Latest / Pod Save America / “Fired up and ready to Zoom.”

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“Fired up and ready to Zoom.” · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
0:24
Speaker 1: On today's pod, Lovett talks to Senator Sherrod Brown and
0:26
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning writer Connie Schultz. about negotiations on the
0:30
Speaker 1: next economic relief bill, and what it's like to quarantine together.
0:35
Speaker 1: Before that.
0:36
Speaker 4: By the way, we've already recorded that and it was delightful.
0:39
Speaker 4: I mean, it was a serious interview, but it was
0:41
Speaker 4: so nice to see them both.
0:42
Speaker 1: Awesome. Before that, we'll talk about the president's latest abuse
0:46
Speaker 1: of power, the Trump campaign's attempt to define Joe Biden,
0:49
Speaker 1: and the $ 3 trillion stimulus package that passed the House
0:52
Speaker 1: last week. But first, Lovett, how was the show this week?
0:56
Speaker 2: We had a... Great love it or leave it.
0:58
Speaker 4: Adam Conover joined to judge the monologue and him saying
1:01
Speaker 4: what the fuck to a bad joke is one of the.
1:03
Speaker 2: Hardest laughs I've had in a while.
1:06
Speaker 4: And Patrick Radden Keefe talked about Wind of Change and
1:09
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories. Plus, we talked to listeners about what's bothering them.
1:13
Speaker 4: It was a great episode.
1:16
Speaker 1: Speaking of Patrick, if you haven't yet started binging Wind
1:19
Speaker 1: of Change on Spotify, don't be the last one to
1:22
Speaker 1: do it. Everyone else is doing it. This is our
1:24
Speaker 1: new investigative series where Patrick Radden Keefe investigates a rumor
1:28
Speaker 1: that the CIA wrote a song that became the anthem
1:32
Speaker 1: for change at the end of the Cold War. Listen, rate, review.
1:36
Speaker 1: You'll thank us later. It's very, very good. Everyone's talking
1:40
Speaker 1: about it.
1:41
Speaker 2: All right.
1:42
Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. New York Times had a
1:45
Speaker 1: story over the weekend that I think sums up where
1:47
Speaker 1: we are pretty well. Here's the subhead. Quote, by smearing
1:51
Speaker 1: his opponent's Championing conspiracy theories and pursuing vendettas, President Trump
1:56
Speaker 1: has reverted to his darkest political tactics in spite of
1:59
Speaker 1: a pandemic hurting millions of Americans. A prime example of
2:03
Speaker 1: those tactics were on display Friday night when the president
2:05
Speaker 1: accepted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's request to fire State
2:09
Speaker 1: Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who was reportedly in the
2:13
Speaker 1: middle of investigating Mike Pompeo for using State Department staff
2:16
Speaker 1: for personal purposes, including dog walking and dinner reservations. And
2:21
Speaker 1: now we learned this morning, potentially for unilaterally approving billions
2:25
Speaker 1: of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Congress's objections.
2:30
Speaker 1: In response to a 60 Minutes interview from another government
2:33
Speaker 1: official who he fired, Dr. Rick Bright, the guy who
2:36
Speaker 1: ran our vaccine development and then filed a whistleblower complaint,
2:39
Speaker 1: Trump tweeted, quote, this whole whistleblower racket needs to be
2:43
Speaker 1: looked at very closely. It is causing great injustice and harm. So, Tommy,
2:49
Speaker 1: people hear this and might think, You know, Trump fires
2:52
Speaker 1: people for fairly corrupt reasons all the time. What's the
2:55
Speaker 1: big deal? What are your thoughts?
2:57
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the first thing they should realize is
2:59
Speaker 3: that these inspector general positions are supposed to be within
3:02
Speaker 3: the agencies, but with independence. They're supposed to look at
3:05
Speaker 3: that waste, fraud, abuse of power, and then like identify
3:08
Speaker 3: and recommend fixes so that they can fix them. You
3:12
Speaker 3: often have an adversarial relationship with your inspector general, but
3:16
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. Trump has fired at least three
3:20
Speaker 3: of them with these late Friday night purges. And so
3:23
Speaker 3: the State Department guy is the latest. By the way,
3:25
Speaker 3: he's not some partisan hack. Steve Linick worked in the
3:29
Speaker 3: George W. Bush Department of Justice. So he's a career official.
3:34
Speaker 3: So House Democrats are trying to figure out what happened.
3:37
Speaker 3: Some think Steve Linick was looking into Mike Pompeo's misuse
3:40
Speaker 3: of political appointees. You mentioned this earlier, but they might
3:43
Speaker 3: have been asked to perform tasks like get the dog
3:46
Speaker 3: from the groomer, pick up my dry cleaning, make me
3:48
Speaker 3: a reservation at a restaurant. Pompeo does have this record
3:52
Speaker 3: of treating the State Department like his own political travel agency, right?
3:56
Speaker 3: I mean, he took three official trips to Kansas, not
4:00
Speaker 3: a foreign policy hotspot, as he was thinking about whether
4:03
Speaker 3: to run for the Senate. to the point where the
4:06
Speaker 3: Kansas City Star wrote an editorial titled, Mike Pompeo either
4:09
Speaker 3: quit and run for U.S. Senate in Kansas or focus
4:12
Speaker 3: on your day job. Pretty pointed. So they've previously called
4:16
Speaker 3: on him to be investigated for violating the Hatch Act. Now,
4:20
Speaker 3: this could be a little bit darker, though. Eliot Engel
4:23
Speaker 3: said this inspector general was investigating Trump and Pompeo's decision
4:27
Speaker 3: to issue an emergency declaration that basically forced through an
4:31
Speaker 3: $ 8 billion arms sale mostly to Saudi Arabia. And the
4:36
Speaker 3: reason that's a big deal is because under the Arms
4:39
Speaker 3: Export Control Act, Congress has to be formally notified for
4:43
Speaker 3: 30 calendar days to review these arms sales before they
4:46
Speaker 3: can be concluded. And so this end run, declaring a
4:50
Speaker 3: state of emergency because of the threat from Iran when
4:53
Speaker 3: the arms you're delivering won't be there for an entire
4:56
Speaker 3: year is absurd on its face, right? And it might
5:00
Speaker 3: have violated not just the notification requirements to Congress, But
5:04
Speaker 3: also the underlying law, which says these arms have to
5:07
Speaker 3: be for legitimate self-defense and what the Saudis have been
5:10
Speaker 3: doing in Yemen in this horrible civil war has not
5:12
Speaker 3: been that. It could also have violated the Foreign Assistance
5:15
Speaker 3: Act because these weapons are going to a country that
5:18
Speaker 3: has been deemed to be in violation of human rights. So, look,
5:22
Speaker 3: if you hear the like making the political appointee making
5:25
Speaker 3: reservations or picking up the dog thing and you think
5:27
Speaker 3: that's like ticky tack bullshit. OK, you can believe that.
5:30
Speaker 3: But having the president of the United States fire the
5:33
Speaker 3: guy that's investigating you is the definition of abuse of
5:37
Speaker 3: power and corruption. And that's why this is such a
5:40
Speaker 3: big deal in its totality.
5:43
Speaker 1: So it's not just– hey, go walk my dog and
5:46
Speaker 1: pick up my dry cleaning. It's walk my dog, pick
5:48
Speaker 1: up dry cleaning, and send a few rocket launchers to MBS.
5:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you walk my dog, I'm going to let
5:55
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia walk America like a dog, and all the
5:59
Speaker 4: dogs are walked.
6:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, walk this Raytheon guy down to the Defense Department
6:03
Speaker 3: and get him a sweetheart deal. And look, this coincided
6:05
Speaker 3: with a huge story in the New York Times over
6:07
Speaker 3: the weekend about the drastic uptick in arms sales to
6:11
Speaker 3: places like Saudi Arabia because people like Jared Kushner and
6:13
Speaker 3: Peter Navarro are treating arms sales like a jobs creation
6:18
Speaker 3: program and not like something we should take very seriously
6:20
Speaker 3: because these are weapons of war.
6:23
Speaker 5: Love it.
6:23
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to the story?
6:25
Speaker 4: I think it's, you know, it's bad and I don't
6:28
Speaker 4: like it. But the larger, you know, look, you just
6:31
Speaker 4: sort of put it in the context. So he's firing IGs.
6:34
Speaker 4: You have Attorney General Barr at DOJ acting as Trump's
6:37
Speaker 4: personal lawyer. You have the administration rejecting Congress's ability to
6:40
Speaker 4: enforce subpoenas. You have the president rejecting law enforcement subpoenas.
6:44
Speaker 4: You have the president using pardons to protect himself. You
6:47
Speaker 4: have a larger Republican theory that the president's authority over
6:50
Speaker 4: the executive branch is total. And therefore these sort of
6:53
Speaker 4: institutional checks are not necessarily valid. They also have them
6:57
Speaker 4: believing the president can only be impeached for statutory offenses.
7:00
Speaker 4: So like specific breaking of the law. And when you
7:03
Speaker 4: find those examples of law breaking, they don't respect them
7:06
Speaker 4: and they don't acknowledge them out of cowardice. And you
7:08
Speaker 4: add all this together and you end up with a
7:11
Speaker 4: president that is above the law and it is incredibly dangerous.
7:15
Speaker 4: And I can only imagine how much worse it will
7:17
Speaker 4: get if we fail to remove him in November. These
7:19
Speaker 4: are all proof points of the stakes of the election.
7:23
Speaker 6: That's all.
7:25
Speaker 1: And look, don't take our word for it. You know,
7:27
Speaker 1: we're a bunch of partisan hacks. Here's Mitt Romney. Here's
7:31
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney. Quote, firings of multiple inspectors general is unprecedented.
7:35
Speaker 1: Doing so without good cause chills the independents essential to
7:38
Speaker 1: their purpose is a threat to accountable democracy and a
7:41
Speaker 1: fissure in the constitutional balance of power. I have to
7:44
Speaker 1: say- Good for Mitt Romney. And that's a hell of
7:47
Speaker 1: a lot better than fucking Susan Collins, who had a
7:50
Speaker 1: little tweet storm about it. Susan Collins has always been
7:52
Speaker 1: like very into inspectors general as a concept. She wrote,
7:57
Speaker 1: the best she could muster was, quote, the president has
8:00
Speaker 1: not provided the kind of justification for the removal of
8:02
Speaker 1: IG Linick required by the law. That's all we got
8:05
Speaker 1: from Susan Collins.
8:05
Speaker 4: You can imagine Susan Collins next to Rose and Jack
8:10
Speaker 4: as the Titanic sinks into the water. And the final
8:13
Speaker 4: words she says before the splash is, I'm deeply concerned
8:18
Speaker 4: about this iceberg.
8:21
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, look, Lovett laid out, I think, a really.
8:24
Speaker 3: scary, like big, big picture. But just with these IGs,
8:28
Speaker 3: I mean, anyone who crosses Trump, one of these inspectors general,
8:32
Speaker 3: who's supposed to be an independent watchdog, has been fired.
8:35
Speaker 3: So the State Department one we just walked through. But
8:38
Speaker 3: over at HHS, that IG reported on severe shortages of
8:42
Speaker 3: coronavirus testing kits. That person was let go. The intelligence
8:46
Speaker 3: community inspector general was shitcanned. for forwarding along a whistleblower
8:50
Speaker 3: complaint to Congress, which he has to do. The DOD
8:53
Speaker 3: guy was fired just because he was called Obama era
8:56
Speaker 3: and he didn't want him overseeing the coronavirus stimulus program.
9:00
Speaker 3: So like, this is a purge. It's a purge of
9:03
Speaker 3: independence in the government, the people who are supposed to
9:05
Speaker 3: root out corruption.
9:06
Speaker 1: So you mentioned this, Tommy, but over the weekend, Democrats
9:10
Speaker 1: in Congress, Eliot Engel in the House and Bob Menendez
9:13
Speaker 1: in the Senate have opened an investigation into what they
9:16
Speaker 1: say may be an act of illegal retaliation, was the quote.
9:20
Speaker 1: So obviously that's the right thing to do. I guess
9:23
Speaker 1: my question is, now that Trump, and this goes to
9:25
Speaker 1: your point, Levitt, like now that Trump has been impeached
9:28
Speaker 1: and acquitted, like how do Democrats make oversight matter? Because
9:34
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do, but sometimes I wonder like,
9:37
Speaker 1: you know, we got an election in November, they can
9:39
Speaker 1: open investigations, it is the right thing to do, we
9:41
Speaker 1: should all want the truth, but how can you make
9:43
Speaker 1: it matter politically, or can you?
9:46
Speaker 2: I think it's a really hard question.
9:47
Speaker 4: And I think that this is an argument that Democrats
9:49
Speaker 4: have been having amongst themselves for years now between those
9:52
Speaker 4: who think it is not necessarily politically advantageous to make
9:57
Speaker 4: oversight a battle line in sort of our... our political campaigns,
10:02
Speaker 4: and who worried over impeachment as being politically harmful to Democrats,
10:06
Speaker 4: even if it was the morally correct thing to do.
10:08
Speaker 4: And those who argue that Donald Trump's greatest trick is
10:13
Speaker 4: convincing people he doesn't respond to incentives. And one of
10:15
Speaker 4: the lessons of impeachment is that the second that impeachment
10:17
Speaker 4: lever was removed, he became more brazen. And I don't
10:20
Speaker 4: think anybody really knows. I don't think anybody has the answer.
10:22
Speaker 4: It's a really difficult question. I think we have to
10:25
Speaker 4: kind of keep both things in our mind at once, right?
10:27
Speaker 4: That ultimately the only true way to achieve accountability here
10:31
Speaker 4: is to remove Donald Trump from office, ideally win the Senate,
10:33
Speaker 4: you keep the House, and then you have the ability
10:36
Speaker 4: with those committees, with that power, to reverse some of
10:42
Speaker 4: his institutional corruption, attack some of the failures of the
10:47
Speaker 4: last three years, expose some of the injustice, which we'll
10:49
Speaker 4: have to do over the next couple of years, versus
10:52
Speaker 4: the importance right now of making sure there's a watchdog
10:55
Speaker 4: on Trump. And I don't think anybody who claims to
10:59
Speaker 4: know the right thing to do perfectly is being honest.
11:02
Speaker 3: I mean, I think impeachment and really everything since has
11:06
Speaker 3: shown the limits of Congress's ability to have effective oversight
11:12
Speaker 3: if the executive branch is just going to give you
11:14
Speaker 3: the finger about literally everything and say no. So I
11:17
Speaker 3: think the key here is making corruption and Trump's, you know,
11:21
Speaker 3: Trump inherited a town that everyone thinks is broken and corrupt, right?
11:25
Speaker 3: People think Washington is bad and all politicians are bad,
11:27
Speaker 3: but he has made it exponentially worse. And I think
11:30
Speaker 3: the Biden campaign needs to know that Trump is already
11:33
Speaker 3: going to call Joe Biden corrupt, even though there's no
11:35
Speaker 3: evidence that that's true. They're going to attack his son
11:37
Speaker 3: for being corrupt. So they need to go on offense
11:40
Speaker 3: and they need to bring back some of the corruption
11:42
Speaker 3: greatest hits. Like remember Tom Price, the head of the
11:45
Speaker 3: health and human services secretary who resigned under pressure because
11:49
Speaker 3: he racked up 400 grand in travel bills for chartered
11:53
Speaker 3: flights and like, you know, completely undermining all the drain,
11:56
Speaker 3: the swamp messaging, like tell a story about all these
11:59
Speaker 3: separate events. We'll get into this later. Tell a story
12:02
Speaker 3: about Ivanka Trump getting a bunch of trademarks from China, right?
12:06
Speaker 3: Like You can lay a narrative and educate people about
12:10
Speaker 3: stories that they may have missed at the time or
12:12
Speaker 3: that seem old to us now, but will be new
12:14
Speaker 3: to them today.
12:15
Speaker 1: I completely agree with that. And we've all seen plenty
12:18
Speaker 1: of research that shows the political value of making oversight
12:24
Speaker 1: about Trump's corruption, the corruption of his administration and his
12:30
Speaker 1: sort of penchant to try to hide that corruption from
12:33
Speaker 1: the American people, you know, a message that works that
12:37
Speaker 1: we've seen is, you know, Trump said he was going
12:40
Speaker 1: to Washington to clean up the swamp. He became part
12:43
Speaker 1: of it. Um, people are bothered by his cabinet, his
12:47
Speaker 1: administration and the corruption that they've been involved in. People
12:50
Speaker 1: are bothered by the fact that his family also could
12:53
Speaker 1: be self-dealing because of cozy business relationships and how they're
12:57
Speaker 1: using government to further those relationships. So I do think
13:00
Speaker 1: at this point, um, post impeachment oversight is, um, you know,
13:06
Speaker 1: it is the right thing to do. It has to
13:07
Speaker 1: be paired with an effective political message. I tend to think,
13:11
Speaker 1: like you said, Tommy, the more effective political message to
13:14
Speaker 1: voters has to do with corruption than Trump being an
13:20
Speaker 1: authoritarian and breaking all the rules and all that kind
13:22
Speaker 1: of stuff. I think average people don't like the idea
13:24
Speaker 1: that the State Department is using their tax dollars, you know,
13:28
Speaker 1: for sort of Mike Pompeo's personal errands and then trying
13:34
Speaker 1: to hide it from us. And so I think that
13:36
Speaker 1: like the Trump campaign is already going to go after
13:39
Speaker 1: Joe Biden for like a parent, you know, being like
13:42
Speaker 1: some kind of a swamp creature. Trump was the one
13:44
Speaker 1: who said he would clean up the swamp. He did
13:46
Speaker 1: not do it. He became part of it. We have
13:48
Speaker 1: to start repeating that message. So while he is working
13:52
Speaker 1: very hard to sort of protect corruption wherever it may exist,
13:55
Speaker 1: Trump's campaign has begun to draw some subtle contrast with
13:58
Speaker 1: his opponent, accusing Joe Biden of everything from pedophilia and
14:01
Speaker 1: dementia to serving as a Chinese agent. and conspiring with
14:04
Speaker 1: Barack Obama to stage a coup against Trump. Just, you know,
14:09
Speaker 1: just trying a few things out.
14:10
Speaker 3: Funny when you say it like that.
14:12
Speaker 4: I have to say, he's an incredibly effective spy and
14:17
Speaker 4: international operator for someone with dementia.
14:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, true.
14:20
Speaker 2: You know, like, they don't really go together.
14:22
Speaker 4: Like, you know, you'd think you'd get lost in his identities,
14:25
Speaker 4: forget to put the mustache on, that kind of thing.
14:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:30
Speaker 1: Of these various attacks, it seems like the campaign has
14:33
Speaker 1: actually put money behind ads about Biden's age and those
14:36
Speaker 1: related to China, though according to Axios, they'll soon be
14:39
Speaker 1: launching state-specific attacks and ads that target Biden's record on
14:43
Speaker 1: Cuba and Florida, fracking in Pennsylvania, and trade elsewhere in
14:47
Speaker 1: the Midwest. Lovett, why do you think they haven't settled
14:51
Speaker 1: on a line of attack, like a single line of attack?
14:54
Speaker 1: And I guess, do you think they need to?
14:56
Speaker 2: I would say two things.
14:58
Speaker 3: I think one.
15:01
Speaker 2: It's a challenge.
15:01
Speaker 4: I think that the reason we've seen him go after
15:04
Speaker 4: Obama and try all these different things, I don't think
15:07
Speaker 4: they know which is their most effective message. And they're
15:11
Speaker 4: seeing the same kind of public polling we're seeing, and
15:13
Speaker 4: I'm sure they see internal polling that shows this uphill
15:16
Speaker 4: battle that Trump faces, a lot of reporting that shows that.
15:18
Speaker 4: So I think they're casting about because they haven't landed
15:21
Speaker 4: on something that feels that works. The other piece of
15:23
Speaker 4: this too is that Trump has been denied some of
15:27
Speaker 4: the platforms he uses to try things out. And that's
15:30
Speaker 4: a really big and important part of how he figures
15:33
Speaker 4: out what his message is.
15:34
Speaker 1: Like rallies, you mean?
15:35
Speaker 4: Like rallies or even using the White House. He has,
15:39
Speaker 4: I think, seen that using the White House briefing to
15:41
Speaker 4: be extremely directly political has not always been smart for him.
15:45
Speaker 4: He's not been doing that as much as you might
15:47
Speaker 4: have expected. Though, of course, he's being incredibly political about
15:52
Speaker 4: the response and treating it like a rally in regards
15:53
Speaker 4: to himself. He has not made it a true anti-Biden
15:57
Speaker 4: rally at times. So, I think the combination means they
16:00
Speaker 4: don't feel confident in any one of these lines of attacks.
16:03
Speaker 4: And we've even seen reporting, right, that Kellyanne Conway, you know,
16:07
Speaker 4: wasn't sure about the attacks on age. There's a dissensus,
16:10
Speaker 4: I think, amongst Trump's advisers.
16:13
Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think? And which attacks sort of
16:16
Speaker 1: worry you the most?
16:18
Speaker 3: I worry about the China attack. I think a lot
16:21
Speaker 3: of people are angry at China. And if you can
16:23
Speaker 3: effectively tie Biden to China, that could be a good
16:26
Speaker 3: avenue for them. I worry about the age attacks, not
16:30
Speaker 3: because I'm worried about Joe Biden's mental capacity, but I'm
16:34
Speaker 3: worried about the optics of being stuck in your own
16:36
Speaker 3: home during the coronavirus. It just makes it hard to
16:39
Speaker 3: undercut this bullshit from the Trump people. Now, the thing
16:43
Speaker 3: listeners should know is that These guys are running ads
16:46
Speaker 3: in these deeply red parts of the country, like parts
16:49
Speaker 3: of Michigan, the Florida Panhandle, Iowa, North Carolina. The fact
16:53
Speaker 3: that they're running TV spots attacking Joe Biden in those
16:56
Speaker 3: places shows that these are attacks made out of weakness
17:00
Speaker 3: and not out of strength. That doesn't make me feel better,
17:03
Speaker 3: but it just shows you the position they're in. But
17:05
Speaker 3: the thing that like worries me the most is right
17:08
Speaker 3: over the weekend, Don Jr. posted a meme calling Joe
17:10
Speaker 3: Biden a pedophile, right? Eric Trump said Democrats are using
17:14
Speaker 3: the virus to prevent his daddy from holding rallies and
17:17
Speaker 3: that it'll go away later. Trump is saying Obama's treasonous, right?
17:20
Speaker 3: These insane accusations are just flying left and right. And
17:23
Speaker 3: the press has not figured out how to cover it
17:25
Speaker 3: yet at all. And it's a huge problem, right? So like,
17:28
Speaker 3: I look, I know we're talking about it right now,
17:29
Speaker 3: but we're talking to a different audience about a different
17:31
Speaker 3: angle here. So the New York Times like reports out
17:34
Speaker 3: this story about what Don Jr. posted. And ostensibly it's
17:37
Speaker 3: about negative campaigning or fact-checking this lie, but I think
17:41
Speaker 3: it failed because some people will hear the words pedophile
17:44
Speaker 3: and just have that lodged in their brain. Right. And
17:47
Speaker 3: then some people will hear them repeat the charges that
17:50
Speaker 3: Biden has, you know, uh, been accused of unwanted touching.
17:54
Speaker 3: And I just think like at some point you can
17:56
Speaker 3: argue that these negative attacks are part of a strategy
17:59
Speaker 3: and that in and of itself is a story. But
18:01
Speaker 3: when Don jr is posting something on Instagram or or
18:05
Speaker 3: like Donald Trump himself is flailing away in 100 plus
18:08
Speaker 3: tweets on Mother's Day, I do think the press has
18:10
Speaker 3: to be a little more judicious about what lies they elevate,
18:14
Speaker 3: even in the context of trying to debunk them, because
18:17
Speaker 3: I think it often fails.
18:20
Speaker 1: I think that it's going to be very hard to
18:24
Speaker 1: make the race about anything other than the pandemic, the response,
18:29
Speaker 1: and the economic fallout, because that is what is most
18:32
Speaker 1: concerning to people. So in that vein, like the best
18:38
Speaker 1: bet for the Trump campaign is to make this a
18:42
Speaker 1: story about China and how like in order to recover,
18:48
Speaker 1: in order to get the economy back, in order to
18:50
Speaker 1: all this stuff, we need a sort of tough guy
18:53
Speaker 1: president who will stand up to China and that's Donald Trump.
18:57
Speaker 1: He's strong. He's tough. He can go after China and
19:01
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is weak and feeble and he can't because
19:03
Speaker 1: he's too tied to China. Like, to me, that is
19:06
Speaker 1: sort of where they're going that still fits with what
19:10
Speaker 1: people are worried about, which is the economic fallout from
19:14
Speaker 1: the pandemic. I think all the other stuff on Biden,
19:16
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, it is incredibly dangerous for
19:21
Speaker 1: Trump surrogates to go out there, including his kids, and
19:24
Speaker 1: call Joe Biden a pedophile and have the media cover
19:26
Speaker 1: it as it does. So, like, I don't think that's
19:27
Speaker 1: great at all. But I do think, like, It is
19:31
Speaker 1: hard to make this election about anything other than what's
19:35
Speaker 1: on people's minds. That said, both the China and the
19:38
Speaker 1: age attacks give them an opening to sort of talk
19:42
Speaker 1: about that and talk about the response and how Biden's
19:46
Speaker 1: not the one to respond in the right way.
19:47
Speaker 3: Here's an example, right? This is an AP story lead.
19:50
Speaker 3: accusations of a deep state conspiracy, allegations of personal and
19:53
Speaker 3: family corruption, painting an opponent as a Washington insider not
19:56
Speaker 3: to be trusted. It's 2016 again, or at least that's
19:59
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump's hope. That is taking a bunch of
20:03
Speaker 3: lies and smears and framing them as a strategy and
20:06
Speaker 3: putting it as the lead of an AP story. And
20:08
Speaker 3: it just look, I don't mean to just media bash,
20:10
Speaker 3: but it made me deeply frustrated for the Biden camp
20:13
Speaker 3: to read that because I agree with everything you're saying.
20:15
Speaker 3: I think that the salient attacks will be about China,
20:18
Speaker 3: will be about the coronavirus. But like, never forget that
20:22
Speaker 3: a lot of people saw things accusing Hillary of having
20:25
Speaker 3: a kill list or murdering people on Facebook and other places.
20:28
Speaker 3: And you can cut together a very unfairly edited video
20:31
Speaker 3: that makes anyone look like they have dementia or cognitive
20:34
Speaker 3: decline or whatever. And I worry about the way those
20:39
Speaker 3: attacks will sink in over time, if not properly rebutted
20:41
Speaker 3: as well.
20:42
Speaker 4: I also do think one of the goals here, too,
20:44
Speaker 4: is like, I think part of the reason that AP's
20:46
Speaker 4: story is so damaging is the Trump campaign wants to
20:49
Speaker 4: create 2016, too, and they want to do it in
20:51
Speaker 4: a very specific way. You know, you have Republican spokespeople
20:56
Speaker 4: out there saying some version of Donald Trump created the
20:59
Speaker 4: hot economy. pandemic happens, he's the one who can bring
21:03
Speaker 4: it back, right? So they're trying to basically start from
21:05
Speaker 4: a place of saying the pandemic didn't happen to us.
21:08
Speaker 4: The pandemic happened to him. And then the goal, then
21:11
Speaker 4: where are you? Well, you're at a new baseline where
21:12
Speaker 4: now you're not comparing Donald Trump as president to a replacement.
21:16
Speaker 4: You're evaluating Donald Trump and Joe Biden side by side
21:19
Speaker 4: as people taking on what's going to come next, right?
21:21
Speaker 4: And the goal there is, right, you try to recreate
21:24
Speaker 4: a 2016 comparison rather than judging Donald Trump on his
21:27
Speaker 4: failures and malfeasance and incompetence and, you know, feckless disregard
21:32
Speaker 4: for human life and what have you. And so to me,
21:34
Speaker 4: you know, the fear, right, is that you get that
21:38
Speaker 4: reset for Trump and then they play what they did
21:40
Speaker 4: in 2016, which is, you know, Hillary sick and dying.
21:43
Speaker 4: They brought Bill Clinton's accusers to the debate, emails, you know,
21:47
Speaker 4: we forget how much noise and attacks and nonsense sort
21:51
Speaker 4: of permeated political coverage in 2016. And they'll just, they're
21:55
Speaker 4: just desperately trying to recreate that environment.
21:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
21:57
Speaker 1: And I think the big question is, can they get
22:00
Speaker 1: that reset? Because I think it's much harder. to get
22:04
Speaker 1: that reset in the middle of a pandemic and economic
22:06
Speaker 1: recession when Trump is the president than it was in
22:10
Speaker 1: 2016 when you could say Hillary Clinton is part of
22:12
Speaker 1: the Obama administration that you just saw for eight years
22:15
Speaker 1: and that maybe you think didn't make enough progress. I'm
22:18
Speaker 1: someone new. Give me a chance. That is the big difference.
22:21
Speaker 1: And now maybe they'll still get that reset with enough
22:23
Speaker 1: money and enough ads. But I think that's the challenge
22:25
Speaker 1: that they face.
22:26
Speaker 3: You're right. I suspect that is true, too. And I
22:28
Speaker 3: think most voters will go into that booth, you know,
22:30
Speaker 3: thinking about coronavirus and thinking about the economy. But it
22:33
Speaker 3: is just very disconcerting to watch last week devolve into
22:36
Speaker 3: a conversation about unmasking because the DNI, this right wing hack,
22:40
Speaker 3: releases a list of Obama administration officials who did something
22:44
Speaker 3: that was perfectly legal and proper.
22:46
Speaker 6: Right.
22:46
Speaker 3: And now we have Trump accusing Obama of treason. And
22:48
Speaker 3: then dumb shit Don Jr. calls Biden a pedophile. And
22:52
Speaker 3: that turns into a New York Times story. It just
22:53
Speaker 3: like it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in
22:56
Speaker 3: the ability for the body politics to filter out garbage
23:00
Speaker 3: from actual issues that matter.
23:03
Speaker 1: No, zero confidence. They've learned no lessons from 2016. Let's
23:07
Speaker 1: talk about what Biden should do here. The Washington Post
23:10
Speaker 1: says that, quote, Biden's advisors, aware of what Trump is
23:12
Speaker 1: preparing to fire at him, describe themselves as dead set
23:15
Speaker 1: against being triggered by his provocations or engaging with him
23:18
Speaker 1: on his terms. Voters will decide the election they believe
23:21
Speaker 1: in response to the crisis now engulfing the nation, not
23:23
Speaker 1: the spectacle of Trump's Twitter feed. Do you guys think
23:27
Speaker 1: that's right? And how do you think Biden should respond?
23:30
Speaker 2: I think they're saying the right things.
23:32
Speaker 4: I think in reality, the choice about when and how
23:35
Speaker 4: to engage is more nuanced and difficult. But, you know,
23:38
Speaker 4: one of the lessons of the last election is whether
23:41
Speaker 4: you engage on a specific Trump controversy or not, it's
23:46
Speaker 4: not whether you take the bait at times. It's if
23:49
Speaker 4: you're going to take the bait, are you able to
23:51
Speaker 4: turn it to an exchange on your terms? You know,
23:54
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is saying X because he's trying to distract
23:57
Speaker 4: from Y. Donald Trump is making outlandish accusations because of
24:00
Speaker 4: his failure on the coronavirus. Some of this, I think,
24:03
Speaker 4: becomes the kind of, you know, disciplined politics that because
24:08
Speaker 4: Trump is such a outlier has led people to kind
24:11
Speaker 4: of not treat in the kind of ordinary way. And
24:16
Speaker 4: I think at times it just requires a traditional hard
24:20
Speaker 4: political response.
24:22
Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
24:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean, I think that Biden people like
24:26
Speaker 3: taking a disciplined strategy is the right strategy. You have
24:29
Speaker 3: to choose to ignore some things because otherwise you'll go
24:31
Speaker 3: down a million rabbit holes. But I do think you
24:33
Speaker 3: need to figure out what's important and like preempt it.
24:36
Speaker 3: So I would like to see Biden, you know, running
24:39
Speaker 3: a positive ad track that talks about his bio and
24:41
Speaker 3: his character and his values, his work at the Obama
24:44
Speaker 3: White House, including on the stimulus in the financial recovery.
24:49
Speaker 3: and the Ebola response that kind of like give you
24:51
Speaker 3: a baseline of understanding who he is and why he'd
24:53
Speaker 3: be good at this. And then, you know, we all
24:56
Speaker 3: know that Trump is going to go after Hunter Biden.
24:59
Speaker 3: So let's see some negative attacks from the super PACs
25:03
Speaker 3: or from the Biden campaign about Ivanka Trump getting special
25:06
Speaker 3: trademarks for her businesses from the Chinese while working at
25:10
Speaker 3: the White House. Let's talk about nepotism and naming your son-in-law.
25:15
Speaker 3: to a job where he's running pandemic response and what
25:18
Speaker 3: a disaster that has been. I think they did a
25:21
Speaker 3: great job highlighting all the times that Trump praised China
25:24
Speaker 3: and Xi Jinping about the coronavirus during that response and
25:28
Speaker 3: all the ways he has ducked responsibility. And it was
25:31
Speaker 3: a great preemptive strike. And I think they should think
25:34
Speaker 3: about ways to do that on some of these other
25:36
Speaker 3: issues that the Trump people are just signaling that are
25:39
Speaker 3: coming with tens of millions of dollars of negative ads.
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you got to do two things. You
25:45
Speaker 1: got to neutralize the attacks on age and on China,
25:49
Speaker 1: and then you got to keep turning everything back to
25:50
Speaker 1: Trump and his response, right? So on the age thing,
25:53
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, that is sort of the easiest
25:57
Speaker 1: to rebut if, you know, just the more times Joe
25:59
Speaker 1: Biden is on television showing energy, being conversational, not being
26:05
Speaker 1: the guy from the clips that they're going to edit
26:07
Speaker 1: together and put a whole bunch of money behind, right?
26:09
Speaker 1: So that's just going to require more Joe Biden being
26:13
Speaker 1: out there. On China, I think you said it, Tommy, right?
26:16
Speaker 1: Like Trump believed China over our own intelligence experts, just
26:20
Speaker 1: like he listens to his political advisors over public health experts.
26:24
Speaker 1: And that's why we're in this mess. I think you
26:25
Speaker 1: can say Trump took the economy he inherited from Barack Obama.
26:31
Speaker 1: and destroyed it because of his catastrophic coronavirus response. That
26:36
Speaker 1: is the other side of the reset that he's trying for, right?
26:40
Speaker 1: That he inherited a great economy and then he fucking
26:42
Speaker 1: ruined it. And then you just got to keep turning
26:44
Speaker 1: it back to Trump, right? Like people are scared of
26:46
Speaker 1: getting sick. They're scared of not getting a job. They
26:49
Speaker 1: want to know why the guy they elected president Can't
26:52
Speaker 1: fix either of those things.
26:54
Speaker 2: That's it.
26:55
Speaker 1: That's the election. Why haven't you fixed it? Why are
26:57
Speaker 1: people still getting sick? Why are people still out of work?
27:00
Speaker 1: And like every time Trump tries some of this bullshit
27:03
Speaker 1: and they start lobbying all these charges, Joe Biden, the
27:06
Speaker 1: campaign has to just go back to and us and
27:09
Speaker 1: Democrats everywhere. Why haven't you fixed this shit yet? Why
27:12
Speaker 1: are people still getting sick? Why aren't they out of work?
27:14
Speaker 1: Why haven't you done anything? And if we can keep
27:17
Speaker 1: that drum beat up over and over again, then it's
27:19
Speaker 1: going to be very hard for Donald Trump to wriggle
27:21
Speaker 1: out of this, I think. But that requires, like we've
27:24
Speaker 1: all been saying, incredible discipline and repetition. And the media
27:29
Speaker 1: will not be allies in this. And look, it's not
27:32
Speaker 1: their job. It's not their job to get fucking Joe
27:34
Speaker 1: Biden elected president. But beyond that, they haven't figured out
27:37
Speaker 1: how to cover this. They're going to make this even
27:39
Speaker 1: more difficult, which makes it even more important for Democrats
27:43
Speaker 1: to be disciplined about all of this.
27:52
Speaker 8: I'm Patrick Radden Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine.
27:55
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27:57
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27:59
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28:24
Speaker 1: One other Democrat who offered what could be a frame
28:26
Speaker 1: for the election was Barack Obama, who delivered a pair
28:29
Speaker 1: of commencement addresses over the weekend, one for graduates of
28:32
Speaker 1: HBCUs and one for graduating high school seniors. Here's some
28:36
Speaker 1: of what he said.
28:38
Speaker 6: More than anything, this pandemic has fully finally torn back
28:41
Speaker 6: the curtain on the idea that so many of the
28:43
Speaker 6: folks in charge know what they're doing. A lot of
28:47
Speaker 6: them aren't even pretending to.
28:48
Speaker 2: Be in charge.
28:49
Speaker 6: Doing what feels good, what's convenient, what's easy, that's how
28:53
Speaker 6: little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grownups, including
28:57
Speaker 6: some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way,
29:01
Speaker 6: which is why things are so screwed up.
29:03
Speaker 1: Lovett, what did you think of the speeches and what
29:06
Speaker 1: did you think of the reaction, which was mainly framed
29:08
Speaker 1: as Obama taking on Trump?
29:11
Speaker 4: It is one of the great ironies of this era
29:14
Speaker 4: that when someone says something like, as innocuous as, I
29:19
Speaker 4: think people should be nice. It is taken as a
29:22
Speaker 4: rebuke to the sitting president of the United States. The
29:27
Speaker 4: implication is always that simply by describing quotidian human virtue,
29:33
Speaker 4: just like the basics of treating each other with respect
29:36
Speaker 4: and looking out for other people is a rebuke to
29:38
Speaker 4: the president. And they always tell on themselves when they
29:42
Speaker 4: immediately realize who Obama is probably referring to. Mitch McConnell
29:48
Speaker 4: criticized Obama for what he said. I think it's an
29:52
Speaker 4: important and good frame for the stakes in the election
29:56
Speaker 4: to put in a way that is not snide or
29:59
Speaker 4: strident at all. It was a completely elegant and simple
30:02
Speaker 4: formulation of the larger stakes of an election like this.
30:05
Speaker 4: And of course, people respond as if Donald Trump isn't
30:07
Speaker 4: president and Donald Trump isn't saying the kinds of things
30:09
Speaker 4: he's saying every day. And I do think Trump's response
30:13
Speaker 4: and some of the other responses are a reminder that
30:15
Speaker 4: Barack Obama is still a potent force and will be
30:17
Speaker 4: an incredibly valuable ally in the fall.
30:20
Speaker 1: Tommy, what'd you think?
30:21
Speaker 3: I mean, look, those speeches, first of all, they were
30:24
Speaker 3: just like really well done and nice to hear. And
30:27
Speaker 3: I also, you know, I watched the Becoming documentary and
30:29
Speaker 3: the Michelle Obama doc the other.
30:30
Speaker 2: Day, and I didn't want to watch it.
30:34
Speaker 3: I watched it. It made me emotional. It reminded me
30:36
Speaker 3: of a time when we had decent human beings living
30:40
Speaker 3: in the White House and like just seeing the Obamas
30:42
Speaker 3: interacting with kids and how much they inspired them, especially
30:47
Speaker 3: like low income kids, you know, it It made me sad.
30:50
Speaker 3: It made me wish for a bygone era. But I
30:52
Speaker 3: also think what you saw over the weekend was that
30:55
Speaker 3: Republicans are very scared of Obama as a messenger. He
30:59
Speaker 3: has the ability to cut them down with kindness in
31:02
Speaker 3: ways that very few other Democrats have. He is wildly popular,
31:06
Speaker 3: especially with swing voters. And Republicans went to the mattresses
31:12
Speaker 3: to try to intimidate him somehow into not speaking out anymore, right? Like,
31:17
Speaker 3: Fox News rolled out that bag of shit, Karl Rove,
31:21
Speaker 3: who called it a political drive-by shooting. I think he
31:24
Speaker 3: chose those words on purpose. Mitch McConnell was attacking Obama.
31:28
Speaker 3: The idiots on Fox and Friends were suggesting that Obama
31:31
Speaker 3: should have taken the high road after he was accused
31:33
Speaker 3: of treason by Donald Trump over the weekend. They are
31:36
Speaker 3: very scared of the impact a fired up, pointed Barack
31:41
Speaker 3: Obama will have on the campaign trail this fall. And
31:45
Speaker 3: they're trying to pretend that the right thing to do
31:47
Speaker 3: would be for him to be quiet because he's a
31:49
Speaker 3: former president and just ignoring the fact that the current
31:53
Speaker 3: president has been threatening to prosecute him for the last
31:55
Speaker 3: few days.
31:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are scared shitless of him. I'm happy that
32:01
Speaker 1: I was able to watch the speeches before reading all
32:05
Speaker 1: the coverage because I when you watch the speech absent
32:09
Speaker 1: any political coverage of it, you just see like a
32:13
Speaker 1: pair of really inspiring, motivational commencement addresses that also make
32:20
Speaker 1: reference to what's going on in the country right now.
32:22
Speaker 1: How could they not? That's all we're all thinking about.
32:25
Speaker 1: And sort of a, you know, an obvious contrast, if
32:30
Speaker 1: somewhat subtle, with the person who's sitting in the Oval
32:34
Speaker 1: Office right now. It also goes to show that sort
32:36
Speaker 1: of like a little goes a long way with the press.
32:40
Speaker 1: When you, when you make criticism like this, like I
32:42
Speaker 1: always think of, you know, everyone, a lot of people
32:45
Speaker 1: now critique on the left and elsewhere, you know, Michelle
32:48
Speaker 1: Obama's when they go low, we go high, but like, Basically,
32:53
Speaker 1: that was Barack Obama going high and taking the high road,
32:57
Speaker 1: but saying more than anything, this pandemic has finally torn
33:00
Speaker 1: back the curtain on the idea that so many folks
33:02
Speaker 1: in charge know what they're doing. And then saying, like,
33:04
Speaker 1: doing what feels good, what's convenient, what's easy, that's how
33:06
Speaker 1: little kids think. Like, that's pretty subtle. That is the
33:10
Speaker 1: high road. And yet the effectiveness of Barack Obama is
33:13
Speaker 1: everyone knows who he's talking about when he says that.
33:15
Speaker 1: And it is still a devastating contrast with Donald Trump,
33:19
Speaker 1: even though he's nowhere near what Donald Trump is doing,
33:23
Speaker 1: which is accusing his opponents of being criminals and saying
33:26
Speaker 1: they should be locked up and saying that they're pedophiles
33:28
Speaker 1: and saying they have dementia, right? Like Barack Obama's like,
33:32
Speaker 1: could we just have a little more maturity? That's his critique.
33:36
Speaker 4: I also just like two quick points on this. One,
33:38
Speaker 4: I think, The speech also does a good job of
33:42
Speaker 4: making a connection between the character and decency of the
33:46
Speaker 4: people in charge and the character and decency of a
33:48
Speaker 4: government and how it helps people or doesn't help people,
33:51
Speaker 4: which is always the next step you have to take.
33:54
Speaker 4: And two, you know, we've talked a lot about the
33:55
Speaker 4: ways in which the media kind of falls into Trump's trap.
33:58
Speaker 4: But I think it's also worth pointing out that even
34:00
Speaker 4: in this sort of toxic political environment, You know, we
34:03
Speaker 4: talked about, you know, Biden making this point about China
34:05
Speaker 4: that I do think kind of broke through and became
34:08
Speaker 4: something Donald Trump was asked about it again and again.
34:10
Speaker 4: Barack Obama giving these two commencements broke through and is
34:13
Speaker 4: part of the conversation to the point where Donald Trump
34:15
Speaker 4: is tweeting about it endlessly. So all is not lost.
34:18
Speaker 4: You know, the engine is still running. It's throwing off sparks.
34:20
Speaker 4: But but but the car goes.
34:24
Speaker 1: And I do think that if Joe Biden sort of mirrors,
34:27
Speaker 1: which I think he has so far, if he mirrors
34:30
Speaker 1: that kind of message that Obama delivered, that is sort
34:33
Speaker 1: of the way to indict Donald Trump's leadership over the
34:38
Speaker 1: last four years in a way that reaches beyond only
34:42
Speaker 1: Democratic partisans, which is what he'll need to do to
34:45
Speaker 1: win the presidency. Because I think if you were the
34:48
Speaker 1: average voter, who might be up for grabs or undecided
34:51
Speaker 1: or undecided about whether they're going to go to the
34:53
Speaker 1: polls or not. You hear something like what Obama said.
34:56
Speaker 1: You hear something like what Biden said. You don't see
34:58
Speaker 1: it as a partisan screed like what Trump says. And
35:01
Speaker 1: yet you still see it as an indictment of the
35:03
Speaker 1: current leadership, which is the exact sweet spot they need
35:06
Speaker 1: to be in.
35:07
Speaker 5: All right.
35:08
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the next economic relief bill in Congress.
35:11
Speaker 1: The House passed the HEROES Act on Friday, which includes
35:13
Speaker 1: the following, an extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits through
35:17
Speaker 1: March of 2021, another round of direct cash payments to Americans,
35:21
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars to save jobs and protect services in state, local,
35:24
Speaker 1: and tribal governments, $ 200 billion in hazard pay for essential workers,
35:28
Speaker 1: $ 175 billion in housing support, $ 75 billion in funding for
35:32
Speaker 1: coronavirus testing and contact tracing, student loan forgiveness, and $ 3. 6
35:36
Speaker 1: billion for expanded vote by mail, partly thanks to all
35:40
Speaker 1: of you who called to Congress. Only one Republican, voted
35:44
Speaker 1: for the bill, but 14 Democrats voted against it. Pramila Jayapal,
35:48
Speaker 1: the chair of the Progressive Caucus, who I spoke to
35:50
Speaker 1: last episode, and 13 Democrats from swing districts that flipped
35:54
Speaker 1: in the 2018 midterms, citing the bill's cost and inability
35:58
Speaker 1: to get bipartisan support in the Senate or from the
36:00
Speaker 1: White House. Both McConnell and Trump are opposed. Tommy, what
36:04
Speaker 1: is your reaction to these swing district Democrats voting no?
36:07
Speaker 1: Are you sympathetic to the politics there?
36:10
Speaker 5: Yeah.
36:10
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I'd be curious to see what data
36:13
Speaker 3: informed their political decision. Like, as a general matter, I'm
36:16
Speaker 3: in favor of letting members of Congress who are in
36:20
Speaker 3: tough districts vote the way they need to vote, especially
36:23
Speaker 3: if the underlying bill is going to pass anyway. So, yeah, look,
36:27
Speaker 3: it didn't bother me that much. I don't think it's
36:28
Speaker 3: a huge deal. I don't think any voter is going
36:31
Speaker 3: to ever learn that this thing lost a bunch of votes.
36:34
Speaker 3: And you can credibly call it bipartisan. But look, there's
36:37
Speaker 3: a lot of important stuff in there. There's money for states.
36:39
Speaker 3: There's money for testing. There's another round of stimulus checks.
36:41
Speaker 3: So I'm glad Pelosi did this. I'm glad she put
36:44
Speaker 3: forward what the Democratic version of a relief bill should
36:48
Speaker 3: look like. And now we can fight over it with Republicans.
36:52
Speaker 5: Love it.
36:52
Speaker 1: What do you think?
36:53
Speaker 4: If your goal is to pass the most progressive version
36:55
Speaker 4: of a bill out of the House, then presumably your
36:58
Speaker 4: goal should be to lose some of the swing Democrats
37:02
Speaker 4: who don't necessarily go along with the most progressive vision, right?
37:04
Speaker 4: There's a There's a push and pull there. And I
37:06
Speaker 4: presume that the conversations between Pelosi and those Democrats.
37:11
Speaker 2: Said as much. So, you know, I don't presume to know.
37:14
Speaker 4: The precise politics of each of those districts. But and look,
37:18
Speaker 4: we talked at length about, you know, what people like
37:20
Speaker 4: Katie Porter have done to to be sort of unabashedly
37:24
Speaker 4: progressive while winning in some of these swing districts. But,
37:27
Speaker 4: you know, beyond that, I sort of agree with what
37:30
Speaker 4: Tommy said.
37:30
Speaker 9: Yeah.
37:32
Speaker 1: I will say like, I am sympathetic usually to sort
37:36
Speaker 1: of the specific concerns that frontline Democrats face. I think,
37:40
Speaker 1: you know, some of them are worried about voting for
37:43
Speaker 1: a bill with a huge price tag. I guess what
37:46
Speaker 1: I would say to that is you all just voted
37:49
Speaker 1: for a $ 2 trillion stimulus bill. Like, do you think
37:52
Speaker 1: that the attacks on the $ 2 trillion stimulus bill versus
37:55
Speaker 1: the $ 3 trillion stimulus bill are going to make that
37:57
Speaker 1: much difference? And also, like, again, one of my biggest
38:01
Speaker 1: concerns is that Democrats will underestimate the rage that voters
38:06
Speaker 1: are going to feel about the economy come November and
38:10
Speaker 1: are already feeling right now, looking around and seeing that
38:14
Speaker 1: bigger corporations, wealthier people are weathering this just fine and
38:19
Speaker 1: working people are getting fucked over. And Donald Trump is
38:23
Speaker 1: going to have an answer to this or going to
38:25
Speaker 1: try to have an answer to this by the fall.
38:26
Speaker 1: He's going to say China's taking advantage of us. He's
38:29
Speaker 1: going to be all anti-China. He's going to be populist
38:31
Speaker 1: about trade, all this kind of bullshit. When people are
38:35
Speaker 1: feeling angry about their economic circumstances, he's going to have
38:38
Speaker 1: an answer. And all I'll say is Democrats need to
38:41
Speaker 1: have a fucking answer on who's the enemy, who is
38:44
Speaker 1: to blame. Why people should feel upset over the fact
38:50
Speaker 1: that they're still struggling and still out of work. And
38:53
Speaker 1: we need to like drawing the economic contrast with Republicans
38:57
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump is maybe the most important objective for
39:00
Speaker 1: Democrats between now and November. And I do worry that
39:05
Speaker 1: if we're not all on the same page. And now
39:08
Speaker 1: Republicans can say, well, that bill was just a big
39:11
Speaker 1: spending partisan bill because look at all the Democrats that
39:13
Speaker 1: decided not to go along with Pelosi. Like, I worry
39:16
Speaker 1: about that. And I wonder if they're overthinking it. But again,
39:20
Speaker 1: sort of like you said, Tommy, like I haven't seen
39:21
Speaker 1: any data on this, so I don't know what they're
39:23
Speaker 1: sort of dealing with in their districts. But it would
39:26
Speaker 1: be hard for me to imagine that there's a lot
39:28
Speaker 1: of people in those districts who are like, gosh. I
39:30
Speaker 1: just wish Congress wouldn't spend another trillion dollars as opposed
39:32
Speaker 1: to I really need help and I want someone fighting
39:34
Speaker 1: for me.
39:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean, I'm just going to give members
39:37
Speaker 3: their leeway because who knows? They know district better than
39:39
Speaker 3: I do. But I do think you can make that
39:42
Speaker 3: case without voting for that bill. I mean, back to
39:44
Speaker 3: Obama's speech, right? And he said that the people in
39:46
Speaker 3: charge are no longer even trying. I mean, if you
39:49
Speaker 3: look at Trump, he's pushing all the responsibility onto states
39:52
Speaker 3: to manage the coronavirus. He declared himself the wartime president,
39:56
Speaker 3: and now he's left governors to arm and equip the
39:59
Speaker 3: troops and do the fighting, right? And then the other
40:02
Speaker 3: person you can fight against is Mitch McConnell, who says
40:04
Speaker 3: we need to wait and see, and that he's okay
40:07
Speaker 3: with states going bankrupt. So I think Democrats need to
40:11
Speaker 3: run on reopening the country, but do so in a
40:14
Speaker 3: way that has all these safeguards in place to help
40:17
Speaker 3: people as much as possible. in the process, knowing that
40:21
Speaker 3: most of the country isn't going to, we're not going
40:23
Speaker 3: to open up completely, right? And that part of those
40:26
Speaker 3: safeguards includes testing and contact tracing, an expanded social safety
40:30
Speaker 3: net stimulus, and then protecting the Affordable Care Act. Because
40:36
Speaker 3: Trump is still trying to kill the ACA in the courts.
40:38
Speaker 3: Republicans voted to repeal it a billion times And now
40:41
Speaker 3: in the middle of a crisis, you have John Cornyn
40:43
Speaker 3: encouraging his constituents to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, right?
40:48
Speaker 3: So run on that. Run on gutting the social safety
40:50
Speaker 3: net in the middle of a crisis on not doing enough,
40:53
Speaker 3: on being cold and only helping businesses. I think you
40:55
Speaker 3: can do that whether or not you vote for this
40:57
Speaker 3: specific bill.
40:58
Speaker 4: It actually, I think, to both of your points, honestly,
41:00
Speaker 4: it's like we're in an unprecedented economic crisis, an election
41:04
Speaker 4: that will be conducted in a completely unusual way. There
41:07
Speaker 4: will be Senate races. There will be an incredibly contentious
41:09
Speaker 4: presidential election. There will be massive voter turnout. The forces
41:13
Speaker 4: at play in the outcome of who keeps the House
41:15
Speaker 4: and what happens in these districts are so large and actually,
41:18
Speaker 4: in many cases, outside of what's taking place in that district,
41:21
Speaker 4: that the kind of massaging on these individual votes may
41:25
Speaker 4: ultimately be impossible to measure. And so really what it
41:28
Speaker 4: comes down to is, do you think that this bill
41:30
Speaker 4: is good? Do you think people need this help? Maybe
41:33
Speaker 4: that would be the best thing to vote on.
41:36
Speaker 5: Yeah.
41:36
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think bringing it back to what
41:38
Speaker 1: we talked about with Biden versus Trump, which is like
41:41
Speaker 1: Republicans haven't done anything to make you feel safer and
41:45
Speaker 1: they haven't done anything to protect your jobs. Um, and
41:48
Speaker 1: then I do think you need an answer. Here's what
41:50
Speaker 1: Democrats want to do that is coherent, that you can
41:53
Speaker 1: repeat a lot. Um, I guess the question now is
41:55
Speaker 1: what Democrats should do next. Um, So there's already some
41:58
Speaker 1: talk that there could be a smaller compromise bill that
42:01
Speaker 1: includes state and local funding and unemployment insurance extension in
42:05
Speaker 1: exchange for expanded tax breaks and some legal protection for businesses.
42:11
Speaker 1: So the question is, should Democrats go for that compromise
42:15
Speaker 1: or stand firm and risk no bill getting passed at all? Tommy,
42:19
Speaker 1: what do you think?
42:20
Speaker 3: I mean, look, this is hard to know until you
42:22
Speaker 3: see the final result.
42:24
Speaker 5: Bill.
42:24
Speaker 3: But I think we need to be very wary about
42:27
Speaker 3: this liability protections piece because we can't have a situation
42:31
Speaker 3: where you have a bunch of businesses forcing people back
42:34
Speaker 3: to work in potentially unsafe conditions and then just washing
42:38
Speaker 3: their hands of any health problems that might emerge from it.
42:41
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that is risky and that needs
42:44
Speaker 3: to be scoped appropriately. I also just think that the
42:47
Speaker 3: PPP program was... created with good intentions, but the execution
42:53
Speaker 3: has failed. A lot of people got loans based on
42:56
Speaker 3: their relationship with banks and not on need. A lot
42:59
Speaker 3: of businesses were given money to pay workers at a
43:02
Speaker 3: period where they couldn't reopen. We need to just get
43:06
Speaker 3: money into the hands of individuals. And however we have
43:09
Speaker 3: to do that, I thought Pramila Jayapal's proposal that you
43:13
Speaker 3: talked about last Thursday was fantastic. That would be my
43:16
Speaker 3: focus if I were them, would just be to make
43:18
Speaker 3: sure that this is a worker's first bill and fight
43:21
Speaker 3: like hell to scope everything in that direction.
43:25
Speaker 5: Love it.
43:25
Speaker 3: What do you think?
43:27
Speaker 9: Yeah.
43:27
Speaker 4: I mean, look, on liability protections, first of all, I
43:29
Speaker 4: do think that whatever happens, I think it's a contrast
43:33
Speaker 4: to be drawn. This is what we're fighting for. This
43:35
Speaker 4: is what they're fighting for. Look, we've already seen spikes
43:39
Speaker 4: in COVID-19 due to the unsafe conditions at places like
43:44
Speaker 4: meat processing plants. You know, Democrats cannot go along with
43:48
Speaker 4: a bill that ultimately results in people basically no longer
43:52
Speaker 4: being eligible for unemployment because they're technically allowed to work,
43:57
Speaker 4: being forced to go into a place that is unsafe
43:59
Speaker 4: where their boss can do whatever they want without fear
44:02
Speaker 4: of what happens if they don't protect their people. I mean,
44:04
Speaker 4: that's just not, it's just, it's, it's, It's not, it's,
44:07
Speaker 4: it's not, it's morally, it's morally unacceptable.
44:10
Speaker 2: It's just unacceptable.
44:11
Speaker 4: That's all.
44:12
Speaker 1: And, and like, it's morally unacceptable. And it's like, do
44:15
Speaker 1: not give up that political issue for the fall. Like,
44:18
Speaker 1: like the, the liability protections are so incredibly unpopular. We
44:22
Speaker 1: have seen the polling. It is like 70% of people
44:26
Speaker 1: don't want to give these liability protections to these corporations.
44:29
Speaker 1: They don't want employers to be able to get customers
44:34
Speaker 1: and employees sick without any accountability whatsoever. And even a
44:39
Speaker 1: majority of Trump voters don't want that in the last
44:42
Speaker 1: poll that we saw. So like, I really would be
44:44
Speaker 1: careful about this. Now, Pelosi has been saying, well, I
44:48
Speaker 1: would only be for some protections for companies who are
44:52
Speaker 1: shown to have followed like very specific safety guidelines by
44:56
Speaker 1: the CDC or whoever. And if the company has followed
44:59
Speaker 1: all those safeguards to the letter, then perhaps they get
45:03
Speaker 1: some kind of protection. So like, maybe there's some kind
45:05
Speaker 1: of a compromise there. Like I'd wait and see the language,
45:08
Speaker 1: but I'd be very careful on this one.
45:11
Speaker 3: They're very well, there could be a version of it
45:12
Speaker 3: that works, right? But that has to be backstopped by
45:15
Speaker 3: testing and contact tracing, something that Trump has just decided
45:18
Speaker 3: that he is gonna push to the States. I just
45:20
Speaker 3: do think broadly, right? Like everyone is fucking sick of quarantine.
45:26
Speaker 3: You guys are, I am. People who have no paycheck
45:30
Speaker 3: coming in, they're really scared.
45:31
Speaker 5: Right.
45:31
Speaker 3: So Democrats need to be in favor of a safe
45:35
Speaker 3: phased reopening with a backstop for people who desperately need
45:39
Speaker 3: it in case they can't get their job. Right. But
45:41
Speaker 3: like I do think our posture has to be for
45:44
Speaker 3: some sort of opening up. We can't be seen as
45:49
Speaker 3: impediments to opening up the economy or reopening the economy.
45:53
Speaker 3: We have to be seen as people who are actively
45:55
Speaker 3: working on the best way forward to do it safely.
45:59
Speaker 1: It is a safe reopening that protects lives and livelihoods
46:03
Speaker 1: versus reckless reopening that does nothing for your health and
46:06
Speaker 1: nothing for your job. That has to be the contrast.
46:09
Speaker 2: And I also just would add to that, too.
46:10
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you know, Rand Paul got correctly
46:14
Speaker 4: a lot of criticism for his for his sort of
46:17
Speaker 4: bloviating during that committee hearing.
46:19
Speaker 3: Which time? Narrow town.
46:21
Speaker 4: Yeah. With with Fauci. is the one I'm speaking of.
46:27
Speaker 4: But kids are out of school. And I think that
46:31
Speaker 4: there are a lot of parents doing their best to
46:32
Speaker 4: make sure their kids keep learning during that time. There
46:35
Speaker 4: are a lot of kids who aren't learning anything. They're
46:36
Speaker 4: out of school. They're not learning. They're in an endless summer.
46:40
Speaker 4: And the cost to those kids is going to be very,
46:43
Speaker 4: very large in terms of their ability to catch up
46:46
Speaker 4: and how they're falling behind right now. And I do
46:50
Speaker 4: think that that's another place where I do want, I
46:52
Speaker 4: think it's important that Democrats start speaking more forcefully on
46:55
Speaker 4: behalf of those parents and on behalf of those kids.
46:57
Speaker 5: That's all.
46:59
Speaker 2: All right.
46:59
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll have Lovett's interview with Senator
47:02
Speaker 1: Sherrod Brown and Connie Schultz.
47:13
Speaker 4: I'm now joined by a power couple, the senior senator
47:17
Speaker 4: from Ohio, Sherrod Brown and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Connie Schultz.
47:20
Speaker 4: Her first novel, The Daughters of Erie Town is out
47:23
Speaker 4: June 9th.
47:24
Speaker 2: Welcome to you both.
47:25
Speaker 9: Thank you, John. It's so good to see your face.
47:28
Speaker 2: Well, you know what?
47:31
Speaker 4: The good news is it's a podcast. How is quarantine going?
47:38
Speaker 4: How are you doing together?
47:39
Speaker 5: No, I mean, you can, you know, we, we have,
47:42
Speaker 5: we have a good marriage and love each other and
47:44
Speaker 5: two great dogs and we have paying jobs and we
47:46
Speaker 5: can work at home and, you know, we're pretty lucky.
47:49
Speaker 5: And I, I just know that, you know, the mental
47:51
Speaker 5: health issues and the financial issues and the, You know,
47:55
Speaker 5: the millions of people that go to work every day and,
47:58
Speaker 5: you know, not just working in hospitals, but doing, you know,
48:00
Speaker 5: food service and deliveries and driving buses and working at supermarkets.
48:05
Speaker 5: And they go home every day, you know, anxious about
48:08
Speaker 5: what's going to happen to their families. It's a tough,
48:10
Speaker 5: tough time for so many.
48:12
Speaker 9: On a much lighter note, I am glad to say
48:14
Speaker 9: that it turns out we like each other very much.
48:17
Speaker 9: also because you can love someone and not want to
48:19
Speaker 9: spend so much time with them.
48:20
Speaker 4: So I'm happy.
48:22
Speaker 5: To hear that we actually do like each other. And John,
48:24
Speaker 5: we got the two dogs too. Did I mention the dogs?
48:27
Speaker 4: You did mention the dogs. No, look, it is a nice,
48:29
Speaker 4: it is, um, it is a pleasant surprise to realize
48:32
Speaker 4: you can spend more time than you ever thought possible
48:34
Speaker 4: with a person and, uh, be willing to continue to
48:37
Speaker 4: do so, I would say.
48:39
Speaker 2: Uh, so we.
48:40
Speaker 5: Plan to do that by the way. Okay.
48:45
Speaker 4: So, Senator, right now the Senate's keeping a pretty normal schedule.
48:48
Speaker 4: You're going in and out of session. That means you
48:50
Speaker 4: have to go back and forth to Washington. Do you
48:53
Speaker 4: think that that's safe? And do you think that that's
48:56
Speaker 4: the right?
48:58
Speaker 2: I've already got it. I know.
48:59
Speaker 4: I know how Connie feels about it. Do you think
49:01
Speaker 4: that there's a safer way to proceed?
49:03
Speaker 6: Yeah.
49:04
Speaker 5: First of all, McConnell is bringing us to Washington every week.
49:09
Speaker 5: I have no staff in the building. I'm not asking
49:11
Speaker 5: staff to come. But because we're in session, police officers
49:15
Speaker 5: and food service people and custodians are there. They don't
49:19
Speaker 5: come to work in black SUVs like Mitch McConnell. They
49:23
Speaker 5: get to work how they get to work. And they're exposing,
49:26
Speaker 5: potentially exposing themselves to that illness. At the same time,
49:30
Speaker 5: violating local public health orders, I might add, in Washington.
49:34
Speaker 5: And at the same time, McConnell's not doing anything of
49:37
Speaker 5: real substance to deal with the coronavirus. He said there's
49:41
Speaker 5: no urgency. For a while, he said, let the cities
49:45
Speaker 5: and states go bankrupt. But clearly, we've got a lot
49:49
Speaker 5: to do, and we ought to be doing it. I
49:50
Speaker 5: think we can do it remote. We're doing our hearings
49:52
Speaker 5: remote in banking and housing.
49:55
Speaker 9: At your insistence.
49:56
Speaker 5: At my insistence.
49:57
Speaker 9: At your initiation.
49:58
Speaker 5: And Senator Crapo, the chairman, Republican chairman, has been good
50:01
Speaker 5: about it, very cooperative. We've done it well. Tomorrow, we're
50:05
Speaker 5: going to have... the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and
50:07
Speaker 5: the Secretary of the Treasury in. And they're going to
50:09
Speaker 5: be remote. We're going to be remote. We can do that.
50:11
Speaker 5: We can do everything remote. But the most important thing
50:14
Speaker 5: is not about our going back or not. The most
50:16
Speaker 5: important thing is McConnell actually addressed these awful public health, housing,
50:21
Speaker 5: and economic problems.
50:22
Speaker 9: And also, can I just add this? You're not going
50:24
Speaker 9: to say this, but I'm going to. When he does
50:26
Speaker 9: go in a committee room, the Democrats are wearing their masks.
50:28
Speaker 9: The Republicans take theirs off. And as we all know,
50:31
Speaker 9: if we don't all wear our masks, nobody is protected.
50:35
Speaker 9: And I find that obscene. And they bring in staff
50:38
Speaker 9: members more than Democrats do. And so these are people
50:41
Speaker 9: who work for them who are being ordered to show
50:44
Speaker 9: up in a place they have no business being right now.
50:46
Speaker 9: They should not be on the premises. And they're not
50:49
Speaker 9: being protected by their bosses. I find all of this
50:51
Speaker 9: so objectionable.
50:52
Speaker 5: What Connie doesn't quite understand, John, is Republican senators, because
50:56
Speaker 5: they are U.S. senators, they can never get sick.
50:59
Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
51:01
Speaker 9: I love that he attempted to tell me what I
51:02
Speaker 9: don't understand. I am fully aware of what they perceive
51:06
Speaker 9: themselves to be. I'm also very willing to explain to
51:09
Speaker 9: them who they are not, and that is immune to
51:12
Speaker 9: this virus and not entitled to endanger the lives of others,
51:15
Speaker 9: including not just staff, but their family members. I feel
51:18
Speaker 9: quite strongly about this.
51:20
Speaker 4: Connie, what do you think is propelling? In a larger sense,
51:24
Speaker 4: there is this machismo, this masculinity logic about masks signaling
51:31
Speaker 4: weakness that somehow following public health officials' best recommendations is
51:38
Speaker 4: a sign that you're not tough.
51:39
Speaker 2: What is your response to that?
51:42
Speaker 9: Weakness is the fear of looking silly by wearing a mask.
51:47
Speaker 9: That is the weakness, that you care more how you
51:50
Speaker 9: look or you care more about what you think you're
51:53
Speaker 9: projecting about yourself than you do about protecting other people.
51:57
Speaker 9: That is the weakness, that we know who the strong
51:59
Speaker 9: people are. They're the ones who may be scared to
52:02
Speaker 9: death of this virus. And so they're wearing their masks,
52:05
Speaker 9: not because it protects them in public, but it's the
52:07
Speaker 9: least they can do to protect others. That is strength.
52:11
Speaker 5: Not that Donald Trump is an insecure old man or anything.
52:14
Speaker 2: No, no, not that you would suggest that.
52:17
Speaker 4: Senator Brown, right now, House Democratic leadership, Senate Republican leadership
52:22
Speaker 4: are reportedly not talking. What are the next steps for
52:26
Speaker 4: actually getting an additional stimulus bill? And I know that
52:29
Speaker 4: You know, you've been working on some rent issues, utility relief.
52:33
Speaker 2: Like, what are your hopes for getting that done in
52:36
Speaker 2: the next package?
52:37
Speaker 5: Well, our hopes and our efforts are to put pressure
52:41
Speaker 5: on McConnell. Schumer and McConnell and Mnuchin ought to be
52:45
Speaker 5: negotiating with Pelosi. Whether we start with a House bill
52:48
Speaker 5: or just, oh, we just want to open the negotiations.
52:51
Speaker 5: The House bill is a great place to start. It
52:54
Speaker 5: does almost every major thing we need done. It does
52:59
Speaker 5: significant help, puts money in people's pockets. It's almost like
53:04
Speaker 5: McConnell and Trump, they don't trust local governments and they
53:08
Speaker 5: don't trust individual people. I want to put money in
53:11
Speaker 5: people's pockets, let them decide how to spend it to
53:14
Speaker 5: take care of themselves so they don't get evicted so
53:16
Speaker 5: they can take care of their kids so they don't
53:17
Speaker 5: have to dip into any retirement savings they have. I
53:20
Speaker 5: want to put money in local governments. I don't want
53:22
Speaker 5: to tell the city of Cleveland or the city of Lima,
53:26
Speaker 5: Ohio or Dayton, Ohio, how to spend the money. They
53:29
Speaker 5: know what they have to do. McConnell doesn't, I mean,
53:31
Speaker 5: McConnell's sort of all things power. He doesn't really trust
53:36
Speaker 5: local communities to do what they need to do the
53:39
Speaker 5: right things for themselves. And that's really a big difference,
53:42
Speaker 5: I think.
53:44
Speaker 4: Connie, another facet of this crisis has been the way
53:48
Speaker 4: that the economic immiseration has hit local journalism. The advertising
53:55
Speaker 4: revenue is gone, and this is a crisis that has
53:57
Speaker 4: added to an already long-running downturn for local journalism at
54:03
Speaker 4: a time when people are turning to local outlets to
54:06
Speaker 4: guide them through complicated local regulations, questions about the way
54:10
Speaker 4: a state regulation or rule or guideline interacts with the federal,
54:13
Speaker 4: interacts with the local around going to the beach, going
54:16
Speaker 4: to the movies, going to the barber, whatever the different
54:19
Speaker 4: ordinances may be. What do you see right now as
54:22
Speaker 4: a way to help support local journalism at a time
54:24
Speaker 4: when places like the Plain Dealer and others have been gutted?
54:28
Speaker 9: Well, the Plain Dealer, I think we need to speak
54:30
Speaker 9: about specifically because it took full advantage of this coronavirus
54:34
Speaker 9: to lay off virtually everyone from the Guild. And the
54:39
Speaker 9: few who were left finally crossed over to what is
54:40
Speaker 9: called cleveland.com. So the Guild is dead at the Plain
54:44
Speaker 9: Dealer as of now, which means they have no rights
54:47
Speaker 9: to negotiate for wages and work conditions. And it was
54:50
Speaker 9: so deliberate. And this was where I launched my career,
54:56
Speaker 9: as you know, at the Plain Dealer and to watch
54:58
Speaker 9: what has happened to this newspaper. And this time when
55:01
Speaker 9: we need the information most, there are some good reporters
55:04
Speaker 9: still working there. The problem is a lot of people
55:07
Speaker 9: no longer subscribe to their local newspapers in part because
55:10
Speaker 9: many of the ones who do are older and they
55:12
Speaker 9: want to get daily newspapers out at their front door.
55:14
Speaker 9: And that has changed as well. We really are going
55:17
Speaker 9: to have to look at how we fund local journalism differently.
55:19
Speaker 9: And there are some grants, there's some conversation about how
55:22
Speaker 9: that's going to happen. My concern is that not enough
55:25
Speaker 9: organizations are picking up the slack for it. Here in Cleveland,
55:28
Speaker 9: we have Cleveland's crane business, which has actually added reporters
55:32
Speaker 9: to the coverage. I never thought I'd see that. A
55:35
Speaker 9: lot of my former colleagues are there now. The greater
55:38
Speaker 9: problem here is, I mean, you saw what Trump's doing
55:41
Speaker 9: with that video of that reporter who was, he had
55:44
Speaker 9: protesters coming perilously close to him. without masks, they were
55:47
Speaker 9: threatening him. And Donald Trump keeps tweeting it out in
55:51
Speaker 9: a celebratory way. So one of the first things I
55:55
Speaker 9: would ask everyone who listens to Pod Save America, because
55:57
Speaker 9: your audience is so large, I know you get frustrated
56:00
Speaker 9: with mainstream reporters at times. I know you wish the
56:03
Speaker 9: journalism were better at times, but I want you to
56:05
Speaker 9: consider the risks they're taking right now to cover this
56:08
Speaker 9: president and the people he has empowered to be so
56:12
Speaker 9: abusive and sometimes dangerous. And I hope you'll show your
56:15
Speaker 9: support And I'll help you let journalists know when you
56:18
Speaker 9: see them doing it right. It's never mattered more. They'll
56:21
Speaker 9: do it anyway. But I can't begin to tell you
56:23
Speaker 9: how much it matters when they hear from you.
56:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, that that footage is from News 12
56:27
Speaker 4: Long Island.
56:28
Speaker 2: That's what I grew up watching.
56:29
Speaker 4: And, you know, News 12 Long Island is a down
56:31
Speaker 4: the middle local news outlet. You know, they're being attacked
56:34
Speaker 4: because of the president's instigations, calling them the virus, trying
56:37
Speaker 4: to threaten these people. Then you go look at what's
56:39
Speaker 4: on News 12 and it's a It's a person showing
56:42
Speaker 4: people how to look up at the stars and teach
56:45
Speaker 4: their kids and just sort of the basics of local
56:48
Speaker 4: journalism that make people feel like they're part of a community.
56:50
Speaker 4: It's really shameful.
56:53
Speaker 9: And now the president's encouraging other people to do that
56:55
Speaker 9: to other local reporters.
56:56
Speaker 5: Think about that.
56:58
Speaker 4: So in opposite to what we've seen from Trump, you
57:02
Speaker 4: have a governor in DeWine who has behaved more responsibly
57:07
Speaker 4: than a lot of his colleagues at the national level.
57:09
Speaker 4: And I'm sure that there are, you know, The response
57:12
Speaker 4: is by no means perfect, but there's clearly a different
57:14
Speaker 4: incentive structure for someone like the governor of Ohio, even
57:18
Speaker 4: though he's a Republican than there is for these national politicians.
57:24
Speaker 4: And it goes beyond just the temperament of this one person.
57:27
Speaker 4: Both of you, I'd put it to you. Why is
57:29
Speaker 4: it possible for a governor to operate the way he
57:33
Speaker 4: has when you have national politicians like Rand Paul and
57:36
Speaker 4: others viewing the politics as requiring basically a completely different
57:41
Speaker 4: kind of response?
57:42
Speaker 5: There's a couple of differences. I mean, DeWine is, it
57:45
Speaker 5: just shows experience and character matter. And DeWine's been doing
57:49
Speaker 5: this for four decades. He's a man of character. He's
57:52
Speaker 5: a decent guy. He isn't different. It's not a partisan
57:56
Speaker 5: thing because I supported what he's done. I will publicly
57:59
Speaker 5: say DeWine has saved Ohioans' lives while Trump's actions and
58:05
Speaker 5: inactions first and then actions have have killed more Americans.
58:09
Speaker 5: One of the big differences is DeWine listened to his doctors,
58:12
Speaker 5: listened to the experts. Amy Acton is a 50-ish-year-old woman
58:20
Speaker 5: doctor out of Columbus, and she has been terrific advising him.
58:25
Speaker 5: We're concerned that DeWine now is opening up the economy
58:28
Speaker 5: a little too quickly without giving workers the protections. It's
58:33
Speaker 5: ultimately We know there are going to be outbreaks at workplaces.
58:36
Speaker 5: We know that with all the kind of gatherings we
58:39
Speaker 5: see in bars and restaurants, but ultimately it's workers that
58:41
Speaker 5: are going to get hurt. And the workers are more often,
58:45
Speaker 5: they're more likely to be women. They're more disproportionately people
58:48
Speaker 5: of color. They're the ones that get exposed and the
58:51
Speaker 5: governor's got to make sure they're protected. He hasn't done
58:54
Speaker 5: that to the degree he needs to yet. Because he
58:56
Speaker 5: said he was not going to require it anymore. that
58:59
Speaker 5: customers wear masks, that we wear them in public. Well,
59:02
Speaker 5: you're not protecting workers if you don't do that. And
59:04
Speaker 5: I was so disappointed to see him do that because
59:07
Speaker 5: I have been just just as sure as that has
59:09
Speaker 5: I've been publicly very supportive of Governor DeWine I feel
59:13
Speaker 5: this is a real misstep and I people keep reporting
59:16
Speaker 5: back to me I mean, you know, I very active
59:18
Speaker 5: on social media and I'm a columnist I'm always hearing
59:20
Speaker 5: for people are shopping and they're giving me the numbers
59:22
Speaker 5: of people they see in masks and and the people
59:24
Speaker 5: they don't, while all the workers are wearing them. But again,
59:27
Speaker 5: let's not forget, if not everyone is wearing a mask,
59:31
Speaker 5: no one is protected. And look what happened in South Dakota,
59:35
Speaker 5: the huge outbreak, the coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of workers,
59:40
Speaker 5: the meatpacking plant. Then the President of the United States
59:43
Speaker 5: finally gets around to using the Defense Production Act, instead
59:46
Speaker 5: of using it to scale up testing and then contact tracing,
59:50
Speaker 5: instead of using it to to have a national effort
59:52
Speaker 5: to get protective equipment to workers and to everyone else,
59:56
Speaker 5: he has used it to reopen that plant, not requiring
59:59
Speaker 5: the company to slow the line down, that's part of
1:00:02
Speaker 5: the problem in these meatpacking plants, not requiring the employers
1:00:05
Speaker 5: to take care of the employees and protect their health,
1:00:08
Speaker 5: not doing anything about the food supply, just saying, we
1:00:12
Speaker 5: gotta reopen these plants and get people back to work.
1:00:14
Speaker 5: And that in a nutshell represents what Trump has done
1:00:19
Speaker 5: all over the country with workers. or two workers.
1:00:23
Speaker 4: Senator, one last question on the politics of this. This
1:00:26
Speaker 4: crisis has, it's a health crisis, it's a democracy crisis,
1:00:30
Speaker 4: it's an economic crisis. Do you see this as changing
1:00:34
Speaker 4: how politicians campaign and how do you think it should change?
1:00:39
Speaker 5: What's significant, I think, that comes out of this is
1:00:42
Speaker 5: American public's greater, deepened, more deeper appreciation of the role
1:00:49
Speaker 5: of government. and people that have spent their whole careers
1:00:52
Speaker 5: bashing government and saying government can do nothing right. Private
1:00:55
Speaker 5: sector is not going to find the vaccine. Private sector
1:00:59
Speaker 5: is not going to provide dollars for public health, for
1:01:04
Speaker 5: communities to fight back. The private sector is not going
1:01:07
Speaker 5: to do all the things that we need done to
1:01:09
Speaker 5: keep people in their apartments, all of those things. So
1:01:12
Speaker 5: I think what comes out of this is a more
1:01:14
Speaker 5: progressive society where people recognize the role of government to
1:01:19
Speaker 5: everything from climate change to dealing with racial disparities. We're
1:01:23
Speaker 5: more and more aware of the damage that is caused
1:01:26
Speaker 5: by the great revealing, if you will, of the pandemic.
1:01:34
Speaker 5: And I think we will act accordingly, especially with a
1:01:36
Speaker 5: new president next year.
1:01:39
Speaker 4: Connie, you wrote a great piece about why it's important
1:01:42
Speaker 4: to still allow yourself to feel joy during a time
1:01:45
Speaker 4: in which there's so much hardship and so much pain.
1:01:48
Speaker 4: How do you think we can simultaneously hold guilt and
1:01:52
Speaker 4: grief and joy during a time in which we know
1:01:55
Speaker 4: how much pain and suffering there is?
1:01:57
Speaker 9: I almost think of it. Thank you for your kind
1:01:59
Speaker 9: words about the piece. As I recall, I said I
1:02:01
Speaker 9: didn't want to squander the joy that remains. And for
1:02:05
Speaker 9: years I've thought and talked about grief as that thing
1:02:08
Speaker 9: that sneaks up on you and it knocks on the
1:02:10
Speaker 9: door and it's not going to go away until you
1:02:13
Speaker 9: invite it in and you get bored with each other.
1:02:15
Speaker 9: It's almost as if we flipped it. Grief seems to
1:02:17
Speaker 9: be our underlying emotion, right? Over overarching maybe and that
1:02:24
Speaker 9: the joy can sneak up on us now. And we
1:02:26
Speaker 9: have to let it in when it's banging at the
1:02:28
Speaker 9: door because I don't think it will wait around and
1:02:30
Speaker 9: it'll quickly flee. And we are always more complicated than
1:02:37
Speaker 9: our worst burden, just as we are always better than
1:02:40
Speaker 9: our worst mistake. And I think that the importance of
1:02:43
Speaker 9: letting in these small joys that suddenly have taken on
1:02:46
Speaker 9: such larger meaning often is that because they sustain us
1:02:50
Speaker 9: and they remind us that this is not our forevermore,
1:02:53
Speaker 9: that it will not always be this hard. And it
1:02:55
Speaker 9: is really hard right now. I mean, I've had tremendous
1:02:59
Speaker 9: losses myself recently. And one of my oldest friends, almost
1:03:01
Speaker 9: 40 years, just died. And the thing is, the more
1:03:05
Speaker 9: I look for pictures of her as I was preparing
1:03:07
Speaker 9: to write about her, the lighter I started to feel
1:03:09
Speaker 9: because we had such a history together. These are the
1:03:12
Speaker 9: things we have to hold on to because we're more
1:03:15
Speaker 9: than just our grief.
1:03:18
Speaker 2: That was beautiful.
1:03:19
Speaker 3: Genuinely.
1:03:21
Speaker 4: One final question on a lighter note for both of you.
1:03:24
Speaker 4: And this is going to be tough.
1:03:25
Speaker 3: All right.
1:03:26
Speaker 4: I'm going to ask you both to answer. It is
1:03:28
Speaker 4: a yes or no question. And I'm asking you to
1:03:30
Speaker 4: both to say your answer at the exact same time.
1:03:33
Speaker 5: Oh, you can ask us. I mean, we're going to.
1:03:37
Speaker 2: Here's the question.
1:03:38
Speaker 9: Here's the question.
1:03:42
Speaker 4: Is Senator Sherrod Brown doing his share of the dishes?
1:03:47
Speaker 5: One, two, three. Oh, my goodness.
1:03:50
Speaker 2: Yes, he does.
1:03:51
Speaker 5: He does. I cook. He cleans. No kidding.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait.
1:03:54
Speaker 5: I make breakfast. She cooks. Everything else. You know what?
1:03:56
Speaker 9: You just blew it by qualifying it because I cook
1:03:58
Speaker 9: all the food.
1:03:59
Speaker 5: He cooks all the stuff that really matters.
1:04:01
Speaker 9: But he does bring breakfast to me in bed every
1:04:04
Speaker 9: single morning he's home. Every single morning with French bread
1:04:07
Speaker 9: and coffee.
1:04:07
Speaker 5: You know, this... this pandemic's been tough because i'm home
1:04:11
Speaker 5: every single day and he has a so i get
1:04:13
Speaker 5: i get no off days on this one oh oh oh.
1:04:18
Speaker 9: Oh welcome to womanhood my husband welcome.
1:04:21
Speaker 5: John thanks for injecting that into our relationship that was
1:04:24
Speaker 5: really we.
1:04:26
Speaker 7: Love you john you and your very love i love
1:04:29
Speaker 7: you both i am so grateful for you doing this
1:04:32
Speaker 7: this was uh uh such a um A nice way
1:04:35
Speaker 7: to deal with some really hard topics.
1:04:36
Speaker 4: And I'm grateful for both of you for taking the time.
1:04:38
Speaker 4: Senator Sherrod Brown, Connie Schultz.
1:04:41
Speaker 9: You reached out very early to check in on us.
1:04:43
Speaker 9: I don't know if you remember, you sent me a
1:04:44
Speaker 9: private message and I will never forget that. That's who
1:04:47
Speaker 9: you are.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
1:04:49
Speaker 5: John, did you ever make her breakfast in bed? Oh, stop.
1:04:52
Speaker 5: Don't tell her.
1:04:53
Speaker 4: Listen, I actually, I will tell you, I will tell you,
1:04:55
Speaker 4: all right, there is a dirty pan from which French
1:04:58
Speaker 4: toast was produced.
1:04:59
Speaker 5: All right.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: I will just say that. All right, it happened.
1:05:03
Speaker 5: That pan's been dirty for how long?
1:05:05
Speaker 4: Sorry, we're out of time. Unfortunately, we just have to go.
1:05:09
Speaker 2: Okay, love you.
1:05:10
Speaker 5: Bye-bye. Thank you.
1:05:11
Speaker 9: See you.
1:05:12
Speaker 2: Thank you both.
1:05:13
Speaker 5: Bye-bye.
1:05:18
Speaker 1: Thanks to Sherrod and Connie for joining us today. And
1:05:22
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you guys later this week.
1:05:24
Speaker 2: See you guys.
1:05:25
Speaker 5: Bye.
1:05:25
Speaker 2: See you, fellas.
1:05:26
Speaker 3: See you, gents. Bye.
1:05:30
Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
1:05:32
Speaker 1: executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
1:05:37
Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
1:05:39
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
1:05:43
Speaker 1: Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
1:05:47
Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
1:05:50
Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
1:05:53
Speaker 1: every week.