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“Is hating the troops good for Trump?” · Pod Save America

0:04
Speaker 1: This is a life-changing election.
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Speaker 2: This will determine what America is going to look like
0:08
Speaker 2: for a long, long time.
0:09
Speaker 3: This is the most important election in the history of
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Speaker 3: our country.
0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 4: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
0:24
Speaker 1: On today's pod, I talk to Fair Fight CEO Lauren
0:26
Speaker 1: Groargo about winning Georgia and fighting voter suppression. Before that,
0:30
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the state of the race as we
0:32
Speaker 1: begin the final homestretch, new reporting about Donald Trump's disdain
0:35
Speaker 1: for the U.S. military, and how the economy might play
0:38
Speaker 1: a pivotal role in the last few months of this campaign. Lovett,
0:41
Speaker 1: how was the show this week?
0:42
Speaker 5: Great, love it or leave it. Travis tried to break up,
0:45
Speaker 5: Ronan and me again, didn't work so far. And Akilah
0:48
Speaker 5: joined for the monologue, and I talked to Imani Barbarin
0:51
Speaker 5: about access to voting for people with disabilities and the
0:55
Speaker 5: language we use when we talk about Trump and Biden.
0:58
Speaker 1: Outstand it. It was fascinating. There's also a brand new
1:01
Speaker 1: Missing America out today about sectarianism with a focus on
1:05
Speaker 1: how India's prime minister used Hindu nationalism to wage an
1:07
Speaker 1: assault against the country's Muslim population. It is excellent. Go
1:11
Speaker 1: check it out. Subscribe to Missing America if you haven't already,
1:14
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, let's get
1:16
Speaker 1: to the news. We are 56 days away from the
1:19
Speaker 1: election and voting has already begun. North Carolina started sending
1:23
Speaker 1: out ballots on Friday. By September 24th, In just a
1:27
Speaker 1: few weeks, more than two dozen states will have also
1:30
Speaker 1: sent out ballots, and eight states will have started early
1:33
Speaker 1: in-person voting. According to FiveThirtyEight, Joe Biden has a 7.6%
1:38
Speaker 1: lead over Donald Trump, and more importantly, is polling close
1:41
Speaker 1: to 50% in the six battlegrounds most likely to decide
1:44
Speaker 1: the race. Biden's at 50.8 in Wisconsin, 49.6 in Michigan, 49.2
1:46
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, 48.9 in Arizona, 48.2 in Florida, 48.6 in
1:48
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Biden, Kamala Harris, and Mike Pence were all
1:58
Speaker 1: visiting battleground states on Monday for the unofficial Labor Day
2:01
Speaker 1: kickoff to the fall campaign, while Trump called a last-minute
2:04
Speaker 1: White House press conference to deliver this message.
2:07
Speaker 3: President Obama. And Biden, sleepy Joe, he knew everything that
2:12
Speaker 3: was happening. They were spying on my campaign and they
2:14
Speaker 3: got caught. Now let's see what happens. But if this
2:17
Speaker 3: were the opposite way, people would have been jailed. They
2:19
Speaker 3: would have been in jail already for a period of
2:22
Speaker 3: at least, it would have started two years ago and
2:24
Speaker 3: it would have been for 50 years for treason.
2:27
Speaker 1: You think they had that marked down on the message calendar?
2:30
Speaker 1: Labor Day kickoff to the campaign, president goes out, accuses
2:35
Speaker 1: opponent and past president of spying and treason. All right.
2:41
Speaker 1: So we have been through both conventions, dueling trips to
2:45
Speaker 1: Kenosha last week. Tommy, what have we learned about the
2:48
Speaker 1: state of the race, Biden's challenges in the next 56
2:52
Speaker 1: days and Trump's challenges?
2:53
Speaker 4: We have learned that the race is very stable, that
2:57
Speaker 4: that national polling average has been quite steady. I am
3:00
Speaker 4: not thrilled about some of the tightening we're seeing in
3:02
Speaker 4: state polls like Florida and Pennsylvania, but we'll, we'll get
3:05
Speaker 4: to that, uh, freak out another day. Um, you know,
3:08
Speaker 4: there was a democratic super PAC, uh, priorities USA. They
3:10
Speaker 4: did a big, uh, round of polling, like 5,000 interviews
3:14
Speaker 4: with battleground state voters, um, who have not made up
3:18
Speaker 4: their mind. And they found that, uh, like by and
3:22
Speaker 4: large for a lot of them, there's, they're not only decided,
3:24
Speaker 4: but there's no chance they would vote for the other guy.
3:26
Speaker 4: That survey found there's basically 13% of the electorate that
3:29
Speaker 4: is persuadable. And within that group, about 5% of them
3:32
Speaker 4: would consider voting for Trump. So the question becomes for
3:35
Speaker 4: both the campaigns, how do you find those folks? How
3:37
Speaker 4: do you reach them? How do you persuade them? And
3:39
Speaker 4: the biggest challenge for Biden, I think, will continue to
3:42
Speaker 4: be finding ways to make news and just talk about
3:44
Speaker 4: issues that actually matter on his own terms because Trump
3:47
Speaker 4: so thoroughly dominates the news cycle every day. I mean,
3:49
Speaker 4: in that press conference, we just played a clip from
3:52
Speaker 4: he attacked John McCain again. He supported an investigation into
3:55
Speaker 4: his own postmaster general's corruption charges, which was sort of
3:59
Speaker 4: just like, I'll brush that aside, right? So he's obviously
4:02
Speaker 4: dominated the news cycle. Trump has this advantage on the economy.
4:06
Speaker 4: Biden wants to chip away at that. It's hard to
4:08
Speaker 4: get coverage of your plan to strengthen collective bargaining rights
4:11
Speaker 4: or bring back manufacturing jobs in this climate. So they've
4:14
Speaker 4: got to work on that. The flip side of that, though,
4:16
Speaker 4: is that we're on day five, I think, of a
4:18
Speaker 4: conversation about whether or not Trump hates dead Marines or
4:22
Speaker 4: thinks they're losers. I mean, I'm going to go out
4:24
Speaker 4: on a limb and say that was also probably not
4:26
Speaker 4: on like the post Labor Day message calendar. So, you know,
4:29
Speaker 4: the hurdles for Trump are no discipline. He isn't capable
4:33
Speaker 4: of driving a consistent message. And then I think like
4:36
Speaker 4: much bigger picture is the handling of the coronavirus. It
4:40
Speaker 4: continues to be a disaster. We're averaging 40,000 new cases
4:43
Speaker 4: a day, even if they do this sort of like
4:46
Speaker 4: October surprise vaccine gambit, which everyone now seems to anticipate.
4:50
Speaker 4: Most voters don't believe what he has to say on
4:52
Speaker 4: the issue. So Those are some big hurdles for the
4:55
Speaker 4: Trump side to overcome.
4:57
Speaker 6: Love it.
4:58
Speaker 1: What do you think? Steady. It is now the steadiest race,
5:05
Speaker 1: the steadiest lead in modern history.
5:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I think we're at the point now where,
5:14
Speaker 5: you know, Trump is going to be Trump. He's going
5:16
Speaker 5: to step on his own message.
5:18
Speaker 1: Right.
5:19
Speaker 5: And he's going to be lifted up by Fox news.
5:22
Speaker 5: He's gonna be lifted up by, um, you know, massive
5:25
Speaker 5: influxes of outside money. Um, I feel like the question
5:29
Speaker 5: now is less about, um, like the kind of movement
5:33
Speaker 5: in the polls that we see day to day and more, well,
5:37
Speaker 5: the fundamental advantages Trump has had right in the electoral college,
5:41
Speaker 5: in the media, in some of these swing States, in
5:44
Speaker 5: the kind of cynicism that a lot of voters have, um,
5:47
Speaker 5: Will that be enough to overcome the fact that he
5:49
Speaker 5: is unable to carry a message, the pandemic failures, and
5:54
Speaker 5: will his continued strength on the economy, will the fact
5:58
Speaker 5: that people still believe he is better than Biden on
6:00
Speaker 5: the economy, despite everything we've seen, be enough to carry
6:03
Speaker 5: him to an electoral college victory, even as he loses
6:06
Speaker 5: the popular vote? I mean, like, that's the, it's less
6:09
Speaker 5: about what Trump does. Trump is Trump, right? You know, there's,
6:12
Speaker 5: you know, he can't get enough Adderall in his nose
6:14
Speaker 5: to get through these things while staying on message. So
6:19
Speaker 5: and and it's and beyond that, like, what are we
6:21
Speaker 5: that's where we're at, you know?
6:23
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, the the fundamental steadiness of the
6:27
Speaker 1: race and Joe Biden's lead, it sort of plays both ways. Right.
6:31
Speaker 1: Like on one hand, it is it can be somewhat
6:35
Speaker 1: depressing that after a pandemic where the president United States
6:42
Speaker 1: has botched the response so badly, almost 200000 people dead.
6:46
Speaker 1: compared to many other countries around the world, a historic recession,
6:52
Speaker 1: a racial reckoning. The president is not trusted on any
6:56
Speaker 1: of those issues, has botched all of those issues, and
6:59
Speaker 1: his approval rating is basically the same as where it
7:02
Speaker 1: was before the pandemic, right? And so that part's surprising.
7:07
Speaker 1: On the flip side of that, it also means that
7:10
Speaker 1: some of the fundamentals that you're talking about, people are like,
7:13
Speaker 1: is the economy going to improve and help Trump? Is
7:16
Speaker 1: Are we going to have COVID cases declining and that's
7:18
Speaker 1: going to help Trump? Is there going to be a
7:19
Speaker 1: gaffe that helps Trump or this, that? A lot of
7:21
Speaker 1: these other things, a lot of things either way aren't
7:24
Speaker 1: changing the fundamental dynamics of the race. And so what
7:27
Speaker 1: you have is this popular vote, electoral vote split that
7:31
Speaker 1: becomes one of Joe Biden's biggest challenges, where a seven
7:34
Speaker 1: and a half point lead nationwide still could mean a
7:39
Speaker 1: very tight race in Florida, a tighter race in Pennsylvania,
7:42
Speaker 1: a tighter race in some of these battleground states. Because remember,
7:45
Speaker 1: Democrats won house by eight points nationally in 2018 and
7:49
Speaker 1: still lost two statewide races in Florida, eked out a
7:55
Speaker 1: governor's race win in Wisconsin. So this thing could be
7:58
Speaker 1: closed just because of the fundamentals of the race.
8:00
Speaker 5: It's a funny thing because, you know, Tommy pointed to
8:02
Speaker 5: what that Priorities USA survey and research found. And it
8:07
Speaker 5: kind of, I don't know, for me, it pointed to
8:11
Speaker 5: the kind of strange reality of campaigning and trying to
8:14
Speaker 5: win against someone like Trump. Right now, it's this mix
8:17
Speaker 5: of extraordinarily unique circumstances against a pandemic, an authoritarian, there's
8:21
Speaker 5: mail falling off of the back of DeJoy's trucks. And
8:24
Speaker 5: then at the same time, you look at that Priorities
8:26
Speaker 5: USA research and what is the message they found that's
8:28
Speaker 5: the most important message to reach swing voters, not the
8:32
Speaker 5: third party voters, but the swing voters, potentially reachable voters.
8:36
Speaker 5: And it's, he's coming for your healthcare, he's coming for
8:38
Speaker 5: your social security, It's the normal kind of politics that
8:43
Speaker 5: we're sort of used to that helped us win in 2018.
8:45
Speaker 5: And so it's this crazy mix of we got Bernie
8:47
Speaker 5: Sanders basically giving speeches about how we all need to
8:50
Speaker 5: be prepared to take to the streets if he tries
8:52
Speaker 5: to steal the election. And then we have research that's like,
8:55
Speaker 5: you know, he's going to cut Medicare. That's the core message.
8:58
Speaker 5: That's how we win this thing. It's this strange combination.
9:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think it's important to know who those
9:04
Speaker 1: voters are. There's, you know, the priorities looked at. Tommy,
9:07
Speaker 1: as you said, 13% of voters said that they are
9:09
Speaker 1: willing to consider voting for a candidate other than who
9:11
Speaker 1: they currently support. Then they looked at the 5% of
9:14
Speaker 1: voters who don't currently support Trump, but say they may
9:17
Speaker 1: consider voting for him. It's important to know these voters
9:19
Speaker 1: are because we hear something happen and everyone's like, Trump's
9:21
Speaker 1: base will never leave him. We're not talking about Trump's base, right?
9:24
Speaker 1: These 5% of voters who don't support him now, but may,
9:27
Speaker 1: they don't like him. They think the country's going in
9:29
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. They don't think he's good on healthcare,
9:32
Speaker 1: the pandemic, race relations, but they think he's good on
9:35
Speaker 1: the economy. And that's where they are. So these aren't
9:38
Speaker 1: like MAGA people, right? These aren't like Trump fans, but
9:40
Speaker 1: they're people who may cast a ballot for him. And
9:43
Speaker 1: I think like as Lovett, as you pointed out, you know,
9:45
Speaker 1: his plans to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay
9:48
Speaker 1: for more tax cuts, his plan to cut health care
9:49
Speaker 1: like that moves those voters. Tommy, I guess the question is, like,
9:52
Speaker 1: how do you break through with those messages in this environment?
9:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know that's the hardest part, I think. I mean, look,
9:56
Speaker 4: a third of these 5% who are Trump curious, it's
9:59
Speaker 4: like white women in, I think, 66, 70% of them
10:06
Speaker 4: are in cities or suburbs. So yeah, it's not the
10:08
Speaker 4: base at all. It's very much swing voters. The good
10:11
Speaker 4: news is, as you said, I mean, they're predisposed to
10:13
Speaker 4: dislike Trump. They are especially upset about his coronavirus performance.
10:18
Speaker 4: So I mean, that's the hardest task in this election
10:21
Speaker 4: for the Biden camp is like getting the message they
10:23
Speaker 4: want to get to all these voters. And I think
10:25
Speaker 4: with people who are, you know, not decided yet, it's
10:28
Speaker 4: probably gonna have to be through paid media because it
10:31
Speaker 4: means you are probably not paying that close attention to
10:34
Speaker 4: the race, or at least not in the way we are.
10:36
Speaker 5: It's like the last, it's the last of the voters
10:39
Speaker 5: who are still susceptible to love me or hate me,
10:41
Speaker 5: you have to vote for me. It's like that, all
10:44
Speaker 5: the shit that's happened to change it, like there's that
10:46
Speaker 5: group of people that are like, I think he's good
10:48
Speaker 5: on the economy and you have to convince them, right,
10:51
Speaker 5: that like actually he's bad for you on health care.
10:54
Speaker 5: He's bad for you on taxes. He's not as good
10:55
Speaker 5: as he seems.
10:56
Speaker 1: Don't forget.
10:57
Speaker 5: Don't forget that maybe your job has been OK because
11:00
Speaker 5: of where you happen to be in the country. Maybe
11:01
Speaker 5: you haven't felt the pandemic as personally in terms of
11:04
Speaker 5: the financial way it's hit people. But don't forget he's
11:06
Speaker 5: coming for you in the second term.
11:09
Speaker 1: I do think the other thing we're seeing today with
11:12
Speaker 1: some of these polls is. and we've seen this for
11:15
Speaker 1: some time now, Biden is underperforming Clinton in a lot
11:18
Speaker 1: of these polls among Latino voters. Um, and I think
11:22
Speaker 1: that is another case, as you said, Tommy, of paid
11:26
Speaker 1: media sort of taking care of that. A lot of these, uh,
11:28
Speaker 1: when you do polls of Latino voters, it's not necessarily
11:31
Speaker 1: that they don't like Biden or they don't, or they
11:33
Speaker 1: just love Trump. They don't know much about Biden. They
11:35
Speaker 1: don't know what his agenda is. They don't know what
11:37
Speaker 1: he stands for. And so I think some of that
11:39
Speaker 1: you can take care of with paid media, but that's
11:41
Speaker 1: another challenge that I think he has. Um, One more
11:44
Speaker 1: challenge for Trump that we should probably mention before we
11:46
Speaker 1: move on. There's a big New York Times story yesterday.
11:49
Speaker 1: Of the $ 1. 1 billion that Trump's campaign and the party
11:52
Speaker 1: raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than
11:54
Speaker 1: $ 800 million has already been spent. And now Trump is
11:57
Speaker 1: reportedly considering spending $ 100 million of his own money on
12:02
Speaker 1: the race. I did not expect them to be in
12:05
Speaker 1: a cash crunch with this many days to go.
12:09
Speaker 2: No.
12:09
Speaker 4: Brad Parscale bought a couple too many Ferraris, I think,
12:12
Speaker 4: because that's pretty abysmal management.
12:15
Speaker 5: Brad Parscale and the Beagley boys making off with a
12:17
Speaker 5: bunch of cash. Swimming in money.
12:21
Speaker 1: So that's all the challenges for the Biden and Trump campaign.
12:24
Speaker 1: But as we say all the time here, the outcome
12:26
Speaker 1: of the race is ultimately in our hands. So at
12:29
Speaker 1: Crooked Media, we're calling today Get Your Shit Together Day.
12:34
Speaker 1: It's a great holiday. Get your shit together day. It
12:36
Speaker 1: involves each of you figuring out exactly when you're getting
12:39
Speaker 1: your ballot, when you're returning it, and how you're returning it.
12:42
Speaker 1: All of that information and all of those deadlines from
12:44
Speaker 1: all 50 states is now available on votesaveamerica.com slash states.
12:49
Speaker 1: Thanks to our phenomenal team, especially Juliet Bextrand and EJ Baker.
12:54
Speaker 1: All 50 states, they got information for. If you might
12:56
Speaker 1: be wondering what happens if you requested a mail-in ballot,
12:58
Speaker 1: but it still hasn't come. What if you decide you
13:00
Speaker 1: want to vote in person? Can you register and vote
13:02
Speaker 1: at the same time on election day? We've got answers
13:04
Speaker 1: to all those questions and more. So check out Vote
13:07
Speaker 1: Save America. It's a great site. Very informative.
13:10
Speaker 5: Fantastic.
13:12
Speaker 3: All right.
13:13
Speaker 1: So during Trump's press conference that we just talked about,
13:16
Speaker 1: as Tommy just mentioned, the president spent his fifth day
13:18
Speaker 1: in a row making news about a peace in the
13:20
Speaker 1: Atlantic by Jeff Goldberg, where multiple sources detailed numerous instances
13:24
Speaker 1: of Trump disparaging members of the U.S. armed forces. The
13:27
Speaker 1: president reportedly said of a visit to a military cemetery
13:30
Speaker 1: in Paris that Why should I go to that cemetery?
13:32
Speaker 1: It's filled with losers. He referred to Marines who lost
13:35
Speaker 1: their lives in a World War I battle as suckers.
13:38
Speaker 1: When John McCain died and White House staff wanted to
13:40
Speaker 1: lower the flag to half-mast, Trump asked, what the fuck
13:43
Speaker 1: are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.
13:46
Speaker 1: While standing in front of the grave where John Kelly's
13:48
Speaker 1: son is buried, Trump turned to Kelly and said, quote,
13:51
Speaker 1: I don't get it. What was in it for them?
13:54
Speaker 1: And maybe the worst of all, Trump once told his
13:56
Speaker 1: staff to exclude wounded veterans from from his military parade because, quote,
14:01
Speaker 1: nobody wants to see that. So, Tommy, Trump's been denying
14:07
Speaker 1: this story left and right. A number of his own
14:08
Speaker 1: staff publicly denied it to make the boss happy. All
14:11
Speaker 1: the MAGA media stars are, of course, just taking Trump
14:14
Speaker 1: and his staff's word for it and using their denials
14:17
Speaker 1: as saying that it's debunked. Why is all of that bullshit?
14:22
Speaker 4: Let me count the ways. So, I mean, look, he's
14:23
Speaker 4: a liar, right? Obviously, his staff is full of liars.
14:26
Speaker 4: And they supported him and backed him up when he
14:29
Speaker 4: was drawing fake hurricane path maps on weather maps that
14:33
Speaker 4: he had printed out from Alta Vista or something. They
14:36
Speaker 4: back him up when he claims that millions of people
14:39
Speaker 4: voted illegally in 2016 or that Obama spied on him,
14:41
Speaker 4: so they have no credibility. I'm not particularly convinced by
14:44
Speaker 4: Sarah Sanders when she trots out another lie. You also
14:48
Speaker 4: know that other news outlets were very quickly able to
14:51
Speaker 4: confirm the original Atlantic story or at least pieces of it,
14:54
Speaker 4: including Fox News. So that was a pretty inconvenient data
14:58
Speaker 4: point for the Trump team. The anecdote about Trump being
15:02
Speaker 4: upset about the flags being lowered to honor John McCain
15:05
Speaker 4: when he passed away tracked pretty identically with public comments
15:09
Speaker 4: Trump has made about McCain. And the former Department of
15:11
Speaker 4: Homeland Security chief of staff said on the record that
15:14
Speaker 4: Trump's staff called him to complain about the flags being lowered.
15:17
Speaker 4: So it seems like that's pretty well confirmed. And it
15:20
Speaker 4: also just, it feels like the sourcing on these stories
15:23
Speaker 4: is an open secret. People are heavily suggesting that it
15:26
Speaker 4: is coming from John Kelly's peers, like four-star generals, like
15:29
Speaker 4: General Mattis or Joe Dunford or others. And I'm not
15:33
Speaker 4: arguing that we should believe everything that those guys say,
15:36
Speaker 4: far from it, but it does suggest that this is
15:39
Speaker 4: coming from people who are, you know, like well-positioned to
15:41
Speaker 4: know what actually happened, not just some little, you know,
15:45
Speaker 4: shithead Trump staffer who overheard something in a staff meeting, right?
15:48
Speaker 4: And like, Then broadly, it just tracks with what we
15:51
Speaker 4: know about Trump as a person. I mean, we know
15:53
Speaker 4: he said that VD or avoiding VD was his personal Vietnam.
15:57
Speaker 4: He doesn't understand public service. He doesn't understand the concept
16:00
Speaker 4: of like sacrificing something for a bigger goal or vision.
16:03
Speaker 4: It's about money and fame and personal success. So it
16:07
Speaker 4: all makes sense. It speaks to his character.
16:12
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, like it tracks the typical Trump denials
16:16
Speaker 1: around this stuff, right? Which at first it's all fake
16:18
Speaker 1: and it's a hoax. And then you get a bunch
16:20
Speaker 1: of people on the record. And then you get some
16:22
Speaker 1: anonymous sources. Then you get more people on the record.
16:25
Speaker 1: And then finally, Trump just basically admits the thing that
16:27
Speaker 1: he denied in some other way. On the press conference,
16:30
Speaker 1: he said he wasn't a fan of McCain. He accused
16:32
Speaker 1: the country's top generals of being war profiteers. Yeah, that
16:34
Speaker 1: was cool. That was something that happened Sunday. Lovett, what
16:38
Speaker 1: did you think of this story?
16:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, Jeffrey Goldberg is not going to
16:42
Speaker 5: publish a conversation between John Kelly and Donald Trump and
16:46
Speaker 5: where Donald Trump basically insults the memory of John Kelly's
16:49
Speaker 5: dead son, if John Kelly is going to go out
16:53
Speaker 5: and deny it, that's not going to happen, right? That's
16:55
Speaker 5: like inconceivable. So, I mean, look, crazier things have happened.
16:58
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that. And John Kelly hasn't. And John
16:59
Speaker 1: Kelly's been quiet.
17:00
Speaker 5: And he hasn't. And he hasn't. And he hasn't. Yeah,
17:03
Speaker 5: of course, it fits with what Trump has said. And
17:06
Speaker 5: then on background, right, yes, what always happens, right, Trump
17:09
Speaker 5: has his people go out on a limb, and then
17:10
Speaker 5: he cuts the limb off. This time, you know, now
17:12
Speaker 5: on background, you see some of his Trump aides being like,
17:15
Speaker 5: he doesn't mean it. He's just a huge fucking asshole, right?
17:18
Speaker 5: Like that's sort of their, the place they end up at.
17:22
Speaker 5: And yeah, I mean, of course it's true. Like some
17:25
Speaker 5: of the things he denied, he said on camera, right?
17:26
Speaker 5: Like I never called John McCain a loser. That part
17:28
Speaker 5: was on camera. I think he doesn't remember it because
17:31
Speaker 5: the loser is sort of, it's inside of a sentence.
17:35
Speaker 5: It's not like, he doesn't say John McCain's a loser,
17:37
Speaker 5: but he does call John McCain a loser. So I
17:39
Speaker 5: think he just doesn't remember that insult because, you know, look,
17:41
Speaker 5: he's been a touring comic.
17:42
Speaker 1: For a very long time.
17:43
Speaker 4: He doesn't remember everything.
17:44
Speaker 5: Every line. So, yeah, you know, obviously it's true.
17:48
Speaker 1: I just do love that excuse that they basically use,
17:50
Speaker 1: which is like, yes, yes, he was an asshole to
17:52
Speaker 1: the troops. Yes, he was an asshole to dead troops,
17:55
Speaker 1: to wounded soldiers. But he's an asshole to everyone.
17:59
Speaker 5: It's like when they would defend Don Rickles for Asian jokes.
18:01
Speaker 5: Like it'd be like, ah, he's an equal opportunity offender.
18:04
Speaker 4: You know, the other thing they trotted out was like, oh,
18:06
Speaker 4: he just hates war so much. That's why he's lashing out.
18:09
Speaker 4: This is just sort of.
18:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
18:11
Speaker 1: What? What are you talking about?
18:13
Speaker 5: Well, the thing that's so frustrating about that.
18:14
Speaker 1: He's so passionately against war.
18:16
Speaker 3: Right, right.
18:16
Speaker 5: He's a peacenik. Well, it's also like he goes around
18:18
Speaker 5: the country saying, like, we were out of bullets. There
18:20
Speaker 5: were no bullets left in any of the guns, and
18:22
Speaker 5: I bought all the bullets. I've raised defense spending. I'm
18:25
Speaker 5: the guy that raised defense spending. Then he turns around
18:27
Speaker 5: and says, like, oh, these generals, they hate me because I...
18:29
Speaker 5: because I want to cut defense spending, or I don't
18:31
Speaker 5: want to spend money on a defense contract. Where does
18:33
Speaker 5: he think this bigger budget goes? It's not, it's just
18:35
Speaker 5: a false attack.
18:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, his Secretary of Defense was a defense lobbyist before
18:39
Speaker 4: he got this current job. Yeah, for Raytheon.
18:41
Speaker 5: Raytheon, right?
18:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was making drones.
18:51
Speaker 1: So the Biden campaign and a bunch of other groups
18:52
Speaker 1: have already cut ads about Trump's comments, and the former
18:55
Speaker 1: vice president responded pretty forcefully over the weekend. Here's a clip.
18:58
Speaker 2: If these statements are true, the president should humbly apologize
19:03
Speaker 2: to every gold star mother and father and every blue
19:07
Speaker 2: star family that he's denigrated and insulted. Who the heck
19:12
Speaker 2: does he think he is?
19:15
Speaker 1: He was pissed. Love it. The question now is how
19:17
Speaker 1: much should Biden and other Democrats focus on this? There
19:19
Speaker 1: were predictably a lot of media and political types over
19:22
Speaker 1: the weekend saying that this won't really matter, won't change
19:24
Speaker 1: any minds. even in the Atlantic piece itself, as Pfeiffer
19:29
Speaker 1: pointed out in his message box over the weekend, you know,
19:31
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic piece, it says Trump did no damage
19:33
Speaker 1: to his 2016 candidacy by attacking McCain or the Khans,
19:36
Speaker 1: the Gold Star family he attacked during the Democratic Convention
19:38
Speaker 1: in 2016. What do you think of that argument?
19:42
Speaker 5: I find that that's very silly, right? Like when a
19:45
Speaker 5: campaign wins, everything they did didn't work and every attack
19:48
Speaker 5: against them didn't fail, right? That's just not how the
19:50
Speaker 5: world works, right? For all we know, Trump would have
19:54
Speaker 5: had a smaller popular vote lead had he not insulted
19:58
Speaker 5: veterans and insulted John McCain and insulted the memory of
20:00
Speaker 5: people who lost their lives serving the country. You know,
20:03
Speaker 5: I was thinking about this and I do think sometimes
20:05
Speaker 5: when these things happen, it's a bit like aliens, right?
20:09
Speaker 5: the movie Aliens, in that, you know, bad shit is
20:12
Speaker 5: going on. You know, we know, you know, there's the
20:16
Speaker 5: kind of like, there's like the Paul Reiser McConnell types
20:19
Speaker 5: playing all the angles. We know who the aliens are,
20:21
Speaker 5: but then Twitter is like the part where Bill Paxton
20:24
Speaker 5: is like, game over, man, game over. Nothing matters. It
20:27
Speaker 5: doesn't matter at all. And it's just, But there's the moment, right, where, okay, everyone,
20:35
Speaker 5: you know, the guy from The Abyss and Terminator turns
20:38
Speaker 5: to Bill Paxton and says, shut up. Things can matter.
20:42
Speaker 5: This isn't a horror movie. This is an action movie.
20:45
Speaker 5: We can actually win. And to me, like, the Game
20:48
Speaker 5: Over Man people, the Nothing Matters Man people, like, I
20:53
Speaker 5: find it very frustrating because I obviously understand why it
20:56
Speaker 5: would be comforting and kind of easier to think nothing matters.
21:00
Speaker 5: But actually... Things do matter. That's what makes this period
21:04
Speaker 5: so awful. We actually can make a difference. We actually
21:06
Speaker 5: do have agency and we can decide to make these
21:08
Speaker 5: things matter. That's what Dan said in his column, which
21:10
Speaker 5: I think is exactly right, that these things can leave
21:12
Speaker 5: a mark on Trump. He's already underperforming in terms of
21:16
Speaker 5: polls of active duty military than he was in 2016.
21:21
Speaker 5: And in the same way, Trump is trying to go
21:22
Speaker 5: through our key demographics and pick off just enough to
21:25
Speaker 5: help him at the margins. That's something we can do too.
21:27
Speaker 1: And this can matter.
21:28
Speaker 5: I do not think Trump is going to be helped
21:31
Speaker 5: in his problem of underperforming amongst active duty members of
21:33
Speaker 5: the military, according to the polls, been a week of
21:36
Speaker 5: stories of him calling people who died for this country
21:38
Speaker 5: suckers and losers. I don't think that was good for him.
21:41
Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
21:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, this shit drives me crazy. I
21:44
Speaker 4: just think like everyone needs to declare a moratorium on
21:46
Speaker 4: declaring something won't or will matter just because one, we
21:50
Speaker 4: cannot predict the future. That seems obvious, but you have
21:52
Speaker 4: to repeat it. Second, like whether or not it matters
21:55
Speaker 4: is up to the campaigns and it's up to the covered.
21:58
Speaker 4: So when you see a eh, this won't matter. It
22:01
Speaker 4: can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And finally, like we're not
22:05
Speaker 4: talking about the bottom dropping out, right? No one is
22:08
Speaker 4: expecting his approval to dip to 5%. Like Trump won
22:12
Speaker 4: Michigan and Wisconsin by 33,000 votes. So a small change
22:17
Speaker 4: in that support can make a huge difference. It could
22:20
Speaker 4: be the difference between winning and losing. And so Again,
22:23
Speaker 4: like what drove me crazy about this particular controversy is
22:26
Speaker 4: there was an analogous situation in 2016 in that fight
22:29
Speaker 4: with the Khan family, the parents of the army captain
22:31
Speaker 4: who was killed in Iraq. That exchange was one of
22:34
Speaker 4: the moments that really, really hurt Trump politically. 59% of
22:39
Speaker 4: Republicans disapproved of how he handled that incident. And it
22:43
Speaker 4: underscored broader concerns about his temperament. It made him look divisive.
22:47
Speaker 4: It's like all the things you don't like about him.
22:49
Speaker 4: So I'm not saying the Atlantic piece sucks. is going
22:51
Speaker 4: to engender that response. But I do think it's foolish
22:55
Speaker 4: to assert it won't. And if I'm Biden, or if
22:56
Speaker 4: I'm a super PAC, I take the Fox News version
22:59
Speaker 4: of the Atlantic piece or what they were able to
23:01
Speaker 4: confirm of it, and I would boost it to every
23:04
Speaker 4: likely voter on Facebook that's a veteran, that's part of
23:07
Speaker 4: a military family, that's active duty. That targeting is not hard.
23:12
Speaker 4: And I think groups are doing that as we speak.
23:14
Speaker 4: Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But you don't need
23:16
Speaker 4: to see an immediate increase drop in his poll numbers
23:19
Speaker 4: to decide something matters, it can be a long process
23:22
Speaker 4: of telling a story about someone's fitness and temperament for office.
23:26
Speaker 4: And I think everyone needs to be a little more
23:28
Speaker 4: patient when things like this arrive before we decide whether
23:31
Speaker 4: it worked or not.
23:33
Speaker 5: Tommy, it's like the real sentence should be, if I
23:37
Speaker 5: went on the street and shot someone on Fifth Avenue,
23:39
Speaker 5: it would hurt me a little bit with some swing voters.
23:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, hurt me in the margins.
23:43
Speaker 5: That's why I won't do it.
23:44
Speaker 4: It'll hurt me in the margins.
23:45
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a close race. There could be 150
23:49
Speaker 1: million people voting. We have no idea what works on
23:54
Speaker 1: all of those people because different things work on different people.
23:57
Speaker 1: It's an incredibly diverse country and diverse electorate. And the
24:01
Speaker 1: mistake that we make is substituting what we think should
24:05
Speaker 1: work or what might work on us or it might
24:07
Speaker 1: work on people we know with what might work on
24:10
Speaker 1: other people, right? Like I went into some of those
24:12
Speaker 1: focus groups for the wilderness thinking, you know, because of...
24:16
Speaker 1: twitter conversations and things i've read what really works is
24:19
Speaker 1: issues and it's not about character attacks on trump right
24:21
Speaker 1: that was my prior because that's what the research showed
24:23
Speaker 1: and then i sat down with a bunch of people
24:25
Speaker 1: in arizona who had voted for mitt romney and then
24:27
Speaker 1: voted for hillary clinton 2016 former republicans and they're like
24:31
Speaker 1: i don't really care about issues i just think trump's
24:32
Speaker 1: a horrible person that's why i'm voting against him right
24:34
Speaker 1: and i'm like that i did not think that going
24:37
Speaker 1: in but like you talk to people and you you're
24:40
Speaker 1: surprised so when you're a campaign you're You play on
24:42
Speaker 1: as many different fronts as possible. Also, there's 56 days
24:45
Speaker 1: to the election. We've now said it a couple of times.
24:47
Speaker 1: Trump has spent five days on this. Five days defending
24:50
Speaker 1: himself from this that he has lost in trying to
24:53
Speaker 1: define Joe Biden, which he needs to do because he's behind.
24:57
Speaker 1: Any day we take off the clock now where Trump
25:00
Speaker 1: is defending himself is another day closer to him losing
25:03
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden winning, you know, at the very least.
25:05
Speaker 1: Just allow yourself to be surprised.
25:07
Speaker 4: Like everyone was just asserting that, protests or violence in
25:11
Speaker 4: Kenosha was going to hurt Joe Biden. And all the
25:14
Speaker 4: polling we've seen since suggests that people view Trump as
25:17
Speaker 4: racially divisive. They think he is likely to inflame those
25:20
Speaker 4: tensions rather than help them. So actually, maybe all of
25:23
Speaker 4: their messaging about law and order is cutting against Trump.
25:26
Speaker 4: So like people are complicated.
25:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know. And like, do I think that
25:32
Speaker 1: the Biden campaign should like exclusively run ads on Trump's
25:35
Speaker 1: disparaging comments? No, of course not. Like, Get the policy
25:39
Speaker 1: ads out there. Get those health care ads out there.
25:40
Speaker 6: Do it all.
25:41
Speaker 1: Just target. But when an opportunity comes up like this,
25:45
Speaker 1: you jump on it. You don't say like, oh, no,
25:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about jobs instead. Speaking of which,
25:49
Speaker 1: let's talk about the economy. We had Friday's jobs report
25:52
Speaker 1: show the unemployment rate falling to 8.4%. But the rest
25:56
Speaker 1: of the news wasn't so great. Job growth is slowing.
25:59
Speaker 1: Job loss is becoming more permanent as opposed to a
26:02
Speaker 1: pandemic-related furlough. And the unemployment rate among black, Latino, and
26:06
Speaker 1: Asian Americans is well over 10%, with black unemployment hitting 13%. Altogether,
26:11
Speaker 1: less than half of the 22 million jobs lost in
26:14
Speaker 1: the pandemic have been recovered. And this report covers the
26:16
Speaker 1: period before Trump and the Republicans blocked a third round
26:19
Speaker 1: of COVID relief spending that had been keeping the economy
26:23
Speaker 1: afloat in many ways. So Trump, who most polls show
26:26
Speaker 1: leading or at least tied with Joe Biden on the
26:28
Speaker 1: question of who can better handle the economy, reacted to
26:31
Speaker 1: the news by saying, quote, great jobs numbers. Wow. Unemployment
26:34
Speaker 1: rate much better than expected. Broke the 10 percent level
26:36
Speaker 1: faster and deeper than thought possible. Love it. What's the
26:41
Speaker 1: what's the argument about the economy that Trump's going to
26:43
Speaker 1: make in the homestretch?
26:46
Speaker 5: It's first of all, just it always is stunning to
26:48
Speaker 5: me because, you know, you remember like How much speech
26:52
Speaker 5: writing and thought went into making sure that whenever you
26:55
Speaker 5: talk about improvements in the economy, you take a moment
26:57
Speaker 5: to recognize how hard it is, how much people are suffering,
27:00
Speaker 5: how much pain there is out there so that you
27:02
Speaker 5: understand what people are going through and how that that's
27:04
Speaker 5: completely out the window. I mean, look, Trump is going
27:07
Speaker 5: to point to the stock market. He's going to say
27:09
Speaker 5: that everything is coming back, that it was a pandemic
27:12
Speaker 5: and it wasn't him. It wasn't his fault. It was China.
27:15
Speaker 5: And if you give the reins to Joe Biden, socialism
27:17
Speaker 5: will come, the debt will go up and all the
27:19
Speaker 5: problems you're seeing were actually kind of examples of the
27:22
Speaker 5: things he will do 10 times more. And he is
27:26
Speaker 5: banking on the fact that while people say he mismanaged
27:30
Speaker 5: the pandemic, he still has this residual approval.
27:33
Speaker 1: On the economy.
27:34
Speaker 5: And while they blame him for doing a terrible job
27:36
Speaker 5: on the pandemic, it does not seem that enough people
27:39
Speaker 5: have taken that to imply that his economic leadership is suspect.
27:43
Speaker 5: There is that kind of residue of his businessman acumen
27:47
Speaker 5: bullshit that that continues to protect him to this day.
27:50
Speaker 5: And they're going to try to scare people about a
27:52
Speaker 5: Joe Biden presidency. I mean, they had, you know, Mnookin
27:54
Speaker 5: going out there saying that if, you know, we were
27:58
Speaker 5: actually doing a great job on the deficit and the
28:00
Speaker 5: debt until the pandemic. That's a lie. That's, of course,
28:03
Speaker 5: a lie because there was a trillion dollar corporate tax cut.
28:07
Speaker 5: And they claim that with Joe Biden becomes president, they
28:09
Speaker 5: will explode the deficit and ruin the economy.
28:12
Speaker 1: That's what they're going to say. Tommy, what do you think,
28:15
Speaker 1: what argument should Joe Biden make about the economy? I,
28:18
Speaker 1: you know, Lovett mentioned this earlier in that Priorities USA
28:20
Speaker 1: survey of like the small subset of voters were considering Trump,
28:25
Speaker 1: that 5% Trump curious, they called them, which, okay.
28:29
Speaker 4: The strongest attack on his economic record was that Donald
28:33
Speaker 4: Trump plans to cut Social Security and cut Medicare to
28:37
Speaker 4: pay for taxes for the rich, and that he's gutting
28:40
Speaker 4: the healthcare system in the middle of a pandemic. Those
28:43
Speaker 4: are the two contrasts that I would focus on because
28:46
Speaker 4: they jumped out of this survey about these potential swing voters.
28:50
Speaker 4: They are core arguments we've seen do well in almost
28:54
Speaker 4: every single survey we've done in states and nationally with
28:57
Speaker 4: change research here on our Polar Coaster series at Crooked Media.
29:01
Speaker 4: So those would be the contrasts. And then you just
29:04
Speaker 4: have to figure out what pieces of his jobs agenda,
29:08
Speaker 4: he can lay out in the simplest, clearest possible way.
29:11
Speaker 4: And I do think that starting that argument about what
29:14
Speaker 4: Joe Biden would do in his administration with getting the
29:18
Speaker 4: coronavirus under control, getting that response right as the key
29:22
Speaker 4: to fixing the rest of the economy is smart. So
29:24
Speaker 4: those are the things that I would focus on in
29:26
Speaker 4: the homestretch. Very obvious stuff. I'm sure in three weeks,
29:30
Speaker 4: we'll be talking about something completely insane and different that happened, but.
29:34
Speaker 1: That's where I would try to go. Yeah, and I
29:36
Speaker 1: would I would I agree with all that. And I
29:37
Speaker 1: would also, you know, to what Lovett said, if I
29:41
Speaker 1: were Joe Biden, I would be, you know, I would
29:43
Speaker 1: say that Donald Trump judges the health of the economy
29:46
Speaker 1: based on the stock market. He's celebrating eight percent unemployment
29:50
Speaker 1: is the best we can do. He doesn't want to
29:52
Speaker 1: do anything to help people who aren't employed, doesn't want
29:54
Speaker 1: to help people who are struggling to pay the bills.
29:56
Speaker 1: He just wants more tax cuts. and fewer rules for
29:59
Speaker 1: companies and his rich friends. He might be able to
30:03
Speaker 1: manage the economy into recovery, but who's going to benefit?
30:07
Speaker 1: Look around the country right now. Who's benefiting as we
30:11
Speaker 1: slowly come out of the recession? A lot of people
30:13
Speaker 1: who were wealthy and well off before the pandemic are
30:15
Speaker 1: doing just great. A whole bunch of people that were
30:17
Speaker 1: struggling beforehand are doing even worse. If I was the
30:20
Speaker 1: Biden campaign, and I'm sure they're doing this in debate prep,
30:24
Speaker 1: that first debate, September 29th, If Joe Biden can, you know,
30:29
Speaker 1: eat into Donald Trump's lead on the economy, at least
30:32
Speaker 1: even sort of break even with him on that and
30:35
Speaker 1: pursue an argument that shows Donald Trump as favoring the
30:39
Speaker 1: wealthy and, you know, his rich friends and his cabinet
30:42
Speaker 1: buddies and all everyone else over most working people in
30:45
Speaker 1: this country, then I think that's the ballgame. Donald Trump
30:48
Speaker 1: can't come back. That's his only advantage.
30:50
Speaker 5: I would also say, too, that what Biden has been
30:51
Speaker 5: doing again and again is saying, you know, you cannot
30:54
Speaker 5: have a recovery. until you address the pandemic and make
30:56
Speaker 5: sure you're connecting those things. Because one thing that's also
30:59
Speaker 5: going on is we're about to lose over, I think, 200,000
31:02
Speaker 5: census jobs, right? That are part of these numbers. Fauci,
31:06
Speaker 5: others are all extremely worried about resurgence of the pandemic.
31:10
Speaker 5: We don't know what these numbers are going to look
31:11
Speaker 5: like absent stimulus. I mean, like, you know, forget recovery.
31:15
Speaker 5: Like we could have another, we're in the middle of it, right?
31:17
Speaker 4: Like, yeah.
31:18
Speaker 5: So some of the jobs may have come back. Some
31:20
Speaker 5: people have maybe stopped looking, whatever the Whatever the machinations
31:23
Speaker 5: led to lowering of the unemployment rate, we're still in massive,
31:27
Speaker 5: massive unemployment territory. And there's no signs that this is
31:31
Speaker 5: going to get better for a while.
31:33
Speaker 1: And he's got no plan. He's got nothing. He is unveiled. Nope.
31:38
Speaker 1: Trump has no plan to deal with this in the
31:40
Speaker 1: second term. It's like his secret plan to fix the economy.
31:43
Speaker 6: Yeah.
31:44
Speaker 4: I mean, also, just speaking of that debate and the
31:48
Speaker 4: nothing matters crowd, I mean, Joe Biden's son both served
31:51
Speaker 4: in Iraq. and tragically died from cancer. You could see
31:55
Speaker 4: a moment where Biden turns to Trump and says, my
31:58
Speaker 4: son was not a loser. His service was not in vain.
32:01
Speaker 4: And the press corps is always looking for big emotional
32:03
Speaker 4: moments that spin out of debates. And suddenly you go
32:06
Speaker 4: from maybe very few people know about that story we
32:08
Speaker 4: were talking about earlier in The Atlantic to literally every
32:10
Speaker 4: single person in the country watching this exchange who is
32:13
Speaker 4: planning to vote. And that's a big deal. And it's
32:15
Speaker 4: another reason why it's so dumb to predict.
32:19
Speaker 6: Yeah.
32:19
Speaker 1: And also, you know, last thing on the economy, and
32:21
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity for both Democrats and the Biden campaign,
32:24
Speaker 1: I think, you know, Senate Republicans today introduced a COVID
32:27
Speaker 1: relief bill that basically cuts unemployment benefits by $ 300 per week,
32:32
Speaker 1: offers some funding to the Paycheck Protection Program, but not much.
32:35
Speaker 1: And then the other big thing that they care about
32:38
Speaker 1: prevents workers from suing their employers if they get COVID
32:40
Speaker 1: on the job. So it's a bill that won't pass
32:42
Speaker 1: the House. It may not even get 51 votes in
32:45
Speaker 1: the Senate. But to me, like, so why did McConnell
32:48
Speaker 1: introduce it? Because... He is smart enough to be worried
32:51
Speaker 1: that a bunch of people have lost their unemployment benefits.
32:57
Speaker 1: All of this money that was being pumped into the
32:59
Speaker 1: economy by the government for the last several months that's
33:01
Speaker 1: kept the economy afloat is gone now. And McConnell knows that.
33:05
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the party in charge, his party in
33:08
Speaker 1: the Senate, are going to get blamed for that if
33:10
Speaker 1: they're caught not trying to do anything. So he tries
33:12
Speaker 1: to do this like small, tiny COVID relief bill because
33:15
Speaker 1: they've been blocking the Democratic bill. And to me, that's
33:18
Speaker 1: a huge opportunity for Democrats in the Biden campaign to
33:21
Speaker 1: just fucking hammer that for the next couple of weeks.
33:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a this is a jobs program for
33:26
Speaker 5: Martha McSally, Susan Collins, Tom Tillis.
33:29
Speaker 1: Cory Gardner.
33:30
Speaker 4: That's what this is.
33:30
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
33:31
Speaker 5: Purely, we passed a bill. That's what they want to say.
33:34
Speaker 5: They want to be going around saying the Senate passed
33:36
Speaker 5: a bill, but you know, Nancy Pelosi, it's entirely political,
33:39
Speaker 5: entirely fake.
33:41
Speaker 1: And Trump knows it too, because Trump's out there talking
33:43
Speaker 1: about how he wants to help. I want to spend
33:44
Speaker 1: some money and give people direct checks and all the bullshit,
33:47
Speaker 1: all the stuff that he does on healthcare when he
33:49
Speaker 1: pretends that he's covering preexisting condition and he wants to
33:52
Speaker 1: give people great healthcare. He's doing now on COVID relief.
33:55
Speaker 1: because he knows he's supposed to say that because it
33:57
Speaker 1: could be a political weakness. But it's only going to
33:59
Speaker 1: be a political weakness if we make it one. And
34:00
Speaker 1: so I do think a huge part of the messaging
34:02
Speaker 1: from Biden and the Democrats need to be around this.
34:04
Speaker 5: Yeah.
34:04
Speaker 4: I mean, look, on that Labor Day, during that Labor
34:06
Speaker 4: Day press conference, in between his attacks on, it went,
34:09
Speaker 4: attack McCain, talk about random monuments. Then he started saying,
34:14
Speaker 4: I know my customers, when he was talking about Democrats
34:17
Speaker 4: in Congress and blaming them for wanting to spend a
34:20
Speaker 4: trillion dollars on relief and just, you know, not mustering
34:24
Speaker 4: any semblance of empathy for all the people who are
34:28
Speaker 4: desperate and out.
34:29
Speaker 1: Of work right now.
34:30
Speaker 4: And then he moved on to locking up political opponents.
34:34
Speaker 5: What about Pelosi? You forgot about Pelosi's trip to the salon.
34:37
Speaker 1: Did that come up?
34:38
Speaker 5: Nancy Pelosi got a haircut.
34:39
Speaker 1: I sketched out.
34:40
Speaker 4: All the things that went on in that press conference.
34:43
Speaker 4: Then he yelled about vote by mail. Then he supported
34:45
Speaker 4: an investigation into DeJoy's fundraising. Then there was the whole
34:48
Speaker 4: vaccine float. So it was a real fun one. Look,
34:53
Speaker 4: he's laser focused.
34:54
Speaker 1: He's laser focused on the economy and what matters to
34:57
Speaker 1: the American people every single day. Can't lose to this guy.
35:01
Speaker 1: We can't lose to this guy.
35:05
Speaker 5: I don't like the stakes being raised for DeJoy stealing
35:07
Speaker 5: the election. I don't like that. I don't like that now.
35:10
Speaker 5: Now DeJoy needs the pardon too. I don't like it.
35:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
35:13
Speaker 4: Although I got to say, DeJoy is going to get
35:16
Speaker 4: a call from someone in law enforcement. You can't have
35:20
Speaker 4: your former head of HR detail on the record in
35:23
Speaker 4: the Washington Post the most clear-cut campaign finance violation possible.
35:28
Speaker 4: The only one that people actually go to jail for
35:31
Speaker 4: is these straw donations where you have your employees or
35:33
Speaker 4: your friends make donations to a candidate and you reimburse them.
35:37
Speaker 4: This HR director is on the record admitting to it,
35:40
Speaker 4: and then it's all backed by data. Like, that guy
35:41
Speaker 4: is in some big trouble.
35:42
Speaker 5: It's extremely provable.
35:43
Speaker 1: Extremely provable.
35:45
Speaker 3: Yes.
35:45
Speaker 1: The reason that he's so screwed, too, is this is
35:47
Speaker 1: not some MAGA guy from the get go. This is
35:50
Speaker 1: just your typical rich Republican donor asshole. Trump loves to
35:55
Speaker 1: cut those people loose.
35:56
Speaker 5: So this is called Sondlanding.
35:57
Speaker 1: This is called Sondlanding.
35:59
Speaker 5: You're a you're an old, bald, rich white asshole who
36:03
Speaker 5: just wants the word ambassador on wedding invitations. And the
36:05
Speaker 5: next thing you know, you're testifying before Adam Schiff.
36:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:08
Speaker 4: And when Trump was asked about whether it's for an investigation,
36:11
Speaker 4: he was like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And if he did,
36:12
Speaker 4: they were like, what if he did something wrong? He's like, yeah, yeah,
36:14
Speaker 4: that'd be a problem. There was no effort to defend him.
36:17
Speaker 4: He's not helping him.
36:19
Speaker 2: All right.
36:19
Speaker 1: When we come back, I will talk to Lauren Groargo,
36:23
Speaker 1: the CEO of Fair Fight Action, about winning Georgia. On
36:35
Speaker 1: the pod today, Lauren Groargo was Stacey Abrams' campaign manager.
36:38
Speaker 1: She is currently the CEO of Fair Fight Action. Lauren,
36:42
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
36:43
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me, John.
36:46
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Georgia, a state that no Democrat has
36:49
Speaker 1: carried in a presidential since 1992. Hillary Clinton got 45.3%
36:51
Speaker 1: of the vote in 2016. Stacey Abrams, your boss, got 48.8%
36:54
Speaker 1: of the vote in 2018. 538 average has Biden sitting
36:57
Speaker 1: at 45.6% right now, just about a point and a
36:58
Speaker 1: half behind Trump. How does Joe Biden get to 50
37:00
Speaker 1: in Georgia?
37:00
Speaker 5: Well....
37:12
Speaker 6: Right now, all polling shows Georgia's right in the margin
37:15
Speaker 6: of error. There was just polling that we released last
37:18
Speaker 6: week that had Biden up one, Morning Consult had him up,
37:21
Speaker 6: I think, two. And so let's just set polls aside
37:24
Speaker 6: because the race is tied. I mean, it's pretty clear
37:27
Speaker 6: if you look at all the credible polling. So what's
37:30
Speaker 6: unique about Georgia in contrast to a lot of other
37:33
Speaker 6: battleground states is first, we are the most African-American electorate
37:38
Speaker 6: in the country. You come into this election, Joe Biden
37:41
Speaker 6: is going to at least probably have 33 percent of
37:43
Speaker 6: the vote will be black Georgians. And what the second
37:48
Speaker 6: piece overall is that we have one of the most
37:50
Speaker 6: diverse electorates in the country with rapidly growing Asian-American populations,
37:55
Speaker 6: Latinx populations. And whites tend to be getting younger and
37:59
Speaker 6: more progressive in the state just in terms of the
38:01
Speaker 6: overall demography. And so today in Georgia, there's already a
38:04
Speaker 6: progressive majority in the state. The question is, can we
38:07
Speaker 6: mobilize that majority to turn out and have their votes counted?
38:11
Speaker 6: And what this looks like brass tacks, as you pointed out,
38:15
Speaker 6: Stacey lost the state by just under 55,000 votes. Very,
38:18
Speaker 6: very narrow loss. In Georgia today, there are about 750,000
38:25
Speaker 6: newly registered folks that weren't even on the rolls in 2018. Half,
38:28
Speaker 6: about 49% of those new voters are voters of color.
38:33
Speaker 6: So the new voters are disproportionately voters of color. They're
38:37
Speaker 6: disproportionately young. They're disproportionately progressive. And they're not factored in
38:42
Speaker 6: to the 538 model, right? The 538 model and others
38:45
Speaker 6: are looking at likely voters. So we have a huge
38:47
Speaker 6: infusion into the electorate that skews towards our side. And secondly,
38:50
Speaker 6: when you add those new voters in, looking at voters
38:54
Speaker 6: that typically only vote in presidentials or maybe unreliable presidential voters,
38:58
Speaker 6: the Biden campaign and our Senate campaigns, because we have
39:02
Speaker 6: two of them, have almost 2 million Democratic-leaning new or
39:07
Speaker 6: infrequent voters to turn out to close that vote gap.
39:11
Speaker 6: So it's a big number. We have a big opportunity.
39:14
Speaker 1: So you're a campaign manager. You've had to deal with
39:16
Speaker 1: tough budget decisions. If you're on the Biden campaign, you're
39:19
Speaker 1: seeing that maybe you're in a better position in states
39:22
Speaker 1: like Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida. Maybe they're more likely to be
39:26
Speaker 1: tipping point. Pennsylvania, states like that. What's your argument to
39:29
Speaker 1: the campaign? that they should spend more money competing in
39:33
Speaker 1: Georgia to sort of get that 270th vote?
39:37
Speaker 6: So I think we need to look at it in
39:39
Speaker 6: two ways. One, we need to not take any state
39:42
Speaker 6: for granted. I look at a state like Nevada. Nevada
39:46
Speaker 6: had more rejected absentee ballots by mail in their June
39:50
Speaker 6: primary than Hillary Clinton's margin of victory. So election administration issues,
39:57
Speaker 6: voter suppression issues, the challenges of COVID mean that the
40:01
Speaker 6: Biden campaign in all efforts need to take a very
40:05
Speaker 6: big look at their map. We want to make sure
40:08
Speaker 6: that we're not taking states like Nevada and Minnesota for granted.
40:11
Speaker 6: At the same time, we need to make sure that
40:14
Speaker 6: we're playing big and giving multiple paths to the White House,
40:17
Speaker 6: as well as giving Biden the Senate majority he's going
40:19
Speaker 6: to need to govern and sort of turn the ship around.
40:22
Speaker 6: And so Georgia, we have two things. We have an
40:25
Speaker 6: extremely competitive state, as competitive as the northern battlegrounds, just
40:30
Speaker 6: by the numbers. Everything's sort of in the margin, essentially.
40:34
Speaker 6: And secondly, we have two U.S. Senate seats here, which
40:37
Speaker 6: is incredibly unusual. And so that's where, you know, what
40:40
Speaker 6: I advocate for with everybody is we need to play
40:43
Speaker 6: in Georgia and you get to build on top of
40:46
Speaker 6: the infrastructure that the Abrams campaign put together. Look, like
40:49
Speaker 6: I had a lot of conversations with the Clinton campaign
40:51
Speaker 6: and others in 2016 about contesting in Georgia. The big
40:55
Speaker 6: difference now is we and our allies have laid a
40:58
Speaker 6: ton of volunteer data and other infrastructure in the state.
41:02
Speaker 6: In fact, the Abrams campaign all told, we spent $ 42
41:05
Speaker 6: million dollars building, volunteers, staff, data, know-how. And so you're
41:10
Speaker 6: no longer coming into Georgia without having all of that
41:14
Speaker 6: institutional and infrastructure overall. And so we're really building that.
41:18
Speaker 6: And the argument here is now just to leverage that investment.
41:21
Speaker 6: And I'm thrilled to see the Biden campaign has invested
41:24
Speaker 6: in a full suite of staff on the ground. And
41:27
Speaker 6: so now really the question is going to be, are
41:28
Speaker 6: we going to really compete in all the ways to
41:31
Speaker 6: turn out voters and the paid media operation? And I'm optimistic.
41:35
Speaker 6: Because when you look at states that are going to
41:37
Speaker 6: be incredibly difficult, sort of our traditional battleground states in
41:42
Speaker 6: the north, we need to make sure, as Stacey likes
41:44
Speaker 6: to say, she likes to say, we need belts, we
41:46
Speaker 6: need suspenders, we need multiple pathways here. And with a
41:50
Speaker 6: financial environment that the Biden campaign and a lot of
41:54
Speaker 6: liberal groups are having really tremendous fundraising, even in this downturn,
41:58
Speaker 6: that's financially giving people options to run multiple strategies at
42:03
Speaker 6: the same time.
42:05
Speaker 1: So in your 2018 race, you guys won over a
42:08
Speaker 1: lot of people who don't always vote by, you know,
42:11
Speaker 1: Stacey always talks about this, showing up in their communities,
42:13
Speaker 1: meeting people face to face, organizing on the ground. The
42:16
Speaker 1: Trump campaign doesn't really care about the pandemic, so they're
42:19
Speaker 1: still knocking on doors. Democrats are basically running a virtual campaign.
42:23
Speaker 1: Do you see that as an additional challenge to overcome,
42:25
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to reaching low propensity voters?
42:30
Speaker 6: It's such a different landscape this year in a state
42:33
Speaker 6: like Georgia, where we've had the failed Trump-Kemp response. And
42:37
Speaker 6: we've had two hospitals close during the pandemic, John. I mean,
42:41
Speaker 6: this is very clear to Georgia voters, the failure of leadership.
42:46
Speaker 6: We still don't have a mask mandate in the state
42:48
Speaker 6: of Georgia. Our neighbor in Alabama, the Alabama governor put
42:52
Speaker 6: a mask mandate in place. But in Georgia, you know,
42:54
Speaker 6: it's really all the burden that's fallen to local, mainly
42:56
Speaker 6: Democratic elected officials to clean up this mess. But when
43:00
Speaker 6: you look at the murders that of Ahmaud Arbery and
43:03
Speaker 6: Rayshard Brooks and others in the state of Georgia that's
43:06
Speaker 6: so connected to this national conversation about racial justice. Folks
43:11
Speaker 6: are motivated to vote in Georgia. Folks understand what is
43:15
Speaker 6: at stake and that they're demanding change. And so I
43:19
Speaker 6: think some of what might be seen as impediments in
43:22
Speaker 6: terms of the lack of ability to do the in-person work,
43:25
Speaker 6: the flip side of it is it couldn't be more
43:27
Speaker 6: clear to Georgians who is responsible for this outrageous proliferation
43:32
Speaker 6: of the virus, as well as the lack of ability
43:36
Speaker 6: for folks to have their voices heard. And so the
43:38
Speaker 6: time has come. We're going to do a couple things
43:40
Speaker 6: this year in Georgia, John. We picked up 14 new
43:43
Speaker 6: state ledge seats in 2018 when Stacey was on the
43:45
Speaker 6: top of the ticket. We have an opportunity to flip
43:47
Speaker 6: the Georgia State House. And maybe your listeners don't care
43:50
Speaker 6: about that in Georgia, but here's what they do care about.
43:53
Speaker 6: They care about reapportionment. They care about who's going to
43:56
Speaker 6: get how many congressional seats in the next... coming out
44:00
Speaker 6: of the census and redistricting. Georgia is a growing state.
44:03
Speaker 6: We should have more Democratic congressional districts. The state should
44:06
Speaker 6: be more 50-50 than it is. And so we need
44:09
Speaker 6: to make sure there's that balance in the legislature. We
44:12
Speaker 6: need to have a shot to win at least one
44:13
Speaker 6: of these Senate races. We have two tremendous candidates in
44:16
Speaker 6: Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. And we have the opportunity
44:21
Speaker 6: to bring it home for the presidential election. and all
44:24
Speaker 6: things are pushing together, right? Not many states do have
44:27
Speaker 6: not one, but two really compelling Senate races that are
44:30
Speaker 6: raising and spending real money, and they're really motivating voters.
44:34
Speaker 6: So that also helps push up and support the top
44:36
Speaker 6: of the ticket.
44:37
Speaker 1: And we have a bunch of listeners in Georgia who
44:39
Speaker 1: should care about a Democratic state legislature in Georgia.
44:42
Speaker 6: 100%. We need to get Medicaid expansion, right? We need
44:47
Speaker 6: to stop these rural hospital closures and really shore up
44:50
Speaker 6: our entire healthcare system here. This is just, You know,
44:54
Speaker 6: Stacey ran on Medicaid expansion and a whole set of
44:57
Speaker 6: these economic issues and justice issues. And we're seeing that
45:01
Speaker 6: failure of our government here, aided and abetted and led
45:04
Speaker 6: by the Trump administration and his two patsies in the
45:07
Speaker 6: Senate down here. And so it's time. It's time to
45:10
Speaker 6: make a big change. And Georgians are there and the
45:13
Speaker 6: dots are so clearly connected. You see it in the
45:14
Speaker 6: polling and you see it in talking to people. You
45:18
Speaker 6: see it in the sort of incredible engagement the campaigns
45:22
Speaker 6: are receiving. So all signs indicate that Democrats are very enthusiastic.
45:26
Speaker 6: They're very motivated. They're motivated to fight voter suppression. This
45:29
Speaker 6: is not a new fight. Welcome to the fight, many
45:31
Speaker 6: states around the country. This is a fight we have
45:33
Speaker 6: been up against here. Voters are very clear. They're educated.
45:37
Speaker 6: We had more Democrats turn out in our June primary
45:40
Speaker 6: than Republicans. Not just a small amount, about a quarter million.
45:44
Speaker 5: That is huge.
45:46
Speaker 6: That shows Democratic enthusiasm. And even with the lines and
45:50
Speaker 6: challenges with voting, Democrats outperformed Republicans. Democrats are motivated. And
45:54
Speaker 6: it's not just me and others saying nice words. You
45:57
Speaker 6: can really see it in the data. And so we're
45:59
Speaker 6: hopeful that we'll see the level of investment we really
46:02
Speaker 6: need this fall to bring it home.
46:05
Speaker 1: In terms of message and policy, is there anything you
46:07
Speaker 1: would like to hear more about from Biden and these
46:11
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates that you think would resonate with voters in Georgia?
46:14
Speaker 1: You've talked a lot already about health care. You've talked
46:16
Speaker 1: about racial justice. Is there anything that they're not saying
46:19
Speaker 1: or should be saying more of?
46:22
Speaker 6: Look, I think the overall piece in Georgia, which is
46:26
Speaker 6: a state that hasn't been contested at the federal level
46:29
Speaker 6: as much as other states, voters want to know. what
46:33
Speaker 6: the plan is to make change and have change be felt.
46:37
Speaker 6: Georgia is not a monolithic state. It's a big state,
46:40
Speaker 6: just like a lot of other battleground states. And so
46:42
Speaker 6: there's no one type of Georgia voter. There's no one
46:45
Speaker 6: type of Georgia African-American voter. African-American Georgians are incredibly diverse.
46:49
Speaker 6: Our Latino community is very diverse. And so that's why
46:52
Speaker 6: I'm really energized by the Warnock and Ossoff campaigns. They're
46:55
Speaker 6: really building campaigns that can speak to all Georgians. And
46:59
Speaker 6: I think the Biden-Harris messaging is good. And I do
47:03
Speaker 6: think it resonates and connects. I think the biggest challenge
47:05
Speaker 6: that we're going to have is making sure voters hear
47:07
Speaker 6: it down here, right? That's where we need the investment.
47:10
Speaker 6: And I'm thrilled. We know that the Biden team has
47:12
Speaker 6: already reserved several million in media for the fall down here.
47:15
Speaker 6: We'll see how that expands combined with what the Ossoff
47:19
Speaker 6: and Warnock campaigns are doing. So, you know, we just
47:22
Speaker 6: need the level of investment that we've had that we
47:25
Speaker 6: haven't had in the past and more in line with
47:27
Speaker 6: what we saw with the Abrams team. And one of
47:29
Speaker 6: the reasons we know we're competitive, John, is because the
47:31
Speaker 6: Trump team is spending. They're spending like crazy. The Republican
47:34
Speaker 6: Senate efforts are spending like crazy. They know the state
47:37
Speaker 6: is very competitive. And so we just have to bring
47:39
Speaker 6: everything we possibly can to this fight. And I do
47:42
Speaker 6: think that we'll be able to get Biden over the
47:44
Speaker 6: finish line here. And I do think we're going to
47:46
Speaker 6: have a surprise in our Senate. I think we're going
47:48
Speaker 6: to get at least one of these two Senate races
47:49
Speaker 6: over the finish line, hopefully both. And I think it's
47:53
Speaker 6: going to really change the narrative about what's possible in
47:55
Speaker 6: the sort of deep traditional South in terms of the presidential.
47:59
Speaker 6: But we're going to continue to push folks to make
48:02
Speaker 6: the biggest investments they possibly can down here.
48:03
Speaker 1: I like to hear that. Of all the battles that
48:06
Speaker 1: Fair Fight is involved in right now, what's making you
48:09
Speaker 1: the most anxious as we get closer to the election
48:12
Speaker 1: and people start voting?
48:14
Speaker 6: I think the thing folks need to remember is that
48:17
Speaker 6: Trump is a coward. He's a loser. He's corrupt. And
48:21
Speaker 6: he and his ilk and his campaign and his allies
48:24
Speaker 6: in the states have built this architecture to erect barriers
48:28
Speaker 6: around the vote every which way because they can't win
48:31
Speaker 6: a fair fight. And so voters just have to be informed, right?
48:35
Speaker 6: They need to go to sites like vote.org. Check your registration.
48:38
Speaker 6: It's still not too late to re-register or update your
48:41
Speaker 6: address in pretty much any state, right? Voters just need
48:44
Speaker 6: to be informed and make sure that they make a
48:47
Speaker 6: plan now. Don't wait until October to decide how you're
48:50
Speaker 6: going to vote. Here in September, now that Labor Day
48:53
Speaker 6: is behind us, request your vote-by-mail ballot now. You can
48:57
Speaker 6: also do that at vote.org. Request that ballot now, and
49:00
Speaker 6: when you get it, return it right away. Or educate
49:02
Speaker 6: yourself on your state's early voting. Most battleground states, most
49:05
Speaker 6: states have at least a couple weeks of early voting
49:08
Speaker 6: in person. Make your plan now. Put it on your
49:10
Speaker 6: calendar now. Figure out what your child care situation is
49:12
Speaker 6: going to be now. Figure out what your work schedule
49:14
Speaker 6: is going to be now. Don't wait to make your
49:16
Speaker 6: plan to vote, and don't let all the noise. around
49:21
Speaker 6: distractions and crises take you off of that. And then
49:25
Speaker 6: tell all of your friends the same thing. They're trying
49:28
Speaker 6: to make it harder and dissuade people from voting by
49:30
Speaker 6: mail to the tune of messing with the post office.
49:32
Speaker 6: They're going to have a whole intimidation and all sorts
49:35
Speaker 6: of craziness around early voting person. Know your rights, make
49:38
Speaker 6: your plan, Cast your vote early, make your plan to
49:41
Speaker 6: vote early, and then make sure you know advocates who
49:44
Speaker 6: can help you. Call 866-OUR-VOTE if you need help along
49:48
Speaker 6: the way. 866-OUR-VOTE is a nonpartisan hotline. They have experts
49:52
Speaker 6: that know how to vote in every single state in
49:55
Speaker 6: this country. You can call them and ask for help.
49:57
Speaker 6: And then again, tell your friends and your family and
49:59
Speaker 6: get involved with Fair Fight. You can go to fairfight2020. org.
50:03
Speaker 6: If you've got more time besides just registering and voting
50:06
Speaker 6: and want to get more involved in protecting the vote
50:08
Speaker 6: this fall, So I think that's really our message, John,
50:12
Speaker 6: is that the whole suppression, depression apparatus of the Republican
50:16
Speaker 6: Party under Trump is so severe on every method of
50:19
Speaker 6: voting they're coming after it. And so voters just need
50:21
Speaker 6: to make their plan and get themselves educated and try
50:24
Speaker 6: and stay focused on getting their vote cast early.
50:27
Speaker 1: Last question, you know, you mentioned voter, not just voter suppression,
50:30
Speaker 1: but voter depression. One of the more pernicious effects of
50:33
Speaker 1: voter suppression is the sense of cynicism. I know Stacey
50:36
Speaker 1: talks about this a lot as well, you know, and
50:38
Speaker 1: it It can lead a lot of people, especially people
50:40
Speaker 1: who don't usually vote, to decide that maybe their vote
50:43
Speaker 1: won't count. Maybe they shouldn't bother. How do you think
50:47
Speaker 1: about overcoming that kind of cynicism in low propensity voters? And,
50:52
Speaker 1: you know, I've talked to pollsters and people who do
50:54
Speaker 1: focus groups that say that it was increased after 2018,
50:57
Speaker 1: particularly because of what happened to Stacey in Georgia, what
51:01
Speaker 1: happened to Andrew Gillum in Florida. I mean, how do
51:04
Speaker 1: you sort of overcome the sense of cynicism?
51:07
Speaker 6: The top way that we see is when folks that
51:12
Speaker 6: people relate to in their own community explain that they
51:16
Speaker 6: were able to vote successfully by mail and sort of
51:18
Speaker 6: connect the dots. And so there are great trusted messengers
51:22
Speaker 6: like Stacey, like Barack Obama, like Michelle Obama. There are
51:25
Speaker 6: a couple figures in the Democratic Party who are very
51:28
Speaker 6: trusted by voters. We've seen this in our research and
51:30
Speaker 6: others' research. that they can really help. But it's really that,
51:34
Speaker 6: and this goes back to, we have to do it
51:36
Speaker 6: digitally now, but that is actually really where community organizing
51:39
Speaker 6: matters a lot. And there are so many fantastic community
51:42
Speaker 6: organizers around the country. Black Lives Matter movement is working
51:46
Speaker 6: on this. There are so many local groups really figuring
51:49
Speaker 6: out how do we have the conversation locally about making
51:52
Speaker 6: sure people know how to vote and where to vote.
51:54
Speaker 6: And right now the fight for racial justice is a
51:56
Speaker 6: huge motivating factor across race and ethnicity. of progressive and
52:01
Speaker 6: Democratic-leaning groups. Folks are inspired and really want to take
52:06
Speaker 6: action and are connecting the dots on how that is
52:08
Speaker 6: one of the big reasons that people do want to
52:11
Speaker 6: vote and navigate all of this disinformation and suppression and
52:14
Speaker 6: the rest. And so for me, that gives a lot
52:16
Speaker 6: of cause for hope that we can, folks like Stacey
52:20
Speaker 6: and community organizers who are nameless in the community have
52:23
Speaker 6: a lot of tools and toolbox to work with to
52:25
Speaker 6: support folks in their quest to cast a ballot and
52:28
Speaker 6: to get it counted, to see it all the way through.
52:31
Speaker 1: Lauren Groworgo, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
52:33
Speaker 1: you for all the fantastic work that you guys are
52:35
Speaker 1: doing with Fair Fight Action and, um, good luck in
52:38
Speaker 1: the homestretch.
52:39
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, John. We're so grateful for you
52:41
Speaker 6: and your, your audience.
52:42
Speaker 5: Take care.
52:48
Speaker 1: Thanks to Lauren for joining us today. And, um, Everyone
52:51
Speaker 1: go to votesaveamerica.com slash states. Make a plan today. Get
52:55
Speaker 1: your shit together. Figure out when you're going to vote,
52:57
Speaker 1: when you're going to get your ballot. And then also
52:59
Speaker 1: adopt a state and make some calls. That's the best
53:01
Speaker 1: way to deal with the anxiety.
53:03
Speaker 5: Make some calls. Make some texts. Just two notes. One,
53:06
Speaker 5: Bill Paxton, may his memory be a blessing. Two, we
53:10
Speaker 5: don't know if that was Adderall falling out of Trump's nose.
53:12
Speaker 5: That's just something on the internet. We don't know that.
53:14
Speaker 5: We don't know it. And I just want to be
53:15
Speaker 5: clear that I'm not one of those people that's just like,
53:17
Speaker 5: I saw something on the internet, so I know it's true.
53:19
Speaker 5: That's one of those.
53:22
Speaker 4: Videos that I have not clicked on and I will not.
53:24
Speaker 4: I do not need to see something flying out of
53:25
Speaker 4: his nose.
53:27
Speaker 6: Now or ever.
53:27
Speaker 1: Oh, this is the first I've heard of this.
53:29
Speaker 5: I watched it like the Zapruder film. I watched it
53:31
Speaker 5: like the Zapruder film. I was like, what's the angle?
53:33
Speaker 5: Is it possible? Is that from the mouth? What are
53:35
Speaker 5: we dealing with here? I'm very much obsessed with this.
53:38
Speaker 5: It's in the canon of the Ted Cruz. What is
53:41
Speaker 5: that white thing stuck on his face?
53:43
Speaker 4: You know?
53:44
Speaker 3: Yep. Yep. Yep.
53:45
Speaker 2: Yep.
53:45
Speaker 1: Real gross.
53:47
Speaker 5: All right, guys. There's music now, I think.
53:49
Speaker 1: We'll see you guys later. Bye, guys. Pod Save America
53:56
Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
54:00
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited
54:04
Speaker 1: by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks
54:07
Speaker 1: to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and
54:12
Speaker 1: Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team,
54:15
Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
54:19
Speaker 1: film and upload these episodes as videos every week.