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“How Trump can win.” · Pod Save America

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Could you imagine if I lose my whole life? What
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: am I going to do? I'm not going to feel
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country. I
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Later in the pod, I'll talk to the chair of
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the Michigan Democratic Party, LaVorah Barnes, about how the race
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: looks in one of the most important battleground states with
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: just 16 days left to vote. Before that, we'll talk
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: about the MAGA meltdown happening in Trump world, how the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: president can still win, and the latest garbage attack on
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden's family. But first, Love It, how was the show?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Great Love It or Leave It. Talked to Hari Kondabalu, W.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Kamau Bell, who were hilarious, and then I interviewed Dave
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Weigel from the Washington Post about what he's seeing on
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the campaign trail. It was a good time. Good time,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: hat by all.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Dave Weigel, man. Hardest work in... Road reporter in politics.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Just always out there.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's also, he's like one of the best
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: people about being on the ground and it's been harder
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to be on the ground.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Which sucks.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: One more quick note. If you haven't already, this is
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: the week to make a plan to vote. Do not wait.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: If you can, take advantage of in-person early voting. If
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: you'd like to vote by mail, get your ballot and
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: then figure out exactly when and where you'll drop it off.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: There are plenty of options to vote early and safely.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: If you need any help at all, we've got you covered.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Go to votesaveamerica.com slash plan to make your plan. Find
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: your voting location and vote as soon as possible. And
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: if you've already made a plan or if you've already voted,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: your work isn't done. You got to go help at
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: least five other people in your life make a plan
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to vote who don't already have one. That's what I'm
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: asking you guys to do. Because I'm sure a lot
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of you are just like, I've already voted. Don't talk
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: to me. There's other people that you know who have
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: just sitting there on their ballots.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: You know other people.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the news. With 16 days
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: left to vote, here are some of the headlines the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: president is getting. The Daily Beast. Trump is taking down
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: names as Republicans begin jumping ship on his, quote, totally
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: off the rails campaign. Axios. Trump's advisors brace for loss,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: point fingers. The New York Times reports that aides are
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: quietly conceding just how dire Trump's political predicament appears to be.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: The Washington Post reports that the mood inside the Trump
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: administration has been, quote, grim. CNN reports that former Trump
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: chief of staff John Kelly has told friends that Trump is, quote,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: the most flawed person he's ever known. And here is
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: some leaked audio of Republican Senator Ben Sasse talking about
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Trump on a phone call with his constituents.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: The way he kisses dictators' butts. I mean, the way
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: he ignores that the Uyghurs are in literal concentration camps
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: in Xinjiang right now. He hasn't lifted a finger on
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: behalf of the Hong Kongers. I mean, he and I
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: have a very different foreign policy. It isn't just that
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: he fails to lead our allies. It's that the United
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending,
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists. I don't
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: think the way he's led through COVID has been reasonable
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: or responsible or right. I'm worried that if President Trump loses,
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: as looks likely, that he's going to take the Senate
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: down with him. I'm now looking at the possibility of
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: a Republican bloodbath in the Senate. The debate is not
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: going to be, you know, Ben Sasse, why were you
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: so mean to Donald Trump? It's going to be what
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: the heck were any of us thinking that selling a TV-obsessed,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: It is not a good idea.
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  Speaker 2: That was Ben Sasse talking about the candidate he's going
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to vote for for president, Donald Trump. So before we
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: get to the shit show of Trump's campaign right now, Tommy,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: do you have a reaction to our two most recent
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Republican profiles in Courage, Ben Sasse and John Kelly?
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: So frustrating. So frustrating. I mean, look, I guess better
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: late than never. It's not the worst thing to have
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Ben Sasse say all of this in October before the election.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: But man, that wasn't a list of news stories. You know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Ben Sasse could have been speaking out about the Uyghurs
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: in concentration camps for years. But, you know, we'll set
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: that aside. Like, I hate these stories for so many reasons.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: We read all the same stuff in 2016 about how
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Trump was angling to buy a TV network and the
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: staff knew they were going to lose. And so, like,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: here we are again. No one should be celebrating on
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: the one yard line. John Kelly. Let's just pause there.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: The most flawed person you've ever known. Okay, that's great.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: That's lovely. No one said you had to work for him.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: No one said you had to rip kids away from
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: their families at the border. You chose to take that job.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: There's no honor in that kind of service. Here's an
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: idea for something you could do. A bunch of newspapers
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: reported that Trump questioned whether the service made by members
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: of the U.S. military was worth it while standing next
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: to you at your own son's grave. If you think
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: he's the worst person on the planet, why don't you
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: speak up about whether that's true or not? You're the
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: only one who knows for sure, and you can clarify.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: So again, I guess there's some political benefit to us
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: for having this stuff out there. I'm also grateful to
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: the lower level staffers who joined Republican voters against Trump
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: and are making these on the record sustained, potentially career
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: ending efforts to defeat him. But God, I'm so sick
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: of these leaked or half-assed comments, right? Or like John
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Kelly's Or Jim Mattis who say, well, we don't want
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: to get involved in politics. Well, when you decided to
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: take off the uniform and be Secretary of Defense or
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: the White House Chief of Staff, the most political job
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: in all of the U.S. government, you cross that line, right? So, like,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: you don't get to duck these questions now. It drives
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: me nuts.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Love it. What do you think? And do you find
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: either of these comments useful in some way?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Well, sure, it's useful. It's all useful. You know, Ben
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Sasse was quite muted when he thought he might face
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a primary and he thought he might want some of
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: those Trump voters. So no, no profile encouraged there. Yeah,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I would divide Republicans who have spoken out against Trump
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: into two categories for the country and for the record,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: like for the country are people who have taken great
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: personal risks to speak out. They have filmed ads.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: They have endorsed Joe Biden.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: They have been honest. They put their faces on camera.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: They've done it repeatedly. They've done it because they believe
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: it's what's in the best interest of the country. I
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: have no doubt that Ben Sasse believes what he says
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in that audio. I don't think he is just doing
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: it because he's trying to earn plaudits. But I do
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: think he and John Kelly are in some sense saying
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: it for the record. When we look back on this moment,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: they are on the record having issued these criticisms. But Mattis, Kelly,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: this is America in 2020. Put your fucking faces on camera.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: That's what matters. It matters. It matters when you say
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it to an Atlantic reporter so that it spreads around
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: DC or say it on a background call or say
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: it to friends or say it to Jeffrey Goldberg of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic and then go hide from people trying to
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: confirm it. It matters. It matters. So, you know, I
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: appreciate the people doing it. for the country. I'm glad
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: when people do it for the record, because I do
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: think it's of some use to have Trump tweeting at
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: a serious conservative and lambasting Ben Sasse on Twitter. I
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: don't think that should be his message. It's a good
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: distraction for us. But we should appreciate that distinction.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my view is I don't really give a shit
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: about Ben Sasse, what he has to say, who he
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: really is. Like, my mind in the last 16 days
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: is just like, pure political animal, what's going to help
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: us win.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I heard, I had read this
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: story about SAS and I knew it was leaked, but
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't know someone had the full audio that they
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: were playing until I was prepping for the pod. I'm like, why,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: why isn't that in an ad?
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: That should be on air.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Let's put, let's, I want Ben SAS's comments in front
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: of Republican and Republican leaning independent voters, because, you know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: you look at some of these stories about undecided voters
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: right now. I know they exist. They're out there. And,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: you know, they all say the same thing. They, They
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: sort of like either Donald Trump's policies or think that
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: as president, he hasn't done that bad of a job,
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: but they hate him. They're disgusted by him.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: And I do think that playing like Ben Sasse's comments
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: for some of these voters may give them the permission
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: structure to say, oh, here's a Republican who may agree
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: with me on a lot of policies, but he hates
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump, too. So maybe I can maybe I can
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: jump ship. He's obviously a coward. Everything you said is right.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: No, complete coward. But I'm just saying, like, let's get
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: this stuff in an ad.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: For sure, for sure. And look, I'm in the same boat, obviously.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: All I care about is what helps us win, of course,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of course. But when it comes to Ben Sasse, I
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: do find it just a little bit interesting about what's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: going to happen to Republicanism in the long haul, because
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Ben Sasse is a good example of someone who had
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a reputation of being serious, of being more intellectually honest
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: than most, of having genuinely insightful things to say that
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: were conservative, but worthy of discussion. And what the lesson
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: of Trump is, you can't be halfway to Trump and
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: walk away with your dignity.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: You just can't.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Because he has spent all of that capital these past
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: four years and emerges a shell of the kind of
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: politician he thought he would be.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about who's blaming who within the Trump campaign.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: The Washington Post reports that staffers and advisors are trying
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: to decide whether a potential loss, quote, should be attributed
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: to an undisciplined message, the coronavirus pandemic, or campaign spending
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and choices made by former campaign manager Brad Parscale. What
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: do you think, Tommy? Who's at fault here?
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, I can't believe that reporters put this stuff
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: in print. Like, yes, Brad Parscale burned through a ton
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: of money too quickly. They raised and spent A billion dollars.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: And that means that Trump hasn't been running ads in
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: places like Iowa since July. And now that the race
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: is competitive, he had a visit there last week. They
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: had to go back up on air. There's a competitive
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Senate race. It's a mess. But Trump hired Brad Parscale. Right.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: And so, yes, like flying to California a couple of
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: weeks before the election, really bad. But the. the fault
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: for winning or losing relies with Trump and Trump alone.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: There's no amount of campaign ads or strategy decisions that
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: can make up for their disastrous handling of the coronavirus.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: And as we were recording, someone sent me a tweet
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: from Donald Trump, where he's again criticizing Dr. Fauci for
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: making bad decisions about masks. And then he ends it
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: with also bad arm. Trump is making fun of Dr.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Fauci for throwing out the first pitch at that baseball
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: game and doing it badly right now. This happened like
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: as of a minute ago. So look, that's the problem.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Like that's the reason they're losing, you know, like not
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: because of Brad Parscale. He certainly didn't help. But the
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: real problem is mocking Fauci on an all staff call,
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: as he also did today, empowering people like Scott Atlas
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: that are basically like pandemic truthers and doing a disastrous job. Right.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Like that's your problem.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: In fairness to Trump, of course, he's making fun of
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Fauci's arm. Fauci is going to use that arm to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: vote for Joe Biden. And like that's something to keep
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: in mind.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: I just I just love that. Like everyone's like, you know,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: let's go through the spreadsheets to see where Brad spent
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: too much money or something like that. Meanwhile, we're looking
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: at headlines, like you said, about the Fauci thing, which
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: has gotten really out of control in the last 24,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: 48 hours. On a call with reporters today, Trump said Dr.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Fauci is a, quote, disaster, who is a, quote, bomb
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: every time he's on TV. He called other health officials idiots.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: He said Americans don't care about the pandemic anymore and
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: just think whatever. And then last night, there's an NBC
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: News headline. Trump mocks Biden for trusting scientists about COVID,
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: warns that he'll listen to the scientists if elected, which
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden just used as an endorsement.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Bizarre.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: There's Donald Trump. Donald Trump's out there being like, don't
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: you like Joe Biden? He's going to listen to the
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: scientists if you do. Yeah, no shit. Yeah.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, we really are in this sort of
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: decadent decline, last days of court. The guy whispering in
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Trump's ear is this crank radiologist named Scott Atlas. It's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the only person feeding him the kind of information he wants.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: The consensus is obviously where we all know it is
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: on masks and testing and all the rest.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, the bigger problem is that cases are exploding
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: right now. Like we are back up to really serious,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: scary numbers of new coronavirus cases. And everyone is predicting
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: that it's going to get worse as it gets colder.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: And Trump is attacking Dr. Fauci in campaign calls.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And right now. One of the holdups on stimulus is
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the fact that the white house is refusing to go
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: along with expanded testing. Why? Because Trump doesn't want to
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: do it. And Scott Atlas is telling him it's a
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: bad idea to test people and find out if they're asymptomatic.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: So they can't spread it to other people.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: We were just talking about that. Like there's, there's two
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: things I would love Joe Biden to bring up both
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: of these at the debate to like pretty easy to
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: understand points. Um, There was that story that the Trump
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: administration was going to mail masks to every single American
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: and then Trump didn't want them to because he didn't
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: believe in masks. And then the point you just made, Lovett,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: that now we know that there was a plan to
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: do more expanded testing and Scott Atlas and Donald Trump
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: were just like, no, we don't want to do more testing.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: So they didn't want to hand out masks and they
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: didn't want to do more testing. Like, pretty easy to
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: understand how badly he fucked up the pandemic. Now, he did...
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: In a sign of how the money issues for the campaign,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: you know, might be problematic, Trump did spend Sunday with...
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: you know, 17 days to the election here in Orange County,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: here in California, down in Orange County, raising money because
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: his campaign has about half the cash on hand that
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Biden does. And that's because of pretty weak fundraising and
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the crazy spending. Tommy, how like real and problematic do
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: you think the Trump campaign's money issues are in the homestretch?
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: So I don't think any amount of paid advertising is
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: going to really overwhelm the broader news cycle. But like
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: there are key states where Trump is getting outspent by
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Biden and his allies. So the Times had a big
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: piece on spending over the weekend. And if you look
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: at states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Biden is basically
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: has a two to one advantage in those states. And
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Biden's also spending in places like Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska. They're
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: spending a little in Georgia. They even went up with
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: like a six million dollar buy in Texas. So it
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: has allowed Biden to spread the field. It gives him
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: a lot more pass to 270. It also I think like. Yes,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: the value of ads can be overstated. But I think
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: like when you are on the air in a market
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: and your opponent is not or is on the air
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: like half as much as you are, that actually can
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: move the needle. So I doubt any of this is determinative. But,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: you know, look, clearly it's built awareness of who Biden is,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: his plans, his record. It's helped his favorables go up.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Hopefully it can help drown out some of this last
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: minute crap. But yeah, like a candidate coming off the
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: campaign trail to fly to California and on what was it,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: October 18th or whatever it was yesterday. Like that is
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: an absolute failure of strategy. Utter failure.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we obviously love a good Trump and disarray story.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: But in each of these pieces, there are also Trump
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: officials saying that they still see multiple paths to victory,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: even if they are narrow. This morning, Trump campaign manager
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Bill Stepien told reporters, quote, he feels better about our
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: pathway to victory than we have at any point in
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: the campaign. And it's not just the Trump campaign saying
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: that over the weekend. Several outlets published excerpts from a
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: memo written by Biden campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, where
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: she wrote the following. The reality is that this is
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: a far closer race than some of the punditry we're
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest. In the
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: key battleground states where this election will be decided, we
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: remain neck and neck with Donald Trump. Yikes.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Love it.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: First, the Trump campaign still sees a few net paths
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: to a narrow electoral victory. What are they?
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, so... They are looking at paths where
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: they think if they can win Florida, Pennsylvania and Arizona,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: they don't need Michigan and they can win maybe one
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: vote in Maine.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: There's like a bunch of different paths where they don't
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: think they need Florida to win. If they have Florida,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: things get very easy for them.
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: They can win Florida. They can win North Carolina. They
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: don't need Pennsylvania. They don't need Michigan, but they need Arizona.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: They're looking at paths where if they lose Florida and
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: they lose Michigan, they can still win with a vote
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in Maine. Wisconsin, Arizona, but then they need Nevada, right?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Like there's like a few different routes for them. But
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: one of the things that is striking about it is
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: if you just go and sort of look at the map, right?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Like you move Florida and Pennsylvania over, right? You can
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: imagine them going together. And then all of a sudden we're,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: it's 2016 and our stomachs are in a knot and
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: we're panicked and we need to win everything that's left, right?
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Like The lesson of 2016 is like every state doesn't
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: run elections independently. They will move together. And we don't
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: know exactly what surprises there will be on election night,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: but there will be surprises. Like there will be surprises.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Now, you have to
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: take all this with a grain of salt, of course, because,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: you know, campaigns that are behind lie and make it
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: sound like things are better than they are. I thought
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: it was interesting sort of digging into what Stepien's different
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: paths there is that they don't feel very good about Wisconsin.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: almost all their paths to victory have them losing Wisconsin. Um,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: so they feel, they don't feel great about that. They
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: do feel very good about Florida. They think that Florida
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: is easy. At least that's what they say. And then
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: it seems like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and maybe Michigan and Nevada
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: are all four States where they feel, um, they feel
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: like the race is tight, but they might be able
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: to pull it out. And then of course I should
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: say they feel He, at least in that story, said
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: he felt good about North Carolina. But there's an ABC
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: News story this morning that said Trump officials are suddenly
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: not feeling good about North Carolina. But who the fuck knows? Tommy,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: what advantages does the Trump campaign still have right now?
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: What are some of the reasons they think they can
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: still pull this off?
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Trump still dominates the news cycle like no
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: one we've ever really seen. It has been quite the
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: net negative for him lately. But that still is a
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: lot of power. And it worries me. His ability to
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: get the press to report on basically anything he wants
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: is a huge advantage. We don't really know the impact
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: of potential voter suppression or how voter tendencies might have
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: changed because of the pandemic. We can't really understand, I
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: don't think, how much all this disinformation and these conspiracy
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: theories that are flying around is impacting voters. I'm not
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: suggesting there's some big foreign intel operation, but you are
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: seeing sort of QAnon or QAnon adjacent stuff coming up anecdotally.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: It's reaching millions of people on Facebook. I don't think
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: we really know how that cuts. We know that Republican
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: voter registration has increased in some states. Maybe there's this
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: big surge of like white men who are going to
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: vote that we're not seeing in polls right now. We
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: know that Trump is pretending the pandemic's not happening and
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: doing big rallies and having his field team do in-person canvassing.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Maybe that will pay dividends. Maybe undecideds will break to him.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Maybe the polling is off, right? So like those are
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: all the major caveats we see out there. I do
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: think like the thing people need to know is like
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: 90% of Trump's past victory involve him winning Florida. So
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: that's a big piece of this for them. And for Biden,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: his easiest path is basically win the Hillary states, win Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: and he's at 278 electoral votes and this thing is over.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: So there's just a lot more optionality for Biden now.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I would just add two things to the list that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Tommy just mentioned. We talked about spending. Sheldon Adelson just
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: decided to dump $ 75 million into the race. And two,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Fox News is an in-kind contribution every single night for
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: three hours a night worth billions of dollars in free advertising.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: They're pushing out the latest sort of shit from Giuliani.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: They will be helping him all the way down the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: home stretch. And it's actually, I think, something that was
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: also true in 2016 that maybe we're forgetting, which is
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: There was a Hillary advantage in the closing days of
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: that race too, but Trump was able to overcome it.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: it because of the kind of shadow campaign other organizations
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: were running around the kind of chaotic, floundering operation that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: he was running. And we're seeing the same thing now.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the fear from the beginning has been
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: that the Trump campaign would register a whole bunch of
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: non-college educated white voters, specifically, as you noted, Tommy, men
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: in some of these swing states that are Trumpy kind
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: of voters, but didn't vote in 16. So and look,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: in some of the registration data, we see that they
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: succeeded in registering some number of new Republicans. And then
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: the other scary thing is there's a pool of registered
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: non-college educated white voters who just simply sat out. In
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: 2016 and 2018, but have been registered to vote and
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: that they would turn out those and they do have
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: this very big ground game. And, you know, I think
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Priorities USA, like a month ago, they did a presentation.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: That's the big Democratic super PAC. And they said, if
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: you just increased, you know, sort of white working class
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: turnout in some of these swing states by 4% and
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: you decreased turnout among voters of color. by 4% in
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: some of these swing states, suddenly it's a razor's edge
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: race and Trump could easily win it. And I think
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: that's what they're looking at. I mean, do you think, Tommy,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: do you think Jen's warning about the race being close
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: is what the Biden campaign is seeing in their polling?
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Or do you think she wrote that memo to avoid complacency?
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: I know for a fact that it was part messaging
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: and they are warning against complacency. And I think that
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: is smart, but there's some reality to it, right? Like
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: there have been polls that have Biden up like eight
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: points in North Carolina. The Biden campaign, does not think
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: that those are real. They think Biden is closer to
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: like one or two points up in North Carolina. There
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: was a poll, a Quinnipiac poll, a good poll that
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: had Biden up 11 points in Florida. The Biden campaign
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: thinks that is nonsense. The race is like three or
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: four points. So their message is take nothing for granted,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: keep donating, keep volunteering, like run through the tape. But
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: we all have to remember that we've never voted in
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: a pandemic before, one, and margins of error exist for
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: a reason. And so if it's a plus or minus
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: 4% margin of error, that margin applies to both numbers, right?
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: So you could see an eight-point swing in a poll
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: with a plus or minus four MOE. And that's just
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: something to remember. Polls are not determinative. They're snapshots in time.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: They're imperfect. The averages that FiveThirtyEight and all these sites
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: are doing is better. But again, we've never voted in
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: a pandemic. We just don't know. So we got to
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: work hard.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I told you, boys... that, uh, there
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: was a one in 10 shot. I put a bomb
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in your car. You'd be fucking terrified.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: To start it.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Unless I was Donald Trump. And then I'd say it's
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: fake news. There's no bomb.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: It's fine. He's just an Eric.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, I get, look, you know, Jen said
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the race isn't up double digits. They don't have it
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: like that. You know, if you look at the state
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: polls right now, they sort of add up to a
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: seven or eight point national lead not quite the 10
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: 11 point lead that you see in some of the
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: averages so you know it could be all uh that
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: that could be what what she means by that but
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: it it's close in a lot of these swing states
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: and partly it's close because again as i was just
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: saying like we don't know what the turnout's going to
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: be that polls are only as accurate as the type
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: of electorate that ends up turning out and that is
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: just as much art as it is science sometimes figuring
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: that out so And I do, the other worry I
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: have is like rejected ballots, right? All these people are
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: voting by mail and by all these people, I mean
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: mostly Democrats, right? The disparity between Democrats voting by mail
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: and Republicans voting in person is huge. And so if
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: there are a bunch of rejected ballots, it's going to
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: hurt Democrats more. So that is the other X factor
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: here that's sort of unnerving.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: One other just, you know, things that are happening that
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: you might not think about, right? Well, when the electorate
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: shifts redder as we get closer and closer to election day,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the kind of shit Trump's pulling that's designed to motivate
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: his base will matter more for them than it would
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: in the opposite for us, right? Like if they're going
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: to be pushing misinformation for the next two weeks really,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: really hard to build up to election day, like that
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: could work. That could manifest in a bunch of Trump
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: people showing up who aren't telling pollsters right now that
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: they're planning to vote.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Or a bunch of people who might be voting for
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden deciding to stay home because they're so turned
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: off by both candidates, which is the other thing that
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: I really worry about. So any of the Trump campaign's
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: paths to victory require destroying Joe Biden's very favorable image
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: with voters. Now that Sleepy Joe, Senile Joe, Antifa Joe,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: all that hasn't worked. They're back to where they started,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: which is Joe Biden criminal mastermind. You will all recall
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump was impeached because he extorted the Ukrainian
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: government to launch a sham investigation into Joe Biden and
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: his family. Well, last week, Rudy Giuliani and federally indicted
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Steve Bannon gave Rupert Murdoch's New York Post a bunch
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: of emails they say they got from a Trump-loving computer
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: repair shop owner in Delaware. who says he took them
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: off a laptop that Hunter Biden brought in for repair
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: in April of 2019. The repair shop owner also reportedly
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: gave the laptop to the FBI, which is reportedly investigating
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: whether the emails are linked to a foreign intelligence operation,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: which might make sense because Rudy has been known to
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: work with at least one Russian agent to dig up
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: dirt on the Bidens.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Can we just also just please note, because it's my
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: favorite part of the story, that the repair shop owner
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: who apparently ID'd Hunter Biden himself said on the record
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: that he's legally blind. So just let me know how
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: that identification was made. There's something else about a sticker,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: but again, worth noting.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I want to get to why all of this seems suspect,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: but Lovett, what are the various allegations that Bannon and
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Rudy are trying to push here based on the content
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: of this laptop? And again, just a warning for everyone,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: we have to go down- Every once in a while,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: we have to do this. We have to go deep
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: down a rabbit hole of Fox News universe here and
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: right wing universe to really unpack all of this.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, one of the key allegations from this
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: weekend is that Joe Biden is a supportive father who
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: loves his son, even as he's struggling to overcome addiction.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Like that's one of the hardest hitting piece of this.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: That's one of the big ones.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It's actually hard to say exactly what they're alleging. Was
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: there some money exchange, some corrupt deal between Burisma and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Hunter and Joe Biden? like it's very similar to Benghazi
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: in the sense that the core facts are quite well
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: known and they have been investigated, right? Joe Biden has
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: been found to have had no wrongdoing by two Republican
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: investigations in Congress. And the most important facts, like the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: key part of this story, the part that they have
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to ally to make it sound like there's corruption is
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Hunter Biden was paid by a company in Ukraine. Joe Biden,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: advice president, did the opposite of influence peddling. He did
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the opposite of what that company wanted. He did what
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was right, what the US government wanted, and it hurt
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that company. It's the opposite of Hunter's influence having any effect, right?
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: That's the facts, right? Burisma would have wanted something to happen.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden said, no, we're doing the opposite of that.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And everything else is an effort to find something that
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: sounds bad, that looks bad, that that sounds like what
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: corruption should be, that sound like what influence peddling is.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: But they don't have that. So they spread these sort
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: of like misbegotten emails and what have you to try
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: to create some sort of illusion of malfeasance.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Tommy, what are some of the many reasons the entire
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: story is almost certainly bullshit?
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, to love its point, I mean, the
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: underlying allegations that somehow Joe Biden used his position in
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: the government to help Burisma and help his son has
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: been thoroughly investigated by Republican-led congressional committees and found to
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: be untrue. The latest kind of twist of the knife
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: here is a suggestion based on a wild interpretation of
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: an email that maybe Joe Biden himself got money or
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: a kickback or some sort from one of these deals.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: But the problem with that is that Joe Biden has
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: released like a decade, many more maybe, worth of tax returns.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: So if Joe Biden got some big influx of money
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: from Burisma, it would show up in those tax returns
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: or he has committed massive tax fraud, right? So there's
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: just a million parts of this underlying allegation that seem
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: completely false. Now, some of the people who wanna make
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: this bad for Biden are trying to get into a
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: game of like, are these emails real or not? And
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: the Biden campaign doesn't want to go down that path
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: because all of a sudden you have to confirm or
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: deny everything Rudy Giuliani says. And I think that's nutty.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: But like, there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: of all of this reporting.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the supposed bombshell in the New York Post story
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: is that maybe Hunter introduced Joe Biden at one point
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: to one of his someone he was working with at
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: this Ukrainian company. That's it. And then the Biden people
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: were like, well, that's not on the vice president's official schedule,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: so it wouldn't have been any kind of serious meeting.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And they're like, well, could he have possibly just said
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: hi to him once? And they're like, well, we don't know.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: But even if that's true, so Joe Biden says hi
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: to a Ukrainian executive in the worst case? That's the bombshell?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: That's why you have to come back to like, there's
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: going to be a lot of noise. They rely on
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the fact that things that are like, investigations shaped are
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: covered like investigations. Like the core allegation is false, right?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Like whatever kind of shit that gets turned up about this,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: we know what happened at the time. They're public, it's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: public information.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, there's a few other things too. Like,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: you know, Tommy mentioned the Republican led Senate committees that
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: couldn't find anything, even though Ron Johnson, dipshit from Wisconsin,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: admitted that the investigations were purely political to hurt Joe
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Biden in the election, and they still couldn't find anything.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani admitted he went to the New York Post,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: admitted this because he didn't think any other outlet would
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: take it, or if they did, they might fact check it.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Multiple other outlets reported that the New York Post reporter
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: who wrote the story refused to put his byline on
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: it because he didn't think it was credible. And this
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: morning we learned that Fox News passed on the story
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: because they didn't think it was credible, though it didn't
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: stop all of their fucking opinion journalists in the primetime
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: lineup from talking about it nonstop for the last week.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: But the news section of Fox said, no, this story
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: is too crazy for us.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Rupert Murdoch basically decided that he wanted to make
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: this a thing. And so he did. The lead author
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: on the story, has no other stories written for the
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: New York Post, and until recently was a producer for
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Sean Hannity. And her Instagram apparently is just full of
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: pictures of her with like MAGA people. So, you know,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: that's kind of the level of sophistication we're dealing with.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: A lot of credibility.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, let's talk about how the media has handled
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: this in general. You know, Twitter initially banned all links
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: to the New York Post story, saying it violates their
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: rules about distributing private personal information and their rules against
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: distributing hacked material. They then backtracked to say they'll only
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: remove such content if it's distributed directly by hackers or
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: their accomplices. Facebook said it reduced the visibility of the
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: story until it could be fact-checked. No non-MAGA news outlet
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: could confirm any of the story. Most of them reported
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: it rather skeptically, although a CBS reporter who asked Biden
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: about the New York Post story got a fairly annoyed
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: response from the former vice president. Lovett, how do you
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: think the press and social media platforms have handled this?
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by what Twitter did. I just was
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: genuinely surprised by it. It's a strange thing. Like this is,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I think is a problem for two weeks and four
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: days from now, but like there was no coherence at
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: all to Facebook or Twitter's decision-making around what it considers
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: misinformation and what it doesn't. I get that it's a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: really hard question, but like banning it and then unbanning
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it and basically giving the right wing this like talking
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: point that they're being kind of manhandled by Twitter, I
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: think is like a strange thing to do. I think
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: what I saw is like a mix of people kind
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: of trying to figure out how to cover this appropriately, right? Like,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I think that there's, you know, there is obviously an
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: important story here. I think the question is, what do
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you think that story is? Is it the story that
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani is trying to say? Or is it the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: story about why Rudy Giuliani is doing this and how
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: he's doing it? And as part of that, an examination.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Of what this material is.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: To me, like, that should be the core of this story. Like,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: what is the chain of custody of this information? Why
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: is Rudy Giuliani doing this? Who is he partnered with?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: What does it tell us about the way right wing
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: misinformation and disinformation and Russian intelligence operations really work? What
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: does it say when you have Trump's handpicked intelligence chief
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: on television doing his dirty work as if he's a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: member of the campaign?
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: There's like that to me is the bigger story than
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: whatever they're trying to pump out of the New York Post.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Tommy, how do you like as a having been a
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: press communication staffer on a lot of campaigns, like there's
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: always a balance when stories like these come out where
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: You want to knock them down, but then you also
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: don't want to give them too much oxygen because then
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: everyone's talking about it. Like, how do you think the
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Biden campaign should handle this?
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think at a staff level, they're doing
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: the right thing. Like they can't get into this game
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: where every piece of misinformation or everything that Rudy Giuliani
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: says gets thrown to them to confirm or deny.
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Like you see a lot of people on Twitter right
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: now saying, you know, Democrats are suggesting that this is
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Russian disinformation. but the campaign refuses to confirm or deny
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: whether these emails are real. I just don't think that's
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: a fair standard. You can't say that Rudy Giuliani can
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: work with some Ukrainian goober who's been sanctioned by the
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Trump administration and called a Russian asset and then leave
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: it to the Biden people to figure out what to
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: do with that. I think the debate is a different story, right?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Because associated with the substantive critique of Hunter Biden and Burisma,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: and we just talked through all the ways That is garbage.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: There is a real human element here, which is the
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: New York Post releasing private, personal information, not about a candidate,
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: but about his son and about his grandkids. And so, like,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: it's just so gross to see text messages from a
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: father to his son who is struggling with addiction get
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: splashed out for all the world to see. It is
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: so gross to see text messages from Hunter Biden to
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: his daughter treated like... There should be public information because
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: it somehow makes the rest of this garbage the New
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: York Post is peddling more credible. So I would want
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Biden to sort of focus on that human element and
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: how gross it was and sort of repeat what he
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: said at the debate, which is like, my son struggled
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: with addiction. He's in recovery. I love him. I respect
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: him for it. What Rudy Giuliani and your surrogates are
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: saying is disgusting. It's offensive to anyone who has someone
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: in their life with a substance abuse problem. And I'm
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: not going to make this about families, but I can
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: tell you what I will do as president is I'm
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: not going to use the office that I hold to
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: steer taxpayer dollars into the family business the way you have.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to install an incompetent schmuck like Jared
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Kushner in my White House because he's my son-in-law and
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: then put him in charge of the pandemic response. I'd
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: want to go a little bit on offense with this,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: but in a way that is not fully down in
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: the dirt.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: You know, I would say your children have used the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: presidency as a business opportunity. And those aren't my words.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: That's what Republican Senator Ben Sasse said on a call
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: last week. Yeah. I would put it in Ben Sasse's mouth.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: I agree Biden should go on offense. I was like,
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I find myself just really sad, like having to read
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: some of those texts and feeling really bad for Hunter
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: and the family and the grandkids and everyone who've gone through,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: who've gone through a family member having addiction. And like,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: it's not only morally repugnant, by the way, like, I
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: don't think that fucking works. Like there is so, how
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: many families in this country have struggled with a family
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: member who's had an addiction issue? Like millions and millions,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: not just Democrats, Trump voters, right? Like that cuts across
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: all demographics, all party lines. Like going out there and
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: gleefully mocking a family's addiction. I just don't think it's a,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a great political play.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also, you know, in those messages, you see, like,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I saw like, you know, Eric Trump and Don, Don Jr.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Sort of gleefully tweeting this, right?
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: And all we have seen, if they're true, are signs
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of a good father showing an incredible amount of love
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: for his family. That's what they managed to reveal to
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: try to kind of, to smear the Biden family. And
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: it is a testament to just how kind of, how
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: low this operation that these people cannot see that this
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: is not an attack. It's not bad for Joe Biden.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: It's just a human, It's a human story. And they're
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: so inside of this evil Trump orbit. It has broken them.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And they think that this is appropriate.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: That's all. All right.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: We have time for a few questions before the interview.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: Questions.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Stacey Smith-Clayman via Facebook asks, talk about Texas and our
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: early voting turnout so far. What does it mean? We
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: can back up and start to talk about early voting turnout.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Reading early voting tea leaves in general. Anyone want to
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: take a stab at that?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's exciting. Don't do it. I'm glad to see the turnout.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: It's really exciting to see people showing up. If we
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: waited four years for this moment, let it motivate you.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Let it excite you. Let it inspire you. Don't take
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: any aspect of it for granted whatsoever.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Why is reading the tea leaves on early voting turnout
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: not the most accurate way to find out whether we're
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: ahead or not?
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, this is true in any election.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: We know based on polling that because of the asymmetric
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: information around the pandemic and voting itself, people who are
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: voting for Biden are tending to vote earlier by mail
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and people who are going to vote for Trump are
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: planning to do it in person. It's a huge, huge disparity.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: So even in a normal year, you can't read a
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: lot into it. But now it's all it tells us
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: is that Democrats are voting, but we would know that anyway.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the other issue, too, is you can't really determine
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: who's ahead by party registration, when one of the reasons
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: that Biden has had a big polling lead, if the
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: polling lead is true, is that he is pulling a
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: lot of Republicans and independents, especially independents, in addition to
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: just Democrats. So if you just see early voting, that's like, D,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: this number, R, this number, non, you know, independent or
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: no party, this number, It's really hard to find out
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: who's ahead then. And then, like you said, it's apples
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: and oranges in a year where we've never had this
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: many people vote by mail. So it's good to see enthusiasm,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: but that's it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It's also the opposite, right? There are counties where Trump
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: won by 20 points, but there's a Democratic registration advantage
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: because there are a lot of former Democrats who voted
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: for Trump in 2016 and probably will again. Yeah.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Alex Medrano via Facebook. Is there any way we can
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: get back into the Iran nuclear deal if Biden is elected?
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: How long will it take for the US to regain
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: its reputation on the world stage after all the damage
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Trump has done in terms of foreign policy? World O.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, the reputation question is, is it going to
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: be a generational problem? So good luck with that, Joe. Yeah,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: he can get right back in the Iran nuclear deal
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: tomorrow and then hopefully renegotiate a stronger follow-on agreement that
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: extends it. I'm hoping that that's one of the first
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: things that Biden does if he wins, because right now,
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: We should be clear that we are much less safe.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: Iran is enriching uranium at levels that they were forbidden
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: from doing under the Iran nuclear deal. And on top
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: of that, the Trump administration is putting more and more
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: sanctions on them and just destroying their economy, destroying their
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: ability to get in medical supplies in the middle of
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: a pandemic. It is really a bloodthirsty, vindictive, horrible policy
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: that is being implemented on the Iranian regime. And I'm
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: obviously no fan of the leadership in that country, but
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: you have a bunch of people trying to live through
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: a pandemic and they're just crushing them. And it is
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: deeply fucked up.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: All right, last question. Julie Finn Bakey via Facebook asks,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: at what point is it too late, not effective to
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: donate to candidates? I'm thinking specifically of Senate candidates. Can
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: my money still help Doug Jones or Gary Peters? Are
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: donations useful right up to election day or is there
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: a cutoff beforehand where it becomes too late to place
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: ads or send out mail?
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: You take that one.
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: I think, I mean... maybe not on election day, but
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I think in these last couple of weeks, your money
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: is very effective, right? Like campaigns place last minute buys
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: all the time. They can go up on air really fast.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: There's also an addition to advertising. That's not just where
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: the money's all spent. There's also a field operation. There's
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: ballot chase operations to make sure that you go find
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: voters who haven't returned their ballot yet. Like there are
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: so many things campaigns can spend money on. towards the
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: end and if they are hurting for cash or they
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: are being outraised or outspent by their opponent then yes
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: that money helps your money tends to help most in
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: close races and especially some of the down ballot races
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: where it doesn't take a lot of money to suddenly
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: have a cash advantage right like that's why we've been
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: raising money in our fuck gerrymandering fund for a lot
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: of state legislative races um we've been trying to do
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: things like you know on thursday's pod we told you
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: about that poll in doug jones's race in alabama doug
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: jones raised how much was it tommy over the weekend.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Uh, they didn't, that wasn't an external number.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, sorry.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, so we, we tried to raise a
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: bunch of money for, um, Doug Jones's race over the
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: last couple of days.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Can we keep in that Tommy knows the internal number?
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Cause I think it's cool.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Well that, you know, they, they reached out to us
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: cause they were looking for some help raising online. And
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: I do think it speaks to John's broader point, which
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: is like Doug Jones is someone who is, uh, uh,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: in a really tight race and a really hard state.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: And they think that they have a little, if they
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: can get a little more money in to go up
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: on air and do more in these closing weeks that
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: they might be able to win. So we'll see.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: So maybe, maybe when it comes down to like the
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: day before the election, maybe you don't donate, but up
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: until then keep donating. Cause, uh, it could help a lot.
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: Um, all right.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: When we come back, uh, we'll have my interview with
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Lavora Barnes, who is the chairwoman of the Michigan democratic party.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party. Thanks for coming on the pod.
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. It's cool
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: to be here.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Good to have you. So I want to start with
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump's trip to Michigan on Saturday, where he told
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: Governor Whitmer to end a stay at home order that
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: hasn't existed since June. And then when the crowd chanted,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: lock her up, he said, lock them all up. Obviously,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: that is dangerous and horrific. How do you think voters
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: react to that sort of thing, especially after their governor
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: was the target of a domestic terror plot?
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Here's the thing that the voters here in Michigan know
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: that this governor stepped up and took care of us
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: in a way that many other governors did not in
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: their states, and certainly in a way that Donald Trump
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: did not for this nation. And they're grateful to her
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: for that. So to hear the president of the United
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: States and his supporters suggest that somehow she needed to
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: be stopped or should be locked up I think is
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: a little bit scary to our voters. I think they
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: understand the danger that our governor is in. There's a
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: terror plot out there. Who knows what other plots are
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: out there? We cannot have a president who incites that
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: sort of violence and hatred. It needs to stop. It's dangerous.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: It puts her in danger. It puts all of us
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: in danger. And the fact that he doesn't care about
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: that should frighten the voters, frankly.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the race. 2016 was a bad year
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: for Michigan Democrats. 2018 was a great year for Michigan Democrats.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Can you talk about what changed between those two elections
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: and what lessons from 2018 specifically you guys have applied
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: to the 2020 race?
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: So I'll start with the lesson from 2016, which was
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: that we as a state party, we're not prepared with
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: a ground game. We had not been organizing in a
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: grassroots way as a state party leading up to 2016.
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: And what we did when we woke up after that
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: 2016 election was to build that ground game. We started
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: a project we called Project 83, which is for the
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: 83 counties here in Michigan, so that we would have
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: organizing activity in every county of the state starting in
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: 2017 and not stopping. And we haven't stopped all the
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: way through till 2020. So obviously that paid dividends for
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: us in 2018. And we continued that work on the
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: ground all the way through so that right up until
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: COVID turned us into a virtual campaign. We were on
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: the doors having conversations with voters and and visiting their
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: neighborhoods all the time, not just showing up right at
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: the end of the election to ask people for a vote,
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: but having good conversations with voters about issues that matter
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: to them and how Democrats would respond to those issues
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: and what's important about participating in the election and supporting Democrats.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: It also helps that in 2018, we ran a slate
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: of badass women who worked hard, who ran all over
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: the state, made sure they were in every part of
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: the state, having gone through those conversations with voters everywhere,
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: I call it now a full Whitmer when you win
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: all of the counties. And and it makes a big
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: difference to actually show up everywhere and have those those conversations.
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: And we're doing that again in 2020.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Well, so obviously, you know, Governor Whitmer won by such
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: a large margin that she earned a huge share of
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: voters who actually cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2016.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: What share of those sort of Trump Whitmer voters do
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: you think that Joe Biden needs to win the state
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: in this year?
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: So as you know, I think as everybody knows, we
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: lost in 2016 by 10,704 votes, the tightest margin in
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: the country. So what I tell everybody is that those 10,704
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: votes are in your neighborhood, 2.2 votes per precinct. So
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: our goal is to go find those 2.2. votes plus more.
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: So I want the full Whitmer Trump voter to come
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: out and vote for Joe Biden and then some. And
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: I think that we can get there. This feels good
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: here on the ground here in Michigan.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: One of the big issues in 2016 was a steep
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: drop in turnout among Black voters. What has the party
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: in the Biden campaign been doing since then to energize
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: communities of color?
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: Great question. So one of the first things we did
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: was open and keep open offices in those cities where
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: people of color are the majority. So Detroit, an office
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: in Detroit that stays open all the time that has
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: staff that's sort of become a community center. And it's
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: been open even during COVID. People go in there masked
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: up and socially distanced. It's where they can go get
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: a sign or whatever they want and volunteer. But those
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: offices stay open because we need to continue to have
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: conversations in those communities all the time. We need to
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: stop being the candidates who show up to go to
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: church in October and then disappear until it's time to
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: get elected again and show up to go to church
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: in October. So we've been in these communities, having conversations
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: with these voters, supporting these communities around the issues that
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: are important to them, whether it be water shutoffs or
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: redlining or just clean water in their homes, like in Flint,
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: all the time. We can't just show up for the vote.
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: We have to be there for the community. And that's
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: what we've been doing.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Michigan was hit pretty hard by COVID, especially early in
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. How do you think that experience has shaped
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: people's political views in the state? Obviously, I'm sure there's
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: a huge number of people in Michigan who have a
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: special appreciation for how scary and serious this virus is.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And of course, we also saw at the beginning, there
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: were anti-lockdown rallies at the Capitol. So how has the
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: pandemic sort of shaped the politics of the state?
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: The first thing is that this governor's response to the
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: pandemic has provided for us a stark contrast between how
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: Trump has handled this virus and how we've handled it
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: here in Michigan. And I think that makes it easy
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: for us to have that conversation about the need for
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: change in Washington is to just point to what's happened
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: here in Michigan and what's different. Number two, I think
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: that the governor and the lieutenant governor have recognized how
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: hard this virus hit the black community and have stepped
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: up to make sure that they began to put in
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: place healthcare beyond just COVID, but healthcare resources for the
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: communities that were hit so hard by this virus, something
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: that the federal government has not done. And that's something
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: that we can remind folks over and over again, that
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: when you have Democrats in leadership, folks who care in
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: leadership can really make a difference in people's lives. And
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: then finally, I think the callous disregard for life that's
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: been shown over and over again by the Trump administration
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: really hits home here in Michigan, where I don't know
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: a single soul who doesn't know someone who has had
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: or someone who has passed away from COVID. It is
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: a painful part of our lives And the fact that
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: this administration just doesn't seem to care makes us angry
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: and makes us all want to vote.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And how have registration efforts been going with the pandemic?
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Do you still feel good about where you guys ended up?
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: So registration is hard because so much of what we
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: would do to register voters would be in person and close.
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: So we stopped registering, frankly, for a while as COVID
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: came in. But what we have in place is a
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: terrific secretary of state. who recognized that the voter registration
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: efforts that we all, as a family, not just the Democrats,
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: would undertake were stopped or slowed by COVID. And she
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: has done some terrific work making it possible for folks
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: to register to vote online and has been pushing hard
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: to get folks to register. So she just announced that
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: she's got over 100,000 new registrants that came through programs
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: that she built out and that she's been pushing to
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: get folks registered. So yes, we feel good, but luckily
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: we can register folks right up to and on election
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: day and we're not stopping because I know that there
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: are young folks out there who turned 18, my son
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: is one of them who who needed to get registered.
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: We walked him into the clerk's office and got him registered.
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: And we need to make sure that we're doing that
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: all over the state with folks who need to get
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: themselves registered, who haven't been into the secretary of state's
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: office because of covid. And therefore, I haven't gotten that
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: registration taken care of.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Really important point. If you live in Michigan, if you
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: know someone who lives in Michigan, you can still register.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: One million Michiganders have already voted. What do we know
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: about who's already voted? Are you seeing any signs in
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: the numbers that give you hope? Or is it just
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: far too hard to tell what's going on with the
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: shift in mail-in voting this year?
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: So because we don't register by party here in Michigan,
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: it is really hard to do what some states are
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: doing and point to an advantage in terms of who
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: has voted so far. But I will tell you this,
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: when you look at the cities and the places where
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: folks are voting, those are places where lots of good
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: Democrats live. We feel good about where we are, about
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: the work we've done to talk to voters about the
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: importance of voting early and voting safely. We're telling folks
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: to get those votes cast, get them in, take them
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: to a drop box, go to your clerk's office, and
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: people are responding and people are voting. And our goal
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: is to get as many of our votes banked early
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: just to make sure that folks are voting safely and
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: don't have to stand in line in a mask for
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: hours on election day. And I feel good about where
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: we are and where those numbers are. And I think
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: we're at 1.5 million voters.
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: Nice.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Very good. I like that. So Joe Biden's consistently polling
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: fairly strongly in Michigan, but incumbent Democratic Senator Gary Peters
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: is running behind him in a lot of polls. What
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: do you think accounts for this gap? And what do
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: you see as sort of the work that Gary Peters
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: has to do from now until Election Day to pull
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: this out?
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Gary Peters is a terrific candidate and he's doing
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: a great job. He is being hit hard by the
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: Republicans who see him as a target, I think in
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: part because of the Trump margin here in 2016, I
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: think in part because they have a candidate that they
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: really enjoy talking about and are supportive of and who
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: apparently supports the president 2,000% and who's got some really
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: wealthy donors behind him, including the DeVos family. All of
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: this comes together to mean that that candidate is well-funded
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: and is working to continue to raise money, probably spends
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: more time out of state raising money than he does
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: in state talking to voters here in Michigan. And you
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: know that that sort of onslaught from a candidate with
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: all kinds of money, a party with all kinds of money,
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: and then third party groups that want to attack Senator
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: Peters makes for a lot of work for Senator Peters
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: to get this done. But he's doing the work. He's
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: broken fundraising records himself. Every quarter, I'm surprised again by
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: Senator Peters' numbers. He's doing a terrific job. I feel
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: confident that Senator Peters will win. You know, we always run,
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: you know, those of us further down the ticket always
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: run a little bit behind the top of the ticket
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: because that's just what happens. But I do think that
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: Senator Peters will indeed be fine. He's doing some terrific work.
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: I've had people, I don't know if you know, Magic
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: Johnson was in town.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: I heard, I heard.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: And Senator Peters was there.
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: And I have not seen Senator Peters have so much
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: fun as the videos I've seen. He's having a good
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: time out there on the campaign trail, but now he's
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: got to go back to Washington and do some voting.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: So we'll pick.
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: Up the mantle for him and make sure his words
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: are being heard.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: So a Michigan court recently ruled that ballots that arrive
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: after election day can't be counted. Is the Michigan Democratic
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Party going to challenge that ruling? Is there time to
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: do this without confusing voters?
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure that there's time to do that. And
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: what I'm trying really hard to do is not confuse
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: the voters on the messaging here. So we've been very clear,
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: even when that judge did say that we could count
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: those ballots up until the 14 days. We were still
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: very clear, get the ballots in early, get the ballots
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: in fast, because we knew that this court ruling was
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: in jeopardy. We need to be just focused on making
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: sure folks get voted, get those votes in. I think
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: that we should challenge this later, beyond this election day,
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: because elections keep coming every week. And we will want
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: to continue to have this discussion about how important it is,
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: because the postmark, I think, should be enough. If you've
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: postmarked yourself, but here in Michigan, you've got to get
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: it in by 8 p.m. on Election Day. And we're
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: just going to continue to share that message with our
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: voters and make sure they get those ballots in.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Make a plan.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: I think it's a big plan, but too many people's
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: ballots don't get counted because they get late. I think
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: there are about 6,500 folks in the August primary here
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: in Michigan whose ballots arrived too late to be counted.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: And we can't afford that.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: No, that's what we just told everyone on the pod today.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: Make a plan this week. Get the ballots in.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: So the Trump last question, the Trump campaign is telling
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: reporters that at least one of their paths to victory
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: includes winning Michigan again. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who worried that
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Trump would win last time, says she's still worried. That's
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: usually what she does. What specifically are the things about
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: the race that are keeping you up at night? I
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: know you want to say everything, but what's keeping you
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: up at night?
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: So here's the thing that that that worries me. And
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: I think I think your listeners won't be surprised when
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: I say this. I don't. trust them to follow the
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: rules or follow the law. So it's the things that
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: they will do when they see that they are losing
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: or have lost that I don't know about or I
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: can't dream about because my brain won't let me think
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: that way because I'm a good, honest person. It's those
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: things that worry me, the unknowns out there, the fact
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: that we have very little understanding of what's in their
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: minds in terms of voter suppression, in terms of trying
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: to block people from voting, trying to block us from
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: counting the votes, all of those things. So what we've
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: built a magnificent team of lawyers, probably the biggest team
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: of lawyers I've ever had around an election day operation,
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: almost ready for anything. And really they can make up
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: some scenarios that I'm like, that will never happen. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: they're like, LaVar, it might happen. So let's be ready
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: for it. And that's my goal is to make sure
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: that we're ready for that, that we can afford to
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: pay for that. And so that whatever happens, we can
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: fight back and make sure that we protect the vote
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: because that's what this is about. It's not just about
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: winning at that point. It is about protecting this democracy.
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: You know, Americans have been voting legally, carefully, safely through war,
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: through everything. But through Trump, this is where we are
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: right now.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: And of course, the best way to avoid the scary
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: scenarios is to win big and for everyone to get
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: their ballots in. So everyone, everyone go vote. Everybody vote,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: win big. Okay. Thank you so much, Lavora Barnes, for
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: joining Pod Save America. And good luck to you in
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: these last couple days. And let's flip Michigan back.
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And thanks
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: for paying attention to what's happening in Michigan.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Lavora Barnes for joining us today. And we
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: will have another pod on Wednesday. Dan and I will
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: do the pod on Wednesday. And then we will have
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: our post-debate. For the final debate, our post-debate pod with
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: all four of us on Friday.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Aren't you glad there weren't three in the end?
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: So glad.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God. Just too much stress.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Terrible. I don't even want another one.
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Pavadimitriou,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Quinn Lewis, Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: production support. Into our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: episodes as videos every week.