Latest / Pod Save America / “The Media’s Afghanistan Amnesia.”

Transcript

“The Media’s Afghanistan Amnesia.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And back again with us today while Lovett's on vacation
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: is the host of NPR's It's Been a Minute, Sam Sanders.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the pod, man.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: I gotta say, this is my first time in a
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: studio since last March. I've been doing my job from
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: home for over a year, so all of this is strange.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: We are honored to have you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is great.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Last time we had you, you were in Texas, too.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: How does it feel so far?
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: It feels.
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: Like it's going to be so smooth because I think
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: we've all gotten used to in the last year doing
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: the whole like.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: No, you first.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, you first. Zoom thing. And this might not be that.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: No, this is this is a little bit easier. Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: On today's show, President Biden touts progress on Afghan evacuations
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: as he takes political hits back home. Republican politicians are
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: catering to a base that's getting more extreme by the day.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: And I quiz Tommy and Sam on their knowledge of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: California's wild list of gubernatorial candidates in a game known
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: as Do You Recall? Oh, okay. This is all news
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to me, too.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be fun.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It's going to be fun. But first, some good news.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Love It or Leave It is coming back to New
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: York City. Our very own John Lovett is bringing the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: show to the New York Comedy Festival on November 12th
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: at the Beacon Theater. Tickets are on sale now, so
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: go get yours at cricket.com slash events. And, as we
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: mentioned before, Rebecca Nagel is back with a brand new
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: season of This Land, where she'll take you inside her
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: year-long investigation into a series of custody battles over Native
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: American children. battles that reveal how radical right-wing activists are
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: trying to quietly dismantle American Indian tribes. The first two
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: episodes are out now, so listen and subscribe to This
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Land wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Also, Rebecca did a fantastic interview on What A Day
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: this morning about season two that I highly recommend. It
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: gets into more details.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was working on that, the second season, for
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the last couple of months. It is fantastic. You should
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: go check it out as soon as you can. All right,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: let's get to the news. The president gave a press
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: conference on Sunday. where he talked about the 37,000 Americans
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and Afghans the U.S. military has now evacuated since the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Taliban took control of Afghanistan last week. He also said
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the military is, quote, executing a plan to bring thousands
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of other stranded Americans to the airport. And he promised
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that all the evacuated Afghan refugees would be given a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: home in the United States. Here's a clip.
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: Let me be clear. The evacuation of thousands of people
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: matter when it started, when we began. It would have
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: been true if we had started a month ago or
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: a month from now. There is no way to evacuate
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: you see on television.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: It's just a fact.
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: My heart aches for those people you see. We are
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: proving that we can move, though, thousands of people a
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: day out of Kabul. We're bringing our citizens, NATO allies,
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: Afghanis who, in fact, have helped us in the war effort,
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: But we have a long way to go and a
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: lot could still go wrong.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Tommy, how's the evacuation effort going at this point? And
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: what are some of the major challenges the administration is
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: facing in trying to evacuate both Americans and Afghans?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So I would say it's pretty chaotic still, but getting better.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So as of Monday morning, the White House said that
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: they've evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of 37,000 people from
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Afghanistan since August 14th. The best part of that stat
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: is that the tempo of evacuations is increasing. They said,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: the military said they had got 16,000 people out in
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the last 24 hours. So very tense situation. You're still
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: seeing these huge crowds in front of the gates of
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: the airport. The White House is worried about potential ISIS attacks.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, talked about on Sunday shows.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: There was a sniper attack last night on some Afghan
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: commandos who were doing security still. in support of the U.S.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: military mission. So, you know, you're going to still see
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: some scary images, some reports of people getting trampled. But
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: it does sound like the pace of the evacuations has increased,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: and hopefully that can get them to their goal. Although
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Biden said that if they're not completed by August 31st,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: he'd be open to pushing the deadline again. So that's
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: out there.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Sam, in light of the criticism Biden's received over the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: last week, particularly around not being empathetic enough towards the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Afghan people, What do you think of his statement on
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Sunday that there was no way to evacuate this many
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: people without the pain and loss and heartbreaking images that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the president himself said broke his heart?
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: There were perhaps some different ways. And I think there
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: was a better way for the administration to let Americans
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: know what we might be in for. It was so
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: unexpected to see those images of Afghans falling off of
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: our planes after Joe Biden and his team for months
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: had been saying, that it was going to be at
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: least a lot smoother, right? And so I get it
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: when they say that us leaving had to be chaotic,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: but I think there should have been some better messaging
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: to help us know.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: What to expect.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: I also think that Team Biden really overestimated the strength
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: of the Afghan military. It's important to note that the
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: Afghan military for years was only really functional when the U.S.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Was there right beside them.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: These weren't we had this idea years ago that we
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: could build a Western government in Afghanistan.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: We couldn't do that.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: And I think even after that, American leaders said that
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: they could build a Western-style military. Probably not. And no
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: one told us that. And to see Team Biden say, oh,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: the soldiers are retreating. No, they just can't.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: Do it without us.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I think the point Biden's probably trying to make is
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: that you could have processed and evacuated all the SIV
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: visa holders or future SIV visa holders. Those are the interpreters.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: All the, you know, the P2 visas, the people who
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: worked with USAID or media organizations, they all could have
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: gotten out a week ago and you still probably would
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: have seen huge crowds of people who are scared, who
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: have not worked for the U.S. in some capacity, who
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: still want out of there, right? Those would be the
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: heartbreaking images. I think that's true. but a bit of
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: a non sequitur, right? To your point, because we should
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: have gotten people out faster. That's a longer story that
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: we should talk about. What I think is getting a
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: little bit lost in both the coverage and the Biden
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: messaging is the broader cost of the war over 20 years.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So Brown University, as is saying, they do the Cost
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: of War Project. It's a great website that aggregates the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: cost both financially and in human terms of the wars
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: after 9-11. They estimate that over 170,000 Afghan citizens have
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: been killed in direct fighting since 2001. That includes 70,000
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Afghan soldiers and police, nearly 50,000 civilians, and around 50,000 Taliban.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And- Not a lot of coverage of that.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, right, like those numbers also don't include death, disease, hunger, right?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: But I think it's totally understandable that what we're seeing
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: now is focused on stories of people who can't get out,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: scary images from these crowds, et cetera. But- it's really
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: hard to adequately convey how much suffering this war has
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: created for the Afghan people. But I do think that
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: is why it's actually important for us to end our
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: war effort there.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: How far do you think the current case scenario is
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: from what the best case scenario of this departure could
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: have been?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that, well, that's a great question.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I think the best case scenario would have been that
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: over the past 10 years or more, the visa process was,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: went much faster. We got these special immigrant visas out. Uh,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration, when they cut a deal to withdraw,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: should have expedited the visa process immediately. Um, and we
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: should have figured that piece of this out, right? Cause
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I think when there's criticism of what Biden did, it's
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: about these potential or future visa holders. Um, I think
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: ending the war, as he said, would always require a
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: peace deal with the Taliban, some sort of negotiated settlement,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: some sort of, um, you know, potential civil war effort
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: between the Afghan forces and the Taliban. And so, you know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: it could have been messier. It could have been a
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: lot smoother. We just don't really know.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, a number of outlets have now been digging
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: into how the U S withdrawal devolved into chaos. I
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: thought the New York times piece was quite good. Um,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: it basically said that as we've been saying, you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: our intelligence officials believed a Taliban takeover wouldn't happen for
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: at least 18 months. So the Biden folks thought they
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: had more time to evacuate people. That seems to be
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the main issue here. Um, even though it also points
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: out that refugee groups were urging the White House in
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: May to begin mass evacuations. But it said that that
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: might have required more U.S. troops as Biden had just
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: announced a withdrawal. And the Afghan government apparently worried that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a mass evacuation would, quote, amount to a vote of
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: no confidence in the government and its forces. And that's
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: something that President Ghani communicated directly to President Biden. Tommy,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: does that all sound about right to you? And did
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you find anything else notable in that piece?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, it makes sense. You know, I can't say
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: if it's right or wrong, but it makes sense. I mean,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Ashraf Ghani was sitting there thinking that if you rush
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: out all these people, it will look like a vote
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: of no confidence for my government, which could precipitate its collapse.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: And I understand why the Biden administration would hear that
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: and think, OK, we need to low key this. Clearly,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: they also just thought they had a lot more time.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: And I like I understand. I haven't heard anyone say
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: they thought Kabul would fall immediately, but it does sort
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: of sound like it comes down to these logistics issues
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: you were talking about. And without the U.S. government support
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: and contractor support for the Afghan military, they just couldn't
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: do the job.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Well, and I think it's a question of like, what
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Afghan soldiers are being asked to do, what they could do,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: and where their loyalties might actually lie. A lot of
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: the folks that were working for the Afghan military also
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: had ties to the Taliban and were sympathetic to them.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Many of them didn't have the proper training to do
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: the basic art of soldiering.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Without the U.S.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: To help.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Lots of these soldiers could not read or write, could
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: not read the maps. I mean, like, they couldn't read
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: the maps, right? And so, I don't know. I think
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: a lot of Americans don't understand how fragile the Afghan
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: military has been for years.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: How fragile are they?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, so, you know, there's been this training mission
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that's gone on forever. But, you know, there have been
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: lots of reports over the years of so-called ghost soldiers
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: who are just, you know, soldiers whose names are put
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: on the rolls. so they get a paycheck, but it
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: just gets siphoned off by some commander or local government leader.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: There have been tons of reports of weapons being turned
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: over or sold or found in Taliban hands elsewhere. So
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I think the 300,000 number for the Afghan security forces,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I think, has been known to have been wildly inflated
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: for some time. There were these pretty impressive elite commando
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: forces who are fighting hard until the last minute in
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: places like Kandahar. And it does sound like Ghani also
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: made a tactical error by not trying to bring back
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: some of his forces from more remote areas, reconstituting them
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: around civilian populations and just defending those. And again, but
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you think about it from his perspective, like he can't
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: look like he's abandoning parts of his country if he's
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: going to now lead it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I saw in that piece that I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: hadn't known before was that the embassy, the U.S. embassy
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan told staff to depart on April 27th, and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: then they told all American citizens to leave as soon
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: as possible on May 15th. Were you surprised that, I mean,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know how this works, but were you surprised
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: there's so many Americans left there even after the embassy left?
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: put that message out? Is that just because it didn't
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: get to people?
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: And who are these Americans?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess if you're in Kabul and you're
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: an American, you have a reason. Maybe you're a dual citizen.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're married to somebody. Maybe your job requires you
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: to be there. If you are a foreign service officer,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: you're reading the same intelligence reports that makes you believe
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: that you have six to 12 months to do your
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: job and you believe in your mission and you are
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: committed to the task and you want to process all
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: these visa requests and do these in-person interviews with former
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: interpreters USAID contractors, et cetera, et cetera, and actually get
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: these Afghan people out because the SIV process is so
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: onerous and painstaking and cumbersome and requires paperwork and interviews,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: in-person interviews, that it just couldn't possibly be done in
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: this short period of time. And it was made even
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: harder because of COVID because people couldn't have in-person meetings
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: for like, what, a year, a year or more. And
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: so I'm sure these are just like committed professionals who
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: are like, no, we're going to stick around and do
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: our job.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Sam, I want to get to the politics in
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a second, but just while we have you here, I
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts on how you think
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the coverage has been, the media coverage has been, because
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: there's been some criticism that the media has focused a
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: lot on how the withdrawal has been chaotic, but not
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: as much on sort of the lessons from this 20-year conflict.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: Well, the lessons, like, that's where I'm, like, still demoralized
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: and thinking through what it all means, because for me...
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: The last big news story that we all focused on
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: before Afghanistan and what's happening there now was Jeff Bezos
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: taking his almost spaceship almost to space. And you juxtapose
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: this imagery of the world and America's richest man taking
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: a flaming phallic symbol almost to the seal of space,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: but not quite getting it all the way up. And
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: then you turn around and you see America fail in
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: the biggest way in a war it's been fighting for
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: 20 years. And I, as an American who just irrationally
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: still loves this country, I'm like, what the hell are
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: we doing? And I think there's a lot of who
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: got out right, who did it wrong, which party is up,
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: where do these people go, a lot of right now questions.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: But this is probably a moment to just reflect big
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: picture about what the hell America is doing. There are
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: so many big stories that I see today that just
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: show that we're a country that feels a lot more
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: rudderless than I thought we would be right now. You know,
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: we don't win wars anymore. We can't beat a pandemic.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: We have a wishy-wash relationship to science. The world is
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: on fire and we don't care. We don't agree on anything.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: And this image, all of these images make me say,
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: what politician, what leaders, what institutions are asking us the
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: larger existential questions of what are we doing and where
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: the hell are we going? And I do not think
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: that any politician working right now in any real institution
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: is equipped to lead those conversations and to have those conversations.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: And I would hope that in the midst of something
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: that symbolizes a really big change in what America means
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: for the world, I'd hope that we'd have some larger conversations.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: But I haven't heard it or seen it in mainstream
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: news outlets, including my own.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, it's not only difficult
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to find politicians who are willing to have those conversations,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: but it's difficult to find spaces to have those conversations.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Without it becoming a fight.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Right, I was going to say, because the spaces we
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: have right now aren't doing so well.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Debating the Afghan withdrawal on Twitter, not going so well
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: so far. No, no.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, there was sort of a bunch of arguments
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: that broke out between journalists over the weekend. You know,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: there's this amazing reporter named Chris Chivers, CJ Chivers. It's
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: usually his byline. New York Times reporter. He wrote an
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: incredible book called The Fighters that follows a lot of
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: human stories of men and women who fought in post
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: 9-11 wars that I can't recommend enough. He is someone
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: who has been a vocal opponent of these wars for
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: a long time, who has called out administration lies or exaggerations, right?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: He's been someone who's been like on it and calling
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: bullshit the whole time. He made the point on Twitter
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: last night that what you're also seeing from a lot
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: of the people who are in Afghanistan or covering what's
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: happening is the human element, which is that they worked
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: with translators. They know people who are scared to death.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And they are personally, they're part of the story because
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: these journalists are trying to get them out. Right. So
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: you can understand that humanity. Of course, that's going to
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: come through in the coverage. But I agree with you
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that there are not a lot of voices that are
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: expressing humility. Admiral Mike Mullen was on ABC News over
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the weekend and he said in retrospect, yeah, we should
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: have we should have gone earlier than we did. He
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: said that he advised President Obama that we could turn
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: it around in Afghanistan and he was wrong. I give
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: him a lot of credit for being one of the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: few people saying that because you read like Dave Petraeus
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: interviewed in The New Yorker. by Isaac Chodner, who's usually
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: like really tough on his interview subjects. And he's making
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: the same points, which is like, I needed more time,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: more troops. We lacked resolves. It's like, well, 20 years
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: isn't resolved. It's a lot of time.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I think it brings up a larger question that I
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: don't think a lot of people have good answers for,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: which is how do you protect and defend human rights
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: around the world beyond military interventions?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of these and I think a
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: lot of reporters, even the ones like like CJ, who
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: worked closely with Afghan translators and the Afghan people. You know,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the question is, when there are oppressive regimes around the world,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: your your choices, either if you're someone like the government,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: like the United States, do you intervene militarily or do
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: you find other ways to protect human rights? And I
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: don't know that there are a lot of easy answers there,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: which is why you face choices about war.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: And there isn't a lot of trust about what we
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: are across the world. You know, it's hard to say,
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: you know, after something like Afghanistan, that America can approach
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: other places, you know, with a clean slate or, you know,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: be totally fair players. Like, is there trust enough to
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: even do anything other than have a military intervention?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the lesson we should all learn is
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: humility and that we cannot... force human rights at the
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: point of a gun. The horrible trade-off is that life
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: under the Taliban might be horrifying and awful and evil
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: for some people, but life under military occupation was awful
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: and horrible for people.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And that is a point that gets lost, right? Not
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a cost just for the US, but a cost for
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the Afghan people.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Like, look, people talk about US casualties in Afghanistan. You
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: really rarely hear the civilian- Death toll number cited or,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: you know, like I think that's why people were offended
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: by President Biden's critique of the Afghan security forces, because
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: something like sixty nine thousand Afghan army and police were
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: killed since the war started. And that's that is a
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: massive number of casualties.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Times had another shit burger of a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: piece for the White House this weekend that was entirely
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: predictable because it involved. More than 40 Democrats, lawmakers, strategists
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and party officials unburdening themselves to reporters about their midterm
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: anxieties over Afghanistan and the Delta surge, which is always
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: a constructive thing to do. That's the way to fix
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the problem is to talk to The Times about it.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: The Times notes that these Democrats are particularly worried about
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: losing moderate swing voters and independents, a concern that's not
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: entirely unfounded, according to a pair of NBC and CBS
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: polls released over the weekend that show Biden's approval rating
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: dipping to around 49, 50 percent. With NBC showing the
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: biggest declines coming from independents, rural residents and white voters. So, Tommy,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Bill McInturff, who helped conduct the NBC poll, he's a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Republican pollster. He said, quote, the best way to understand
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: this poll is to forget Afghanistan. So I'll take that
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to mean he doesn't think the issue is having a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: big effect on Biden's approval ratings and that it's more
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the pandemic and the economy. But what do you think
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of that, first of all? And then what do you
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: make of all the Afghanistan polling you've seen in these
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: last weeks?
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: The best number I saw in these polls was in
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: the CBS poll, 81% of voters said they want the U.S.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: to help Afghan interpreters come to the U S including
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: 76% of Republicans. So that kind of restored my, I.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Was surprised by that number. Yeah.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think we need to watch it.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: It'll change, but I think you see those images early days.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The propaganda machine hasn't cranked up yet. Right.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: But look, you know, Tucker Carlson was on TV last
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: week saying first we invade, then they invade us. Uh, right.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: He's talking, he's talking about African civilians as invaders. You
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: have Steven Miller out there. Right. So I'm, I'm, yeah,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I'm genuinely worried about this. Um, I think when it
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: comes to Afghanistan more broadly, what we're learning is what
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: we suspected that people support ending the war. I do
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: think there's cause for concern when you're the president and
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: what people are seeing is chaos, stories or assertions that
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the U.S. was humiliated or defeated or that there's a
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: greater risk from al-Qaeda. Those are all things that I
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: think are not support or oppose withdrawal, but could be
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: problems for Biden. But it's not a surprise that Delta
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: variant's really driving this.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: Well, also, when I first saw the number that he
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: was down to 49%, I said, oh, that was Trump's
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: high point.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: That was Trump's high point, right? And so these numbers
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: don't exist in a vacuum. And by the time we
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: get to midterms, it's always going to be tight between
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: both parties. I also think a lot of these moderate,
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: independent swing voters, they don't check in really until just
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: before the election. And we're what, still over a year
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: away from that?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: So much could change. So it's, we can, let's look
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: at the poll numbers, but let's understand where they exist
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: and how they exist. And it's a long time away
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: from that.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the most salient qualities of swing voters
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: is what you point out. No one ever talks about this,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: is that they're just not as engaged as other voters.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And so maybe when they do engage, it's sort of
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: what Tommy was just saying. They see images of chaos
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: on the television. They, um, are sick of the pandemic.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: They know about that. They don't feel the economy's back yet.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So you ask them how they feel. They're like, not great.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: To your point that you were making earlier, just sort
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of about broader views of the United States and where
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we are right now, I thought it was interesting in
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the NBC poll, 29% say the country's headed in the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: right direction. That's down seven from their last poll. 54%
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: say they're pessimistic about the country's future. Only 24% think
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the economy is excellent or good. And more people think
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the worst of the pandemic is yet to come than
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: has already passed.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: I agree on all counts. I agree on all counts.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I actually thought Biden's approval would be lower compared to
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: all of that.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: But I mean, this is the thing.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: It's like it's hard to overstate how much everything is
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: unsettled for everybody right now. We've still got millions of
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: Americans across the country who are reluctant to go back
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: to their jobs. You know, that's still happening in the
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: midst of the Delta variant, in the midst of Afghanistan.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: in the midst of all this other crazy stuff. It's like,
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: which also means that Americans by and large are engaging
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: with partisan politics in general period, a lot less than
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: you think, because they're trying to get their lives together.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: Most families right now are trying to see if their
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: kids can go back to school safely right now. You know,
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: who's up and who's down in DC is bottom of
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: the list, I think.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: To your point about 49 being Trump's high watermark, Dave
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Weigel at the Washington Post had a hilarious tweet this
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: morning where he said, President's approval rating below 50%. You
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: know what that means? Trips to Biden country to ask
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Biden voters why they still support him. Googling diners in
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Marin County, BRB. At this yoga studio that sells lattes
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: with activated charcoal, they never stop saying malarkey. Like, I
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: think it's such a funny joke that is true about
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: how Trump was covered in these moments.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Well, but to that point also, I thought it was
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: interesting in the NBC poll that Democrats are not Biden's
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: problem here. So he had a 90% approval among Democrats
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: in April and only 88% today. That's only a two
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: point drop.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Do you think it should be that high for him
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: with Democrats?
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I think it is.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: It feels Trumpian.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: When I hear that number for him, it's like paralleling
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: what the GOP was doing for.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Trump for years. It does. It seems Trumpian on its surface.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I actually think it's broader than that. I think it
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: is the fact that we are just growing more polarized
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: as a country. Yeah. And I think that's the answer to,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: you know, Biden's approval, even though it has, quote, dropped
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to 40 and 50 percent, it's going to be held
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: up to a certain level. There's going to be a
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: high floor, much like there. I mean, even Trump had
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: a floor that was higher than we thought it should be,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: because I think that polarization has made Democrats just more
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: supportive of their president and their politicians, no matter what happens. Yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: because you would think, OK. All these scenes of chaos
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, it's got to get to Democrats at some point, too.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: So far, we're not seeing that yet.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: And I wonder, you know, a few weeks ago, everyone
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: was thinking that the issue of the midterms was going
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: to be.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Critical race theory. We kind of forgot about that. Where
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: is that?
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: And so, like, how do we know what's going to
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: be the big thing in the month or two ahead
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: of the midterms?
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: You don't know.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: You can't know, which is why I think larger conditions
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: like the state of the economy and the pandemic, I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: still think will end up driving a lot of vote
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: one way or the other by the time you get
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to the midterm.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: How does Fauci feel by next October?
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: That's the question.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: And again, I think what's helping Biden here is that
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people blame, fairly or not,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the unvaccinated population for the Delta spike and not Biden,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: who they can see is trying to get people to
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: do the one thing we need to do to solve
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about another extremist faction looking to destabilize
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: a democratically elected government.
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: That's a segue.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: You thought about that one.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: You wrote that down.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: A few developments over the last several days that I
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: think we should keep an eye on. I wanted to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: talk about this. On Thursday, a right-wing extremist who was
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: arrested for threatening to bomb the United States Capitol received
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: what reads like a sympathetic tweet from Alabama Republican Congressman
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Mo Brooks. It said, quote, Generally speaking, I understand citizenry
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: anger directed at dictatorial socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and the very fabric of society. But the way to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: stop socialism's march is for patriotic Americans to fight back
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: in the 2022 and 2024 election. What was that, Mad Libs? Wild.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Wild tweet. Wild, wild comment on when someone threatens to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: bomb the Capitol. Later that day, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and Matt Gaetz said, Matt Gaetz still kicking. He's still around.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: They held a MAGA rally in Des Moines, Iowa, where,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: according to The New York Times, they promised to support
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the January 6th rioters who'd been arrested. And Green also
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: declared that the United States now faces a new, quote,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: axis of evil made up of the media, Democrats and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: big tech. Then on Sunday, Donald Trump's rather lame attempt
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: to encourage people to get vaccinated at his rally in Alabama,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: where there are no ICU beds left, was met with boos.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Take a listen.
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: I believe totally in your freedoms.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: You got to do what you have to do, but
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: I recommend take the vaccines. I did it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: It's good.
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: Take the vaccines, but you got, no, that's okay.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: That's all right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: You got your freedoms, but I happened to take the vaccine. Wow.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: There were four years where we heard his voice every day. Wow.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: That's my first question to you, Sam. Like I'm always
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: torn about highlighting all this lunacy because on one hand,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: You don't want to give it oxygen. On the other,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: this is what's happening with one of the country's two
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: major political parties. What do you think?
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: I think it's like, how do we get to a larger,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: bigger conversation?
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: There is a question directly about how much mainstream media
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: gives fuel to these fires. And are we gassing these
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: folks up and helping them out by doing it? Because
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: they want it, right? They want the attention. And I
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: think instead of parsing what they're saying... and parsing whether
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: it will work or not, I think we all need
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: to ask ourselves the ways in which we are complicit
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: in this type of behavior and the ways in we
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: don't check this stuff when we hear it from friends
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: and family in our daily lives. And I think even
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: the fact that we talked about the threat of another
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: Capitol bombing and didn't spend time thinking about the severity
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: of that. It's like, are we complicit in the numbing
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: of ourselves to the dangers that we're facing right now.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: And so like, we can have a conversation about specifically
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: what Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying, but I don't know.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: I want to, at some point, figure out how do
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: we keep being a nation that produces Marjorie Taylor Greene's?
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: And where does that stop? I have no answers.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: That's a very good point. Yeah, Tony Blair op-ed, Axis
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: of Evil. I'm not feeling this mid-2000s nostalgia right now.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Let's come back. But like, I think, Your point is
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: exactly right. We kind of have a euphemistic conversation about
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: these things. I've been reading Spencer Ackerman's book about the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: war on terror, which I highly recommend. At the beginning
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: of the book, he talks about Timothy McVeigh and the
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma City bombing and the way that was covered and
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the way we responded to it as compared to 9-11.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: And so McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh was inspired by white supremacist
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: writings like the Turner Diary. He was very much a
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: white supremacist act of terror and movement. And it took
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: us like a decade or two to realize that.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Collectively. And it was glossed over and his motives were
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: framed in the way Mo Brooks is framing this guy's motives,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: which are like liberty, blah, blah, blah, right? And then
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: the government's response to this mostly white homegrown extremism as
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: compared to how we responded to 9-11 with the war
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: on terror policies and the Patriot Act was night and day.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that the global war on terror
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: response was good.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: It was horrible.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: But I think it's like we need to be more
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: cognizant of what he's inciting.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: And cognizant of the ways in which race underlies all
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: of these things. You know, like a lot of that
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: rhetoric from Marjorie and from Matt Gaetz, it is incredibly
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: racially coded. And a lot of our notions of American
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: idealism and hegemony are influenced by white supremacy, right? And
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: I think that we are complicit in allowing these things
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: to continue until we acknowledge the through line of race
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: in so many of these stories and have a real
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: higher level conversation about how we move past it. And
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: I hate to get all red table talk this whole episode,
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: but like it requires some larger existential questions that unfortunately
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: just will not be coming out of the beltway.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and of course, in that same rally with
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Green and Gates, Gates said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: first black man to ever hold that office, to hold
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: that cabinet position, is the stupidest person to ever serve
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: in the cabinet ever.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Stupidest.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Right. Wow. Of course.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: After he called Ilhan Omar a traitor to America. Oh, yeah.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Forgot about that one, too.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. That was Green who said that.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: It's hard to keep track.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Dumb and dumber.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, part of the reason I wanted to bring
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this up is because it does feel like we are
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: operating in two different realities. And in one reality, there's
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the Biden administration and it's a normal presidency. Normal in
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the sense that they have successes. They have failures. There's
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: criticism directed towards them. They deal with the criticism like
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: everything you expect to play out over the course of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: a presidency. then in another reality you have a good
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: chunk of the republican party who believes that the people
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: who attack the capital are good and life-saving vaccines are
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: bad yeah you know and i you know the thursday
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: came and went and you know there was a guy
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: who threatened to bomb the capital who was a right-wing
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: extremist and folks are like oh okay it was almost
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: nowhere but it's like those people that republican party as
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: one of two major parties in the country they're going
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: to get a vote yeah they're going to have a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: nominee they're going to have politicians that they put up
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: for office like we kind of have to pay attention.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: And it's like, we all have to also acknowledge the
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: ways in which we're complicit in it. You know, like,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: so the craziest part for me about watching the imagery
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was like around the
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: same time that I was watching the White Lotus finale.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: And I remember getting to the end of that show saying,
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: those dumb imperialist Americans going on vacation in Hawaii, taking
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: all of those native stuff, I had just been in
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Hawaii two weeks earlier for a wedding. I was just there.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: And I think that some of these larger conversations require
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: Republicans and Democrats and people of all races to say,
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: we can be both the beneficiaries of American imperialism and
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: the victims of it. We can be both the beneficiaries
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: of American partisan politics and also the victims of it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: And these cut and dry lines of who did it
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: right and who is doing things wrong They only get
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: you so far.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: And the larger.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: Macro conversations about what our role really is in this stuff,
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: that's going to be required. Because like, I mean, I
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: hate to say it again, but like Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: is a creation of all of us.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: It's a creation of all of us. And how do
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: we have conversations and cultures across the country that stop
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: letting that stuff happen?
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you also... again, if you're going to have
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that kind of reflection, you need the time to reflect
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: on it. And often we are just onto the next
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: thing as fast as possible. So there's not a lot
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of time to sit, to stop, step back and say,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, like we were talking about with Afghanistan. All right,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: what lessons have we learned? It's just like, all right,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: what's the next headline? Let's go.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: No, yeah. No, Ackerman's book gets into this too. After 9-11,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: history started the minute after the 9-11 attacks for us.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: And American exceptionalism meant that we were a force for
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: good in the world and the people that attacked us
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: were evil. And Susan Song Tang and other people who
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: tried to like talk about the complexity of the U.S.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: relationship to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, the fact that
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: we supported the Mujahideen when they were fighting against the
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Soviets were run out of town, were drummed out of
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: the conversation. And even when like State Department officials like
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Richard Armitage would go and try to meet with foreign
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: leaders in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, they would try
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: to talk to him about the complexity and the history
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of the place. And he said, there's a quote in one,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: and I think the book or something I read today
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: that he said, History starts today. You know, like we
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: just refuse to hear history always starts today. Every new
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: day is the beginning of history. So, Tommy, we talk
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: a lot about Trump's grip on the party. What did
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: you make of the booze he got for talking positively
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: about the vaccines? I mean, I just think that if
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: you go to a Trump rally, you're there to hear
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the greatest hits of the culture war.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, you don't want them to play the new stuff.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: You don't want the new stuff. You want the fake
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: news media. You want the libs to get owned. And unfortunately,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: masks and vaccines, I think, have gotten folded into that construct.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And they would rather tell people who nag them about
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: COVID to shut up than to protect themselves. And, you know, look,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: I understand it. Look at Ron DeSantis. Like, it's depressing.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: It didn't have to be this way. But it's basically
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: driving all the conversation around Ron DeSantis' presidential ambitions. So
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: clearly it's working for them. And I found myself both
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: being happy he mentioned it because the bar is so
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: low for Trump. I was like, oh, wow, he told
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: them to get vaccinated. I guess that's good. But then
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: I really thought about how much he could help if
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: he made a concerted messaging effort, if he did PSAs,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: if he went on Fox News and pitched them on
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a conversation about the vaccine. He doesn't want to, right?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: He wants to talk about the election fraud that didn't happen.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: And he wants Biden to get blamed for people dying.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's that cynical. What did you
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: make of that?
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: Well, one, I was, so I've been at Trump rallies
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: and when I heard the boos, I was like, was
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: it a real boo or a funny, funny, ha ha boo?
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: I don't think anyone that goes to a Trump rally
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: is actually going there to ever really boo him.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: And so that was a metaphorical boo.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Metaphorical boo. I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think that Republican politicians,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: including Trump, um, can no longer control the extremism that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: they fuel.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: That is what I thought here.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: They're riding the tiger.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: It doesn't matter what Trump says about the vaccine now.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: It's too late.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: It reminded me of some TikTok of the January 6th
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: attack from the perspective of people inside the White House.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people said that Trump was surprised
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that this happened. And I actually believe that. I don't
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: think it absolves him of anything. But you can tell
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: that he is sort of confused about this very radical
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: movement that he created. And I think a lot of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Republican politicians are that way. But they're like, you know what?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: We're going to win because we want power and that's
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: all we really care about. So if they don't believe
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: in vaccines because Tucker Carlson was telling them that or
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: any other misinformation, I'm there. Let's do it.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: What I wonder is like the best way to respond
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: to people across the country who are still really anti-vax.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: You know, I have people close to me. who are
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: not Republicans, who are anti-vax.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: And it's like, how do you talk to them? Because
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: laughing at them is not.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Going to work.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: Shaming them is not going to work. And as good
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: as it feels to see the martyrs and be like,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: you're crazy. What is the way to talk to all
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: of the country that gets them to just get the shot?
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it is yet. And I don't
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: know who they would trust.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I think, I think first of all, the group
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: is not monolithic as you point out, right? So there's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: some who are unreachable, I think. Yeah. I think there
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: is another segment of people who, They've said that doctors
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: are really helpful, right? Like talking to your own doctor
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: can convince people, family and friends who've got the vaccine,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that can be helpful as well. So I do think
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it's more of on a, it's on a person to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: person sort of local level. Certainly, I don't think like.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden saying again, everyone go get the vaccine or
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: even Donald Trump for some Republicans is going to work.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Although Olivia Rodrigo. Olivia Rodrigo is of course the exception.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: I was like, Olivia, I'll get a third dose.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I would.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: It's fine.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: She is our queen. We'll do what she says. I do.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I really, really hate it when people almost gleefully retweet
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: stories about anti-vax personalities who then got it and died.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: It's not helping.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: It's disgusting. I do wonder if you could do a
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: series of interviews, ads, public service, PSAs. with individuals who
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: like you know like in a campaign when you have
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: people who switch votes say like i was anti-vaccine i
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: refused to take it i thought it was blah.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Blah i've been wondered about this for so long but.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Then i got sick yeah i wish i you know
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: and it's like i would make that my campaign yeah
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: see the human cost of getting sick yeah.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah the sort of sneering about the people who've died
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: and the stories about that i I don't love that.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: They died.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: And I have to say, like, it's wild. They're dead people.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: You can sneer at them.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Like, Charlie Worzel wrote some piece about this, or tweeted
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: some piece about this, sorry, about sort of this, from
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: a doctor, about how he doesn't like people sort of sneering,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, at people who've died of this. And, like,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I retweeted it. And I got, I got someone on
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Twitter who was like, Oh, I liked it. Right. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: someone on Twitter is like, why did you like this piece? Wow.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I'm like, why did I like this piece? Because I
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: agree with it.
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Now you're policing what I liked because you want me
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: to cheer the people who. What are you talking about? Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: Well, and then there's this other echo chamber of extremely liberal,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: woke Twitter that. That just only wants to be totally
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: alarmist about everything every day.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I'm so concerned.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: We're all going to die.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: It's all ending. And like that is not helpful either.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I think there is– And I get the– look, I
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: get the fear and anxiety. I have it too.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: But there's a certain portion of Twitter specifically that wants
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: to live in that anxiety all day. And that is
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: not helping them and it's not helping other folks and
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: it's not helping us get vaccinated.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Don't lead with that.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I will say that because I am one of those
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: anxious people about the pandemic in general, like I check
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: LA Public Health every day, I check where the numbers
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: come out. If you ever want to see this, look
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: at some of the replies to the numbers because when
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: there's like an increase in cases, There are some people
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: who reply, I knew it. Shut it all down again.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: It's bad. This is terrible. And I'm like, why are
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you all replying this? Why are you putting this out
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: into the public? What's that going to help?
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: And it's people who at this point know the science
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: who are doing a certain performative level of maskness and
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: vaccine-ness and pandemic-ness that is more meant to help them
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: get their liberal gold star for the day. than actually
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: be an asset to public health and the greater good.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: And that's what I'm tired of.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And it's just a question of like, is what you're
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: saying here or the tweet you're putting out, is it
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: sort of, is it going to help the situation? Is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: it going to help end the pandemic? Is it going
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: to help more people get vaccinated? Is it going to
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: help more people take precautions? Or is it not? Or
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: is it just for you?
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: We're asking tweeters to think before they tweet.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which I know. I've not followed that myself always.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I have not either. People in glass houses. It's tough.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: So that New York Times story about Democratic anxiety that
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: we were just discussing said that Democratic leaders believe the midterms, quote,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: will be fought over a pandemic version of kitchen table issues,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: public health, school openings and household economics. Do you think, Sam,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that's how Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Trump see the election?
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: It's going to matter less how they see it and
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: what it actually is.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: I'm always surprised how every election cycle, one of the
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: top issues is It's health insurance, whether we're talking about
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: it or not. People care about their health insurance, right?
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: And so there's going to be some basic bread and
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: butter things that will be important for voters regardless of
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: what people say. And as we mentioned earlier, something new
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: will pop up. There'll be some new critical race theory
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: that happens before next October that also takes the attention.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: So, yeah. It's hard to say is what I'm saying.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Tommy, from like a Democratic strategist point of view, how
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: much do you think Democrats should make this election about
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: a pandemic version of kitchen table issues versus the extremism
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Party?
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: I think I would recommend that they make it about
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: the kitchen table issues and the thing Joe Biden has
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: done for regular people. I get a little nervous when
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I see some of the messaging around the California recall,
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: which we're going to talk about in a minute. It
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: is like, overly focused on offensive things. Larry Elder said
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: in the past, I just feel like we just tried
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: that with Trump and that maybe we should try something new.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: That said, to your point about how we're complicit or not,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: or we ignore things or we don't. I mean, last
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: night in Portland, there was a big Proud Boys rally
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: where they mostly looked pathetic. But at the end of it,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: a guy took out a gun and started shooting at
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: a bunch of Antifa members. And so there are these
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: like real strains of violence and extremism happening. And the
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Proud Boys are part of the MAGA base, right? I mean,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: they made up most of the, not most of, but
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of the January 6th crowd that went into
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: the Capitol. And so like, we can't pretend those things
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: aren't happening. I just think like the Republicans are going
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: to run one election, which is going to be all
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: about motivating the most hardcore people. And I think that
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: if we're going to get out a broader coalition, it
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: can't just be fear of them. It's going to have
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: to be something else.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: Well, and will Democrats coalesce around themselves by the midterms?
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: There's potential for more moderate folks in the House and
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: Senate to have a totally different track of messaging than
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: what perhaps Pelosi and Schumer want them to have.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: We don't know yet, right?
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, is there any way to predict the cohesiveness
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: of the bond of this party?
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Well, to that point... Today doesn't look good. No, but
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: to that point, I think one thing that we'll unite Democrats,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: which united them in 2018 and 2020, is here's what
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: will happen if Republicans take power. And so I do look,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I think comparing every Republican and say, oh, this is
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: a Trump clone. I don't know if that necessarily works
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: because I don't know if it's always believable. Some Republicans
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: will run away from Trump. I'll try to present themselves
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: as different than Trump. Right. But I think talking about
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I think talking about kitchen table issues is, of course, important.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: That's what the polls will tell you. That's what people
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: care about. Like you said, people care about their health insurance.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: They care about their jobs. They care about their family's future.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Have to talk about that. I also think that there's
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: going to be a certain kind of voter, perhaps that
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: swing voter that tunes in and out of the election,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: you know, periodically that says, OK, I generally like what
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden and the Democrats have done. I'm not thrilled
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: with everything, but those Republicans take power. They're really going
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: to fuck everything up in a pretty big way and
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: maybe a dangerous way. And I think you have to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: have that part of the equation in your message or
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: else you might not turn out the people that you
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: need to turn out. And you just you have to
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: frame the choice for people.
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: Well, and some of that might just be playing the tape.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I mean, some of the most effective messaging
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: for them might be just playing Marjorie next fall.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: The devil's advocate to that argument is I do think
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: it's going to be about delivering more than almost anything else,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: because I do think if Democrats like. we literally have
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: a text chain with a bunch of former political nerds
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: where we all laugh.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Of course you do.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Every time a candidate says, I'm going to create tax
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: breaks for companies that move jobs here and not overseas.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: It's like a democratic talking point that has existed since
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: the Clinton administration that we try it out every year
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: and we never deliver on. And I think for Biden,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I think it has to be beyond just delivering on
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: the bipartisan infrastructure bill because the odds of that being
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: really felt in people's lives seems low by the midterms.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: But if they can deliver on this much bigger bill
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: that they want to do afterwards, it includes climate change,
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: it includes home health care, like all these other things
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: that really matter to people that they'll feel right away,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: that I think will go a long ways.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I still think the most important factor is
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: what is the state of the pandemic? What is the
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: state of the economy? And so for Democrats, the choice
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: is how do you influence those two things, right? Well,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: you support policies that help end the pandemic and improve
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the economy, like the Biden economic agenda. Then you make
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: sure that voters know you supported those policies that will
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: help end the pandemic and improve the economy. And then
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you let people know what Republicans will do if they
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: take power. Right. I mean, this is the classic choice.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: You know, the challenger wants to make it a referendum.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: And the Republicans are the challenger. And the incumbent wants
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: to turn it into a choice between two visions, which
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: is what the Democrats are going to want to do
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: in the midterms.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: Didn't Trump, when that first round of COVID checks went out,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: didn't he sign the check?
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. Yeah.
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Democrats need to do some version of that.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: But not quite. Yeah. I know. No, you really... Sign
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the check. Right. And it's so much more than just like,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's great to see some, you know,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Biden allied organizations out there running a bunch of ads
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: about this. And they're doing it early, which is new, right?
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: We didn't do that in 2010 before we got smoked
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: in those midterms. But we need a lot of it
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: needs to be sort of on the ground, organizing, talking
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: to people face to face. Like you really need to
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: drill the message home because as we have seen just
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: from the last couple of weeks, it's hard to break
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: through the normal news cycle with... accomplishments like, do you
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: know that the child tax credit reduced poverty among children
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: by 50%? Like that headline's not getting far.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: Well, and then I think there's a larger strategy question
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: for Democrat and it involves Stacey Abrams directly. There's a
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: question of whether Democrats can win midterms by convincing those weird, elusive,
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: moderate swing white voters, or if they can re-galvanize all
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: of these new types of voters. Well, they're not new,
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: but they haven't voted before. that the Stacys of the
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: world were mobilizing. And I don't know if those conversations
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: are happening yet. And I think the expectation is you're
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: never going to get that kind of turnout in a midterm,
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: but who knows? And you don't know until you try.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: You should try. I think the answer to that is
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: they have to do both. Yeah. Which is the real challenge.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: Which they don't do well. No, because again- Because it's
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: two different messages as well.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and in 2020, the coalition stretched from the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: AOCs of the world- And the voters who never turned
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: out in an election before all the way to the
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchins of the world. It was the weirdest coalition.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: It was the weirdest coalition.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: And it's a coalition that won by, you know, 40,000
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: votes across three states. Yeah. So it really is. I
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: think it's not a choice. You have to fire up
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the base and all a lot of those voters who
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: voted for the first time in 18 and 20. And
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: you have to win over some of these some of
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: these moderates and swing districts. And that is not an
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: easy task.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Joe, call Stacey.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a whole bunch of Stacey Abrams in a whole
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: bunch of states. That's what we need. All right. Speaking
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: of elections, let's end with a game. As you hopefully
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: know by now, radical Republican activists here in California have
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: forced the state to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: on an election to decide whether Gavin Newsom should be
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: recalled as governor. You can vote in person on September
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: 14th or return your ballot any time before then. They
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: were mailed out last week. This means we now have
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the final list of yahoos and goobers vying to replace Newsom,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: which means we can play a game called.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Do You Recall?
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Where I'll read the name and bio of a candidate.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: This is the name and bio that are on the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: official California voter guide. And you tell me if you
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: think that the name and bio are real or fake. Okay.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to lose this game.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: I'm going to lose this game.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Okay. Here we go. A person with the most correct
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: guesses wins.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: How many questions are there?
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Let's see. You know what? They're lettered. So now I can't.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: I can't. I think there's like 10 of these. Oh, Lord.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Anyway. All right. Can I just say before we start,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I've gotten more worried about this recall election every week
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: for months now. I think that I just hope listeners
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: are taking this really seriously because I think Gavin Newsom
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: might be in more trouble than people realize. Or at
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: least the way this election is structured, he could not
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: only lose, but we could elect an actual crazy person.
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: Because if the recall is approved, the winner just has
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: to get a plurality, right? And so that person in
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: a field of however many candidates could get like 10%
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: of the.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Vote and become governor.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Gavin could get 49% of the state saying, no, don't
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: recall him, but get recalled. And then it could go
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: to the second question and like a Larry Elder could
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: get 20% and he is the governor, not the guy
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: who got 49%.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: But let me stop here and say, no love lost
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: for Gavin.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: That guy.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: My guy. I can't even bear to look. I'm just like, oh, you.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of voters feel that way. And
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: I think that's a fair way to feel. If you're
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: not motivated, that's okay. But I think, you know, just.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: know what the alternative is if you decide to sit
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, and it's not about people and personalities here, right?
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: A little bit of it is about Gavin. I'm sure
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: that's how people are feeling, right? What I'm saying is
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: think to yourself, do I want to live in a
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: state with a governor who wants to repeal the minimum wage,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: who wants to repeal environmental protections, who wants to put
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: choice back on the table, right? You can feel how
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you want to feel about Gavin Newsom, no problem. But
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: if he's recalled, that's what we're going to get. And
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Dianne Feinstein is really old. And the governor will choose
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: her replacement.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Should something happen. Marinate on that.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Just saying. We need the Senate. All right, Tommy. Number one.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: The name is Angeline. And the bio is Angeline Billboard Queen. Icon.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Experienced politician. Real or fake? Real. That is real. Wow.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: That is real.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Did you read the list?
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: I did no homework for this.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: I started and then I was like, I can't.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: That's a long ass list.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I voted. Okay. That's it. Sam the next one is
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the name is Jeremiah Jeremy Marciniak and the bio is
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: search YouTube real real.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: Because whenever you say search YouTube that's actually that's like
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: that's like having a viral tweet and then dropping your
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: SoundCloud that's exactly what he did that's genius.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Tommy number three Jerry Brown bio yes again real fake.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: What a dumb guess. I should have known that because
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: otherwise we'd all be coalescing around Jerry Brown.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: It could have been another Jerry Brown who was like,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I have the same name. Let me jump in the recall.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's crazy.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: And again, this sort of hypothetical speaks to a controversy,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: which is the Gavin people are saying vote no on
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: question one, then leave question two blank. And a lot
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: of Democrats are like, no.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Also, if your quick short message has two steps as
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: one step too many. It's just hard to message this.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: It is hard.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: It's weird.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Do this, but then that.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I think that's partly why they just want to say
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: vote no, vote no, vote no, and don't ask me
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: about the second question. It's like, doesn't matter.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. If you guys disagree with them, do you.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: And that is true, by the way. It really, if
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: you vote no, it really doesn't matter that. I mean,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: there's going to be no, at this point, there's no
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: organized effort behind an alternative Democrat. So a bunch of
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: people writing in different things is not going to do it. Yeah.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Next one, Sam. Mike rounds and the bio is my
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: pullout game is strong. Now let's pull out of the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: U S and finally secede from the union.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Please let that be.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Look, I didn't write these.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Next one, Tommy. The name is Daniel Mercury. The bio
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: is as a Patriot, I will fight to starve the
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: government and feed the people. So real. So real.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: That person is on the ballot. That guy was at
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: January 6th. He was storming the Capitol with a hat on.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Sam, this is an interesting one. The name is Felicity Huffman,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and the bio is reforming our school systems so every
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: child has a fair shot.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: The audacity is fake. Although I would listen to her speech.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: I'm interested. Yeah, let's hear it.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Let's hear her out. Tommy, next one. Name. Dan Kaplowitz. Bio.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Can you dig it? Short, sweet.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I can dig it.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, real. It's real. It's real. Sam, Mikayla Laughlin in
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the bio, I believe you have the right to choose
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: not to get vaccinated. Let's throw away our shot. Oh,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: my God.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: You had me, so let's throw away our shot.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: No one's going to say that.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I'm worried about that. Tommy, the name is Tony Rossi.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: And the bio is, replace the Cuomo brothers with the
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Mario brothers.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: That's fake.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Anti-Italian slander.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, really.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: How dare you, sir?
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: What did Cuomo, Chris Cuomo get really mad at being called?
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: I can't remember now. Fuck.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It's the... Fredo.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Fredo.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the brother from.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Elijah.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Elijah.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Save from the.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Elijah knows all your Cuomo trivia right there. All right,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: last one. Sam, Nicholas Wildstar is the name. And the bio...
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Our nation was founded on liberty, but now it's considered
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: a wild idea. That's why I'm asking you to go
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: wild and elect Wildstar for governor.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Real.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: That is real. Wow. Just some real interesting people on
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: this ballot. Who won?
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: I think Sam won.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Flavia tells us that Sam won.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Vote for something, America.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: But we do have a bonus round.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: I wasn't told. I win.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: It's over. It's done. This is, yeah, we're just doing
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: this on the fly. The current Republican frontrunner is a
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: right-wing radio host named Larry Elder, a believer in the
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: big lie who wants to get rid of the minimum wage,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: environmental protections, and all vaccine and mask requirements. I'm going
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: to read a list of facts about Elder. You tell
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: me if they're real or made up. Sam, we'll start
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: with you. He has called diversity a form of liberal fascism.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, he has.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: That is correct. Tommy, he once argued on Fox that
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: black families were better off as slaves.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Is that real?
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: That is correct. That is real.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: We should point out here that he's black.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: He is black. That is correct. Sam, he hosts a
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: talk show in his bathrobe called Robe Rage.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Please be real.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: That is real. That is real. Road rage? I'm into it.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: I just want you guys.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: To know, when the team sent this game over, they
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: did not give me all the correct answers. And so
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: I said, well, I assume that the road rage one
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: is wrong, right? And Olivia was like, no, no, that
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: is absolutely real.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: That's almost as bad as, didn't the Almost Jeopardy guy
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: have a podcast called, what was it called?
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: Random, but it was spelled D-U-M-B.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Come on, bro.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: It's amazing he didn't... shoot from the job that unraveling
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: has been that's been exciting.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: I called on day one I was like this shall
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: not stand you don't mess with LeVar you don't mess with.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: LeVar how great was LeVar Burton the day that he
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: got fired and LeVar Burton just said hey everyone he
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: just tweeted hey everyone.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: He's a class act I'm not gonna lie I love
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: LeVar the like one selfie I posted from the White
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: House was me with LeVar Burton it's on my Instagram
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: somewhere he was so nice he's.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Such a good guy he's the warmest human yeah.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Alright Tommy Elder believes employers should be able to discriminate
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: against pregnant employees Fact. That is fact. And last one, Sam.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: He repeatedly demanded an ex-girlfriend get the phrase, Larry's girl
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: tattooed on her.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: That's so real. It's so real.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: They were all real. They were all real. That's the game.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, that was the game?
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: That was the game, yeah.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: So again, if you don't like Gavin, that's your alternative.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's the front runner. And just to remind people,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: you can vote by mail right now. You even had
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: a ballot mailed to your house if you are a
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: registered voter. You can also vote in person on the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: September 14th election day. And again, there are only two questions.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Should Gavin Newsom be recalled? Yes or no. And which
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: candidate should replace him? Of course, as we said, the
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Newsom campaign says leave it blank, but you can do
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: whatever you want. Make sure you and your friends are
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: prepared to vote in the recall. Visit VoteSafeAmerica.com to check
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: your voter registration and make sure you're good to go.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Sam Sanders, thank you for joining us today. This was
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: really fun.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: This was really fun.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: This was my first in-studio in over a year, and
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: I'm honored to have spent this time with you two.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Such a pleasure.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Really fun. You are welcome here anytime.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Please move in. We can give you an office space.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: We doubled our rent before the pandemic and then didn't
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: go into it for a year and a half.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: But are dogs allowed?
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dogs are allowed.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: Mine has gas.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: That's okay.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: That's fine.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: So does John. John Lovett.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Perfect. Perfect. Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Nar Melkonian, who film and
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: share our episodes as videos every week.