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Trump Loses At Supreme Court, Handles It Well · Pod Save America

0:21
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pond Save America. I'm Jon Lovett. Today on
0:23
Speaker 1: the show, I talked with Jerusalem Dempsis, journalist and founder
0:26
Speaker 1: of The Argument, an independent liberal media company. We covered
0:29
Speaker 1: a lot of ground The Supreme Court's tariff ruling against Trump,
0:33
Speaker 1: the argument's new controversial poll on trans rights, why Democrats
0:36
Speaker 1: have been losing ground on this issue, how we can
0:38
Speaker 1: get it back. We talked about housing affordability. We talked
0:41
Speaker 1: about the role of resistance, cringe and fighting fascism. Love
0:45
Speaker 1: talking to Jerusalem. The word from the producers in the
0:48
Speaker 1: room is that they are, quote, obsessed. So let's jump in. Hey, Jerusalem,
0:57
Speaker 1: good to see you.
0:58
Speaker 2: Hey, nice to see you, too.
1:00
Speaker 1: So we are both reeling from having just watched Trump's
1:03
Speaker 1: response to the Supreme Court's ruling rebuking his emergency tariffs.
1:08
Speaker 1: Let's start with the ruling itself. Jerusalem, what was your
1:12
Speaker 1: response to how the court ruled on Trump's tariffs?
1:17
Speaker 2: I wasn't super surprised. I mean, I just thought this
1:20
Speaker 2: is where it was going to go. Obviously, there's some
1:22
Speaker 2: kind of like there's a level at which you're worried
1:26
Speaker 2: that the court has gotten so partisan that maybe they
1:28
Speaker 2: will just stop adhering to even the most normal expected jurisprudence.
1:33
Speaker 2: But this is where I think most people thought it
1:35
Speaker 2: was going to go. I think most markets assumed it
1:36
Speaker 2: was going to go in this direction.
1:38
Speaker 1: So, yeah, there are a few on the court that
1:41
Speaker 1: are still base partisans. You have Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas
1:50
Speaker 1: ruling with Trump, Kavanaugh seem to be frustrated with the
1:56
Speaker 1: fact that the court doesn't have an answer for how
1:59
Speaker 1: to deal with the roughly $ 200 billion that has been collected.
2:04
Speaker 1: But it's usually not, you know, you don't, if a
2:07
Speaker 1: bank robber has a bunch of cash in a pile,
2:10
Speaker 1: you don't often say they get to keep it because
2:13
Speaker 1: it'd be so hard to figure out who it belongs to.
2:16
Speaker 2: I mean, this is honestly sometimes how the Supreme Court
2:19
Speaker 2: does work in ways that are kind of frustrating. I
2:22
Speaker 2: don't think anyone really thinks in an ideal world that
2:25
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court or courts in general should be in
2:26
Speaker 2: charge of legislating. These people aren't actually policy experts. Hopefully
2:30
Speaker 2: they're legal experts, but they're not policy experts. And you
2:33
Speaker 2: can hear them sometimes in oral arguments trying to become it.
2:36
Speaker 2: And I have some sympathy for the fact that they're
2:38
Speaker 2: being put in this position because... Presidential administrations, in particular
2:41
Speaker 2: this one, are forcing them to make decisions that should
2:44
Speaker 2: have been legislated by Congress. But at the same time,
2:47
Speaker 2: it's just like, yeah, like what? I don't know. Like,
2:49
Speaker 2: what should they do about it? Like, that's like asking
2:51
Speaker 2: me what they should do. I probably know more about
2:53
Speaker 2: this than some people in the Supreme Court because they're
2:54
Speaker 2: not economic policy people. But like, I agree. Like, this
2:57
Speaker 2: is the main unanswered question. Like, I am someone who
2:59
Speaker 2: had to personally pay tariffs to like get my wedding
3:01
Speaker 2: dress sent to the United States of America, like hundreds
3:03
Speaker 2: of dollars that I was not expecting to pay. It's like,
3:06
Speaker 2: am I getting a refund? Is that happening? I don't
3:08
Speaker 2: think so.
3:08
Speaker 1: So. Yeah, I paid $ 30 on a rug yesterday. I
3:12
Speaker 1: literally paid it yesterday. I'm so fucking pissed. If I'd
3:15
Speaker 1: waited one day, I might have gotten... That's $ 30. How
3:18
Speaker 1: am I going to get that.
3:19
Speaker 2: $ 30 back? Does it make you feel like you're being
3:21
Speaker 2: held up too? You get an email that's like, we
3:22
Speaker 2: have your package. Send us this money right now. Or
3:25
Speaker 2: it's like, we're not going to release it.
3:27
Speaker 1: I don't even believe... Am I being scammed? You get
3:29
Speaker 1: an email that says, we will not give you this
3:32
Speaker 1: rug unless you pay us $ 30. So people were also
3:37
Speaker 1: saying that this was... the court potentially saving Trump from himself.
3:44
Speaker 1: And yet you have Trump in this press conference, obviously
3:47
Speaker 1: attacking the judges quite personally, but then saying that this
3:52
Speaker 1: is a ruling that is terrible to disgrace. It's a
3:55
Speaker 1: disaster for our country, but also it doesn't matter because
3:58
Speaker 1: I can impose tariffs through other legal means. How do
4:01
Speaker 1: you square that circle?
4:03
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump loves in every conversation to like, have
4:07
Speaker 2: his cake and eat it too. Like, it sucks that
4:08
Speaker 2: you did that, but it doesn't actually matter at all.
4:10
Speaker 2: And like, who cares? Like, we're going to make America
4:12
Speaker 2: great again. Also, America is also great, but we're going
4:14
Speaker 2: to keep saying make America great again because MAGA is
4:15
Speaker 2: a great slogan. Like, you can just, this is how
4:17
Speaker 2: he like constantly wants to win it. But like on
4:20
Speaker 2: the merits itself, like it is always been the case that, um,
4:26
Speaker 2: there were legal pathways for Trump to impose tariffs. I mean,
4:30
Speaker 2: most legal pathways would have involved going through Congress and
4:33
Speaker 2: Congress could actually engage in and take on that authority
4:37
Speaker 2: that it's kind of allowed the federal government to have
4:39
Speaker 2: or allowed the executive branch to have for many years now.
4:42
Speaker 2: But there are other less dramatic pathways that were available
4:47
Speaker 2: to Trump. The difference is those ones don't let him
4:50
Speaker 2: do what he likes to do, which is to say,
4:52
Speaker 2: I'm going to switch on tariffs today, buy this amount,
4:54
Speaker 2: and now I'm going to take them off. And like,
4:56
Speaker 2: That kind of instability is like, I think, a part
4:59
Speaker 2: of how Trump likes to do politics and how he
5:00
Speaker 2: likes to make deals. And that, I think, is important
5:03
Speaker 2: that we can take that away because that was really
5:05
Speaker 2: destabilizing for both businesses, but also various countries who had
5:09
Speaker 2: no ability to make any kind of like long term
5:11
Speaker 2: economic planning. If they thought, OK, well, tariffs are this today,
5:14
Speaker 2: but quite literally by 5 p.m. they could change. That
5:17
Speaker 2: is now that is now not possible.
5:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:19
Speaker 1: It also seems part of this is the court did.
5:22
Speaker 1: avoid really getting into what constitutes an emergency or not.
5:27
Speaker 1: And there seems to be this reluctance across different, uh,
5:32
Speaker 1: rulings by the Supreme court, by lower courts, both for
5:34
Speaker 1: Trump and against Trump, uh, a reluctance to engage with
5:38
Speaker 1: the kind of plain meaning of these terms, because, uh, it,
5:43
Speaker 1: the courts don't want to say we can tell the
5:45
Speaker 1: president what an emergency is or isn't. And yet when
5:49
Speaker 1: the president stretches the bounds of this definition, like we
5:53
Speaker 1: do not have an emergency with the Swiss based on
5:56
Speaker 1: the president not liking the Swiss leader's voice or whether
6:02
Speaker 1: or not he's given a gold brick or not, or
6:04
Speaker 1: whether or not Mark Carney gives a speech that Trump
6:07
Speaker 1: likes or not. Like, even if you want to give
6:10
Speaker 1: the president an expansive space to decide what an emergency is,
6:15
Speaker 1: at a certain point, the court does have to say
6:19
Speaker 1: the word has some meaning. Like, you can't just use
6:22
Speaker 1: it to mean anything you want.
6:25
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the problem, right? Is it like
6:27
Speaker 2: there's a level of discretion that especially the Supreme Court,
6:31
Speaker 2: is used to giving the executive branch in interpreting what
6:36
Speaker 2: Congress has given the executive branch powers to do. So, like,
6:39
Speaker 2: Congress passes a law, and the executive branch has to
6:41
Speaker 2: interpret that law. Okay, they say, like, you have to
6:43
Speaker 2: do this health care policy, but they don't write out,
6:46
Speaker 2: and this is how you should allocate the money, and
6:47
Speaker 2: these are the ways that you should, you know, write
6:50
Speaker 2: the equations for who gets to qualify. You have to
6:53
Speaker 2: have some interpretation. Otherwise, like, government couldn't function. Like, how
6:55
Speaker 2: could you even run a massive bureaucracy? And that sort
6:58
Speaker 2: of logic... works when everyone is like generally acting in
7:02
Speaker 2: good faith about like what words mean and like how
7:05
Speaker 2: they should be used and what did people try to
7:08
Speaker 2: try to use those for in the past. But when
7:11
Speaker 2: you get to a point where someone's clearly just wanting
7:13
Speaker 2: to ram through their policy preferences, regardless of the plain
7:18
Speaker 2: meaning of the statutory language, that exists, then the court
7:23
Speaker 2: has to intervene. And I agree with you that like,
7:25
Speaker 2: it's now getting to the point where it's like, okay,
7:26
Speaker 2: we need Supreme Court to say like, this is an emergency.
7:28
Speaker 2: This is not an emergency. We're drawing these boundaries. But also,
7:33
Speaker 2: we also need Congress to do that. Like at the
7:34
Speaker 2: same time, like, yes, I'm annoyed at the Supreme Court,
7:36
Speaker 2: but like all of this comes back to the fact
7:38
Speaker 2: that Congress refuses to reassert its role as a co-equal
7:42
Speaker 2: branch of government. They have decided like, all right, I
7:44
Speaker 2: guess we're going to get cucked by Trump for the
7:46
Speaker 2: next like two years. And I guess that will continue
7:48
Speaker 2: happening forever. And that's, yeah, that's where we are.
7:51
Speaker 1: So what happens now? Trump is not going to be
7:54
Speaker 1: able to do the same kind of queen of hearts
7:56
Speaker 1: off with their heads tariff implementation, but he does have
8:00
Speaker 1: the ability to put tariffs in place. What do you
8:04
Speaker 1: think happens now? What are the economic impacts of this?
8:10
Speaker 2: I think he's going to try. And I mean, he
8:12
Speaker 2: just announced this in the press conference. I didn't take
8:14
Speaker 2: notes of the specific numbers he was saying, but he's
8:17
Speaker 2: going to be re-implementing these tariffs through the existing authorities
8:23
Speaker 2: that are that require a lot more process to go through,
8:25
Speaker 2: but like are legal. So I expect that we will
8:28
Speaker 2: see significant tariffs being levied on, you know, in the
8:32
Speaker 2: exact same format and structure. Really, it'll just take longer.
8:35
Speaker 2: It'll have to go through go through the normal administrative
8:37
Speaker 2: processes in order to get there. The economic impact of that,
8:42
Speaker 2: because it will take more time for them to actually
8:44
Speaker 2: be felt. seems unclear. You already see a bunch of
8:47
Speaker 2: other countries really attempting to build bilateral, trilateral, multilateral trade
8:51
Speaker 2: agreements that exclude the United States in order to sort
8:54
Speaker 2: of develop, you know, supply chains, different markets that don't
8:58
Speaker 2: rely on the United States anymore, either to like get
9:01
Speaker 2: those goods and services or to be a place where
9:02
Speaker 2: they can sell their goods and services. That's like a
9:05
Speaker 2: real loss for them, obviously, because the U.S. is a
9:08
Speaker 2: massive market that, you know, has a lot of value
9:11
Speaker 2: for people, but it's also like a long-term loss for us.
9:14
Speaker 2: Like if the rest of the economy, global economy, like
9:16
Speaker 2: decides to figure out a way to like replace the U.S.
9:19
Speaker 2: market with other, either emerging markets or, or other, other
9:23
Speaker 2: existing markets like China or anywhere else, like that's really
9:26
Speaker 2: bad for the United States. And so, you know, this
9:28
Speaker 2: is something where like the long-term picture requires, like relies
9:31
Speaker 2: on like what the, uh, choices of a bunch of
9:33
Speaker 2: different actors are going to be. So I think anyone
9:35
Speaker 2: who's like really prognosticating about like A couple of years
9:37
Speaker 2: from now, what this looks like, I don't really know
9:39
Speaker 2: how you how you would know that. But I just
9:41
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to be good for us.
9:42
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a bad situation. Right.
9:45
Speaker 1: Like even the short term, we aren't paying the tariffs
9:48
Speaker 1: because we pay the tariffs, obviously. But whatever the the
9:52
Speaker 1: kind of realignment that's happening will not stop because he's
9:55
Speaker 1: first of all, he's already promising to put them back on. Also,
9:58
Speaker 1: a lot of these are long term plans. that have,
10:01
Speaker 1: that Trump can take tariffs on and off in a week,
10:04
Speaker 1: but companies and countries can't change their trade policies in
10:07
Speaker 1: days or weeks.
10:08
Speaker 2: Exactly.
10:09
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10:11
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10:14
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10:17
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10:21
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11:22
Speaker 1: So I want to switch gears because one reason I
11:25
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to you today is the argument, which
11:29
Speaker 1: is the independent media company you've launched, put out a poll.
11:34
Speaker 1: And the headline on the poll was the trans rights
11:38
Speaker 1: backlash is real. This caused quite a firestorm on social media.
11:45
Speaker 1: So let's just start with what the poll found. Can
11:47
Speaker 1: you just walk us through the top line results? Yes.
11:51
Speaker 2: So it's actually a very, very long poll. So I'll
11:55
Speaker 2: draw out, I think, what was causing a lot of
11:59
Speaker 2: controversy because we were trying to pull on a bunch
12:02
Speaker 2: of different issues regarding gender that we haven't even gotten
12:05
Speaker 2: to fully explore. But the poll centers on these questions
12:10
Speaker 2: of trans policy and also people's views, their own personal
12:14
Speaker 2: values about how they think gender roles should function. And
12:17
Speaker 2: it finds a bunch of depressing things. Like one thing
12:19
Speaker 2: that it finds is that What used to be a
12:21
Speaker 2: majority issue, which is that people didn't really want to
12:24
Speaker 2: see bathroom bills. They didn't like the idea of the
12:26
Speaker 2: government getting involved in what bathroom people were using. Now
12:30
Speaker 2: you see that's flipped. You see the majority of Americans
12:32
Speaker 2: saying that people should be required to use the bathroom
12:35
Speaker 2: that corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth.
12:39
Speaker 2: And you also see this on a couple of other policies, too.
12:42
Speaker 2: So on questions of allowing puberty blockers for minors, the
12:46
Speaker 2: majority of the public does not want that to happen.
12:49
Speaker 2: Even when doctors and parents have consented, they still don't
12:53
Speaker 2: want kids to be able to have access to puberty blockers.
12:56
Speaker 2: We also asked about allowing gender surgery for minors when
13:00
Speaker 2: deemed medically necessary by doctors with parental consent. This is
13:02
Speaker 2: a very rare thing. This has not happened very often.
13:05
Speaker 2: But it's even more unpopular than allowing puberty blockers. But
13:11
Speaker 2: the good news in the poll, I would say, is
13:14
Speaker 2: that when we asked specifically about protecting kind of more
13:17
Speaker 2: core issues, civil rights questions, like banning discrimination against trans
13:21
Speaker 2: people in hiring and housing, that's a place where the
13:25
Speaker 2: majority of the country is in favor. We should not
13:27
Speaker 2: have discrimination in that way. And it's a much bigger margin, too.
13:31
Speaker 2: You have like 63 percent of people saying they want
13:33
Speaker 2: to ban discrimination against trans people in hiring and housing,
13:37
Speaker 2: whereas you have roughly like 56 percent of people saying
13:41
Speaker 2: they don't want to allow puberty blockers for minors. So,
13:43
Speaker 2: I mean, like this is something that I think, you know,
13:45
Speaker 2: our takeaway is largely there is a real backlash here
13:48
Speaker 2: when we compared it to polls, you know, from from
13:51
Speaker 2: a few years ago. You do see more of the
13:53
Speaker 2: public turning against these issues that are core to the
13:57
Speaker 2: LGBTQ rights community. And you also do see that this
14:01
Speaker 2: is happening across subgroups. So one thing that we wanted
14:04
Speaker 2: to do, because I was interested in a bunch of
14:06
Speaker 2: different gender questions. And I wanted to see real subgroup analysis.
14:09
Speaker 2: But like in a lot of polls, like the numbers
14:11
Speaker 2: are so small, it's like you can't really make decisions
14:13
Speaker 2: on this. So we paid extra to have this be
14:15
Speaker 2: a 3000 end poll rather than a 1500 person poll,
14:19
Speaker 2: which would which would allow us to actually look at subgroups.
14:22
Speaker 2: And what you can see is that across subgroups, including
14:24
Speaker 2: people who were Harris 2024 voters, you still see this
14:28
Speaker 2: backlash happening against trans people. Obviously, it's much worse in
14:32
Speaker 2: more conservative subgroup demographics like Trump 2024 voters. But it's
14:36
Speaker 2: something where you see across the board a real shift happening.
14:39
Speaker 2: And it's even more concerning because it's happening at a
14:43
Speaker 2: time where the Democratic Party, I think, is doing very
14:46
Speaker 2: well in polling. Like in our poll, the Democratic Party
14:49
Speaker 2: is plus six. This is not actually meaningfully affecting the
14:53
Speaker 2: chances of the Democratic Party's ability to regain the House
14:57
Speaker 2: this year. But on other issues like immigration, you've seen
14:59
Speaker 2: that thermostatic opinion shift happen. You've seen people viewing what's
15:03
Speaker 2: going on with ICE and the interior enforcement horrors, the
15:07
Speaker 2: killings that are happening in Minneapolis. And they're like, OK,
15:10
Speaker 2: I don't like what's happening. My views are shifting towards
15:13
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party on this issue. But we don't see
15:16
Speaker 2: that with this issue, which I think is notable.
15:19
Speaker 1: So what is your interpretation of that? What do you
15:25
Speaker 1: view as driving the shift?
15:29
Speaker 2: I think a few things are driving the shift. So first,
15:32
Speaker 2: I think when you think about the issues that have
15:34
Speaker 2: always been kind of perennially more popular— for civil rights
15:38
Speaker 2: movements in this space. It's the core issues on discrimination. People,
15:43
Speaker 2: even if they disagree with you and how you choose
15:45
Speaker 2: to live your life, they don't really think you should
15:46
Speaker 2: get fired for your gender, your sexuality. They have an
15:51
Speaker 2: aversion towards the government engaging in that way. But the
15:57
Speaker 2: LGBTQ rights movement, particularly the trans rights movement, has been
15:59
Speaker 2: more focused, or the debate has been more focused, that is,
16:03
Speaker 2: on issues that are less central to that. It's been
16:05
Speaker 2: focused on things like sports and whether trans women should
16:09
Speaker 2: be able to play with cis women in sports. It's
16:10
Speaker 2: been more focused on whether on children and what they
16:15
Speaker 2: should be taught in schools, et cetera, in places where
16:17
Speaker 2: I think that people view that as less central of
16:21
Speaker 2: an issue. And the reason for this, I think, is
16:23
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of reasons. I think one is that,
16:25
Speaker 2: I mean, there's been like hundreds of millions of dollars
16:27
Speaker 2: spent to focus attention on these issues because the right
16:30
Speaker 2: understands that this is the country they live in and
16:33
Speaker 2: that they want to be able to focus on issues
16:36
Speaker 2: that make this more difficult for trans people to get,
16:38
Speaker 2: you know, greater access to civil rights. So you see
16:40
Speaker 2: this with in 2016 when the bathroom bill is being
16:44
Speaker 2: debated in North Carolina. Republicans like saw that, like the
16:48
Speaker 2: right saw that. They saw how businesses turned against them.
16:51
Speaker 2: They saw how regular people in a state that is
16:53
Speaker 2: not blue were horrified by this decision to like try
16:58
Speaker 2: to police who was going into what bathroom. And I
17:00
Speaker 2: think that they took this lesson and were like, OK,
17:02
Speaker 2: that's not the place to put a bunch of our energy.
17:04
Speaker 2: We're going to put it over there. But I also
17:06
Speaker 2: think there's like secondarily, there was a lot of, you know,
17:09
Speaker 2: when you think about the decisions being made within the
17:12
Speaker 2: progressive side around what things to focus on, at some level,
17:16
Speaker 2: there was a conceding of that being the core debate.
17:20
Speaker 2: Like there was constant focus on trends, visibility and on
17:24
Speaker 2: on these questions of, of what should be taught in schools.
17:28
Speaker 2: And in a way, I think this has to do
17:30
Speaker 2: with a different amount of money being spent in these spaces.
17:32
Speaker 2: I tried to figure out how much exactly was spent,
17:34
Speaker 2: but it's very difficult because some of it's being spent
17:36
Speaker 2: with dark money or whatever. But largely, you can tell
17:39
Speaker 2: way more money is being spent on the right than
17:41
Speaker 2: on the left here. But I also think it's very
17:44
Speaker 2: reasonable that people were concerned with the Democratic president's in power.
17:49
Speaker 2: We have the ability to do visibility for people to
17:51
Speaker 2: make them feel better about There are people like them
17:54
Speaker 2: in high places of authority. And that's like a reasonable
17:57
Speaker 2: impulse to have. But I think that people misjudged how
18:00
Speaker 2: far the country had come on these issues. I think
18:02
Speaker 2: that we saw a lot of horror by people who
18:07
Speaker 2: are on the right on this and who are more
18:09
Speaker 2: socially conservative about bathroom bills. And a lot of us,
18:12
Speaker 2: including myself, interpreted that to mean that attitudes had shifted
18:16
Speaker 2: more fundamentally about whether people were OK with gender nonconforming people.
18:20
Speaker 2: But like those two things actually don't always move together.
18:22
Speaker 2: Like you can be really opposed to people acting differently
18:26
Speaker 2: than the birth they're assigned at sex and still think
18:29
Speaker 2: they shouldn't be discriminated against. And then when you see, OK, well,
18:31
Speaker 2: they're not just asking not to be discriminated against. They're
18:33
Speaker 2: asking me to like. you know, see them in positions
18:36
Speaker 2: of authority or whatever, that triggers, I think, much more
18:38
Speaker 2: bigotry in the public than than otherwise. And so I
18:41
Speaker 2: think both of those things played a role in this backlash.
18:45
Speaker 1: You do like in the numbers, you do see that
18:48
Speaker 1: that what Republicans understood is that this was just not
18:54
Speaker 1: deeply felt yet.
18:55
Speaker 3: Right.
18:55
Speaker 1: Like this was just there was a lot of room
18:58
Speaker 1: for persuasion. And it does seem like Democrats were on
19:03
Speaker 1: a stronger footing when they were talking about freedom from
19:06
Speaker 1: government control. That's how the original debate around the bathroom
19:11
Speaker 1: bill in North Carolina was. It was just like, get
19:13
Speaker 1: out of the bathroom. We don't want the government in
19:15
Speaker 1: the bathroom. When we were talking about trans issues here,
19:20
Speaker 1: we focused on just leave trans teens alone, just leave
19:24
Speaker 1: people alone. And when I was looking at your poll,
19:28
Speaker 1: like the framing around the questions, right? Like allow gender
19:32
Speaker 1: surgery for minors when deemed medically necessary. And this is
19:36
Speaker 1: also around supporting or opposing national laws, enacting these kinds
19:40
Speaker 1: of policies. Like, is there part of this that's just
19:43
Speaker 1: a framing issue? Like if you ask the same group
19:46
Speaker 1: of people a question that was more along the lines of,
19:50
Speaker 1: do you believe the government should be able to ban
19:54
Speaker 1: parents and doctors from determining the best healthcare decision for
19:58
Speaker 1: their kids who are trans, you could conceivably get a
20:02
Speaker 1: different answer, right? Do you agree with that?
20:06
Speaker 2: I mean, wording matters a lot in polls for sure.
20:09
Speaker 2: So one thing that we do at the argument is
20:12
Speaker 2: after we've drafted the questions, we send them to an
20:14
Speaker 2: independent review panel that includes both Democrats and Republicans to
20:18
Speaker 2: review our language for bias to make sure that we're
20:20
Speaker 2: not just doing a push poll. But even with that,
20:23
Speaker 2: like even with that, there's no like perfect way to
20:25
Speaker 2: ask this. One thing that I'll point out is that
20:26
Speaker 2: there are other polls with different wording that have found
20:29
Speaker 2: very similar trends. And so even if you, you know,
20:33
Speaker 2: you might think like, okay, well, the wording moves this
20:34
Speaker 2: way or that way. That's something to keep in mind.
20:38
Speaker 2: But on top of that, too, like you want to
20:40
Speaker 2: test language or policies in various types of wording because
20:45
Speaker 2: the goal is not just to can you get the
20:49
Speaker 2: public to agree to one specific type of. of how
20:52
Speaker 2: I frame an idea. It's, okay, when they approach this idea,
20:56
Speaker 2: how it will be presented to them in public, how
20:58
Speaker 2: will they react to it? Because Republicans and like people
21:01
Speaker 2: who are more conservative on this issue are not going
21:04
Speaker 2: to try to figure out the most like liberal sounding
21:06
Speaker 2: frame for talking about these issues. They're going to use
21:09
Speaker 2: language that is way more hostile than what we're talking
21:13
Speaker 2: about in this poll and way more loaded and way
21:16
Speaker 2: more likely to make people feel uncomfortable with the idea.
21:18
Speaker 2: So if even in this language, which is, should you
21:21
Speaker 2: even allow someone to do something? Even, and to me, like,
21:25
Speaker 2: we got feedback from some people that it's maybe we're
21:27
Speaker 2: loading the poll too much in the progressives' favor by
21:30
Speaker 2: putting in that that's only when doctors and parents consent. And, like,
21:35
Speaker 2: that addition was considered, like, okay, well, maybe you're pushing
21:38
Speaker 2: it a little bit too much to try to get
21:40
Speaker 2: people to agree with you. And so, you know, even
21:43
Speaker 2: in this framing, you still see this shift, I think,
21:46
Speaker 2: is really concerning.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not asking because I.
21:50
Speaker 1: I want to get to the backlash to the polling itself.
21:53
Speaker 1: But the reason I ask is also like I'm trying
21:55
Speaker 1: to understand what directions Democrats should be going and making
21:59
Speaker 1: an argument. And to me, the argument has to be
22:03
Speaker 1: around freedom, that we're on a better footing when we're
22:06
Speaker 1: talking about freedom. But at the same time, I think
22:08
Speaker 1: what what's here is like what is very clear is
22:11
Speaker 1: whatever views that people have, they're not that strongly held
22:15
Speaker 1: even now.
22:15
Speaker 2: Right.
22:16
Speaker 1: Like this is an issue where people seem to be
22:18
Speaker 1: open to persuasion. And I want to understand why Republicans
22:21
Speaker 1: have done such a better job of the persuasion. It
22:26
Speaker 1: does like if you these these issues, right, like treatment
22:31
Speaker 1: for minors, bathrooms and sports like that is where Republicans
22:35
Speaker 1: have focused their energy. But it's also where Republicans, it seems,
22:40
Speaker 1: have a more genuine passion around it, right? Like Democrats,
22:44
Speaker 1: whatever position they're taking, like their hearts are not really
22:48
Speaker 1: in these This is not something they're passionate about. They
22:51
Speaker 1: seem scared to be on the wrong side of the populace,
22:56
Speaker 1: of the public, but also scared to be on the
22:58
Speaker 1: wrong side of activists. And the end result is you
23:02
Speaker 1: have Democrats advocating a range of positions with a lack
23:06
Speaker 1: of real enthusiasm. And then you have Republicans hammering this
23:10
Speaker 1: with their base fully behind them, excitedly pushing this narrative.
23:16
Speaker 1: And I just... I'm curious how, like, you wrote a
23:20
Speaker 1: piece basically against what you described as thoughtless moderation, which
23:25
Speaker 1: is between ignoring this data or, quote, throwing trans people
23:30
Speaker 1: under the bus. And I'm just like, what is the
23:32
Speaker 1: third direction here? Like, what what do we do if
23:34
Speaker 1: not those two options? Yes. No.
23:38
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I think that there's a clear answer
23:41
Speaker 2: in this poll. A large majority of Americans agree. do
23:45
Speaker 2: not think you should be able to discriminate against trans
23:48
Speaker 2: people in hiring and housing. I would expect that those
23:50
Speaker 2: numbers stay solid when you look at other kinds of
23:52
Speaker 2: public accommodations too. So for instance, like, can you refuse
23:55
Speaker 2: service to someone because they're trans? Like these are things
23:58
Speaker 2: like that I think most people would find to be unacceptable.
24:03
Speaker 2: That's actually not the law of the land right now.
24:06
Speaker 2: Like Iowa, for one, has just repealed legislation that they
24:10
Speaker 2: repealed gender identity as a core protected part of the
24:14
Speaker 2: Iowa Civil Rights Act. They're trying to stop localities from
24:18
Speaker 2: being able to even enact their own protections at the
24:20
Speaker 2: local level. The Supreme Court through Bostock has protected trans
24:25
Speaker 2: people in hiring and employment decisions. Obviously, that requires a
24:29
Speaker 2: federal government that wants to enforce that kind of civil
24:31
Speaker 2: rights law. And even under a democratic administration, it's very,
24:34
Speaker 2: very difficult to enforce that sort of thing from the
24:36
Speaker 2: federal government side. It just requires people complaining and then
24:39
Speaker 2: the government can eventually kind of maybe put in a lawsuit.
24:43
Speaker 2: And so I think that there's like a lot of
24:45
Speaker 2: room here for the trans movement and for liberals to
24:48
Speaker 2: like focus on these issues and make hay out of
24:50
Speaker 2: the fact that they're trying to strip people of their
24:52
Speaker 2: ability to rent an apartment if they are trans. Like,
24:56
Speaker 2: that's what it means to strip someone of discrimination or
24:59
Speaker 2: other ability not to be discriminated against in housing. Those
25:02
Speaker 2: sorts of things I think are really, really solid footing.
25:05
Speaker 2: And I am not like, you know, I'm not like
25:09
Speaker 2: saying that there's like an obvious step one, two, three here,
25:12
Speaker 2: but I think from an orientation perspective, like there needs
25:15
Speaker 2: to be a lot of effort to make clear that
25:21
Speaker 2: just as in previous civil rights movements, trans people are
25:24
Speaker 2: not asking for special treatment, they're asking for equal treatment.
25:28
Speaker 2: The right to do the exact same thing everyone else is,
25:31
Speaker 2: the right to make decisions with their doctors about their
25:33
Speaker 2: own health, the right to make decisions with their kids
25:35
Speaker 2: about their kids' health, like Who is better positioned to
25:37
Speaker 2: know what kinds of medical decisions your kids should have
25:40
Speaker 2: other than you? Like in a society like we often
25:43
Speaker 2: we always say like, OK, your parent can sign off
25:45
Speaker 2: on whether or not you get a boob job, whether
25:48
Speaker 2: or not you get a nose job, like all these things.
25:49
Speaker 2: Like we have to defer to parents make those decisions.
25:52
Speaker 2: And like these are areas where I think there's actually
25:54
Speaker 2: a lot of sympathetic support. stories to be told. But
25:57
Speaker 2: I think that starting with, um, uh, clear examples of
26:02
Speaker 2: discrimination in places where people who already disagree with you
26:05
Speaker 2: think that there should be protections winning there, I think
26:08
Speaker 2: is the important part on, on actually winning more hearts
26:11
Speaker 2: and minds. And I don't think this is easy because
26:12
Speaker 2: you don't control everything. Everyone says like other people are
26:15
Speaker 2: going to talk about bathrooms, other people are going to
26:16
Speaker 2: talk about sports and like, that's hard. But, um, I
26:19
Speaker 2: think that's the only place to go. Yeah.
26:23
Speaker 1: I think that that that's largely right. Like to me,
26:26
Speaker 1: it's like you have to have a larger story you're
26:30
Speaker 1: telling about LGBT rights that starts from a place of
26:35
Speaker 1: freedom and equality, right? You start from freedom and equality
26:38
Speaker 1: for all people. And then you have to turn around
26:43
Speaker 1: the idea that Democrats are focused on this because the
26:46
Speaker 1: truth is why did, why does Kamala get tagged with this?
26:49
Speaker 1: Because she answered a question on a survey. Now that
26:51
Speaker 1: survey was written by people who seemed more interested in
26:55
Speaker 1: their survey than winning, whatever. There's a lot of problems
26:58
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side. She also was part of a
27:01
Speaker 1: group of Democrats who became completely unable to have a
27:06
Speaker 1: worldview that might be in conflict with... There's a lot
27:10
Speaker 1: of things that led to what happened in 2024. But
27:14
Speaker 1: the ability to tell a story that basically says, we
27:17
Speaker 1: are for freedom, we are against discrimination... And we are
27:21
Speaker 1: not the ones obsessed with trans people. These freaks on
27:24
Speaker 1: the right are obsessed with trans people. We want to
27:26
Speaker 1: get out of people's medical decisions. We want to get
27:28
Speaker 1: out of people's bathrooms. We want to let people live
27:33
Speaker 1: and be free. To me, if you can start from
27:36
Speaker 1: a place that says that, then by the way, people
27:39
Speaker 1: might trust you a little bit more when you disagree
27:42
Speaker 1: with them and say, actually, you know what? I actually
27:47
Speaker 1: think even if you're not sure about like what should
27:52
Speaker 1: be happening with trans teens. I'm not, I don't agree
27:55
Speaker 1: with you. I want to leave that to doctors and parents,
27:57
Speaker 1: even if you don't agree or by the way on sports, like,
28:00
Speaker 1: like you want to talk about like NCAA top competitive athletes.
28:06
Speaker 1: I just want trans kids to be able to play
28:08
Speaker 1: sports with their friends. Like, like I think sometimes this idea,
28:12
Speaker 1: like there's so much, I think there's a lot of
28:16
Speaker 1: anxiety and, on the part of people that care about
28:19
Speaker 1: these issues and on the part of trans people around
28:22
Speaker 1: like feeling like Democrats just are not reliable, that they
28:25
Speaker 1: don't have the credibility as fighters. And so there's no
28:29
Speaker 1: space to have this debate because the Democrats are not
28:32
Speaker 1: seen as like kind of tough, strong representatives who they
28:37
Speaker 1: can count on, even if they don't always see it
28:39
Speaker 1: eye to eye. And it seems like what we need
28:42
Speaker 1: to do is kind of build up some trust. And
28:44
Speaker 1: that starts with like, having Democrats willing to kind of
28:47
Speaker 1: like take a strong, clear pro-trans position that also has
28:52
Speaker 1: popular support. And like, but I don't know, like right
28:57
Speaker 1: now it just does feel like there's still this tension
28:59
Speaker 1: where if you even want to have this conversation, you
29:05
Speaker 1: are pretty well like attacked as being kind of like
29:11
Speaker 1: unsafe to the movement. Yeah.
29:13
Speaker 2: And I mean, I think that there's like to separate
29:15
Speaker 2: out things. Like I think I understand why trans people
29:19
Speaker 2: would be extremely sensitive to this and are, you know,
29:21
Speaker 2: I'd like no critique for people who are afraid about
29:23
Speaker 2: their civil rights being taken away and, and are, are
29:26
Speaker 2: upset about anything that makes them feel that that might
29:28
Speaker 2: happen or might push people to, to do that. But
29:30
Speaker 2: I think that like when it comes to people who
29:32
Speaker 2: have decided to become activists, whether they're trans or not,
29:36
Speaker 2: if your decision is that your goal is to enact
29:38
Speaker 2: electoral change, um, you need to stop thinking about elected
29:42
Speaker 2: officials as your friends or people who are going to
29:44
Speaker 2: be loyal to you, especially when it comes to rights
29:46
Speaker 2: movements where you're unpopular. Like, I... do not care how
29:50
Speaker 2: nicely I am treated by any elected official. I don't
29:53
Speaker 2: care if they like me. I don't care if they
29:55
Speaker 2: feel loyal to me. I care if they feel beholden
29:58
Speaker 2: to my interests because there's actual power and persuasion that
30:01
Speaker 2: we've built. This is difficult work, and it's not the
30:04
Speaker 2: work of an election cycle. It's the work of many,
30:07
Speaker 2: many years and maintaining that cultural power. And that's about
30:10
Speaker 2: convincing enough people in real life to be on your side.
30:15
Speaker 2: We've seen this with Abortion rights. It wasn't durable to
30:18
Speaker 2: just protect us through the courts like women in many
30:22
Speaker 2: places across the country do not have the right to
30:24
Speaker 2: their own body in situations of potential death because we
30:29
Speaker 2: they were protected only by having convinced like. five people
30:33
Speaker 2: on the Supreme Court. That's how you convince people on
30:37
Speaker 2: that issue. And it's really important to realize that that
30:41
Speaker 2: is a type of protection that's important. We want legal
30:43
Speaker 2: protections that happen through the court system. Those are not
30:45
Speaker 2: things to just give up on. But mass persuasion in
30:49
Speaker 2: a democracy is always going to be the most powerful thing.
30:52
Speaker 2: Whether or not Democrats stand by trans people or If
30:56
Speaker 2: this issue becomes salient in an electoral way, which I
30:59
Speaker 2: don't think it is right now at all, but if
31:00
Speaker 2: it does become salient, it's going to rely on not
31:03
Speaker 2: on Democrats' courage, really, which I mean, like some people
31:06
Speaker 2: would make decisions on how courageous they are. It's on
31:08
Speaker 2: whether that's popular or not. These are representatives of the public.
31:10
Speaker 2: And if the public is telling them, I don't want
31:12
Speaker 2: you to allow minors. to get puberty blockers. And there's
31:17
Speaker 2: 60% of them saying that to them in their districts.
31:20
Speaker 2: That's not about just courage on the Democrats' part. It's like,
31:23
Speaker 2: how are we convincing people to have different views such
31:28
Speaker 2: that we allow our elected officials to do that? Now,
31:30
Speaker 2: I think that there's a fair point to be made
31:32
Speaker 2: here that elected officials are not just automatons that go,
31:35
Speaker 2: what is the most popular thing? And let's just do
31:37
Speaker 2: that thing. And I think that's clearly happening right now.
31:40
Speaker 2: The Democratic Party's position on trans rights is like way
31:45
Speaker 2: to the left of the country right now in a
31:47
Speaker 2: way that I think is correct. Like they are right
31:49
Speaker 2: now holding the line. Like there's not, they're not like
31:52
Speaker 2: democratic politicians proposing bills or supporting bills right now to
31:56
Speaker 2: try and strip trans people of the rights that are
31:58
Speaker 2: unpopular in the public. Like that is something I think
32:01
Speaker 2: people should have some sort of, you know, take heart
32:04
Speaker 2: in the fact that there's been a real holding of
32:07
Speaker 2: the line on the specific rights. Now we have seen
32:10
Speaker 2: shifts in language, I think in ways that people are
32:12
Speaker 2: right to be you know, paying attention to. I think
32:15
Speaker 2: Seth Moulton is one of these people. And also, of course,
32:18
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom more recently. But even while their language has shifted,
32:23
Speaker 2: like California is one of the safest places in the
32:26
Speaker 2: country to be a trans person. And so is Massachusetts,
32:30
Speaker 2: where Seth Moulton is elected official. And Seth Moulton himself
32:32
Speaker 2: has like voted in favor of legislation to protect trans people.
32:35
Speaker 2: So I think it's something where like people need to
32:37
Speaker 2: be really focused on outcomes here because there's like actually
32:42
Speaker 2: a real long road ahead in trying to move the
32:46
Speaker 2: country in a better direction on this issue.
33:00
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Cringe. It's time to talk
33:03
Speaker 1: about cringe. You and I are aligned on the topic
33:07
Speaker 1: of cringe. There's a lot of people that see what
33:10
Speaker 1: happens at a No Kings protest. They see the signs about,
33:13
Speaker 1: you know, like that make fun of Trump. They're very earnest.
33:18
Speaker 1: They're very sweet. They're very Hamilton. And people call it cringe.
33:25
Speaker 1: And you wrote a great piece about it. about cringe
33:28
Speaker 1: being born of insecurity and fear. What is the role
33:32
Speaker 1: of cringe in the resistance to fascism in America in 2026?
33:36
Speaker 2: Cringe is just normie behavior. And if you don't win
33:41
Speaker 2: the normies, you've just lost. Normie is the average person.
33:44
Speaker 2: So anytime you're in a movement and it's too cool...
33:48
Speaker 2: you're losing. Like, it's, like, too cool. Like, not enough
33:52
Speaker 2: people are with you. If the losers aren't with you,
33:55
Speaker 2: if the moms aren't with you, if the grandpas aren't
33:57
Speaker 2: with you, like, it's, like, not going well. So when
34:00
Speaker 2: you look at mass movements that have actually succeeded, like,
34:04
Speaker 2: the idea that there wouldn't be some element of, like,
34:06
Speaker 2: I don't know, people dressing up in weird ways or, like,
34:08
Speaker 2: having signs that are, like, okay, like, I guess you
34:11
Speaker 2: almost got there, but there's something a little bit weird
34:13
Speaker 2: about that. Like, that's the kind of thing that you
34:15
Speaker 2: expect to see. And I also think, too, like, I
34:17
Speaker 2: don't know. I've reported on a variety of protests, including
34:21
Speaker 2: No King's protests in places across the country. And I
34:25
Speaker 2: think that like on social media and on like, you know,
34:29
Speaker 2: you know, TikTok or whatever, if you're just like kind
34:31
Speaker 2: of scrolling your feed and you see these signs divorced
34:33
Speaker 2: from context and divorced from the person, it can really
34:36
Speaker 2: maybe seem a little bit more embarrassing or weird. And
34:39
Speaker 2: when you're in person, you're interviewing people like really. These
34:42
Speaker 2: are people who, and I, you know, ask them about
34:44
Speaker 2: their signs, like, what does this mean? Like, they often
34:45
Speaker 2: actually have, like, quite moving stories about, like, why they're
34:49
Speaker 2: doing this, like, what brought them there. I talked to
34:51
Speaker 2: a very old man, I think more than 80 years old,
34:54
Speaker 2: in Berkeley, California, at the last No Kings protest. who
34:57
Speaker 2: said he had never protested in his life until this
34:59
Speaker 2: moment and he felt really awful about that and that
35:02
Speaker 2: he had realized like what he needed. He was on
35:05
Speaker 2: his own. He didn't have his friends with him. He
35:06
Speaker 2: didn't have his family with him. He was like, I
35:07
Speaker 2: needed to go do this because I realized like I
35:08
Speaker 2: can't be a part of the silent majority. And like,
35:12
Speaker 2: I don't remember what his sign was, but I remember like,
35:13
Speaker 2: it's like the kind of thing that people would have
35:15
Speaker 2: cringed at that would have been like, oh gosh, like
35:17
Speaker 2: it's written terribly and like it doesn't look nice and
35:20
Speaker 2: it's not, you know, whatever. And so, you know, I
35:22
Speaker 2: think that like things can play different on social media
35:24
Speaker 2: and that's like important to think about, but. But yeah.
35:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm interested in cringe because I feel like cringe,
35:31
Speaker 1: it's about, it's a description of a feeling you have
35:34
Speaker 1: when you see something, right? You cringe. It's a secondhand
35:39
Speaker 1: embarrassment of a sort. And it feels like we combine
35:43
Speaker 1: a lot of different things into what that is. Like
35:45
Speaker 1: one is just being uncomfortable with earnest displays of emotion, right?
35:50
Speaker 1: Just someone who doesn't seem embarrassed of their feelings, which
35:53
Speaker 1: seems like a very like... And cringing at that seems
35:57
Speaker 1: like very high school, very afraid of what the cool
35:59
Speaker 1: kids are going to say. Right. Like that's part of it.
36:02
Speaker 1: But then there's also, I think, like when when people
36:06
Speaker 1: say that Chuck Schumer is cringe.
36:08
Speaker 2: Right.
36:09
Speaker 1: Or Nancy Pelosi is cringe. That's actually, I think, more
36:12
Speaker 1: of a valid more. It's more worth thinking about what
36:15
Speaker 1: that is. And that's not just, oh, that's an embarrassing display.
36:18
Speaker 1: It's that's a performative display that goes beyond their actual either.
36:25
Speaker 1: views or prerogatives.
36:27
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I think what's happening there is when
36:29
Speaker 2: people say, like, people say it's cringe that, like, I
36:32
Speaker 2: don't know, like Nancy Pelosi, you know, wore a kente
36:35
Speaker 2: and put her fist up in the air on the
36:37
Speaker 2: ground or whatever, right? Like, I think that, like, when
36:39
Speaker 2: people say that's cringe, what they're saying is, like, I
36:41
Speaker 2: can't believe someone who I had to, who I voted
36:43
Speaker 2: for or is on my team is, like, doing something
36:45
Speaker 2: so embarrassing. Like, I think it still is internal. And
36:48
Speaker 2: I think the root of the problem there is that
36:51
Speaker 2: people are thinking too much of politics as a source
36:55
Speaker 2: of identity. Like if Nancy Pelosi is, isn't cool, like
36:59
Speaker 2: that has like nothing to do with me. Like, I
37:01
Speaker 2: don't like, like whether or not I'm cool has no,
37:03
Speaker 2: like Chuck Schumer has no bearing on it. Hakeem Jeffries
37:06
Speaker 2: has no bearing on it. Like it's like not relevant
37:08
Speaker 2: to like my own self-perception of myself. But as we've
37:10
Speaker 2: gotten into a place where politics is not just an
37:14
Speaker 2: arena to win specific material gains, but actually a reflection
37:19
Speaker 2: of who you are as a person and what kind
37:21
Speaker 2: of person or what kind of vibe that you yourself hold.
37:26
Speaker 2: And we see this in a lot of places, right?
37:27
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're watching Love is Blind right now,
37:29
Speaker 2: but I just watched it. Spoiler alert. I don't want
37:32
Speaker 2: to give anything away. Are you into Love is Blind?
37:34
Speaker 1: I'm not. For the dear listeners, there's about to be
37:37
Speaker 1: a spoiler for Love is Blind this season. I haven't
37:39
Speaker 1: watched this season. Earmuffs in the studio.
37:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. So spoiler alert for Love is Blind, but like
37:47
Speaker 2: there's one there's one of the men in the couples
37:51
Speaker 2: is asked by his his fiance's dad, like, who did
37:54
Speaker 2: you vote for? And, you know, he's like, you know,
37:56
Speaker 2: he like it's like, oh, yeah, I would have. I
37:57
Speaker 2: didn't vote, but I would have voted for Trump. And
37:59
Speaker 2: you don't I mean, and like like this sort of
38:00
Speaker 2: thing coming up in reality TV shows as dating as like.
38:03
Speaker 2: Now it speaks to his person's entire character, which, you know,
38:07
Speaker 2: I think that's reasonable to like view that like values
38:09
Speaker 2: shift to shift. But like that wasn't like normal even
38:12
Speaker 2: like 15, 20 years ago for like politics to be
38:14
Speaker 2: so central to like these cultural shows and movements. And
38:18
Speaker 2: I think that to me is to me is a
38:20
Speaker 2: reflection of the fact that we've lost a lot of
38:24
Speaker 2: other ways that we describe ourselves. And politics is now
38:27
Speaker 2: the place where people derive a lot of meaning from.
38:31
Speaker 2: instead of like, whether it's church or the kinds of,
38:33
Speaker 2: whether you are a part of a club or whatever.
38:35
Speaker 2: So you see this associational decline happening in life. And like,
38:38
Speaker 2: we've moved all of that energy towards politics. And as
38:40
Speaker 2: a result now, I'm like really concerned if people associate
38:43
Speaker 2: me with something cringe that like, you know, an elected
38:47
Speaker 2: official does. And like, you should free yourself of that.
38:49
Speaker 1: So I want to make, yeah, I agree with that.
38:52
Speaker 1: I do think it's more, I think it's more than that.
38:54
Speaker 1: I think it's more than just identity because a lot
38:56
Speaker 1: of what Republicans do would be cringe to us if
39:00
Speaker 1: we were Republicans, but we're not. And so there is
39:03
Speaker 1: a little bit of the narcissism of small differences. Lydia
39:05
Speaker 1: Paul Green wrote something about the Indigo Girls that cringe
39:09
Speaker 1: implies a naivete that gets coded as feminine, a silly
39:13
Speaker 1: belief that human beings, through sincere effort, might actually improve
39:16
Speaker 1: themselves and the world. And I do think there is
39:19
Speaker 1: a kind of cynicism that undergirds this, which is like,
39:28
Speaker 1: you're not jaded enough that you don't understand how the
39:31
Speaker 1: world really works. You don't understand how broken things are.
39:35
Speaker 1: You're too hopeful, right? I do think that's part of
39:38
Speaker 1: it too. What do you think?
39:40
Speaker 2: No, I agree. I mean, I think that there's like,
39:43
Speaker 2: anyone who really works in politics, whether it's as a commentator,
39:47
Speaker 2: as a journalist, as an activist, you know, we're much
39:49
Speaker 2: more ideological than the average person. And by that, I mean,
39:52
Speaker 2: we have like a, you know, we think about policies
39:55
Speaker 2: and our worldviews as connecting in like very consistent ways.
40:01
Speaker 2: Whereas when you talk to like, Most voters like they'll
40:03
Speaker 2: say a grab bag of things that you're like, well,
40:05
Speaker 2: how do these things go together? Like, how do you
40:06
Speaker 2: support this? And also that like you get you have
40:09
Speaker 2: to tax rich people more if you want Medicare for all. Like,
40:11
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, like, why are these things more consistent?
40:13
Speaker 2: And you see this in polling as well, where people
40:15
Speaker 2: often will hold very inconsistent views in ways that seem
40:18
Speaker 2: like they don't make sense. But like we are actually
40:20
Speaker 2: the weird ones for being so ideological and consistent. And
40:23
Speaker 2: so why I say that is that I think that
40:26
Speaker 2: when you are someone who's like an expert in your
40:30
Speaker 2: field and whether that's like politics or whatever it is,
40:32
Speaker 2: and you see someone who doesn't do that a lot,
40:35
Speaker 2: kind of just like get on the ice for the
40:36
Speaker 2: first time, you're like, oh my God, that's not how
40:39
Speaker 2: you move the puck. Oh God, that's like not how
40:41
Speaker 2: you shoot a basketball. And like, we're like, oh God,
40:43
Speaker 2: that's like not how you do politics. But in politics, like, yeah,
40:46
Speaker 2: maybe we're the experts, but like everyone has the same voice.
40:50
Speaker 2: So we don't get to tell people how to be.
40:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like a, I'm working towards a theory of
40:58
Speaker 1: cringe that ultimately lands at being anti-cringe is in the
41:03
Speaker 1: same way like a Rockefeller was offended by the strivings
41:10
Speaker 1: of people who had made their own money. That there's
41:12
Speaker 1: a kind of class aspect to this where like, look
41:16
Speaker 1: at all that trying and look at all that effort.
41:20
Speaker 1: With the kind of image in there, which sort of like,
41:22
Speaker 1: as if all politics is in performance for a 32-year-old
41:30
Speaker 1: white rich guy who has a very dark comedic aesthetic
41:37
Speaker 1: and who has seen it all and done it all
41:39
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. I'm like, who is that? Well,
41:40
Speaker 1: that's a kid who went to NYU because... They had
41:45
Speaker 1: the money to go back. Who exactly? Who is that
41:48
Speaker 1: high school kid? Who's that popular kid you're worried about?
41:50
Speaker 1: What do they look like? What are their equities? I
41:52
Speaker 1: don't think they're poor. I don't think they're poor.
41:55
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll say this. I think that the class
41:57
Speaker 2: aspect is like maybe to me less central than the
42:01
Speaker 2: age aspect. Like we're now in a moment where young
42:04
Speaker 2: people are. Because the democratization of social media, because of
42:08
Speaker 2: the shifts in culture that have allowed young people to
42:11
Speaker 2: have more access to a microphone, which are good. But
42:15
Speaker 2: that means they're entering politics and realizing, oh my gosh,
42:19
Speaker 2: politics is dominated by 50-year-old white people. That's so embarrassing
42:23
Speaker 2: and cringe.
42:24
Speaker 1: And it should be dominated by 43-year-old white people.
42:27
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. That will be our utopia. But I mean, like,
42:31
Speaker 2: I think that it's like just, you know, young people
42:34
Speaker 2: always think older people who are older than them are cringe.
42:36
Speaker 2: That's just like how life works in every generation. But
42:39
Speaker 2: like now they now have the ability to go online
42:41
Speaker 2: and like buy the thousands and go like, ew, like,
42:43
Speaker 2: what is this? And it's like, that's like politics. Like,
42:45
Speaker 2: please go to a rally. Go to a local government meeting. Like,
42:50
Speaker 2: that's what it is. They're in control of all the power. Like, please.
42:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaking of old people being in charge and having
43:09
Speaker 1: all the power, I do want to touch on housing.
43:11
Speaker 1: So Trump signed an executive order aiming to, quote, stop
43:14
Speaker 1: Wall Street from competing with Main Street homebuyers. This has
43:18
Speaker 1: long been an issue on the left, the effect that
43:23
Speaker 1: private equity and has had on the housing market. It
43:27
Speaker 1: seems like Trump is trying to co-opt this issue. But
43:30
Speaker 1: at the same time, the critique of this argument is
43:33
Speaker 1: this doesn't actually have that big of an influence on
43:36
Speaker 1: the effect of housing. What do you make of that
43:37
Speaker 1: Trump announcement?
43:39
Speaker 2: This has been my hobby horse for years, John. I
43:42
Speaker 2: feel like I have to do deep breathing, short inhalation,
43:47
Speaker 2: long exhalation, to stay calm. I mean, This is one
43:51
Speaker 2: of those things where I think the media has done
43:52
Speaker 2: a severe disservice to the public in informing them about
43:55
Speaker 2: things that are important. Institutional investors, whatever you think about
44:00
Speaker 2: their ability to engage in the housing market, just putting
44:02
Speaker 2: that aside, are definitionally a tiny percentage of the housing market.
44:06
Speaker 2: I just pulled up an article I wrote earlier this
44:08
Speaker 2: year called Everybody Hates Renters. We have a chart in
44:11
Speaker 2: there that shows this. Mega investors made up 2.2%. of
44:17
Speaker 2: investor purchases in June 2025. So in June 2025, mega
44:23
Speaker 2: investors made up 2.2% of investor purchases. That doesn't even
44:27
Speaker 2: include all the purchases that are non-investors. This is like
44:30
Speaker 2: a tiny, tiny amount. Even in sub-markets where you hear
44:33
Speaker 2: things like, oh, wow, like 30% of homes were bought
44:36
Speaker 2: by investors. When you hear that headline, what that is
44:39
Speaker 2: saying is not private equity coming. It means anything from
44:44
Speaker 2: someone who owns, who's buying a second home, someone buying
44:47
Speaker 2: a home through an LLC, a small investor who's a
44:51
Speaker 2: developer in your area who's now renting out apartments or
44:54
Speaker 2: multifamily units, all of those purchases count as investors. So
44:59
Speaker 2: I don't want to get too into the weeds on
45:00
Speaker 2: this because I could go on this for forever. But
45:02
Speaker 2: part of the problem is that there's been such a
45:05
Speaker 2: focus on this issue. And it is obviously because private equity,
45:09
Speaker 2: institutional investors, these are like easy punching bags because people
45:12
Speaker 2: hate them already on across the political spectrum. But as
45:16
Speaker 2: a result, it allows Trump to sound like he's doing
45:18
Speaker 2: something meaningful on an issue that's actually very important to people.
45:23
Speaker 2: Housing affordability, housing access, homelessness. These are issues people are very,
45:27
Speaker 2: very attuned to, particularly since 2020, when we saw prices
45:30
Speaker 2: skyrocket across the entire country. And this is not going
45:34
Speaker 2: to meaningfully affect anything about people's ability to afford housing.
45:38
Speaker 2: And it is really, really disappointing to me that like
45:41
Speaker 2: actors in the media have allowed this story to spread
45:45
Speaker 2: to the point where now, yeah, he gets a lot
45:47
Speaker 2: of political win and say like, yeah, we ban institutional
45:49
Speaker 2: investment to the housing market. I'm like, all right, you
45:52
Speaker 2: didn't even do that. And also it's not going to
45:54
Speaker 2: do anything.
45:54
Speaker 1: It's not going to make a difference. So let's talk
45:56
Speaker 1: about what could make a difference. I'm curious where you
45:58
Speaker 1: think we're at in the great Yimby housing wars that
46:02
Speaker 1: began with the last like couple of years. So California
46:07
Speaker 1: passes SB 79. This is to allow building towards around transit,
46:11
Speaker 1: a huge victory for trying to address California's massive housing shortage. Meanwhile,
46:17
Speaker 1: Los Angeles has been fighting it tooth and nail. Karen Bass,
46:22
Speaker 1: our mayor, came out against it. The city planner just
46:25
Speaker 1: put out a document with all the ways they're going
46:27
Speaker 1: to try to screw with the implementation of SB 79.
46:32
Speaker 1: It feels like nationally the politics of this really have shifted.
46:35
Speaker 1: I think there's been a big debate. People are, even
46:37
Speaker 1: from Mamdani to the abundance world, people are getting behind
46:42
Speaker 1: the need for more market rate housing and getting rid
46:44
Speaker 1: of rules that prevent people from building. And yet, one
46:49
Speaker 1: of the biggest cities in the country in a democratic bastion,
46:53
Speaker 1: we seem unable to address it. What do you think?
46:55
Speaker 2: This is one of the most difficult policy issues to
46:59
Speaker 2: make progress on. because it doesn't just require convincing a
47:03
Speaker 2: bunch of people, which I think successfully has happened. You
47:07
Speaker 2: now see across the political spectrum, like Mamdani is a
47:10
Speaker 2: YMBA champion. You have like even Trump voters in Arizona
47:14
Speaker 2: and Trump elected officials in Arizona and Texas who are
47:18
Speaker 2: passing YMBA policies, Montana, et cetera. And so, you know,
47:22
Speaker 2: that is great. And I'm like super happy that we've
47:25
Speaker 2: moved this far in this direction to be in favor
47:27
Speaker 2: of building more housing. But like the central critique has
47:30
Speaker 2: always been that there are so many veto points to
47:34
Speaker 2: actually getting housing built. Like you can convince like the
47:38
Speaker 2: majority of people that actually there really should be an
47:40
Speaker 2: apartment building on this block. But if you allow there
47:43
Speaker 2: to be whether it's loopholes and how people can sue,
47:48
Speaker 2: you allow discretionary approval processes in local government. So like
47:52
Speaker 2: if local government doesn't have to just say like, OK,
47:54
Speaker 2: you passed all the rules. You did all the safety checks.
47:56
Speaker 2: This is the homes that have been approved there. You're
47:59
Speaker 2: not building in an environmentally dangerous area. All that's good.
48:03
Speaker 2: We've given you your permit. Good to go. Now, instead,
48:05
Speaker 2: they can say, well, you've passed all those things, but
48:08
Speaker 2: we're just going to sit on this for a while
48:10
Speaker 2: and we're going to have 15,000 more hearings and we're
48:13
Speaker 2: going to demand more information. And when they do this,
48:16
Speaker 2: it can seem facially very neutral. You just hear like, oh,
48:18
Speaker 2: they're just asking for more information. The community is upset.
48:21
Speaker 2: They want to know more what's going on. But that delay,
48:24
Speaker 2: like housing delayed is housing denied. Like because of the
48:27
Speaker 2: fact that you have made developers, affordable housing developers to
48:32
Speaker 2: private market developers wait, you are increasing the cost of housing.
48:36
Speaker 2: And I think that people don't realize it. I mean,
48:38
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles in particular, I did a story a
48:40
Speaker 2: few years back about affordable housing developers in Los Angeles.
48:44
Speaker 2: Affordable housing developers have a much harder time with maintaining
48:48
Speaker 2: control over land in order to build housing on it
48:52
Speaker 2: over successive years because affordable housing developers are often like
48:56
Speaker 2: getting their financing from a bunch of different mechanisms and
48:59
Speaker 2: like though there are different rules for how that that
49:01
Speaker 2: money has to be spent and what time period reporting
49:03
Speaker 2: or whatever and so when they have all that lined
49:06
Speaker 2: up and they go to the city they say we
49:07
Speaker 2: have all the financing here's our permit we'd love to
49:09
Speaker 2: build some affordable housing for homeless people and the city
49:12
Speaker 2: says well let's just hold on for a little bit
49:15
Speaker 2: and then the financing uh... rules change now they have
49:18
Speaker 2: to get uh... get it re-upped or the the the
49:20
Speaker 2: interest rates shift such that like the financing no longer
49:23
Speaker 2: pencils out for that project those projects just disappear and
49:26
Speaker 2: the city never has to say like actually we don't
49:28
Speaker 2: want that anymore and los angeles like you know we've
49:30
Speaker 2: seen this like prop triple h which passed like i
49:32
Speaker 2: don't know like a decade ago now which was in
49:34
Speaker 2: los angeles meant to uh provide it was a billion
49:36
Speaker 2: dollars for affordable housing i mean like Like so much
49:40
Speaker 2: of that has yet to be actually spent and because
49:42
Speaker 2: people don't want to fix these problems.
49:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
49:46
Speaker 1: There was just some money that LA returned because it
49:51
Speaker 1: was unable to spend it in time, just free money
49:53
Speaker 1: that they were given for local development projects to sort
49:57
Speaker 1: of gone. You've started a media company, final topic, the argument.
50:02
Speaker 1: What have you learned in your transition from being part
50:06
Speaker 1: of a larger media company to starting your own?
50:10
Speaker 2: Um, so many things, John, so much. I'd never managed
50:13
Speaker 2: that many people before. Now we have a great team.
50:15
Speaker 2: Now we have a, um, we're 10 people. Uh, the
50:18
Speaker 2: argument magazine is, is, is, is, is growing strong. But
50:22
Speaker 2: at the same time, management is just like, it's a
50:24
Speaker 2: whole different ballgame. I had no idea how, how much
50:26
Speaker 2: stuff I was making my editors or managers do for
50:28
Speaker 2: me in the past. I am now like reflecting. I
50:31
Speaker 2: actually reached back to my old editors and I was like,
50:32
Speaker 2: Hey guys, like, sorry about that. And they're like, he
50:34
Speaker 2: is a circle of life. But I think one of
50:36
Speaker 2: the coolest things that I've learned about this is, and
50:39
Speaker 2: part of the reason for starting the argument, which is
50:42
Speaker 2: an argument really focused on political liberalism and how to
50:45
Speaker 2: reinvigorate it and really make it meaningful to people's lives
50:48
Speaker 2: by focusing on the core issues, whether those are economic,
50:52
Speaker 2: material growth, whether it's gender and family, which is what
50:55
Speaker 2: we were talking about earlier today, or about AI and
50:57
Speaker 2: technology and society and how technology policy should interact with society.
51:02
Speaker 2: These big issues, like what can liberal ideas actually say
51:05
Speaker 2: to them, is something that I think there's a lot
51:07
Speaker 2: of hunger for. People are not just looking for a
51:10
Speaker 2: technocratic answer to their question. They're looking for a framework
51:13
Speaker 2: that can feel ideologically true to them and feel like
51:19
Speaker 2: it's actually speaking to the broader questions they have about
51:23
Speaker 2: meaning and where they get it from and what politics
51:25
Speaker 2: is supposed to do and what it's supposed to be like.
51:27
Speaker 2: And there are, I think, a lot of people who
51:29
Speaker 2: are unsatisfied both by the kind of like moderate, just
51:33
Speaker 2: kind of like skewed to the median voter like angle
51:36
Speaker 2: that a lot of politics has felt like. And also
51:38
Speaker 2: like the way that progressivism felt for many, much of
51:41
Speaker 2: the 2020s and, you know, the late aughts where it
51:43
Speaker 2: felt like you're not allowed to... you know, engage in
51:47
Speaker 2: meaningful debate over questions over which there's a lot of
51:49
Speaker 2: uncertainty or these are not places where you can actually,
51:54
Speaker 2: you know, have reasonable disagreement without just shutting down the conversation.
51:59
Speaker 2: And that's why we're called The Argument is like we
52:00
Speaker 2: platform a lot of different views in contention with one another.
52:04
Speaker 2: And I'm constantly publishing people that I disagree with And,
52:07
Speaker 2: you know, we have this column called Mad Libs where
52:09
Speaker 2: I just argue with people. And I just think that, like,
52:11
Speaker 2: that's really important to do because most people don't have
52:14
Speaker 2: my views. I'm, like, not an average voter. They don't
52:17
Speaker 2: agree with me on a lot of stuff. And if
52:19
Speaker 2: you don't figure out ways to talk to them, then
52:21
Speaker 2: you're either consigning yourself to, OK, maybe I can hold
52:25
Speaker 2: on to New York and Los Angeles and live in
52:27
Speaker 2: my safe haven and, you know, fuck everyone who can't
52:29
Speaker 2: make it here. Or you're consigning yourself to losing forever.
52:33
Speaker 2: And that's something that I'm not willing to do.
52:35
Speaker 1: Well, that's good news because everyone can't move to Los
52:38
Speaker 1: Angeles because we can't build a fucking house for people
52:41
Speaker 1: to live in here. That was great.
52:44
Speaker 2: Way to bring that around.
52:45
Speaker 1: That was great. Yeah, thanks. Jerusalem Jemzins, I'm such a fan.
52:48
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I just want to sum up
52:50
Speaker 1: where we're at just because we covered a lot of topics. One,
52:54
Speaker 1: tariff's bad, but he's probably going to be able to
52:56
Speaker 1: do it anyway. Two, cringe good. Cringe good.
53:02
Speaker 2: Three.
53:04
Speaker 1: We have to be able to talk about why we're
53:06
Speaker 1: losing ground on trans issues if we want to protect
53:08
Speaker 1: trans people. Four, we have to build houses.
53:13
Speaker 2: Yes.
53:14
Speaker 1: And five, argument's good.
53:16
Speaker 2: Argument's good. Argument's great. Argue with people.
53:19
Speaker 1: We covered a lot of ground. Jerusalem Dems is so great.
53:21
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
53:22
Speaker 2: This is so fun. Thanks for having me. I'm such
53:23
Speaker 2: a fan of the show. I'm glad to be here.
53:25
Speaker 1: And that's our show. Thank you so much to Jerusalem
53:28
Speaker 1: Dems for joining. John, Tommy, and I will be back
53:30
Speaker 1: in your feeds with a new episode on Tuesday morning.
53:34
Speaker 1: And that's it.
53:36
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