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“Trump on shuffle.” · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Dan's interview with Congresswoman Katie Porter,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: who just came out in favor of an impeachment inquiry
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: into President Trump. But first, we're going to talk about
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's 2020 kickoff rally and what it says about
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: his re-election campaign, Joe Biden's rocky week, and the growing
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: competition between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Also, my new
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: episode of Pod Save the World dropped yesterday. Tommy and
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Ben talk about the escalation with Iran, some good news
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: out of Hong Kong, and the bizarre story of why
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Trump has a new Secretary of Defense. Don't miss this
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: week's episode of Hysteria, which also features What A Day's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Priyanka Arabindi. who you know and love from our weekly
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Q & A live streams. And the latest installment in
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: our presidential candidate interview series will drop on Friday. Tommy
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: talked with Beto O'Rourke earlier this week when he was
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Dan, I believe you also have some
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: book news.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I do have some book news. The paperback version of
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: my book, Yes, We Still Can, Politics in the Age
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: of Obama, Twitter, and Trump, is out this week.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: If you didn't get a chance to get the hardcover,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: get the paperback. I hope you like it.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: This is the kind of compelling book pitch that my
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: editor tells me to make when the books come out.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Buy the paperback, people. We're about to hit 2020. There's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: some fantastic advice on that book. And it's just a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: joy to read. So go buy it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, and good important point. New epilogue talking about what
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: happened in 2018 and projecting forward some lessons we could
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: learn from 2018 for 2020. So new content. New content
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: alert in the paperback.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Buried the lead, man. You can't get that comment. I know.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I'm so fucking bad at bookselling. It is a constant
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: topic of discussion back with my publisher.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Buy it for the epilogue, people, for nothing else. Okay.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. I'm going to go ahead
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and say that this was the week where the apocalyptic
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: shit show of a campaign really kicked into high gear.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: This was it, Dan. It started with the Donald Trump
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: rally in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday night. The president officially
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: filed papers for his reelection the day he was inaugurated
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and has been holding campaign rallies ever since, but he
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: wants us to believe that the real campaign kickoff was
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night, so let's go with that for now. In
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a speech that lasted more than an hour, Trump offered
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: no new policies or any sort of real agenda for
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a second term, and instead alternated between patting himself on
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the back and painting himself as a victim of an
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: illegal plot against his presidency and his family by the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Robert Mueller, the media,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and the deep state saying, quote, our radical Democrat opponents
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage and want to
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: destroy you. And they want to destroy our country as
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: we know it. It's just all very cheery, very uplifting
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: message from the president. And anyway, as he was saying
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: all of this, the crowd responded with chants of CNN
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: sucks and lock her up. So the more things change,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the more they stay the same. Dan, what do you
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: think of the speech? B for substance, A minus for style.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Are we doing the Mark Halperin style grades?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the callback there.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: B minus for substance, C for style. Overall grade, A
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: plus plus plus. No. We are obviously, for people who
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: are just tuning in to this podcast, anti-Trump.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: But I will try for a minute to take off
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: my partisan hat and analyze his speech. from the perspective
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: of a neutral political observer, a pundit, if you will.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It was terrible. It was poorly written. It had no
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: actual message. It had no story. The press strategy around
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: it was terrible. The whole thing was terrible. You could
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: not possibly diagram what the goal was, what the message was,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: what sort of strategic itch it was trying to scratch.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: It was just a man vomiting blood narcissistic, conspiracy-laden talking points.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I know that, you know, the big focus
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: on Stephen Miller, as it should be, is that he
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: is a C-plus Santa Monica fascist, as Lovett calls him.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: And his behavior, his policy positions, the way he sees
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the world, his xenophobia, his racism, these are the things
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: we should focus on. But as someone who spent a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: lot of time in my life as a speechwriter, I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: just want to say, He is, without a doubt, the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: worst speechwriter to ever write for a president of the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: United States in my lifetime, by far. End of story.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, Michael Gerson wrote for George W. Bush.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Did I agree with a lot of what he said?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Not really. Fantastic writer. Peggy Noonan. Do I like her columns?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I do not. Did she write great speeches for Ronald Reagan? Yes,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: she did. Stephen Miller is, he, like, puts together phrases...
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: that are the most cliched, garbage, don't make any sense. Like,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Trump going off the prompter and doing his weird Trump
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: thing where he just vomits up a bunch of words
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and says crazy shit is better than what is prepared
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: by Stephen Miller. Just putting that out there, and I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: won't talk about Stephen Miller in speech writing again. Just
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: needed to say it for the kickoff.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Do you know the Charlie Day meme where he is
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: standing in front of the conspiracy... theory board with like
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: pieces of paper and pictures and very well and yarn
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: everywhere yes the one i send to brian all the
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: time when he goes crazy in slack uh the like
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: i think that that charlie day meme is basically stephen
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: miller's speech writing process it's just.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It is um it's not a great it's not a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: great process and it doesn't produce a very good speech
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: um my other question watching that speech here's how i
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: watch the speech we all watch it in the office
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: um Our team here, you know, we did some response
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to the speech on the Pod Save America Twitter feed.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: The team did a fantastic job. So we're all watching it.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I got about halfway through and then I decided to
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: drive home because I was hungry and needed dinner and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: it was getting a little late. And I couldn't believe
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: it was still on when I got home and it
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: kept going. Like, I was bored by the speech. Like,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: is Trump getting boring?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: For some people, I think. I mean, if the goal
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: was to get attention, he got attention in the run
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: up for sure. But other than Fox, this cable networks,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: which are Trump's lifeblood, turned it off pretty quickly because
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: he was saying nothing new. And like, you know this
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: because you had to write Obama's reelection announcement speeches around
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: this time in 2011. And it's a really hard thing
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: to do because like, if you propose new ideas, people say, well, why,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: why don't you do those? You do those ideas. Now
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: you're president of the United States and you like finding
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: the right balance between talking about yourself and, and you
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: don't have an opponent yet is all very challenging, but
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you have to have something new. And Trump had nothing new.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: He just played all the old hits in. It was,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: it was basically Trump on shuffle.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, We were a real campaign as our
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: most presidential re-election campaigns, regardless of party. And I remember
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: we decided to give a speech in the fall of 2011.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And then we gave a kickoff speech in December, I believe,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of 2011. And the fall speech was in Osawatomie, Kansas.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And it was the site of the new nationalism speech
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: by Teddy Roosevelt, where he talks about breaking up the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: banks and trust busting and all this kind of stuff.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And the reason we picked that location is because Barack
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Obama decided that he would define the 2012 election as
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a choice between one vision that just gave tax cuts
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: to the rich and cut regulations and let everyone fend
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: for themselves, or another vision where we took on wealthy
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: special interests and fought for the middle class. And he
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: said the defining issue of this election in this generation
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: is whether people in this country can actually succeed if
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: they work hard. So we had this whole speech set.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: We decided to try to frame the race. Yeah, we
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: did have some new policies as well, but it was
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: an effort by the president to sort of frame the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: reelection on his terms with his argument. This was not that.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: This was not that in any way. Let's talk about the,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to the extent there was a message of the speech,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: which I believe there was buried somewhere in the steaming
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: pile of verbal diarrhea that was an hour-long speech. There
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: was a couple different messages in there. What did you
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: think the message was, or at least the various messages
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: in that speech, what did you think they were, and
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: what was Trump and his team trying to accomplish?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I honestly don't have a fucking clue. It was 500 messages.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: There was a message, as you point out, about Democrats
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: allowing immigration to destroy America and that MS-13 is going
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: to come kill your family. There was a message about
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: a deep state that was blocking Trump from more progress.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: There was a message about a great economy and these
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: great accomplishments. And like in a truism in politics, if
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: you have 500 messages, you have zero messages. And so
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: it really wasn't clear to me. I think to the
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: extent it bespoke a strategy, it was a strategy of
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: exciting a base and demonizing the rest of the electorate, right?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It was frightened and suppressed, which was a, it's a
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: rerun of 2016 strategy. It's just that clear that the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: 2020 playing field is going to look a lot like 2016.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, I mean, there was a few messages
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: that are a few lines that stood out to me
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: as attempted messages. Early on in the speech, he says,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: we took on a corrupt political establishment that looks down
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: at you, you know, my enemy. And it was basically
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a speech that, There's so much grievance in the speeches
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: there always is. Trump always tries to cast himself as
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the victim. But what he tried to do in this
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: speech is basically say what he's been saying for the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: last couple of years. My enemies, the people who have
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: attacked me over the last three or four years, they're
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: your enemies too. And this election is about whether it's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: not just a verdict on me and everything that I've done.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It's a verdict on, as he said, the un-American conduct
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of those who tried to undermine our great democracy and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: undermine you. And so what he's trying to tell these
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: people is whatever you think about me, my opponents who
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: he decides to categorize as Democrats, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the media, the deep state, Robert Mueller, all these people,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: they are not just out to get Donald Trump. They
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: are out to get you. And if they win. They
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: will open the borders of this country to hordes of
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: immigrants who will come in and, you know, threaten your
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: children and mooch off your tax dollars. And they will
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: sell off America to China and to the highest bidder
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: around the world. And what I will do is protect
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you and my enemies or your enemies, and we have
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: to beat them for four more years. That's sort of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: what he was getting at.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I see that. Like, that's definitely there. And you can
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: include a lot of things in a speech that runs
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: nearly 90 minutes. So he had the opportunity to touch
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: on many topics and many messages. The thing that is,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: I think, very– it's an interesting tension within sort of
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Trump– the Trump political strategy, which is– He does try
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: at times to make it about his supporters.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Like we are all in this together against these liberal
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: elites who don't happen to be white. Like that is
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: definitely a message he has. And he tries to laud
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: the movement. Right. He calls it the greatest political movement
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: in history or whatever.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: That always feels like an afterthought because 90% of it,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: if not more than that is about Trump himself, things
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: that have happened to Trump, things Trump did problems only
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Trump can solve and very little about the people who
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: support him, who are benefiting from the theoretically benefiting from
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the policies that he may or may not have implemented,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: who are the ones who deliver this victory to him.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, the American voters, not the Russian troll farms. And, and,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And the best thing he can say, like Obama would
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: always say, this is not about me, it's about you.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: And would talk about our volunteers, our organizers, the people
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: who put on their marching shoes to use all the
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Obama lines, and the role they played in changing America
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: for the positive, pushing for civil rights, for workers' rights,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: women's rights, et cetera. But the best thing Trump can
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: say about his movement is that they had the, in
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: their infinite wisdom, they decided to support him.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: He is still the hero of the story. Trump is amazingly,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: in alternating sentences, the hero and victim of every sentence
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: he admits.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, that is exactly right. And here's the big difference.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: He's been president already for a couple of years, and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: he's not railing against a system of which he is outside,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: which is the major difference between 2016 and 2020. So
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: in 2016, he can go out there and say, if
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: your life isn't great right now, if you're upset about something,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: whatever it may be, whether you're not getting paid enough,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: whether you're pissed about immigrants, whatever grievance you may have
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in your life, it is the fault of the people
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: who've been running the government, the establishment, the media, the Democrats.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And if you send me in there, I'll fix all this.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Now he's caught in a situation where all he wants
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to do is both tout his accomplishments, which he believes
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: are accomplishments, but I think with most of the country
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: believing that the country is moving in the wrong direction
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: and people believing that while the economy may be good
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: they don't necessarily credit trump for the good economy and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: they don't believe the trumps economic policies favor them they
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: believe they favor the wealthy and they believe that republican
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: economic policy favors the wealthy uh... he has that to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: contend with and so he sort of alternates between yeah
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: i've done all these great things but by the way uh...
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: if you don't elect me again, all these other people,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: all these enemies that we have will ruin everything. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: what's missing there is we have to finish the job
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: on X. We have to do more on Y. I
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: need four more years so I can do X, Y,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and Z. There's just, there's, like you were saying, there
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: is no recognition that anyone in this country still may
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: have problems or concerns and want to fix something. Because
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And that's indicative of his new campaign slogan, Keep America Great. Right?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: He changed it.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: CAG.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. CAG. So, he lost MAGA. Now he's got Keep
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: America Great. And I don't, like, I think it's a fairly,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about his base now. We all fucking
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: know his base is there from they're all fans. I
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: don't want to hear from everyone being like, oh, it's
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: not going to work. His base loves him. Yes, we
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: fucking know that. They're 40% of the country. We get it. But,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: For most people in this country, for swing voters, of
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: which there are, there are up-for-grab voters out there, to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: tell them Trump's campaign is about keeping America great. It
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: sounds like the job is finished. There's nothing left to do.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Everything is wonderful. That's that. I think that's a danger.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Generally, when you are thinking through your
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: re-election campaign strategy, you have a very important data point, right? Obviously,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: you have your polls, you have your focus groups, your
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: private polling, your public polling, but you have this data
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: point of the intervening political event, which is the midterm election,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: and trying to understand what message was sent in that
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: election that is worrisome, and then how do you set
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: up your election campaign to address it? So for us
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: in 2012, other than just having to be president at
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: a time of 10% unemployment right after a bank bailout
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: passed by the previous president. Not an ideal time to
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: be president. But one of the messages from that 2010
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: midterm was that American voters liked Obama, they trusted Obama,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: they wanted to believe in Obama, but they thought he
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: wasn't focused enough on jobs, on creating jobs and dealing
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: with the economy. So our re-election campaign, both the speech
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: you mentioned in 2011 and then the quote-unquote announcement speech
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: we gave very similar to Trump with our rallies in
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: May of 2011, were about the economy and jobs and
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: what Obama had done, the progress he made, and the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: things he was going to do to finish the project
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: of getting America back and forward, our slogan, if you will,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: from the Great Recession of 2008. And Trump didn't, like,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: there is no indication that he is even aware of
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: what happened in the 2018 midterms. that what the voters said,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: what it meant, why voters left him in key battleground
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: states and he needs to win, or any sense of
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: what he will do to address those challenges in order
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: to fix his political problems by 2020. Obama had to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: do a lot of work in a short period of
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: time to fix his post-2010 political problems in order to
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: win a big victory in 2012. Trump has, as of yet,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: not shown any indication of His campaign has so-and-so, which
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: we can talk about, but Trump himself and the most
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: powerful weapon in the campaign, what comes out of the
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: candidate's mouth, seems both living in a bubble and living
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: in the past.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: So I suppose we should ask the question, is speaking
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: only to his base enough? Can he win this election
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: by essentially rerunning the 2016 race, living in the past,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: playing the greatest hits on all these rallies, firing up
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: his supporters? So they come out to the polls because
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you can make an argument that, you know, we said
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: for an entire election in 2016, he's only speaking to
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the base of the Republican Party. He's not trying to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: reach out to any independents or anyone else. And sure,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: he lost the popular vote, but he cobbled together 270
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: electoral votes in the states that he needed.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, nothing is impossible, right? But it does seem
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: improbable that the same set of circumstances that allowed him
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: to win lose the popular vote by millions of votes
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: and squeak out an electoral college victory will replicate themselves
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: in 2020. And it's like, that is, there are certainly
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: some voters who left Trump in 2018 and he's going
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: to have to find a way to get them back.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: So basically he acted a certain way for the first
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: two years. The voters delivered a verdict on that behavior
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: and he has done nothing to change that in the
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: intervening six months or any suggestion that he will change
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: it in the, next 18 months that would allow him
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: to win re-election. And so the idea that he could
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: win states to get to 207 electoral votes at 46
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: or 47 percent of the vote in battleground states, which
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: is what he accomplished in 2016, is unlikely. And you
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: have to adjust from your initial election to your re-election.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: George W. It was in a similar situation to Trump
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: in the sense that he lost the popular vote by
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: a much smaller margin than Trump did. But he was
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: able to win the Electoral College because enough voters voted
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: for Ralph Nader, the third-party candidate, to tip the election
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: to Bush.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Trump won because enough voters voted for Jill Stein and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: or Gary Johnson and that he was able to win
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: with sub-50% of the vote in enough key states to
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: get to 270.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Or stay at home.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Or stay at home.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Or stay at home. I'm even operating just from the
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: people who actually voted, right? Because you need a third
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: party candidate to get a decent number of votes for
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: you to win in the mid 40s. And for that
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: to happen again, he needs a third party candidate to
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: suck it up. Bush knew that Democrats learned their lesson.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: They were not voting for Ralph Nader again. The error
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: of their ways was made apparent. And so he had
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: to change strategy. And Bush, now he, Bush improved his
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: standing with female voters by five points, which is what
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: allowed him to win the popular vote in the Electoral
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: College in 2004. The question is, what is Trump's plan
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: to improve his standing with some set of the elector
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: between now and then? That is not readily apparent from
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: what he is doing. So it is, I don't think
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: he can win with the exact same strategy in 2016.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: He's going to have to improve his standing with some
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: voters somewhere. Now, that could be stronger base turnout. Now,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: that's something of diminishing returns, but it's not He's going
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: to have to do something differently than he did 2016
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: to win.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the other thing I noticed in the
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: New York Times write-up of the rally was there was
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a 72-year-old woman who attended the rally, and she said
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to the New York Times, I just want to hear
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: his plans. And he doesn't have those. Now, is that
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: going to be the deciding factor for that woman? I
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: don't know. But if there are people attending his rallies
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: wondering where the plans are, what does that say about
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the voters he lost in 2018 to Democrats? And again,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: these are the real interesting voters here, because it could
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: be the case that some of these people who voted
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump in 16 voted for a Democrat in
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: 2018 to sort of provide a check on Donald Trump,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: to stop Donald Trump and the Republicans from taking away
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: their health care, to put a check on Donald Trump's behavior,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: but maybe saying to themselves, well, I still think he's
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: doing a good enough job. I want to give him
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: another four years. That's very possible. The voters we won
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: back in 2018, we do not necessarily have for good
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: in 2020. And so I think the question, a big
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: question is, what do those voters want? How do they
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: see Trump? How do they see this election? And I'm
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: sure both Trump and the Democrats are going to be
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: wondering how to put those voters in their column.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to be very clear. Like, I am
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: not saying that Trump is going to lose. I am
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: not saying don't wet the bed. The bed is fully
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: fucking wet. Trump is a favorite to win reelection for
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: a whole host of reasons that I'm happy to discuss.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: But it is a slight favorite, but he is most
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: certainly a favorite. And Democrats are going to have to
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: do everything pretty close to perfectly to stitch together 270
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: electoral votes.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Are there any lessons or clues for the Democratic candidates
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: in this speech?
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: I think if I could take one from this, it
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: is that there is no point in responding to the
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: things Trump says. You could fill a room the size
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: of a warehouse with researchers and rapid response people sending
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: out tweets, videos, documents responding to all of Trump's lies,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: the absurd things he says, the offensive things he says,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: and you will end up just doing the inverse of Trump,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: which is having 500 messages that add up to less
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: than one message. And I think the key is you
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: just have to have a story about Trump. Then you're
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: going to tell that story every single day, no matter
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: what Trump says, no matter what Trump does.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, my take, my clues in the speech, I
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: have jotted a few things down. One, he can't help
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: but make it about himself, as we were talking about.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And we should, too. I mean, we've talked about this
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: message a lot on this pod that Donald Trump promised nothing.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to put America first. All he does is put himself first.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: He commits crimes to put himself first. He enriches himself
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: with his office. He uses immigration and xenophobia and racism
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: as a way to divide people so he can win politically.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Everything comes back to him. He only cares about himself
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and his fortune and his political standing, and he will
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: stop at nothing to make himself better off. And he
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: does not give a shit about anyone else. So, to
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the extent that He says things in the speech that
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: try to show that he cares about other people, where
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: he tries to argue that he has the greatest economy
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: of all time, even though that's not the case. I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: do think those things are worth responding to. His case
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: depends on convincing people that the economy is great and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that he's responsible. We should not let him make that case.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: He wants to be seen clearly from the speech as
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the one who's fighting corruption in Washington. We cannot let
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: him make that case because it's not true. And of course,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: what we've known forever is when in doubt, he will scare,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: try to scare voters with nonsense about immigration. And I
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: think whoever our Democratic nominee is has to be able
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: to not shy away from fighting him on immigration, but
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: make a strong case in response.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, I wasn't trying to suggest that you should make
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: issue-specific cases. You know the arguments you want to make, right?
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: It falls under, you have a, overall narrative, which is
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: about Trump putting himself first. And I think the key
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: to that message is you have to explain how that
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: affects voters, right? It's not just the idea of having
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: a narcissist as president is bad. It has to be
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: why having a narcissist affects you. And like you have
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: said this before, Trump puts himself first. He is in
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the White House to enrich himself, to reward his friends,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: to punish his enemies. And he does all of that
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: on taxpayer expense. And then I think you have to
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: take it one more step, which is that Trump is
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: too focused on himself. Imagine if you had a president
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: who woke up every day thinking about you, not about himself,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: not about his grievances, not about his enemies, not about
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: his own.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Totally agree.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And I think that's really important. And you can fit
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: all of that in there. So it's like Trump says
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: the economy is great. Of course he thinks that. He
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: has made millions of– he has taken millions of taxpayer
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: dollars and put them in his pockets. through his hotels.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: All of his rich friends and political donors got rich
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: off a tax cut that says that Amazon pays zero
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: in federal taxes and you pay more. There's just a
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: way to do it that flows from that. But if
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: you're chasing every line for the viral hit, the gotcha,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: the fact check, you're going to lose the forest.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: For the trees. And I should add, the message that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: we're talking about, it's a hard message to break through
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: because what tends to happen is exactly what you were
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: just warning against, which is Trump gives a speech like that,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: there's a blizzard of lies. We're all conditioned to, because
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we've all yelled at reporters, talk about the lies, talk
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: about the lies. So everyone fact checks. The president's a liar.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: He said all these lies, right? And so that gets
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of attention. He'll usually say something crazy offensive, dangerous,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: that gets attention. I mean, like I said, we were
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: here basically making from crooked media as we were tweeting
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: out on Pod Save America, sort of the economic case
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that we were just talking about, the Trump selfish case.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I happened to tweet about the quote, you know, our
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and want to destroy you and destroy the country. And
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I had noted that Donald Trump said this. And, you know,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: back in October, a fucking Trump fan sent pipe bombs
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: to leading Democrats. And basically because he was radicalized at
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: these Trump rallies, he admitted. And now Trump's telling people
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: the Democrats want to destroy the country, which is very dangerous.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So I tweet about that. That tweet got way more
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: attention than any of the economic case that we were
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: trying to make. And it's just a small microcosm of
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the challenge that I think the Democratic candidates have. Because
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: if you respond to Trump on his racist bullshit, if
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you respond to Trump on his xenophobic bullshit, if you
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: respond to Trump on his lies, on all the offensive
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: things he says, that leads the news. That's what gets
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: everyone talking. When you try to make a solid economic case,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: when you try to paint him as corrupt, when you
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: try to do all these things based on policy, it
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: is so much harder to break through. And so it
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: requires a sort of new level of creativity to sort
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: of break through the noise machine of Twitter, cable, the media,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: everything else.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: I think it is very important for particularly the nominee
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: to recognize that if you're depending on Twitter and the
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: mainstream media, which is basically Twitter, to deliver your message
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: to voters, you will never succeed.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: It is impossible. Their incentives, the things they're interested in,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: the thing that drives retweets, which drives traffic, which drives
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: bottom line, have nothing to do with what most voters
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: care about. And so if you're setting yourself up in
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: a feedback loop of inane stupidity, if that is the
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: way to do it, you are going to have to
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: do it directly from your mouth when campaigning in their
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: community through the getting that message out through local media.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: You're going to have to have your organizers to join
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: the door, and you're going to have to do paid
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: distribution through digital ads of your message to a targeted
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: set of folks. The mainstream media, there are opportunities for
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: viral moments that can go very well for you. But
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: those are few and far between on a day-to-day basis.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: You're going to be optimizing for the exact wrong thing
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: if what gets the most traffic, which gets the most retweets,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: which even, frankly, gets the most coverage in mainstream media,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: you will lose. It is just that fucking simple. And
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of really smart people in the
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: party who understand that. I really worry there are far
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: too many at the top of too many of our
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: campaigns who don't yet understand how the ground has shifted
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: underneath our feet.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about Trump's overall campaign strategy here. In
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: an interview this week with CBS News, Trump campaign manager
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Brad Parscale said he thinks that Trump is going to
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: rack up more electoral votes than he did in 2016
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and win re-election by a landslide. He also said that
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: modern polling is the biggest joke in politics, referring perhaps
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to the various public polls and leaked internal Trump polls
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that show Trump trailing Joe Biden. And the public polls
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: show Trump trailing Bernie Sanders and other candidates in key
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: swing states as well. Parscale said that Trump can win
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: in Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and quote, even Colorado.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: In other news, Trump's already raised more than $ 25 million
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: since his re-election launch. Dan, is he full of shit
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: or what?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: He really seemed full of shit in that interview. He
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: said repeatedly the polls were wrong in 2016. He said
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: every poll was wrong. And I think it's just important
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: to recognize that. that that is just not true. The
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: average of the polls was pretty clear that Hillary Clinton
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: would win the national popular vote by about the margin
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: that she did. Now, there were state polls that were
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: up and down, and there wasn't enough state polling to
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: get those things right. But I just want to stipulate that.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: I would just say, let me put it this way.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: It would not be a confidence-inspiring interview if I was
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: one of the people who contributed to that $ 25 million
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: fundraising total. It was basically, he was speaking to an
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: audience of one that audience is Trump and that, and Trump,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: it's just, it wasn't great. I just put it that way.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It was not great.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Um, well, so do these general election polls mean anything
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: at this point? No. Yeah. And I listened to our,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I listened to our friends at five 38 talk about this. Um,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and they actually, you know, did research into this and
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this far out, they are almost worthless general election matchup polls. Um, Now,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: with one exception, they were going through some of them,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: elections where both candidates have very high name identification already,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: they might be a little closer to the truth, but
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: not by much. So you can make an argument because
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: everyone knows who Joe Biden is and everyone knows who
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is. Perhaps it's a little better, but it's
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: so far out from election day. There's ages and ages
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and ages of campaigning to go. Donald Trump has not
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: fully defined Joe Biden yet or whoever else the nominee
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: may be. They have not even fully defined Donald Trump yet.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: We don't know what the race is actually going to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: be about, the issues that are going to be fought on.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: We don't know all the controversies that are going to
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: come up. We don't know what kind of foreign interference.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: We don't know anything. So I do think, you know,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: we say take all polls with a grain of salt.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: But in my view, look at some of the early
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: state horse race polls. If you're really looking for some polls.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: And even those represent a snapshot in time right now.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: But the general election matchup polls do not mean much
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: at this point.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is cold comfort to Democrats looking for reasons
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: to be confident about what's going to happen in 2020.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: There is one interesting trend in these polls that can
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: very much change, but it is something to take away,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: which is in these states, whether it's Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Trump's approval number and his vote share are almost identical.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: And that is very important because if this is not
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: going to be a race where Howard Schultz hands the
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: presidency to Trump by running as a third-party candidate, if
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: it is essentially a two-person race, unlike 2016, Trump is
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: going to have to get to a vote share that
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: is higher than his approval rating has ever been since
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: he's been president. And that is going to take a
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: lot of work and some real shifting of the ground
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: that we have not yet seen from him or his campaign.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: It is possible. Don't get me wrong. But there has
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: been this theory that people don't approve of Trump but
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: will vote for him anyway because they like the economy
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: or they hate the Democrats. But we have not yet
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: seen that in these polls. And even in the ones
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: that I think are probably the closest to real, which
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: is still pretty far from real, which are the Biden-Trump
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: ones because Biden is a well-known quantity. When it's just
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: a generic– Democrat, then people can put forward whatever views,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: positive or negative, they put on that. But when someone
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: you know, like you pointed out, the 538 folks said,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: it's closer to reality. But I would be very worried
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: if I was in the Trump campaign and I saw
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: that relationship between my approval number and my vote share.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: One other quick thing that we should mention just before
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: we move on to the primary. Police in Orlando had
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to get in between a group of Proud Boys and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: who tried to confront an anti-Trump protest outside of the
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: arena for the rally. Some of the Proud Boys, who
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: are part of a neo-fascist organization that promotes violence, that's
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: what the Proud Boys are, they are neo-fascists, they promote violence,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: were captured on video outside the event chanting things like
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Pinochet was right and Roger Stone did nothing wrong. Trip
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Gabriel of the New York Times quoted one Republican operative
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: as saying the following, quote, the Trump campaign is well aware,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Pretty scary. It should really be close to the biggest
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: story in American politics right now, which is neo-fascists, neo-Nazis,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: white supremacists are a part of the Republican coalition.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And that is not just about Trump. That is how
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Marco Rubio plans to win. That's how Paul Ryan planned
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: to win in 2018. That is the modern Republican Party.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: For every one of those people who put on their
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Brooks Brothers suits and go work for Ben Sasse or
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: whoever else, you are working for a party that knows
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: it needs the votes of white supremacists to win elections.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: And there are two approaches to that. You could disavow
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: that and try to broaden your coalition to still win
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Or you could just keep quiet about it and hope
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the Proud Boys show up on election day. And that
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: is the choice the modern Republican Party made after the
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: 2016 election. And that's where we are. And I think
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: that it is a tremendously undercovered, under-discussed part of politics
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: in the Trump era.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what? I was probably most annoyed
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: when I woke up the next day on Wednesday by
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the fucking Politico headline. About Trump's rally?
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Greatest show on earth!
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: The greatest show of all time. The greatest show of
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: all time is what a journalist, a media organization, that's
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: how they decided to characterize a rally where the President
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of the United States said the Democratic Party is out
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to destroy America, where he lied the entire time, and
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: where neo-fascists were outside the rally blending into his own event.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: That's how they decided to describe that. So the other
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: big problem we have is the way that, and we
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: could do a whole fucking episode on that, and we
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: will do more, and we're not going to do it today,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: but we will, no one should think that the media
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: has learned any lessons from 2016 as we head into 2020.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Zero lessons. So that's something that we have to all
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: be aware about in Democratic campaigns as they're trying to
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: figure out, as you were saying, ways to get their
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: message out, because the media is not a way to
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: get your message out. You do that through paid advertising.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: You do that through your candidate. You do that through
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different ways. But do not count
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: on the press corps to, you know, talk about what
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about every day. Or even to
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: cover it in a way that actually captures the sheer
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: insanity of the political crisis that we're in right now. No.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Their brains are broken by Twitter and Trump, just like
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: the rest of us.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: And if you want to do something about the fact
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump just raised $ 25 million in a day...
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: You can donate to our Unify or Die Fund. Again,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: this is a fund where all the Democrats in the
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: primary right now are going at each other. They're trying
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to win the primary, so they're trying to raise money
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: on their own. Whoever the nominee is is not going
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: to have much money by the time they face Donald Trump.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's going to have an enormous war chest. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: so what you can do right now is donate to
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the Unify or Die Fund and make sure that whoever
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the nominee is, they get that pot of money the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: second they become the nominee. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash unify. Also,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: if you want to do something in 2019, we have
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: elections in 2019. Some of them are very important. Last week,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the Virginia primaries took place, which means we can now
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: focus on the general election when we'll have the chance
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to flip both of Virginia's legislative chambers. In each chamber,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Democrats just need to flip two seats and hold all
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of their current seats to take control. If we have
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: control of the VA legislature, that means we get to
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: draw the maps in 2021. That means Democrats can make
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: sure they have seats in Congress, that Congress isn't gerrymandered.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: This is a huge, huge deal. So go to our
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Fuck Jerry Fund. That is votesaveamerica.com slash fuckjerry. All right,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the Democrats. Vice President Joe Biden has
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: an odd way of celebrating Juneteenth, Dan.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: How long did it take you to come up with
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: that intro?
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it rolled off the tongue. At a fundraiser in
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: New York on Tuesday night, he decided to wax nostalgic
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: about the time he served with segregationist senators James Eastland
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and Herbert Talmadge. Here it is, as recounted by the
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: New York Times. I'm just going to read it verbatim. Quote,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I was in a caucus with James Eastland, said Mr. Biden, 76,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: slipping briefly into a southern accent, according to a pool
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: report from the fundraiser. Quote, he never called me boy.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: He always called me son. Biden called Mr. Talmadge, quote,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: one of the meanest guys I ever knew. Well, guess what, Mr.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Biden continued. At least there was some civility. We got
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: things done. We didn't agree on much of anything. We
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: got things done. We got it finished. But today you
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: look at the other side and you're the enemy, not
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Biden's comments were criticized by several other Democratic presidential candidates,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: including Cory Booker, who said, quote, You don't joke about
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: calling black men boys. Men like James Eastland used words
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: like that and the racist policies that accompanied them to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke and Bill de Blasio
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: also criticized Biden. while several members of the Congressional Black Caucus,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: including James Clyburn, came to Biden's defense. So, Dan, there
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: was actually a second gaffe at the fundraiser, but let's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: take one thing at a time here. So the Biden
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: camp responded by saying that the vice president did not
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: praise a segregationist. He said that sometimes in Congress you
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: have to work with terrible and even racist politicians to
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: get things done. Biden himself responded by saying that he
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a racist bone in his body and cited
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: his long record of civil rights advocacy, including Trump. his
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: work to extend the Voting Rights Act in 1982. What
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: do you make of this whole situation?
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Not great.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's... Yeah, okay.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, just to... I'm going to try to
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: analyze this from two perspectives.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Personally, as people who have known Joe Biden and have
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: tremendous admiration for him as a person and as an incredibly...
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: loyal vice president to president Obama. The whole thing makes
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: me sad.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Like it is just, I hate, I hate that he
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: like Joe Biden is far from perfect. None of us
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: are perfect. He is one of the most human politicians
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: you'll ever be around. And he, his strengths and his
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: weaknesses are out there for the world to see. And,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: but he is a truly decent, good, caring human being. Um,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: But it is also true, and this is one of
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: the reasons why a lot of those of us who
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: care about him are nervous about him running, is that
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: he's not necessarily well-equipped for the political moment we're in,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: both in his campaigning style, his demeanor, and it also
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: just is the fact that he's been in politics forever
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: and things have changed a lot. And you see this
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: all the time when people who have been out of politics,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: and he hasn't really had, he hasn't had to run
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: a race for seven years to, and even then he
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: was the vice president doing so, he was not the
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: lead candidate. Just this is the thing that I've been
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: worried about from the beginning about Biden's campaign. Now, from
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the analysis of the politics of it, it's a gigantic
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: problem because it undermines his two greatest strengths, which are
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: that he has by far the most support among the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: African-American community. And he has seen it by people as
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: overwhelmingly the most electable candidate against Trump, which is theoretical
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and bullshit, but it is something that voters, a strength
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: voters have given him. And when you make multiple gaffes,
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: which was this, it undermines the electability case, and when
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: you fail to understand why those comments would be offensive
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: and hurtful to large segments of the American population, then
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: you are undermining your support. And it's just, I think
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: the whole situation is incredibly problematic for his campaign, and
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: I'll leave it at that.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people today, Thursday, making the case
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: that why is it so bad? This is how things
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: get done in this country. You work with people that
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: you don't like. You work with people that are sometimes
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: awful people, right? This is what the Biden campaign responded with.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: No one is saying, at least I'm not saying, and
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of Joe Biden's rivals aren't saying,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: and his critics aren't saying, that Joe Biden should have said,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I refuse to co-sponsor, sign on to, work on legislation
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: that with anyone who is a segregationist. That is not
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the problem here. It is not the problem. The problem
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: is that what he said represents a fundamental misunderstanding of
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: our history and what was going on back then. James Eastland.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Here's Mississippi's James Eastland at a rally in 1956. Quote,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: when in the course of human events it becomes necessary
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: to abolish the Negro race... Proper methods should be used.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. Okay?
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: So that guy comes up to you and you're in
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the Senate and you know who he is and you
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: know what he believes. And he says to you, hey,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: let's sign on together to a bill to build a
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: highway that goes through both of our states and it's
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: going to create a whole bunch of jobs for both
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: of us. Okay? for both of our constituents. You look
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: at that guy and you go, well, he's a real
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: fucking racist asshole, right? But I need a lot of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: jobs in my state, and we need a highway, and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. Are the jobs in his state going
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: to go to black Americans? Obviously not, because he's a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: racist prick. But this is a good thing to work on,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and sometimes you just have to work on things with
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: people who you don't like so fine. That's fine to do.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: But 30 years later, 40 years later, in 2019, to
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: then point to that example and say, those were the
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: days when civility reigned and you could get stuff done
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: with people you don't agree with. Well, that's not what
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: happened there. Like back then, the divisions in the Senate,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the divisions in American politics were, you had liberal Republicans
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: in the North, you had liberal Democrats in the North,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: of which Joe Biden was one back then. And then
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: you had conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans in the South
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: who were mainly segregationists. And to the extent that there
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: was bipartisanship between those groups, it was bipartisanship in terms
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: of doing things that left out and excluded black Americans.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: That was the only way you could have bipartisanship with
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: people from the South, is if you worked on bills
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: that excluded African Americans, that trampled their rights, that made
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: them less human. That was the only way you could
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: have bipartisanship. So all these years later, to look back
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: and say that was a golden age of bipartisanship and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: civility and look at all the stuff we got done,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: it's not racist. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of politics,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of history, and of where we are now. And on
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: top of that, and on top of that, saying he
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: never called me boy, he always called me son.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to bring that up.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, come on, man. You have to know the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: reason he didn't call you boy is because you were white.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: It's just, it hurts me too, because this is.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: It's exactly what I thought was going to happen.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is the, it just, the response, right?
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Which I know we're going to talk about, but Cory Booker,
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: among others, criticized Biden. And the question that Biden got
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: as he was getting out of the car at a fundraiser,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: which I would just note from a campaign perspective, is
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: that is terrible advance work that in the middle of
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: a crisis, Biden was able to be cornered by a
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: CNN reporter on the way between the driveway and the
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: door of a house. Like, there's better ways to do this.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: But the answer, I think the question was in the
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: context of Cory Booker. So Biden responded to Cory Booker
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: and said, Cory should apologize, and I don't have a
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: racist boat in my body, which is problematic on about
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: nine levels. Cory Booker, obviously an African-American senator and presidential candidate,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: and not someone who is prone to demagoguery in any way.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know whether you support people who support Cory
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Booker or not, but he's a very thoughtful person who
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: chooses his words carefully. Cory Booker did not call Joe
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: Biden racist. He did not explain why, from the perspective
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: of an African-American man living in America and serving the
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: United States Senate, why that story was wrong and offensive
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: and hurtful to him. And Biden should, instead of stubbornly
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: yelling back at Cori. Booker in a fairly dismissive and
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: patronizing way, should instead try to understand why that was hurtful,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: as he knows Cory Booker. And Cory Booker wouldn't say
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: that lightly and try to address it and have a
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: conversation with Cory Booker about it. That would have been
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: the right approach. And also, he just didn't call Biden
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: racist in the I don't have a racist boat in
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: my body is a response to criticism on racial issues.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: That is very, has a, has a long history and
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: is a, and is the defense that Trump uses, which
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: is to somehow say that the thing I said that
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: offended people on racial issues is you treat in this
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: binary way that either I'm a member of the KKK
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: or I'm I don't have a racist bone in my body.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: When these issues are much more complex and nuanced and
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: everyone should be willing, especially someone who wants to be
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: the leader of the Democratic Party, should be willing to
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: analyze why it is that what they said caused hurt
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: to someone they respect and trust.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: And what I really worry is that, you know, the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: way that Biden sees all this stuff is, oh, this
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: is just the new left, woke Twitter, all these people,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: they criticize everything, everything is a problem, everything's blown out
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: of proportion, and I'm a good person, I know I'm
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: a good person, I have people around me who tell
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: them I'm a good person, and so, fuck this, I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: don't need to worry about this. And it's like, you
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: know what, yeah, maybe it is possible, it is entirely possible,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: that this is a controversy that stays within, you know,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: liberal circles, activist circles, it's a thing on Twitter, it's
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: a thing on cable, And that a lot of other
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: voters in the Democratic Party who aren't paying as close
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: attention are saying, and they could be black voters, too,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: because Joe Biden has a lot of support among the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: black community right now with black voters. And they could
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: be saying, fuck this. It doesn't really matter. I love
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Right. And so fine. He can sort of
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: skate by. But we are in a moment right now
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: where we have to do every one of these candidates
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: has to do everything humanly possible to unite this party
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to beat Donald Trump, which is the most important thing
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: in the fucking world right now. And so everything you say,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: you have to be careful and you have to make,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and look, and this goes by the way for people
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: on the far left too, who were like, fuck all
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the centrists and bullshit like that too. No, we are
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: in a moment right now where we need to have
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: a great debate about the future of the party for sure.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: And we need to argue about it, but we have
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: to be careful as we do this, that we're not
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: cavalier and just pissing off people or dismissing their concerns
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: all the time. And that's what I worry about. The
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: thing is like Joe Biden, if he wants to make
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: his point about you know, the good old days of civility,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: he could have very easily talked about how he worked
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: with Bob Dole, Republican Bob Dole, to extend the Voting
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Rights Act in 1982, a piece of civil rights legislation.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: And Joe Biden sat down with Bob Dole, and fucking
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan signed it into law, and it was a
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: good piece of legislation, and it was around civil rights,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: and Joe Biden got it done. He could talk about
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: his work with John McCain. He could talk about his
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: work with other Republicans. You know, people on the left,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: maybe us, we might still roll our eyes a little bit,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: but it would have been totally fine. Did his advisors
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: tell him to do those stories? Yes, they did. Did
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: he listen to his advisors? No, he didn't. And that's
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: part of the problem with this campaign.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is... Joe Biden has been telling
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: the James Eastland story forever.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: It's in his 2007 book. It is a... And he...
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is... I am from Delaware. As we've said
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: this probably many times, Joe Biden has been my senator,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: my vice president nearly my entire life. And so I've
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: been hearing Joe Biden tell stories forever. He tells the
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: same stories all the time, as every politician does. And
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: the longer you're a politician, the more those stories become rote.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: And you're right. There are a thousand different ways to
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: say this. And it is a failure to adjust to
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: the moment we were in and to understand the how
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: something may have been true 40 years ago, but you
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: have to talk about it in the present with the
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: knowledge of everything that has changed and we have learned
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: in those 40 years about what that all meant, how
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: that moment looked then and how it looks now. And
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: when you've been telling the story since, I mean, let's
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: just go back to 2007. If you have not, if
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: you are still telling the same story about working with
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: segregationists in 2019, you were telling in 2007, let alone 1997, 1987, 1977,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: then you've missed a massive shift of what's happening in
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: this country in that time. And it is... And your
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: point that his staff told him to pick a different senator,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: because you can pick anyone, not to mention the fact
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: that James Eason was a Democrat, so it makes it
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: a poor parable about bipartisanship.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Right. The.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: It speaks to electability, like candidate skill. How is he
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: going to be nimble and adjust on the campaign trail
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: if you ran through this light? This wasn't a flashing
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: yellow light. This was a red light, and he ran
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: right through it. And yes, maybe this will end up
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: being a cable news Twitter thing, but I think there
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: will probably be massive record numbers of Americans who watch
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: the debate Biden is in next Thursday. And he's going
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: to be on stage with people who have been critical
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: of him. And how is he going to respond to that?
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Is he going to have a more thoughtful response than, no,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: you should apologize? There's not a racist bone in my body?
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: And you and I also know that Joe Biden, for
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: all of his strengths as a politician, he is not
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: someone who... He is very strong-willed. He is not someone
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: who is easy to prep. If he has his mindset
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: on doing something, he is going to do it. Prepping
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is a very challenging thing to do.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: very reticent to be quote unquote managed by staff. And
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: there are some real strengths that come with that because
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: it has allowed him to develop an authenticity and speak
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: his mind that has been a huge part of his
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: brand for many years. But it also leads to situations
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: like this. And it is not hard to project the
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: challenges in a general election if our nominee is making
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: mistakes like this.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: And again, like not to mention, like not to mention
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: the act, like there are, there's two ways to look
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: at this. There is that he said something that was
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: wrong and hurtful and responded to it in a way
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: that was neither thoughtful nor empathetic. Aside from the politics,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: and that is important. Then there is also what it
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: says about the politics, and both of those are very
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: problematic for him.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, it's like, it is so hard to
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: talk about this because, you know, I love Joe Biden,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: and he has a good heart. He's a fundamentally decent
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: person who has learned and grown and changed over the years,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: but he's not our vice president anymore. He's running for
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: president United States and he's running for president United States
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: at a moment when we are in a political crisis
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: of epic proportions against Donald Trump, who is the president
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: right now. And when you're in a race like that,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: you have to take it fucking deadly serious and you
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: have to lock it up and make, and make sure
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: that like everything is right. And you're saying everything right.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: And you have to be willing to change and you
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: have to be willing to say the right things. And like, Man,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and knowing, and you have to have a fundamental understanding
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: of the politics of the moment. You have to. And
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: that goes for Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, all
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: of them. They all have to have that. So it's
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: not just about Joe Biden, but in this case it is.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: So it's tough. And then there's another gaffe, too. He
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: also said in front of the same group of donors
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't want to demonize wealth and that, quote,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Fine.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: But then he said how income inequality brews political discord,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: but told the wealthy donors that they had nothing to
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: fear from a Biden administration, quote, We can disagree in
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the margins, but the truth of the matter is it's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: No one's standard of living will change. Nothing would fundamentally change.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I need you very badly. I hope if I win
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: this nomination, I won't let you down. I mean, just,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you're with a bunch of rich donors in
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: New York. You're telling them, if you're president, don't worry.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Nothing will fundamentally change when it comes time to your
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: tax policies. Like, I don't know, man.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: That is... on the list of campaign gaffes, that is
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: a potential campaign ender. Now, it has gotten almost no
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: attention because there's another incredibly damaging, controversial statement within that
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: same sentence. But to go before a bunch of rich
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Wall Street donors in 2019 while running for the Democratic
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: nomination to tell them, don't worry, your standard of living
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: will not change, is an insane thing to say. And
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: It is something that would be brought up in a primary.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: It'll be brought up in a general election. It is
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: up there with Mitt Romney's 47%. Yeah. And it is
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: such an insane thing to do because Joe Biden has
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: already talked about repealing the Trump tax cuts. Right. As
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: one of the first things he would do. So yes,
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: their standard of living would change. He's already pledged to
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: raise their taxes. And this is one, like Biden is
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: an old school politician, obviously. But one of the things
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: he has a habit of doing is telling people in
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: the room what they want to hear. It is how
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: we ended up with the controversy over the Hyde Amendment
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: when he told the woman on the rope line that
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: he would repeal Hyde and then he said he wouldn't
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: and then he said he would. He is trying to
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: win the room. He always tries to win the room.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: And oftentimes that is great, but you have to be
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: incredibly careful when you are doing that in a room
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: where Full of Wall Street donors with reporters in the room.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: This isn't the case of some server had an iPhone
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: going like Mitt Romney, the 47%. He was looking at
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: people with notepads and recorders as.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: He was saying it. Yeah.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: And and the funny thing is the reason according to
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: reports why the biden staff decided to open up the
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: fundraiser was because open up all of his fundraisers to
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: print reporters was so that one he would be more
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: careful in the things he's saying and this is what
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: he said.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: It's uh it's not great i'm sure we'll see some.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Of this banging my head against the wall because We're just,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: we are having this, I mean, it's just, there's so
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: much stupid shit happening and now we're contributing to it ourselves.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. But it's also like, you know,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: don't run a race like this and force everyone to
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: talk about all this shit by continuing to screw up.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Don't do it. Run a better race, man. Run a
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: better race.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: One more thing about this that is important, which is
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Biden has clearly adopted the no apology strategy of Trump.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: And that, I think, is a fundamental misreading of what
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: works in the Republican primary or what works in the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Democratic primary. And if you make a mistake, you should apologize.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't apologize just for the sake of apologies, but
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: being thoughtful and nuanced and respectful is a way to
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: win in Democratic primaries. It is not a way to
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: win in Republican primaries. So emulating what worked for Trump
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: in 2016 in the Republican primary, I think, is a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: very poor strategic decision for what will work for Democrats
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: in the 2020 primary. All right.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: One more smallish primary controversy before we get to Katie Porter.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: On Monday's podcast, we talked for a bit about how
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren's recent rise in the polls seemed to be
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: eating away at support for Bernie Sanders. So on Wednesday,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Politico ran a story with the headline, quote, centrists are
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: coming around to Elizabeth Warren as an alternative to Bernie Sanders.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: The story basically quotes a couple of people in the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: centrist organization third way saying they actually really like elizabeth
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: warren that's about it that's the whole fucking story uh
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: bernie sanders then tweets the following in response to that
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: story quote the cat is out of the bag the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: corporate wing of the democratic party is publicly quote anybody
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: but bernie they know our progressive agenda of medicare for
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: all breaking up big banks taking on drug companies and
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: raising wages is the real threat to the billionaire class Dan,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: I was a bit surprised that Bernie or maybe his
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: campaign chose to tweet this. Were you?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Obviously I was because you and Tommy and I all
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: tweeted about it almost simultaneously, which is not a conspiracy.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: It's just we're all on the same Slack channel, so
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: we see information at the same time. But I was surprised.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: In reading everything that has come since, I have come
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: to the conclusion that That it was a poorly constructed
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: tweet from the Sanders campaign. But it speaks to a
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: defensive crouch that the Sanders campaign has adopted as Elizabeth
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Warren has begun surpassing him in polls. What they really
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: should have done is just screenshotted the part, the quote
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: from Third Way that said that they would support anyone
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: but Bernie.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Which is the point they were trying to make. But
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: if you... In a world in which, and the Sanders
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: campaign is very savvy about social media, but in a
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: world in which you link to a story that says
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: establishment Democrats warming to Elizabeth Warren and talk about corporate Democrats,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, then the impression
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: you were clearly giving is that you were attacking Elizabeth Warren.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: And that's just not the impression that we had. It
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: was also a lot of people who were very supportive
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: of Bernie were concerned about the tweet. Waleed Shahid of
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Justice Democrats.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Arun, who used to work.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Arun, who now works for someone else, but he, I think,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: still is very fond of Bernie and said that they
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: should delete that tweet. A lot of people read it
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: the way we did. So I am willing to chalk
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: it up to a misfire, but it fits within a
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: pattern of behavior within the Sanders campaign, which suggests the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Sanders campaign is running very differently in 2019 than it
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: did in 2015.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I also think it speaks to sort of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: challenge that they're facing right now is how do you
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: separate yourself from Elizabeth Warren if Elizabeth Warren is the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: one gaining in the polls and seems to be acceptable
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: to both progressives and at least mainstream Democrats in the party? And,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I think there's always been sort of a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: faction of the Sanders campaign, whether it was last time
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: or this time, who sort of revels in making a
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: contrast between Bernie Sanders and the democratic establishment or centrist
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Democrats or corporate Democrats. Like they kind of like to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: have this fight within the party. It's we, you know,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: we talked about this when they sort of went after, uh,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: think progress. Remember that little controversy a couple of months back. Um,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: and I don't, and I think they do that because
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: they're like, well, how else are we going to separate
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: ourself from Warren? And I don't know. I mean, I,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: in some ways I understand the challenge that they have, um,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: in the Sanders campaign because they're probably sitting there saying,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we're the ones who moved the debate and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the party to the left after 2016 because Bernie was
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: out there for a long time on all these issues
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and now he's not getting as much attention as Elizabeth
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Warren is. What's the deal? How do we get attention again?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: Which I think is actually a tough challenge. I mean,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: what would you do if you were in that position?
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: It's very, very, very hard for them to figure out
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: how to do it. Like, Warren's success is... at least
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: in the moment, a nightmare for Bernie. It is much
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: easier for Bernie to become the vessel for progressives uncomfortable
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: with Joe Biden or whoever else is the frontrunner. When
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: it is Bernie versus Elizabeth Warren, then it's not. None
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: of the things that he said or did in 2016
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: are applicable here. And there is just... Our friend Jennifer Palmieri,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: who was Hillary Clinton's communications director in 2016. So obviously
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: she has run a campaign against Bernie, but she noted
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: on Twitter that in the last election, one of the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: things she really admired about the Sanders campaign was just
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: how cool they were. They never got too up, too down.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: They never reacted whether they were the same way, whether
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: they're winning or losing. And the Sanders 2016 campaign was
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: a superbly run campaign. To go from where they were
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: to where they ended up was a tremendous achievement and
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: a real understanding of political moment in the party, if
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: not the country. But whether it's fighting with the Center
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: for American Progress, as you point out, whether it is
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: the long-running and very aggressive Twitter war that David Sirota,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders' speechwriter, has been having with Nate Silver about
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: which polls are included, and then this fight, which is
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: as notable as the original tweet was about was construed
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: by many people, including us, is attacking Elizabeth Warren, was
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: the follow-up tweets where Bernie Sanders himself, the presidential candidate
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: who came within a few million votes of being the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: Democratic nominee last time, is now engaged in a back
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: and forth with Jim Kessler, one of the leaders of
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Third Way, about who they would support and otherwise. There's
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: something that feels just... There's sort of a lashing about
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: looking for some sort of grievance, establishment grievance to hang
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: on to here that I think is just very different than,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: I don't have an alternative strategy for them. I'm not
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: saying this is the right one or the wrong one.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: It's just very different than what worked for Bernie in 2016.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: And I just think in general, if you have fought
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: in the last few weeks with two think tanks and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: Nate Silver, that you're probably, those are probably not things
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: that are advancing your path towards a delegate majority.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: David Sirota is Bernie Sanders' speechwriter. Can you imagine, Dan,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: if in the 2008 primary, I had a Twitter account
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: and was, as speechwriter, was spending a lot of my
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: time in like Twitter flame wars with fucking Nate Silver
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: and various, like shadowboxing various members of the Clinton campaign
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: on Twitter, what you and Plouffe and Axelrod would have
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: done to me?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, you would... I mean, you would not have
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: been the speechwriter. Plouffe would have shooed you out of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: the building carrying a shoebox with your possessions if he
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: didn't just murder you on the spot.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: So bizarre.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: And there are very, very smart people running the Sanders campaign.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: I think Faz Shakira, his campaign manager, is incredible.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: He's one of the best campaign managers out there, for sure.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bright death strategist. And I'm willing to bet that
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of people in the campaign uncomfortable
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: with a Twitter flame war with Nate Silver.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: Probably fast.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: I could make a case for why the third-way fight
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: or the cap fight makes some strategic sense for Bernie.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure that those are paths I would take,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: but I see how it fits into a strategy of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Sanders branding himself as the anti-establishment Democrat. Whenever, and we
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: have all been guilty of this, the Obama campaign, you
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: and I individually, of publicly fighting with pollsters about the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: makeup of their polls or their models... That is never
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: something that comes off well.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Un-skew!
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: It is a flashing sign of weakness.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Un-skew!
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, you'll all hear Dan's interview
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: with Representative Katie Porter.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Our guest today is California Congresswoman Katie Porter. Congresswoman, welcome
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: back to Pod Save America.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you, delighted to be here.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: So earlier this week, you released a video where you
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: laid out why you came to the conclusion that you
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: would support opening an impeachment inquiry. Help us understand what
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: it was that led you to make that consequential decision.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: Well, it was really my decision to support the beginning
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: of an impeachment inquiry really grew out of the Mueller report.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: And I think it's important that we take it back
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: to that. I think we were all very patient in
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: waiting for Mr. Mueller to do his investigation and in
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: supporting him being able to do that unimpeded. But when
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: you look at the Mueller report, it's really important, I think,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: for people to know that contrary to what the president
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: has been tweeting or saying, in point of fact, Mueller
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: found that there is substantial evidence that the president engaged
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: in four potential acts of obstruction of justice. And each
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: one of those acts is a potential crime.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: In your video, you talked about how you read a lot.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: You went back and you read cases, the Constitution, the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: arguments around previous impeachment. Was there anything in particular that
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: pushed you in this direction that you read or learned
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: about since then?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: I think one of the things I took note of
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: was how relatively little the Constitution actually says about this.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, it really comes down to one sentence describing
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: the procedure. So this idea that somewhere out there, if
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: only we wait long enough, is some impeachment handbook that
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: tells us everything we need to know, that's just not true.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: The founders really put this duty on the members of
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: the House of Representatives, including me now, to make this determination.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: And so I think it was important for me to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: kind of really go back and understand the role of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: the House of Representatives which is to impeach, not to convict,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: that that is for the Senate. And then thinking about
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: what is the evidence that's necessary to impeach, and that
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: is a different level of evidence that's necessary to convict.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: And the Mueller report, in my review, gives us that
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: level of evidence.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: Now, the assumption among virtually everyone alive and breathing today
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: is that no matter what the House does, the Senate
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: will refuse to convict Trump because Mitch McConnell's in charge
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: and you need two-thirds. How do you think about, how
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: did that factor play into, or I guess, how does
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: the idea that no matter what the House does, Trump
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: is highly unlikely to be removed from office play into
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: your decision?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: Look, if we were thinking about our work in the
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: House with a lens of what will Mitch McConnell do,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: we would just all go home. Because the truth is
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: we haven't seen the Senate Majority Leader do anything yet.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: So he hasn't acted on gun violence prevention. He hasn't
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: acted on the Violence Against Women Act. He hasn't acted
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: on any number of the Equality Act. So that can't
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: be our benchmark. So one of the things that really
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: bothers me is hypocrisy. It's something that I've fought against
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: my whole life. And kind of hearing people say, well,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: we have to keep passing these bills because because they
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: send a signal. So things like the Equality Act, they
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: signal our shared values. Things like gun violence prevention, they
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: signal that we are fighting to make our community safer. Well,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: that is equally true when it comes to upholding the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: Constitution and enforcing the rule of law. We need to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: do what is right to signal to the American people
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: that we are on the job and doing the work
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: that they sent us here to do. And I don't
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: think you can draw a meaningful distinction between that. I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: absolutely wish that Mitch McConnell would do his job. The
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: joke in my office is my staffer wanted a pet.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: I said, absolutely not. No pet. I have three kids.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: I have a bunch of staffers. I have two offices.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: I can barely take care of everything I have to
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: kind of keep alive and healthy and paid for. And
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: she said, but I want a turtle, and I want
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: to name it Mitch. And for her birthday, I got
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: her a pet turtle named Mitch, and it has a
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: little tag on it that says, hi, ask me about
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: my 2019 legislative agenda. So that problem is real with Mr. McConnell,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: but it's equally real for everything that we're doing, and
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: I don't think it lets us off the hook.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: I guess the sort of the inverse of that question is,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: Let's say your position within the Democratic Congress does not
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: prevail and the Democrats decide to do what has been
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: Speaker Pelosi's position to this point, which is not to impeach.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: Do you think there are consequences over the long term
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: if the House does not undertake what you have stated
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: you believe its constitutional obligation is?
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: I think it's really hard to predict the future with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: any certainty. But I do think as we're trying to,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, for me, running for Congress was about standing
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: up to President Trump. It was about fighting for the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: things that I believe in, a fair economy, affordable health care,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: a fair banking system. But it was also partly about
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: restoring the American public's confidence in Congress. And that is
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: not a partisan issue. I mean, the reality is that
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: across party lines, a lot of Americans don't believe that
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: Congress is doing its job, is doing it ethically, is
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: doing it in a way that respects the rule of law.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: And so I think we have to earn back that trust.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: So it's impossible to know kind of what the consequences
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: might be of failing to act. But I do know
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: that by making the decision I did and by doing
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: it in what I hope was a thoughtful way, by
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: taking the time to talk with my constituents about it,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: that I have given the people of the 45th District
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: confidence that I am taking their concerns and this work
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: as seriously as I can.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: What did your constituents tell you, both in the run-up
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: to your decision and then since you released the video
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: earlier this week?
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: So while I was campaigning in Orange County for almost
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: two years, I really rarely heard about impeachment. I certainly
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: never brought it up. It just wasn't my focus. My
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: focus was really on who I was, what I had done,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: what President Trump was doing that was creating problems for
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: Orange County families. Relative to other candidates around the country,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: I think I was probably in the very bottom of
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: those candidates who talked about impeachment. Partly that reflected that
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: I really did respect the process. I really do believe
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: that the appointment of the special counsel was the right approach.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: I really believed in being patient and allowing him to
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: do his investigation. But that is done. And we have
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: that report. And Mr. Mueller has stated that his report
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: is his testimony, that the facts in the report are
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: what we should be relying on. And in his report,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: he says, you know, if we had confidence that the
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: so state. And they do not so state. And so
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: I think waiting for that report I think helped give
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: my constituents confidence that I was being deliberate and being fair,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: trying to honor the rule of law. After the Mueller
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: report came out, I got many more constituents who asked
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: questions about impeachment. They asked really thoughtful questions about how
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: to understand the Mueller report, really terrific questions about executive privilege,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: which the president is offering up at every opportunity as
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: an excuse to continue to obstruct justice. And he simply
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: is overstating the role of executive privilege in the legal system.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: You know, we on Pazzi of America obviously talk about
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: the debate around impeachment, the morality of it, the constitutionality
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: of it, the politics about it all the time. It's
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: a topic that obviously dominates cable shows and Twitter. What
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: is the conversation like within the Democratic caucus? Is it
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: something that you and your colleagues are debating and talking
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: about a lot? Is it sort of an unspoken topic
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: because it's so tense for people? What are the conversations
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: like you guys are having about this?
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: I'm really glad you asked that because one of the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: things I want people around the country to know is
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: that On the Democratic side, people are discussing this. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: whether someone's particular congresswoman or congressman has come out with
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: a public statement or not, I am seeing almost universal
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: interest and kind of responsiveness from the delegation in terms of,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: you know, Democrats asking questions, wanting to be updated on
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: what the committees are doing, thinking about the consequences, talking
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: about the rule of law issues. So this is something
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: that comes up. It comes up not just in leadership,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: but it comes up among freshman members. It comes up
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: among members like me who flipped very, very tough to
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: flip districts and are already paying the political consequences of it.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, it took the National Republican Campaign Committee 48
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: hours from when I issued my decision that we need
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: to begin an impeachment inquiry to go up on social
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: media and hit me with ads. And I think some
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: of my colleagues have asked me, how do I feel
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: about that? And I really told them, I think I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: have to make the decision to do what I think
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: is right. And this isn't a political decision, nor should
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: it be.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: It isn't a political decision, but obviously there are politics
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: at play here. And as you point out, this is
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: a decision with great political risk for someone who won
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: such a tough district. When you are home in August
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: doing town halls or talking to constituents, and you talk
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: to those voters who are, I would call them Trump
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: porter voters, people who approve of President Trump but also
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: supported you last fall, how are you going to make
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: the case for this decision to them?
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: I think we also call those Dan Unicorns. I mean,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know that there are a lot of Trump
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: porter voters. There are some, but to be clear, the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: district that I represent is, supported Hillary, did not vote
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: for Trump. There are a lot of Republicans who I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: think supported me, and I'm very grateful for their support,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: and I want to continue to earn their trust. But
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: I think there was a fair amount of skepticism in
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: Orange County about some of President Trump's leadership. I hate
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: to use the term qualities because it seems like an oxymoron,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: but some of President Trump's leadership potential, shall we say.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: And I think some of those concerns have only deepened
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: with some of the things that he's done.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe the better way to put it is– so
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: you have– so we'll call them Romney Porter voters. But
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: there are people who supported you in part because of
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: your focus on issues and they thought you were maybe
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: different for whatever reason from either Speaker Pelosi or quote-unquote
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: Democrats in Washington. I guess I would say how do
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: you make the case to them instead about that you
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: were going to be– that you're going to be able
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: to both impeach slash investigate Trump and deliver on the
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: issues you talked about on the campaign trail?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: I don't think anybody who has watched my questioning in
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: hearings has any doubt that I am fully prepared for
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: every single hearing on the Financial Services Committee. I've released
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: a number of terrific bills that I'm really proud of,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: most of them bipartisan on things like mental health, on
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: the cost of child care. So I'm For me, I
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: am working hard on a whole bunch of important legislative initiatives.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: Just today I took to the House floor to try
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: to get additional funding to test rape kits. We have 13,000-plus
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: rape kits in California that have not been analyzed, and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: those are victims and survivors who are waiting potentially for justice.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: So it is absolutely important that I continue working for
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: my constituents and for the American people on legislative priorities.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: But that does not stop me from also being able
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: to read the Mueller report, from talk with colleagues to
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: study some of these concepts like executive privilege and how
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: they apply and don't apply, and then be able to
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: make a decision.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: We haven't had you on the show since you've actually
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: been to Washington. And I am just curious, how has
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: serving in Congress been? What have been the best parts
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: and the worst parts about it?
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. I thought a lot about something that
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: my former teacher, Elizabeth Warren, said when she first went
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: to Washington and I think was working on the oversight
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: of the bank bailout. Somebody asked her a similar question,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: you know, do you like Washington? And she said something like,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: I'd rather poke my eyes out every day than go
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: to Washington. It's a challenging environment here. I do think
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: the freshman class and my class of colleagues among the freshmen,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: both on the Democratic side, but there are some strong representatives,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: I think, in the freshman class on the Republican side
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: as well. I think that has been an incredibly important
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: part of my experience, to come in with a group
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: of people who really ran on values, who have substantial
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: expertise in other areas. So just today I was talking
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: to Lauren Underwood, my colleague who used to be a nurse,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: about a healthcare initiative that I want to work on.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: I went up yesterday to talk to Congressman Tom Malinowski
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: to give his thoughts about a national security issue. So
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: that camaraderie among freshmen and just the depth of expertise
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: in issues that the freshman class brings, I think for
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: me has been the most rewarding part of doing it.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: The worst part by far is just flying from California
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: to here. I fly back and forth every weekend and
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: there's just no easy way to make that happen.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: No, that is always the hardest part for members who
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: have to travel across the country. How do you think
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: your freshman class, which has been, as you point out,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: lauded by everyone for the talent in it, the diversity
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: of backgrounds and experiences, how can your freshman class change
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: how Congress is run?
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: So we talk about this, the freshman class talks about
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: this all the time, about kind of The way I
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: like to talk about it is sort of is Congress
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: going to imprint onto us or are we going to
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: kind of imprint and shape this Congress? There's a committee
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: to modernize Congress that was formed by Speaker Pelosi. I
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: think rather unfortunately it doesn't have any freshmen on it,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: but it's not true. It has Mary Gay Scanlon. I
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: take that back. It has my colleague Mary Gay who's
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: terrific on it. But that committee to modernize Congress has
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: had many opportunities for members to get engaged, and the
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: freshman class has done so. So my colleague, Dean Phillips,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: for example, has talked a lot about the need to
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: have bipartisan working spaces so that Democrats and Republicans can
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: sit down together and meet and sort of run into
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: each other in our everyday business, and really working on
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: trying to think about, for example, the ethics rules that
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: we have in Congress, focused on a lot of prohibiting
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of things that I think the American public
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: would support. For example, I have a constituent who's dying
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: if she doesn't get a bone marrow transplant, and I
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: wanted to publicize these bone marrow drives that we were
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: doing in the district. I myself got swabbed as a donor,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: potentially to help save a life, and the Congressional Ethics
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: Committee said I could not publicize bone marrow drives, that
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: that would be an ethical violation. At the same time,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: We have all kinds of sort of patently unethical behavior
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: going on in this Congress that the committee has nothing
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: to say about. And so I do think freshmen kind
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: of questioning, why are these the rules? Who makes these rules?
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: Why are we doing it this way? How can we
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: improve it? There's a lot of that that goes on,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: on everything from the schedule to, like I said, the
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: kinds of meeting spaces that we have.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: Last question for you. You bring up the idea of
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: bipartisan meeting spaces. Now that you are in Congress and
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: either being in a committee or on the floor with
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: Republican members, do you see a world in which Democrats
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: and Republicans in the near-ish future could have a more
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: cooperative relationship in Congress? Or are we sort of doomed
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: to the polarization that we've had for the last at
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: least decade?
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think at the top levels, I'm very
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: discouraged about that in terms of the president. I mean,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: when President Trump said that if we in Congress continue
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: to do our constitutional duty to conduct oversight, that he
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: would not be willing to work with us on prescription
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: drug pricing and on transportation and infrastructure issues. That was
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: terribly discouraging to me and I think should send a
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: real signal to the American people about where Trump's priorities are.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: They should be with solving problems for the American people,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: not with punishing those who do their job and who
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: have different role in government than he does. At the
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: level of my fellow congressional Republicans, I think it's really
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: been about not assuming what they believe, but really going
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: up and trying to pitch them on bills. And I've
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: had some of them come up and try to pitch
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: me on bills. And so, you know, we're not always
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: going to find that common ground, but I think creating
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: those repeated relationships where they say, I want to do
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: something about this. Does that interest you? And you say,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: maybe I'm working on this. Would you be willing to
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: co-sponsor that? We need a lot more of those conversations
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: going on at the member level, not just at the
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: leadership level if we're going to make progress.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you so much for taking time
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: out of your busy day to be on Podsafe America.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Katie Porter for joining us. And, oh, a
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: little note. We will be recording next week's pods on Tuesday.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: We will have our Tuesday pod with John, Tommy, and me.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: And then on Friday, we will have a special podcast.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: in-studio podcast debate special with me, Dan, Tommy, and John Lovett.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: All four of us here in studio will be talking
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: about the two nights of debate proceedings, so tune in
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: for that next Friday. So it's Tuesday, Friday next week,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: not Monday, Thursday. All right, everyone. Have a good weekend.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Be prepared for all the theater criticism and optics discussion
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: you can possibly handle.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: The figure skating judges will be here.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: Bye, Dan. Bye, guys.