Latest / Pod Save America / “Fear and electability in Miami.”

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“Fear and electability in Miami.” · Pod Save America

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tom Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod we'll be digging into the first...
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of a series of polls that Crooked Media is doing
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in partnership with our friends at Change Research. We're calling
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: it Polar Coaster 2020. Very exciting stuff. But first, we've
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: got quite a bit of news to talk about, from
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: new sanctions on Iran to the humanitarian disaster on our
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: border to a rape allegation against the president.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Not great stuff. Welcome back, Lovett.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Good to be back, John.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: A few quick notes before we get to all that.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Dan mentioned last pod that the paperback version of his book, Yes,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: We Still Can, is out and available. You should know
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that for the next two weeks, he's going to donate
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a portion of the proceeds for every copy purchased to RAICES,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: which is helping immigrant families and children who've been detained.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: New episode of This Land is out called The Treaty.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Fantastic episode.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: That's one yet, I would argue.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it digs into Rebecca's family. and treaties and Andrew
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Jackson and all kinds of really fascinating history. So go
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: check that out right now, thislandpodcast.com. Also, the first Democratic
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: presidential debates are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday this week.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We'll be putting out a pod covering both of them
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: on Friday morning. Dan is coming to L.A. to join
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: us for that. Finally, another installment of our presidential candidate
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: interview series is dropping on Thursday. My interview with Montana
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Governor Steve Bullock that I did last week when he
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: was here at Crooked.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: All right, let's get to the news.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Since our last podcast, the president called off a military
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: strike against Iran with 10 minutes to spare, initiated new
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: cyber attacks against Iran, and announced new economic sanctions against
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the country's top leaders. Trump acknowledged on Twitter Friday that, quote,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: we were cocked and loaded.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: I don't know that that's what he was groping for.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: He's always cocked.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Go on, John. Cool.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: This broke on Friday. What was your initial reaction to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: this news?
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: Thursday night.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Thursday night, I'm sorry.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: That really fun breaking news alert that says we almost
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: went to war.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: We were all texting about Thursday night.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Genuine fear. I remain pretty freaked out by the risk
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: of escalation.
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think what's missing from the debate still
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: is a conversation about the possible worst case scenarios that
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: could arise from a war with Iran. So people know
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: they can use proxy forces and militia groups in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria.
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: They could attack U.S. personnel, our partners and allies in
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: the region. They have ballistic missiles that can target our
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: bases and ships in the region or Israel. They can
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz. They could target
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: Saudi oil infrastructure and drive up oil prices.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: So in other words, like.
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: Things could get very serious very quickly. But, you know,
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: you're not hearing that discussed. You're hearing glib bullshit from
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: people like Tom Cotton, who said war with Iran would
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: be two strikes, the first strike and the last strike.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: Tom, uh, Brett Stevens, the New York times says sink
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: their Navy. Like it's that easy. And, uh, there won't
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: be any sort of response. So it's the same Iraq
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: war proponents making the same arguments with absolutely no humility
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: about how absolutely fucked up and wrong they were last time.
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: And also about how incompetent this white house is like,
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: would you trust these guys to manage a war?
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: I would not.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: So again, like, Remember when Obama.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: Said that our option was negotiate a deal with Iran
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: or war, and all the neocons were.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: So hurt and upset, and that was such an unfair?
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: Well, here we are, folks, and this is deadly serious,
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: and Trump is escalating the war of words this morning.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those examples where I think
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump being in the White House is obviously awful
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and scary, but this is something that neoconservatives, warmongers like
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: John Bolton, have basically wanted to do for some time.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: They basically wanted to get us to this place, right? Yeah.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: What was your, uh, you, you were on vacation. What,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: what happened when you heard this news? Did you just
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: think about maybe not coming back?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: I definitely, uh, was glad to be out of signal range. Uh,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I kept like, you step into American, you step into
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: like sort of American political news and it's really is
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: like opening a, an evil chest of screams. Just, you
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: open it up and it's just the most blood-curdling noises
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: and then you close it again. Okay, alright. But no,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: you know, it is very frightening. It's the decision-making process.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: It's Trump's decision-making process layered on top of conservative dogma, right?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Which are two of the most destructive forces on planet Earth.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: So that is my takeaway.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Tommy, I always like to play this game with you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: How do you think a normal administration would have responded
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: to the Iranian shooting down one of our drones? Let's
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: say Hillary Clinton was in the White House. Stipulating that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: she wouldn't have pulled out of the Iran deal. And
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think most reasonable Republicans would have pulled out
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: of the Iran deal.
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: But let's say we are where we are today. I
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: think you bring your whole team into the situation room
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: and you have a conversation about what is our big
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: picture goal? Because I think that is also missing from
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: the conversation. Is it preventing them from ever getting a
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: nuclear weapon and renegotiating on that front? Are we just
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: concerned about sabotaging ships in the Strait of Hormuz? Is
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: the concern about the drone? And do we want to
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: respond to send a message to the Iranians that you
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: can't do that again? So I think you figure out
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: what your objective is, then you can move forward. I
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: would start with making a very detailed public briefing for
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: friends and allies at the UN maybe about the specific
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: location of our drone, because the Iranian narrative is that
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: it was in Iranian airspace. We say it wasn't. No
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: one's really detailing what the truth is. I would want
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: to bring friends and allies together to talk about some
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: sort of international way to protect ships in the area,
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: and then think about responses that wouldn't escalate the situation.
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: So I was talking with Seth Moulton, served four tours
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: in Iraq, running for president, member of Armed Services Committee.
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: He suggests responding with a cyber attack that could take
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: down their electrical grid where that missile system is based
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: as a direct response to the drone, and then engaging
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: with allies and friends, building a coalition to protect sea lanes,
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: and then publicly spelling out the goal and strategy. That,
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: to me, seems more measured and proportionate to what was
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: actually done to us, which was blowing up a very
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: expensive computer in the sky. I do think Trump is
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: right that killing 150 Iranians in response to blowing up
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: an unmanned drone is completely disproportionate.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: It's, you know, And obviously it's chilling and terrifying to
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: think that Fox's primetime lineup and what its hosts think
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: might dissuade us from taking military action. Obviously these people
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: should not be part of the chain of command. But
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: they are.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: And they don't agree on this one either.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: They don't. Well, you know, this is.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: As Trump has moved further into his administration, the voices
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: that made Trump... uniquely unsettling to Republicans back when they
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: admitted that they didn't want Trump to be the nominee
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: or president, obviously it was trade and immigration, but the
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: other piece of it was foreign policy. And Tucker Carlson
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: does represent the isolationist nationalist streak.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Pat Buchanan, this is Ann Coulter.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it really was an important part of Trumpism
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: when it was being defined by people like Tucker Carlson
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: and Maureen Dowd calling him a dove because they thought
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: that that Tucker view would be better represented in the
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: White House.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: So Trump decides to not go with the strike. He
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: goes with, you know, there was a cyber there was
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a cyber attack. I read that that had been planned
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: maybe even before.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but that was I think that that was a
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: limited cyber attack designed to take down Democrats. missile defense
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: systems that could have taken out airplanes that were flying
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: sorties designed to hit targets.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: Like, I think it was.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: In the event of the actual strike.
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: If we were going to do a strike, you take
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: out the air defenses first with some sort of cyber
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: attack to make sure that our guys aren't shot down.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then there were economic sanctions against some of
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the country's top leaders. In response to those sanctions, Iran
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: has said that the path to diplomacy is now closed
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: and that the White House is afflicted by, quote, mental retardation.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Trump responded that Iran's leadership doesn't understand the word nice.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And that any attack by Iran on anything American will
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: be met with overwhelming force and in some areas obliteration.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So this is, of course, the fear that maybe, you know, Trump,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: who might have started off not wanting war, cannot control himself.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: once there starts being a war of words on Twitter
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: and through the news. So where do we go from here, Tommy?
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: This is the problem with having a childless idiot in
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: the White House, but this is also the problem of
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: having a strategy that's just fundamentally incoherent. I mean, they
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: have this maximum pressure strategy of crippling sanctions, but it
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: is not paired with a diplomatic off-ramp that could lead
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: to some sort of resolution. And in fact, they're doing
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: the opposite. I and Zarif, the foreign minister. Those are
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: the people we need to talk to. They're the people
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: who can cut a deal and make a decision.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: They were the ones involved in the Iran deal, right?
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the Supreme Leader makes every big decision.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: The foreign minister is the guy you'd negotiate with. But instead,
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: we're just needlessly pissing them off with additional sanctions. They're
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: not going to do anything. I mean, I don't think
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: that the Supreme Leader's got a bunch of money parked
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: in New York that we've now cut off from him.
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: You know, it's just stupid. So, again, no one knows
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: what their goal is. The message is coming from Pompeo
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: and Bolton and Trump change constantly. And so the Iranians
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: are probably understandably confused. Our allies are confused. The world
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: is freaked out and there's no end.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Game.
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: Like this is, it's a, it's as serious a situation
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: that I think we've been in, in a very long time,
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: probably since North Korea. Now, luckily he pulled a rabbit
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: out of the hat there and decided to just pivot
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: to talks and let them develop nuclear weapons.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: And the problem is much worse, but at least we didn't.
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: Go to war.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: There, there really are apparently, you know, We are seeing
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: on a bunch of different policies internationally, you know, internationally
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: in terms of what's happening in the UK, domestically in
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: the United States when it comes to health care, immigration,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: other policies, and now internationally as it comes to Iran,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: that conservative rhetoric is bellicose, angry, and simple. And it
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: attacks the complex solutions offered by centrists, the left, the
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: international community. But when push comes to shove... They don't
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: like the Iran deal. They think the Iran deal is terrible. Okay,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: what's your alternative? They don't have one. You know, you say, oh,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: we want to repeal Obamacare. We want to repeal Obamacare.
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: It's terrible.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: It's terrible.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: What's your alternative? We don't have one. We want to
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: leave the EEO. We want to leave the EEO. What's
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: your alternative? We don't have one. And so we have
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: this populist movement calling for all kinds of, you know,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: a rearguard action against the difficult compromises of modern life.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: And then once in power... We are left with these
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: hideous choices because they cannot match their rhetoric with any
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: kind of a coherent policy outcome across virtually any possible issue.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: I mean, I guess all we can hope for is
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: that Congress takes some action that might block off their
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: ability to respond to Iran. But I think that he's
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: got considerable authorization under the War Powers Act and can
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: respond in ways to defend the U.S. So I don't
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: really know what the path is to preventing him from doing.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Something really stupid.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's what I was wondering is what
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: happens in Congress here. And I guess, you know, I
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: know that House Democrats last week repealed the voted to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: repeal the authorization for use of military force. But that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't go anywhere in the Senate, I imagine.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: It doesn't go anywhere in the Senate.
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: And also, I think you could probably make a credible
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: argument for some limited response under the War Powers Act anyway.
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: So it's just there's not a lot they can do
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: to constrain him here. It does look like public opinion
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: may constrain him.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: It's ridiculous that it is.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: To have fucking Tucker Carlson talking you out of a
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: strike on Iran. Public pressure and public opinion and news
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: reports constrain every president on every issue.
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: So maybe you just have to be happy with that.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: We're just at the mercy of a madman right now.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And whether he listens to Tucker Carlson or whether he
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: listens to John Bolton.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: Or Sean Hannity. Okay.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to make sure that's where we are. Yeah,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: it's good. It's good stuff.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about another crisis that Trump has made
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: much worse. Federal authorities disclosed today that more than 100
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: children have been returned to a detention facility on the
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: border in Texas after initially being removed when court-appointed attorneys
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: discovered that kids as young as toddlers had been living
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: in shockingly inhumane conditions with inadequate food, water, and sanitation.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: There was no access to soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, beds, blankets.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: There had been outbreaks of flu and lice. According to
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the Associated Press, the lawyers described a four-year-old with matted
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: hair who had gone without a shower for days, and hungry,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: inconsolable children struggling to soothe each other, some who had
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: been locked in the facility for weeks at a time.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: The acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection also announced
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: today that he'd be stepping down in the coming weeks.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the most obvious question.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Why is this happening?
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's that fear should prevent these
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: kinds of things from happening. You know, like a low-level
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: employee to the very top of the food chain, You
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: should live in fear that if you did this, a
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: news report would come out about the conditions in these
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: facilities and you would be fired or maybe fucking prosecuted
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: for criminal neglect, right? I mean, that's how normal politics works.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: But anecdotally, it seems like these guards are actually punishing
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: kids on purpose, right? They were given two lice combs
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: because there was a lice outbreak and they lost one
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: of the combs. And to punish the kids, they took
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: away their blankets or their beds. Like, this is some vindictive,
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: crazy shit.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So.
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: That shouldn't surprise us, though, right? Because Trump's policy is fear.
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: He wants cruelty as a deterrent for future migrants to
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: travel north and make this risky bet. And that's the reality.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: And I think that's what Democrats need to be talking about.
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: But the thing I don't really get is he says
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: he needs more funding, but he declared an emergency to
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: reprogram money to build a wall. Why couldn't he declare
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: an emergency to take more money to build new facilities
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: to put these kids? Like, What they're doing is illegal.
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Under the Flores Agreement, it's blatantly illegal. And I don't
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: know how to hold them accountable for it, except for
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: these press reports.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I think this is the problem in Congress right now.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, at the heart of this problem is an
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: influx of asylum seekers at the border, right? So this
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is something that, you know, and we had this in
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the Obama administration in 2014 for a little while. It's
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: obviously now gone on much longer under the Trump administration.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So you've got all these asylum seekers, and many of
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: them are children. Right now what we're seeing is a
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: lot of children who are accompanied by not their parent,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: but by some other relative, but not their legal guardian.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: So what happens is the child and the aunt, uncle,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: grandparent get to the border. They are separated because it's
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: not a parent. And Customs and Border Patrol is not
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: supposed to be able to house thousands and thousands of children.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That's just they were never built for that, right? So
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: under any administration, there would be an overflow at Customs
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and Border Patrol. What's supposed to happen is under the law,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Customs and Border Patrol is supposed to hold these kids
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: for 72 hours, and then they're supposed to transfer them
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Refugee Resettlement. At that point, that office is supposed to
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: then connect these kids with some parent or guardian or
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: any relative.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: In the U.S., and off they go.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: No one has good answers as to, A, why these
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: kids are spending so long in CPB facilities, and B,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: why once they're moved to the HHS facilities, they're not
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: being connected with parents and guardians fast enough in this country.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: We don't know on either side what's going on.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: There does seem to be a combination of sort of
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: willful neglect, a reflection of Trump's priorities and his desire
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to use cruelty as a cudgel combined with a system
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: that is overwhelmed and a bureaucracy that does, I think,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: sincerely seem to be overwhelmed. Of course, you know, dehumanized
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: people in the hands of an overwhelmed bureaucracy is one
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: of the most dangerous forces in the world, right? That is,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: those two things come together to create conditions like this,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: which is why it's, you know, The system being overwhelmed
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: is not an excuse. Obviously, Donald Trump's policy preferences are
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: the opposite of an excuse. So it's heartbreaking. And it
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: is a culmination of the choices Donald Trump has made
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: and the leadership he has shown on this issue, the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: kind of direction he has given to those in these agencies.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And I would direct everyone to read the interview in
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: The New Yorker with Warren Binford, who's one of the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: attorneys that the court appointed attorneys who discovered this. And
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: basically these attorneys who were appointed by the court became
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: whistleblowers because they were so horrified by these conditions. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: one of these attorneys said, almost every child that we
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: interviewed had a parent or relative in the United States
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: who were able to and want to take care of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: their children. All we need to do is to get
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: these children to their families. And we know that almost
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: all of them will be well cared for and it
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: will cost the U.S. taxpayer no money to care for
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: these children because they will be cared for by their
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: parents or relatives.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Like, so it is, there is no fucking excuse for
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: this at all.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: And it is, it really is like a leadership question
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: because this is why you have a president. This is
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: why you have a White House. The government is big
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: and it is vast and is doing very complicated things
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: all around the world, all across the country, all the time.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: But you have a White House to set priorities and
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: you have groups of people there who are meant in
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: these moments to step up and take charge of the issue. Say,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: we have a crisis. That's a White House chief of staff.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: One of the key roles is to solve problems as
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: they come up in a very complicated bureaucracy. But what
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: is clear is because of this president and the people
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: around him, there is no sense that there is an animated,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: humane force inside of the administration that would see something
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: like this as a true emergency it needs to solve.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't care. Not caring is... is the top-down order.
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: I might take it a step further, which is that
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Stephen Miller might see headlines about kids being tortured, essentially,
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: and think, okay, that might convince these parents in these
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: central triangle countries down in Central America not to come
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: north now, right?
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: Which we know doesn't work. Right.
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: From family separation today, you could draw a pretty straight
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: line that they're trying to be as cruel as humanly
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: possible to children to prevent further migration. But I think
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: the thing we need to remember is that We are
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: doing permanent damage to these children. I don't think you
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: can traumatize a two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old, five-year-old and expect them
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: to get over. These kids are likely to have problems
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: for life. You see some of these videos.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: It is horrific.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's trauma. We're putting these kids through trauma. You
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: can't undo it. And to John's point about there being
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: no excuse, the second these reports became public, All of
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: a sudden, there's the ability to move these kids out
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: of these facilities, right? The second the attention came.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Except now that they're moving them back, I don't even
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: know what the fuck I mean, the worst thing here
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: is the fucking excuses from not only Donald Trump, but
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: his administration and these Republicans. You have Donald Trump telling,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: you know, Chuck Todd interviewed him over the weekend. Donald
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Trump's excuse on this is, I don't have family separation.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Obama had family separation. he was the one that separated
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: them i'm bringing them back together which is just a
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: fucking insane lie all over the place you've got trump
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: saying we could solve this whole problem in 15 minutes
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: if democrats just came and changed the asylum laws which
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense because basically trump is saying if
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: only democrats agreed to deny people the right to seek
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: asylum in this country then somehow the situation at these
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: facilities of children who are already there be fixed? No,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: that doesn't make any fucking sense whatsoever. And then you've
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: got Republicans in Congress saying, well, Democrats are holding up
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: this funding because, you know, they don't want us to
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: deny asylum to enough children. They don't want us to
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: put more, have higher guidelines and standards for these facilities.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And so we don't want to, you know, they don't
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: want to give us the money to do this. So
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: there's just a bunch of really fucking bad excuses right
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: now when all you need to do is get these
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: kids out of the facilities and get them the resources
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: they need while they're in the facility so that it
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is actually fucking clean and sanitary, and then, you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: connect them with parents, connect them with guardians and relatives.
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: To Levin's point, you're the president, man. You've been in
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: charge for a while. You've made the situation worse. It's
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: on you to fix it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: Get it together.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And the rest of the fucking people in Congress that
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: we've elected. Heartless.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And, you know, the Democrats are out there talking about
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: this and want to get some, but, like, all these
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: other fucking Republicans, it's not just Trump. There's a whole country,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: there's a whole government of fucking people who are just
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: watching as, you know, Two-year-olds are scarred for life.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: That is the kind of chilling, obviously it's all incredibly heartbreaking,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: but there's this, and we'll get to all these stories,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: but there really is this feeling of these stories come
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: out and we don't know what it is, but more
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: should happen. We should have this feeling like there should
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: be something more and bigger that takes place when a
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: story like this come out. When someone accuses the president
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: of rape, there should be more that happens.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: And they're used.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about the first time we learned about
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: family separation.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: It led the news for weeks and weeks. And I mean,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the reason we know about this right now, two different
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: things happen. One, there was an Associated Press story where
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the lawyers, you know, blew the whistle on this.
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But it was sort of in the news a little
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: bit before that because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, is on her
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Instagram story and said, we're running concentration camps down there.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And everyone got all fucking upset because she used the
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: word concentration camps. And so the first time in months
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: that news of horrible conditions at detention facilities was in
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the news is because people were upset with the fucking
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: terminology that was used by a single congresswoman, including a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: lot of reporters and a lot of fucking pundits in D.C.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: who are not Republicans and not part of the Trump administration.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: It made me. So angry. Hey, guys, the Holocaust isn't
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: a fucking brand you need to protect. You know, it
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: isn't a... When people say we need to learn the
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: lessons of the Holocaust, it is not to avoid comparing
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: anything that ever takes place with that terrible, evil tragedy
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: because it denies the unique horrors of the Holocaust. It
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: is supposed to mean... that we learn from it certain
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: lessons about what happens when we treat people inhumanely, when
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: we fail to take the dehumanization of fellow human beings seriously,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: when powerful countries put the power and might of their
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: police state, of their military, and they set it against
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: people in need, right? These are the lessons we are
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: supposed to learn. It is not supposed to make a
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: set of terms sacrosanct to protect us, to protect the
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: idea of the Holocaust from being used as a way
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: of learning lessons now. It makes absolutely no sense. It
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: is infuriating. We do not have to wait for things
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: to be far worse before we learn the lessons of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: how civilized people, people who consider themselves to be good,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: can participate in something horrible.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, there are probably some people out there
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: that have a deep personal connection to the Holocaust who
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: don't want to hear it invoked, and that's fine, and
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: that's their choice.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: But Liz Cheney is not one of those people. She
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: is a cynical.
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: Bad faith, lying, horrible person who is invoking the history
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: of the Holocaust to make a political attack on her
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: political opponent. And no one is going to look back
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: on this moment and debate the lexical definition of a word.
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: They're going to look back on the treatment of kids
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: and think that is a stain in our history and
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: anyone associated with it should be fucking ashamed and driven
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: out of public life.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: See you, Liz.
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: Thanks for the Iraq war. Thanks for your shitty dad.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: Thanks for your terrible congressional seat.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: You suck.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: We don't like you.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think we can blame Liz Cheney for her dad.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: We can blame her dad for Liz Cheney.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: We can do both.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Go both directions.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So the question is, you know, what can be done
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: about this? What can Democrats do in Congress? Right now
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: they're trying to pass emergency funding to improve the conditions
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of these facilities. But as I was saying, Republicans refuse
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to accept it unless Democrats also agree to fund more
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: enforcement like immigration raids and detention beds. And some House
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Democrats refusing to support a bill that does fund these
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: things and doesn't put enough restrictions on Trump. So I
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: don't know what you guys think about this debate. I
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: get the challenge here, right? There's an emergency funding bill.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: You know, you're in the House. Democrats run the House.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: They don't run anything else. I think to me, it
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: seems like the main priority, the urgent priority right now
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: is to get these resources, get whatever resources we can
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to these facilities, because if you can even help you know,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: five children to me, it's worth it. Like, I don't
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: want to fund more fucking detention beds and immigration raids either.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: But this is an emergency right now.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And I sort of think the Democrats have to just
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: act like it because we're not getting a better deal.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: We don't run the Senate. We don't have the White House.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Right. And it doesn't close you off from seeking accountability
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: through investigations, through hearings, right? There are other avenues to
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: hold the administration accountable for its mistreatment of these children,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: while just not using this debate for anything other than help.
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: I mean, as usual, Democrats were caught between being responsible
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: and dealing with an administration that is cruel and vindictive
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: and just lies about everything. But I mean, if you're
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: trying to negotiate a deal with Dick Durbin for more funding,
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: and then the president of the United States announces that
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: there's going to be massive ice raids in 10 cities,
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: including Chicago, well, of course, that's a bad faith way
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: to start a negotiation. Of course, they don't trust that
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: the money they would appropriate is actually going to go
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: towards helping kids and not towards additional efforts to rip
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: families apart.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: I get that.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: I get that. I get the lack of trust.
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: I think that I would land in throwing money at
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: the problem to try to help the kids too, but
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Trump is making it impossible.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: So then the question is, what can people do at home?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: You can go to RaicesTexas.org. That's R-A-I-C-E-S-Texas.org. They're an organization
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: that provides free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children, families,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and refugees in Texas. They're accepting donations and volunteers. We
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: will also tweet out a link to the Texas Tribune,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: which published a good list of other local organizations that
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: are helping on the border. And of course, you should
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: call your member of Congress and do everything fucking possible
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to vote Donald Trump and everyone who is helping Donald
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Trump do what he's doing out of office. Okay, one
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: more completely awful and enraging story before we get to 2020.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Last week, New York Magazine published an excerpt from a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: new memoir by E. Jean Carroll in which she alleges
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room at
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Bergdorf Goodman in the 90s. Carroll is now among more
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: than 20 women who have publicly accused Donald Trump of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: sexual assault or misconduct. Trump has denied the allegations. He
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: told The Hill on Monday, quote, I'll say it with
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: great respect. Thank you for that. I'll say it with
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: great respect. Number one, she's not my type. Number two,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: it never happened. It never happened, okay? Carol's story wasn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: on the front pages of most major newspapers this weekend,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: nor was it covered significantly on any of the major
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Sunday news programs. The Washington Post ran a front page
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: story on Saturday. Guys, why hasn't this received front page,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: top of the morning show coverage? What's going on here?
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the kind of stasis that we're in.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: There is like a, you know... There is a brokenness.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: There's a brokenness to politics. And one of the... The
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: assumption that Donald Trump will not face consequences means that
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: when there is something that someone deserves to face consequences over,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: breaks into the news, it is not given the attention
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: it deserves because the end is already presumed. That this
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: will go nowhere. This will have no consequence. And because
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: of that, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We see that across
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: a number of stories on Donald Trump.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: It is simply a fact of his conduct and his
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: incredible gross misbehavior across so many avenues that he has simply,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: there is a bias in the media in favor of
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump that does not take his misbehavior as seriously
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: as other people. It's just, it is now built in.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And it is, I think, a deeply, it is a
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: hard thing. I think it's one of the most painful
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: parts about being about following the news in this era
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: for anybody, like for all of us who are paying
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: attention and listening all the time, it is the kind of,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: it is, I think the part that gives us a
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: stomach ache all the time, because there is this sense
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: that things are supposed to happen that don't happen. And
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: when you say that you sound naive and you're supposed
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: to be more cynical. Um, but because of Republican cowardice
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: and capitulation and, uh, uh, um, failure to show any
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: political courage whatsoever, combined with the way the media has
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: treated Trump for the past several years, we are trapped.
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I would recommend people read the whole
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: article because the Trump anecdote is just one of a
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: series of just harrowing accounts of horrible men acting horrifically.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: I was struck by a few things.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: One, The way the article was talked about online was
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: very euphemistic. There were lots of claims of... sexual misconduct
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: or sexual, it was rape.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: It was a rape allegation. I don't understand why people
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: weren't using that word.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: And the decisions at a bunch of newspapers not to
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: report out the story, it's inexcusable, it's unconscionable. I mean,
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: When you think, look, Trump has dominated the news since
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: he started running, but the only other story that broke
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: through was a bunch of Me Too allegations against Harvey
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: Weinstein and Les Moonves.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: A bunch of scumbags. This story combines the two.
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: There's no excuse for not putting this on the front
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: page of every newspaper and every newscast.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, I would do some soul-searching if I were
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: in those newsrooms.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think, love it to your point, we've
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: now had three different segments in this news section, and
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: each one I've ended by being like, okay, what can
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: be done now, you know? And on Iran, we're just
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: waiting around to see what happens because no one can
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: stop Donald Trump from doing anything crazy. On immigration, we
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: don't have Congress. And who knows what Donald Trump will
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: do and who knows if the money will get to
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the border and the facilities because we can't trust them.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: And now on this, what do you do about the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: fact that the president is an alleged rapist and has
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: committed all this sexual assault? And the answer to all
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of these is to vote him out of office in
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: 2020 because And so the media, I think, looks at
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: that and is like, all right, well, that's.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: What we're covering.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: We're covering the race to get him out of the office,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and they don't know what else to do. And also,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, this partly goes to the Democrats in
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the House saying, we don't want to impeach him. We're
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: too afraid because we don't know about the politics. That
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: is not a perfect tool because it will not result
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: in his removal from office because the Senate will save him.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: But it is one more tool to at least stand
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: up and say, this man is manifestly unfit for office
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and should not be here because he has committed crimes
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and done horrible things.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do think that part of that is
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: why I think Democrats generally have a kind of bad feeling.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes we translate that into, oh no, are
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: any of these candidates the right candidates? Oh no, maybe
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: we don't have what it takes to win.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Fear is in the backdrop of this election in a
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: huge way.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Right, and I think sometimes so much of what we're
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: seeing in terms of conversations about electability is not a
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: sense of not believing our candidates are up for the job.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: It is a terrifying realization about how big the consequences
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: of failure are.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, just to that point, and it's,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you know, we always make fun of electability. It's like, oh,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: you're basing your decision on what other people are going
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: to do. But it's partly because we're all looking around
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: at each other and we're like, I thought we all
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: knew each other here. And then 2016 happened, and I
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: guess we didn't. So people are guessing what other people
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: are going to do because... you know, you add up
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: all the votes of everyone in the country, and that's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: what happens. Well, unless it's the popular vote.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: But no, but, you know, yes, okay, for, you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: popular vote, it's close. The fact that it's close is
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: terrifying in and of itself, right? We concede every way
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: in which the election was swung toward Donald Trump. It
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: is still a close election. That shouldn't have been, and
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: so it forces us to confront, yes, what we thought
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: we knew about our fellow Americans and about what it
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: means to have a national identity itself. And all of
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: these stories kind of wrench at that because we're forced
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: to confront the fact that millions of Americans now say
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: they believe a lot of the allegations about Donald Trump,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: but may vote for him anyway. All of these things
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: I think force us to make, make us question some
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: basic ideas we had about what America stood for and
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: about what Americans would stand for. One, one really small
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: point about this. I do think one of the challenges
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: with this particular story is because it is a first
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: person account, it is, there is no, there is no, uh,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: journalistic outlet that has truly run it to ground. So
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: to me, one thing that I would like to see
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: is for reporters to take up the story. And one
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: of the challenges is because it's already broken, there's not
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: the upside of being the one to break it, but
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: there's such value to reporters now digging in and really,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: really validating the story, going through the evidence that she
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: has and kind of providing another account.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: And she did tell two friends as well.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, of course. I'm not.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: No, I'm just saying that's one avenue to go down.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Of course, yeah. I'm not speaking anything... I'm not denigrating
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: her account. What I'm saying is that there's value to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: an additional account from a journalistic outlet that runs through
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: what she says, what the friends say, that kind of
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: puts it in a... does an objective version.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. All right.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So in a bit, we're going to dig into the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: results of the very first poll in our Polar Coaster
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: 2020 series. But first, I spoke quickly about the approach
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and methodology we used with Pat Riley, who's the co-founder
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: of Change Research, which is our partner in this little project.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: So that interview is up next. On the pod today,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: we have the co-founder and chief growth officer of the
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: polling firm Change Research, Pat Riley.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Pat, welcome to the pod.
• 34:24
  Speaker 7: Thank you, John. I'm excited to be here.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, excited to have you and excited that Crooked Media
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: is working with Change on a series of polls on
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: 2020 that we're calling the 2020 Polar Coaster.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: So we're going to be digging into this poll in
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: a few minutes on the pod, but I wanted to
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: talk with you about your firm, your approach, and your methodology. Sure.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: To start with, I know you guys are a relatively
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: new polling firm. How did Change Research come together over
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: these last few years? Yeah.
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: So we'll be two on July 20th of this year.
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: And we would not be having this conversation had Hillary
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: Clinton won in 2016. We woke up the next day,
• 35:14
  Speaker 6: I woke up the next day as the mother of
• 35:17
  Speaker 6: a 11-year-old and 13-year-old and thought, I need to step
• 35:20
  Speaker 6: back into politics. And my co-founder, Mike Greenfield, did the
• 35:23
  Speaker 6: same thing. So change research is about providing fast and
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: accurate and affordable public opinion polling to help Democratic candidates
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: and causes win. And we're really all about trying to
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: improve our democracy by increasing the number of tools that
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: candidates and causes have to understand voters and succeed.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: So how is your approach at Change different than other firms?
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: What's unique about your methodology and how did you guys
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: land on it?
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:59
  Speaker 7: So one of the big headlines that came out of
• 36:02
  Speaker 7: 2016 was.
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: All public pollsters should be shot. And I think Jim
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: Messina is the one who said that. And there was
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: this general recognition that something was wrong with the way
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: that Democratic candidates and causes in the party, the technology
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: just seemed dated. I don't know how many listeners today
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: have landline phones, but I'm looking at an audience of
• 36:31
  Speaker 6: people with their hands down.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: And we.
• 36:36
  Speaker 6: We're all about changing that. My co-founder, Mike Greenfield, was
• 36:39
  Speaker 6: the first data scientist hired at PayPal. He led the
• 36:43
  Speaker 6: data science team at LinkedIn. And he started his first
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: odds-making firm called Team Rankings in his Stanford dorm room.
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: And he went to help a friend of his run
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: for Palo Alto City Council in September of 2016.
• 37:01
  Speaker 7: And he was like, WTF?
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: Here in Silicon Valley, you've got a candidate who's running
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: for a local office that has no accurate way to
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: really understand what voters are thinking.
• 37:14
  Speaker 7: And then Trump won.
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: And we together decided to apply the intellect that he
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: has on how to do A-B testing at scale and
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: apply a modern data science approach to understanding voters to
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: our approach.
• 37:32
  Speaker 7: So here's how it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 6: You know about, or you think you know about traditional polling, i.e.
• 37:38
  Speaker 6: we don't do landline phone calls, we don't do IVR
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: or cell phone calls, and we don't have a big,
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: giant online panel. Instead, we have a new technology that
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: we developed called BiasCorrect that allows us to dynamically build
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: a representative sample by soliciting respondents through online advertising. So
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: here's how it works. You're sitting on Facebook, Instagram, whatever's
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: popular on your handheld phone, in front of your tablet,
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: on a screen, and you've got a solicitation and it
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: pops up. And it'd say, you know, make your voice
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: heard in Des Moines. And it's completely innocuous. You click
• 38:18
  Speaker 6: on that solicitation and you're in our survey instrument. And
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: it looks and feels just like any other survey you've
• 38:25
  Speaker 6: ever taken online. That's as opposed to you're just sitting
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: down to dinner, the phone rings, I don't think I'll
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: take it, or you're getting a bunch of people, hitting
• 38:34
  Speaker 6: you up on your cell phone with numbers you don't recognize.
• 38:38
  Speaker 6: Or an online panel, which are often incentivized so that
• 38:42
  Speaker 6: if you complete six to 10 surveys in a day,
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: you might get an Amazon gift card, which is dramatically
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: increasing the likelihood that they'll be wrong. So the way
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: that our bias correct engine works is we have a
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: general sense of who you are based on the advertising
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: targeting we've done. And our bias correct engine goes out
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: across that massive universe of people who are online every
• 39:03
  Speaker 6: day up to four to five hours a day, and
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: gets just the right number of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, African Americans, Latinos, women, men,
• 39:13
  Speaker 6: older people, and millennials. Plus, we've fully automated the post-stratification
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: and waiting so that we can do things that traditional
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: pollsters simply can't. One, we can deliver a poll, a
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: national poll, in about 24 hours with a very large
• 39:32
  Speaker 6: sample size, a congressional district about two days on the outside,
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: and even a small state legislative district in about four days.
• 39:41
  Speaker 7: We're accurate.
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: Our actual error rate in the nearly 600 polls we
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: completed in 2018 was was 2.6. That means we were
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: within 2.6 of what the actual vote share of the
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: Democrat who won was. And most important, we're affordable. So
• 39:58
  Speaker 6: the actual price, the average price of our poll was
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: south of $ 5, 000. So we're removing a lot of the
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: obstacles that make traditional polling inaccurate, and then at the
• 40:12
  Speaker 6: same time, creating an opportunity for women, people of color,
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: people who are not white men who are really rich
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: to run for office with actionable insight that will help
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: them win.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I mean, I think one of the first
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: times I heard about you guys was during the 2018
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: midterms when I believe that change sort of captured the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Andrew Gillum surge in the Florida primary. almost before any
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: other pollster did, or instead of any other pollster, really,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: because I don't know that anyone else really caught it.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: What made you guys, why do you think you were.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Able to sort of capture that sort of late surge
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: by Gillum when other polling firms weren't able to capture that?
• 40:57
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's about frequency.
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: And then it's also about a commitment to constant innovation
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: and making sure that you're counting people who say they're
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: going to vote. So our approach in working with candidates
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: like Andrew Gillum, Lauren Underwood, some of the other hundreds
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: of down-ballot candidates that we worked with in 2018 is
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: instead of spending all of your money on one poll,
• 41:24
  Speaker 6: instead do five polls. So we were able to benchmark
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: Andrew Gillum's rise, and we kept saying to his team, man,
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: you're doing pretty well. And then he was able to
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: look at some of those results and make key decisions
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: to help move forward. I think part of the reason
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: that we were right in Florida is because traditional Democratic
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: Party orthodoxy is we're only going to count voters who
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: have previously voted. The problem with that is that if
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: you are a younger voter, you might not be in
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: the voter rolls. if you are a voter who voted
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: for Obama but sat out HRC, you may also not
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: be on the voter rolls. In the Gillum race, we
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: weighted and counted voters who said that they were definitely
• 42:15
  Speaker 6: going to vote in that election. And that included voters
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: who were not on a voter file. So we can
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: poll folks either from a voter file or via geolocation.
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: And in the Gillum case, It was all via geolocation.
• 42:29
  Speaker 6: So we were waiting and counting those voters who said,
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: you're damn right, I'm definitely going to vote for Gillum.
• 42:35
  Speaker 7: And that's why we were right.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: So obviously the universe of folks who spend a lot
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: of time online is a little bit different than the
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: broader universe of everyone who votes. How do you sort
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: of weight the polls to make sure that you capture
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: all the demographics online? in the right way so that
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the universe of people that you find online sort of are,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: you know, also represent the broader universe of voters?
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:02
  Speaker 6: I mean, we get that question a lot. And I
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: think the assumption is that older people are not online.
• 43:09
  Speaker 6: But that's simply not true in 2019. I mean, there
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: are people, older people, younger people, we have trouble on
• 43:17
  Speaker 6: occasion getting people over 80. over 85 to reply online.
• 43:24
  Speaker 6: The real challenge is in getting a representative sample of
• 43:27
  Speaker 6: 18 to 24-year-old African-American men, for example. And I think
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: one of the ways that change research is different is
• 43:35
  Speaker 6: we're 100% committed to constantly innovating and trying to find
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: affordable ways that we can get a representative sample on
• 43:45
  Speaker 6: the communication platform that people are on right now, which
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: is online.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: So if you wanted to get an accurate sample in
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: the 1980s, you.
• 43:56
  Speaker 7: Call people on their phone.
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: If you're wanting to get a representative sample now, you
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: have to do it online. And we think that by
• 44:04
  Speaker 6: taking an approach where you're constantly soliciting voters' opinion in
• 44:10
  Speaker 6: a deep way, you can not only get that snapshot
• 44:14
  Speaker 6: in time, but you also have an enormous amount of
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: data that you can use that can also be helpful
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: and predictive in winning a campaign.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: What were some of the most important things you all
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: learned during the 2018 midterms?
• 44:30
  Speaker 6: I think the most important takeaway was that candidates in
• 44:37
  Speaker 6: close races... like J.D. Scholten, for example. I loved being
• 44:43
  Speaker 6: called a hipster at 52 by 538.
• 44:45
  Speaker 7: It was awesome.
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: And they wrote and said, hey, we don't really know
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: what's going to happen in some of these rural districts.
• 44:52
  Speaker 6: We have no idea. We've never seen any polling data.
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: So we took them up on that cause. And there's
• 44:58
  Speaker 6: a whole bunch of polls that we did during that
• 45:02
  Speaker 6: last month before election day including in that J.D. Scholten race.
• 45:07
  Speaker 6: And we made the decision to release that poll. It
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: showed him within striking distance of King. He raised about
• 45:13
  Speaker 6: a million bucks from that poll. It changed everything. It
• 45:16
  Speaker 6: wasn't quite enough to have him win. But nonetheless, if
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party and establishment folks did not know that
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: he was in striking distance, he may not have gotten
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: as close. Another really important thing lesson was in Oklahoma.
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: So because we're able to do affordable down ballot races,
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: we did dozens of polls in places like Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida,
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: places where there simply are not many Democratic pollsters for
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: darn sure. But then also candidates are running with very
• 46:00
  Speaker 6: little resources so that every penny counts. And we did
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: two different rounds of polling there in state legislative races
• 46:07
  Speaker 6: for the itsy bitsy, teeny weeny number of progressives in Oklahoma.
• 46:12
  Speaker 6: And one of the things that we kept seeing was
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: that Donald Trump was simply not very popular in Oklahoma City.
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: And we kept seeing that Kendra Horn was within striking distance.
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: We let folks know inside the beltway that this was
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: a race that they should pay more attention to. And
• 46:34
  Speaker 6: lo and behold, she was the big sleeper winner of
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: that period. So frequent polling allows you to see things
• 46:42
  Speaker 6: that if you're only doing the traditional baseline messaging and
• 46:48
  Speaker 6: then six weeks out a tracking poll, you're going to miss. Yeah.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, we tell people on the pod all
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the time, You know, the thing to know about polls
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: are they are a snapshot in time. And so they
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: can capture one moment in time. And you shouldn't extrapolate
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: that out into, oh, well, this is what the whole
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: race is going to be like. But the more you poll,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the more polls you have, obviously, the more accurate the
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: picture is. Yeah.
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: And that's why we're really excited about this collaboration, because
• 47:13
  Speaker 6: with our 2020 change polling that we're doing up to
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: three polls per week, a poll in all the early
• 47:21
  Speaker 6: primary states, Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas, California, plus
• 47:26
  Speaker 6: deep dives on issues that voters care about, as well
• 47:29
  Speaker 6: as deep national looks at women voters, African American voters, Latinos.
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: We're getting a really deep, deep insight on what voters
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: are thinking well beyond the horse race. And with those polls,
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: We're keeping our eye on the prize, which is when
• 47:49
  Speaker 6: we finish this process and we have a Democratic nominee,
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: that Democratic nominee will have more insight on what American
• 47:57
  Speaker 6: voters are thinking than any nominee before them. And at Change,
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: we're really committed to regime change, as Pod Save America
• 48:05
  Speaker 6: is too. So we're excited about sharing those results with
• 48:08
  Speaker 6: you weekly as well as our cool– Polarcoaster, yes.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Exciting.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Well, Pat, we are very, very excited to be working
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: with Change on this project and look forward to many
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: more polls before November 2020. So thanks for joining us
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: and explaining a little bit about this project. And we'll
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: talk to you again soon.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: So as I talked about with Pat, we polled 935
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina last Monday
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: through Thursday who said they'll be participating in the Democratic
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: primaries and caucuses. So mostly Democrats, but some independents in there,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a few Republicans. But everyone said, I'll be participating in
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the Democratic primaries. In the horse race, Joe Biden leads
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: with 29 percent, then Bernie Sanders with 20 percent, Elizabeth
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Warren with 19 percent, Pete Buttigieg with 14 percent, Kamala
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Harris at 5 percent. and Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: with 3% each. Everyone else was 1% or under. But
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: the reason we're doing these polls is to go far
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: beyond the horse race, so we also asked why people
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: preferred the candidates they did.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: We asked people.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: what they're looking for in the next nominee. And we
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: asked all kinds of other questions that you can find
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: on crooked.com right now. I want to touch on a
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: few of the more interesting findings here. But first, what
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: jumped out at both of you guys from the poll?
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: What's interesting to you?
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: What jumped out at me is that the Warren surge
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: is real and it's real across a bunch of the
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: early states. She's in second place in this poll in Iowa.
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: She's in second place in South Carolina. So she's made
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: a huge amount of progress in a short period of
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: time in the early states and in the national numbers.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: And I think that if I were her campaign, I'd
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: be pretty happy about it.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: Lovett, what'd you think?
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: So two things. One, you know, we wanted to look at, right,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: who do you think would, so who do you support, right?
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: And that gives you some information. Then we asked these
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: two other questions. Who do you think is most likely
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: to beat Donald Trump? And who do you think would
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: make the best president? And I'll just be honest that
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: I thought there might be more difference there. But of course,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: then you remember that once, you know, when you ask
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: somebody a question, who do you support? Well, they're going
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: to say they're the best person to win. They're the
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: best person to lead.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: It's hard to say I support so-and-so, but I don't
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: think so-and-so would make the best president.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: So I'm actually interested in kind of trying to push
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: people on that, maybe in the next poll, like really
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: kind of force them to like try to attack their own,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: their own, everyone's a pundit now. So they're going to
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: defend their choice. But even with that kind of built-in
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: natural desire to defend your decision, you see that there
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: is kind of a pro-Biden electability contingent, and there is
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: a pro-Warren but worried about her electability contingent kind of
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: built into these numbers where people's second choices tend to
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: go toward Warren, where people concerned about electability tend to
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: go towards Biden. So I think you start to see
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: the kind of debate that's people kind of that people
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: are having around electability and Warren and Biden kind of
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: inside of these numbers.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I want to quickly say a few more things about
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Warren and this and then go right into that electability debate.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: So to your point, Tommy, the other piece of data
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: that shows a real Warren surge is we decided to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: ask people how closely you pay attention in the primary
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: and also how much do you know about all the candidates?
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: So Voters' preferences vary quite a bit based on how
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: much attention they've been paying. Warren leads with high candidate
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: awareness voters. These are people who recognized all the candidates
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: and said they'd heard a lot and know a lot
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: about all the candidates. And both Biden, so when you
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: do the horse race there, Warren's in the lead, then Biden,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: then Buttigieg, then Sanders. And then Kamala actually does a
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: little bit better too. So both Biden and Sanders do
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: much better with lower awareness voters. Among people who have
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: low awareness of all the candidates, Biden is at 44
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: among low awareness voters, and Sanders is at 28. Warren, Buttigieg,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and Harris get their best numbers with high awareness voters.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: So this is, as people pay closer attention to the race,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: they seem to gravitate more towards Warren, towards Pete, towards Kamala,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and less towards Bernie and Biden, which I think is
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: a very important characteristic here, too.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: It's really important for two reasons. One, I think that,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: you know, we've talked about this, that One of the
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: reasons I think Warren has been doing better is she
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: seems to be running a really good campaign.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: It's smart.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: She makes interesting choices. She's ahead of some other candidates
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: on issues, on some of the strategic decisions that the
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: campaign makes. And over time, low-awareness voters are going to
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: become high-awareness voters over time as we get closer and
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: closer to these votes.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Seems like it.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: The only caveat there that I wonder about, and we're
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: going to have to pull more, but Warren is also
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: leading with highly educated voters, more college-educated voters who tend
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: to pay more attention to this stuff. And low awareness
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: voters tend to be less educated voters who pay less attention.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: So future high awareness voters may not reflect current high
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: awareness voters.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Right. We don't know. It could be. We don't know.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: We don't know yet.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: And we don't care about the polls. That's like the
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: key thing about this poll. This is the first poll
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: by people that don't care about polls. That's what makes
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: this so awesome and such an important poll to pay
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: attention to because you shouldn't pay attention to. So you
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: should pay attention.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I will. That is funny.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Uh, but I will say the least, the least interesting
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: thing here is the horse race. And this is why
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: we asked so many more other questions. So you should
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: look at, so I want to talk about electability because
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: we really tried to dig in on this whole notion
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: of electability. Brian Boitler wrote a great piece on this.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: That's on cricket.com right now. But, um, as you mentioned,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: love it. Each candidate supporters tend to think their candidate
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: would be the best president, but there's a decent chunk
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: of all candidates supporters who feel that Biden is the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: likeliest to be Trump. 50% of Buttigieg supporters, 28% of
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Warren supporters and 20% of Sanders supporters believe this. Um,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: The other question we asked is, to figure out this
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: electability thing, are there candidates that you wouldn't vote for,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: even though you're going to participate in the Democratic primaries,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: that you wouldn't vote for if they were the nominee?
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: 83% to 86% of Democratic primary voters said they'd vote
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: for any of the top seven candidates.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Even de Blasio?
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Didn't crack the top seven. Didn't crack the top 17.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Didn't crack the top 20. So Biden and Warren get
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the best numbers there, but all seven are within the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: margin of error. That said, Warren's numbers do suggest more
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm than the others. The 23% who would either volunteer
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: or donate to her or gladly vote for her is
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: tied with Sanders for the most of any candidate. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: then the 65% who said they'd either gladly vote for
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: her or volunteer or donate for her is higher than
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: any other candidate. So we not only asked, who wouldn't
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: you vote for? We said, Which of these candidates would
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you go volunteer, knock on doors, really be happy to
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: vote for? And the enthusiasm for Warren is quite high
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: with Sanders and Buttigieg actually right below her.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: And with Biden, it's actually a little lower, the enthusiasm.
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: The other thing that's notable is that Biden is really
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: dominating among African-American voters. He's got 62 percent of African-American voters.
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: Kamala Harris is next with 11 percent. That would make
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: me very nervous if I were in the Biden campaign,
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: given the recent conversation about his anecdotes about segregationist senators
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: and civility in Washington. It would seem to me that
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: you should, I would be worried about that coming up
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: the debate.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: The other person who should be concerned about the African-American
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: vote is Pete Buttigieg because he received 1%. And to
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: receive 1% when you're actually polling that high overall is,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: just kind of shows you the breadth of the challenge
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: that he faces. And again, it's very, very hard to
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: win the nomination without doing very well among African-American voters
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: in the democratic party.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: I also think it was interesting.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: We, um, only 11% of Warren supporters said that they
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: chose her over their second choice because they think she's
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: likelier to be Trump.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: That's, that to me is a really interesting number. That's,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: that's where you start to see inside of these numbers
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: where the electability fears around Elizabeth Warren are very real
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: and very present in people's minds.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Well, so yeah, we, We asked a follow-up question of
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: those who chose their number one candidate because he or
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: she is likelier to beat Trump. So we asked, why
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: is your number two candidate less electable than the first
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: candidate you chose? 55% of those who ranked Warren second
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: because she was less likely to beat Trump did so
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: because they thought average Americans are less likely to like her.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: Those who ranked Kamala Harris number two did so for
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: the same reason, perceived likability, but by an even higher percentage, 67%,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: And this was also the top reason for those who
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: chose Buttigieg number second, though the number here was only
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: 44 percent.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: You contrast that with Sanders.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: The people who chose Bernie as their number two said
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: he wasn't as likely to win because he was too
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: far to the left. So it's very interesting that those
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: four candidates after Biden, the reasons why people think they're electable.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: And it's what everyone thinks. Sexism, racism, potential homophobia, like
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it's all there. And then Sanders does have this socialist left.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: You know. So it's a smaller percentage, but I think
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: it was very interesting. Anything else? Anything else to go
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: to you guys?
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: I think you really ran the gamut.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Yep. The impeachment thing I thought was interesting.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me that much. You know, Democrats
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: happily vote for someone who supported impeachment. They'd be pretty
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: pissed at somebody who actively tried to stop impeachment.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's 83 percent of support impeachment, 52 percent strongly,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: 57 percent. who support impeachment would be willing to vote
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: for a candidate who voted not to impeach Trump, but
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: 91% of those who oppose impeachment would vote for someone
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: who voted to impeach him. It just goes to show
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you that for Democrats, running for president at least, there
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: is no political cost to supporting impeachment, but there is actually.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: In the primary. Yeah, in the primary, there is a
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: political cost to opposing it.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: And many of them seem to have figured that out.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: So good for them.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: We have... So next time we'll talk, we'll be after
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: the debate.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Big debates.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: What do you guys think?
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Any... I mean, most people in this poll said they'd
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: be watching some or most of the debate. They're going
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: to be pretty interested, especially, of course, the high candidate
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: awareness voters. What are you guys looking for in this debate?
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: I'm really hoping that someone ends their candidacy at this debate.
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: I want to see Rick Perry forgetting what agencies he
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: would shut down and saying, oops. I want to see
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: Ben Carson literally getting lost on his way to the
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: stage or Marco Rubio getting unraveled by Chris Christie. Those
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: are the performances that I want to see to help
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: me narrow this thing down.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would like to see some real winnowing by,
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: you know, self-winnowing by real miscalculation. I'm really interested in that.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: I agree with Tommy. So we have the first night
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: is Warren as sort of one of the top candidates there.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: The second night, there are more top candidates, Biden and Sanders.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: Et cetera.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: We talked about this before. We're still looking for a
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: candidate who can articulate this moment, you know, in this
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: this terrifying, unsettling political moment in which so much is
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: on the line. And there's still time. These are all
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: candidates who are perfecting what they're saying. They're talking to people.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: They're listening to people. All of that is food for
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: their figuring out this bigger argument. And at any point,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: because you look at these numbers, yeah, Biden's winning. The
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: next two are Warren and Sanders. No one's running away
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: with this thing. I do sincerely believe that many of
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: these candidates, if they were to articulate a true kind
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: of compelling argument that appealed to a lot of people
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: could start to emerge. And so I just think every
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: moment where we're... And they should.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: Be able to do that in the six minutes they
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: have allotted.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to grab it.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I will say one last thing on that. It's interesting
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: in this poll too, what's driving Biden's perception of electability,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: obviously white guy, but more so than the other white
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: guys in the race, is people say his experience, right?
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: And we have been part of so many elections that
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: were change elections. And obviously this is a big change
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: election as well because people don't want Donald Trump. But
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: because of this fear that we've been talking about this
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: whole podcast, I think... There is this comfort with Joe
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Biden because of his experience that if I were some
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: of these other candidates, I would think about how to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: make people not just make the case against Donald Trump
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and make the case for yourself, but make people feel
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: comfortable with the idea of you as commander in chief
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: and the idea of you going toe to toe with
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and being able to beat him. You know, like,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: for example, if I was Elizabeth Warren, right, Elizabeth Warren
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: has a fuckload of experience. She set up the CFPB.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: She created it. She had the idea. She set it
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: up from beginning to end. she knows how to run
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: an agency, a government agency. No one else has created
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: a government agency on that stage. I'd maybe talk about
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: that a little bit. Kamala can talk about her time
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: as a prosecutor. Everyone can make a case also for
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: their experience, I think, that might help sort of siphon
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: off some of those Biden voters.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if I were Kamala Harris, that's another point just
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: looking at this poll. I do think of these electability
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: fears around people under Biden, to me, someone like Kamala Harris,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: I do think has an opportunity. And So far, to me,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: she has done a good job of saying, of putting
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: in people's minds, you can imagine me going toe-to-toe against
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: Like, you get that. I'm a prosecutor.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: I'm good at interrogating people. I think people who are
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: paying close attention kind of get that. For me, I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: think that her opportunity is to kind of put more
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: meat onto those bones. Like, okay, we get it. We
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: can see you going toe-to-toe to Donald Trump. What do
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: you want to do? Like, what is driving you to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: make this incredible decision to run for president at this moment?
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been a lot of emphasis on, like, I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: can be the one who can prosecute the case, but
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: it's always like, well, then what is the case?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: Look, the elephant in the room here is that Joe
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: Sestak just upended this whole thing.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I totally forgot that another candidate asked, and we did
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: not talk about that on the pod.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: You know what?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: Looks like we're running out of time. We're living in
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: a post-Sestak world. You're all laughing. He'll be here in
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: two weeks. One of you is going to talk to him.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: Do the Oscars play us off music?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: So we'll talk to you Friday after the debates on
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: this pod, but before that... We are going to, on
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday night of each debate, we are going
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: to stream our text thread conversation on YouTube and on
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Facebook alongside the debates.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: What an experiment this will be.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: How exciting this must be for all of you.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: It's going to be our Slack channel, but now you
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: can see it. A window.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: A window into a whole nother part of crooked media.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: And maybe because, you know, we won't be on Twitter,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and so maybe we'll forget that it's public and we'll
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: say some crazy shit.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going to let loose.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we'll be reacting and shouting and breaking it down
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: in real time. You can submit questions throughout the debates,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: and we might just discuss your question in the Slack thread.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Make sure you are following Crooked Media on Facebook and
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: YouTube to be able to see this. This is Wednesday
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: and Thursday night during the debates. Yeah, we'll be online
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: just chatting about it. So looking forward to that.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: Bye, guys.