Latest / Pod Save America / "Nuke the Hurricane."

Transcript

"Nuke the Hurricane." · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Favreau and Tommy are on vacation in Biarritz, making eyes
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: with Justin Trudeau while Trump watches.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Dan, how you doing? Good, how are you?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Look at this. Another Jetsons-Flintons crossover. It's what the people want.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: That's your crossover episode go-to? It is. I don't know.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Didn't Mad About You go somewhere once? Didn't they show
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: up in places?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. ALF was on Gilligan's Island. There
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: are a couple other ones. All right, let's move on.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about new additions to Trump's
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: long list of enemies, foreign and domestic. Now it's the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Jay Powell, who definitely
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: had a rough Friday. We'll also look at... at Trump's
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: escalating trade war with China and his decision to skip
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a climate change meeting at a tumultuous gathering at the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: G7 in France. Then we'll cover the Republican presidential primary,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: which is heating up. Dan, do you think it's fair
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: to say that it's heating up?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: It's hotter than it was before, so yes.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And the latest news around the Democratic race. Plus, we'll
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: have Dan's interview with Ben Wickler, the new chair of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the Wisconsin Democratic Party, on Ben's efforts to organize in
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin one of, if not the most important states we
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: can target in 2020. Dan, I know there was one
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: thing you wanted to mention.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Sure. So for all of our listeners who are in
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the Bay Area, on September 16th, Hallie and I are
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: hosting a fundraiser for RAICES with our friends from Airbnb
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: at their headquarters here in San Francisco. At that fundraiser,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I'll be interviewing Hope Fry, who is one of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: attorneys who has been visiting the immigration facilities. As people
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: listening to the pod know, RAICES is an amazing organization
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: that is working to reunite the separated families and advocate
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: for immigrants, particularly those who are suffering at the hands
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of the Trump administration's policies. So for everyone who's in
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the area, I hope you can join us. I will
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: tweet out the invitation and more details later today.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So go to that.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, come.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And then also on Thursday, I will be joined by
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Alyssa Mastromonaco, who will be filling in for Dan on
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: a very special Thursday pod, which should be fun. But
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: let's start with the latest on Trump's various trade wars
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and Twitter wars, because they're having very real consequences for
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the economy right now. You and John talked about it
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: last Thursday, about the kind of increasingly unhinged musings of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Trump around the economy. But on Friday, it did get worse.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: We woke up to news that China would be adding
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: $ 75 billion in retaliatory tariffs. The Fed chair, Jay Powell,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: gave a speech where basically he said that the trade
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: war was doing damage and the Fed was not the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: right tool to fix it. Trump found the perfect way
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to combine these two news events.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: He said.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: quote, my only question is, who is our bigger enemy,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Jay Powell or Chairman Xi? Dan, were you surprised to
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: see the president basically issue a threat to the Fed
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: chair on Twitter comparing him to a foreign adversary?
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm not even sure if it was a threat
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: to Powell. I And both. And the funny thing is,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I saw that tweet, and then I saw that it
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: had been deleted. And I was like, oh, someone got
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: to Trump. They suggested that maybe it was a bad
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: idea to label China our enemy and make the suggestion
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: about the Fed chair. But no, he reposted it moments
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: later because he simply had a typo, which in and
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: of itself, I guess, shows growth from Trump.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: It was a typo. So it wasn't a fit of pique.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: He went back and really made sure that he stuck
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the landing. It wasn't extraordinary. I do think it's Look,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I know we talk about Trump tweets all the time,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: but it really is an extraordinary document because it contains
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: two very big parts of what Trump is doing at once.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, it is calling China an enemy,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: which is a big deal. And then on the other hand,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: it is this personal politics of threats and harassment that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: he practices now against the chair of the Federal Reserve,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a position that is incredibly important in our economy that
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: for a very long time, was treated as sacrosanct, was
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: treated as something at least in some ways apolitical, whether
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: or not that's true, because there was a recognition that
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of danger in getting our scuzzy
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: partisan politics on the way the Fed operates, given how
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: important monetary policy is to the economy. So let's take
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: each one at a time. Dan, why is it a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: big deal for Trump to declare China an enemy?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: You know, it seems so quaint, like even thinking about
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: this way, but there was this time where we spent
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: all this time thinking and caring about the words that
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: came not just out of the president's mouth, but out
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: of any person who could credibly be labeled a spokesperson
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: for the United States government, whether, you know, that was
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Jay Kearney or Josh Earnest or Robert Gibbs or, you know,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: an assistant press secretary in the White House, and that
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: anyone with White House in their title could cause international
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: incident or markets to sink. I guess now we know why.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: But the idea that we're very careful what we call
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: other countries. And the people have been very specific with
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: China to call it either an adversary or a strategic competitor,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: because enemies are the people you go to war with.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: And we can all decide that we don't care, that
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Trump isn't someone we should take seriously or literally either one.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: But the people of China see that, and it probably
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: is concerning to them that the United States with the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: most powerful military in the world, and a gazillion nuclear weapons,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: thinks that China is an enemy. And so everyone has
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: laughed it off and we've paid little attention to it,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: but these are the kind of things that have mattered
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: before and we'll have to wonder whether they matter again.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is a sort of now, the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: system seems to protect itself from Trump's words because we
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: just don't take them as seriously. But it does seem
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: as though there was regret on the part of the
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Trump administration. At the G7, Trump then struck a much
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: more conciliatory tone in how he talked about China, how
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: he talked about the Chinese president, referring to him as
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: being very capable, talking about the importance of making a deal. Now,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: there was this sort of mini kerfuffle around whether or
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: not Trump had second thoughts about the trade war, and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: we can get to that. But do you think that
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: even in his, forget the explicit discussion of second thoughts.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Is there an acknowledgement that he went too far in
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: just the way he addressed China during this meeting?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I think it, yes, I think there is an acknowledgement,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: but I think he views that the consequences of his statements,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: not in the context of U.S. relations around the world,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: but in the very specific context of he needs China
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: to help him get out of this mess, right? He
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: is He banked his reelection on these glowing assessments of
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: the economy, saying he's given us the greatest economy in
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the world, even though the facts do not back that
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: up by any stretch of the imagination. And so I
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: think he did a thing where he pushed really hard,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: sort of realized, maybe I went too far, so I'm
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: going to walk it back. But not because it's bad
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: for the US, but because it's bad for Trump. Let's
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: talk about the other ways.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: In which he seemed to escalate this feud with China
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. He issued a series of tweets in
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: which he, quote, hereby ordered, end quote, American companies to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: look elsewhere from China. Immediately, people were very concerned about
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: what he meant by this, if he meant anything at all,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: if it was a serious order, if there was some
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: legal mechanism by which he could enforce this order. He
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: then tweeted reference to a law which he claims gives
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: him the authority to do things like this. It does
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: seem as though someone made a mistake in teaching him
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the word hereby because it seems as though he added
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that to make it sound more official. How big of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a deal is it, Dan, that Trump is hereby ordering
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: American companies to look elsewhere?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it says a lot about the
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: moment we're in. Like we can talk about the specifics
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: of the order that was hereby given. But he obviously
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the authority to do this. And no one
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: seems to be immediately shuttering their factories overseas. But I
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: see a couple different dimensions. One is it must be
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: noted that almost everything that Trump has ever sold with
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: his name on it is made in China. And that
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: still to this day, the Chinese government is bribing the
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Trump family by granting trademarks to his daughter, Ivanka Trump,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: who somehow has a line of goods that are still
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: sold in China while working in the White House. So
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: there's just a general lack of self-awareness there. The second
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: part is, I do think we didn't... I know he
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: can't actually order people to do it, but I don't
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: know that the conversation around it in the media by
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: other politicians fully grasps the gravity of the moment. I mean,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Trump is at bare minimum, Trump is authoritarian curious. And
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: here he is ordering... the American companies who stopped doing
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: business in China, and all this pretend like, oh, he
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: couldn't possibly have meant that. It's not that serious. We're
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: just going to ignore it. But we have gone to
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: the point where we're neither taking Trump seriously or literally,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: and that's probably a pretty bad thing for the country.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Even if it was just what it says about the
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: person in charge of the country right now is that
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: he's like, he is your crazy uncle that you just
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: dismiss what they say at the Thanksgiving dinner.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Right. There's two pieces of this that I think are
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: why it's alarming. There's the one piece of it you're describing,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: which is just not taking what Trump is saying seriously because, oh,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the law is murky. But once again, whenever Trump has
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: sought to expand executive power in some way. This has
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: been true around immigration. This has been true on a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: number of other issues. There's immediately this look at the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: law and whether or not it's possible. You know, Trump
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: tweeted out reference to a law that he believes gives
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: him emergency powers to make these kinds of declarations over
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the economy. But the debate tends to resolve to, well,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: kind of, sort of, probably not. It would end up
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: in the courts. And everybody just sort of goes along
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: with that uncertainty. as if that's an acceptable way to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: imbue a single very unfit person with a tremendous amount
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of power. The other piece of it is what it
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: signals about the trade war and whether or not he
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: views it as something that will end soon. So he's
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: in Baritz and I love saying that he's in Baritz
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: because it's just a city I associate with like drunken
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Hemingway adventures, you know, but, uh, He's in Buritz.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sure Trump spent the whole time just catching up,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: rereading all of his Hemingways.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great time for Trump to dive into
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: The Sun Also Rises, sort of like be in the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: place while experiencing what it was like in another time.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: But so as an American traveler, you know?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: The ugly American. More of a green green situation.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: The greatest mind of his generation. Yeah. Anyway, he is
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: in Buritz talking about how he wants it to resolve.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: He wants there to be an end. He wants there
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to be a deal. while he's signaling to American companies
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: for his own politics, and maybe because he also views
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: this as a trade war that will go on for
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a long time, to start looking to stop doing business
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: in China because of how extensive this trade war is
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: going to be.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: But it's also a temper tantrum, right? Which is he's
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: out of options. He has placed his fate in the
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: hand of the Chinese. He doesn't understand them. He doesn't
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: understand what their calculus is. And He doesn't get that
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: he's on a 18-month timeline right now and Xi will
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: never stand for election again and can be in charge
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: as long as he wants. And it is– like you
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: have– and sort of the going back and forth between
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: threats and flattery goes to a point that you have
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: made many times, which is Trump views this as a
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: negotiation with a guy selling a marble for countertops, right?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Which is he thinks– like he doesn't– he's doing one-dimensional negotiations,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: which is if I– threaten them, then flatter them, then
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: threaten them, then flatter them. They'll eventually do what I
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: want when like the Chinese have a thousand different interests
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: at stake here. And he hasn't even begun to calculate
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: like what, what would get them to yes.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Right. And there is also just this inherent challenge we
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: have as a democracy, which is they're playing on a
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: much longer timeline. They have, they have greater tools at
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: their disposal. You know, Trump, bristling at the Fed, Trump
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: trying to order American companies to move their factories, it
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: does go to the problem with this trade war that
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: many pointed out from the beginning, which is China has
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: a much different set of tools than the United States does.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But he dove in because he never considered it at all.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: He didn't consider the long-term implications of this fight. He
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: didn't consider very much of anything. It's a It's a
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: view he's had since 1985. It's frozen in amber, this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: idea that you need to fight China on trade.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: 1985 was a good term because 1985 was basically the
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: year he stopped learning things. You can take back all
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: of his views or sort of the views of an
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: old rich guy in New York from the 80s.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: There is a bookmark on page 13 of the very
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: last book he tried to read, and it is very
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: much where it was left at. in 1985. Dan, before
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: we move on, there was a very important question that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: was apparently on the mind of many world leaders. This
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: is what Trump reports. The question I was asked most
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: today by fellow world leaders who think that the US
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: is doing so well and is stronger than ever before
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: happens to be, Mr. President, why does the American media
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: hate your country so much? Why are they rooting for
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: it to fail? Dan, do you believe it was Merkel
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: who said that? Macron? Who do you think is the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: one who ask such a pointed and honestly hard-hitting question
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: for all of us to consider.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Was the other most asked question, President Trump, why are
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: you so awesome? He is such a bad liar because
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: he has now taken a lie that is so obviously
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: not true, but he's also There's only six other people.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: It's a G7, so there's only six other people who
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: can ask him the question. So it makes it pretty
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: easy to prove that he is full of shit.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess Boris Johnson could have in some
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: way asked the question. It's not inconceivable.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, I guess if there was one person who would
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: do it, it would be the other authoritarian wannabe anti-immigrant
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: world leader with bad hair of a once great nation.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the G7 for a bit. The Times
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: has had, I thought, very delightful, delightful writing out of
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the G7. Ever so gingerly, as if determined not to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: rouse the American's well-known temper, the other group of seven
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: leaders thought to nudge him toward their views on the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: pressing issues of the day, or at least register their differences,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: while making sure to wrap them in a French crepe
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of flattery, as they know he prefers. Though I don't
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: believe he has ever allowed a crepe to enter his face.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Like a small child, he would lick the filling out.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Man, do you think that we've talked about Trump too
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: much in our lives? What do you think we would
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: have talked about for days on end during this period
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: at Hillary Clinton 1? Would we have had other hobbies?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Would you think we would have taken up, I don't know, painting, archery?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know, solve climate change, cured cancer, watch more
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: better TV. I don't know.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So, so I think there was a signal event at
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the G7 that's worth talking about that I think captures
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: this tension between the rest of the world and Trump
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: at this event. There was a meeting to talk about
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: climate change and, uh, the fires currently ravaging the Amazon
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in Brazil in part as a result of the populist
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: government that has taken power there and their, uh, disregard
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: for environmental rules to protect a part of the world
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: that sucks up carbon dioxide and provides oxygen for the planet.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: So a big deal. Trump skipped the meeting, claiming that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: he was busy because he had meetings with other leaders
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: like Merkel and Modi in India. However, both of those
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: leaders attended the meeting. Dan, why do you think Trump
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: skipped the climate change meeting?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Because he's scared. This has happened a couple of times
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: in various G7s or G20s or UN General Assemblies where
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: the topic is climate change, and the rest of the
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: world agrees that climate change is real because it's only
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: one half of our two-party political system of America who
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: refuses to believe that climate change is real. And so
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: it It was going to be uncomfortable, and he seeks
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: to avoid confrontation. So he hid out in his room
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: and watched, I don't know, I assume whatever was on
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Fox News at the moment. And it probably, like, it's
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: kind of funny that Trump is such a giant wuss
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and for someone who talks so tough that he can't
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: even defend his indefensible views on climate change. But the
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: world is, as you point out, literally on fire. The
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: world and the United States can't even show up to
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the meetings. I mean, it's like when it's all said
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: and done, if we ever get Trump out of here
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: and reverse some of his policies and reverse some of
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: his executive orders, the most damage that Trump will do
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: will be the opportunity cost of four to eight years
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of dealing with climate change, four to eight years we
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: don't really have.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And the abdication of American leadership. We saw Trump basically
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: issue bromides encouraging Brazil to tackle the fires and suggesting
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: that we'd help as if this is a purely natural
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: disaster Brazil is unequipped to fix, as opposed to something
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: that the government has actively encouraged. And we've seen other
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: leaders like Macron in France and others step up to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: try to pressure Brazil into doing the right thing. And
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the Times reported that even as Trump talked about how
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: much comedy there was at the G7, how well these
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: countries were getting along. And by the way, it is
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: always so uncomfortable how much he personalizes even these moments
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: about how much basically describing it as a great time.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And that's so important. It's so important that we had
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: fun here and really, really had a blast. We wanted
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: the meeting to last longer. We could have talked for
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: another hour as if these personal relationships are that important
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: if it's based on his personal affection for these people.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, Trump administration officials were criticizing the
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: G7 in France for focusing on niche issues. One of
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: those niche issues was climate change.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, the niche issue that matters to the entire fucking planet.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: So, Dan, if there were an American president, period, if
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: there was someone, if that job was filled appropriately by
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a full-fledged functioning person, what would that president be doing
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: differently about the crisis in Brazil?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I think about this all the time because, you know,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: when we worked in the White House, you're constantly faced
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: with crises and you often have a limited set of
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: tools at your disposal to deal with it. And we
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: were working on these, you know, people within the government,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: the White House work on these things all the time.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And I just wonder sometimes what the people in the
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Trump White House are doing other than retconning his tweets
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: into policy. But so in this situation, what you have
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: is you have a fire in the Amazon that threatens
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: the world. It threatens climate change, everything. You have a corrupt,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: essentially a dictator in Brazil who is unwilling or incapable
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: to deal with the situation. How would the United States
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: deal with this? It would have been not a meeting
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the United States skipped. It would have been a meeting
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: the United States chaired at the G7. The president would
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: be on the phone with leaders around the world, with
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: the other G7 nations, but also in the region, marshalling
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: support and putting pressure on Brazil to do something. Instead,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: we're just sending tweets. A lot of what's been going
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: on in Trump's Friday meltdown over the weekend is just
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: this really crystallization of what has happened to America's leadership
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: role in the world under Trump. The consequences of it
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: are serious. I saw on Twitter this morning that bethany
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: frankel of the uh real housewives of new york's of
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: new york is chartering a plane to go like a
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: tanker plane to go spray the fires and some areas
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: and try to help indigenous people and people are cheering
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the fact that she is doing it because it's great
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: she's doing it but also because no one else is
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: doing it right like we actually need people from the
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: cast of bravo reality shows to step in and do
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the things the united states government would do which is scary.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I mean look they are the real heroes uh you know,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in a, in a dark time. Well, it's also, you know,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Franklin Ford wrote in the Atlantic about the ways in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: which these fires are more dangerous than weapons of mass destruction, that,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: that basically this incredibly valuable global resource is being threatened
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: by this one government. And you can imagine a, an
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: order led by a, by an American president who cares
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: about this issue and who cares about working with allies
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: on this issue, coming up with a way to think
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: about these really important questions, about these incredibly precious global
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: resources at a moment where scientists tell us we're at
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a hinge point as to whether or not we can
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: address climate change. You could imagine an American president leading
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: not just on this one issue, but in thinking about
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: these broader questions about resource use, about agriculture. And by
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the way, the fact that there is a populist in
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Brazil is just another reminder too that this scourge of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: right-wing populism is genuinely threatening the health of the planet.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: There's obviously connections between why we have a populist in Brazil,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a populist in the United Kingdom, and a populist in
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the United States all at the same time. But you
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: couldn't pick a worse time in world history to seed
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: some of the most important influential governments, either diplomatically or militarily,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: or in the case of Brazil, literally in charge of
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: the world's oxygen supply to have these sort of knuckleheads
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: at the switch, you know, at this moment.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's just worth remembering too, that this abdication
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: of American leadership, as many have pointed out, as Joe
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Biden has pointed out, that if we can get Trump
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: out of office, we can make this period of time
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: an aberration, not because we don't, not because we view
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Trump as an aberration, but because we can signal to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the world that we recognize the mistake of Trump. But
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: if we affirm him in a second term, the opportunity
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to send that message to the world is gone at
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: an incredibly critical moment.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: No one is ever going to be more popular than
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the first president who isn't Trump at like the G20
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: or the United Nations.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: They'll carry him in on one of those litters. Before
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: we leave this climate discussion, there was one other story
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: that I do believe we have to discuss. I will
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: read from an Axios post that I think caught the
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: world by storm, shall we say. President Trump has suggested
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: multiple times to senior homeland security and national security officials
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: hitting the United States. It goes on. During one hurricane
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: briefing at the White House, Trump said, I got it.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I got it. I can't do it. I got it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I got it. Why don't we nuke them? According to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: one source who was there. They start forming off the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: coast of Africa. As they're moving across the Atlantic, we
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: drop a bomb inside of the hurricane and it disrupts it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Why can't we do that, the source added, paraphrasing the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: president's remarks. Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: he said something to the effect of, sir, we'll look
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: into that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Are you concerned? Am I concerned?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Am I concerned about a an atomic hurricane barreling down
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: on the East Coast, flooding our cities and leaving them
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: covered in radioactive debris? Yes, I'm a little bit concerned
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: is the word.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I did not realize because I have never seen these films,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: but this is actually the plot of Sharknado.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Apparently, I've also never seen Sharknado and shame on the
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: creators of Sharknado. who have planted a terrible idea into
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the mind of our feeble president. I do think nuking
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the hurricane captures something essential about Donald Trump as a person,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: because he doesn't believe climate change exists, but the worsening
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: hurricanes heading for us, he does have a plan to
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: make them radioactive and kill more people.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I would just try to put myself in the world
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: where you're just... You're a normal person. You're reading Facebook,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: going through, seeing what's happening in the world. And you
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: catch a post from your uncle who has this idea
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: in response to some story about hurricanes coming. Do you
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: immediately call a family meeting to discuss this post? Or
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: what is the reaction to it? And how concerned are
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: you that This is coming from a person who actually
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: has the ability to launch said missiles, not just pontificate
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: about them on Facebook.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, it does feel like it's the sort of thing
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: where several members of the family kind of speak in
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: hushed tones that, you know, obviously, you know, he's alone
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: all the time. You know, Sarah Beth left. He's just there.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: You know, he's just there alone. He's having these crazy ideas.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what to do. I don't know how
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: much he means it. I don't know how much he
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: means it. We just need to check on him more.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're going to draw up a chart, and one
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: of us is going to go there every other day
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: for the next month just to make sure that Uncle
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Insane Person is fine.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Let's move on to domestic politics. The Republican primary has
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: entered a new phase. There is a new competitor. His
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: name is Joe Walsh, and he is going to bring
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the fight to Donald Trump. Dan, how worried do you
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: think Donald Trump is and should be about former congressman,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Twitter persona, previous, quote, Obama is a Muslim, end quote,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: type guy running against Trump?
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think Trump should have any fears about losing
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: the nomination. Um, I don't think there's any chance that
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Joe Walsh is going to beat him. I mean, Trump
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: has a 96% approval rating or whatever from Republican voters,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: the Republican party, just to make sure that he wouldn't
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: lose the nomination, canceled the South Carolina primary, which is
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: the primary where conservatives, you generally have the best chance
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: to knock off an incumbent. Um, it was problematic for, um,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: George H.W. Bush back in the day. And so he's
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: not going to lose the nomination, and we shouldn't think
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: that that's going to happen. But I do think he
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: should be more worried about someone like Joe Walsh than
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: either William Weld or John Kasich. William Weld is a doofus.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: He is a governor of Massachusetts. He was on the
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: third-party ticket last time. He has no constituency in America,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: let alone the Republican Party. John Kasich... is an affable,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I guess, guy. He has some popularity. He did a
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: few things that were not terrible in Ohio. He's a
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: CNN contributor, but also no constituency in the National Republican Party.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Joe Walsh is the first person who is making an
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: attack on Trump from the right. That, at least, I
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: think is interesting and could have some political consequences down
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: the line. He was on He was on ABC this
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: weekend during the Sunday show circuit, and he attacked Trump
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: for not building the wall and not making Mexico. pay
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: for the wall. I was intrigued by that. I'm interested
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: to see where that goes, because that could have some
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: political repercussions for Trump down the line, not in a primary,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: but in the general election.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So there was some effort on the part of Walsh
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: to get George Conway involved in this fracas. And to me,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: that signaled that this is very much a publicity move
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: for Joe Walsh, because obviously getting George Conway involved is
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: not about appealing to voters in swing states. It's about
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: finding someone who will antagonize Trump the absolute most. You know,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like there were two conversations happening on Twitter
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: about Donald Trump facing a new Republican challenger. One was
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: kind of a, I don't want to say openness, but
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: at least a willingness to say, well, it's good that
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: this person is doing this. It is good that a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: former right-wing person, even a heinous right-wing person, is willing
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to tell the truth about Trump, even if it's for
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: their own purposes, even if it's to build a brand,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: even if it's ultimately to fund a right-wing campaign for
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the House. And then there was, I think, a more cynical...
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: take when I think I largely agree with saying this
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: is a purely self-aggrandizing move to help one person gain
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: traction and find a way to make income in the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: commentary economy we have built after we closed all the factories.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I think I take an even more cynical take on this.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: This debate, the don't normalize Joe Walsh debate or the
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: don't normalize Joe Walsh argument has been led by Shannon
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Watts of Mom's Demand, who is someone we support a
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: lot here at Positive American, really like. And she is right.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Joe Walsh is disgusting. He is a disgusting human being.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: He dispels disgusting racist views. I think he, at one point,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: was a Sandy Hook truther, obviously said horrible things about Obama.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Really a disgusting person. And we should not take his
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: conversion to anti-Trumpism seriously. Like, we shouldn't. The same thing
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: with Anthony Scaramucci, right? These are grifters who find a
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: market opening. They go into it to make money. And
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: when then that closes, they look for another one.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Scaramucci, Dan, Scaramucci wrote a book. He wrote a book
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: about Trump, a pro-Trump book in October of 2018. Like
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: it is one thing to have a change of heart.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: You cannot write a book and then six months later
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: say the opposite of the book. That's too quick. Yes.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I can almost buy someone who supported
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Trump in the election under this idea that he would
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: somehow be a more serious president or would not, or
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: like that was a stupid position to have them. But you,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: if you decided after a month or two of Trump
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: is president, like this is not a good thing. He
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: is even worse than we thought. And you can do it,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: but nothing. He was just as bad in September of
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: 2018 or October, whatever. So much worth the book as
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: he is now. It was all part of a Scaramucci
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: grift to support Trump. And when that door closed, he
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: found another grift. It was anti-Trump, right? It's a better
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: way for him to get on television attacking Trump than
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: praising Trump. Walsh is the same way. My even more
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: cynical take on it is I agree Joe Walsh is disgusting.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: I do not take him seriously. I do hope that
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: there are some segment of voters who are get to
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: see Joe Walsh's message, right? Who are conservative but have
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: questions about Trump. There are these universes of Republican voters
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: who could be driven away from Trump, maybe not to
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: vote for a Democrat, but maybe into a third-party camp,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: or they may decide to sit the election out if
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: they were exposed to an argument about Trump, which no
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: one is making, and Walsh is making. So I do
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: think there is some political upside to it. But I
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: think we need to, we should be this way with
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: all of our, the sort of never Trump universe, right?
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Which is just like, we may agree with what Bill
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Kristol says about Trump now, but every other part of
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Bill Kristol's, just because the broken clock has stopped in
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: the right place for right now doesn't mean we should
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: support these people. And I think Joe Walsh falls in
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: that category. But look, my imaginary super PAC would be
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: completely above board and not engaged in anything. But another
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: imaginary or real super PAC who was, showing some targeted
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: universe of conservative or Republican-leading independents a conservative anti-Trump argument,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: I would be interested to see what impact that could
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: have in an election.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: As always, we end this segment by wondering where our
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: billionaires are with the delightful above-board super PACs and less
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: delightful subversive super PACs that we say we don't want
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: but secretly do. One other note on what's taking place
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: on the right. Trump has... increasingly been directing criticism at
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Fox News. I don't want to spend too much time
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: on this, but what do you make of this? He
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: was seemingly annoyed that Donna Brazile showed up on his
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: television because he associates Donna Brazile with a very overblown
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: attack he leveled against her and CNN for a long
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: time around debate questions for Hillary Clinton during the primary.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: But it does seem he is in some ways frustrated
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: with the way Fox has been covering him. What do
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: you make of it?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I think he is feeling anxiety about, and I think it's,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's economic. Trump is finally feeling the economic
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: anxiety that pundits have falsely projected on his voters. Yeah, sure.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: He is, so I think there is these nerves and
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: he is trying to circle the wagons and this is
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: evidence that he watches Fox too much because Fox is
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: so pro Trump. You really have to watch it for
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: hours upon hours upon hours to find a glimmer of anti-Trumpism.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And because he's always watching it, he manages to find it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: You know, I would love to see some reporting on
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: how the folks at Fox are reacting to this because they,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: they have hitched their wagon to Trump and he, and
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: like it helped them in 2016 to get on board
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: with Trump very early. Uh, And I don't know where
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: they would go if they left Trump, or if these
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: voters left Fox, but there must be, like, inside, you know,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: I don't, there is not like there's a new, like
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: an actual true news division, but somewhere in Fox, the
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: people who keep the money flowing, I would love to
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: know what their reaction is to Trump attacking them. Like,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: is it, like, how nervous does it make them?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Right. You know, it strikes me as, you he finds
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: someone who has said something that damages his ego in
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: some way, whether it's the head of the Fed or
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: it's Fox News. It does seem to me that targeting
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Fox is one of those places where he can actually
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: be far more effective. I don't know what personally attacking
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the chairman of the Fed will do other than put
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: a kind of battery acid panic in the stomachs of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: his loved ones. But it seems as though he thinks
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: going after Fox is going to make them just a
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: little bit more circumspect before... They tell the truth to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the audience they respect so very much. Okay, let's move
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: on to 2020. This week is the deadline to see
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: who will make the September debate. As of right now,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: 10 candidates have qualified. One candidate, Tom Steyer, is one
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: poll away. That could be something he hits while we're recording.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It could be something he doesn't hit. If Tom Steyer gets...
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the qualifying poll, the fourth poll he needs. He already
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: qualified on donors. That will mean ABC will go to
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: a two-night debate with six on one night and five
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: on the other. Dan, I don't... Sometimes I go back
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: and forth. I obviously have a personal interest in there
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: being a one-night debate because Love It or Leave It
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: is on Friday in New York that night. But when
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I actually think about it, whether or not there's a
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: kind of lengthier conversation... over two nights among smaller groups
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: versus one night in which all the candidates are on
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: one stage. I'm not totally sure which is better for
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Democrats writ large. What do you think?
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I have gone back and forth on this too. So
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: once the DNC, like this has been this lingering question
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: among a lot of people about if it was 11 candidates,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: would they just add another podium in and just do
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: it in one night? And the DNC was specific last
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: week that they would make it two. And my initial
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: reaction was, ugh. Like I wanted to see, I want
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: to see you know, the leading candidates on stage. I
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: want to see Warren and Biden on the same stage
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: or Warren and Harris on the same stage. And so
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: you can compare them and maybe there will be some interaction,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: but like that was my initial reaction. And then I,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: there was like, I thought about it for a little
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: bit and which I probably should have done before I tweeted.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And I actually, Dan, I know, I know.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Don't do that to yourself. Hey, hey, you tweet whatever
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: you want without thinking it is 2019. Don't hesitate.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: There are no consequences. But I now, in hindsight, think
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: that my two nights would be better. It is September
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: of the off year. We don't need Bloodsport, where we
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: have put the candidates on stage right now, and one
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: of the two frontrunners walks off. It's not the fucking Kumite, right? And, like,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: it would be interesting to see at least one debate.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what that meant. You don't know what
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Kumite is?
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the movie Bloodsport with Jean-Claude Van Damme? Oh.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: It's a classic 80s cable movie.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen Bloodsport all the way through.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I only know it as a movie Donald Trump watches
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: on his airplane, but fast forwards to the fights.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: It's only like 90 minutes long and it's basically all,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: it's very 80s. It's all fights in musical montages. It's
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: like an R & B, karate kid. Any dialogue, he's gone.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: He's gone.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: But anyway, so I think it would be interesting to
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: have five or six candidates on stage together having a
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: longer conversation and hopefully ABC could you know, either extend
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: the number, you know, the length of answers or get
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: to more topics. And so I kind of think we,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: if just hearing more from the candidates now would probably
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: be useful. I mean, so I re I rescind my
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: original tweet, but I will not delete it. Good, good.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: And don't apologize ever. Dan, I have to say I
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: am shocked, but I think that I agree now. I
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: guess I, my, my actual view is it doesn't really
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: matter that much ultimately, but I do agree that that
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I would rather see longer, more substantive conversations over two nights.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: And I say that not because I think the substantive
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: debate will mean there's some more likely shakeup of who's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: supported versus who's not, but because the kind of cattle
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: call debates we've been having don't seem to be moving
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: the needle that much anyway. And so a good conversation
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: is just a better outcome because we'll just hear more substance.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: We'll have, uh, a richer, deeper policy conversation as we
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: move through these issues. The reason I say that is,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: so John Harwood reported this in July, actually, that in
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: late April, a poll found that just five candidates, Joe Biden,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg drew
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: 79% of the Democratic vote. Six weeks later, before the
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: first round of debates, it drew the same 79%. This
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: was from July. After the first round, just before the second,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: a Quinnipiac poll showed that those five drew 78%. And
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I went and looked today. That's basically where the vote
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: share is now. But over the course of these several debates,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the top five candidates have continued to be splitting around
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: 75 to 80 percent of the vote. Now, things have
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: moved about between those candidates. But this notion that getting
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: on the debate stage and finally having an opportunity to
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: be seen by millions more Americans will fundamentally shift the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: dynamics of the debate. That just hasn't happened yet.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: We're thinking about this, I think, in the wrong way,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: which is we're seven, eight, nine months, whatever it is now,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: from the Iowa caucuses. And the debates are the journey,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: not the destination to a decision. So over the course
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: of time, they're going to get to see these candidates,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I think, 12 times between now and, I guess, through
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: the early primary contests. And people will get to make
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: their decision. They're learning a little bit more, both good
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: and bad, about all of these candidates, but And then
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: there will be an opportunity for the race to shift.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: On Thursday, when John and I were having this conversation
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: about why the race hasn't changed, I went and looked
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: back at the polling from this point, 2003, which is
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: probably the most analogous Democratic primary to this one. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Joe Lieberman was leading in the polls, and John Kerry
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: was in fourth, and Dick Karpart was in second or third.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: And so there was, you know, like, we're still really
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: early in this, and people are learning, and They will
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: either shift among those five or they will move to
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: one of those other candidates at some point. And we
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: don't need a debate in the summer of the year
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: before to tell us who's going to be the nominee.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: We just want people to learn more information.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Now, another debate that has been taking place inside the
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is whether or not there should be a
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: climate debate this weekend. The DNC held a vote. The
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: climate debate lost. There will not be a climate debate,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: according to the DNC. Dan, the activists are furious about this.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of Democratic voters are angry about this.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: A lot of the candidates have come out in favor
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: of a climate debate. Jay Inslee, I think, before he
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: dropped out, led the charge on this because he was
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: running on a climate platform. Why do you think the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: DNC is at odds with activists and I think some
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: of the more energetic and fervent parts of the base
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: over a climate debate right now?
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: I think the DNC is, throughout all of this, doing
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: the best in a terrible situation. And so from their perspective,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: as I understand it, the argument against... It's not an
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: argument against a climate debate specifically. It's an argument for
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: an endless series of debates that take the candidates off
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: the campaign trail and put them in a studio and
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Because it's not just the two hours of the debate.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: It's also the days of prep for the debate. And
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: they're trying to find this balance. When we ran in 2008,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: there were dozens of debates. It was a huge time suck.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: It was probably bad for the campaign. In 2016, there
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: were not enough debates. They overcorrected in 2016. So this
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: is sort of the just right approach they're doing. And
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: their fear is, if you say yes to climate, how
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: do you say no to guns? So let's say all
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the activists who... after what happened this past weekend, El
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Paso or Dayton or anything else, or mom's demand, or
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: everyone come together and say, we want to debate on guns.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: How do you say yes to climate, no on guns?
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: How do you say yes to climate, no on a
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: criminal justice debate? And so they're trying to hold the line.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: So I would make two points on this. One is
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: the campaigns are acting as if they have no leverage here.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: And if the front runners, not Jay Inslee, who we miss,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: but not Jay Inslee, but if Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Harris,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Sanders decided there was going to be a climate debate,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: there would be a climate debate. In 2008, the front-running
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: campaigns of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, who was a person
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: in American politics at one time, and the campaign managers
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: would help sort of navigate all the forums and debates together.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Because if one of them did it, all three of
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: them had to do it, and if none of them
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: did it, then it wouldn't happen. And so the frontrunners
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: could decide to have a climate debate, but they have
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: decided not to do that. And so it's the DNC's fault,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: but right now a lot of the campaigns want to
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: have their cake and eat it too and say, we
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: are for a climate debate. But the DNC, you know,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: hold me back. The DNC said we can't do anything,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: but they could do something if they wanted to.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Right. It does seem right. The interest of the candidate
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: is to be for every debate humanly possible while hoping
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: some other external force prevents them from having to leave
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the trail again and again. It's also true that there's
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: going to be a climate change forum. So that is
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: also an opportunity to hear all the different candidates on
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: this issue at length. But I do think, you know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I think one of the problems people are having is
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: that there's a kind of objectivity to the rules, which
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: I understand, but just feels quite frustrating to people that,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: wait a second, what are these qualification terms? Why is
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Tom Steyer able to get so close, but someone like
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Michael Bennett isn't? Like, I understand that these rules were
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: drawn up before there were candidates so that they'd be fair,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: but is it actually serving the candidate's best. Do you
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: think overall the debate process this time has been working?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: I just, I don't really know. Like there are obviously flaws, right?
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: The donor, the grassroots donor threshold seemed like a great
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: idea at the time, but it has become a world
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: where the campaigns have had to spend millions of dollars
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: at a loss to try to meet these thresholds. And
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: so there are unintended consequences to all of them. I just,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: cannot come up with a better process, right? I don't
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: know what... Like, certainly just a non-grassroots donation number or
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: contribution number would be bad, right? So where you're rewarding
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: people who raise money from large contributors, that would be bad.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: The polling should matter in some way, shape, or form because, like,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: what would we have done? Like, it would have been
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: worse if there had not been a 20-candidate cutoff for
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: these first couple debates.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: we had three nights of debates, right? You're just getting
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: fewer eyeballs or less interaction. And so I don't think
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: there is an ideal way to do this. I think
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: this is the right way to do it. I would
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: be cautious about trying to overcorrect for some of the
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: criticism going forward to make it harder.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: To get into debates.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: I think that would be a mistake.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll leave it there before we wrap up
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: another important development, uh, Dan, Sean, Sean Spicer, he was
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: a white house press secretary. This is a sort of a,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: this is a job of great prestige. It is, um,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: a job that has been lionized in film, in television,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the voice of an administration standing at that podium. People
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: work really hard to get that job. They achieve it.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: They go on to, to incredible things. Uh, Do you
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: think Donald Trump was being sincere when he praised Sean
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Spicer for going on Dancing with the Stars?
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: No.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I do not think Donald Trump was being sincere. And
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I think he sent that tweet because he knew it
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: would make Sean Spicer's life harder. And torturing Sean Spicer is,
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: other than golf and watching Fox News, one of Trump's
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: few hobbies. Do you remember in the early days when
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Sean Spicer was, A, when Sean Spicer still worked there,
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: and B, there was actually a White House briefing, that
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Trump would clear his schedule, watch the briefing in his office,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: and then demand that Sean Spicer come up there and
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: then give him basically question by question critiques, all while
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: making fun of the tailoring of his.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Suit First of all, I would take issue with the phrase,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: clear his schedule.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, he had to DVR at least two Fox
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: shows at that time. So something had to give.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: To make one serious point about this before we go, though,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: it is. So the one thing that was always fascinating
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: about Sean Spicer is when he was press secretary, he
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: kind of wore his pain on his face and in
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: his tailoring. But there was a kind of a gruesome
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: expression he would draw when standing at that podium because
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: of the space between the person he thought he was
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: going to be and the person he had to be
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: by defending Donald Trump, the kind of the distance traveled
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: between being press secretary for a different president and being
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: press secretary for this president. And it was fascinating to
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: see Spicer kind of do this round of press saying,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: I just think this should be a politics-free zone because
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: there's still this desire to on the part of people
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: like Sean Spicer to be treated normally. That even now,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: there's still this feeling, like they know deep down that
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Trump is not a legitimate president in any meaningful sense,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: that working for him will always have an asterisk, that
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: you're not a press secretary, you're a Trump press secretary.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: And it seems to me that the response he's getting
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: to this is a reminder that as much as they
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: want that to be true, that's just not the case.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: You can't evade responsibility and only take the parts you want,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: like the fame and apparently the ballroom dancing.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: What do you think the calculus was in Sean Spicer's
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: head to do this? Dancing with the Stars is a
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: refuge for B-list celebrities trying to resurrect their career. It
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: is where the cast of Jersey Shore goes when Jersey
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Shore goes off the air. I presume Sean Spicer, just
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: on the Republican speaking circuit, selling access, has the capacity
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: to make money in other ways. Are you sure about that?
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. That's interesting. There seems to be a
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: lot of money going around Republican politics.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but think about that market. Who wants Sean Spicer
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to come speak at their event? Normally, an administration, there
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: would be trade groups, nonpartisan organizations that might want somebody
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: from an administration to come give them the lay of
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: the land in Washington. People pay for that privilege. It
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: is a longstanding... This is basically a version of what
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton did when she gave high paid speeches. They
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: want the best person they can get to talk to
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: them about politics. But you might not want Sean Spicer
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: at your event where you talk about the latest in,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, like retail packaging or health administration because
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: he's so controversial. Nobody believes he had any influence. Nobody
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: believes he's still talking to these people. So all the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: people trying to buy their way into Trump, they're going
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: to Lewandowski. They're going to other people. I wonder if
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: it's not more complicated than the book didn't sell. you know?
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the book was interesting because he both man,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: like he did, it is like, no one has played
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: their hand worse than Sean Spicer in this whole deal.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Like most of the people who got fired, got no
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: show jobs at Trump super PACs and are just making,
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: you know, just getting laundered Coke dollars put in their pocket.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Just did not saw it. Just, just basically they're being
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: paid to sign NDA. So Trump, so they didn't do that.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Or they wrote anti-Trump books.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: By the way, just so people know, Coke dollars, I
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: thought you meant, I thought you meant Coke dollars. And
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: now I'm realizing you meant Coke dollars. Yes.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: K-O-C-H.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe the other ones.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: Who knows?
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Or they either wrote these typical conservative selling books that
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Trump will tweet about, about the fake press or fake
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Russian collusion, witch hunt, whatever else. Or they wrote tell-all's.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: And Sean Spicer managed to do neither. He did not
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: write a book that pleased the Trump people, but he
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: also didn't have the courage to tell the truth either.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: And so he's been living in this, I don't know,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: some sort of sad purgatory of he can't figure out
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: how to get himself out of the box he put
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: himself in. But I want to be very clear, I
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: do not feel sorry for him. He is a grown,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: sentient adult who made a series of choices that everyone
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: knew were wrong, and he knew they were wrong, and
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: he made them anyway.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Yes. It is almost as if he's been sentenced to
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: pushing his reputation up a hill. And then when it
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: gets to the top of the hill, it rolls back down.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: So he walks back down to the bottom of the hill.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: And it seems like he may have to do that forever.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Pretty good.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Seems fair. All right.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Dan's interview with
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: We are here in studio in San Francisco with Ben Wickler.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: He's the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party and a
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: former senior advisor to MoveOn.org. And most importantly, or maybe
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: not most importantly, but longtime friend of the pod, you've
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: been on many times to talk to us about activism
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: around the Affordable Care Act and so much other stuff.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: And we are pleased to talk to you now about Wisconsin.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: Very glad to be here.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Ben. So you were here in San Francisco
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: at the DNC meeting, the National Committee meeting. How's that
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: meeting going? Is the party... We read a lot of
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: reports in the news that perhaps the Democrats are horribly divided.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Have you sensed that at this meeting?
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: So there's an autocomplete for the phrase Democrats in disarray.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: And if you press D-E, then it just autofills the rest.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: The reality is everyone I'm talking to is totally focused
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: on stopping Trump. And that is this central unifying goal.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: There's a real sense that we have to fight for
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: state legislatures. We have to fight for the Senate. We
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: have to fight for the House. But it all connects
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: to the big fight. They're all linked to each other.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: We know that the fate of candidates, Democrats, up and
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: down the ticket is connected to how we prosecute the
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: presidential fight and that there are reverse coattails when you
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: get local candidates. They pull out more voters. So I
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: think there's a real sense of shared mission. And a
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: lot of what's happening now, a year out, is the
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: kind of building blocks of how we assemble the coalition
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: that we need. How do we get the different structural
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: pieces in place? How do we get organizers trained? So
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: as an organizer myself, I think it's exciting. And I
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: think a lot of the conflict that is at the,
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: you know, you might read about in the news, misses
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: the fact that mostly people are just leaning to do
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: the work.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: So you, as I mentioned at the top, your history
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: and your background in politics is in activism and organizing,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: but mostly from outside of the party structure and oftentimes
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: in opposition to the party structure, pushing the party in
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: directions it may not want to go. How has that
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: background influenced your approach to now being in a position,
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: now you have the term Democratic Party Chair in your title,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: which is about as inside as.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: You can get. So I grew up in Madison, where
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: I live now, and in Wisconsin And growing up, when
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: I was in high school, I used to organize debates
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: between state legislators about issues affecting teenagers. And this one
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: state rep would always come and win the debates. And
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: then she ran for Congress. My friends and I volunteered
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: on her race. And Tammy Baldwin got elected to the
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: House and now the Senate. I've worked on governor's races.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: My godmother is a woman named Ada Deer, who became
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: the first American Indian woman to win a congressional primary
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: when I was 11. That was the first race I
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: volunteered on. So I kind of grew up in the
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: Wisconsin progressive tradition, both in activism, which I did a
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: lot of, and also electoral politics. And frankly, in Wisconsin,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: there's not much daylight between them. There's a tradition of
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: folks fighting for causes and social justice, moving in and
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: out of the electoral world. And I think I brought
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: that sensibility to the activism I did. I think one
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: of the things that at MoveOn we try to do is,
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: we are centrally an independent progressive grassroots group, but we
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: try to be in constant contact with elected folks so
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: we understand where the battle lines are, where the pressure
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: points are, And that kind of like the inside-outside game
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: was a big part of how all of us collectively
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: won the ACA fight. That was something where having just
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: really hyper-pinpointed intel about where Republicans could crack or if
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: there were threats to Democratic unity, that allowed us to
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: do our most effective work. So as state party chair,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: I'm on the other side of that handshake, but it
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: is still a handshake, that we see ourselves in the
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: party as part of an ecosystem and a movement. We're
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: working with amazing groups, with organized labor, with grassroots groups,
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: everyone from high school students to there's a a group
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: called the Raging Grannies of seniors that sing at progressive events.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: We're all working on it together. And we all get
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: that the stakes, you know, they ripple out from the
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: political system to every person's life. So to me, it's not,
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: there's no silos in this business.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: So Wisconsin is the center of the political universe in 2020.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: It is the state that all the data analytics types
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: predict is the person who wins Wisconsin is most likely
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: to be the next president of the United States. So
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: beyond the pressure that may put on your shoulders, I
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: think it's worth spending a little bit of time examining
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: how Wisconsin became that state because Barack Obama won Wisconsin
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: in 2008 by 13 points. He won it by seven,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: almost seven points, I believe, in 2012. It is a
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: state in 2012 that Obama felt had such confidence would
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: be in his camp that he almost didn't campaign there.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: I think we went once at the end, and I'm
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: not even sure we even ran an ad, to the
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: point where Hillary Clinton loses. Yeah. Small margin, but loses.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: What has happened in Wisconsin in the last decade that
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: has changed the politics to the point it went from
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: a non-competitive blue state to a purple state that some
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: see to be potentially trending red?
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: Scott Walker and the Koch brothers. And they're a symbol
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: of a broader apparatus on the Republican side funded by
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: incredibly wealthy, often heirs, who are trying to protect the
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: ability to build a kind of aristocracy in America, who
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: have systematically gone after and dismantled the pillars of progressive power.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: So everyone knows about Act 10. After Scott Walker came
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: into office, he was recorded saying his plan was to
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: divide and conquer, and he eliminated the power of public
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: sector unions to organize at a just giant cataclysmic fight
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: with 100,000 people outside the Capitol. But he pushed the
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: law through. He then did right-to-work law that further was
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: a body blow to organized labor in Wisconsin. He put
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: in extremely harsh voter ID laws that made it way
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: harder for people to be able to register to vote
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: and to cast their ballots. Something people don't know is
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: that he eliminated the ability of student governments to be
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: able to do mass registration drives on their campuses, and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: he changed the voter registration rules. So instead of being
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: able to be deputized statewide as a voter registrar, you
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: have to get deputized by every municipality. And we have 1,852
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: municipalities that administer their own election rules in Wisconsin. Just
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: point after point after... Oh, and he... This is another one.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: He changed the campaign finance laws to suit the profile
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: of his specific donors. So in Wisconsin... If you're a union,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: you can give $ 12, 000 to a state party. If you're
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: an individual, you can make unlimited contributions. And there's a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: billionaire named Diane Hendricks who writes literally seven-figure checks to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: the Republican Party. All of that then, the state party
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: can make unlimited donations to state candidates and the gerrymander
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: at the same time. So in all these ways, they
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: took a progressive state. If you poll Wisconsinites about issues,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: they're very progressive and put it into shackles. They... They
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: handcuffed the state to make it so that democracy couldn't work.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: And the ultimate expression of this was in our state
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: assembly races last year. Democrats got 54% of the votes.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: Republicans got 63 out of 99 seats. So democracy is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: just broken in our state. And our one shot now
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: is in this election, simultaneously, we have to stop Trump
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: and If Republicans get three more seats in each chamber
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: of our state legislature, they get veto override supermajorities and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: lock in the gerrymander for another decade until my seven-year-old's
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: graduating from high school. So we have to fight with
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: both hands.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: And so 2018 was great around the country. Also good
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: in Wisconsin, right?
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: Great in Wisconsin.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: Scott Walker gets sent home. But the numbers are interesting, right?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: You obviously see, as you mentioned, the results of gerrymandering,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: which is the state legislative results do not reflect the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: popular will of the people of Wisconsin. But even then,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: there are some warning signs in those numbers, right? But
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: there is an exception to those warning signs in the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: sense that Tammy Baldwin, your friend since high school, did
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: incredibly well, right? And there is this large swath of,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: or not, surprisingly large swath, I would say, of Baldwin-Walker voters.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: And so- What do you– like what is either the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: profile of that voter or what is the way to
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: turn a Baldwin-Walker voter? So someone who picked Tammy Baldwin
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: over– but did not pick Tony Evers, your governor. Like
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: what is the profile of that voter and how do
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: we reach that? How do you convert– turn a Baldwin-Walker
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: voter into a Democrat in 2020 or a Democratic voter
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: in 2020?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: So the key thing that I think is true in
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: Wisconsin and is more true than people realize across the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: country– is that swing voters and ticket splitters are not centrist.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: They're conflicted. They have a bunch of different ideas that
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: don't cohere into a perfectly polished gem of ideological consistency.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: They might have incredibly strong views in one way or
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: the other on guns and totally different views on health
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: care and totally different views on unions. They're human beings,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: and they're beautiful and bewildering complexity. And in Wisconsin, the
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: key thing is showing up and speaking to and making
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: most salient the issues that people care about in their
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: own lives, their lived experience that connect with progressive values.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: And so Walker was incredibly effective at breeding resentment. His
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: divide and conquer strategy carried right through in 2018. And
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: he was able to pull that off and pull a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: lot of voters towards him, even ones who trusted that
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: Tammy Baldwin was going to make sure that the ACA
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: wasn't ripped away. Health care was a central, giant issue
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin in 2018. And it was interesting because at
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: the national level, there was this fantasy that they could
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: go after Tammy Baldwin for endorsing Medicare for all. And
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: Leah Vukmir is a nurse, and she talked about preexisting
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: conditions all the time. But everyone knew because of the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: giant fight over ACA repeal that one vote in the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Senate could mean that their health care would be taken away.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: And they knew that Tammy Baldwin was on their side.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: She also did a ton of stuff in rural Wisconsin.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: She's been fighting tooth and nail. She did ads about
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: going after almond milk because we make real milk in Wisconsin.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: And people get that. We have a dairy crisis in Wisconsin.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: You might not get out of San Francisco alive if
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: you crash almond milk.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Don't you dare mention oat milk.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: I will be out of this state by the time
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: this episode airs. But I will defend our dairy industry
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: to the last in Wisconsin. And by the way, we
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: have two dairy farms closing every day in Wisconsin. There
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: have been 1,600 dairy farms. keeping it 1,600. 1,600 dairy
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: farms have gone under since Trump came into office. It
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: is just a massacre.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: And that is related to his policies in what way?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: So one thing is the trade war, which is we've
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: got retaliatory tariffs. It's making it really, really tough. And
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: also farm equipment, all these things that farmers need to
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: be able to sell their products and keep their farms
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: running are under threat. A second piece is he's bailing
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: out and supporting and not doing anything about the incredible
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: level of consolidation. Big ag, you know, we have these
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: handful of farms that are buying up smaller ones and
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: it's tough to compete against them. His policies are all
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: tilted towards the super rich. Even the tax bill allowed
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: these companies to, you know, pull in tons of money
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: and be able to just gobble up the smaller farms.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: People can tell in rural Wisconsin who's on their side.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: And Tammy has been fighting her whole life. She's for,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: you know, she went to West High School in Madison
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: like me. But she's shown up consistently at every step
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: of the way. And people can see that. And I
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: think that's one of our openings with Trump is that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: people are experiencing real problems in their lives. They can
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: see that Trump is spending all day on Twitter not
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: doing anything about the threats that they face and making
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: that case and drawing that connection is part of how
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: we win.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: So we did a poll a week or so ago
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: of Wisconsin. It was part of the Crooked Media Change
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: Research Polar Coaster Series.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: This was our first– we had done a couple of
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: primary polls with our first general election. We picked Wisconsin
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: for the reason I stated that it seems to be
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: the most important state and I think– an underpolled state
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: I think. Is it your sense– you were quoted in
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: the New York Times saying the general election is underway
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: in Wisconsin. And I know you guys– you're with the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: party doing a lot of organizing strategies. I want to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: hear you talk about that. But do you think the
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: rest of the party infrastructure understands, A, how important Wisconsin is?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: And by party infrastructure, I don't just mean the folks
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: you met with at the DNC. But the super PAC universe, yeah,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the organizer, which is there's one state that we cannot win,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: most likely cannot win the presidency without winning. Do people
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: get that fact?
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: People get it. Yes.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Are they acting on that fact?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: They're acting on it. I think that the pieces are
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: coming into place. And I would say we need to
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: like find some way to push the accelerator through the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: floor to make this happen. I met with a group
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: of high school Democrats in Waukesha. And every time they
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: log onto YouTube, they're seeing Trump ads. And what that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: tells you is that Trump is coming for everybody. Or
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: they have terrible data.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's probably the former, though.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's probably the former. I mean, even
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: if they have terrible data right now, they're using their
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: digital ad campaign mostly to ID people. They're trying to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: find every voter they can. They actually don't have a
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: message to persuade at all. As far as I can tell,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Trump's strategy is ID every possible supporter, get them all
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: to vote, and suppress everybody else. And it's not a
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: persuasion game. It is just getting people to... vote for
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: him or not vote at all. And, you know, our answer,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: our response to that is a little more complicated. Like,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: we certainly, you know, I would make the case to
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: a Republican that Trump is betraying their values and, you know,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: it would make, you know, they should think twice about
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: whether they actually want to cast a vote for him.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: But we also, we need to persuade and massively turn
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: out our base and ID tons of people who have
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: been bystanders to this whole thing. And, you know, if
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: you look in 2016, Trump and Clinton both got fewer
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: votes than five of the previous six presidential campaigns in Wisconsin.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: There are a ton of people who didn't vote for
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: either of them.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: Your point about fewer people voting for Clinton and Trump
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: than previous nominees points to two things, right? It points
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: to people who didn't turn out, right? But also points
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: to a group of people who voted third party, right?
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: So a chunk of Johnson voters, but also the Stein
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: voter margin or the number of Stein voters was larger
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: than the amount Trump won Wisconsin by.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: That's right. It's about 30,000 versus about 22,000.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: What's the Wisconsin party doing to target both those groups?
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: So first, non-voters in a state where, as you point out,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: voter registration is incredibly challenging on purpose. But then also,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: how do you persuade some of these third-party voters to
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: be Democratic voters in 20?
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: So the key thing in Wisconsin is you treat anyone
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: who's eligible as a potential voter, whether they're registered or not,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: because we have same-day registration. That's the one thing that
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: Republicans did not manage to take away. So if you
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: find someone who might be able to vote, might be
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: inclined to vote for you, You can start a conversation
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: with them now as we're doing, find out what they
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: care about, and keep up that conversation all the way
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: through Election Day. And frankly, you advocated for just a
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: sustained digital persuasion campaign. I think that is a great
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: thing to do. It is also important to have a
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: multilayered like, two-way conversation with voters. And that means you
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: knock on their door, you follow up with a postcard,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: you follow up with a text, you text back and forth,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: you make sure they're getting emails and, you know, and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: digital ads that are tailored to the conversation they had
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: at the door. And maybe, you know, the same person
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: follows up with them right before the election, makes sure
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: they're going to vote. That takes a level of kind
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: of organization and sophistication and data connected to your field program.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: That's what we're building at the state party. to a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: level that it's inspired by the neighborhood team model from
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: the Obama campaigns, but we're doing this already at a
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: scale that's never been seen before in the state. We
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: have hundreds of neighborhood teams across the state right now.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: And if you do all that, you know, you have
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: to break out of just tapping the same people that
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: have been hit every time. There are doors where no
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: Democrat has ventured for a very long time in the state,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: in part because, you know, data kind of deteriorated over
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: time and you never want to mobilize people who are
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: going to vote for the other side. But right now
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: when it's this early, you can talk to people and
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: just find out who they are and what they care
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: about and begin a conversation that can lead to a
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: vote down the road.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Is it a question of data deteriorating over time, which
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: is a larger problem within the party, but also a misunderstanding,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: at least in 2016, of shifting coalitions? Like a lot
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: of people beyond just Wisconsin talk about being asked to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: make phone calls at mobile phone banks or mobile text
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: banks around the country on Election Day. and getting a
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: lot of Trump supporters from a Democratic GOTV universe. And
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: there's clearly, even in Wisconsin, a group of people, there's
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: a chunk of Romney Clinton voters who have moved into
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: a different universe. Are you out there, are you trying
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: to just freshen the data, hitting every door so you
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: can get a sense of who people are because you
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: have the advantage of starting so early?
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, the coalitions did shift. I think any conversation
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: like this, you have to remember the 40-year blitz campaign
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: to poison people to Hillary Clinton that was the backdrop
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: to everything that happened in 2016. It was easy to
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: lose track of because people liked her being Secretary of State.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: There were a lot of people who got freaked out
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: when she got closer to power. And that piece is
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: not on the table this time. They don't have that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: head start with any of our Democratic candidates. And the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: goal that we have in terms of, we call it
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: the bridge-building canvas. It's a deep canvas where we go
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: and talk to people at their doors. It's to It's
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: to find out what issues motivate them and find out
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: which way they're leaning and not assuming, not taking anyone
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: for granted and not writing anyone off. So in communities
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: of color and in rural Wisconsin and in the Milwaukee suburbs,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: there are a lot of people who've zigzagged. There are
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: literally voters in counties that were Obama, Walker, Obama, Walker, Baldwin, and.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: Walker, people who have cast votes one way or another
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: or like different people who come out one way or another.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: And so in Wisconsin, we don't– this gets into the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: weeds a little. We don't have partisan– We're all nerds here.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: We don't have partisan voter registration. So when you register
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: to vote, you don't register with a party. We don't
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: have race on the voter file. So you have to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: figure out how people identify racially and ethnically through other
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: means and through talking to them. We don't have partisan primaries.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: We have open primaries. So you can't tell based on
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: which primary people voted on. And we have voter purges
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: that go on. But we have same-day registration. So when
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: people register, they're new in the data system. And all
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: that means the quality of data in Wisconsin, if you're
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: not actually talking to people and listening to them, it's
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: easy to lose track of who's who. And Republicans have
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: been obsessed with building really, really strong data infrastructure. So
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: that's an area where, you know, it caused me and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: so many other people in 2016 who are knocking or
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: calling in Wisconsin to pull their hair out. We've got
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: to leapfrog them in this cycle. And that's part of
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: that is just the work of volunteers grinding it out,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: talking to people one at a time and having actual conversations.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: There's nothing that replaces that. You can't model your way
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: out of a problem like that. You have to talk
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: to people.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: Have you seen in Wisconsin the obviously tremendous wave of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm in 2018, people out knocking doors a year, more
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: than a year out of the election?
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: Has that sustained since then? Because obviously there was this
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court race not long after the 2018 election which
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: saw things– which the Democrats lost, which was sort of
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: a brutal loss over relative to the impact of a
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. It sort of saw things
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: shift back away from the surge of enthusiasm in 2018.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: How is that working for you guys?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: So the way I think about Wisconsin, Obama won twice.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: We actually had trifecta control after 2008 for a hot second. 2010,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: Coke machine moved in, Walker, you know, Republican trifecta control.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: They started dismantling all our stuff. They were trying to
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: make Wisconsin an actually red state and they almost got
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: us over the cliff. And I think the like huge
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: uprising of people organizing across Wisconsin, it was like they
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: were able to grab a tree branch before they fell
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: off the edge and pull back up. We won the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: governorship by 1.1 percentage points. We swept statewide races for
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: the first time since 1982, but they still had a
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: lock on the State legislature, they did a special session,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: a lame duck session to grab power away from the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: elected Democratic governor and attorney general, including to stop them
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: from changing how voter ID laws are administered. I mean,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: totally intent on locking in their power. What happened in
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: the spring of 2019, this spring, is that Democratic enthusiasm
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: stayed high. We actually turned out more voters in our
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court race this spring than we did in the
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: previous spring, where Democrats won by 11 points. We won
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: a Supreme Court race in 2018 by a blowout. And
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: then we got more votes this time, a 7% increase
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: in turnout. The Republican side had a 30% increase in turnout. Essentially,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: Republicans surged back onto the field. Their enthusiasm is going
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: to be red hot. And I think this, you know,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: we're always looking for cracks in the Republican base. They
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: love Trump. The Republican base is enthusiastic about, I mean,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: the intensity of their support is not as weak as
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: the intensity of our opposition. That's one of our strengths.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: But it's not like the Republican base is fundamentally fractured.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: He's consolidated it. And part of the reason why a
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: lot of Republicans were leery in 2016 is they thought
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: he wasn't right-wing enough. People forget that now. But, you know,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: they were like, oh, he wants to protect Social Security
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: and Medicaid? Like, screw that guy. He's got them locked in.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: He's given them their justices. He's given them their tax cut.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: So we have to expect that they're going to turn
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: out a lot more voters than they did last time,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: not fewer, even after all the horrors they've committed. So
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: I want to tell you about– we have this five-fight plan.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: Please do.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: So– So it's going to be a quiz about the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: five fights afterwards?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: It'll be a quiz about the five fights. I want
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: everyone to take out their notebooks or their note app
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: or whatever they notate on. Tattoo artists, prepare to write
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: this onto your customers' wrists or wherever people are getting
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: their political notes tattooed. So first we're gearing up for
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: the one year out. November 3rd of 2019 is a
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: Packer game. So we're going to have a huge canvas
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: on November 2nd. You never want to knock doors during
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: a Packer game. Note to everyone. people who might be
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: visiting Wisconsin. But we're going to do a big push
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: this fall. But that gears us up for next year.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: So normally if you look at the graph of sort
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: of activist engagement, volunteer participation, it looks like a hockey stick.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: There's like this sort of long rumble and then this
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: explosion at the end. Our strategy in Wisconsin is to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: use moments before the election to build up so it
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: looks more like a series of steps with a curved–
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: it's not a very good metaphor.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: It's an audio medium.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Just imagine in your mind a wave that is–
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: Tilt it up and to the right. Yes. So the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: first thing is our presidential primary, April 7th, is also
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: the date of our Supreme Court race in the spring
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: and our local elections. Mayors, county board supervisors, school boards,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: all the stuff that Republicans have been focused on, Democrats
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: have been letting slide for so long. We want hundreds
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: of candidates to run for office. If you're listening right now,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: we want you to run for office in the spring
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: of 2020. And we're going to engage. I've been talking
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: to presidential candidates about engaging in our local elections and
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: our Supreme Court election as they come to woo Wisconsin
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: voters for the primary. It's a dress rehearsal for the fall.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: We want a full court press. We're going to knock
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: a zillion doors. We're going to make calls, send text messages,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: write postcards, do all the things, figure out what works,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: figure out where our strengths and weaknesses are, max that out,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: have a step change. So we're looking like a fall
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: campaign in the spring. Second thing, we've got the National
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: Convention in Wisconsin. And conventions are huge productions. They're important nationally.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: The key thing for Wisconsin is to leverage that and
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: make it a trampoline out of which comes this huge
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: surge of new volunteer engagement. So we'll have thousands of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: people volunteering at the convention. We want all those people
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: to commit to volunteering for the election. And I think
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: there's a huge opportunity to train, to get people to
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: make commitments before they leave Milwaukee about what they're going
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: to do in the fall. So we'll come out of
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: that again with this huge surge of energy. That's fight
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: number two. So it's win the spring, leverage the convention.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: Fight number three is our state legislative fight. As I mentioned,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: super majorities are on the line and gerrymandering is on
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: the line. The districts where Republicans are attacking us, they're
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: the Milwaukee suburbs, they're places in western Wisconsin near Green Bay.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: So those are areas where it's not the most Democratic
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: vote dense, but we have to contest every one of
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: those votes for the presidential as well as for our
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: state legislative fights. And it focuses the mind, gets people
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: to run for state legislature to know that the stakes
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin are going to be so vast. So fight
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: number three is protect the governor's veto with a state
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: legislative and local fights. And we also want to run
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: progressives for prosecutor positions across Wisconsin. So there's a bunch
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: of great fights there. Fight number four is stopping Trump.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: And nothing focuses the mind like holding the electoral college
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: in your hands. We're building the general election campaign without
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: a nominee. There's always this incumbent advantage. And part of
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: that comes from having an extra year to be able
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: to prepare your campaign. So- What the RNC did in
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: 2016 is it built a general election campaign before they
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: knew Trump was going to be the nominee. In Florida,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: they had 62 field offices open for more than a year.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: We're building that kind of campaign at the grassroots level
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: through our neighborhood teams and our field operation. And building
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: all that to stop Trump, that's fight number four. Fight
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: number five is we do all this so that we're
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: stronger for the future. Because 2022 cannot look like 2010.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: If we win the White House this time and then
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: we have a wipeout in 2022, we lose the future
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: of our state. And it threatens everything we want to
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: do nationally and in my home state for the long term.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: All of our statewide offices are up for reelection in 2022.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: We'll have new maps for the House, the state Senate
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: and the state assembly. We have a Senate race that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: will probably be open. Ron Johnson's talking about stepping down.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: So we've got to come out of 2020 just a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: finely tuned, totally aligned machine to be able to fight
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: the next fight. And if we do that, it might
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: take a cycle or two. But we can get if
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: we get new maps, we actually have a democracy in Wisconsin.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: We could become a blue trifecta state. And then we
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: could make an inclusive democracy that starts representing and fighting
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: for everyone.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: How quaint.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: I know. It's an amazing thing. And we've seen the
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: examples like New York this year, New Mexico this year.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: States that became actual kind of blue trifectas passed almost
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: the whole legislative agenda in one session. That's the goal
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin, that we do that. And that's what Minnesota did.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: They had a Democratic governor in 2010. While Wisconsin elected
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Scott Walker, they had Mark Dayton elected. And then they
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: got trifecta control in 2012. And in 2013, all those
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: folks were sworn in and they passed a huge agenda
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: right away. And their trajectory as a state has been
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: so much more hopeful and optimistic than Wisconsin's next door.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: It kills me that Minnesota has leapfrogged Wisconsin as a
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: bastion of progressivism. Wisconsin's supposed to be the progressive state.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: So we want to get that back and shine a
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: light onto the nation about what's possible.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: I always forget that the greatest rivalry in America is Minnesota-Wisconsin.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: I never forget.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Last question for you. As the Democratic Party chair,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: I assume you're assiduously neutral. You love all the candidates equally.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: So I won't ask you to pick.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: I won't get you in trouble.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: But I do want to ask you what you think
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: is the profile of a candidate who can win in Wisconsin, right?
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: Like what does it take? Because Wisconsin is a very–
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: it's a hard state that is getting harder for all
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: the reasons you mentioned. It is the prototypical example of
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: you have to do both, right?
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: You have to do both.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: The question of do we just turn out the base
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: or do we persuade swing voters or Obama-Trump voters or
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: whatever else, the only way to get there in Wisconsin
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: is to do both. So what is the profile of
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: a candidate who can do both and therefore win Wisconsin?
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: What I will describe are actions that I think the
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: candidate should take.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: Do this as carefully as possible. Yes.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: So the first thing is showing up in all caps
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: in the richest sense of that term. That means– coming
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: to Milwaukee and coming to Madison, also coming to Northern Wisconsin,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: coming to Western Wisconsin, coming to the Fox Valley, going
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: to all the different regions of our state, Racine and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: Kenosha and Southwestern, you know, every part of Wisconsin and listening,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: finding out what's actually happening in people's lives. And I
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: will say the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is here as
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: a partner. All of you presidential campaign staffers listening right now,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: we will work with you to make sure you connect
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: with and hear from the people that you need to
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: hear from and be able to talk about the issues
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: that they're facing. I think the The biggest fallacy in
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: democratic politics is the idea that you come up with
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: a message through introspection. You don't come up with a
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: message by thinking about what would make sense to you
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: in your own head. You do it by talking to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: actual people and learning and being able to reflect back
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: to them about what's happening in their lives. People who
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: win in Wisconsin show up, they listen, and they connect.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't mean trimming your sails ideologically or swinging
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: for the fences necessarily. It means showing that you are
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: on people's side. It's a populous state. It's a state
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: that has a kind of an independent, almost pocket tradition
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: that stretches back more than a century. Fighting Bob La
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: Follette is still the icon in Wisconsin. He had the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: progressive party. He was like, you know, outside the party structure,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: but he fought for people. He fought for change. He
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: fought for farmers and for people in cities. The sense
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: of having a fighter who actually cares and who actually
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: comes through and listens and takes up the mantle, that's
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: the key thing for our state. That's what wins every time.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: That's what President Obama did in our state. And I
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: think it's the sense of distance or disconnection is the
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: thing that maybe kills us the most. So we are
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: rolling out the red carpet. And I will also say
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: anyone who's listening right now can help make this happen.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: So the thing that is most vital for us right
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: now is people becoming recurring donors to the state party
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: so we can actually hire and budget based on those contributions.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: I love big bursts of money. But if you go
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: to wisdems.org slash donate and become a recurring donor, makes
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: a giant difference to build the kind of infrastructure we need.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: And then go to wisdom.org slash volunteer, because whether you're
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin or anywhere in the country, we're going to
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: need folks making calls to fill door-to-door volunteer shifts. We're
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: going to need those text messages to follow up with people.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: All that work is stuff that folks can do from
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: across the country to support the organizing we're doing in
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: the state. We are all honorary cheeseheads now. This is
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: an all-hands-on Wisconsin moment. So I'm grateful that folks get
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: the urgency of it. We've got to translate the anxiety
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: that you feel when you see those push alerts on
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: your phone into action to win the state. If we
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: win Wisconsin, we win the White House.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: Ben, thank you so much. Good luck with everything. And
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: I'm confident we will be talking many times between now
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: and when we're all waiting late into the evening on
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: election night for the votes from Waukesha County.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Dan. Appreciate it.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: What an interview, Dan.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: It was amazing.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Join us on Thursday. It'll be me and Alyssa Mastromonaco.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: What else? That's the pot everyone wants.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Finally, people are saying to themselves at the gym, on
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: the toilet, or in their cars, wherever you get this.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: Bye, Dan.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: Have a great week.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Have a great break. Bye, John.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: The show is produced by Michael Martinez. It's mixed and
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Caroline Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: production support, and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: and Milo Kim, who film and upload these bad boys
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: every week.