Latest / Pod Save America / “1600 Covid Ave.”

Transcript

“1600 Covid Ave.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Tommy talks to CNN polling guru Harry
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Enten about the 2020 map and the path to flip
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the Senate in November. Before that, we'll talk about how
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the coronavirus may now be spreading through the White House,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Attorney General Bill Barr's decision to drop charges against one
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of the president's convicted criminal friends, what Barack Obama thinks
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: about all this, and why Trump has accused Governor Newsom
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of rigging this week's special congressional election in the California 25th.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Just another day in paradise here, guys. You will also
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: hear a sneak preview of Tommy's Pod Save the World
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, the host of Wind of Change,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a brand new podcast from Crooked Media, Pineapple Street Studios,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and Spotify, which is finally out today. Tommy, you want
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: to say a few words about one of the best
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: podcasts our fine listeners will ever hear?
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so listen, I sincerely think that this is one
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: of the best podcasts I've ever heard, one of the
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: best stories I've ever heard So Patrick Radden Keith is
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: like a heavy hitter New Yorker writer. He's written about
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: El Chapo, terrorism, like all these big pieces. This story
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: is about a power ballad from the 90s called Wind
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: of Change that was the anthem to the fall of
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: communism in the USSR and a tip that he got
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: a decade ago that it might have been written by
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: the CIA. And so you'll hear more about the show
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: itself in my interview with Patrick. The cut down version
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: will go on Pod Save America. A longer one will
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: go on Pod Save the World. But my pitch to
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: you guys is if you're looking for eight episodes of
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: like mystery spy stories, metal bands, music, fun, just like
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: a total escape from the nightmare that is the COVID
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: reality we are living in, this is the show. It
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: is so fun. You can binge it all right now
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: for free on Spotify. So check it out there. You
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: don't have to have a paid subscription. You can binge
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: it right now, Monday at for free. Check it out.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: It's such a fun show. You will love it. I'm
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: so excited that this thing is finally in the world.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: We've been working on it for a year. So, trust
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: me on this one.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I can't improve upon that.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: That's what I got.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I'll just add, do it for us too. Like, we
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: really want this thing and need it to be a hit. So,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: head on over there.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Do it for yourself. Do it for yourself.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Do it for us, Patrick, the team at Pineapple Street
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Studios did just an unbelievable job. This is like a
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: big budget, went to four continents, like amazing show. Check
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: it out.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I always test these things on non-political news junkies like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Emily loved it. My brother loved it. My sister-in-law loved it.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: They all started listening to it yesterday. It's just it's really, really.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Really so fun.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Love it. Love it. I believe you also had an
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: excellent show this weekend. Tell us all about it.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Huge love it or leave it. We talked to Michael Lewis,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the author about the fifth risk and Trump as a
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: bad coach of a good team. Brittany Packnett Cunningham shared
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: her thoughts about this gruesome murder in Georgia and the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: public outcry about the lack of charges. Emily Heller joined
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: for a gardening segment against my will, and Whitney Cummings
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: was hilarious judging the monologue.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Check it out.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: It is, I think, one of my favorite episodes with
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of great conversations and really funny segments.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Excellent. All right, let's get to the news. Last week,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump said, quote, we did everything right. Now it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: time to get back to work. On Sunday, one employee said, quote,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: it is scary to go to work. I think that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I'd be a lot safer if I was sitting at home.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: That employee was White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: he was talking about the West Wing, where two staff
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: members have now tested positive for COVID-19, one of President
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Trump's personal valets and Katie Miller, Mike Pence's press secretary.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: The infections have forced a number of senior White House
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: health officials to self-quarantine to some degree after possible exposure,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: including FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, CDC Director Robert Redfield, and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci. Tommy, I want to get your reaction to
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Trump's response to the news about Miller. He said, quote,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: she's a wonderful young woman, Katie. She tested very good
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: for a long period of time. And then all of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: a sudden today she tested positive. And this is why
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: testing isn't necessary. We have the best testing in the world,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: but testing is not necessarily the answer because they were
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: testing them.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Look, I mean, thank God President Trump is willing to
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: tell the hard truth about health care in general, which
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: is that one day you can go to the doctor
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: and be healthy, and then later you can get sick.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: So why bother to go in the first place, right?
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is so ludicrous on its face. He's
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: trying to downplay the need for testing because the federal
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: government has completely failed to ramp up the availability and
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: frequency of testing. And so now he wants to push
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: all that responsibility, all of that work to the states
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: to And then try to say, well, my focus here
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: at the White House is about reopening the economy. But
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: this example perfectly demonstrates why this strategy is doomed to fail,
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: because the president's valet had COVID. So that job means
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: you're in the Oval Office dozens of times a day.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: You bring the president food, drinks, you hand him his
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Diet Coke. There's no one really with more direct contact.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: And the VP's press secretary, Katie Miller, now has coronavirus.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: She's sitting in all the task force meetings. So now Fauci,
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the CDC director, the FDA commissioner, they're all self-quarantining. She's
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: also married to professional racist Stephen Miller. So he is
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: susceptible and he has direct access to the president. So like,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: first of all, I feel badly for anyone who has
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: to work in the West Wing right now because it
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: is tiny. And before you all yell at me that
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: these people chose to work for Trump, like know that
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: the cleaning crews, the military aides, the press, they did
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: not choose to work for Donald Trump. But like my
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: first office in the West Wing was called Lower Press.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: You guys remember this. It's literally directly behind the briefing
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: room podium when you watch Trump and the coronavirus tax force.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: And like, I haven't been in there in a while,
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: but back in the day, we used to seat eight
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: people in a space that would be considered too small
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: for a studio apartment, right? So like social distancing is impossible. But,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: you know, like the White House is.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Still- Remember me and Rhodes in the basement, our office
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that was then your office too. No windows, no ventilation,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: just like a tiny cramped office in the basement of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the West Wing.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: It's a petri dish.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And look, in the White House, you know, they're blessed
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: with having the fastest, most modern equipment. They're testing every
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: day and they can't keep the virus out of the building.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: So how are the rest of us supposed to do
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: so and head out in the world and back to
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: work and stay safe? And so- Like, the initial phase
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: of social distancing and the bending the curve that we
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: were talking about, that was not an end in and
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: of itself. It was supposed to give us time to
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: ramp up hospital capacity and testing so we could try
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: to keep a lid on this thing in a regional
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: way and regional outbreaks by testing and contact tracing. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: we are just nowhere near ready. And you're seeing it
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: with these videos of packed restaurants and TJ Maxx's and
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: everything else. But the White House, despite the fact that
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: the virus is in the heart of the West Wing,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: they still want to push us to reopen. So I
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: just think it's a very ominous side for how things
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: are going to go.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Well, Trump's decided to label this period where he pretends
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the pandemic is already behind us, the transition to greatness.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: This is what he's been tweeting in all caps. It
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: seems like maybe a COVID outbreak at the White House
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: might complicate that message. What do you think?
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. COVID definitely throws a wrench in the COVID
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: hasn't really gotten the gotten the talking points. COVID has
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: consistently refused to go along with the Trump messaging campaign.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: You know, there's all this outside of the, I feel
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: like one thing that's happened over the past, say, 48 hours,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: 72 hours is a combination of two things. One is,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: as Tommy points out, that the White House, the West
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Wing specifically, is small, it is cramped. And so you
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: see all these advisors saying, yeah, it's bad, but we're
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: doing it for our country. And they are combining two things,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: the risk that might be necessary in this emergency to
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: serve the country and the refusal even inside the White
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: House for people to take this seriously enough. I mean,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: we watched for weeks as the coronavirus task force and
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Trump would hold briefings where nobody was socially distant. We
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: have now seen footage of Trump wandering around places without masks,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Pence wandering around places without masks, Pence's team trying to
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: get people to take masks off. You have a concern
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: in Iowa amongst local officials that Mike Pence, far from
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: coming to reassure the country and assuage people's fears, is
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: a fucking vector for disease. So we should really make
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: sure we're separating out both sort of in how we
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: look at what Trump and these people, these dummies are doing,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and Trump's larger policy goals, which is they are desperately
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: trying to ally the difference between a careful reopening in
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: which people take all necessary precautions and it takes place
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: gradually and just opening the country back up and returning
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: to greatness, whatever that means.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It is also an example of, so the White House
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: staff is not, and including and starting with Donald Trump
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and Mike Pence, is not taking their own guidelines seriously, right?
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: There's not enough masks in the White House. They're not
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: social distancing. But in some ways, it's also like test
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: for me, not for you, right? Like what happened with
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Katie Miller and the valet is almost exactly what should
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: happen in a workplace going forward, right? They test everyone
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: daily or they test some White House staffers weekly. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: then as soon as you find that someone is positive,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you then contact trace all of their contacts you ask
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: those people to quarantine and self-isolate. And that is what
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the White House has done. That's why all these senior
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: health officials are quarantining right now. And Trump being like, yeah, well,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: one day you can test negative. and the next day
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: you can test positive. Like, imagine if there were no
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: tests in the White House like there aren't in thousands
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of places, millions of places all across the country. And
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Katie Miller ends up being asymptomatic, and so does the valet.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: How many more people would they have infected if they
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: didn't get tested, if people weren't quarantining and isolating? It
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: is proving the entire point of why we need to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: ramp up testing. We're averaging 250,000 tests per day. Last week,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: it was like a little over 300,000 some days, so
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: it's getting better. But Harvard University epidemiologists there say that
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: we need 900,000 a day by May 15th. So we're
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: still not at the level we need to be safe.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So when outbreaks happen at workplaces, which they may, you'll
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: be able to do exactly what the White House did
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: in this situation.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: It's also just, it's crystal clear that Trump won't wear
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: a mask because he thinks it makes him look stupid.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: And it is so irresponsible. It is demonstrating bad behavior.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: But I just, I nearly lost it when I saw
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Trump doing an event with World War II veterans without
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: a mask on.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It is so disrespectful.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: You call these people there, these heroes from World War
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: II who are absolutely going to die if they get
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: COVID and you can't show the respect to wear a
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: fucking mask in front of these guys who are there
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: for D-Day?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Did you hear what Kaylee McEnany said when asked about this?
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: She said, well, they chose to come.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, the 95-year-old World War II heroes chose to come,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: so it's on them.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And once again, I think it's time we call out
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: the Harvard Law School admissions process that takes a look
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: at potential transfers. Obviously, we've seen problems at the undergraduate
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: level with people like Jared Kushner, but we should also
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: look at the decision making that's leading Harvard Law to
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: admit people who transfer to Harvard Law because it's really
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: doing a damage, I think, to that brand.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Kayleigh's having a rough run in her first week as
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: a White House press secretary. I bet a lot of
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: people are wondering why they went back to this old
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: system when not having her to not lie was probably
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: even easier. All right.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So you guys might remember that long before Donald Trump
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: let a plague loose on America, a number of his
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: top advisors were convicted of various crimes that were uncovered
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: during the investigation of the Russian operation to help Trump
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: win the presidency. On Thursday, The Department of Justice took
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: unprecedented steps to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, Donald
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Trump's first national security advisor, who pled guilty twice to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the 2016 election. Flynn
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: later withdrew his guilty plea, and Trump was reportedly ready
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: to pardon him until Attorney General Bill Barr dropped the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: charges in a 20-page memo that in which they argue
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that the FBI had no justification for interviewing Flynn in
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the first place and that his lies had nothing to
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: do with any relevant FBI investigations. Tommy, why is this
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: such a big deal?
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: So it's a big deal because Attorney General Bill Barr
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: is taking a series of steps to systematically undercut and
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: undo the Mueller probe for purely political reasons. So remember
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: going back in time a little bit, that Barr basically
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: applied for the job of Attorney General by writing this
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: unsolicited memo attacking the Mueller investigation. He got the gig.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: He then wrote a four-page letter spinning Mueller's report in
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: a wildly dishonest way before the whole thing was released.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: More recently, Barr's handpicked staffer asked for a more lenient
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: sentencing for Roger Stone, which led to four career prosecutors
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: withdrawing from the case and one resigning. So that brings
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: us forward to Barr asking another prosecutor to review Flynn's case.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: So last week, The interim U.S. attorney for the District
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: of Columbia, this guy Timothy Shea, who is Barr's handpicked guy,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: filed a motion to dismiss the false statement charge against Flynn,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: which he had pleaded guilty to, as you just said, John, twice.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: And so it's worth noting that this interim U.S. attorney,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Michael Shea, he wasn't vetted. He wasn't confirmed by the Senate.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: He was appointed. So he's just Barr's guy in there
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: doing his bidding. So this new DOJ argument is just
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: absurd on its face. They say that Flynn's lies to
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the FBI were immaterial to the underlying case, thus they
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: should throw the thing out. So remember that that lie,
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: that lie that Flynn told the FBI, the vice president,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: Sean Spicer, and thus the public, was that he didn't
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: discuss sanctions when he made a phone call during the
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: presidential transition with Sergei Kislyak and the Russian ambassador to
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: the US, but he did. And now arguing that lie
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: is somehow immaterial to a counterintelligence investigation about Russian interference
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: in the 2016 election is just ludicrous, especially when you
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: consider that there was already concern about Flynn himself, specifically
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: that he had been paid $ 40, 000 by RT to deliver
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: a speech, which is the Russian language propaganda network. And
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: he went to this gala in Moscow and he sat
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: next to Putin. I think it was Moscow. Um, So
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that that makes Flynn guilty or a
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Russian asset or any of the darker charges you hear,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: but it's nonsensical that you could argue that a phone
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: call so clearly relevant to the underlying context and concern
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: is irrelevant. And, you know, they're also pointing to some
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: procedural issues that maybe the DOJ and FBI made some
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: mistakes with respect to reopening the case or was trying
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: to set them up. So look, I'm not an expert
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: on any of that, but to play devil's advocate for
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: a second, like I am very open to criticisms of Comey.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: or how the case was handled. I'm open to arguments
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: that prosecuting someone under the Logan Act is just dumb,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: or that FARA, the Foreign Agent Registrations Act, is confusing
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: or inconsistently enforced law at best. But just stepping back,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: it would have been a dereliction of duty for the
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: FBI to have all these concerns about Flynn, to know
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: about Russian interference, and not pursue this matter. Once they
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: knew Flynn lied, they knew the Russians knew Flynn lied,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: And Flynn is about to get briefed in the most
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: sensitive information literally in the entire U.S. government as national
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: security advisor. And we haven't even touched on the lobbying
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: Flynn did for the Turkish government or reports that he
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: was part of this insane scheme to literally kidnap a
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen from his home in Pennsylvania
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: and take him back to Turkey where he would have
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: been tortured or imprisoned or worse. So, you know, that
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: I think is the bigger picture of like this effort
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: by Barr that is purely political.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know who thought that Flynn's lies mattered?
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Mike Pence because they fired him over them.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And also, like, part of the problem here was they
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: were running a counterintelligence investigation about Russian influence in the election.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: And.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: The Russians knew that Flynn lied about the call. So
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail. The incoming national security advisor
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: was vulnerable to blackmail because he told the public a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: lie that the Russians could prove was a lie because
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: they knew that he had talked to Kislyak on the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: phone and what he had said. That is precisely why
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you do an investigation. And he pled guilty to it twice.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's going to be a ton of Like
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: every right wing media character in the universe is on
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: this thing. And Donald Trump is going to be talking
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: about it forever. And like they're going to try to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: confuse everyone in this fog of like the left says
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: this and the right says this. Just look at all
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of the career prosecutors who've served in Democratic and Republican
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: administrations who aren't partisan. Look at what the judges are saying.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Look at what all of these nonpartisan people are saying.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Some of them are resigning. All of them think it's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: fucking outrageous. People who've worked for the Bush administration, for
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the Obama administration. What Bill Barr has done and his
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: cronies is fucking a travesty of justice. And everyone who
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: is not a Trump acolyte believes that to be true.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, Lovett, what are the potential implications of this
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: going forward? Because Trump has basically spent all day on
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Sunday tweeting threats of revenge, accusing the Obama administration of
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: conspiring against Flynn, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Obama himself. He tweeted Obamagate many times now, and he
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: actually retweeted a meme that said, hope you had fun
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: investigating me. Now it's my turn.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Well, sort of really gives away the game a little
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: bit there. I mean, look, This is a rollout of
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory. And step one of the rollout of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: the conspiracy theory is getting everybody confused about what is
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: ultimately a very simple thing. It's actually similar. I feel
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: like we're doing this twice today, right? The White House
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: is now having an outbreak of COVID, proving the necessity
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: of testing that Trump is denying. All of this is
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: pretty trivial. But Mike Flynn is asked about his contacts
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: with Russia in a Russia counterintelligence investigation.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: He lies.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: He is caught for that lie. He pleads guilty. He
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: admits to the crime. His very accomplished defense attorney signed
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: their name saying that this is all legitimate and that
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: he is confessing and admitting to what he does. He
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: is fired for his conduct. It is sort of sanctified
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: up and down the chain of command. And then because
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Trump heading into reelection realizes he needs to drum up
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: some kind of a story and some kind of a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: kind of assault on his own administration, gets Bill Barr
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: to do all this, all for the specific purpose of
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: being able to say the Russia investigation was actually a
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: hoax and the real enemy here is Barack Obama. What
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: they're doing now is first they muddy the water and
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: get everybody confused about what happened. And then the next
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: step is to say, actually, what really went wrong, the
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: real scandal is the Obama administration investigation of Donald Trump
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and Donald Trump's associates so that they can try to
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: make this about Obama and Biden and some kind of
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: abuse of power that took place during the transition and
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: before because they view it as a way to help
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: them win the election. And they're going to have a
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: bunch of allies and the media help them do that.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: They're already doing this. The only people defending Flynn are
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: the kind of serial liars and manipulators of the right wing.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: It forces you to ignore not just Flynn, not just Trump,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: not just Mike Pence, not just Flynn's own lawyers, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: hundreds now, I think, what, 1900, almost 2000 career officials
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: who are saying that this is an abuse of power. And,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the media will likely go along with this
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: argument that this is some kind of a right left
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: dispute when really it's a tiny cabal of right wing
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Trump goons against tradition, nonpartisan experts and everybody else.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: One of the things that's most galling about the MAGA
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: people and Trump in general is that they always claim
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: to be victims of a government that they are in
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: charge of and have been in charge of for a
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: long time. That is true with the right-wing protesters who
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: are complaining about the lockdowns and saying this is government tyranny.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: You're a bunch of Make America Great Again, QAnon-loving Trump fans.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Don't you realize that he is in charge? And The
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: other thing we should all be concerned about is this
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: isn't the end of the revisionist history on the Russia probe, right?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: There's this Durham investigation that Barr has started that is
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: reviewing the entire Russia probe. And it seems like the
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: goal is to find something they can point to, which
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: shows that former Obama administration officials politicized the investigation or
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: did something improper or were trying to rig the election process.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, which is, you know,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: things that Donald Trump has been asserting for literally years, right?
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: But he's finally found his guy. He installed Barr at
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice, and Barr is more than happy
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: to set up a process that he can point to
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: as a fig leaf or, you know, sort of a
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: sliver of justice to make it seem reasonable. But I
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: think we should all be very worried about it.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Trump's also starting to bristle at FBI Director Christopher Wray.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: He's starting to go around to anyone. Forget forget holdovers
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: from Obama. Just anyone who is not just a knee
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: jerk Trump defender, a true loyalist in positions of power
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: inside of the Justice Department and inside of law enforcement.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, Trump sort of like gave away the game
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. You know, he spent all day Sunday.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: He's still doing it today. Tweeting, you know, threats of revenge,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: accusing the Obama administration of conspiring against Flynn. He's pointing
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: out Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Obama himself. He's tweeting Obamagate.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: He retweeted a meme that said, hope you had fun
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: investigating me. Now it's my turn. I mean, that's what
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this is about, right? Like, you know, if Donald Trump
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: had pardoned Michael Flynn like he was planning to do,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that would have been bad enough. But the purpose of
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: having Barr dismiss the charges is not just letting Flynn off.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It's saying the real villains here are the FBI and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the DOJ and in the Obama administration and law enforcement.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: They want to go after the Obama administration. I mean,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I think there's two tracks here. The legal track, which
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: involves John Durham, this prosecutor that Barr has reviewing the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: whole case, is actually quite terrifying because I think Trump
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: is not going to be happy and Bill Barr is
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: not going to be happy until they get someone or
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: multiple people from the Obama administration and have some kind
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of a fucking show trial here. I think the political track,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's going to be as effective
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: for them because... Like watching Donald Trump start tweeting about
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: something called Obamagate in the middle of a pandemic where
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: over 80,000 Americans are dead, I do not think is
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: going to find a lot of traction outside the fucking
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: right-wing fever dream of like his... But that's the goal.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: That's the point, right?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I mean... That is the goal. If you.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Like Dave Weigel did this interesting experiment where he downloaded
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: like the Trump app and he downloaded the Biden app
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: and he lived in the two different worlds they create
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: for you in terms of media. And the Flynn story was...
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: the biggest thing that has ever happened in the world
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: on the sort of MAGA app, right? If you turn
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: into Fox News, this is what's going to pepper you.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: If you watch OANN, it's going to be all conspiracies.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Like he's clearly looking for something that makes him the
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: victim again, that gets his people angry and motivated that
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: might distract them from his utterly terrible response to the pandemic.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that'll work, but it is certainly
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: kicked up a shitload of media attention. And it's very,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: very purposeful. Otherwise, why do you send like 52 retweets
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: or tweets in an hour on Mother's Day morning, right?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: It's also just, I think, worth looking at how conspiracy
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: theories have changed because of Donald Trump, right? You look
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: at like 9-11 conspiracy theories, and it begins with a
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: bunch of people in the fringe of the internet making
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: sort of spurious connections. And it ends up as, you know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: it's a joke on Twitter, jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams,
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: but you have sort of people building cases and building
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: information so that they can develop up this conspiracy theory
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: from the ground up to try to get it to
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: catch on, to explain things in a way that's sort of, you.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Know, false.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Trump tweets Obamagate. There is no underlying fact pattern. There's
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: no justification for it. There's no information to support that
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: there is any kind of conspiracy going on. But he
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: starts with the conspiracy at the highest possible level, And
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: it's a signal to everyone from the legitimate slowly down
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: to the nether regions of the kind of right wing
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Internet to begin building this argument so that it can
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: bubble up into the mainstream press. And that's why this
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: will be back again and again and again.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think I think there is diminishing marginal
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: returns to the strategy of firing up your base, because
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I think from the beginning of the selection has been very,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: very clear that his base is going to turn out
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: and they're going to turn out in numbers like we've
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: never seen. And they're going to be with him no
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: matter what. And he can, you know, he's going to
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: do all these things to juice turnout and to get
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: his base excited. And exactly what you were talking about, Tommy,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and what Weigel wrote about by keeping them in this,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you know, information bubble the entire time. I just, I wonder,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you know, what Donald Trump needs right now is, what
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: worries me most about what he does in this election
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is one, anything to get back sort of the suburban
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: voters that he's lost in 2018. And two, whatever he
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: can do to depress democratic turnout, which that's their specialty.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: They did that in 2016 too. And I don't know
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: if this fits with either of those strategies. I do
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: have incredible concern about the sort of legal fallout that
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: fucking show trials that, you know, the fact that he's
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: just making a mockery of our justice system and all,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and then the rule of law, like that scares the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: shit out of me. But, um, but I do wonder
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: how this political, uh, move plays out in a world
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that's in, you know, a deep, deep, deep recession and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: a pandemic.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: My other just sort of fear, too, is one of
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: the reasons he's starting to drum this up is because
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: we may see more interference in this election.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: And we're going to see more.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That worries me a lot.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: We're going to see more interference potentially from Russia. Perhaps
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: it's already ongoing and we're going to find out fucking later.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And as that unfolds, he's going to try to do
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: this to muddy the water and make this about Obama
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: and make this about anything other than the kind of
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: illegitimacy of his previous victory, and the illegitimate victory he's
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: trying to eke out in 2020.
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: I'm Patrick Radden Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine.
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: On my new podcast, Wind of Change, I investigate a
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: rumor I haven't been able to shake since I first
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: heard it years ago. It came from someone inside the CIA,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: and the story was that the agency had written one
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: that changed the world So that was the tip that
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: started me on this story, and it only got crazier
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of
• 27:35
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• 27:38
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• 27:43
  Speaker 1: So one person who had something to say about all
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: this was our old boss, Barack Obama. On Friday, Yahoo
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: News obtained the recording of a call the former president
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: did with around 3,000 former staffers, which... Somehow the three
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of us all missed. And towards the end of that call,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: didn't know what was happening. And towards the end of
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: that call, 3,000 former staffers.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: We were not on there.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And towards the end of the call, Obama said that
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Barr's dismissal of the Flynn case demonstrated that, quote, our
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: basic understanding of the rule of law is at risk.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: And when you start moving in those directions, it can
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: accelerate pretty quickly, as we've seen in other places. He
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: also called Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, quote, an
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: absolute chaotic disaster. Lovett, what did you think? Were you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: at all surprised by how pointed Obama was?
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, OK, let's call that pointed. It's, you know,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: it's it's pointed from an.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Absolute chaotic disaster.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: No, no, I'm only I'm pulling punches.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: I'm only saying that it's it's it's accurate. It's a
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: completely accurate sentence. And it's news because Barack Obama is
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: saying something obvious and accurate. It is a chaotic disaster.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: It's only pointed because the reality demands it. And yeah,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: that's it.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: That's what I got.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it's like. We're in this. I
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: feel like, you know, here we are week 12. We're
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: in our fucking week 30. I don't know. We're in
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: our homes. It is an absolute chaotic disaster. It is
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: good that Barack Obama is pointing it out. You know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the New York Times could only muster saying that Barr's
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: decision heightens fears of politicization at the Department of Justice.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: It's good that Barack Obama is willing to to to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: come out here and just point out how.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: True this is, because it is it is still his megaphone.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: He still can reach people with it.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess I just, you know, there was a
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: lot of chatter after this was released. Like, finally, Obama
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: is saying something. Why isn't he saying this in public?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Why don't we hear him speak more? And, you know,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: there's always various rounds of this every so often. It
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: feels like people forgot 2018. A lot of times it
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: feels like people forgot what happened in 2018 midterms. But like,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama went out there and campaigned for Democratic candidates
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and talked about like, how, you know, democracy was at stake,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the rule of law was at stake. Like he said
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: all this shit before. I do think that people, some
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: people believe that Barack Obama has these magical powers that
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: when he comes out and speaks against Trump, suddenly like
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the Trump presidency will just crumble before our eyes, you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: which is not really the case. I mean, I'm glad
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: he said it. I'm always an advocate of Barack Obama
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: speaking his mind more. Tommy, what do you think this
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: tells us about like the role he intends to play
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in this campaign?
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, look, I hope it's similar to the
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: one he played in 2018 when he was out a
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: lot to the extent one can be out on the
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: quote campaign trail these days. I mean, it does signal
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: that he's not pulling punches. And I do think no
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: one should be surprised by that. And the timing does
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: seem appropriate by Obama's standards of sort of wanting to
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: give Trump some leeway as an ex-president. But once you
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: have a presumptive nominee, the campaign season has really started
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: and he put out that endorsement video. So I think
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: you'll probably hear from him more regularly. I mean, look,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: I'm sympathetic to the people who want to hear him
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: out there more. He has a big megaphone. He's able
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: to get press attention and drive a message in ways
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: that most other Democrats can't. This does seem to be,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: I think, a signal to them that you're going to
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: hear a lot from Barack Obama going forward, especially in
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: the fall. He's going to be campaigning for Joe Biden
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: a lot, maybe from his living room, maybe on Zoom.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: But you're going to hear from him And he will
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: continue to be one of the people in the party
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: that can really prosecute a case against the Republican Party
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: better than almost anyone else. So it's a good thing.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with that last point, too, because I
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: think in his comments, there was what I think could
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: be a really effective message for Democrats in November. He
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: said this election that's coming up on every level is
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: so important because what we're going to be battling is
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: not just a particular individual or a political party. What
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: we're fighting against is these long term trends. We're being selfish,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: That has become a stronger impulse in American life. And
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well. He
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: said that the reason the response to the pandemic has
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: been an absolute chaotic disaster is because that mindset of
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: what's in it for me and to heck with everybody
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: else has been operationalized in our government. And I do
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: think in those comments is sort of the seeds of
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a message that that Democrats and Joe Biden and the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: rest of us can run on in November. So in
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the middle of his latest weekend Twitter meltdown, the president
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: also falsely accused California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democrats
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of rigging Tuesday's special congressional election in California's 25th district.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: He tweeted, quote, Governor Gavin Newsom of California won't let restaurants,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: beaches and stores open, but he installs a voting booth
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: system in a highly Democrat area. in parentheses, supposed to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: be mail-in ballots only. Now suddenly Donald Trump, he loves
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: mail-in ballots because our great candidate, Mike Garcia, is winning
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: by a lot. CA25, rigged election. Tommy, you want to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: unpack this crazy for us?
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: So, okay. So there's a special election. Democratic State Assemblywoman
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Christy Smith is running against this guy, Mike Garcia. They're
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: trying to fill out the seat left vacant by Congresswoman
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress. So this would be
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: a special election that would allow that person to fill
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: the seat until the November 2020 elections. The weird thing
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: about this tweet. So the request to open this polling
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: location in the area came from a Republican mayor, among others.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: The other option is vote by mail, which Trump also
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: says is rigged. And so apparently he doesn't want anyone
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: to be allowed to vote. That's sort of his position here.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: The other thing that's weird is that Republicans are winning
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: that race or so everyone seems to think. So he's
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: drawing a whole bunch of attention to it and he's
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: calling it rigged when it seems likely that Mike Garcia
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: is ahead. So this doesn't make any sense factually. It
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense politically. I guess that shouldn't surprise me,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: but it was just like, I want to know what
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: Fox segment he was watching that led him to pull
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: this idiocy out of his ass because normally that's the like,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: you know, little breadcrumb trail we follow to figure these
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: things out.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's two things. I think
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: we're seeing he found a great way to combine two birds,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: one tweet. So there is evidence that Republicans are returning
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: more of their mail-in ballots than Democrats, but there's a
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: chance that Democrats could catch up in returning their ballots
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: or in some of these in-person locations. And by the way,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: it's not just one location. There are multiple locations, and
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: this was opening one more location. And so this is
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: about in a small way previewing what could happen in November,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: which is a slow count over time, a Democrat slowly
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: coming back and Trump delegitimizing the election.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: So that's just something to watch for.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: That's what he's testing a little bit.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So scary.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: So scary.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: So that's one. And then two, and then two, he
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: just wants to take a shot at Gavin Newsom, you know,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: in a week where they're having to send everybody home
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: from the White House because of COVID. He has one.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: He wants to outsource the pain. protecting people from this virus.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And so he's trying to blame Gavin Newsom for economic
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: fallout in any way that they can. That's what Fox
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: News is doing constantly. That's what Kevin McCarthy is doing.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: That's what all of these Republicans are doing. Why won't
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: you open the house? I got a tea near the
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: White House. They're trying to put anyone being responsible and
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: listening to health experts as responsible for the economic cost.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, There would normally be a thousand in-person
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: polling places in this district. There's only going to be
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: 13 because of COVID. And this polling place that Trump
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: is talking about in Lancaster is one of them. It's
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: heavily African-American community and didn't have a polling place like
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: some other communities in the district. But like, as you
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: pointed out, Tommy, Republican mayor. It's represented in the California
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: state legislature by two Republicans. So it's not like the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: most Democrat area of California, as you said, or even
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: in that district. But I do think, you know, part
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of me was like, oh, I'm glad Donald Trump is
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: calling attention to this race because Democrats need to get
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: their fucking ballot in. We have a registration advantage in
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: this district. Katie Hill won it by about seven points
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: in 2018, even though it was competitive. And there are
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: more registered Democrats than Republicans. And everyone has been mailed
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: a ballot.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: There's a ballot in your house. There's a ballot in
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: your house.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: If we lose this race tomorrow, the only thing we
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: can blame is ourselves because Democrats did not turn the
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: ballots in. They're at your fucking house.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, Dave Wasserman pointed out that Lancaster, which
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: is the most heavily non-white area in CA25, was in
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: fact the only population center without an in-person voting center
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: until this weekend's. So if anything, this was writing an injustice.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: God help voters in states where you don't have a
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: governor like Gavin Newsom, who cares about democracy and doing
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: the right things. This just speaks to the quiet voter
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: suppression that happens in elections all the time, especially against
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: people of color. And it's infuriating.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And what everyone should know is, you know, so
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: we're behind right now. Obviously, Chrissy Smith, who was on
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the pod the other week, hopefully she can catch up
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: as more ballots get returned and maybe some in-person voting
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: on election day. Um, but there's basically going to be
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: a rematch in November because this is filling out the
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: remainder of Katie Hill's term. And then they both have to,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: no matter who wins tomorrow, they both have to run
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: against each other again in November. And so, you know,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Democrats believe that with a presidential election turnout, maybe, uh,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Chrissy Smith could do even better in the November election,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: but still a lot of people are going to be
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: watching this race. It's going to be a lot of
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: takes about what happens tomorrow. So, um, Go to votesaveamerica.com
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: slash CA25 to find out how you can donate or
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: volunteer in these final two days. Uh, no matter where
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you live, you can help out. So, uh, call attention
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: to that. There's also, by the way, going to be
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: a special election. I think we talked about this before
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin's seventh congressional district, Democrat Tricia Sunker is on
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the ballot. Um, and, uh, so you can find out
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: more about that at votesaveamerica.com slash Wisconsin. That's a little
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: bit of a tougher race, but we just saw the
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin Democrats pull out something big in that, uh, In
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: that court race a couple of weeks ago. So hopefully
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: they can do the same. All right. When we come back,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: we'll have Tommy's interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, the host
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of our new podcast, Wind of Change.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: I am so excited to talk to my guest today.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: It's Patrick Radden Keefe. Patrick is a New Yorker staff writer.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: Say Nothing, which has been called the best nonfiction book
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: of 2019 and one of the best nonfiction books of
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: the decade.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: No big deal.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Patrick, it's great to have you back and see your
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: face from this COVID nightmare.
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: Great to be back with you.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: So.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: I just want to say, so we're here today to
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: talk about this amazing new show, Wind of Change. And
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: before we get to questions, I just want to sort
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: of tell listeners that I literally remember where I was
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: in my office the first time we talked about this
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: show and the tip you got about the song Wind
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: of Change. There was something about it, the distinctive song,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: like the mystery, that period of time, the nostalgia.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: And it just put this like big shit-eating grin on
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: my face. And that smile was still there when I
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: listened to the last episode a couple weeks ago. So
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: here's my pitch to listeners. If you want to immerse
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: yourself into eight episodes of mystery, of fantasy, history and
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: music and rock stars, and just like pure joy that
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: will escape this pandemic nightmare, this is your show. So
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: check it out on Spotify. You can binge the whole
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: show there. And this is important. You don't have to
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: pay for Spotify to binge it. You can get it
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: for free on Spotify and binge the whole series. So
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: It's 2020. Get with the program. Download Spotify. Subscribe to
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: Wind of Change. And you will feel joy for the
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: first time in months. End of speech from me. So
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: first question for you, Patrick. So like at The New Yorker,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: you've written about the Sackler family who are these monsters
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: that pushed Oxycontin like it was Tylenol and helped create
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: the nation's opioid crisis. You've covered terrorists. You've covered the
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: hunt for El Chapo. You wrote a book about the
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: IRA and the troubles in Northern Ireland and immersed yourself
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: in that history. But your white whale, your Moby Dick
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: was a 90s power ballad called Wind of Change. Can
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: you talk about like the genesis of this story that
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: led you on a decade long journey that got us
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: to today? Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:35
  Speaker 6: So I have this friend and he's a character in
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: the podcast, this guy, Michael Schender Auerbach. who, um, I've
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: known for years.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: We first met, I.
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: Think in 2006 and he's one of these people, I'm sure,
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: you know, people like this too. He's just, it feels
• 40:51
  Speaker 6: like he's, he's kind of a, uh, almost a sort
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: of where's Waldo. Like he, he pops up in all
• 40:57
  Speaker 6: kinds of different places. He knows all sorts of different people.
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: So he now works for Madeline Albright, um, at Albright Stonebridge, uh,
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: her company. Um, But he's been in business intelligence and
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: he's had startups and he's been in the think tank
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: world and he's involved in Middle East peace stuff. And
• 41:15
  Speaker 6: he has been a dear friend of mine for years,
• 41:17
  Speaker 6: but also a source. And so over the years at
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: The New Yorker, he would tip me off to things,
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: crazy stories, and just became one of those people who
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: always had wild ideas that nobody else was talking about
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: and seemed to be able to kind of sort of
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: see around the corner a little bit and sometimes just
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: tip me off to something that maybe was going to
• 41:38
  Speaker 6: be a big thing in a few months time. Um,
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: and so I, you know, anytime he comes to me
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: with a tip, I take it seriously. And the way
• 41:48
  Speaker 6: this whole thing started is in 2011, he sent me
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: an email and he said, I had dinner last night
• 41:53
  Speaker 6: with this guy who was a friend of mine who
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: used to work at the CIA. And he told me
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: that there's this song by the 1980s German hair metal band,
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: The Scorpions, called Wind of Change, which is this big song.
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: More in Europe. It's one of the biggest rock songs ever.
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: Less so in the US, but in Europe, it's just huge, ubiquitous.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Nearly a billion views on YouTube.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's something like in terms of
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: singles in the pre-digital era, it's like the 13th biggest
• 42:24
  Speaker 6: selling single of all time. And it's this metal ballad
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: all about the end of the Cold War. It came
• 42:30
  Speaker 6: out right around the time the Berlin Wall fell. And
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: it's all about reconciliation and the end of communism and tyranny.
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: And it was kind of the soundtrack to the collapse
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: of the Soviet Union. And the tip that I got
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: from Michael in 2011 was he said, so this guy
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: last night told me that that song was written by
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: the CIA. And that set me off.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Down this rabbit hole. My shit-eating grin is back.
• 42:55
  Speaker 6: I'm telling you. Um, and I didn't even, it's funny
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: cause I wasn't really all that familiar with the song.
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: You know, I was not a metal kid growing up.
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: I was, certainly that was my era. You know, I
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: was a kid and very into music in those years,
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: but not metal. Um, but there's just something about the
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: story and that kind of set me off on, on
• 43:15
  Speaker 6: this path, which all these years, literally almost a decade
• 43:19
  Speaker 6: later has turned into this, this podcast.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: So.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: Let's, I guess, start by going back in time. And
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: I think the reason I imagine that you heard that
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: tip and didn't think it was ridiculous on its face
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: is because this kind of thing has happened in the past.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: So the CIA has sponsored concerts, arts festivals, books, films
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: as part of this cultural Cold War against communism, against
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. And one of my favorite episodes in
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: this series is when you dig into that history. Can
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: you talk a little bit about Louis Armstrong and Nina
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Simone and their relationship with the CIA? Yeah, so this
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: to me was all new.
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: I mean, I vaguely knew that the CIA had kind
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: of dabbled in the world of culture, particularly early in
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: the Cold War, that there were certain books and films
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: and literary journals that they promoted, that they literally promoted
• 44:13
  Speaker 6: abstract expressionism. You know, you had this period of time.
• 44:16
  Speaker 6: I think some of this is the kind of agency
• 44:18
  Speaker 6: of CIA guys, it's all guys, who are these white
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: guys who come out of Yale. And so there's this
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: period of time where they're like, Jackson Pollock is the answer.
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: You know, they have this notion that kind of promoting
• 44:32
  Speaker 6: certain kinds of high art will win the ideological battle
• 44:35
  Speaker 6: with the Soviets. But one of the things that we
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: delved into in the podcast is that you get this
• 44:43
  Speaker 6: amazing moment in the 50s and 60s when Eisenhower comes
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: into office and Eisenhower says explicitly, we quote him, the
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: CIA should be dabbling in the world of culture. It's
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: one thing to have a propaganda leaflet dropped out of
• 44:58
  Speaker 6: an airplane, but nobody's going to trust something if it
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: looks like propaganda. So what he says is we should
• 45:02
  Speaker 6: be kind of messing around in the sphere of culture.
• 45:06
  Speaker 6: And Eisenhower's quote was, the hand of government must be
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: carefully concealed. And so you have this point where America's
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: holding itself out there against the Soviets as this bastion
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: of freedom and liberty. But at the same time, it's
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: Jim Crow America in the 1950s. And the Soviets, actually
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: a big part of their propaganda about the U.S. is
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: about race relations in this country. And so you then
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: get this moment where initially it's the State Department starts
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: approaching black jazz musicians and saying, we want you to
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: go on a goodwill tour abroad. We want you to
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: go to the Middle East. We want you to go
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: to Africa. In some instances, we want you to go
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: to the Soviet Union and tour around and play. And
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: we tell the story of Louis Armstrong in particular because
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: he ends up incredibly conflicted where the State Department is
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: coming and asking him to be this roving ambassador. And
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: at the same time, he's deeply uncomfortable being kind of
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: put out there as this black American prop, effectively, who's
• 46:09
  Speaker 6: sort of vouching for the American way at the same
• 46:12
  Speaker 6: time as domestically, he has obviously deep misgivings about the
• 46:18
  Speaker 6: nature of the political system and segregation. Um, and we,
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: we found out this other amazing story that I hadn't known.
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: And this one kind of hit me particularly hard because
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: it's about an artist that I, I just, I grew
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: up loving. I've, I've listened to her since I was
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: a kid. Um, so Louis Armstrong actually goes to Africa
• 46:35
  Speaker 6: on tour and he knows what he's doing. The state
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: department sends him and he's uncomfortable about it, but he
• 46:39
  Speaker 6: goes in 1961. We tell this story about how Nina Simone,
• 46:45
  Speaker 6: the high priestess of soul goes to Africa, goes to
• 46:48
  Speaker 6: Nigeria on a tour. And Nina Simone was actually politically
• 46:52
  Speaker 6: pretty radical, not the kind of person who would ever
• 46:56
  Speaker 6: have gone anywhere if the State Department asked her to.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: So she goes.
• 46:59
  Speaker 6: There's a foundation in D.C., the American Society of African Culture,
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: which sends her there on this tour. And one of
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: the stories we tell in this podcast is we found
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: out through talking to a historian who'd been through the
• 47:13
  Speaker 6: archives of this organization that the American Society of African
• 47:16
  Speaker 6: Culture was a front for the CIA. The CIA was
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: secretly funding this group.
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 47:21
  Speaker 6: They send Nina Simone to Nigeria. She performs. It's this
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: like important experience for her. And she died not knowing
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: that she'd been used.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Man, it's like it's just it's a heartbreaking story in
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: so many ways, especially given her eventual split with the country. Well,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: she leaves the country. Yeah, she moved abroad.
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: Didn't want anything to do with the United States. But
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: it just opened my eyes to this idea. You know,
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: when I first got started on this and heard the
• 47:45
  Speaker 6: Scorpion story, I was like, that's ridiculous that, you know,
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: what would the CIA have to do with music? And
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: then you push into it, and the podcast explores this
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: at great length with a bunch of different genres in
• 47:55
  Speaker 6: different periods during the Cold War. But the answer is
• 47:57
  Speaker 6: a lot.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, the minute after we talked about this
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: story for the first time, this show for the first time,
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: I ran home and I bought a book about exactly
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: this subject. And since we're both Boston guys, I'm obligated
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: to read this quote, which is that in 1952, the
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: CIA sponsored an arts festival in Paris that included a
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Thomas Braddon, a senior
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: member of the CIA, said of that concert, the Boston
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the US and Paris
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: brought with 100 speeches. So certainly, that speaks to their
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: belief in the efficacy of this kind of cultural effort.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: And you talk to former CIA people, and we interviewed
• 48:40
  Speaker 6: a bunch of them for the podcast. And you know,
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: this would be a, a kind of a covert operation,
• 48:46
  Speaker 6: but it sort of, it would be described as an
• 48:47
  Speaker 6: influence operation, right? It's essentially propaganda, but you're out there
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: trying to win hearts and minds and it's, it's connected
• 48:54
  Speaker 6: in interesting ways. So like one thing that some CIA
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: people would tell you is our bread and butter is
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: being in a foreign country and trying to persuade people
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: to betray their country and secretly share information with us.
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: And the way you lay the foundation for that is to, um,
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: you know, have messages and ideas out there that reflect
• 49:16
  Speaker 6: well on the United States. You know, so the kind
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: of hearts and minds thing is like a broad popular approach,
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: but it's also a very kind of specific targeted, how
• 49:26
  Speaker 6: do we persuade key individuals to.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Back our horse in this thing?
• 49:31
  Speaker 6: Um, and they did it, uh, they did it for years.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, that was a portion of my interview with Patrick
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Radden Keefe about the show Wind of Change, our brand
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: new show that you can find right now and binge
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: on Spotify. The full interview with Patrick about how he
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: figured this story out, how it all came together, what
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: it was like talking to all these spies is going
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: to run on Pod Save the World on Wednesday. And
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: then when we come back, we'll have my conversation with
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: CNN's Harry Enten about why the Senate map is looking
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: better and better for Democrats and and some really interesting
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: tidbits about both Trump and Biden's polling. So stick around
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: for that. I am thrilled now to be joined by
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: senior writer and analyst for CNN Politics, Harry Enten. Harry,
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: thank you for joining the show. I also feel like
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: I'm obligated to say that you're a diehard Buffalo Bills fan.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: So that just tells everyone out there it could be worse.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: It could be, you know, it could be far worse. Imagine,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: you know, you're in a one bedroom during the quarantine.
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: I'm healthy, but I'm also a Bills fan. It doesn't
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: quite equal out. But the fact of the matter is, look,
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: maybe we'll make the playoffs this year. We did last year, right?
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you got some good players. Your first draft
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: pick was at like, what, 53 in the second round?
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we traded that first round draft pick away. But
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: the fact is, you know, we're on the upswing. My
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: old stat was the Bills didn't make the playoffs from
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: before my bar mitzvah to the current moment in time.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: I can no longer claim that. So we're on the upswing.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: Things are looking up.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Things are looking up. Okay, so Harry, I'm so excited
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: to talk with you because you wrote a piece the
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: other day that I had to pause and stop reading.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: because it created this feeling in me they call hope.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: And I didn't like it. It was very unfamiliar. And
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: Dan Pfeiffer actually had the exact same reaction. And so
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: the headline was, Democrats are slight favorites for Senate control.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: That's how desperate Democrats like myself are for good news
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: these days. So with the caveat that polls can wildly
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: change this far out, I just wanted to chat with
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: you about why prospects seem to be looking better for
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Democrats and hopefully, you know, inspire listeners who care about
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: this stuff to donate to these elections, to these candidates, volunteer,
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: you know, rip that gavel from Mitch McConnell's hands. And
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: by the way, they can go to votesaveamerica.com slash donate
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: if they want to donate to our Get Mitch Fund.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: So The overview right now is Republicans have 53 seats,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: Democrats have 47, 35 Senate seats are up for grabs
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: this fall. Republicans are defending 23 of them. So they're
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: in a tougher position. Democrats need a net gain of
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: three seats if Biden wins, four seats if Trump wins.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: You looked at all the overall data and you gave
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: some odds of Democrats taking back the Senate. Can you
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: share those before we get into specifics like state by state?
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: And maybe give an overview of why you think Democratic
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: prospects are looking a touch better.
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Sure. So, you know, essentially what my math, you know,
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: I look back at all the Senate elections that I
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: possibly could since 2006. And I basically said, OK, how
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: do different variables help predict or help forecast what's actually
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: going to occur? You know, stuff like the generic congressional ballot,
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: stuff like in the individual states, the individual state polling, stuff,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: you know, like is the incumbent running? You can go on,
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: so on, so forth. And what essentially I found through
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: all of that data was that the chance that Democrats
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: pick up three seats, the net gain of three is
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: around 60%, right? Which is a little better than even,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: but of course, we don't know whether or not, we
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: don't know who's going to win the presidency. In terms
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: of the picking up the four seats, that clocked in
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: right around 50%. But if you average those out, even
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: if you just assume that there was a 50-50 shot
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: in the presidential race, Democrats would still have a slightly
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: better than even shot of going. And I think what's
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: so important in all the statistics that I looked at
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: that sort of give us this understanding of why Democrats
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: are in the position that they are is it's two
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: key factors. Number one is the generic congressional ballot is
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: really good for Democrats right now. It's averaging around an
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: eight-point Democratic lead. That's actually slightly better than Democrats were
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: at this point in the 2018 cycle, and it's significantly
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: better than where they were at this point in the
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: 2016 cycle. And the other thing is that, as you
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: mentioned at the top, Democrats are on offense here. They're
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: not really protecting that many seats. You know, if you
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: go back to 2018, when Democrats were protecting all of
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: those seats, right, there were multiple cases where there were
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: Democratic incumbents defending seats in states that Trump won by
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: 10 points or more. In this particular election, there's just one.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: That's Doug Jones down in Alabama. So they're on considerably
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: more offense and the national environment is considerably better for
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: them than it was four years ago at this point.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: That is a great overview. I'd also note that fundraising
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: and candidate recruitment has done pretty well this year. So
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: some of the top pickup opportunities are Colorado, Arizona, and Maine.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: So I was hoping we could start there with Colorado.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: Former Governor John Hickenlooper leads Senator Cory Gardner, the Republican incumbent,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: by 18% in a recent poll by a Democratic firm
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: in the state. So you should know it's a Democratic firm,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: but you know, Hick is 54-36, Hickenlooper over Gardner. That's
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: a pretty big advantage. That poll of likely voters increased
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: from plus 11 in October. The Washington Post had a
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: piece over the weekend on the Senate map that included
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: a line that said, quote, many GOP strategists have already
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: written off Cory Gardner, the Republican incumbent. Harry, do you
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: think that poll is too rosy? Or like, how do
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: you think things are looking in Colorado for Cory Gardner?
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that poll probably is
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: a little bit rosy. And there was another poll that
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: was taken by a nonpartisan, I believe in Montana State Billings,
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: I believe it was, that actually showed a similar margin.
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: But neither of those polls were phone polls, right? They
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: were online polls. And state online polls, while certainly they
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: can give a signal, I'm not necessarily sure I'd drill
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: down and say it's exactly 17 or exactly 18. But
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: the fact of the matter is, you know, when I
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: wrote my piece, I didn't have any state polling. I
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: was basically, you know, relying upon the state fundamentals, you know,
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: how it voted in 2016, the different expert ratings. whether
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: or not the income was running. And I still projected
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: out that Gardner was going to lose by six. So,
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: you know, this is not a good state for Republicans
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: to be defending in a good Democratic year. Remember, this
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: is a state that Hillary Clinton won rather easily, won
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: it by five points. So this is the type of state,
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: especially with Hickenlooper, who's a well-known candidate, likely going to
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: be the Democratic nominee. It's certainly, in my mind, probably
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: the top pickup opportunity for Democrats.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I apologize for presupposing the outcome of that primary.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: It is worth noting that the Q1 fundraising numbers came out.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Hickenlooper raised about $ 4 million. Gardner raised about $ 2. 4 million.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: So that's a pretty good advantage. But Gardner is about
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: double the money in the bank. But the trend for
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: a lot of these candidates is they're having monster quarters,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: even if they don't have as much money in legacy accounts.
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right. And of course, keep in
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: mind that Hickenlooper hasn't been running for nearly as long
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: as Cory Gardner has been running. Cory Gardner has been
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: running hard for over five years now since he was
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: first elected. And just on the fundraising, generally speaking, yeah,
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: that's certainly one of the things, especially later on in
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: the year, that I'll certainly be looking towards.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about Arizona. So fundraising is another big
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: factor here. Former astronaut Mark Kelly raised $ 11 million today.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: In the first quarter of 2020, some presidential campaigns would
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: have been pleased with that number. Senator Martha McSally, the
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Republican incumbent, raised $ 6. 2 million, which is still an impressive haul.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: But pre-pandemic polling showed Kelly up about 7%. He has
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: double the cash on hand. Do you think this is
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: lower in the rankings in terms of pickup opportunities because
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: the state is more of a toss-up? Or how do
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: you view Arizona?
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, if Arizona is one of those states
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: that I believe since 1948 has only gone in the
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: Democratic column in a presidential election year once, and that
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: was in 1996 with Bill Clinton. So, you know, that
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: is a state that certainly has been trending more favorably
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: towards the the Democratic Party. Obviously, Martha McSally ran just
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: a little under two years ago and lost to Kyrsten Sinema.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: And she's, of course, running again. She was appointed to
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: the seat. That obviously was John McCain won in 2016.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: So you do have those state fundamentals that perhaps pull
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: you back a little bit. But if you look at
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: the presidential polls in that state, Joe Biden has been
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: leading in those. And there's no history, perhaps unlike in
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: the Midwest, where the state polling in Arizona tends to
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: overpromise for Democrats. But, you know, more than that, if
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: you look at the state Senate polling, we have a
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: ton of it in Arizona, a ton of it. And
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: I tell you, you can set your clock to it.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: Mark Kelly is going to lead in pretty much every
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: single poll. I think the only polls he'd been trailing
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: in are the ones in which that were conducted for
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: Republican organizations or conservative organizations. So that to me, plus
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: the fundraising. And I mean, my goodness gracious, Mark Kelly,
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: you know, could could raise money if he didn't have
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: a telephone or anything like that. It would just almost
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: just come to him. It's like a magnet. I would
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: say that it's pretty much very, very close to Colorado
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: in terms of the pickup opportunities. The only thing I
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: would note was that some of the earlier polling was
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: friendlier to Sinema, and then it sort of closed as
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: you got sort of closer into the general election. That's
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: about the only thing I'm looking out for there. But
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: certainly that's another race in which the Democrat is favored
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: at this point.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Nows are watering about that potential pickup in Washington. The
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: next state is Maine. So Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: is facing a strong challenge from, well, likely opponent, the
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: Maine House Speaker, Sarah Gideon. She still has to win
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: their primary. But Sarah Gideon raised $ 7. 1 million in the
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: first quarter compared to $ 2. 4 million for Susan Collins, so
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: another financial advantage. Collins still has about a million more
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: on hand, but that won't be the case, obviously, if
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: they repeat that sort of performance in the next quarter.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: A poll in early March that I saw showed Sarah
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: Gideon up 4% on Susan Collins. So, you know, Harry,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: I'm a little torn with this one because You know, look,
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: I think Collins has like raised the ire of a
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: lot of Democrats who feel like, you know, she always
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: caves and sides with Trump. But she's also a political survivor.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, what do you think the smart money and
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: pollsters are thinking about this main Senate race?
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you're right about that. I love watching
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: old election night tapes. And I remember when Susan Collins'
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: first one was back in 1996. I believe she beat
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: the former Democratic governor in that state, whose name is
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: escaping me at the time. But she's been around for
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: a very long period of time, right? A very long
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: period of time. But the key factor that I think
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: is so important to keep in mind in any of
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: these states that lean at least a little bit blue
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: is that it used to be that you could be
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: a Democratic senator in a red state and survive. You
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: could be a Republican senator in a blue state and survive.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: That is the relationship, the correlation between the presidential lean
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: and the Senate voting patterns. was not anywhere near as
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: strong as it is today. And the fact is, if
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: you look at those past presidential results in Maine, even
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: though Trump only lost it by three, but if you
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: take that into account, you look at the national environment,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: and you look at those individual state polls, Susan Collins
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: is in the most trouble she's ever been in since
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: she was first elected back in 1996. That's the fact
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: of the matter. And more than that, look at the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: results from 2018, right? The Democrats elected a governor there.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: They hold both House seats. Jared Golden won in a
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: very tough district in rural Maine up in the second district.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: This is the type of state... which I would say,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: knowing nothing else, just knowing the fundamentals, that this is
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: the type of state that the Republican incumbent would be
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: in trouble in. And while perhaps she's not nearly as
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: in much trouble as Cory Gardner, once again, if I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: were a betting man, I would say that the more
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: likely possibility is that she loses rather than wins. Yeah.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Fingers crossed here. Okay. So I just filled these listeners
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: with hope. So before we move on to pick up opportunities,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: I want to dash some of it. So Let's talk
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: about Doug Jones. We all remember Doug Jones's incredible 2017
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: special election in Alabama. The challenge for Doug Jones, right,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: is he's not running against Roy Moore again. Roy Moore,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: who is accused of some pretty depraved, deplorable things that
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: I don't need to get into. What do you think
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: the prospects are for Doug Jones right now in Alabama?
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: I know that he doesn't have an opponent yet, but
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: it seems like he will face either Jeff Sessions, the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: former attorney general, or Tommy Tuberville. Former Auburn coach?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: I believe that is correct, yes. Yeah.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: So how's Doug looking, you think?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, the fact is, if there was
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: if I was just going to pick one seat on
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: either side of the aisle that I was going to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: pick to flip, it would be the state. It would
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: be the seat in Alabama. I mean, look, this is
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: a state that leans about 30 points more Republican than
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: the nation as a whole. If you're just looking at
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: presidential races, that is just a really, really, really tough
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: seat to hold on to. If you're Doug Jones, if
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: you look at the individual state polling so far, He's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: down at about by about 10 points. I understand that
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: the national environment is good for Democrats. But Joe Biden,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: simply put, unless something happens that we don't see at
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: this point, is not going to be competitive in Alabama.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: I would expect that this seat would be going to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: whomever the Republican nominee eventually is. And while Jones will
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: put up a good fight and he is a good
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: candidate for the state, I just don't really see. I
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: don't really see how he holds.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: On at this point.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: So, you know, look, I tell listeners, Doug Jones has
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: been a good senator. He's been a good candidate. It
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean you shouldn't support him. It definitely is. It's
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: a it's a tough road to hoe down in Alabama.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: But a little more fertile territory for us here is
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: North Carolina. So North Carolina, we have incumbent Republican Tom
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: Tillis running against Cal Cunningham. So Cal Cunningham has been
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: on Pod Save America before. He's an army vet. He's
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: a business leader. He raised four point four million in
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: the first quarter. Tillis has a little more than double
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: the cash on hand that he does. So Obama won
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: North Carolina in 08. I believe it flipped back to
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: Romney in 12. Trump won it in 16. But Cal
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Cunningham has been up in a bunch of recent polls.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: How do you think Democrats are feeling about North Carolina generally?
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that they feel about as good as
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: they possibly could, given they're going up against a Republican
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: incumbent in the state that Trump won by, I believe, 3.66.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: We can look it up and see if I got
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: that exactly right.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: I went down to the 100th place there. But look,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: the polling is close. Tillis is an incumbent, not a
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: particularly well-known incumbent, even in a state like North Carolina.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: The undecideds for both him and Richard Burr tend to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: be sky high. This is going to be probably the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: state that I'm looking towards on election night to understand
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: whether or not Democrats win control of the United States Senate.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: It's the type of state that, you know, when I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: put everything into my calculator, I think that we found
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: that Cunningham was about a 55% chance of winning, very
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: right there on the border. And so look, Cunningham is
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: who the Democrats wanted to run. The polling at this
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: point is him up probably by a little bit, although
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: really split in that state. There's some polling that shows
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: Tillis up ahead. But this sort of seat is the
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: next grade down from say Colorado, Arizona, and Maine. This
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: is the seat that is really the one on either
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: side that I would describe as a toss-up. Yeah.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: So I think you wrote sort of the next tier
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: down from that is, you know, Republicans have, I think
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: you gave it a 70% or 75% chance of winning
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: Senate races in Kansas, Iowa, and Montana. And so out
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: of those three, I mean, the one that really intrigues
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: me is Montana, because Steve Bullock decided to run after
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: a long courtship process. He was a popular governor. A
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: recent poll had him up seven points in the first quarter,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: I think in only a few weeks. Bullock raised $ 3. 3 million,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: while the incumbent, Steve Daines, raised $ 1. 3 million. Daines has
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: a little less than double the amount of cash on
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: hand that Bullock does. You know, so Harry, the challenge here, right,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: is that Montana will likely go to Trump by what?
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, 20 points? I mean, do you think you
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: can find enough ticket splitters, as I guess my question?
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think if the ultimate margin is 20 points,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: then you probably won't. I think that if you believe
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: that this seat is ultimately going to be competitive, then
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: you're probably going to need to shrink that margin by,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: you know, anywhere from a essentially be 10 to 15
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: points right that the ultimate presidential margin would have to be.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: You know, I like to use the Missouri race in
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: 2016 as sort of the baseline. If you recall there,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: Jason Kander lost by only about three while Trump was
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: winning the state by around 19 points. So there was
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: about that 16 point split. That's probably where you need
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: to be to have a realistic shot of winning around
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: 15 point margin on the presidential level. Look, it's a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: tough seat for Democrats. There's no doubt about that. But
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: of course, Montana has that history, unlike perhaps a lot
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: of other states. and a relatively recent history as well.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, Jon Tester won reelection in 2018. by about
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: three points, three, four points. And that, of course, is
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: a state that did move to the right considerably between, say, 2008,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: when Obama only lost it by about three, to 2016,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: when Hillary Clinton lost it by about 20. So Montana
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: has that ability. Bullock is the right candidate for that state.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: I think, ultimately, the question is, can you really get
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: that ticket splitting down to that point? There's going to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: be a lot of money spent against Bullock to try
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: and tie him to Biden. But the fact is, he
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: has that history of winning. So it's an intriguing possibility,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: as I think you put it, for Democrats.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: By the way, if people find this stuff as fascinating
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: as I do, you should follow Harry on Twitter because
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: he is constantly breaking down these races. You want to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: give me your handle real quick?
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's at Forecaster Enten, F-O-R-E-N-T-E-N. C-A-S-T-E-R-E-N-T-E-N. That's my last name.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: And it means ducks in German.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: He's a great follow. So look, just concluding this sort
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: of Senate roundup where we get some Trump Biden stuff,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: we've got potentially tight races in Iowa, Kansas, two of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: them in Georgia. Anything that, you know, you think is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: worth a special mention or, you know, did I miss
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: a state that we should talk about that people should
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: be watching?
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: No, I think that, you know, What you just hit
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: upon and what I hit upon in my piece is
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: there are a load of states where if you run
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: it through the model, where essentially you'll find that Democrats
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: have a greater than 5 percent chance of winning, but
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: a less than 25 percent chance of winning. You know,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: you mentioned the two Georgia seats. Kentucky is another one,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: even the Mississippi race. And so what's so important for
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: Democrats is they look to pick up those three to
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: four seats. They are and they have a wide map.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: And that's key, a wide map. So if one of
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: those races starts moving, you'll be able to see it.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: Of those states, I honestly think Georgia perhaps is the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: most interesting insofar as there's been a few Republican polls
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: from that state that suggest that Biden is quite competitive.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: And in fact, one that suggests that the incumbent running,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: not Loeffler, but Perdue, Dave Perdue, was only up by
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: single digits to John Ossoff, who may or may not
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: be the nominee for the Democrats in the long seat there.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: And so I think that perhaps is the one state
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: of all those that you mentioned I'd be keeping the
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: closest eye on now.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: Great advice. Let's do a little bit of a Biden-Trump
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: stuff before we wrap. So you have this great piece
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: about how Biden's lead has been incredibly steady. It's about
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: six points over Trump. I think you called it historically steady.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: What did you make of that, the solidness of that lead?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: And what kind of lead is sufficient in a national
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: poll to overcome the electoral college disadvantage that Democrats face?
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, you know, first off, I mean, my goodness gracious,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: you know, I used this earlier, but you could set
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: your clock to it. Biden up by somewhere between five
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: and 10 points in a national poll. I mean, it's crazy.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: And you go all the way back. If you average
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: the polls, as I think I put it, since 2019,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: it's a six-point lead. If you average all the polls
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: since the beginning of 2020, it's a six-point lead. If
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: you average all the polls since the beginning of April,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: it's a six-point lead. And what's so key there is,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: number one, you know, Biden's gone through a lot of
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: a lot of stuff and not necessarily a lot of
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: good press. And yet that lead is holding. So that's
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: one important thing. The second important thing I think is
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: important is that it does seem to me, based upon
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: all the elections I looked at, all the elections in
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: which the incumbent was running since 44, that when you
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: have steadiness early on, it tends to correlate with steadiness
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: later on. And so Biden's lead perhaps has a better
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: chance of holding. You know, look, we still got a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: long way to go, about six months. We're not necessarily sure,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: but more times than not, it may hold. The other
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: nugget that I think you pointed out that I think
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: is rather key is these are national polls, right? This
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: is not the electoral college. If you were to try
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: and project it out, I would say that to be
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: safe and secure, if you're a Democrat, you'd want a
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: lead of at least five points. But more realistically, you
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: probably need a lead of around two to three points,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: especially that three point margin to be safe and secure.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: Although I will say there's no guarantee we'll have the split,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: although I probably would bet on at least the fact
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: that Trump doing better in the median state in the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: Electoral College with the electoral votes than he is going
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: to do with the popular vote. Yeah.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: So I saw another data guru out there who pointed
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: out that a lot of the national polls have Biden
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: up six. Then if you look at state polls, it
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: suggests he's up closer to eight points. I wasn't quite
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: sure what that meant. Is he projecting the numbers onto
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: the national stage? Did you see that data? Do you agree?
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: I did read the tweet. I myself, you know, you'd
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: have to ask George Elliott exactly what he was going for.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: But I will say that the Democrats have had a
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: number of good state polls since the beginning of April
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: that do suggest perhaps a wider margin. Right. There were
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: the Fox News polls. In Pennsylvania, where Biden was up
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: eight in Michigan, where they had Biden up eight in Florida,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: where they had Biden up, I believe, three. And that
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: doesn't tend to sort of if you were to project
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: the 2016 map on a 2020 and you were expecting
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: a uniform swing that those state polls would suggest that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: Biden was up a little bit more than, say, six
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: percentage points. But I'm going to be interested. You know,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: we have a Marquette poll coming on Wednesday. I'm going
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: to be interested in that. The one sort of note
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: of caution I would note with all of this is
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: those higher quality live interview call to cell phone polls,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: there have been fewer of them this cycle. And so
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: I want to wait for a little bit more of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: those to really get a keen understanding as we head
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: into the final six months, where exactly the race stands.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: Is it six? Is it five? Is it seven? We'll
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: have to wait and see on that one.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: Before I ask you a couple more just specific Biden-Trump questions,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: Do you think that the pandemic changes polling? I mean,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: we're all stuck at home. Are we more likely to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: answer landlines or just phones generally? Could that skew results?
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: How are people thinking about that?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they actually we do know that the response rates
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: are up. And that's not too much of a surprise
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: because all of a sudden there are friends that I
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: used to not want to talk to who they email
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: me and I go, oh, my God, I haven't heard
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: from you from so long. Meanwhile, of course, I had
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: ignored like 95 percent of their emails. I know I'm
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: not alone here. How many extroverts really are there? Most
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: of us are introverts. So there's no doubt that we're
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: getting a better response rate. And that should actually help,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: at least on the margins, to help improve the poll
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: quality at least a little bit. But it perhaps will
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: throw a few people off in terms of their weighting mechanisms.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: But I don't think that's a reason to think that
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: the polls will be more off. I think in terms
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: of the turnout models for the fall, And mail voting
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: perhaps being a bigger thing. That to me is a
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: more interesting question, but we're still a long ways away
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: from that.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: So when you look at this Biden support, despite its steadiness,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: do you think there are obvious strengths and weaknesses that
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: his campaign should be worried about?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, there are a few weaknesses that
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: I would be worried about if I were he. Number one, obviously,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: you know, if you look at the polling, people feel
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: very strongly about Donald Trump one way or another, about
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: seven tenths than voters do. That's a record for any
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: major party nominee. If you look at Biden, less than
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: half feel very strongly about him. So obviously the minds
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: about Biden are less made up. They can be more
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: contorted by any negative advertisements that come his way from
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: the Trump campaign. So that'd be one thing I'd be
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: worried about. And the fact is, even at this point,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: he's getting out searched on Google versus Trump by four
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: to one. And the press mentions are considerably lower even versus,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: you know, say 2016, where Clinton was at about a
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: two to one deficit. Biden's at about a nine to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: one deficit. And so I think that that's important. But
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: more than that, you know, if you look, his favorability
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: ratings among liberals is less than Clinton's was on the
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: eve of the election. So obviously there is that point
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: on the left. Certainly among younger voters, his favorability rating
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: is lower than perhaps you'd want it to be if
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: you're Biden. And in fact, he might be doing worse
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: with younger voters than Clinton did in 2016, despite the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: fact that, of course, he's doing better nationally overall in
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: terms of strengths. He's much more popular among moderates and
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: conservatives than Clinton was. He is considerably more popular among
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: older folks, those 65 and older than Clinton was. And
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: so those are things that perhaps pretend well, especially in
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: some of those swing states.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: Especially among some of those older voters, perhaps in a
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: state like Pennsylvania or Florida or Arizona. But overall, I mean, look,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: the fact is, is that Biden is running an analog
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: campaign in the digital age. And the question is whether
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: or not voters are looking for that. And so far,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: by the looks of the polls, they might actually be
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: looking for it. And so it's working for him.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. Certainly that they would point you to the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: fact that they are winning. You know, you you offered
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: a perfect segue for me because. There has been a
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: lot of reporting about anxiety on Trump's team, especially among
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: Kelly and Conway and some others, about Trump's numbers slipping
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: with seniors. Are you seeing that in the data? Do
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: you think there's a real cause for concern?
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'm absolutely seeing it in the data. I mean,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: it's one of the most obvious points in the data.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: And you see it in the fact that, you know,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: Trump's not perhaps doing as well in Florida as he
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: wishes he were doing. But you also see the national polls.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: If you take an average, I took it, you know,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: a few weeks ago among those 65 and older in
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: the live interview national polls. Biden was up by nine.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: That was a group that Hillary Clinton lost by five,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: six or seven, depending on how exactly you average it.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: That's a well, that's a double digit swing. That's a
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: huge swing. And, you know, the fact is, you know,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: you go back to what I just point out. Feelings aren't,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: you know, towards Biden aren't nearly as strong. And perhaps
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: that's because there's not that much to really hate about
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden. He is sort of this alternative, this generic
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: Democrat in some ways that Hillary Clinton wasn't. And that
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: might work very well for seniors who, you know, perhaps
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: given some of the coronavirus stuff that's going on, you know,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: have a right to be worried. more so than younger
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: voters do in terms of their own life. And so
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: to me, it's not necessarily so surprising that perhaps there's
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: been some of that leakage of Trump support among those
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: 65 years and older.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does make sense. Final question for you.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: If you had to fight one data analyst named Nate,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: which would it be and why?
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: You know, it's a great question. And the reason it's
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: a great question is because I used to work with
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: one named Nate. And funny enough, I'm in a text
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: chain with another one named Nate right now. And, you know, actually,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: I texted both Nates this weekend. I don't.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Really know.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: I personally think I could take either one of them on.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: I'm taller than both of them. I'm better looking than
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: both of them. I've got more of a New York
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: attitude than either one of them. And the fact of
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: the matter is my father was a former supervising judge
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: of the Bronx Criminal Court. So I have ends with
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: law enforcement so I can take either one of them down.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: Neither one of them really scare me if I'm being
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: frank with you.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: So Smart Money is on, Harry. And Harry, thank you
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: so much for joining. I literally could do this all day.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: It's so much fun to talk about this stuff. Everyone
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: should follow you on Twitter. Check out your stuff on CNN.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: What else should they do? How else can they find you?
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, I do have an Instagram account, but the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: fact is that there's only a picture of a pug
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: there and it's not even my pug. Um, so I mean,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: you know, you, you, you get me on Twitter, you
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: get me on CNN website, you'll get me on CNN
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: television again, eventually right now, obviously we're all coronavirus. Um,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: but I have a good feeling that we'll be seeing
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: each other along the way. And, uh, I look forward
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: to chatting with everybody and anybody and Shalom, my friend.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: Listen, right back at you. Thank you so much. I
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: really appreciate the time and see you on the TV.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: So long. Be well.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Patrick and thanks to Harry for joining us today.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk to you guys later. Pod Save America
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: is a product of Crooked Media. The executive producer is
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.
• 1:19:34
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• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
• 1:19:44
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