Latest / Pod Save America / “Mueller purgatory.”

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“Mueller purgatory.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: Later on the pod, you'll hear Lovett's interview with Planned
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: Parenthood President Dr. Lena Nguyen about the latest legal assaults
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: on women's health. We're also going to talk about Trump's
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: post-collusion presidency and all the latest 2020 Democratic primary news.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: That hurts to hear.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: We're in a post-collusion universe.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Colors are brighter.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Lovett, how was the show this week? Emergency show.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: We had a surprise Lovett or Leave It to cover
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the Mueller news with Emily Heller, Jameel Smith, and Mitra Juhari.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: We had a great time. We had Breaking Down the
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Bar book report. Check it out. Really, really great episode.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Tommy, you got anything to say about Pod Save the World?
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: We talked about Brexit. We talked about the fighting in Gaza.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: We talked about the claim that ISIS has been defeated
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: and then a longer conversation about the need to get
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: rid of nuclear weapons. So tune in.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's a lot.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Pod Save the World. Chalk a block with policy.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Brexit, that still happening?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Brexit. Through the gift shop.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: It's a rolling disaster.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Sounds like it. Also, there's a few tickets left to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: our New England shows. Come see us. Pod Save America.
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: Go to cricket.com slash events and you can scoop up
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: those last few tickets.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: To Boston and Concord.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Boston's going. Concord's going.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: They're almost gone. All right, let's get to the news.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: We have been told that the clouds have lifted over
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump's White House, that his presidency has been reset
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: due to the fact that he hasn't been charged as
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: a Russian co-conspirator. So let's see what the American people
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: are saying. According to a new NBC News Wall Street
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Journal poll, 40% say they do not believe Trump has
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: been cleared. And a third of Americans say they're not
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: sure if Trump has been cleared of wrongdoing. Only 29%
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: say that he's been totally cleared. That includes nearly half
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: of independents who aren't sure if he's been cleared of
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: wrongdoing and about a quarter of both Democrats and Republicans.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: A Washington Post poll found that only 32% say Trump
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: has been exonerated on obstruction, while the public is evenly
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: split on whether Trump committed wrongdoing in terms of Russian interference.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: In a CNN poll last week, a majority, 56%, says
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: the president and his campaign have not been exonerated of collusion,
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: but that what they've heard or read about the report
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: shows collusion cannot be proven. Also, the 43% who say
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: the president has been exonerated is about the same as
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: the 42% who said that in an earlier CNN poll
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: that Trump's campaign didn't collude with Russians, suggesting that the
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: summary letter released last Sunday did little, if anything, to
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: move public opinion on this matter. uh, Trump's approval rating
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: also has not really moved guys.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Uh, what are these numbers tell you?
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So I think there's a reason to be cautious. One
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: thing that is also true about polls like this is
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: it does take time.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Polls are lagging indicators.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: They take, it takes time for the information to move through, um,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: like the sort of first level of people paying attention
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: very closely all the way to people that aren't paying
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: attention at all. Um, that said, I think it does
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: sort of reflect the way the coverage, uh, the way
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the coverage played out because of the Barr letter, right?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: There was a, the coverage was really about, you know,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: was the president vindicated on collusion? Maybe. Was the president
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: vindicated on obstruction? Absolutely not, right? I think it's a
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: fair reading of the kind of 30,000-foot view of the coverage. But.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, I thought it was most interesting that the
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: public opinion is accurate, according to the information out there.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And the other thing about it, too, is that, like,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: these are polls taken at a very strange moment that
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: will only exist for between two and three weeks between...
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: the bar between finding out that Mueller is done and
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: seeing some actual text by Mueller. And we don't know
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: exactly what we'll see or when we'll see it, but
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: we are in a kind of liminal phase of the
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Mueller report. So I think it's interesting. I think it
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: speaks to the importance of the fight we're having right
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: now about keeping the focus on getting the actual document.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: And it speaks to the fact that as of right now,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: it's playing out as you'd expect.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Mueller purgatory.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I think the most important part of the poll done.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I think the most important number in these polls is
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: that 80 percent of the country wants the full report
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: to be released. That's the key here. So we need
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: to just keep hammering on that. It's also a reminder
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: of how hard it is to get something to break
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: through like across the country. This is still mostly a D.C. story.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: There's a bunch of people who really aren't sure. So
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: the the the bar book blurb, the news of it
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: broke along partisan lines. And I like that. should no
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: longer surprise us on literally any issue. And it's going
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: to take a lot for Democrats to break Trump's stranglehold
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: on his base's understanding of any issue because he has
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: a right-wing media apparatus at his disposal all day every
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: day called Fox News and then all the shit that's
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: worse to the right of it. And so our goal
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: has to be to get full access to the Mueller
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: report and then continue with additional oversight to figure out
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: what salient details are in there, what things we should
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: be talking about in general. Because the numbers, they're going
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: to move, right? It's a lagging indicator. It's going to
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: take some time. But it's good to know that the
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: early panic, that the shitty, shitty first reports that said
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: he was exonerated didn't totally penetrate.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if you watched Fox News, if that's
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: how you get.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: Your information or you get your information from right-wing media,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: you think he's exonerated and everything's wonderful. If you watch CNN, MSNBC,
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: the networks, if you read the New York Times, the
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: Washington Post, you probably come away with a more nuanced view.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: Or- Um, these numbers also say that since there's a
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: lot of Americans who aren't sure that this isn't an
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: issue that is really breaking through yet. So maybe they
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: watch this in the background, but this is not what
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: people are thinking about every day of their lives.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's worth remembering, right? Like people who pay
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: attention closely like us were awaiting not only the Mueller report,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: but aware of someone named Bill Barr and his involvement,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: his previous views, right? Like there are a lot of
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: people who never heard of Bill Barr. You don't necessarily
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: know who the Attorney General of the United States is.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: He's not someone that's been very prominent. He was just confirmed.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: He's not a star yet. Listen, let's call Bill Barr
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: what he is. A rising star. A star has been
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: around since Reagan. Not until he does his duet with Trump.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: On stage at the big event will he finally get
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: his due.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: So someone you've never heard of has a report that's
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: a mixed bag. I don't know what you take away
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: from that, but it certainly makes sense that you wouldn't
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: be totally sure.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think Tommy's point is important here, which is
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: that what these numbers should tell Democrats is, forge ahead
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: with doing whatever's necessary to get this report. And, um,
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: there's a report this morning, Monday morning that, um, Democrats
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: are preparing to subpoena the full report, the evidence, the
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: underlying evidence and trying.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: To get all the goods. So they have, they have
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: wheeled out the subpoena cannon.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: The subpoena.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The, uh, They've lit the fuse.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll say like, you know, Nadler's hand with a
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: little spark above the fuse waiting to light it.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, one of the other polls, I think it
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: was ABC, Wall Street Journal, 50, or sorry, ABC, Washington Post,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: 51% said the findings made no difference in their vote.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: That's significant. But also interestingly, 54% say Congress should not
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: begin impeachment hearings. So I'm clearly Pelosi has known this
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: for a long time. A lot of the more moderate
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: members have known this. So, you know, all data points
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: to be aware of, but not necessarily let us drive
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: our actions.
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: You got to wonder who the voters are out there
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: who are thinking to themselves, like, you know, I was so,
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: so on Trump. I'm not sure if I'm going to
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: vote in 2020 sort of waiting to see how deep
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: this collusion or obstruction really is.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it actually, that's a good point too,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: because like, I think as we get further away from
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: the weekend of insanity, temp title, uh, uh, you sort
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: of start to say, okay, what actually happened? And I
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: think what actually happened is the Mueller report didn't fundamentally
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: change the dynamic in the country. Now it could have, right?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Had he produced something, it still may, right? Depending on
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: what's in the actual report. But the fact that as
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of right now, like we haven't seen, there weren't new indictments.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: There wasn't any new revelation, at least in the bar memo.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: It kind of means that where we are is at
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: a status quo ante. What's the status quo ante? Most
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Americans don't like Donald Trump Most Americans aren't planning to
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: re-elect Donald Trump. Most Americans are very suspicious of Donald
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Trump and his criminality, right? We're kind of left where
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: we were before where we started, right? It didn't help
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: us too much, but as of right now, based on
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: these polls and what we've seen so far, it didn't
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: hurt us either.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: And Republicans have not broken ranks in any way, shape,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: or form. Nor would you expect them to, based on
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: what we've read so far.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, a lot of people have.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Drawn the comparison. between this report and the broader issue
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: with Iran-Contra and the way Republicans just hunkered down and
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: battled it out and didn't give a shit about bad
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: headlines until they ultimately pardoned all the wrongdoers. I thought
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: that was an interesting piece by Jamel Bowie, I think.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: And yet, as we look ahead towards 2020, we remember
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: that in 2016, a significant chunk of Americans voted for
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump, even though they highly disapproved of him.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a poll... That's a good point.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: That's a warning sign.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: There was a poll that I think that... Meet the
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Press put out that said basically like above 50 percent
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: of Americans are very uncomfortable voting to reelect Donald Trump.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: And I wanted to just quote and be like, but
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: they're going to do it anyway. You know, it's like
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: there is still that that that possibility that's always worth
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: keeping in mind.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: So now that Trump's presidency has been reset, he's trying
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: something brand new, demagoguing immigrants after mocking asylum seekers as
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: part of a, quote, big fat con job during a
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: speech last week. The president is now threatening to deal
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: with increased border crossings by closing the U.S.-Mexico border completely
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: and cutting off assistance to three Central American countries where
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: the migrants and asylum seekers are coming from.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: What would it mean to completely close the border?
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Well, Mexico is our third largest trading partner, so it
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: would be incredibly disruptive. Half a million people legally cross
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: the U.S.-Mexico border every day via Texas portals. of entry alone.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: There's $ 611 billion, with a B, in cross-border trade last year.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: And that's just the Coke.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: So the, you know, the economic impact would be massive.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, like if a thousand trucks worth of produce
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: and meats just rot and go bad, you don't get
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: that back. It also, you know, it also, again, with
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: all things Trump, it completely misses the problem, which is
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: an increased number of asylum seekers.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the key there, right?
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, what he's talking about is shutting down ports
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: of entry where people and goods come in legally. And
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: that doesn't stop migrants because What's happening is the migrants
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: are turning themselves in to border patrol agents, many of them,
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: as soon as they cross the border.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And even where there's.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Fencing and wall, the fencing happens a little bit inland
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: from the actual border. So all they have to do
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: is step across the border, talk to the border patrol agent,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: and say, I'm seeking asylum. And by law, they can
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: apply for asylum. And Trump has tried to overturn that
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: or say that they can't do that, and the courts
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: have already told him he can't do that. So this
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: would not do anything but create an economic crisis. I mean,
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: trade specialists say that the economic consequences of a complete
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: shutdown would be immediate and severe with automakers and American
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: farmers among the first to feel the pain.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: So, like, I mean, everyone thinks this is crazy, but again, like.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: You know, people thought that, like, sending American troops to
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: the border was also crazy. That, you know, trying to
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: build a wall when you didn't get a wall passed.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Through Congress was crazy. And then he keeps doing these
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: things anyway.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's also threatened to do this before
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: and hasn't done it. But he's also threatened to do
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: this before and has sort of tested out brief shutdowns.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: You know, to the point about, I think, you know, he's, again,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: he's a raptor and he's testing the fences. But with
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the– it's worth stopping on this idea of him saying–
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: these asylum seekers are faking it. It's all a con job, right?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Because obviously it's inhumane and despicable, but it's, but why
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: is he doing that? And it's about sending a signal
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: to his people to say, don't feel compassionate, like fight
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: that urge to feel compassion. And it speaks to, I
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: think what has made his immigration policy, not just, you know, vicious,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: but also unpopular and unworkable that like he's fighting against
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: not only practical matters like trade, he's also fighting against
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the compassion, even of his own people. He's trying to
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: convince millions of people that follow him closely that are
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: his base. Like when you see these images, you don't
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: have to feel like don't feel. Don't worry.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: And, you know, the White House pointed to a Washington
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: Post piece where they said some asylum seekers have been coached.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: Or some some migrants have been coached to pretend to
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: be asylum seekers.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Right. But what he does to his base is say
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: this is all of them. right? Of course. When the vast,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: vast majority.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: Are escaping violence, are escaping brutality, are trying to get here.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Because, you know.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, in 2015, Doctors Without Borders did a survey.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: This was when Donald Trump was still a little Fox
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: and Friends fever dream, right? And they found then that
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: 39% of Northern Triangle migrants, so Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: left home because of threats of physical harm.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: So that's an enormous reason why there's migration. And now
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: the other piece of the puzzle here is he wants
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: to cut off all assistance to those countries. So money
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: designed to improve the situation on the ground, create job training,
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: community policing, like basic infrastructure to keep people safe. And
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: there is evidence that these programs actually reduce violence, which
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: reduces immigration. So like, I think you have to step
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: back and say, okay, why are we doing two things
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: that are either self-defeating or just stupid? One, he's an
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: idiot and he's cruel. I think that's always an option.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Or two, he wants the crisis to get worse. He
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: wants to run on this crisis. He wants press attention
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: to focus on drastic actions, no matter how dumb or
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: self-defeating it might be. And that's what is going to
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: be his campaign in perpetuity. And we saw it with
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: the caravan. We saw it in 2018. We saw it
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: in 2016. So I think we need to go on
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: offense as soon as humanly possible. And the press needs
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to cover stupid shit like this
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: that we all know is not actually going to improve
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: the problem.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: Well, as you point out, I mean, this is obviously
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: the issue that Trump keeps coming back to. It's the
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: issue he spends the most time on in his stump.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: There's going to be a new caravan or two every
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: month between now and the election. How much should Democrats
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: engage on this and what should they say? Tommy, you
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: made a point the other day when we were talking
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: about this that one thing Democrats could start saying is that,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: you know, Trump just he hasn't fixed the problem. Like
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: it's a broken immigration system and he's made it worse.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: He acts like he got elected yesterday. And then at
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: some point we need to say you've been president for
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: two plus years and you have failed. You have failed democratically.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: to deal with the immigration problem. Things have gotten worse.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: You can't control the border. The one thing you promised
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: you would do to build a wall, to stop illegal immigration,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: you have failed that. You are a failure as a
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: president on this matter and on all others. So we
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: need a new approach. And I think that this will
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: probably be a tough sell, but you lay out a
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: program where you work with countries to stop undocumented migration
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: before it starts by making them more safe. So some
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: of the funding and assistance we talked about We stopped
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: talking with the stupid wall, but we actually used like
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: technology and other smart border fencing to deal with the problem.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, you probably make a big values
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: point about family separation and leading with our values and
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: being a nation of immigrants. And I don't know that
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: that would work. Foreign aid is not an easy sell.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: It's not a popular program. But if you're telling people
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: we're either going to spend half a billion dollars on
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: a wall in the middle of the desert that you
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: can get over with a ladder or half a billion
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: dollars in country's to try to make it so people
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: don't want to leave them, maybe you can make that argument.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Some people are trying. I know Beto
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: O'Rourke's trying. Castro is trying. But we need to go
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: on offense about this. You can't sit back and just
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: say no wall, no fence, and let him hammer us
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: until Election Day.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the point that Democrats don't make enough
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: is we always say that his immigration policy is cruel,
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: which it is, but it's also dumb.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Right. What's your inhumanity gotten us?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: You know, you rip children from their parents to try
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: to dissuade people from coming. They're still coming.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You pretend you're building a wall, but you don't. Yeah.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: You act as though you're changing the rules and making
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: it harder to be here. You've unleashed ICE to make
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: life miserable, to introduce even greater kind of mercurial threats,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: like just sort of, you know, unrelenting, unpredictable threats into
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the lives of undocumented people who we told to come
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: here to get the jobs that were waiting for them.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And yet border crossings are up. You know, asylum claims are,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: you know, they're down. They're not at a record level
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: that they once were, but they're up like these are
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: the you know, you claim that our humanity was was
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: we couldn't we had too much humanity at the border.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: And what is inhumanity gotten us? It's made everything worse.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: So even though Trump won as an immigration demagogue in 2016,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: part of his appeal was also this faux populism where
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: he pretended that he was going to break with the
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Republican Party on economics. He did do that on trade.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: He didn't do it anywhere else. Uh, he gave rich
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: people a tax cut. He tried to take away people's
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: healthcare and it went very badly for his party in
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: the 2018 midterms. And yet over the last few weeks,
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: Trump's administration has renewed their assault on the affordable care act,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: which they want to eliminate. And they have released a
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: budget that proposes massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, social security,
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: disability insurance, meals on wheels. And famously last week, the
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: special Olympics, um, Republican strategists and some Republican politicians are
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: reportedly very nervous about this strategy.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Should they be?
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: And what does it say that Trump ended up backtracking
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: on the Special Olympics cuts and the cuts to Great
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: Lakes restoration?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And also saying that now he wants to be the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: party of health care.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: He loves deep lakes. How much money do you make
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: as a Republican consultant to tell Republican politicians that you're
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: nervous about cutting the Special Olympics? What is that, five
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: grand a month? What do you get to tell people
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: not to cut the Special Olympics?
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: I think the Special Olympics plus health care plus all
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: the other stuff, Mike Murphy looked at all of it,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: who's a Republican consultant, and said, we are diving into
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: the wood chipper.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, like, this is the message we used
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: against Mitt Romney. This is the Paul Ryan Freedom Caucus
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Tea Party vision of the Republican Party. Mick Mulvaney is
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: in there doing whatever the hell he wants because Trump
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: doesn't know anything about budgets or policy beyond what he
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: sees on Fox & Friends. And so I do think, like,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: they have handed us a gift with these crazy, crazy proposals. One,
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: just stepping back for a minute, like, not to dump
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: on the press today, but I also don't get how
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Trump gets away with telling reporters... that he's contradicting his
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: own staff. Like, Betsy DeVos works for you. You run
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: the Department of Education. You own this shit, man. You
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: don't get to blame her, especially when she's out there
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: backgrounding the press saying that actually Mulvaney in the White
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: House pushed to zero out the Special Olympics for the
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: third year in a row.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: First of all, like, It's funny because obviously I had
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: no idea. I'm very much not connected to the running
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: of my own government. I've handed off basically everything except
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: TV appearances to Mick Mulvaney, a noted straight-up right-wing nut,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: who I put in charge of basically three branches of
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: my administration.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: But this is like a baseline now that we give him.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh, well, obviously he's not connected to the
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: running of his government.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: He doesn't read budgets. He doesn't know that. As if
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that's okay.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: Can you imagine if one of the departments— I mean,
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: this always used to happen in the White House. Obama
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: used to say, like... Actually, I remember he said that
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: Bob Gates once gave him advice and said, as president,
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: if there is someone anywhere in the federal government in
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: any agency and they fuck up, it's your fault.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it is.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: And the idea that because it's like Betsy DeVos over
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: in the Department of Education, which, as you point out,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: it wasn't even because it was fucking Mick Mulvaney in
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: his own White House pressing for it, is crazy.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: But I think, like, this is.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: Democrats should be talking about these cuts.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Every single day.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Every presidential candidate, it should be part of their message.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: They should all be saying it. We should be running
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: fucking ads about this. We should be running digital ads.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: We should be all over Facebook about this.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Where have you gone, liberal super PACs? I mean, our
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: nation turns its... Where's Dan on that super PAC of his?
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: I got a lot of eggs in the Dan Pfeiffer
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: super PAC basket. Yelling at the Thursday pod.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And look, and we were saying this on Thursday, too.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Bring us answers, Dan.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: We have been telling everyone, like, you know, Democrats need
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: to propose what they're for and not just run against
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: Trump and stuff like that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, to a point.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: But these budget cuts, I am telling you, are politically...
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: deadly for the Republican Party and for Donald Trump. It is,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: as you said, Tommy, it is how we won an
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: election against Mitt Romney when Barack Obama's approval rating was
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: in the mid-40s and the economy wasn't back yet in 2012.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: We talked about his plan to cut Medicare. We talked
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: about his tax cuts. We talked about the fact that
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: he was a rich guy who wanted to keep cutting
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: taxes for rich people and not everyone else. It is
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the way that Democrats can win elections and we have
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: to start talking about it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Another little hobby horse on this, like over the weekend,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Mulvaney was out on a lot of shows and they
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: were again getting asked about their efforts to completely do
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: away with the Affordable Care Act and what it would
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: mean for people with pre-existing conditions. And on one show,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Jake Tapper pressed Mulvaney on this point and really went
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: after him. But on ABC, he was allowed to say, oh, no, no,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: we're going to take care of people with pre-existing conditions
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: and that there was no rebuttal to that. I mean,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: the point is not, we're not arguing that somewhere along
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: the way they won't put in writing, oh, yes, we'll
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: be great. Everyone with pre-existing conditions will be taken care of.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: The point is.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: That you will be allowed to jack up rates to
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: completely unaffordable levels if you have a pre-existing condition. Insurance
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: companies will be allowed to. And so, like, I guess
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: I'm just getting at the press needs to get more
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: sophisticated about these really important policy points and not let
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Mick Mulvaney spew propaganda on ABC News this weekend.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it's also, you know, this is what they tried
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: to do in 2018, and I think mostly not effective,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: although I think Claire McCaskill should still be a senator,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: if not for the fact that, I think, uh, Holly
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: had some success in, in sort of muddying the waters here.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Like they come out for lawsuits that would just get
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: rid of the affordable care. Like there's no replace, right?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Just a lawsuit. It would get rid of it. So
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: the preexisting condition protections are gone. 20 million people lose
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: their care, all the problems.
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: And then they say, but, but I'm not for getting
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: rid of preexisting conditions. I'm for this policy, a policy,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: not in any bill, not, no, no, no, no possibility
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: of it being passed recently. And the Republicans have played
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: that game for a long time. I mean, it's part
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: of the reason why they weren't able to pass something
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: when John McCain gave his famous thumbs down, they were
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: all for repeal. They could not rally behind a replacement.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: But don't worry. That replacement will be magic. It will
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: manage to get all the Republican votes you need while
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: doing nothing bad and everything good.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not great. But it's an issue that Democrats
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: should be talking about every day.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: It's shocking that Donald Trump is making... I'm sitting here like,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump's going around... How many different times can you
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: touch this part of the stove?
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: You know, I think It's hard to get in Donald
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Trump's head. But I think he saw what happened in 2018.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: He saw how health care has bedeviled him. And much
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: like we talk about immigration and say Democrats can't just
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: avoid this issue because it's a tough issue. He's looking
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: at health care and saying, I've actually just got to
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: engage because they're going to talk about it all the time.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: I guess, but that wouldn't lead me to then change
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: my position on defending the lawsuit and making it as
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: easy as possible for us to attack him on this.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: No.
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, what he's betting on is what Lovett was
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: just saying, is that he's going to go around offering
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: a magical plan that is an alternative without being able
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: to give any details about the plan whatsoever because it
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: doesn't fucking exist.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. But he made that harder for himself
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: through this DOJ decision.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Well, the order is crazy, right? You would presumably say,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: we're working on a plan. It's going to be a
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: really great plan before.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, imagine this.
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: Imagine Donald Trump saying, the Affordable Care Act is the
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: law of the land, but it doesn't go far enough.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And what I want to do is improve it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: Right like then that that's that's like a politically smart
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: thing to do and you look at like but you
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: can't because the Republican Party doesn't want to do.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: That well of course the Republican Party doesn't want to
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: do that you look at like Graham Cassidy right which
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: was the which was one of the Obama Obamacare alternatives
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: right and like they Graham Cassidy there is no overlapping
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: there's no overlap in the Venn diagram between practical Republican
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: proposals that wouldn't make things worse and votes for a
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Republican proposal so the only kind of version you can
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: get is a Graham Cassidy that is kind of devolving
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: healthcare to the states while also doing draconian cuts to
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: public health spending. They can't seem to find a way
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: to pass something Republican that doesn't make life worse for
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: millions of Americans.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because they don't really believe the government should
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: be involved in healthcare. All right, let's talk about 2020.
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: On Friday....
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: Former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores said that before an event
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: during her 2014 campaign for Lieutenant Governor, Vice President Joe
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: Biden came up behind her, touched her, and planted a, quote,
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: big slow kiss on the back of her head. In
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: a written statement on Sunday, Biden said that even though
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: he's made, quote, expressions of affection over the years, he
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: didn't believe he acted inappropriately, but, quote, we have arrived
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: at an important time when women feel they can and
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention, and
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: I will.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: In response.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Here's what Flores said to MSNBC's Casey Hunt on Sunday, quote,
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: for the record, I don't believe it was a bad intention.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: I'm not in any way suggesting that I felt sexually
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: assaulted or sexually harassed.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I felt invaded.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: I felt there was a violation of my personal space
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: and it's dismissed as if it's just Biden being Biden.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: No big deal. It is a big deal. So is
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: it a big deal? And how should Biden handle this?
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's I think the answer should have
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: been I'm sorry. Start with that. I mean, you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: if someone came up to me and kissed my head
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: or sniffed my hair, I would feel like that was creepy, too.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: And I would want to know why that happened and
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: would prefer an apology to that statement that was kind
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: of tortured. So, yeah, it's uncomfortable. But it's also the
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: power dynamics, the biggest piece of this. I mean, if
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: the vice president of the United States makes you feel
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: uncomfortable in any way, you're in a really awful position.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Because what are you going to do? You feel like
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: you make a scene in the moment. Are you going
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: to rebuke him? Because obviously, you know, people are already
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: attacking her for just saying what happened. So, yeah, I
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: think if I were Biden, I would have been more apologetic.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: I would try to call her and reach out and
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: apologize sincerely. But, you know, it's it's a tough story
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: to read.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, first of all, I think the way
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Flores has laid this out, like I just have a
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: lot of respect for her honesty and her integrity and
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: her consistency. care and saying, here is why I'm doing this.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Here is why I think it's really important. And I
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: think she's right. And, you know, she was made to
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: feel uncomfortable. And I think for Joe Biden, who is
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: a touchy guy, right, with men and with women, I
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: think he would look back and say, I was affectionate
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: with people my entire career and no one said anything.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't know I was making people uncomfortable. I never
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: thought there was anything wrong with it. But one of
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the things we're doing now is realizing that actually, people
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: didn't know they could say something. And maybe they couldn't
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: because you were more powerful, because you were famous. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: you learned a bad lesson over a long period of
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: time in which you treated people in a way that
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: made them feel uncomfortable. Not with bad intentions, as even
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Flora says, but with a lack of an understanding about
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the boundaries that weren't drawn for you, that you didn't
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: know you were supposed to draw, that you should have drawn,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: and that we're drawing now. And I think a deeper
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: issue here, it is about the way powerful men treated
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: women and invaded their space and treated them differently than
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: they treated men. That is a generational divide. That is
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: something we're grappling with right now. It is a big
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: question for him to grapple with as he embarks as
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: a presidential campaign. And I think it's probably, this conversation
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: was inevitable. And I think that the way Flores has
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: laid this out puts a really important question to Joe
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Biden and he has to answer it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think two things can be completely true.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: One is that He is an affectionate guy who is
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: unusually touchy to both men and women and has been
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: over the years and had no bad intentions. And like
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: you said, never thought he'd anything wrong. That can completely
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: be true. It can also be very true. And it
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: is that Lucy Flores felt uncomfortable and invaded because of
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: that power dynamic and because he did that. And like
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: I don't I don't see how hard it is if
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: you're Joe Biden. Like like you said, if someone came
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: up and told me that I would just call her,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: apologize to her. apologize publicly, don't issue a written statement,
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: go do an interview, you know, speak about it yourself.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And, and that's it.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: That's all, you know, that's all you can do and
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: say that you're learning and, but then give a full
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: throated apology. I don't quite get the statements that sort.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Of elide the actual apology and like edge right up
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: to it, but don't actually say it. Like just, you know,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: people do things that are wrong. You say you're sorry. Yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: And I, I assume that part of it is that
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: he has to get there and I think he has
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to learn and understand that. this, and it's probably quite difficult, right?
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: He's been in public life for a very, very long time,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: and now he's being confronted with this question about the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: way he's behaved for a very long time, and not
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: just with Lucy Flores, right? This is a quality that
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I think, not something, forget thinking that there was something
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: wrong with it, that he took pride in, that he
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: made people feel welcome, that he was affectionate, that he
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: was loving toward people, and learning that that may have
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: been making people uncomfortable and you didn't know is probably
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: a really difficult thing that doesn't mean he doesn't owe
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: an explanation, certainly if he wants to be president of
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: the United States, and I do think there's this We
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: are in a period of transition, as I think everybody
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: would recognize. And it really is about seeing women as equal.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: And I think part of that is recognizing that even
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: being affectionate with a woman who you don't know and
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: in a way that you think is being nice is
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: treating someone differently. than you would treat a man and
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and and I do think that that is part of
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: it and something we have to grapple with and it
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: does come with you know come with the fact that
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: he is an older person who is from an older
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: generation I.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Was gonna say the other thing we're dealing with here
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: is the culture has changed very rapidly in a very
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: short period of time and if you are younger and
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: if you pay closer attention to these stories, if you
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: follow politics, if you follow this sort of cultural change,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: you are more likely to empathize with it, to understand it,
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: to change your views. I know there's a lot of
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: people in our party, not just, you know, in our party,
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: and older people, too, who probably look at.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: This and say, I don't get it. I don't understand
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: what's wrong here, you know?
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: And I see people already online being like, oh, this
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: is like a political attack and what about Trump and
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: stuff like that.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, no.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: Let's just, it's okay if you, you know, if you
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: don't understand this, but like be open to the fact
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: that this is a cultural change that we're having with
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: that women like Lucy Flores do not come forward easily
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: to talk about this stuff.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And that when they do, it is because it was
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: real and it bothered them.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: And if there was a power dynamic at play, And just,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: you know, and people like Joe Biden can learn and
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: they can grow from this.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It is possible. Right.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And, you know, we've, I've talked about this before, but,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: you know, across, there's this question like, oh, do we
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: need a new generation? Is it okay that older people,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: like people that have been around for a very long time,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: like Joe Biden, like Bernie Sanders, that are, that have
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: been in politics for a long time, is it, do
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: we need a new voice? And to me, what I've
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: always come back to is it's that the age itself,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: the amount of time they've been around doesn't matter. What
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: matters is Do they sound like someone that's been around forever?
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Do they sound like somebody who doesn't understand what a
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: new generation wants to hear? And I think somebody can you.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Grow and learn from your right, right?
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: So all this comes after a series of stories about
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: how Biden didn't do enough To protect or back up
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings that he chaired
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: Meaning he didn't speak up when the Republicans on the
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: committee were attacking and insulting her and he didn't allow
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: three witnesses to testify Who she says could have backed
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: up her claims of sexual harassment there were also stories
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: the last few weeks about Biden's evolution on abortion and
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: He's now a strong supporter, though as a Catholic, he
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: wasn't always in the 70s and 80s. How much should
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: all of this matter if he decides to run?
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, there's, I think what's sort of become
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: conventional wisdom that Biden is just not where the party
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: is on a lot of issues and that he will
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: be harmed by increased scrutiny of past policy positions on
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: abortion rights, the crime bill, probably Iraq, and you could
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: probably name a whole bunch more issues. You are starting
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: to see some good uh, reporting, digging into all these areas.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: And there's probably some truth to the conventional wisdom that
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: this is going to be raised. He's going to have
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: to deal with it. He's going to have to contextualize it.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: There's also the reality that Biden is still leading almost
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: every poll, uh, and not all of these policy positions are, are,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: are secret. So it's, it's hard for me to tell
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: now how much of this is driven by actual voter
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: sentiment versus, you know, the thought in, in Washington as
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: we wait for him to announce. Um, To the broader
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: point you made earlier, I mean, there's also a question
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: of how much forgiveness you get from voters for evolving
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: over time. I don't think we know that answer yet.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Twitter is not forgiving. News reports are not often forgiving,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: but voters can be. So Biden is in this period
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: where he is trying to decide if he's going to
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: get into the race. Clearly, a rival, whether it's a
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Democrat or a Republican, is landing some punches on him
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: in advance of that decision to try to prevent him
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: from running. And I'm not saying that about the Flores
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: piece in any way, shape or form. I'm talking about
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: these deep dives into his policy that feel very research
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: driven and frankly are important pieces. Like this is what
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: the vetting process is. That's what it means to run
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: for president.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, just, just to understand the dynamic that's happening
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: in the party right now is there is a lot
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: of people, again, these are voters who they might be
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: older voters.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: They might be more moderate voters.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: There might be voters who don't pay as close attention
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: to politics as we all do. And they are seeing
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden as the very popular vice president who was
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: vice president for eight years and And they liked him
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: a lot and they still like him a lot. And
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: then they see these stories and it's sort of like, well,
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: wait a minute. He was like beloved for eight years.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I don't understand.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: And so they don't, it's not computing with a lot
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of people yet.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: And I'm not to say that, not to say that
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: this is right or wrong or whatever, but I'm saying
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: that's just the dynamic at play right now in the party.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: And the question is.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Whether that dynamic changes once he gets into the race
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: and more people raise these questions about his record or
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: whether people's views of him are sort of set because
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: they have known him so well for eight years. I mean,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: like you said, we love it. You talked about the
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: poll about like people being comfortable electing Trump, whatever. If
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: you look at the Democrats, people are most comfortable and
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: excited of all the candidates about Joe Biden. It's not
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: just name ID at this point.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And look, that can change.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Of course it can change. You know, The primary is
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: about choosing the person you want to be president based
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: on your beliefs about who could beat Trump and what
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: they'll do once they're in office. As all candidates have
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: to do, they have to explain how their record comports
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: with what they plan to do when they're president. He
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: has to explain his evolution on these issues. He has
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to explain what he's learned since the Anita Hill hearings.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: By the way, he can also put that in the
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: context of having passed the Violence Against Women Act, having
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: elevated women throughout his time in public life. So I
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: think he has to tell a story about his career.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: and about why it leads to him being the right
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: choice for this moment. And that involves the good he's
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: done in the past, that involves the mistakes he's done
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: in the past, and that involves convincing people that where
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: he is right now is where the party is and
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: that he understands this moment and the kind of energy
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: and enthusiasm and hunger for a different kind of politics
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: from Democratic voters.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: I also think just brass tacks. People are voting right
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: now on electability, right? Like that is the thing you
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: hear over and over again. I want someone who's going
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: to be Trump. So there's a very good chance that
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: people are going to look at his past record and
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: think if you're the candidate who can beat Trump, they
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: will give you a pass on having evolved on an
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: issue that may be very important to them even over time.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: Well, and the tricky thing there is so many voters
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: are defining electability in so many different ways, right?
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Which we don't know.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: All right, let's talk about Beto O'Rourke, who formally kicked
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: off his presidential campaign on Saturday, holding rallies in El Paso, Houston,
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: and Austin that turned out about 30,000 people across the
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: three events.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Here's the lead of Politico. Guys, what did you think
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: of the kickoff?
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: And what is.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: What is Beto's strategy here? What is his bet in
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: this race?
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it was good for him, for
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: his campaign, it was good to have an announcement that
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: was fundamentally about policy and the contrast between him and Trump.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: That is much better than the early stories that were
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: all spinning out of whatever Vanity Fair reported or whatnot.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I thought the El Paso event looked cool. The three
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: events in one day shows how frenetic the pace of
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: his campaign is. It shows that he can get a
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: big crowd. It shows that he can fire people up.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: I His style to me comes off as a guy
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: who just sprinted to catch a train. He's always kind
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: of out of breath. He's kind of intense and a
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: bit yelly. I think he would be served well to
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: slow down a bit, talk more, yell less. But I mean,
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: that's a middling criticism. I think that this was a
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: pretty good weekend for him. And the message of going
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: after concentrated wealth and power and lobbyists who are distorting D.C.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: is one you've heard from a lot of people. Elizabeth
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Warren and Bernie have been way out in front on this.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: But clearly, you know, this is something he has a
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: record on as well.
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I just want to it is a small criticism,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: but I just want to as a as a speechwriter
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: and someone who's gone through people with speech delivery, I
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: want to make this point. You know, Hillary Clinton dealt
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: with a ton of sexism in 2016, but. There was
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: a time where a lot of people were saying she
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: shouted too much, and people were saying that that was
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: a sexist criticism. Beto O'Rourke shouts too much, too. And
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: you know whose delivery is really, really strong? Kamala Harris
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: and Elizabeth Warren, for different reasons. Kamala Harris projects a
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: lot of strength in her delivery. Elizabeth Warren projects a
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: lot of warmth because she tells stories. And I do think,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: just a speech-writing thing, when you're delivering a speech, there
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: is value in modulating your tone between, like, yelling all
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: the time and getting intense and quieter stories.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Charlie Pierce, who's a really funny reporter, described it as
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: a long run on sentences.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Well, which was, now that was, and that was an
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Obama thing.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: Obama would do like paragraphs that were like one sentence long.
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: But again, he was another one who learned to sort of,
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: you quiet down sometimes and then you go up.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: So speech delivery is a thing.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: That was just an aside.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: No, I do think it's good that I think it
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: was a recognition of, of the need to be specific
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: on policy, I still think, you know, these are, you know,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: he's sort of laying out a set of proposals, right?
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: But he's laying out a set of policy positions that say, okay,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: here's where I'm at, right? But it isn't sort of
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: an agenda that he's setting, which is fine, right? He's
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of his campaign. But, you know, look,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: we've said this about every, like launches matter, but they
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: also don't matter. Like now he goes and he campaigns
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: and The launch gets him some attention. That attention fades.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: The memory of the launch fades, and now he hits
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: the ground. So we've done through so many of these announcements,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and you get to the same place at the end
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: of every single one, which is I liked it. We're Democrats,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: and it was a well put together announcement. I felt,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: as I said, like I've loved every announcement video and
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: I'm for every candidate for five minutes and now they
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: go and they hit the ground, they hit the gun
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: running and they see what happens when, when they talk
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: to people.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: Well, look, and I think the, this announcement versus how
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: he kicked off, which was, you know, going, just going
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: to Iowa, not really giving a set speech and having
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: that Vanity Fair piece out is a lesson, is a
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: political lesson on controlling your own narrative.
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: There's a reason that you do a set piece and
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: you have a message and control a narrative because you
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: want to get your message out and you don't want to.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Let the press.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: This was a lot. This was also a lot stronger
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: than the video. Like this is for sure. Also much stronger.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: His secret weapon in this campaign is being unemployed. He
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: can go to Iowa for seven days at a time
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: and never leave. And there, there is some real power
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: and value in that. Like that guy's going to get
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: to all 99 counties in Iowa before July. But, you know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I saw that he was doing, I think a six
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: county day or six town hall day. It's okay to
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: do five. Like, you're going to get burned out, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: you're going to make mistakes when you're fatigued. And also,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: stop driving the fucking car, Beto.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: No more driving the car. Everyone who's in that car
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: is unsafe. If you're exhausted driving the car, stop driving
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: the car.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: It's not just because he's exhausted. He's, like, distracted. He's
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: on the phone. He's eating shit. Don't do that.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Make some fundraising calls. It's not good.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: All right, finally, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar called for
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: breaking up big agriculture monopolies through stronger antitrust laws and
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: enforcement during a multi-candidate forum on rural issues in Iowa
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: on Saturday. Warren rolled out her agriculture policy last week,
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: and Klobuchar made her first policy announcement of the campaign
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: last Thursday, a $ 1 trillion infrastructure plan that she said
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: would be her top legislative priority as president. Tommy, since
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: you spent a lot of time in Iowa as press secretary,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: how important are these agricultural policy proposals to Iowa voters,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: and what do you think about Warren and Klobuchar's plans
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: and what you've heard.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: In the past from voters?
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Think that this is very smart from Warren to target
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: corporate consolidation and the Monsantos of the world that are
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: these big agro businesses. J.D. Scholten, who is the guy
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: who took on Steve King, the neo-Nazi white supremacist guy
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: in Iowa, the congressman, he thinks, he told us this
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: when we were hanging out, that the best way to
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: reach rural voters is to talk about these issues because
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: despite being a farm state, there are like miles and
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: miles of counties where you can't find fresh produce. So
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: he thinks that this is a real bridge issue to
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: reach people. I think it's interesting that Klobuchar did this
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: big infrastructure plan. It's something we desperately need. She would
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: know that better than anyone from Minnesota where there was
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: a literal bridge that collapsed like a decade ago and
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: nothing has changed since. So these are both very smart policies.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: I'm also always fascinated, and we've been asking candidates about this,
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: to hear what they'll do as president first, knowing that
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: you only get one or two shots in that first
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: term to do something big. And Klobuchar is really the
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: first one who's basically put a jobs plan at the center. Um,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: I guess if someone, I don't, haven't heard anyone yet
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: say the green new deal is their first thing that
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: would obviously count as a, as a jobs plan too,
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: but it is interesting and it's not, look, the, the
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: infrastructure plan she put together is, um, are along the
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: lines of what Obama proposed. You got the infrastructure bank,
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: you got some public funding, you're leveraging some private funding,
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. But it is, um, yeah,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: it's interesting that that's her first big, uh, her first
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: big move there.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: The, uh, Elizabeth Warren talking about breaking up big ag,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: that's my ice cream sundae. That's your sweet spot. I
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: could just eat that all day.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: It's interesting, though.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: I think it's also interesting that Klobuchar went there, too,
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: because she's a more moderate candidate. But on this issue,
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: she was in lockstep with Warren.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I also think it's also worth keeping in mind, too,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: that in part because of corporate consolidation, even in a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: state like Iowa, even in a farming state, the actual
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: benefits of breaking up big ag don't accrue to that
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: many people. But to me, it also is a signal
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: about your willingness to take on the powers that be
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: in the parts of the country where people see it
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: every day, even if it may not directly impact their lives.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: So I think it's really important. And I'm, you know, look,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: it's something that I see as something that should be
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: more central to democratic politics generally. And I just have
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: been really heartened by the fact that Elizabeth Warren has
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: been willing over and over again to get to be
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: first to saying we need to take on consolidation and
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: take on consolidation in agriculture. And I'm glad she's doing it.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I think it's really important.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: Warren's just running a really smart Iowa strategy. It's just
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: another reminder. Sorry to interrupt. She's taking every selfie. She's
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: taking every question. But she's going to rural counties and
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: rolling out ag policies. And that's the physical location where
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: you're actually going to get questions about this from the
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: media while the national media that's following you day to
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: day is going to ask about fundraising numbers.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that is a perfect segue. My last question on
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: all of this.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: There's been a lot of debate over the last few
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: weeks about how the volume of media coverage doesn't always
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: match up with the volume of policy proposals some of
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: these candidates are putting out, particularly Elizabeth Warren. You know,
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: we've all been on campaigns and now we sort of
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: cover this stuff, too. What do you guys think of
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: that dynamic? What are some of the explanations?
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, I don't think it's that clear cut.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: I would argue that one of the strengths Elizabeth Warren
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: has had in the early parts of this campaign is
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: her ability to drive the conversation and draw attention because
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: of policy. You know, her conversation, policies on tech, policies
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: on ag, her wealth tax. These are all things to
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: me that have managed to break through. And it is
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: a reminder that even now, basically, there have been two
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: ways for Democrats to wrest control of the microphone away
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: from Republicans. Donald Trump, one has been massive protest in
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: the event of inhumane policies, and the other has been
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Bold policy has managed to break through. So that's, I think, exciting.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: At the same time, it is one of the great
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: challenges that political coverage is so personality-based and politics-based. And
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: that means in order to break through on policy, you
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: do have to go big and be bold and find
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: creative and innovative ways to reach people. I'd also say
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: it is quite likely that her conversations around policy during
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: her events are doing her a lot of good, even
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: if there may not be as many write-ups of it.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: because ultimately she is going to try to touch as
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: many human beings in Iowa as possible, and having a
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: full arsenal of bold, interesting policies that people will rally
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: behind that shows what she cares about.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Wears very well over time. Yes.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, it's very hard to get covered
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: on policy. Barack Obama, I remember we... held this rural
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: issue forum at a farm in Iowa, and it was
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: supposed to be at all these ag issues. And he
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: said something like, have you seen the price of arugula lately?
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: And it was the only thing that was played on Fox.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: No one cared about his detailed policy.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: You always get hammered on some silly thing by the
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: national news and it sucks. It's incredibly frustrating. But I
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: think like Lovett was saying, like Warren has done a
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: very impressive job of forcing them to cover her substance
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: because she's disciplined, she's smart, and she's rolling it out
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: in this vacuum when no one else is. I think
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: it will pay a dividend to her. It might not
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: show up in the poll tomorrow or the next day,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: but long-term, the conventional wisdom about Warren is that she
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: has the best policy. That's a good place to be.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: I would say this is a dynamic that is specific
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: to the early part of the race. And you were
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: just saying this, Lovett, when we were talking about Beto.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: So far, everyone has gotten press attention when they do
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: their sort of announcement, whether it's exploratory or they're videos
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: or whatever.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And then they have.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: All smartly followed up with an official announcement and then
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: they get the second bite at the apple. And we've
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: basically done that with every candidate. We've talked about their
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: rollout and then their official kickoff.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: It's working on us.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: And then the other way you.
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: Get press attention is with announcing policies. And every time
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren has announced policies, there's some coverage. There's more
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: print coverage than there is TV because TV is even
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: more focused on personalities and bullshit. And then when you're
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: in a campaign, so after you've done your kickoff and
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: after you've put out your policies, then you all sit
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: around and you're like, fuck, how else are we going
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: to get covered?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Yep. And what the media.
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: Covers is conflict, which is unfortunate. And in a primary,
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: most candidates stay away from conflict until the end when
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: they start beating each other up a little bit. They
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: cover controversy. So if something bad happens to you, then
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: they'll cover that.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, the best thing you could do is announce
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: a new policy while falling off a stage flipping a pancake.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Just be like, we'll double the inheritance tax, and then
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: you fall backwards.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And they cover things like fundraising numbers and new polls
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and stuff. I mean, we know how this is.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: And so it's now incumbent upon campaigns to find creative,
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: interesting ways to break through the clutter. And I think
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: both of you made this point that's really smart. Some
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: of that is, some of that people... We'll never see
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: who are just paying attention to national media because all
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: of these candidates now are running individual campaigns in Iowa
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: and New Hampshire and South Carolina for right now where
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: they are trying to break through locally with as many
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: voters as possible. And the strength they have in breaking
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: through may not be apparent in the national media or
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: the national polls for quite some time.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Right. It certainly wasn't in 08.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: And we're talking about the substance of Klobuchar and Warren's
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: announcements in Iowa now. And I know like the local
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: APY and the local news did. But the soundbites I
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: saw on cable coming out of it was them getting
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: asked about Biden. Right. And that is a perfectly legitimate question.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: They should be asked about that. But that's what broke through.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: And that's and that's and that is a dynamic that
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: has existed since.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: Forever.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: It is arguably worse now, and it gets worse every year.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: But that's the way it can't, just, I could just,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: because I think there's a lot of people who are
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: paying attention to politics really closely for the very first time,
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: and if you see someone like Elizabeth Warren throwing out
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: a whole bunch of policy proposals, and then you see
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: the media covering, you know, Trump's latest gaffe, and, you know,
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: asking everyone at the forum about Biden, you're like, what
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: the fuck? But this is a dynamic that has existed
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: in media coverage for quite some time, and it's shitty.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: I would also, though, I would argue, too, though, that, like,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: The media-seeking conflict is not rooted in any noble motive,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: but actually, if it provides an opportunity to draw contrast
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: with each other in a way that are fair and
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: sort of intellectually honest, then I think that that can
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: be a good thing, too. Like, conflict and media is
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: trying to stir up contrast to me isn't inherently magical.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: It's often bad because it's tends to be about surface
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: issues or about going after Trump or what have you,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: personality driven. But, but I, you know, some of the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: worst moments in 2008, I think were driven by personality
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: based disputes. And part of it too, is, you know,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: it's like, part of the reason they get personal as
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: they get to the end is because they're looking ways
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: to break through. Part of it is because they're tired
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: and they're sick of each other.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: And part of it is because a lot of their
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: policies become pretty similar. And the policy differences between these
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: candidates end up being somewhat small. And so therefore you
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: have to magnify those differences. And the media helps magnify
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: them when you actually get into a debate with each other.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And that is coming.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, one of the biggest debates in 2008
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was over the individual mandate.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: A policy... That became a kind of central part of
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the health care debate, a policy he ultimately adopted. It
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: was then thrown out.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: I was going to say, it turns out she was
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: substantively right and he was politically right.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: But it was elevated to this big dispute in part
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: because John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama's health care
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: plans looked very similar because there was a broad-based democratic consensus.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: Planned Parenthood's Dr.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Lena Nguyen.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Our guest today is the president of Planned Parenthood Federation
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: of America. She is the first physician in 50 years
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: to lead the organization. Dr. Lina Nguyen, welcome.
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It's nice to join you.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: So you're leading Planned Parenthood at a time when anti-abortion
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: politicians seemed emboldened. Women's reproductive freedom seems newly threatened. This year,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Trump announced a domestic gag rule in effort to ban
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: funding for any organization that provides abortion or even provides
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: information about abortion services. This past Friday, the administration announced
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: their Title X grant recipients for 2019. Has the gag
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: rule impacted Planned Parenthood?
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: Very much. The Trump administration's Title X gag rule will
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: hurt the ability of 4 million people to get basic
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: health care, to get cancer screenings, affordable birth control. And
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: we're talking about low-income women and families, people who already
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: face the greatest barriers when it comes to health care.
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: And what the Trump administration is doing is to put
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: a gag on doctors, which is unethical and illegal. It's
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: preventing us from telling our patients full, honest, and accurate
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: information and forcing us to compromise the oath that I,
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: as a physician, took when I became a doctor. And
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: so this is why we, as Planned Parenthood, for us,
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: this is the fight of our time. We will not
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: accept gag funds. We will never force our doctors and
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: nurses to censor themselves. We are fighting against the Trump
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: administration through every avenue, including by suing them together with
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: the American Medical Association because of this unethical and illegal rule.
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: And we need everyone's help to join us in the suffer.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: So just so for people that may be following this story,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: but don't totally understand what it means for there to
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: be a gag rule. So according to this rule, in
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: order to get funding to provide women's health care, doctors
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: would not be allowed to even discuss abortion with their patients.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: So this would be the government coming in and telling
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: doctors what they can and cannot say inside of their
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: relationship with their patients.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: That's exactly right. It is a direct attack on the
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: practice of medicine. It is politicians telling physicians that what
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: it is that we can and cannot say. It's not
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: even clear what we would do if a patient came
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: in and it were medically necessary for that patient to
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: receive abortion care. This is just not compatible with medicine,
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: which is the reason why provider organizations representing 4.3 million doctors, nurses,
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: public health leaders have come out strongly against this gag
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: rule because it is, we as physicians, we trust our
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: patients and we trust women.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: And the majority of the services that Planned Parenthood provides
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: are not related to abortion. So this would be a
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: rule that would say if a doctor, so a doctor
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: could not discuss abortion so that Planned Parenthood could continue
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: to provide cancer screening and other kinds of services.
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: Abortion care is part of the full spectrum of reproductive
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: health care, along with birth control, along with breast and
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: cervical cancer screenings, STI, and HIV tests. And we need
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: to speak the truth about what it is that we
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: in medicine know, which is that abortion care is reproductive
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: health care, reproductive health care is health care, and should
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: be treated no differently from all other aspects of medicine.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: So this is only one blank of the assault we're
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: seeing right now on reproductive freedom, on women's health. On Friday,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Georgia passed, passed by one vote, a bill that the
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: governor signed, the heartbeat bill, which is a ban on
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: abortions after six weeks, because that's when you can supposedly
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: hear the heartbeat of a fetus. That's often before women
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: know they're pregnant, effectively banning abortion. There's been a spike
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: in these kinds of bills and bans like this, including
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: recently in Kentucky and Mississippi. Why now? Why have politicians
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: taken this moment? to attempt to pass laws like this?
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: Well, there have already been over 420 laws passed in
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: the last eight years that directly restrict abortion access. But
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: now we're seeing an escalation in the number of bills
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: introduced that are anti-women's health, anti-healthcare. And the reason is
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: these politicians know this is the time to be bringing
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: up cases that could reach the Supreme Court. With Brett
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: Kavanaugh on the court, there are already 16 cases of
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: the last count that are one step away from the
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: Supreme Court. And if any of them are heard, then
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: we face the real situation of Roe versus Wade being
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: further eroded or even overturned, which means that one in
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: three women of reproductive age, which is 25 million women,
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: would be living in states where abortion is banned and criminalized.
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: And that means that for us who are here to
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: protect women's health care and lives, The battleground is the states.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: States are the critical backstop. And that's why we are
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: working with our champions across all of our states to
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: introduce proactive policies that would protect and expand reproductive rights.
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: This is the will of the people. We saw in
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: the last elections that women, particularly women of color, rose
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: up and voted for the most female, most diverse, and
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: most pro-reproductive health majority ever in the House of Representatives.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: We now have 25 governors and 19 state legislatures, including D.C.,
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: that are strongly in favor of reproductive health and rights.
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: And we know that the American people want more health
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: care and not less. And that's why it's so important
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: that we see this as the fight of our time,
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: that reproductive health care must be treated no differently than
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: what it is, which is health care.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: I want to go back to this Georgia bill for
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: a second, just because it is such an extreme measure.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: So obviously it's an attempt to criminalize abortion, but could
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: it also lead to investigations and other sort of threats
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: to women in the event of even a miscarriage? How
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: draconian do you see the outcome of the passage of
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: a bill like this being?
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: This is a major attack on women's rights. At six weeks,
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: most women don't even know that they're pregnant.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And we know the.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: Consequence of bills like this. The consequence is that we're
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: going to go back to a time, as we did pre-Rome.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: One of my mentors, who is an emergency physician, talked
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: about how he worked in the ERs before Rome in
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: the 1960s, and how there was an entire area of
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: the hospital called the sepsis ward, where... women went who
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: had to seek unsafe abortions. And they were dying from
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: kidney failures. They were dying from blood infections. And at
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: that time, thousands of women died because they did not
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: have access to safe legal abortions. The idea that we
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: could be returning to that time is truly terrifying. And
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: we know that this is not what the American people want.
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: And this is why with the ban on abortions early
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: in pregnancy in Georgia and We saw that hundreds of
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: business leaders and dozens of Hollywood celebrities sent a letter
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: to the Georgia House Speaker and Georgia Governor saying that
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: they will push for TV and film production companies to
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: abandon Georgia if this bill is signed into law, because
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: they understand that we're talking about the health of women,
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: and the health of women is instrumental to determining the
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: health of families and the future of communities.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: So you've talked about how important this issue is and
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: how motivating it is for women across the country. Do
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: you believe a pro-choice position should be a litmus test
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: for the viability of a Democratic candidate in the 2020 race?
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: And what about Democrats running down ballot in redder states?
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: Do you think Democrats should withhold support if they are anti-choice?
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: Look, this is not about a party. This is about
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: our core values. And our core value has to be
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: that women's healthcare, reproductive healthcare, is healthcare. That keeping people
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: unhealthy is a tool of oppression. And that when we
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: stigmatize reproductive healthcare, that becomes a tool of misogyny. What
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: Planned Parenthood does is standard health care. We provide care
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: for one in five women in America. I was a
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: patient in Planned Parenthood, so was my mother, so was
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: my sister. We care for men. We care for non-binary people.
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: Over 160 of our health centers now provide hormone therapy,
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: and our goal is to provide gender-affirming care in every
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: health center. What we do is healthcare. We are not
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: the ones that made healthcare political. Getting vaccinations, medications, cancer screenings,
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: none of that should be political. But when there are
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: politicians who have made access to the fundamental right to
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: healthcare political, That's why we all have to fight back
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: with everything we have. And I would urge for all
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: of our elected officials to keep in mind that it's
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: not what we're fighting about, but who we're fighting for.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: And who we're fighting for is all the millions of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: patients who come to Planned Parenthood to seek care. And
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: we know that when health centers are forced to close,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: We know the consequences, that people simply go without care.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: The rates of STIs and unintended pregnancies increase and health
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: outcomes suffer around the country. These are the battles that
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: we fight, and it is the fight of our time.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: So how would you advise Democrats to discuss sort of
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: this fight with voters who are pro-life or unsure about
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: how to feel about abortion rights? What have you found
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: to be the most effective message in reaching more people
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: about the importance of this issue? Given how much partisanship
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: there is around this issue now, given how emboldened anti-choice
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: politicians currently feel?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: I would urge three things. One is talk about the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: will of the people. Support for Roe v. Wade as
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: the law of the land has never been higher. It's
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: at 73 percent. 73 percent of Americans support the right
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: to safe legal abortion. Second is to frame our discussion
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: around health care. because that's what it is. Access to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: healthcare is the number one issue that motivates voters, and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: reproductive healthcare, women's healthcare, must be seen as the healthcare
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: issue that it is. And the third is to talk
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: about what we in medicine and public health know to
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: be true, which is that we are at a record
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: low When it comes to teen pregnancies, we are at
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: a 30-year low when it comes to unintended pregnancies and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: the need for abortions. We know what works when it
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: comes to improving health, for improving women's health. We know
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: that it takes access to comprehensive sex ed. It takes
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: access to birth control. We also know that legalizing abortions
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: did not create the need for it, but actually it's
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: something that's necessary because in order to preserve the health
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: and well-being of women. We also have to talk about
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: this Trump administration's pattern of taking away our health and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: our rights. We've seen that it's 2019, and the Trump
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: administration is issuing rules to allow employers and universities to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: deny workers and students of birth control. And it's 2019,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: and we're still arguing about birth control, which is wildly popular.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: The Trump administration is cutting comprehensive sex education, which in
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: my last role as the health commissioner of Baltimore, we
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for this, and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: we won, restoring comprehensive sex ed in our middle schools
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: and high schools. And, of course, in appointing Kavanaugh to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: the Supreme Court in the Title X gag rule, in
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: additional efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, the Trump
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: administration has further taken away health and rights. healthcare and
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: the right to bodily autonomy, these are winning issues for
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: not only Democrats, but I believe for all politicians. And
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: this is something that we hope that every one of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: our elected officials will embrace because this is the will
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: of the people.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: It sounds like there are sort of two facets to
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: that when trying to sort of reach beyond voters who
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: consider themselves to be pro-life. On the one hand, it's
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: the Republican attacks on access to health and the bodily
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: autonomy of women. But it sounds like you're also talking
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: about this idea that by increasing access to comprehensive sex education,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: by increasing access to health care, by increasing access to information,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: you actually successfully reduce the number of abortions. Is that
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: part of the case you believe politicians should be making?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: Look, over 90 percent of the work done at Planned
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: Parenthood is prevention. We do more than any other organization
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: when it comes to preventing unintended pregnancies. This is what
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: we know from medicine and public health to be true.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: So if what politicians want to do is to reduce
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion, they should be
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: investing in Planned Parenthood, investing in sex education, investing in
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: comprehensive birth control, investing in programs like Title X. If
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: what President Trump really wants to do, as he said
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: in his State of the Union, is to reduce HIV transmission,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: he should look to Planned Parenthood. Last year, we provided
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: over 740,000 HIV tests. We have PrEP and PEP in
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: over 40 states in this country. This is the work
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: that we do. It's prevention. It's keeping people healthy. And
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: keeping women healthy is also improving the health of communities.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: We're at a time now when the rate of maternal mortality...
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: is higher than it was 30 years ago. An African-American
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: woman is three to four times more likely to die
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: in childbirth than a white woman. A woman in Georgia
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: is 10 times more likely to die than a woman
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: in California in childbirth. There are huge disparities in our healthcare.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: What Planned Parenthood is doing every single day is to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: provide care to everyone, particularly those who are the most vulnerable.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: And if our elected officials are truly committed to improving healthcare,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: They should be investing in us because we are the
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: ones who are delivering care through over 600 health centers
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: all across the country.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: So for anyone listening who wants to help in this
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: fight against Trump's encroachment on reproductive freedom, what can people do?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: What's the most effective way right now for listeners who
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: want to do something to protect Roe v. Wade, to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: fight against these anti-women bills? How can they help?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: Well, thank you for asking that, John. We need everyone's
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: help in this fight. The Title X gag rule fight
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: is our number one priority, and we urge you to
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: join us by texting PROTECT10, which is PROTECTX, PROTECT10 to 22422.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: So text PROTECTX or PROTECT10 to 22422. Also, we would
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: love to have you join our ever-growing number of supporters.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: We have 12 million supporters and strong and growing who
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: are dedicated to the idea of protecting bodily autonomy, to
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: protecting our health, our rights, and our futures. So we
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: hope that you can join us. And it's at this
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: time when we cannot look to anyone else. We have
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: to look to us. The cavalry is not coming. We
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: are the ones that we've been waiting for.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: Dr. Alina Nguyen, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: Thanks to Dr. Alina Nguyen for joining us today, and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: we'll talk to you guys later.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you.