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“The Chosen One.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Dan's interview with Stacey Abrams, who
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: just launched a new effort to protect voting rights in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the 2020 election. Before that, We will try to assess
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the damage from the president's latest meltdown, which, even by
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's standards, was one for the ages this week.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Also check out Pod Save the World, where Tommy and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Ben talk about how Trump bullied Netanyahu into blocking Ilhan
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Omar and Rashida Tlaib from visiting Israel. They speak with
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a China expert from Human Rights Watch about the massive
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: protests in Hong Kong. Issue a call to action in
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: defense of California wine. That's a very Tommy topic. and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: explain why Al-Qaeda released a blooper reel.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Check it out. Finally, in the latest episode of our...
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Tommy's promos for Positive of the World are just fire,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I have to say. Finally, in the latest episode of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: our Crooked miniseries, Rigging North Carolina, our political director, Shaniqua McClendon,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: examines the bonkers hearing the North Carolina State Board of
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Elections held earlier this year to get to the bottom
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of what happened in the congressional race for the 9th district.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. So at one
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: point yesterday, these are the four headlines that ran on
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the front page of the New York Times.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Trump urges unity against racism?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Not that one. Not that one.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: They've moved past that. Here they are. New rule would
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: let U.S. hold migrant families indefinitely. NRA gets results in
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: one phone call with the president. Trump accuses Jewish Democrats
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of disloyalty. and Trump canceled a meeting with Denmark over
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: its refusal to sell Greenland. Michelle Goldberg, a columnist at
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the Times, posted a photo of the front page and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: tweeted that it looked like one of those pre-election parodies
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: about what a Trump administration would be like. And the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: worst part is, those headlines just scratched the surface of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: all the unhinged, nasty, destructive shit the president said and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: did last week. Dan, we're going to dig into these
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: headlines one by one, but I want to start by
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: asking you about... A theory that I've been hearing from
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: our old pal David Axelrod, which is that the voters
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: that Trump needs to win are getting exhausted by waking
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: up to this constant chaos and craziness day after day,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and it is sort of damaging his political standing with
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: probably some of the voters he would need to win
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in 2020. What do you think of that theory?
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's definitely some merits to it. I'd like
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to see, you know, research that suggests it. I Now,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I saw Amy Chozik of the New York Times tweet
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: this morning, when is a Democrat going to run on
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: the platform of Make America Boring Again? And I get
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: that idea. I think Michael Bennett also said this, which is,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: wouldn't it be great if you had a president you
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: have to think about 24-7? I do think that Trump,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I would actually take Axelrod's theory and take it in
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: a less optimistic direction, which is, The result of Trump
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: exhausting the American electorate is not that people will vote
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: against him. It is that some people won't vote.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Is that it is so loud, so annoying, so terrible,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: so miserable that they would rather check out than tune in.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And if that happens, that is going to hurt Democrats
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: because we depend on folks who have never voted before
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: or are less frequent voters to get the majorities we
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: need to win the electoral college, while Republicans have a
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: smaller but more— smaller but more reliable voting base?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I think you have to connect the argument to what
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: really matters in people's lives. Because if the argument is just,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: we have a crazy president, every time you turn on
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the news, he's done something else, you know, batshit crazy,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you know, then a lot of people could either, like
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you said, say, well, then I don't want to vote
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: either way, or just turn off the news. But I
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: think if you frame it as, this country has enormous problems,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: climate change, your healthcare costs are going up, Your wages
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: have been stagnant. You're having a tough time sending your
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: kids to college. And we have all these problems. And
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: what is the president doing the whole time? He's just
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: like spouting off every other day, pissing some people off,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: pissing off foreign leaders, inciting hate and violence. He's just
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: making the country more divided. He's profiting off the White House.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: He's doing all this bullshit. Well, all of these problems
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that we have as a country are growing and no
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: one is actually fighting for you. So I think if
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you connect it, it can be powerful, but I think
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it can't just be Donald Trump's annoying on Twitter, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that's why we should have a new president.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you make a very important point here,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: which is you have to connect it to there have
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: to be consequences for his behavior in your life, like
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: either things that have gone wrong or missed opportunities to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: make the country better. I do think that there is
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: an opportunity for a Democrat not to run on being boring,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: but to take.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: To basically connect the dots on everything that Trump is
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: doing and saying is that it's about Trump.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: These are his grievances, his fights, his temper tantrums, his
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: bottom line when it comes to his economic policies and
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: his corruption. And to say, have a message that's something like,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: wouldn't it be nice if we had a president who
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: woke up every day thinking about you, not thinking about themselves,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: who was fighting for you, not fighting everyone for themselves, right?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: I think there's room for a candidate to do that.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And I think that is the key to tie this
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: all together. And I don't think Axe is suggesting this,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: but boring is not a way to win an election
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: when your party depends on inspiring non-voters to vote.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. So let's start with Greenland,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a Danish island that was minding its own business until
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump offered to buy it for at least $ 600
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: million of our tax dollars per year. When the prime
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: minister of Denmark called the president's offer absurd, Trump called
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: her nasty and canceled his upcoming visit to Denmark and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: attacked the country's NATO contributions on Twitter, successfully pissing off
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: yet another close ally of the United States. Dan, I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: never thought I'd be asking this question, but why did
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: President Donald Trump get in a fight with the Danish
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: prime minister over his offer to buy Greenland?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: We have come to expect the unexpected in the Trump era,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: but I have to admit, This one threw me for
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: a loop.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Didn't see this one coming.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: It is so insane. I mean, it's so crazy. It's
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: just like, you just hear it and you're just like,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: what the fuck? How did we get here? And it's
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: not even like things are going superb all around the
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: country right now. We're just like looking for new things
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: to do. Trump has just checked everything off of his
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: list and the economy is humming. Congress is passing things.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: People aren't getting killed in mass shootings. And it's like,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I just need a new project. So I'm going to
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: take on the Greenland thing. So it's absurd in the
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: best of times. It is incredibly absurd in the middle
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: of this week, which has felt, just on the events,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I'd say this summer, which has felt particularly chaotic and
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: traumatic and scary, even by the scale of that in
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: the Trump era. And so it's just like, I don't
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: really know what to say other than Trump has an
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: amazing ability to take the political conversation and focus it
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: on the stupidest part humanly possible.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And, I mean, we should talk for a second about
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: why he wanted to buy Greenland. He's not the first president,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, to inquire about purchasing Greenland. I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: think Harry Truman did. A couple other presidents did in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the past. You know, a legitimate reason could be, you know,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: there's a geostrategic reason for this, you know, that Greenland
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: is by Russia and you could have military bases there, which,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: by the way, you could have military presence there. through
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: NATO without actually buying the fucking island. But for Trump,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: we know why Trump wants to buy Greenland, right? He
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: considers himself like a real estate guy and a builder.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And if he could be the president that like, you know,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: added another, added an entire island to America and say
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that he like increased the size of the United States
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: by 20%, you can see him like being excited to
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: brag about that because it's exactly the type of fucking
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: thing that Donald Trump gets excited about.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Did you have Spencer's Gifts stores growing.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Up in Massachusetts? I did, yeah. Loved Spencer's Gifts.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So for folks who may not have been around in
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: those days, Spencer's Gifts is like this classic 80s store
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: in malls that sold like posters and gag gifts and
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: like t-shirts from bands. And I remember at the Spencer's
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Gifts in the Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware, they always
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: had this poster up that was like this dude, I
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: think he was like in tennis shorts and he was
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: surrounded by like a Ferrari and all this other stuff.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: And it said at the bottom, in this like the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: most quintessentially 80s thing, which is he who dies with
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the most toys wins. And I've always thought that that
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: is like Trump who is himself a man trapped in
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: the 80s. Like that is his ethos. That is his
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: reason for being. And so like adding, buying stuff or
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: getting more land for the United States is to him
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: equal success. Without any thought of anything other, like the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: purchase or the acquisition or possession of something is in
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: and of itself a win regardless of what you're using
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: it for or what purpose it would serve.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's also one of these guys who's clearly only
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: looked at Mercator maps that make Greenland look like five
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: times bigger than it actually is, you know? And so
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: he sees it on that fucking map and he's thinking
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to himself, holy shit, that's big. I want to buy
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: that Island. Now the other, the bad reasons for this,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: for trying to buy Greenland, which there are many, but
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: one of the worst is he basically just wants to
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: fucking drill. There's like plenty of oil and natural resources there.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And it's inhabited by about 50,000 people. A lot of them,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: they're indigenous people in Greenland. And he basically wants to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: go into their home and drill for a bunch of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: fucking oil, and realize that, you know, with climate change happening,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Greenland is also, like, the ice on Greenland is melting,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: so it's a perfect opportunity not to solve climate change,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: but to drill for more fucking oil there. Now, the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: most ridiculous thing of this whole offer is that he
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: can't buy Greenland even if the Danes said yes, because
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: they are not able to sell Greenland. There is something
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: in the Constitution that says that if Greenland wants to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: separate from Denmark, or go somewhere else, or be on
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: its own. It's the people of Greenland that decide in
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: a referendum. They vote. So it is also so Trump
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to think that he can, it's so fucking colonial of
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: him to think he can just pay some money for
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a territory that is able to, that if it ever
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to leave Denmark, in the Constitution says that it
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: can decide that on its own.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: What was it that Dinesh D'Souza or Newt Gingrich or
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: some other right-wing nutjob said about Obama that he had
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: The colonial, yeah. The neocolonial attitude, yeah. I think that
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: it always comes full circle in the Trump world, where
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: it's basically Trump becomes the absurd thing that conservatives accused
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Obama of being, and then they embrace it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's also not let slide here that the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: consequence of what happened this week is that we just
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: pissed off another NATO ally, which Trump has been doing
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: left and right. Sucks up to every dictator all over
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the world and just pisses off our allies. You know, Denmark,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: small little country in Europe, also sent troops to Afghanistan
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: after 9-11 to support us because we invoked Article 5
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: in NATO, lost 43 soldiers in Afghanistan, which is the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: highest per capita death rate of any member of the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: coalition fighting in Afghanistan, Denmark. And Donald Trump said, fuck you,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: because you wouldn't accept my offer to buy an island
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that I actually can't buy anyway. That's where we're at.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Would you support the acquisition of Greenland if it became
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: a state?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Well, their politics are pretty left-wing, so maybe we'd get another.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Elijah likes it. Elijah's looking at me. This is where
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: he's been going all week. Yeah, no, two senators from Greenland?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Two Democrats? Absolutely. Well, again, if the people of Greenland
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: want to decide that for themselves, then it's up to them. Okay,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: next up on the crazy train. Multiple times this week,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the president accused American Jews who support Democrats of being
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: disloyal to Israel. Trump first made the anti-Semitic accusation as
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: he was attacking Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the president successfully lobbied Bibi Netanyahu to ban from Israel
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: of being anti-Semites. On top of that, Trump tweeted the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: following quote from right-wing conspiracy theorist Wayne Allen, who believes
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the mass shooting in Las Vegas was a Muslim plot. Quote,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: The Jewish people in Israel love Trump like he's the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: king of Israel. They love him like he is the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: second coming of God, but American Jews don't know him
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: or like him. They don't even know what they're doing
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: or saying anymore. This was a tweet thread from the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: president of the United States. Dan, should we go through
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: all the ways these comments aren't just stupid and offensive
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and anti-Semitic, but actually dangerous?
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Trump using an anti-Semitic trope to call
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Democrats anti-Semitic is Trumpism in a nutshell.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Peak Trump. It is.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: It speaks to his stupidity. It also speaks of the
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: willful stupidity of the Republican Party, who had a fucking
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: hissy fit attacking Ilhan Omar for suggesting that her comments
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: were about loyalty and that she was using this exact
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: same anti-Semitic trope that Trump just used. And then all
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: of the people who attacked Ilhan Omar all defended Trump
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: for it. It's like you the price of being in
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party in the Trump era is that you
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: have to make yourself a little ridiculous three times a week.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: It's also very Trump in that the typical dual loyalty
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: trope is that somehow American Jews aren't really loyal to America,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: they're loyal to Israel. In Donald Trump's mind, American Jews
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: should be loyal to Israel, which means he doesn't really
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: see American Jews as Americans, right? It's such an It
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: fits with his ethno-nationalist worldview where he sees so many
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: people in this country as not really truly being American.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: But if you're ethnic or you're Muslim or you're Latino,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: you have a... Judge Curiel, the judge that he said
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't be fair because he was Mexican, even though it
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: was just like he was born in the United States
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and he had Mexican heritage, right? Trump doesn't see people...
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: He only sees... like white Christians as fundamentally American. Everyone else,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're okay if you like Donald Trump.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: If you're not, you're disloyal, not only to Trump, but
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to America. That's sort of, that's how he thinks. And
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: it's an extremely dangerous worldview at a time where white
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: nationalist domestic terrorism is on the rise and just happened
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a couple weeks ago.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And it's this, in 2016, 71, according to the Expo,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: 71% of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton. That number
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: was 79% in the 2018 midterms. It's been around that
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: 70% number for a long time. So he's essentially saying
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: that 7 in 10 American Jews are disloyal and dumb.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Because the original comment was that they support, that they
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: are either disloyal or ignorant to explain their support of Democrats.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: And we're just moving on. Like this happened, it happened
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: like 36 hours ago, we're on to the Greenland thing
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: and everything else, and we're just going to move right
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: past the president attacking with an anti-Semitic trope the Jewish
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: community in America.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and look, a bunch of people noted if Elizabeth
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Warren or Joe Biden had said this, this would be
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the end of their campaigns. The media would never let
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: it go. It would be covered as the biggest thing
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that ever happened. It would not last a day or two.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It would go on and on and on. But because
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump does five of these things per day, it
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: was one of many headlines on the New York Times
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: yesterday that was completely bonkers.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And Trump benefits in the minds of the press from
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the fact that they think accurately that he's dumb.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So this is treated as a misstatement of someone who
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: talks a lot and generally doesn't know what they're saying,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: as opposed to an actual... window into anti-Semitism into his soul.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: And when you connect all the dots around this, right,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: you connect his very fine people comments about the neo-Nazi
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: marchers in Charlottesville, the amount of times that he retweeted
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: anti-Semitic memes during and after the campaign. And then you
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: attach that to all the other examples of bigotry in
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: his life and in his presidency that It paints a
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: very clear picture, but instead we treat this as just
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: yet another thing Donald Trump said because he talks a lot.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It also shows like his political strategy here is based
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: on a fundamental misunderstanding, right? Which he thinks, and to
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: be fair, a bunch of Republicans around him think that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: if they somehow cozy up to Bibi Netanyahu's government in Israel,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: then American Jews will say, oh, well, I don't want
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to vote for Democrats anymore because all I care about
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: is what happens in Israel, which is anti-Semitic all on
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: its own. As if Jews in this country wouldn't care
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: about the fact that Donald Trump, after a rally where
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people were marching with signs that said,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Jews will not replace us, said there are very fine
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: people on both sides. And all the other instances of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: anti-Semitism in his life. Like, they wouldn't care about that.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: They would care, by the way, about him being nice
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: to Bibi Netanyahu. I mean, it's just, it's so fucking,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: it's crazy, man.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Not to mention caring about providing healthcare to people, or
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: saving the planet, or protecting people from gun violence, or
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: all the other issues that matter to people. But I think,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: so I think in Trump's mind... He thinks this way
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: because he is such a fucking one-dimensional thinker. And the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: collection of numbskulls he has surrounded himself are the same way,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: which is to win election must win Florida. To win
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Florida must win Jews. There are lots of Jews in Florida. Therefore,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I will do this. So I think that's how Trump
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: thinks because he's basically Homer Simpson as president. Like it's
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: not– the complicated thoughts do not work through that brain.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: But I think the smarter Republicans– out there. And there
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: are some. And don't think about that. They think about
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the strategy in the following ways. Yes, I do think
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: that part of this, to the extent there is strategy
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: behind these rants, painting Democrats as anti-Semitic is part of
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: the same strategy as painting Democrats as pro-socialists. It is
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: about Florida. Republicans do much better among older Jewish voters
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: than younger Jewish voters because they do better among older
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: voters than younger voters. And there is a disproportionate concentration
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: of that electorate in Florida. And so if you can
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: either hold on to or peel off some of those voters,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: you're going to do better in Florida. So that's part one.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Part two is most of the Israel, the Democratic anti-Israel,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: the butting up the BB Netanyahu is about the evangelical
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: vote in the rest of the country more so than
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: it is about the Jewish vote, right? And then the
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: third part about this is it is just yet another
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: way to try to scare white people by trying to
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: take two Muslim women and make them the face of
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the It's about holding on to the evangelical vote, who
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: have many reasons to have questions about Trump's own personal morality.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And then it is about this idea that he thinks
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: if he makes the Democratic Party seem less white, he
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: will win the election.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And just like everything else he does, it's not
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: about them thinking they can win the Jewish vote in 2020,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: just like they don't think they can win the African-American
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: vote or win the Latino vote. They just want to
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: shave off um, some margins here for Democrats and they would,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and they don't care if you vote for Donald Trump
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: or you stay home, either one works for them. All
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: they want to make sure is that, uh, the Democrat
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't reach 50%. And the Democrat not reaching 50% or
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: 50% plus one is because they didn't get high enough
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: turnout among African-American voters or Latino voters or Jewish voters, right?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Like they're just, they're trying to sort of peel off
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: their constituencies and Just a little bit here so that
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump can again, you know, probably lose the popular
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: vote but win the electoral college. And you have just
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: enough people staying home or voting for third parties. That's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the whole strategy here, right? Yep. All right, let's talk
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: about the end of Donald Trump's latest flirtation with gun control.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Not even a month after two of the worst mass
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: shootings in recent history, all it took was one 30-minute
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: phone call from the NRA to scare the president away
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: from supporting legislation to expand background checks. Trump gave the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: following reasoning to reporters on Wednesday, quote, I have to
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: tell you that it's a mental problem and quote, you know,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: they call it the slippery slope and all of a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: sudden everything gets taken away, which of course is a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: long time NRA talking point. Dan, are you even a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: bit surprised here?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: John, I think it's unlikely that Dean McKay is going
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: to let me write New York times headlines, but you don't,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: my headline for this would have been, what's that? No shit. Sherlock.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, We've seen this. This is now the third
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: time this has happened in the less than three years
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: that Trump has been president. We have a tragic mass shooting,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: first in Las Vegas, then at Parkland, and then earlier
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: this month in El Paso and Dayton. And every time
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Trump says the right thing or considers the right thing early,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: the NRA gets involved and nothing happens. This is the
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: cycle we are in. It is because we are a
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: country with a politics that was broken by a Republican
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Party who cares more about winning elections and stopping people
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: from getting killed.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: What do you think this says about the NRA's influence,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you know, even as they're engulfed in multiple scandals? You know,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: we talked a couple pods ago about how they were
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: outraged and out-organized in 2018 by gun safety groups for
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the And then something like this happens, and with one
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: 30-minute phone call, they get an entire gun safety agenda killed.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: You know, every time one of these shootings happens, a
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: bunch of people on Twitter will tweet at every Republican
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: member of Congress who blocks gun control, which is every
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Republican member of Congress. We'll tweet at them the amount
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: of money they took from the NRA. And I think
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: that's an important point to make, and we should continue
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: to make it. But I also think it has the
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: danger of oversimplifying the politics of this. Because the NRA,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: what they have brought to the table is less about
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the money that they give candidates and more about the
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: money they spend to win elections. And I think that
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: the politics of this are, of being for, and we'll
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: talk about this as it relates to Trump in a minute,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: but the politics of this It's pretty easy you could
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: be for issues that have 60-some percent support among Republicans
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: and 90% support around the country. That's easy. But what
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: prevents it from happening is fear. It's fear of a
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: primary challenge. It is fear of getting attacked from the
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: right because even though they are a minority, the pro-gun voters,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the NRA voters essentially, are very well organized and they
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: turn out to vote. And so these Republicans fear that
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: if they do the right thing they will get primaried
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: in their next election and lose. Because even if it's
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: the right move for the general election, and even if
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the right move for their party writ large, in a
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: more narrow primary universe, they could get killed for it.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're Donald Trump, you also want the NRA
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to be spending as much money as possible on 2020,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: whether it's organizing, whether it's ads. And by the way,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: some of these ads that the NRA runs, they're not
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: about guns. They know that's not as popular. They'll run
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: ads about immigration. They'll run ads about attacking the Democratic
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: candidate for all kinds of stuff. They don't give a shit.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: They're just another interest group that's going to spend a
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: fuckload of money on the election, and Trump doesn't want
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to piss them off. You're absolutely right. It is dangerously
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: oversimplifying the politics to just say, so-and-so got a couple
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars for the NRA, and that's why they vote
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the way they do. because that's not necessarily the case.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: You're right, it is fear. They have built an organization
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: that has scared a bunch of politicians because they have
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of money to run ads, to organize on
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the ground, to disseminate propaganda, which they do very well.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: It's just another big, expensive, right-wing organization.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And we should just point out exactly what the NRA is,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: because they brand themselves as this group of citizen... Hunters
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: and sportsmen and hobbyists, that's not what they are. They
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: are a lobbying group for gun manufacturers. The reason their
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: ads are about immigration is it is in their interest
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: to scare people into thinking this country is dangerous and
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: they need to protect themselves with a gun, even though
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: all studies say that makes you less safe than if
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: you were to not have a gun. And so that
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: is what this is about. Everything that they do is
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: about selling more guns. so that they can get more
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: money from the gun manufacturers. And the Republicans want the
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: money from the gun manufacturers laundered through the NRA. And
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: so this is about electoral preservation more than anything else.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I will say, you know, looking at 2020, this may
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: not have been the politically smartest move by Donald Trump.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: There was a new AP poll out this morning that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: says only 7 in 10 Republicans approve of how he's
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: handling gun policy, which is the lowest rating from his
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: own party on any issue, obviously in Democrats and independents.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: by large majorities, think he's not handling gun policy well.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: We've talked a million times about, you know, the overwhelming
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: majorities of people who are for background checks, assault weapons bans,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: all the rest of it. Trump, who is having particular
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: trouble with women, suburban women, even, by the way, non-college
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: educated women, white women, which is new this time around,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: having trouble with all these groups. And, you know, I actually,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: if he had passed background checks I'd be a little,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that would have helped him politically
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a little bit.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have been a home run for him
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: on the following vectors. As you point out, suburban voters
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: are his biggest problem. That's where the biggest drop off
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: has been since the Republican Party in 2012. This is
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: an issue that matters a ton in the suburbs. His
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: second issue is he's basically seen as ineffective, you know,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: because he's too busy engaging in Twitter wars to get
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: things done. And the third problem is that he ran
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: as someone who was going to be an independent voice
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: who is not captive to special interests. And he has
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: been just living... He's been the king of the swamp
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: for the last three years. And so this would have
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: dealt with all three things. Dealt with something that matters
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: to voters. Would have been able to say, I brought
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Democrats and Republicans to pass background checks, something that Barack
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Obama could not do.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: That is a powerful message to a target group of
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: voters from him. And the third, he would get to
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: say that he bucked the NRA, that he stood up
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: against strong voices in his own party. Like that is...
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: political gold. And he was just too dumb or too
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: scared to take it on. Because if he were to
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: do it, it would have helped him with voters, but
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: hurt him with his key advisors. And by his key advisors,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: I mean the people who are on Fox from 8
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: to 11.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: So what do Democrats do now? You know, on Wednesday,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: March for Our Lives released probably the most ambitious, comprehensive
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: gun safety proposal we've seen in this race yet. You know,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: how do we get it passed? Win.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think if you're angry right now, you
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: can give money or volunteer for March for Our Lives,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Moms Demand, Gabby Giffords Group, do all of that to
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: help them, because that's also going to help organize voters
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: for 2020, but also help pass these laws at the
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: state level, which is incredibly important. We have to win
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: in 2020. And then, you know, we've said this before,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: but if we take the presidency and we take the Senate,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: the only way we're going to get common sense gun
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: safety laws in this country is to eliminate the filibuster.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Which Mitch McConnell knows, which is why he wrote an
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: op-ed in today's New York Times about why the Democrats
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: should be very careful about wanting to get rid of
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the filibuster. Because, you know, Mitch McConnell thinks the filibuster
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: is very important and he would never shake up the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Senate or violate any norms and institutions and rules because
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, he's a defender of the Senate, Dan.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, really?
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: The person most responsible for the completely fucked up situation
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: this country is in right now is Mitch McConnell.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: It's also important to know that like Mitch McConnell has
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: basically gotten what he needs out of the Senate in
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: that he has eliminated the filibuster or the filibuster no
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: longer exists for judicial nominations at all. And what the Republican,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: what the Republicans care about is cuts to benefits, tax
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: cuts and putting right wing judges on the bench. And,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: You now don't need the filibuster for any of those things.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: So there's some things, there's definitely some things that if
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: there were no filibuster, Republicans would be able to do
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: if they had control of government, for sure. But the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: most important things to them, the things that get them
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: up in the morning, cutting taxes, cutting benefits, and putting
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: conservative judges on the bench, they can do that without
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the filibuster.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: If anyone thinks that if Trump wins the White House
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and the Republicans keep the Senate, that Mitch McConnell is
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: going to keep the filibuster, they are fucking clueless. Mitch
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: McConnell held up Merrick Garland because of his long-held principles
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: about allowing voters to pick Supreme Court justices, then basically
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: was asked whether he would do the same thing with
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Trump as president, and he said no. He is not
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: a man of his word, and I do not give
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: a fuck what all the Capitol Hill reporters who love
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell and believe in the legend of Mitch McConnell think.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: He is a cynical, dishonest, anti-democratic force in this country.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: And there are lots of things they can and would do.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: The pressure, even if Mitch McConnell didn't want an unlimited filibuster,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: you think a newly reelected Trump, that Mitch McConnell's going
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to be able to stand up to him and hold
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: him back if there's something they want to do that
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: they can't get done?
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Fuck no.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: No way. And they'll all feel emboldened. The Republicans win again.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Trump wins again. They're not going to be scared. All
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: these senators that are, come on.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And the idea that this is Harry Reid's fault is
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: so absurd. So Mitch McConnell's piece today said, well, Harry
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Reid did this, so I was forced to just take
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: it to its natural conclusion and eliminate the filibuster for
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. Let's just imagine for a second. Mitch
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: McConnell has stolen the seat from Barack Obama. Trump wins.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: The filibuster is still in place for judicial nominations. Democrats
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: filibuster Neil Gorsuch because Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: seat from the American people who selected Barack Obama. And
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: you think Mitch McConnell should be like, you know, norms.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Just going to go with eight Supreme Court justices for now.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Or you know what? I feel like it's so important
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: to have nine. Let's just put Merrick Garland on the court. No,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: he would have eliminated the filibuster in two fucking seconds
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: and put on Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, anyone else.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Michael Bennett disagrees with us, but I... I think
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell would have blown that thing up.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: He doesn't even disagree with that. He sort of acknowledged
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: that Mitch McConnell would do that when I talked to
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: him about it.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, he did. He did.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I bullied him into that position, potentially, or badgered him,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: I think is probably a better word.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: We love Michael Bennett. All right, so after Trump said
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: no to gun safety... He said yes to indefinite detentions
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: for families and children who are fleeing violence and seeking asylum.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: The administration unveiled a rule this week that, if it
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: survives court challenges, would supersede an old court settlement known
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: as the Flores Agreement that limits the detention of children
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to 20 days. This announcement came after Customs and Border
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Patrol said that families currently in detention centers will not
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: be given the flu shot, despite the fact that three
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: children have died of the flu already. And on Wednesday,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the president also told reporters that he's seriously considering eliminating
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: birthright citizenship through an executive order, even though it's a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: right that's explicitly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. He
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: first floated that towards the end of the 2018 midterms.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Now it's back. Dan, let's start with the Flores Agreement.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Why does Trump want to get rid of this court settlement?
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: And what's the administration's argument here?
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Whenever there's a question about Trump's immigration policy, It's always
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: important to harken back to the comment from Atlantic columnist
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Adam Serwer, which is the cruelty is the point.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: That's why they want to do this, because it's cruel.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: They argue it's about deterrence, but it's not. The Trump
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: administration argues for their immigration policy as deterrence the same
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: way that death penalty advocates argue for the death penalty
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: as a deterrent. It's not. The point is punishment.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, because look, you could, you could try other
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: ways to deter immigration that do not involve, uh, keeping
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: people locked up indefinitely, children indefinitely, uh, cutting legal immigration
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: as they're doing the public charge rule that we spoke about. Um, now,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you know, not allowing anyone to seek asylum who hasn't already,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: who's traveled through a third country from their home country.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: That rule went into effect this week. Um, They fucking
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: let's remember just a few weeks ago, they held an
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: 18 year old American citizen for weeks because they suspected
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that he was undocumented in horrible, horrible conditions. They held
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: an American citizen and it was not the first time
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: that they did that either. So, yeah, I don't think
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: you're telling us this is about fucking deterrence.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And just a side note, it's not just cruel. Their
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: policies are also stupid. They are not giving flu shots
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: to the people in these detention centers. As if there
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: was no history of large groups of people in temporary
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: facilities infecting each other with diseases and then spreading out
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: across the country. That's exactly how the fucking 1918 influenza
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: epidemic happened. It is just so stupid because that is
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: somehow they see giving people flu shots as weakness. As
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: if people are going to flee Central America go on
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: a dangerous march across Mexico, come to the US border
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: to get a fucking flu shot.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, I mean, I do, it does seem like
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: this is, you know, the cruelty is the point, but
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: also this is a, this is a political strategy, right?
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Like they, they want these announcements. They have, it's clear
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: they have a long list of things. And you could
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: tell when the president was asked about birthright citizenship. And
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: he said, Oh, how do you know we were considering that?
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: That's very good.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: We've been seriously looking at that. We're looking at all
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: kinds of things. Like you just know that Stephen Miller
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: has a long list right now of anti-immigrant xenophobic policies
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: and rules they can take through executive action that they
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: want to roll out from now until November of 2020.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure a bunch of them will happen in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the fall of 2020 when everyone's paying attention to the election,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: because again, Trump's whole bet here is that he can
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: make this election about an invasion, about an immigrant invasion,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and he wants to scare people, and he wants to
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: say that Democrats care about undocumented immigrants, and I care
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: about hardworking Americans, right? Who, by the way, happen to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: be white. That is the political strategy, and he wants
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: those headlines to crowd out all of the other headlines.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Tommy made this point on Twitter, but I think it
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: really explains everything about The mentality of the Trump administration
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: and the message of the Republican Party in 2020, which
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: is the reason the term indefinite detention sounds so familiar
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: to people is because that is the policy that the
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Bush administration put in place to deal with members of
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And which is the reason
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: why that matters is because it speaks to the fact
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: that they believe the invasion rhetoric. They believe the infestation rhetoric,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: that this is ultimately a war for America's white soul.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: And they want people to think that. And the more
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: they can do things like use indefinite detention, send the
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: military to the border, talk about walls, that's all about
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: creating this idea that it is a war for American culture.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: And it is an important point that that is basically
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: ripped from the manifesto of the El Paso shooter. It
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: is the rhetoric that permeates 8chan and the other white
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: supremacist sites.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: it is what it is, which is the Republican Party
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: has become a white nationalist party. It is in degrees
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: from Trump and Stephen Miller down to others, but ultimately
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: when your electoral strategy is you need to fire up
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: as many white voters as possible and via laws and
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: disinformation campaigns and other strategies disincentivize as many voters of
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: color to participate, then you are a white nationalist party.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because again, there's a way to talk about the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: influx of asylum seekers at the border in a way
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: that doesn't sort of evoke this idea of an invasion, right? Like,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: you could imagine another administration, probably a Democratic administration, but
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: even a Republican administration, talking about and saying, look, we
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: have this influx of asylum seekers at the border. We
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: are a nation of immigrants. We do respect the asylum
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: laws internationally in this country. Right now, our system is overwhelmed.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: We need more resources at the border so that we
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: can deal with these claims. We want to make sure
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that people belong here, that are granted asylum, get asylum.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: People who don't deserve asylum don't get it. We're going
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: to do this. We're going to secure our border in
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the meantime. There's a whole bunch of ways to talk
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: about this as a problem that we have to deal
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: with that doesn't use the invasion rhetoric. They're using the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: invasion rhetoric for political reasons. That's why it's in all
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: their ads. That's why it's in all the Facebook ads.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: That's why it's in all their campaign ads. This is
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a political strategy right now.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: So.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Finally, let's talk about what may be the real cause
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: of Trump's meltdown this week, which is his intense anxiety
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: over mounting signs that the economy may be headed towards
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: a recession, anxiety that has led him to blame the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, blame the media, blame the Democrats. acknowledge that
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: he's postponing more Chinese tariffs because they'll hurt American consumers,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: and float that he's considering more tax cuts. At the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: same time, Trump is also telling us that the economy
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: is the strongest it's ever been, that we don't really
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: need any economic stimulus after all, and that he's winning
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: his trade war, which he had to wage, because in
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the president's words, quote, I am the chosen one.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is an audio medium, so you can't
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: really get the beauty of it that he also pointed
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: at the sky when he said that.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: He did. He did. Clearly a joke, but also maybe
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: not a joke in his mind. So what's with the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: mixed messages on the economy here? What's going on with that?
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: John, are you saying that a– you know, you yourself
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: have written many an economic speech and you're an expert
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: in messaging. Are you saying that a message that is
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: the economy is working– the Fed has broken the economy,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: the economy is great, the media is destroying the economy,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: we're winning the China trade war, but we have to
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: eliminate the tariffs so it doesn't hurt people, is not
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: a coherent message?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: It would be tough to write a speech with all
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: those messages. I will admit that. I don't know that
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: if I'd get that all in one message box.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there is this sort of window into
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Trump's brain always because, like, the distance between his brain
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: and his mouth is so short, which is we're watching
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: him in real time wrestle with a serious political problem,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: which is he ran around touting his economic success as
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: the reason why voters should support him, even if they
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: are uncomfortable with his rhetoric or his other policies, right?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Which is, the economy's going great. I didn't fuck it up.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Stick with me. And so, like, he... He sort of
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: hung his hat on that, and now we're seeing that
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: collapse around him. And he's sort of trying to find
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the right way to explain it, deal with it, et cetera.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't have a strategy. He doesn't have a plan.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have a team of smart people around him
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: who can help him come up with one. So it's
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: just sort of vomit things until he gets the right
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: amount of applause and sort of thinks he's hit on something.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I do think that what he ultimately– where there can
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: be success in that completely convoluted, inconsistent message is he
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't need to convince everyone about the state of the economy.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: What he needs to do is create permission structure for
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: some group of voters to stick with him because he
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: has successfully convinced them that it's someone else's fault. Right.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Most people don't know who the Fed chair is, don't
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: know what the Fed chair does, don't care. Most people
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: think it's absurd that the New York Times or mainstream
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: media in general, a business whose economics are shaky, to
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: say the least, have the power to control the economy.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Because if they did, they would be doing much better.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: We'd have, I don't know, local newspapers. But he just
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: needs to convince some people, a small group of people,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: that it's someone else's fault. And that is the sense
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: where Trump really does have some natural political ability, where
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: he understands identity politics, where They're people who want to
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: be with Trump. And if he can just give them
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: enough of a reason to hang on to that, to
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: stick with their political tribe, that they will do that.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what this is about.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think, you know, he'll have some success
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: convincing a small group of people that are his biggest
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: supporters and fans in his base that that's the case.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: He could have a little more trouble with most other voters.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I do think the added problem he has is, you know,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: we've said this before, presidents tend to get credit for
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the economy when the economy is doing well, get blame
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: for the economy when the economy is doing poorly. And
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: some of that credit and blame are both not really
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: deserved because the president doesn't have a ton of control
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: over the economy and economic cycles. But for this specific case,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: it does seem like it is Trump's trade war that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: he started on his own that is contributing, at least contributing,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: to a potential economic downturn. And Trump has also passed
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: a giant tax cut, most of which went to the
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: wealthiest corporations and Americans, very unpopular. And that, at the
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: very least, hasn't done anything to help the economy long
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: term like they promised it would. So his only two
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: economic policies, his tax cut and his trade war, have failed.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: And now we're in a recession. So I think that's
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: sort of that's an added challenge for him or there
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: would be an added challenge for any president in his
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: in his position.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: And it makes it, I will say it makes it
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: harder to blame other people when you designate yourself the
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: chosen one, or you said on the convention stage that
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: I alone can fix it.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: He pitches himself as some sort of political messiah or savior,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: and therefore he's going to, he potentially, we hope, will
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: be held to account for that in a way that
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: other people who make more nuanced arguments about the economy
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: and politics would be.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: So, you know, he floated... Well, the White House also
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: floated a payroll tax cut. I think on Wednesday, he said, no,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: we're not considering that anymore. What's a payroll tax cut?
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: And why do you think he proposed it?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Well, a payroll tax cut is a cut in your
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: payroll taxes, which go to Social Security and Medicare. In 2010,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: when we were trying to help a struggling economy, we
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: actually ended up working with Republicans to put in place
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: a payroll 2% payroll tax cut, which puts more– your
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: paycheck is bigger, right? 2% bigger essentially. And it is
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: a well-known way of stimulating the economy, which is put
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: money in people's pockets, put more money in the economy.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Economy should grow. Economy grows more people higher. So the
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: problem with it for Trump is Republicans, after initially agreeing
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: to Obama's payroll tax cut as part of a deal,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: tried to tank it. because they thought it would help
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: his reelection. And every Republican is, or most Republicans are
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: on record complaining about the damage it does to Social
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Security because that 2% comes out of your contributions to
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Social Security and Medicare, as I understand it.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Republicans are on record as opposing this in
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the past. Of course, that won't stop them from switching
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: if Trump decides to go forward, I'm sure. But It
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: does seem like there's no universe where Donald Trump and
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party just put up a payroll tax cut
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: on its own with nothing else. And already it seems
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: like they have other tax cuts in mind as well.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: One of them, a tax cut idea, is basically an
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: executive order to cut capital gains taxes, which would basically
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: cut capital gains taxes by $ 102 billion over the next decade.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: And it's a tax cut that would give the top
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: 1% of Americans 86% of that benefit.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Because as we know, the people who are truly suffering
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: in this economy are the wealthiest. And so we need
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: a potentially unconstitutional bailout of rich people. It seems like
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: a winning message, if you ask me.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I'm like, please let them do this. Fucking go
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: for it. Please try to unilaterally, unilaterally, without an act
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: of Congress, Cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans as we're
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: heading into a recession. Go for it. I cannot imagine.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: You've seen polling your whole life. I have. We just
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: did a poll in Wisconsin. I cannot imagine a more
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: politically damaging thing for Donald Trump to do than cut
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: capital gains taxes as the economy looks like it's heading
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: into a recession on his own through an executive order
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that will probably be overturned by the courts.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Do you think he would use the much-derided pen or
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: the phone to do this unilateral executive action?
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like... So much for Trump, the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: fucking working-class nationalist hero. Trump, the economic populist. The country
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: is heading towards a recession. What does he do? Cut
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: some taxes for the richest investors in the country. I
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: couldn't even believe that I was reading it. You've got
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: to know that Kellyanne Conway, who is... awful for a
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: million reasons, but knows how to read a poll, thinks
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that's a good idea.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like something in her has
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: been broken somewhere over the years. So it's possible that
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: she does not know that.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: That's possibly true. But I do think that this whole
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: story about Trump and the economy is sort of, of
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: all the things we've talked about today, maybe the most
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: fertile ground for Democrats to make an argument. And again,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the argument is not just let's watch the stock market,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and let's watch the economic indicators. And when they're bad,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: say Trump is bad. And when they're good, shy away
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: from this. Make an argument about Trump's economic policies and
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: what they have done. And don't just rely on, you know,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the headlines about the health of the economy. Rely on
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the statistics about how people are struggling in this economy
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: with stagnant wages, with high health care costs, with high
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: tuition costs, and all the rest. Because there's a good
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: argument to be made whether we head into a downturn
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: or don't head into a downturn, that Trump's economic policies
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: have hurt the vast, vast majority of Americans, except for
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: his rich friends and corporations. Yeah.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Like, let's just try this one on for our size, Democrats.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Under Donald Trump, corporations never made more money or paid
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: less in taxes, but the cost of your healthcare, college, food,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: retirement have all gone up. Amazon, you pay more for
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: your Amazon Prime subscription than Amazon pays in federal taxes.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: If you think that's a good idea, vote for Donald Trump.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: If you want something different, vote for a Democrat.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I realize this might be a boring argument to some
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: people listening to this, but to a lot of people
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: in this country, I think it would be very effective.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Very effective. All right. Let's end with a quick 2020 segment.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: This week, Julian Castro became the 10th Democrat to make
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the September debate stage. Jay Inslee dropped out of the
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: race on Wednesday night. And John Hickenlooper decided to enter
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the Colorado Senate race. Beyond those developments... It's a pretty
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: stable primary with about six months to go. Joe Biden
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: has a small but persistent lead in all of the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: early state polls. Elizabeth Warren is gaining on him in
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Iowa and New Hampshire. Bernie Sanders is close behind her
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: or slightly ahead in some polls. And then Kamala Harris,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke are in single
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: digits behind them. Dan, why do you think the race
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: is so stable?
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: You know, we've had this conversation both on the pod
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: and off the pod, and just it feels like a
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: gazillion things have happened. Because in the Trump era, every
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: day feels like a week and a week feels like
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: a year. It feels like this race has been going
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: on forever, but it is still incredibly early. And while
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I think Joe Biden has certainly shown strength and the
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: race is very stable, I would like to read to
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: you the CNN USA Today Gallup poll from basically exactly
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: 16 years ago today. Joe Lieberman was winning the Democratic
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: primary with 23% of the vote. Dick Gephardt was coming
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: in second with 13%. Howard Dean had just surged to
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: third with 12%, and John Kerry had 10%. And so
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: my point here is the fact that the race has
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: not changed very much this between when everyone got in
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: early this year and August of the off year is
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: actually not unusual, right? And we don't remember that being
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: a big deal because 2003 was back before Apple, Facebook,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: and Google broke the American cortex with dopamine injections via
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: the smartphone. And so it just felt like no one
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: paid attention to the race yet, but now we see it,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: feel it, hear it all the time, but most voters
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: haven't tuned in yet. That doesn't mean the race is
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: going to change. I mean, it could stay exactly the same,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: but it's not a new, the stability is actually historically
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: less unusual than I assumed until I went back and
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: looked at the numbers.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: So the Biden campaign is, um, it's been out there
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: this week. Um, I mean, they've been making an electability
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: argument the whole time, but they've really been driving it
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: home this week. You know, uh, Biden went up with
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: his first ad in Iowa, I believe maybe it was
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: in some other early States, but I know it was
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: in Iowa. Um, and then, uh, Dr. Jill Biden, um,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: was out there and she said, quote, your candidate might
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: be better on, I don't know, healthcare than Joe is,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: but you've got to look at who's going to win
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: this election. And maybe you have to swallow a little
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: bit and say, okay, I personally like so-and-so better, but
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: your bottom line has to be that we have to
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: beat Trump. Just about as explicit as you can be
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: on electability. What did you think about the Biden campaign
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: leaning so heavily on this?
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Well, there's no question that both from polling and just anecdotally,
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Democrats are obsessed with beating Trump for good reason. Trump
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: is very bad. And so people want the person they
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: think can best beat Trump. And polls show for a
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: variety of unproven reasons right now that voters think Biden
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: is that person. So that is his strongest argument. I
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: do think the Biden campaign is selling Joe Biden short
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: by making that the only reason. He is someone with
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: a long career, a lot of accomplishments in his career before,
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: but also within the Obama administration he can talk about.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: He is a good person. He is a good politician.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: And I think electability should be subtext. And they have
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: made it the text of the entire campaign. And maybe
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: that could work. I mean, some strategists would say, just
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: lean into your strongest argument for as long as you
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: possibly can. But I think if the answer is, you
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: may not like Joe Biden, but you should take him
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: because he's the only one who can win, I think
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: that that is going to be That's a hard message
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: to sell over a long, sustained period of time.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I will say that the flip side
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: of the poll that you read from summer of 2003
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: that showed Kerry at the bottom of the pack there
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: is in the fall when Kerry was sort of written
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: off for dead, the way that I was on that campaign,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the way that we came back and beat Howard Dean,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: who was leading in the polls in the fall of
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: 03 and into the winter of 03, was with an
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: electability argument. And the reason that John Kerry's electability argument
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: was so powerful is that like right now in 2004,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: sort of the emotion that pervaded the entire electorate was fear,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: fear that George W. Bush, who people thought was the
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: worst president in their lifetime at the time, um, would
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: win again. And people and voters, again, were thinking like,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm happy to hear all these candidates. Howard
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Dean seems inspiring, but what we really need to do
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: is beat George W. Bush. And John Kerry rode that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: electability argument all the way to the nomination. Now, I know,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: then he lost. But in Democratic primaries, especially at a
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: time where there's an incumbent Republican president who a ton
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: of Democrats, all Democrats hate, with a passion and are
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: very afraid to see win again, electability is a really
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: strong argument. And the reason I bring this up is
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: that I do think Joe Biden's opponents, if they want
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: to beat him eventually, have to sort of respect voters'
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: fears and voters' desire for someone who can beat Trump
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: and make electability arguments of their own. I don't think
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: you should lead with electability arguments. I don't think they
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: should dominate the debate. I don't even think you need
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: to have them right now as much, but subtly, slowly,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: I think each of these candidates has to tell voters
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: why they're the most, why they're gonna be the most
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: electable Democrat, you know? What do you think of that?
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Am I crazy? No, it's not crazy. I still believe
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: electability is better shown, not told, right? And you demonstrate
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: electability by running a really good campaign, by having a
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: message that people like, by turning out crowds, by demonstrating competence.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: on the step and in the debate. And yes, you
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: were on that campaign. I was not. Voters picked Kerry
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: in large part because they believed he was the most electable.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: But Dean also raised questions about his own electability down
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: the stretch. Basically, he had sort of existed in a
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: different media environment without as much scrutiny. And when the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: scrutiny kicked in and he was the front runner, he
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: didn't respond well to that scrutiny. He had some awkward
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: exchanges and some, some tense exchanges at town halls. And
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: then to the extent that he had a chance to
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: bounce back in a state like new hand after. So
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: to be clear, Carrie won Iowa. Dean did not. Dean
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: had been very strong in New Hampshire in the polling
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: to date because he was from Vermont. I know Carrie
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: was also from, uh, from nearby Massachusetts, but Dean has
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: shown strength, but Carrie, but Dean's, um, had a meltdown
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: on election caucus night and that essentially destroyed his campaign.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And so the, like the lesson from that, like you
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: can take two lessons, right? One is Kerry said he
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: was the most electable, showed he was, and therefore won.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Dean also gave people a reason to question his electability.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, for someone like Warren, who tops
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of polls as the, as people's favorite choice
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: is the highest approval or the scene is the most
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: qualified or which, or, first choice for president or whatever,
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: yet has been dogged, at least in the media, by
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: questions of electability and doesn't poll as well on that measure.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: She can show she's electable by running a great campaign,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: which she has done to date, in winning Iowa, right?
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton also ran in a very different environment on
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: electability message and then lost Iowa and the bottom fell
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: out of her electability message. And so just run a
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: good campaign is the best way to be seen as electable.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And I will say that even in that in that
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: campaign when she was seen as the electable one and
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Obama was the, you know, take a chance on what
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: you really believe candidate. Um, we started making sort of
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: subtle electability arguments and trying to show electability one with,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: like you said, showing the enthusiastic crowds, right? Like if
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama is the nominee, these are the kinds of
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: crowds you're going to get in the general election. And
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I think that was powerful to people. And, you know,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: he would also, I remember in the Jefferson Jackson dinner,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, when I, if I'm the nominee,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: my opponent's not going to be able to say that
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: I voted for George Bush's war in Iraq, using the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: fact that he opposed the war in Iraq and Hillary
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Clinton supported it as a reason that he might be
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: more electable because he has a contrast, right? So there's
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: a million different ways to sort of subtly make electability
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: arguments to people that aren't just, check out the polls,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I'm the one who's beating Trump by the most. Right.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: It's... Live by the polls, die by the polls is
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: the problem, right? Because polls, they change.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that to everyone. What do you
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: think could possibly shake up the race in the coming months?
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Got a couple of debates. You've got some people starting
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: to run ads on television. What do you think?
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: The early state polls in Iowa in particular are leading
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: indicators of where the race is going because that's where
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: the voters have the greatest engagement with the candidates. Where
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: they see them in person is where they're going to
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: start seeing ads. It's where they consume local media that
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: is less process-oriented than the national media. And so if
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: we see a Des Moines Register poll, for instance, which
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: is I think the only one, only Iowa poll I
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: think can truly grab the political media by the throat
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: and have it change a narrative. But if we see
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: a Des Moines Register poll in September, October, whenever the
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: next one comes out and Elizabeth Warren is leading, I
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: think that will– change how everyone thinks about the race.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: It'll mean more scrutiny for her, right? It'll potentially undermine,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: at least temporarily, Joe Biden's primary argument for himself to date.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: And it'll change the general dynamics of the race because
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: right now we live in this world where Bernie Sanders
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: and Kamala Harris's staff fight 24-7 about Medicare for all,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: just like in some sort of Twitter war. Joe Biden
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: and Kamala Harris go after each other on the debate stage.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Julian Castro and Cory Booker go after other people, and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: no one goes after Elizabeth Warren. I think it's fear,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: both that she is very good and very popular, but
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: the candidate who has risen the fastest in the polls,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: who seems the most likely to be the nominee if
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: the nominee is not Joe Biden, is the person that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: no one wants to engage with. And if she takes
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: the lead, that will change that dynamic, and then we'll
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: have to see how that plays itself out.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It is interesting
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: that no one has really engaged Elizabeth Warren on anything,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: on her policies, on anything else. And it seems unlikely
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: that she can go through the entire primary in that situation.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: She might be able to handle it really well, you know,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: but then that's the test, right? Can you handle the
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: attacks when they're incoming? Okay, when we come back, we
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: will have Dan's interview with Stacey Abrams.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: We are now excited to be joined by Stacey Abrams.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: She is the chair of Fair Fight Action, which is
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: leading the Fair Fight 2020 initiative. She was the Democratic
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: gubernatorial candidate in Georgia last year. Stacey Abrams, welcome back
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: to Pod Save America.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Thank you guys for having me yet again. It's awesome.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: We are always happy to have you here. You are
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: one of our all-time favorites. So you made a big
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: announcement this week, and unlike perhaps some of the media,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: we're going to spend this interview talking about what you
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: decided to do not what you decided not to do.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: So can you tell, I know that's crazy in this world,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: but can you tell us what Fair Fight 2020 is
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: and what you're going to be spending the next many
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: months of your life doing?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, thank you for focusing on Fair
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: Fight 2020, which can be found at fairfight2020. org. When I
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: thought about how I could best serve the values I
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: hold dear and where I can best contribute to this
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: primary process and certainly heading into the general election, I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: have an intimate awareness of voter suppression being one of
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: the most existential crises facing us, not just in terms
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: of winning elections, but really in terms of preserving our democracy.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: And what we decided to do is look at the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: 20 states that we consider battleground. That means battleground for
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: the presidency, battleground for Senate seats, but also down-ballot races,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: secretaries of state, state attorneys general, and legislative seats, races
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: where if we have the right to vote made manifest
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: and protected, we know that we could possibly flip those
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: chambers and control redistricting in 2021. And so what Fair
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: Fight 2020 will do is three things. One, we are
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: going to fund setting up voter protection teams in those states.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: That's going to mean having full-time staff, often for the
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: very first time in those states, working with state parties,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: but making sure that no matter who the nominee is,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: that those apparatuses are in place. Number two, we're going
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: to staff it. We're going to make sure that people
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: are hired who know what voter protection needs to look
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: like for their particular states. Because one of the most
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: pervasive parts and the most insidious parts of voter suppression
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: is that it looks different in each state. There's a
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: lot of cross-contamination. But each state has found a way
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: to make it work. And third is we're going to train.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: We're going to make sure that folks are out there
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: who know what can be done, have the resources to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: do it, and are doing it early. Because often voter
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: protection waits until September before the election. But by then,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: the damage is done. The harm is ready to be
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: wrought across the electorate. And it's too late to really
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: stop it. We want to be there early. And so
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: we'll be there during the primaries in each of these states.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: We'll be able to test the muscle memory, figure out
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: what the problems are. And by the time we get
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: to the general election, no matter who the nominee is,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: we will be ready to protect the votes in those states.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: How do you combat the actual laws? Like, let's say we're,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: I'm sure many of the states that you are, you'll
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: be working in have voter ID law, for instance. Like,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: what is the tactics or strategy you guys use to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: push back on that or at least make sure, or
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: is it push back on it legally? Is it educate
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: voters about how the needs for an ID, like how
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: do you push past the law?
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: Well, we have to remember, you've got dozens of organizations
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: across this country that are each trying to tackle these concerns.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: The problem is they're disparate organizations that may or may
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: not have a presence in each of these states. And
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: you have volunteers who are ready to do the work.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: And so what we're going to do and what we've
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: done is done the research on each of these states.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: We know what their laws say and we know what
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: the likely voter suppression tactics are going to be. And
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: so we'll work with the state party. That means working
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: with the county parties to find out if it's voter
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: ID that's the problem. You're not going to be able
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: to undo voter ID. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: that that's going to be permitted. And they have created
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: a pipeline for even stricter rules. Well, what we can
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: do is make sure that the groups that want to
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: come in and help have someone to talk to. Because
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: as you know, Dan, sometimes the hardest part in politics
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: is not wanting to do the right thing. It's finding
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: out who can help you get it done. And so
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: by having these voter protection teams set up, they will
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: have access to people who are full-time employees, and this
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: is their only responsibility. But it's also going to be
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: about alerting folks to what's happening. So we're going to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: be investing in digital communication and social media communication, making
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: sure that voters know what their rights are. and that
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: if they have a problem, they can call. There are
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: a lot of voter protection hotlines. 866-OUR-VOTE is a great
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: one that's operated by a consortium of organizations, but it's national.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: What we want are local hotlines that are staffed and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: sourced locally that are multilingual and that understand the contours
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: of how bad actions happen. So when you are in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: Alabama or in Wisconsin and something has happened in your precinct,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: you're not calling someone in D.C. to say, can you
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: help me with this? You're calling someone who is in
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: Sheboygan who can say, look, let me reach out to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: the person we know who has this answer and we
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: can get back to you. Which is not to say
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: we don't want to be in partnership with those national organizations,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: but we want to make sure we are creating as
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: much local presence as possible to support what the national
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: groups are doing.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned that one of the criteria you used
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: for picking your 20 states was Secretary of State races. Now,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Probably more than any person walking the planet, you are
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: familiar with how important the Secretary of State office can
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: be in any state when it comes to access to
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: the ballot and free and fair elections. But could you
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: help explain to our listeners just how important it is
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: for Democrats to focus on winning Secretary of States all
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: across the country?
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: I think I shared the distinction of having... dealt with
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: the Secretary of State and the outcome of an election.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: I think the only other person who's probably had a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: sharper experience would be Al Gore and what happened with
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: Captain Aaron. But here's the thing. A Secretary of State
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: is the election superintendent. That is the person who is
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: responsible for the administration of elections in the state. And
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: in most states, that's an elected position that's also a
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: partisan position. In my case, I had the unique experience
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: of having the person responsible for the election, for the training,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: the resourcing, and the administration of the election happened to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: also be my opponent. So he got to be the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: man at bat and the umpire, as well as the
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: guy posting the score. That did not work out well
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: for me. But what we have to understand is that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: in most states, it's the Secretary of State who implements
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: the laws that are passed by your legislature. So even
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: the most innocuous law can become a weapon against voters
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: who if a policy is promulgated from that law that
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: narrows how it works or applies it differentially. And that's
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: why it's so important to have secretaries of state who
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: believe in our democracy and believe in our voters, because
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: this is the person who usually has constitutional authority to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: decide how voters get access and how their challenges are
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: actually adjudicated. There is no stronger and more important a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: job than the secretary of state when it comes to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: administration of elections and Because that's also the person responsible
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: for training your county officials. You've got 3,100 different counties
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: that are administering an election on any given national election day.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: But that person gets their resources. their training, and their
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: direction from the Secretary of State.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: So, you know, one of the effects, and I think intense,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: of voter suppression law, I mean, obviously the main point
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: is to stop people from voting in an immediate election, right?
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: But it is also, I've also found there's a larger
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: pernicious effect, which is to convince people that it's not
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: worth it to participate in the political process, that they
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: are not wanted. And so cynicism is the outcome of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: these voter suppression laws. You've had a lot of success
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: in your gubernatorial race, despite all of the barriers that
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: your opponent put in front of people to vote, to
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: convince people to vote, to get people to the polls
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: for the first time to get off the sidelines. What
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: do you think is the best way to Or what
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: strategies do you recommend to people to accomplish that goal,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: to get people to vote, to go from non-voters to voters?
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: You're absolutely right. One of the most pernicious effects of
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: voter suppression is not just that it blocks people from voting,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: but it creates a sense of despair about the act
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: of voting. And often that's made manifest by people saying, oh,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: my vote doesn't count. And they do it with bravado,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: but really it's despair. My voice doesn't matter. And so
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: one of the ways we've always talked about voter suppression
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: is not as a given that your vote is gone
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: and you shouldn't worry about it or you'll never get
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: it back, but it's a call to arms. And during
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: our campaign, what I said over and over again is, yes,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia, but the
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: best way for us to fight it is to overwhelm
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: the system. They can't keep all of us out. And
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: you'll hear that one of the current tropes to push
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: back against me and our very clear and evidentiary-based accusations
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: of voter suppression is, well, you know, we had record turnout.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: She had the most Democrats ever vote. Well, that's like
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: saying because more people get in the water, there are
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: fewer sharks. No, there's still a lot of sharks, but
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: the more people who are in the water, the harder,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: you know, more people can survive. And the reality is
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: we have to treat voter suppression as what it is,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: and that's theft. And when someone takes something that's yours,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: you should take it back. And so we want people
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: to talk about and engage this fight in as a fight.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: It is a fight to take back our rights. It's
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: a fight to take back our voices. And that means
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: you have to go to people you normally don't talk
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: to so they know that their voices are real. We
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: don't just go to the people who vote every cycle.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: We go to the people who haven't voted since the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: last time they heard a story about voter suppression. And
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: we're going to spend time in those communities. And the
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: most effective thing we can do is turn out as
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: many people as possible and arm them with the right
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: to vote. And it sounds ephemeral, but it's very basic.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: Talk to people, tell them it's theirs, tell them someone
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: wants them to shut up. Because if they didn't want
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: us to be quiet, they wouldn't be working so hard
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: to shut us up. Let's be louder than they are.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: We were fortunate enough last fall, right before your election,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: to interview Latasha Brown from Black Voters Matter Fund. And
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: she said something incredibly interesting to us on stage, which was,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: that non-voters are not apathetic, that they actually often make
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: a very considered decision not to vote. Was that your
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: experience as well?
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: That's absolutely true. When we started the New Georgia Project
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: in 2014, the first thing we did before we handed
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: out a single voter registration form was hire Fred Yang
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: from Garenhart Yang to do focus groups and polling. And
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: what we found is that non-voters People who didn't register
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: to vote for President Obama, these are people of color
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: who did not participate. They didn't participate because they actually
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: understood the system and they believed the systems were so
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: rigged against them that there was no purpose in participating.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: Or they were concerned that they were going to make
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: the wrong choice and they decided not to make a
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: choice at all because that's actually one of your options.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: What we try to do in our campaign and what
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: we do through everything and all the work we do,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: both with Fair Fight and with my other organization, Fair Count,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: is we try to provide not only the information, but
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: the motivation for why action is necessary. That when you
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: choose not to vote, and that's a legitimate choice to make,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: you are still making a decision. And these aren't people
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: who are deciding out of ignorance. They're deciding because they've
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: been overwhelmed with how unwelcome they are in this process.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: And our responsibility is to not only welcome them, but
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: to encourage them to be even more aggressive about with
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: their presence. Because it's not just about electing a president.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's critical. And as we've seen the last
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: three years, it's essential. But it's also about making sure
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: that the school board member who represents your child actually
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: cares about that child. And that's what we saw in Quitman, Georgia,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: when Secretary of State Brian Kemp arrested these 10 people
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: who had the temerity to use the voting system to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: elect people who looked like the children in the school.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: He had them arrested. He cost them their jobs. He
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: made sure they were all removed from the school board
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: and not a single person was convicted. There's an amazing
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: story on Yahoo News from John Ward. You should look
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: it up about the equipment 10. And it's proof of
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: not only how well informed these non-voters are, but how
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: dangerous voter suppression can be. Because with that action, they
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: didn't just stop these people from championing the needs of
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: their children. They stopped an entire community from believing they
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: should actually participate in the process. And that wasn't ignorance.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: That was intention.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought up Fair Count, which as I
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: understand it is an organization that's going to try to
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: help to make sure that the census accurately counts Georgia's population.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: How are you going to go about doing that, especially
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: given the tremendous amount of mistrust there is with the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: Trump administration across the country, but particularly in communities of color?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: So Fair Count, like Fair Fight, were both born of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: my 10 days of mourning after the election. And then
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: I thought, if I become governor, what would I have done?
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: And in lieu of having that job, what still needs
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: to be done? One is election protection and electoral integrity
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: and voter protection. But the second was making sure that
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: the mechanism that will decide the narrative of America for
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: the next decade, that it does not get to erase
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: people of color, immigrants, the poor, and children from that narrative.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: And so Fair Count, which you can find out about
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: at faircount.org, faircount.org is designed to intervene and to say,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: these are communities we're not only going to aggressively count,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: we are going to build technologies to support them. And
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: so just this week, they are testing the Black Men
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: Count committees going around South Georgia, which are one of
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: the hardest places to get people to participate in the census,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: and actually engaging churches and Black men's organizations to to
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: reach out to their community and not waiting until next year,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: but doing it this year. This is the first year
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: that 45% of the census will be done online, even
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: in communities that don't have access to the internet. Well,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: we are testing out in, I think, 20 counties or
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: 20 locations. We're testing out creating hotspots in community organizations
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: so that they can be the venue where you can
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: get your information and you can submit your census. But
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: we also recognize that Georgia, while it's one of the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: largest states, we're the eighth largest state, and we have
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: one of the highest undercount possibilities, we're not alone. And
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: so Fair Count is also traveling the country, working with
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: the Congressional Black Caucus. We're going to be meeting with
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: the Hispanic Caucus and others. We want to make certain
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: anyone who represents communities that are hard to count, that
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: they have access to what we're testing, to the models
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: we're building, and to the information we have. There are, again,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: great organizations across the country that are focusing on the census,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: but we're one of the only ones in the country
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: that do nothing but census work.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: And just for our listeners who don't know, help them
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: understand why it's so important that we have an accurate census.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: What do people lose if the census is inaccurate or
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: communities like the ones you're targeting do not respond?
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. So the census is how we count who is
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: in America. And it is so important because the allocation
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: of federal dollars are determined by the number of people
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: who are here and the needs of those people. If
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: you live in a community where you have an overcrowded school,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: it's likely because they did not count how many children
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: lived in that community who would be apportioned to that school.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: If you think that your state has been gerrymandered, part
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: of what happens with gerrymandering in the drawing of legislative
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: districts is that the apportionment, the number of people who
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: are divided up in that state is based entirely on
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: the census, and it can only happen once every decade.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: You don't get to do a do-over. It happens once.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: basically from February until, I think it's that the enumerators
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: are on the ground until August. But that's it. Once
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: it's done, if you haven't been counted, you do not count.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: In Georgia, for example, if black men are undercounted at
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: the rate the Urban Institute estimates, that's $ 150 million a
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: year that Georgia will not receive. We'll still have the
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: same needs. We'll still need the same number of hospitals.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: We'll still have the number. We'll have all of the
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: same needs, but we won't get the money. And if
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: you look at the states that are represented by CBC members,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: by Congressional Black Caucus members, the aggregation of those 26 states,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: it's $ 2. 5 billion a year that will be lost. And
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: that's not money that just doesn't get spent. It's money
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: that gets sent to somebody else. And so it's about
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: making sure that you get the resources that you're entitled to.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: It's about making certain that you get the legislative resources.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: you're entitled to. But the third is that they already
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: know you exist. That's why they're sending you the form.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: The biggest fear I hear about with the census is
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: that somehow the census will be used to profile you
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: or track you. If you've ever paid a bill, they
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: know how to find you. What we want them to
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: know is that you know where to find them. and
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: that you want to be counted so that you get
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: the resources you're entitled to. And so a big part
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: of what we're doing is demystifying the census, putting out
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: good information, and dispelling bad information. And the biggest victory was,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: of course, the fact that the citizenship question, which was
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: designed to force people not to respond, that that is
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: not going to be permitted in the census. If we
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: do the thing right, then we will know how diverse
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: and dynamic and multiracial and multiethnic this country is, but
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: we will also get the resources we're entitled to so
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: that we are a stronger nation overall.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: So I read, or I heard you say in an
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: interview that you're not planning on making an endorsement in
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: this presidential race. So I'm not going to ask you
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: about that. But I am going to ask you if
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: you think Georgia can be won by a Democrat, and
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: if so, what is the right profile of a candidate
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: to do that? What's the right message or how do
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: you go about doing that if you believe it can
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: be put in the battleground column and maybe turn blue
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: this cycle?
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Georgia is absolutely a battleground state. In a state where
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: the Secretary of State controlled the outcome of the election,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: he still barely eked out a 1.4% victory. That's what
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: makes a state a battleground state. Not that it's constantly blue,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: then we just put it in the blue column and
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: we move on. What makes it a battleground state is
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: that it's winnable and Georgia is absolutely winnable. what we
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: demonstrated is that the way to win is not necessarily
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: having an African-American woman as the candidate, although that's a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: great option. The way to win is to actually talk
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: to the people of Georgia. We were the first campaign
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: to actually invest in deep canvassing across the state. By comparison,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: my predecessors had spent maybe $ 15 million, and most of
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: that was on TV. The presidential race is As you know,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: there hasn't been an investment in the presidential races in
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: Georgia since the 90s. Our campaign spent $ 42 million and
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: we achieved the highest single turnout of Democrats in Georgia history.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: And that still was in a non-presidential year. You're going
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: to have billions of dollars spent on this presidential campaign.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: Spending even a fraction of that in Georgia will win
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: Georgia because Georgia is ripe. We have a population that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: is one of the most diverse in the country. We
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: have the highest percentage of African-American voters of any potential
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: battleground state. And I've proven people will vote if we
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: talk to them, if we invest in them. So to
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: your question, the profile of the person who wins Georgia
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: is the person who shows up, who has a clear
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: narrative for why they are running and why they want
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: to win, and who takes that narrative to every community.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: We win elections, as President Obama demonstrated, not through technology,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: but through organizing. Technology is a tool. It is not
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: a a strategy. The strategy is talking to people and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: letting them know that you see them and you understand them.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: And that's why I also spend a lot of time
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: talking about identity politics. We've allowed the Republicans to scare
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: us away from what has always been our strength. Democrats
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: win because we see each other, because we see the
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: problems and the barriers that block you from achieving opportunity.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: And we understand that the barriers are different. If you're
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: physically disabled, If you are Latino, if you are Asian
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: Pacific Islander, if you're Native American, if you're LGBTQ, if
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: you're black, we see your identity not as a dispositive
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: of whether you are for us or against us, but
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: we see it as a reason to find out what
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: the barriers are for your success. Yes, you all want healthcare,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: but let's understand why healthcare is harder for this community.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: Let's understand why economic security is more difficult for this community.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: Identity politics is how we win because it means we
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: see the people who make up our party and we
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: are willing to help them make up America.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: That is such great advice for whoever our 2020 nominee
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: is going to be, and it's so important. Before I
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: let you go, I do want to ask, on behalf
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: of our listeners, if they want to help you with
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: Fair Fight Action 2020 or Fair Count, how can they
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: do that?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: First, go to fairfight2020. org. You can sign up. We will
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: send you alerts. We are going to have someone in
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: the 20 battleground states. You can find out which states
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: those are. And even if you don't live in one
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: of those states, you can help because a lot of
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: the states are going to need volunteers coming in from
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: places that are safely democratic. And we are going to
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: be able to keep you apprised of all of the developments,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: all of the calls to action, and all of the charges.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: For the census, go to faircount.org. That is an extraordinary
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: opportunity to make certain that the communities that are usually
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: overlooked in your state get counted. They've got amazing resources.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: We're continuing to build new tools. And what they know
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: is that they want everything they build to be replicable
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: and exportable. So it doesn't, we are starting in Georgia,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: but this is a national movement. And we're going to
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: make sure that Donald Trump's attempt to defund the census
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: and to erase communities of color and others from the
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: narrative will not work in 2020. And so go to faircount.org
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: or fairfight2020. org. both those places, you can help, and we'd
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: love to have you.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us on
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: Podsafe America again, and we hope to talk to you soon.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: Dan, you're always delightful. Thank you so much for giving
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: us a chance to talk about great work.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Stacey Abrams for joining us. I'm headed out
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: on vacation, so I'll be gone next week. Tommy's heading
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: on vacation. He'll be gone next week, but I believe
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: Dan and Lovett will be doing Monday's pod, and then...
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: On Thursday, I think you're on vacation too.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sort of on vacation.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: So then, you know, then it's real trouble because then
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: it's just John Lovett on his own. So hopefully we're
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: going to have to get him some backup there. Because otherwise,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: we'll all come back from vacation and it'll just be
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America with John Lovett.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Back in the world in which people still listen to
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: sports radio, I always used to be amazed by the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: people like Colin Cowherd who could just speak for four
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: hours by themselves. And if there were any one of
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: the four of us who could do a solo pod
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: it would definitely be John Lovett.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: We could go on forever because there's no way he's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: listening to all the way to the end of this
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: pod I don't know if he listens to the Thursday pods.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: I would guess not.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Anyway well I will I'll see you guys in a
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: couple weeks and take care yeah have a great vacation
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: you too bye music music music.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: show is produced by Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: to Caroline Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, and
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Milo Kim, who film and upload these bad boys every week.