Latest / Pod Save America / “Joe and the Giant Speech.”

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“Joe and the Giant Speech.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:52
  Speaker 5: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:53
  Speaker 6: On today's show, Joe Biden takes on Republican voter suppression
• 0:55
  Speaker 6: in Georgia. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler talks about
• 0:59
  Speaker 6: Ron Johnson's re-election announcement and saving democracy in.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: The Badger State.
• 1:03
  Speaker 6: And Ted Cruz grovels to Tucker Carlson for referring to
• 1:07
  Speaker 6: violent insurrectionists as terrorists.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Wild stuff.
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: You know, a lot of clips get shared online and
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: they're like, this is the worst thing you'll ever see.
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: I can't believe how bad this... This one delivered like nothing...
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: Nothing I've seen in a while.
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  Speaker 3: It sure did, Tommy.
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  Speaker 6: It's why I broke my new rule of I tweeted it,
• 1:24
  Speaker 6: but I didn't do a screenshot. I wanted people to
• 1:26
  Speaker 6: watch the clip.
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, me too.
• 1:28
  Speaker 7: If there were any more cringes per minute on that clip,
• 1:31
  Speaker 7: it would be part of, and just like that. And
• 1:34
  Speaker 7: just like that, Ted Cruz humiliated himself.
• 1:38
  Speaker 6: In case there's anyone who was involved in Just Like
• 1:41
  Speaker 6: That listening to our podcast, it's now heard a text
• 1:43
  Speaker 6: four or five episodes in a row.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: It's okay.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Sorry. Attack away. All right, but first, before we start.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: You know what you did.
• 1:52
  Speaker 6: Check out this week's Offline where I talk to Facebook's
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: former chief security officer, Alex Stamos, about why he left
• 1:58
  Speaker 6: the company, why he thinks Mark Zuckerberg should too, and
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: how he thinks the platform can become less of a
• 2:03
  Speaker 6: democracy-destroying hellscape.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Is he broken up about the Bob Saget news?
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: It is sad. It is sad.
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: Listen, you don't have a lot of chance to make
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: a Stamos joke. I actually was sad about the Bob Saget.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: You actually texted me about the interview and did say
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: John Stamos.
• 2:20
  Speaker 8: Yep. Yep.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: So that is one thing that happened. I was sad too.
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: We all grew up watching America's Funniest Home Videos and
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: America's Funniest Home Videos, both shows.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: America, this is you.
• 2:29
  Speaker 6: Also check out the latest episode of All Caps NBA
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: on YouTube where Jason Concepcion discusses who's playing and who's
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: not as COVID-19 cases soar within the league. And Carl
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: Tartt from NBC's new show Grand Crew joins to explain
• 2:41
  Speaker 6: some lesser-known Los Angeles Clippers facts. Subscribe to the Take
• 2:45
  Speaker 6: Line YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: All Caps NBA.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: It's fantastic. All right, let's get to the news.
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: Joe Biden is headed to Georgia for a major speech
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: on voting rights where he's expected to again drive home
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  Speaker 6: the message He delivered on January 6th about the threat
• 3:01
  Speaker 6: to democracy posed by Donald Trump's Republican Party. The president
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  Speaker 6: also delivered remarks on Friday about the monthly jobs report,
• 3:08
  Speaker 6: which showed a sharp drop in the unemployment rate, where
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  Speaker 6: he had the following message for Republican politicians who accuse
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: him of ignoring inflation.
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  Speaker 9: Malarkey.
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  Speaker 8: They want to talk down the recovery because they voted
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  Speaker 8: against the legislation that made it happen. They voted against
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  Speaker 8: the tax cuts for middle-class families. They voted against the
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  Speaker 8: funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police
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  Speaker 8: officers and firefighters on the job, to lower health care premiums.
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  Speaker 8: They voted against the funds we're now using to buy
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  Speaker 8: COVID booster shots and more antiviral pills. I refuse to
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  Speaker 8: let them stand in the way of this recovery. And
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  Speaker 8: now my focus is on keeping this recovery strong and durable,
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  Speaker 8: notwithstanding Republican obstructionism.
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  Speaker 3: Malarkey. Malarkey.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: Malarkey.
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  Speaker 6: So Biden's recent speeches led to a classic classic comes
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  Speaker 6: out swinging piece from Michael Shear at The New York Times,
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  Speaker 6: who described the president as, quote, lashing out at Republicans with, quote,
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  Speaker 6: forceful new attacks.
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  Speaker 3: And a sharp tone.
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  Speaker 6: Do you guys think this is an intentional strategy from
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  Speaker 6: the White House, and why do you think they decided
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: to do this now?
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  Speaker 3: Tommy.
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  Speaker 5: You also missed the triggering line for me, which was
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: seeking to jumpstart his agenda, which obviously is true, but
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: I think it was a stalled agenda. Did it say
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: jumpstart stalled agenda? Probably, yeah. You could write these things
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: in your sleep.
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  Speaker 5: It's so annoying when the change in tone is the focus,
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: but I don't know. You kind of go into this
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: speech knowing that's what's going to happen.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they were.
• 4:40
  Speaker 7: He didn't talk about Trump for a year and then
• 4:42
  Speaker 7: he talked about Trump. I think they knew what they
• 4:43
  Speaker 7: were doing. One other thing I just, and the piece
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  Speaker 7: is fine.
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  Speaker 5: It's fair.
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  Speaker 3: It's a classic of the genre, but it's fair.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: It's a, yeah, it's a classic of the genre.
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  Speaker 10: Exactly.
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  Speaker 7: But the, but there's also in this genre of stories,
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  Speaker 7: there's always the to be sure paragraph, like, so here
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: are the things that are going well, but then here
• 5:01
  Speaker 7: are the things that aren't. And my favorite part of
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: that paragraph laying all the challenges that lay before Biden
• 5:07
  Speaker 7: is Every day there is evidence that climate change is
• 5:10
  Speaker 7: getting worse. It's like, wow, that is a tough part
• 5:14
  Speaker 7: of the thing you're supposed to deal with in the
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: first two years. But the other piece of this is
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: just as we head into the midterms and Trump is
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  Speaker 7: going to be more and more of a figure, it
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  Speaker 7: is just a reminder that like Biden puts down a
• 5:27
  Speaker 7: pencil and picks up a ballpoint pen. He is escalating
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: the rhetoric. Trump puts down a rifle and picks up
• 5:34
  Speaker 7: a sword. and he's easing tensions and turning down the temperature.
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  Speaker 4: It's a trap. We are at malarkey. Like, lest we forget,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Trump threatened to kill Hillary Clinton.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, a few times. A couple times.
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  Speaker 7: And he's like, malarkey. Malarkey is the sharp new tone.
• 5:52
  Speaker 7: And it is a sharp new tone, but just.
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  Speaker 5: No, this is the trap that Democrats often lay for themselves.
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  Speaker 5: And this is why the story was triggering for me.
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  Speaker 5: I got very mad about it, and then I reread it,
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  Speaker 5: and I was like, oh, it's completely fine.
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  Speaker 3: Completely fine.
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  Speaker 5: Which is that Barack Obama, when he ran, pledged to
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: have the most transparent administration in history. And then every
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: time you do something that isn't seen as perfectly transparent,
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: that gets thrown back in your face. When you run
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: as the unity candidate... You just gotta know that for
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: the next four to eight years, every time you say
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: something that could remotely be construed as divisive, everyone is
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  Speaker 5: gonna punch you in.
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  Speaker 2: The face for it.
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  Speaker 6: Well, so sometimes the press treats what you do as
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  Speaker 6: a strategy when it's actually just happenstance. But then sometimes
• 6:35
  Speaker 6: it is a strategy and the press writes it and
• 6:38
  Speaker 6: you're like, oh good, they figured it out. I kind
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: of felt like it was the latter this time. I
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  Speaker 6: felt like in the White House they were like, all right,
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  Speaker 6: enough of this shit. We've been we've been getting hit
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  Speaker 6: for a while now. All we've been doing is like,
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  Speaker 6: you know, there's a lot of coverage about Democrats fighting
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  Speaker 6: amongst themselves, like the Republicans are the one who are
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  Speaker 6: fucking up democracy in the country here.
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  Speaker 3: Let's take it to them. Do you guys agree?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it seems like he held back.
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  Speaker 7: I mean, Clyburn, I think, represented the frustration pretty well,
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  Speaker 7: which is like we were trying to do a bunch
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  Speaker 7: of stuff, including with Republicans. Of course, that was not
• 7:08
  Speaker 7: the time to go full bore with a with a
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  Speaker 7: partisan hit. But now is a different moment. January 6th
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  Speaker 7: is the perfect moment to have him have a Trump message.
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  Speaker 7: It was carried live by a bunch of networks. It
• 7:19
  Speaker 7: was pretty effective. It was also pretty tame by the
• 7:22
  Speaker 7: standards of our politics. So it seems all good.
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  Speaker 5: Can't be upset about the word malarkey. What the White
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  Speaker 5: House people would say is, this is actually what he
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  Speaker 5: ran on. I mean, his announcement speech was about Charlottesville,
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  Speaker 5: the divisiveness and the need to bring the country together.
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  Speaker 5: Between then and now, we had a pandemic. You guys
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: might have noticed the economy, some challenges in the economy.
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  Speaker 5: So He was focused on getting those things done. A
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: lot of it involved Congress. So I think it made
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  Speaker 5: sense to come out on January 6th. They also probably
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  Speaker 5: knew just tactically, again, like this is probably the best
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  Speaker 5: chance you're going to get this kind of message about
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  Speaker 5: Trump covered in the way you want it to be
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  Speaker 5: covered on the anniversary of an attack he unleashed on
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  Speaker 5: the Capitol.
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  Speaker 6: It's also January of 2022. It's an election year. The
• 8:08
  Speaker 6: election is here. The election year is here.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: And look, we've talked about it many times, but Right now,
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  Speaker 7: generic ballot. Republicans are winning. They're not winning because obviously
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: vote suppression will help them, but they're winning fair and square.
• 8:19
  Speaker 7: They're winning on the popular vote. And that is because
• 8:22
  Speaker 7: no one has done a great job of defining these people.
• 8:26
  Speaker 7: Right now, if people are going to vote, they want
• 8:27
  Speaker 7: Marjorie Taylor Greene to have more power and they want
• 8:29
  Speaker 7: your favorite member of Congress, be it Josh Gottheimer or
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: someone else.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: But mostly Josh Gottheimer.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Or AOC.
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  Speaker 7: They want that person to have less, and that's because
• 8:38
  Speaker 7: nobody has made a really strong case, and all the
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: coverage has been about the intra-dem battles to get something
• 8:43
  Speaker 7: through the Congress, while the fact that the reason it
• 8:45
  Speaker 7: has to be a solely Democratic conversation is because Republicans
• 8:48
  Speaker 7: have basically abdicated governance.
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  Speaker 6: So do you guys both think it's a smart strategy
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: from the White House?
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  Speaker 5: I think you have to show a contrast. You have
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: to be fighting with someone you need an enemy. It
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: is certainly better than trying to tell people, which they
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: also did in that economic speech, that actually the economy
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: is good. Actually, inflation is transitory. That's just a tougher sell.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: It's much easier to be out there and seen as
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: fighting something. It reminds me of 2012 Obama, where the
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: economy wasn't great, but the message was about how Mitt
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: Romney was a corporate raider and would make things worse.
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: And you're better off with me, Barack Obama, than Bain
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: Capital over here. I mean, the hard part is going
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: to be deciding when to engage with Trump I get
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: why they haven't wanted to make the first year of
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: the administration a colloquy with Trump where they're just constantly
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: going back and forth. But my concern has always been
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: that Trump is waging war against Biden all day, every day.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: So are his surrogates. And Biden's also dealing with tough events,
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: the economy, COVID, things that drive you nuts. And sometimes
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: like you just got to be seen as fighting.
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: Remember the biggest election in 2021 that went well for
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: the Democrats was Gavin Newsom's, uh, the recall effort against
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: Gavin Newsom here in California. And it started going well
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: when Gavin Newsom told people what Larry Elder stood for.
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: When someone Googled Larry Elder and realized he's a fucking lunatic.
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: And it wasn't just telling him he was a Trump clone,
• 10:07
  Speaker 6: like we saw Terry McAuliffe do with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia.
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: I think Gavin Newsom said, you know, Trump was defeated,
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: but Trumpism still lives. And here's what Larry Elder actually
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: stands for. But he really hit against minimum wage, against
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: climate change. Now, of course, you can say this was California.
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: California is very blue. But again, the margin in 2021,
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: the recall was the same as the margin in 2018,
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: which is not what we can say for Virginia or
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: New Jersey. Now, we all think it's a smart strategy.
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: Does anyone want to take the Chuck Todd red hen
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: sign of the argument?
• 10:39
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Red hen. Civility alert. Red hen. Civility alert. Paging Chuck Todd.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Paging Chuck Todd. Tip O'Neill. Ronald Reagan, you're needed.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: With the bourbon in the West Wing.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: There's a bridge.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Red Hen. Red Hen. All right. Cut it off. Going
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: just a little too long is the best part of it.
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: I've tweeted that so many times that I just want
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: Chuck Todd to respond to me once.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: Someone out there, get a word to Chuck.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Wisely, Chuck's probably not on Twitter as much anymore. Yeah,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: I think he's not.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Okay, this is my straw man case for Biden taking
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: the high road, being civil, not mentioning Trump by name,
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: although I don't know that he mentioned it by name,
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: but not like hammering him.
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: Before you i want to hear this but i cannot
• 11:28
  Speaker 7: stand the didn't say the name did say the name
• 11:31
  Speaker 7: it is so stupid we're still doing this it's so
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: dumb i don't want to say is i don't i
• 11:35
  Speaker 7: know where did it.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Come from it's like a lake off book i don't
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: fucking get it i think.
• 11:39
  Speaker 11: It's before that man yeah seriously it's been yeah no
• 11:43
  Speaker 11: i know i hate that too anyway i look okay
• 11:45
  Speaker 11: here i'm gonna strum in So ironically, to convince you
• 11:48
  Speaker 11: guys that you are idiots for wanting to not.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: Take the high road.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: So like we talked about earlier, Biden is defined as
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: the unity guy. He's the heal the nation guy. And
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: so when he changes course, it's going to be covered tactically.
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: It's going to focus on the change. And the problem
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: with that is the one thing we know is that
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: voters hate divisiveness. They hate infighting in Washington. They hated impeachment.
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: So if you know that this is going to be
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: the outcome, just stay on the high road.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Talk about your message.
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: Two, voters only care about the economy. New AP poll,
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: 68% respond and say it's their biggest concern. Concerns about
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: inflation went to 1% to 14%. They're still pissed about
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: COVID ruining their lives. Any time spent focused on Trump
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: decreases your chance of talking about that. Third, you will
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: never get as nasty as Trump. If you attack him,
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: he will bludgeon you. But this time he gets mainstream
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: coverage because it's seen as a response to Biden.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: So it elevates him.
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: Fourth, Biden is very good at unity. He's not always
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: good at attacks. That's the last point I have. That's
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: my straw man for taking the high road. And you morons.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: You fucking dolts.
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: Bozo's want to respond.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I'm persuaded.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: You got me.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think that you have raised a good
• 13:01
  Speaker 6: point there, which is here's what we know is true.
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: Biden has campaigned on campaign on two themes. You mentioned
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: both of them so far today. Bring the country together
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: and preserving democracy.
• 13:12
  Speaker 10: Yep.
• 13:12
  Speaker 6: So the question is, and I think we also know
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: a majority of voters want both. They want democracy preserved.
• 13:19
  Speaker 6: They also want the country to come together. And so
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: the question is, how do you do both, I think?
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: And I think if you're Biden, you have to make
• 13:26
  Speaker 6: it clear that you are a president who represents all Americans,
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: even if you didn't vote for him. A president who's
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: going to fight for all Americans, even if you didn't
• 13:35
  Speaker 6: vote for them. But then you try to marginalize Republican
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: politicians and Donald Trump. um, as people who want to
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: keep dividing us for their own gain. I think that's
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: the way you sort of split the difference.
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: I mean, the simplest argument against what you just said
• 13:52
  Speaker 7: is what Joe Biden said this week is what he
• 13:55
  Speaker 7: said as a candidate over and over again for the
• 13:57
  Speaker 7: entirety of the race, both on how he argued against
• 13:59
  Speaker 7: Republican economics and how he argued against Trump specifically. That was,
• 14:03
  Speaker 7: those were, I mean, like the three messages were kind
• 14:06
  Speaker 7: of unity, Trump is an aberration to our values and
• 14:10
  Speaker 7: our democracy and our morality. And he's enabled by these
• 14:13
  Speaker 7: Republicans that don't care about you or the problems you face.
• 14:15
  Speaker 7: And that's what he reiterated. He became president because he
• 14:18
  Speaker 7: was able to deliver that message at a time when
• 14:19
  Speaker 7: people were really receptive to it. And I think the
• 14:21
  Speaker 7: point that Jen Psaki made in one of these look
• 14:24
  Speaker 7: back pieces that basically some of this sort of some
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: of this sourness in the polling, you can attribute it
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: to gas prices, you contribute to whatever you want. But
• 14:34
  Speaker 7: like the base issue is the country's not back to normal.
• 14:37
  Speaker 7: We are still in a pandemic that is uncertain. That sucks.
• 14:39
  Speaker 7: People don't know if their kids are going to be
• 14:40
  Speaker 7: in their school or not. They're still wearing masks. They're
• 14:42
  Speaker 7: hearing about Omicron all the time. And so as long
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: as that is the case, I mean, the truth is,
• 14:46
  Speaker 7: as long as that is the case, these are not,
• 14:48
  Speaker 7: this is not a political problem.
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: This is a cultural societal problem.
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: It's not a messaging problem.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: No, it's not a messaging problem. It's an outcomes problem.
• 14:57
  Speaker 7: And so I think right now it is about defining
• 15:00
  Speaker 7: Republicans as best you can. It is about, I think,
• 15:03
  Speaker 7: Trump in the right measure, which I think is exactly
• 15:05
  Speaker 7: what he's been doing. And then it is trying like
• 15:07
  Speaker 7: hell to figure out how to get the country out
• 15:10
  Speaker 7: of this and then be able to take credit for it.
• 15:12
  Speaker 7: Starting with the state of the union. It's an election year.
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: Joe Biden's job is to define the choice that voters face,
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: which has always been the job of every incumbent, every
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: party in power since the beginning of time.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: That's just the way politics works.
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: And we also know that every compelling message, every compelling
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: political message has a villain. Um, With Barack Obama, he
• 15:32
  Speaker 6: talked about Washington dysfunction. He talked about special interests. Sometimes
• 15:36
  Speaker 6: it was Republican politicians that were in the way. And,
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: you know, he was seen as the unity bringing the
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: country together, too. But no one just does. Let's bring
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: the country together. And I'm trying as hard I can
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: to solve the problems and no one's standing in my way.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: And so that's it.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: That's not going.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: To work for anyone.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: My straw man, and again, no one tweeted me that
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: I'm an idiot because I was just a straw man.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Tommy genuinely, deeply believes it.
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: The problem is when you walk out in front of
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: the mics every day and you're like, here are the
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: ways I'm fixing the economy, no one covers it. And
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: so a fight with Trump is more likely to get covered.
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: I think it's his only path.
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: On the Georgia event, love it, how would you put
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: together a speech on voting rights and democracy that doesn't
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: just feel pointless to the moment that Joe Manchin and
• 16:20
  Speaker 6: or Kyrsten Sinema inevitably say that they still don't want
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: to get rid of the filibuster. I thought about that question,
• 16:26
  Speaker 6: and then right before we recorded, sure enough, Manu Raju
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: from CNN tweeted, Dem pressure campaign on Manchin to use
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: nuclear option and change rules to pass a voting bill
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: isn't working. He told me tonight, quote, I haven't seen
• 16:37
  Speaker 6: a proposal that he could back to change rules along
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: party lines. Quote, maybe someone is hiding something. They haven't
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: shown it to me.
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: He said while covering his eyes. Yeah.
• 16:48
  Speaker 7: And it's this thing, there's this very strange, it's almost
• 16:52
  Speaker 7: like a kink of like, I don't, I'll never, he
• 16:55
  Speaker 7: never rules anything out and he never rules anything in.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: He keeps it all possible.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: What's his safe word?
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: It's Maserati. Safe word is Maserati. That's nothing.
• 17:05
  Speaker 7: But what I was going to say, so it's like,
• 17:06
  Speaker 7: I think you have to act under the assumption that
• 17:08
  Speaker 7: there's no magical set of words that Joe Biden can
• 17:11
  Speaker 7: issue that It's the right combination.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: It's not a fucking, it's not a spell. It's not
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: a wordle.
• 17:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's not like you put the right things in
• 17:19
  Speaker 7: the cauldron while saying the right incantation and Joe Manchin
• 17:23
  Speaker 7: becomes a.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: Civilized fucking human being. This is the speech, I got it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: It's not magic.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: But now he's running out of his office. I did it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: I got it, I got the right combination. Like Alan
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Turing cracking the Enigma code. I think there's three things.
• 17:38
  Speaker 7: One, there is more to do to protect democracy than
• 17:42
  Speaker 7: simply passing laws at the federal level. That's really important. Two,
• 17:46
  Speaker 7: I think that there is, I think Trump woke us
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: up to the amount of backsliding there was, not just
• 17:54
  Speaker 7: in our politics, but in our culture around democracy that
• 17:58
  Speaker 7: we are still paying a price for and we will
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: continue to pay a price for. People simply do not
• 18:03
  Speaker 7: have a strong adherence to democratic values in the way
• 18:05
  Speaker 7: that we thought. And once the kind of elite protection
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: the kind of elite consensus around how democracy should work,
• 18:12
  Speaker 7: how elections should work, what it means to concede when
• 18:15
  Speaker 7: you've lost, what it means to accept fair results. Once
• 18:18
  Speaker 7: that broke, there weren't very many guardrails behind it. And
• 18:21
  Speaker 7: so I do think making just a larger argument for
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: democratic principles and democratic values, making it big, you know,
• 18:27
  Speaker 7: Republicans have spent the last 50 years taking on every
• 18:30
  Speaker 7: patriotic symbol, co-opting every, the eagle and the fucking flag
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: and don't tread on me and owning all of it.
• 18:36
  Speaker 7: Like we need to do a bit of that ourselves
• 18:38
  Speaker 7: and take take some ownership, co-opt some of the democratic
• 18:41
  Speaker 7: symbols and the democratic process as something we.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Believe in and that they don't.
• 18:45
  Speaker 7: And then the third piece of this is, look, stopping
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: vote suppression is really important. Reforming the Electoral Count Act
• 18:52
  Speaker 7: is really important. We need to do these things. It
• 18:55
  Speaker 7: will determine the outcomes of these elections when they are close.
• 18:58
  Speaker 7: But one example, you know, the Trump-Eastman-Giuliani plan to steal
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: the election, it was extra legal. It was in some
• 19:07
  Speaker 7: ways too defy the Constitution and the law, ignore the
• 19:11
  Speaker 7: Constitution and the law, pretend the law and the Constitution
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: say something that they don't. And so ultimately, the only
• 19:17
  Speaker 7: real way to fascist proof your country is to win.
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: It is to have power. The only way we will
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: stop these people ultimately is with power. And sometimes that
• 19:25
  Speaker 7: is about making a case around democracy, but sometimes it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 7: just about fucking winning on whatever terms you need to
• 19:30
  Speaker 7: take in order to win.
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I know that a lot of voting rights groups
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: were upset months ago when the White House said we're
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: going to have to out-organize them. But again, even in
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: a perfect world where we pass the Freedom to Vote
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act tomorrow and
• 19:45
  Speaker 6: did something about election subversion legislatively tomorrow, we would still.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Need to out-organize them.
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: Them.
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: There's no piece of legislation that can prevent some of
• 19:54
  Speaker 6: these yahoos from running for office for secretary of state
• 19:58
  Speaker 6: or governor or county recorder or all these positions that
• 20:01
  Speaker 6: have power over the administration of our elections. And And
• 20:06
  Speaker 6: Joe Biden should point that out.
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: Everyone should listen to my interview later with Ben Wickler,
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, because he talks
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: about some specific, very scary individuals running for a local
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: office who are overt in their desire to just steal elections. Yeah,
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, the problem with the Biden strategy is like
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: the Georgia speech is about raising awareness and general support
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: for voting rights and legislation. And, you know, I guess
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: just like getting everyone fired up about the issue. The
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: strategy to actually getting that done is an inside game
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: where we could have to convince the same people whose
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: names I refuse to say. It's not like we've got
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: to get Warnock and John Ossoff on board. And so
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: that's why it seems a little discordant. And I know
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: that some voting rights groups in Georgia are skipping Biden's
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: event today because they say, we want to vote today.
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: I think these are some of the smartest, most effective
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: organizers on the planet, but I don't totally understand that
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: because I worry that Biden's attempt to get voting rights
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: covered in the conversation will now be impacted by this
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: boycott of the event. I'm not sure exactly how it helps.
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: I guess the The argument for skipping the event, if
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: you're a voting rights activist, is that your job is
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: not to be Joe Biden's friend. It's to be the
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: squeakiest wheel possible and get time and attention and grease.
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: But I don't know. I mean, it's tough. Same idiotic
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: senators are making our lives harder.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the voting rights group said Georgia voters made history
• 21:25
  Speaker 6: and made their voices heard. In return, a visit has
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: been forced on them, requiring them to accept political platitudes
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: and repetitious bland promises. As civil rights leaders and advocates,
• 21:33
  Speaker 6: we reject any visit by President Biden that does not
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: and be signed into law. Anything less is insufficient and unwelcome.
• 21:43
  Speaker 6: I get the anger. I get the frustration. These people
• 21:45
  Speaker 6: have been working their asses off and they did tremendous,
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: tremendous work in 2018 and 2020 and many of them
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: in many years before that when people weren't paying attention.
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: But like, again, this is What is Joe, like, how
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: does Joe Biden force people to take a vote that
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: they don't want to take when he doesn't necessarily have
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: political leverage? A lot of groups did some heroic work
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: by going to West Virginia and trying to pressure Joe
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: Manchin in West Virginia, running ads in West Virginia.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Did that work? No. Do I blame them for that
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: not working? Of course not. They tried their best.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: Well, and just practically, I mean, Schumer's promised a vote
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: by the 17th, correct? So we're talking about seven days
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: from now.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: Six days from now. There will be a vote.
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: When this airs, yeah.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: There will be a vote.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: And as of right now, it would probably fail. Because
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: of the poor use of Redford Manchin.
• 22:29
  Speaker 7: If we were living in a world where what we
• 22:34
  Speaker 7: had seen over the last few months was Joe Biden
• 22:37
  Speaker 7: choosing build back better over voting rights, making a political
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: calculation that he wanted to do a domestic agenda before
• 22:42
  Speaker 7: he did democracy reform. And so he put all his
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: power and pressure, brought it all to bear to get
• 22:47
  Speaker 7: a passage through the Senate. and that worked and it
• 22:51
  Speaker 7: successfully persuaded Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and he had
• 22:54
  Speaker 7: successfully gotten Build Back Better through, I think you can
• 22:56
  Speaker 7: have an argument that he chose Build Back Better over
• 22:58
  Speaker 7: voting rights. But right now, we've got fucking neither. So
• 23:01
  Speaker 7: there's no, where is this pressure campaign that Joe Biden
• 23:04
  Speaker 7: is supposed to be mounting that is gonna affect Joe
• 23:07
  Speaker 7: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? It hasn't been possible. Like, you
• 23:10
  Speaker 7: can argue that there needs to be more of a
• 23:13
  Speaker 7: focus on voting rights. I think that's probably true. But
• 23:15
  Speaker 7: you can argue that when Joe Biden brought pressure to
• 23:18
  Speaker 7: bear- It worked.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: It didn't.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: It didn't work. So it's not on... I mean, I
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: don't know what else we're supposed to do.
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's on him, right? The argument is he
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: needs to do a better job. He needs to figure
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: out a new strategy. But I just think... I just
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: don't totally get what skipping the event does. And I
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: say this with the utmost respect. I love LaTosha Brown,
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Blackfooters Matter. They've done incredible work. These are some of
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: the smartest, hardest working people, period. I just don't get
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: this move.
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: Well, this is back to Lovett's joke about the speech. Like,
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: is there a certain combination of words that... Bernie Sanders
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: or Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren or anyone,
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: any Democrat could have uttered to Joe Manchin that would
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: have led to a different outcome?
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Does anyone want to make that case?
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: Hey, Joe Manchin, here's a manila envelope filled with photos
• 24:01
  Speaker 7: of you en flagrante with someone who is not your
• 24:04
  Speaker 7: wife and who is not a woman. Does that do
• 24:07
  Speaker 7: anything for you, Joe Manchin?
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Well, let me know if those pictures exist.
• 24:13
  Speaker 7: Other than that.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know.
• 24:15
  Speaker 7: All right. I, for one, would welcome queer ally Joe Manchin,
• 24:21
  Speaker 7: but for him, I think it would make maybe work
• 24:23
  Speaker 7: as blackmail.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Is that a lump of coal in your pocket, or
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: are you just glad to vote with me? Well, we're
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: a little far afield now.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: I think you're right, yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: On Biden's economic message, the other part of this where
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: we started a long time ago.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Thanks, John.
• 24:36
  Speaker 7: I want you all to know that that was the
• 24:39
  Speaker 7: second version. of what we decided I was allowed to
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: say on this podcast.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: It gets worse. Just remember that. It will always get worse.
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: On Biden's economic message, Jeff Stein had a Washington Post
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: piece today saying that some economists close to the White House,
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: including people at the Treasury Department, surprise, surprise, are uncomfortable
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: with the president's new argument that, quote, price increases for
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: gasoline and meat are connected to corporate consolidation and greed.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: What do you think of that?
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: What do you think of the Treasury nerds getting all
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: upset about that?
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: I want to encourage all the.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: economists in the Treasury Department listening to get real close
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: to the speaker.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Turn up the volume just a little bit.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: Shut the fuck up.
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: We don't need to convince economists. We need to convince voters.
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: You guys do your economist stuff. Econometrics is a class
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: I didn't take. Figure out what policies will deal with inflation,
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: then let Joe Biden make the argument he wants to make.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: Here's one thing we've learned over the last few years,
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: whether it's That economists shouldn't do punditry. Epidemiologists shouldn't do
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: fucking punditry.
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: People and Bob Mueller's investigative team shouldn't do punditry.
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: We probably shouldn't do it anymore.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Nobody should do it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: At least no one's in danger of having to make
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: a big decision because of what we say on here.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Uh you know we're not in positions of authority anymore it's.
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: Like also just don't tell the washington post like keep
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: the debate inside the house i.
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: Thought uh i thought um larry summers was was it
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: perfectly larry summers he was like yep uh if it's
• 26:13
  Speaker 7: a message for politics that's fine if it's about how
• 26:16
  Speaker 7: you know if it's a political message that makes sense
• 26:18
  Speaker 7: if it's actually about stopping inflation it won't work but
• 26:21
  Speaker 7: either way it's fine.
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: Corporate profits are up so here's i mean Here's what
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: always happens between the communications and political folks and the
• 26:31
  Speaker 6: pollsters and all of the economic policy folks. For as
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: long as I've been in politics, long time now, what's
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: at the top of the chart when we poll policies?
• 26:44
  Speaker 6: Taking tax breaks away from companies that ship jobs overseas,
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: giving tax breaks for companies that create jobs right here.
• 26:51
  Speaker 6: not outsourcing overseas, creating stuff here, right? Like every message
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: about corporate greed, about rich people not paying enough taxes,
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: about creating jobs in America.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: John got his DLC hymnal.
• 27:03
  Speaker 6: It is just, those are the most popular policies ever,
• 27:08
  Speaker 6: all the time. And then you go to the White
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: House like we did, and you sit there and you're like,
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: all right, where's the policy that we're going to implement
• 27:14
  Speaker 6: about taking away tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas?
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: And you get some Nerd from the Treasury Department there, oh,
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: I don't think we can do that because of the
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: tax code.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Okay. Okay. All the time. And then the promise goes unfulfilled,
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: and then we look like assholes.
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: So it's like, I get, look, I don't want people
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: lying about the economy. I don't want people lying about policy.
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: I don't want people proposing policy that can't be done.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: It's part of an argument. It's exactly what you said, Tommy.
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: Like, corporations are making record profits right now, and people
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: are paying higher prices.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It is completely fine and right to point that out.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was persuaded, actually.
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: I was skeptical of this sort of message just because
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: it sounded... I don't give a fuck about how, you know,
• 27:59
  Speaker 7: where it fits on the fucking expected value fucking economics.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: I didn't take any economics. And I'm glad I didn't.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: No, but what I was going to say is.
• 28:13
  Speaker 7: I don't know where the fucking lines intersect on the
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: goddamn chart.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: But here's what I know.
• 28:18
  Speaker 7: When someone says inflation's happening because of greedy corporations, what
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: I think is, that's weird. Were they less greedy five
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: years ago? I'm just common sense. That doesn't make sense
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: to me. That like, wait a second. People didn't suddenly
• 28:32
  Speaker 7: become greedy.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: No, of course not. But it's an easy fix. It's
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: an easy fix. Inflation's happening. Meanwhile, these greedy corporations are
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: doing as better as they've ever done.
• 28:40
  Speaker 7: I would actually even go further. I thought, you know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 7: they put in the piece looking at... these arguments, they
• 28:47
  Speaker 7: put Elizabeth Warren's as if it's like to the left
• 28:49
  Speaker 7: of Joe Biden when she says, or more explicit than
• 28:52
  Speaker 7: Joe Biden, when she says that corporations are taking advantage
• 28:56
  Speaker 7: of the pandemic to make more profits and raise costs.
• 28:59
  Speaker 7: And I actually found that more persuasive. Like, I think
• 29:01
  Speaker 7: that's like a simpler, oh, that makes sense to me.
• 29:03
  Speaker 7: And then this part about consolidation, like, sure, like consolidation
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: is a long term problem. But like, I think it's
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: a pretty reasonable argument to say, hey, while you weren't
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: paying attention, a bunch of big companies sort of swallowed
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: up some of their competition. And when they saw an
• 29:17
  Speaker 7: opportunity to use that new power to raise prices during
• 29:19
  Speaker 7: a pandemic, they fucking did it. That's a very reasonable
• 29:23
  Speaker 7: argument to me. And I think that, of course, we
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: should be making that point. Of course, we should be
• 29:27
  Speaker 7: making that argument.
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: And also just some news you can use here. Data
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: for Progress, our friends, polled inflation in December, polled the
• 29:36
  Speaker 6: best testing messages against inflation. These were the top or
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: messages on inflation. Number three, per what we were just
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: talking about, quote, President Biden says corporations are recording record
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: profits while Americans are paying higher prices. He says we
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: need a fairer economy where workers and consumers, not CEOs
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: and shareholders, come out ahead.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: So that's number three.
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: Number two is touting the bipartisan infrastructure deal because it
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: will strengthen our supply chains. And number one, the most popular.
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: We need to bring manufacturing jobs back to America by
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: making sure our supply chains are housed here, not outsourced abroad.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: Which I didn't even know you could do. Can you
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: do it? Who knows?
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: If this is what Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren are
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: out talking about, this is the message they're carrying, which
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: it is, it's probably a good one.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: Sherrod Brown won Ohio a bunch of times when he
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: wasn't supposed to.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, maybe it's a good message. Anyway. Something to
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: think about.
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: Our segment, giving a noogie to some poor economists in
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: the charity department. Austin Goolsbee is welcome to come back
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: on here and defend all of the economists.
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, sure.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Okay. When we come back, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair.
• 30:39
  Speaker 9: Supply, demand, man.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: Spend the cost curve in the out years.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: R squared.
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: Confidence intervals.
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: When we come back, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: chats with Tommy about Ron Johnson's announcement that America's dumbest senator...
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: is running for reelection.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: I am so excited to welcome back to Pod Save America,
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler. Ben,
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: good to see you.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Tommy. It is good to see and hear you too.
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: I love Zooming with you because you have the most
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: campaign office vibe we got. Tony Evers signs. We got
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: big maps with counties on them. I assume there'll be
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: pushpins in there soon for various reasons. Indeed.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, there'll be pushpins. There may be string connecting the pushpins.
• 31:33
  Speaker 12: I've got my Tony Evers and I've got my Biden-Harris
• 31:37
  Speaker 12: four by four barn sign up on the facing wall.
• 31:40
  Speaker 12: For folks just listening in the podcast, just imagine the
• 31:43
  Speaker 12: most campany of rooms. There's also a used large couch.
• 31:46
  Speaker 12: which is always a campaign feature.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: All you need is a potluck and you are officially
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: in a campaign office.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: All right, Ben.
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: So we want to talk to you this week because
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: there was some big news out of Wisconsin. Senator Ron
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: Johnson said he is going to run again. I thought
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: he had pledged to not run for a third term.
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: Why did he lie? What's up with the change of heart?
• 32:10
  Speaker 12: Well, lying and breaking promises is like breathing air for
• 32:13
  Speaker 12: Ron Johnson. So in some ways, the fact that he
• 32:16
  Speaker 12: promised not to run for a third term is not
• 32:18
  Speaker 12: a surprise. But when I look at what he's done
• 32:21
  Speaker 12: over the last dozen years, you know, he'd been in
• 32:24
  Speaker 12: the Senate, he ran as Mr. Kind of pragmatic businessman.
• 32:27
  Speaker 12: And after he got reelected in 2016, after his closing
• 32:30
  Speaker 12: argument was that he wouldn't run again, he got to
• 32:34
  Speaker 12: the Senate and worked with Donald Trump to get his
• 32:37
  Speaker 12: tax bill passed.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: And, you voted for the tax bill.
• 32:42
  Speaker 12: But Johnson stood out because he actually refused to vote
• 32:45
  Speaker 12: for the tax scam, which was a massive giveaway to
• 32:47
  Speaker 12: people at the top, until he convinced Donald Trump to
• 32:52
  Speaker 12: add a specific carve-out for something called a designated S-corp.
• 32:57
  Speaker 12: And a designated S-corporation happens to be the exact kind
• 33:00
  Speaker 12: of corporation that Ron Johnson owns.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Interesting.
• 33:05
  Speaker 12: It is interesting, right? And it's something he knows a
• 33:07
  Speaker 12: lot about. And it's the kind of corporation, as it
• 33:09
  Speaker 12: turns out, that his biggest donors own, the Uline family
• 33:13
  Speaker 12: and Diane Hendricks. They're right-wing billionaires in Wisconsin. Between Richard
• 33:20
  Speaker 12: and Liz Uline and Diane Hendricks, they gave away $ 84
• 33:24
  Speaker 12: million to Republican donors in the last election cycle. They
• 33:27
  Speaker 12: put $ 20 million into his 2016 race in a super PAC.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: And the year after the tax bill passed, after Ron.
• 33:36
  Speaker 12: Johnson got his dream loophole added to Trump's tax bill,
• 33:39
  Speaker 12: because it didn't already give away enough money to rich people,
• 33:42
  Speaker 12: the year after Johnson got his dream tax loophole added,
• 33:45
  Speaker 12: the U lines and Diane Hendricks walked away with more.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Than $ 200 million in one year.
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: That's a great investment.
• 33:53
  Speaker 12: It's a 10 to one return in a single year.
• 33:55
  Speaker 12: It's like a cryptocurrency accessible only to right wing billionaires.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: That's nice.
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: It's a hell of a kickback. I want to do
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: more about the Johnson rap sheet because he is, there's
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: a lot of, members of Congress who are not quite
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: tethered to reality and he's sort of in the upper echelon.
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: But real quick, Johnson announced his change of heart, his
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: flip-flop in the Wall Street Journal. Is that a popular
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: newspaper in Sheboygan?
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: Would you make it up?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: He knows his audience. I'm sure it's not just.
• 34:24
  Speaker 12: The Wisconsin right-wing billionaire class that enjoys reading the Wall
• 34:27
  Speaker 12: Street Journal op-eds where he penned his campaign announcement. He actually, Madison,
• 34:31
  Speaker 12: Wisconsin is not like a right-wing bastion, but his campaign
• 34:35
  Speaker 12: office or his, excuse me, his constituent office in Madison
• 34:38
  Speaker 12: is located on Wall Street in Madison, which is an
• 34:42
  Speaker 12: address that I didn't even know we had a Wall
• 34:44
  Speaker 12: Street until I went to his office and discovered that
• 34:47
  Speaker 12: that's where he'd.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Managed to locate it.
• 34:48
  Speaker 12: So I think he's sending a big flashing signal for
• 34:51
  Speaker 12: whose side he's on. And it is not the good
• 34:54
  Speaker 12: people of the state of Wisconsin.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: So we talk.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: There's so many members of Congress who are just a mess.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: We got Marjorie Taylor Greene. We got Matt Gaetz. I mean,
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: it's like it's hard to keep track. What's the rap
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: sheet on Ron Johnson? Why do you think he's uniquely dangerous?
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: So here's the thing about Ron Johnson.
• 35:09
  Speaker 12: He makes huge national news for being just the worst
• 35:14
  Speaker 12: of the worst conspiracy theory monger, you know. claiming that
• 35:18
  Speaker 12: there was no insurrection on January 6th, saying that he
• 35:22
  Speaker 12: would have been scared if it had been Black Lives
• 35:23
  Speaker 12: Matter protesters, but he was never scared because it was
• 35:25
  Speaker 12: patriots who loved their country and loved law enforcement. That
• 35:29
  Speaker 12: was his literal quote about the people who beat.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Up cops with an American flag.
• 35:34
  Speaker 12: He has called climate change, the idea of climate change, BS.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: He has gone out.
• 35:41
  Speaker 12: Of his way in a million ways. He was the
• 35:43
  Speaker 12: guy opposing Juneteenth being a federal holiday. He was All
• 35:47
  Speaker 12: these things that are just patently offensive.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: You said that excess carbon in the atmosphere helps the
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: trees grow.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 35:53
  Speaker 12: What carbon dioxide does is it helps trees grow. He
• 35:55
  Speaker 12: claimed that green– anyway, there's a lot of things like that.
• 35:58
  Speaker 12: And it's easy to just focus on those. But the
• 36:02
  Speaker 12: thing about Johnson is that with one hand, he's just
• 36:06
  Speaker 12: stirring things up and saying horrible stuff that in some
• 36:09
  Speaker 12: cases has lethal consequences like his huge championing of conspiracy
• 36:12
  Speaker 12: theories about COVID-19 and you know, opposing, pushing vaccines on anyone.
• 36:17
  Speaker 12: That's the way he describes it. But on the other hand,
• 36:20
  Speaker 12: he's just lining his own pockets. He's picking the pockets
• 36:24
  Speaker 12: of Republican constituents and Democratic constituents and non-voters and independents alike.
• 36:29
  Speaker 12: He's a venal self-serving politician who is dressing himself up
• 36:33
  Speaker 12: as a, you know, truth-telling messiah from some right-wing utopia.
• 36:39
  Speaker 12: And the bait and switch, the kind of like, The
• 36:43
  Speaker 12: corruption at the heart of that equation is the thing
• 36:46
  Speaker 12: that is actually dynamite for Republican voters. And I think
• 36:49
  Speaker 12: as we look at this guy who, you know, is
• 36:53
  Speaker 12: right there at the front of the attack on democracy,
• 36:55
  Speaker 12: who's calling on our state legislature to unilaterally seize control
• 36:59
  Speaker 12: of election administration in the state of Wisconsin. We have
• 37:01
  Speaker 12: the most gerrymandered, horrific right-wing state legislature you can imagine.
• 37:05
  Speaker 12: While he's doing all that, why does he want to
• 37:07
  Speaker 12: rig the system? He wants to rig it so that
• 37:09
  Speaker 12: people like him can stay in power and give more
• 37:11
  Speaker 12: money to people like him. And that's like it's not
• 37:15
  Speaker 12: just that he is completely out to lunch and completely
• 37:18
  Speaker 12: out on the fringe. It's that he's actually profoundly corrupt
• 37:22
  Speaker 12: in the kind of the real politician sense of corruption.
• 37:26
  Speaker 12: And so many voters, when they even if they kind
• 37:28
  Speaker 12: of maybe agree with him about ivermectin or whatever, if
• 37:31
  Speaker 12: they hear that he's ripping them off and that he's
• 37:34
  Speaker 12: the stuff he's doing behind closed doors, actually, he's trying
• 37:37
  Speaker 12: to block the stimulus checks for people.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Trying to block the child tax credit.
• 37:42
  Speaker 12: He's one of only six senators to vote against the
• 37:45
  Speaker 12: ban on surprise medical bills. He's like the most in
• 37:49
  Speaker 12: the pocket of all the worst special interests. That stuff
• 37:54
  Speaker 12: actually costs him support from what he would hope to
• 37:56
  Speaker 12: be his base at the same time as he tries
• 37:59
  Speaker 12: to appeal to the worst instincts of the worst parts
• 38:03
  Speaker 12: of the American political discourse.
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: Opposing a bipartisan bill to ban surprise medical bills is
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: a strange vote if you want to win. You mentioned this.
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: So Johnson wanted the state legislature to take control over
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: federal elections. What would that have meant in practice? And
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: can you talk about the response even from some Republicans
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: in the state?
• 38:24
  Speaker 12: People– this is like so far outside of the bounds
• 38:28
  Speaker 12: of democracy, I guess you could say, because changing– who
• 38:34
  Speaker 12: runs the elections requires a bill that needs to be
• 38:37
  Speaker 12: passed into law by going through the state legislature and
• 38:39
  Speaker 12: then being signed by the governor.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: That's how states work.
• 38:42
  Speaker 12: He just wants the state legislature to assert that it
• 38:44
  Speaker 12: has a constitutional right to do whatever it wants and
• 38:47
  Speaker 12: seize control. And state legislators were aghast. The public was
• 38:51
  Speaker 12: totally aghast. Every editorial board that commented on it thought
• 38:54
  Speaker 12: this is a horrific idea. But he fundamentally doesn't believe
• 38:58
  Speaker 12: that voters should decide who runs our government. This is,
• 39:01
  Speaker 12: you know, he was opposing the certification of electoral college
• 39:05
  Speaker 12: votes until the insurrection had actually crashed into the U.S.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Senate.
• 39:09
  Speaker 12: Then he put that aside for a few hours and
• 39:11
  Speaker 12: was right back feeding the big lie right afterwards. If
• 39:15
  Speaker 12: our state legislature got control, we've seen in lots of
• 39:20
  Speaker 12: different ways what they would do. They've already passed a
• 39:23
  Speaker 12: slew of laws to crack down on all the things
• 39:25
  Speaker 12: that people did to try to vote safely during the pandemic.
• 39:27
  Speaker 12: They have passed a law through the state legislature that
• 39:31
  Speaker 12: would restrict access to drop boxes. They would require that
• 39:35
  Speaker 12: you take a photo of your voter ID every single
• 39:38
  Speaker 12: time you request an absentee ballot, even for primary and
• 39:41
  Speaker 12: then a general election, even if your ID is already
• 39:43
  Speaker 12: on file.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: All these things. The governor has vetoed all of these rules.
• 39:48
  Speaker 12: But he wants the state legislature to have carte blanche
• 39:51
  Speaker 12: outside of the bounds of law. And there's really no
• 39:55
  Speaker 12: constraint based in reality or our constitution or common sense
• 39:58
  Speaker 12: or data or science that affects what he aims for.
• 40:02
  Speaker 12: What he aims for is things that consolidate power for
• 40:05
  Speaker 12: people like him. And that is exactly why he shouldn't
• 40:08
  Speaker 12: have that power. It's because it's so contrary to the
• 40:11
  Speaker 12: fundamental idea of how this country is supposed to work. Unfortunately,
• 40:14
  Speaker 12: it does work that way sometimes, but it should not.
• 40:17
  Speaker 12: And that's the reason why we're organizing so intensively and
• 40:21
  Speaker 12: have been for the whole last year, even before he announced,
• 40:23
  Speaker 12: to make sure he doesn't get another term.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, so you mentioned Tony Evers, the Democratic governor,
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: and some of the things he's vetoed. He's up as well.
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: What's at stake in that race?
• 40:33
  Speaker 12: So if you are concerned about the future of American democracy,
• 40:37
  Speaker 12: you have to zero in on exactly how it is
• 40:40
  Speaker 12: that Republicans would overturn a presidential election. And it really
• 40:43
  Speaker 12: comes down to a handful of states. The last two
• 40:46
  Speaker 12: presidential elections have been super close. In each election, there
• 40:49
  Speaker 12: were three states that got the winner over the top.
• 40:53
  Speaker 12: And Wisconsin was the only state that was on both
• 40:55
  Speaker 12: of those lists. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan in 2016, Wisconsin, Arizona,
• 40:59
  Speaker 12: Georgia in 2020. Wisconsin was the tipping point state in
• 41:02
  Speaker 12: both elections. And the reason why democracy prevailed in 2020
• 41:08
  Speaker 12: is that we had a Democratic governor in Wisconsin in
• 41:11
  Speaker 12: 2020 who didn't throw the election to Trump or support
• 41:14
  Speaker 12: its overturning. There's a woman named Rebecca Clayfish who's running
• 41:17
  Speaker 12: for governor of Wisconsin. She was Scott Walker's lieutenant governor.
• 41:21
  Speaker 12: She famously negotiated the giant Foxconn deal. Do you remember
• 41:28
  Speaker 12: when that Senate candidate said that rape survivors should turn
• 41:31
  Speaker 12: lemons into lemonade and that's why there shouldn't be an
• 41:34
  Speaker 12: exception for rape and incest.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: In abortion laws?
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: Oh my God.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: Someone said that?
• 41:39
  Speaker 12: Yes.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Rebecca Clayfish quote tweeted that and said, Like she's telling
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: it like it is like, she's just an extreme.
• 41:47
  Speaker 12: Like really radical far right Republican candidate. But she is
• 41:52
  Speaker 12: saying that she would actually sign a law to do
• 41:55
  Speaker 12: what Ron Johnson says should happen to give the state
• 41:58
  Speaker 12: legislature control of our elections. And she was asked directly
• 42:01
  Speaker 12: if she would support, if she would sign a bill
• 42:04
  Speaker 12: that would allow the state legislature to overturn an election result.
• 42:07
  Speaker 12: And she said it would be premature to comment. She's,
• 42:10
  Speaker 12: We set up a website called RadicalRebecca.com when she launched,
• 42:14
  Speaker 12: and she started talking about RadicalRebecca.com on the campaign trail.
• 42:18
  Speaker 12: She's running as the candidate of the most extreme of
• 42:21
  Speaker 12: the extreme fringe. If she wins, then it becomes much,
• 42:27
  Speaker 12: much harder to have confidence that democracy actually will function
• 42:30
  Speaker 12: at its most basic level in 2024. And Governor Evers
• 42:33
  Speaker 12: is absolutely rock solid in a veto of any threat,
• 42:38
  Speaker 12: anything that makes it harder to vote, anything that makes
• 42:40
  Speaker 12: an election less free and fair and secure. I mean,
• 42:42
  Speaker 12: for people in Wisconsin, the stakes are good schools. He's
• 42:46
  Speaker 12: got our schools back in the top 10 after Scott
• 42:48
  Speaker 12: Walker and Rebecca Clayfish looted the public school system. Roads,
• 42:52
  Speaker 12: he's paved a thousand miles of roads. Healthcare, he's great
• 42:55
  Speaker 12: on preexisting conditions. All this stuff that affects Wisconsinites' lives.
• 42:58
  Speaker 12: But for the whole country and the whole world, the
• 43:01
  Speaker 12: Wisconsin governorship can actually affect whether we have a democracy
• 43:03
  Speaker 12: at all. We have to win We have to reelect
• 43:07
  Speaker 12: Tony Evers. We have to win the governorship in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
• 43:10
  Speaker 12: Let's elect Stacey Abrams. Let's elect a Democratic governor in Arizona.
• 43:14
  Speaker 12: That becomes the firewall to make sure Republicans can't actually
• 43:18
  Speaker 12: overturn the election results. Get obsessed with governorships. Get obsessed
• 43:22
  Speaker 12: with reelecting Tony Evers is my advice for friends of democracy.
• 43:26
  Speaker 12: And while we're at it, let's take out Ron Johnson.
• 43:28
  Speaker 12: That's our to-do list. That's a great to-do list.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: So Although I know you're obsessed with the governor's race,
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: I know you're obsessed with taking out Ron Johnson, but
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: I also know you are focused on countless smaller mayoral
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: and county-level positions. Can you give us some examples of
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: local races in Wisconsin that we're never, ever going to
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: read about in the newspaper, but you're super focused on
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: and why you think those are important. Basically, what I'm
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: trying to do is get you to inspire by proxy
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: a bunch of people outside of Wisconsin to give a
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: shit about the county clerk of, you know, whatever, or
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: the mayor of blah, blah, blah.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: I would be more than delighted.
• 44:09
  Speaker 12: So, and let me say, if you're listening to this
• 44:11
  Speaker 12: right now and you're thinking about how you can have
• 44:13
  Speaker 12: an impact on things, Go to whistems.org slash donate and
• 44:18
  Speaker 12: chip in.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 44:19
  Speaker 12: If you care about Ron Johnson, why not go to whistems.org
• 44:21
  Speaker 12: slash Ron Johnson, become a monthly donor, support the Democratic
• 44:24
  Speaker 12: Party of Wisconsin, and go to whistems.org slash volunteer because
• 44:28
  Speaker 12: we need your time and your treasure and your talent.
• 44:31
  Speaker 12: And this spring, on April 5th, there will be local
• 44:33
  Speaker 12: elections across the state of Wisconsin that will help shape
• 44:38
  Speaker 12: how elections run in the fall of 2022 and thus
• 44:42
  Speaker 12: whether we have a democracy in the fall of 2024.
• 44:45
  Speaker 12: So when you're thinking about this huge national crisis of democracy,
• 44:50
  Speaker 12: I want you to think about the mayor of the
• 44:53
  Speaker 12: city of Darlington in Lafayette County, Wisconsin. I want you
• 44:56
  Speaker 12: to think about the mayor of Dodgeville in Iowa County, Wisconsin,
• 45:00
  Speaker 12: the mayor of the city of Rice Lake in Barron County, Wisconsin.
• 45:04
  Speaker 12: These offices have enormous effects on who becomes the municipal clerk.
• 45:08
  Speaker 12: In Wisconsin, we have one of the two most decentralized
• 45:12
  Speaker 12: election administration systems in the country. We have more than 1,800
• 45:16
  Speaker 12: municipal clerks, city clerks who administer the elections in those cities.
• 45:20
  Speaker 12: And those people matter enormously for whether the right to
• 45:23
  Speaker 12: vote actually has meaning for the people who live there.
• 45:26
  Speaker 12: We can't let Bannonite, stop the Steeler authoritarians, take charge
• 45:32
  Speaker 12: of local election administration systems.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: And just to be clear, as listeners to the show know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: I listen to C. Bannon's show all the time. He
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: is day after day after day telling his folks to
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: go and run for office, run for the school board,
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: volunteer for these local municipal elections because he wants to
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: set up a scenario where those MAGA brainwashed people are
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: in charge and can actually steal the next vote. That
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: is their plan. They talk about it in the light
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: of day every day on his podcast.
• 46:02
  Speaker 12: Literally, I mean, there are two counties in Wisconsin that
• 46:05
  Speaker 12: actually flipped in 2020 relative to 2016. They flip by
• 46:11
  Speaker 12: like a couple percentage points. There's Sauk County and Door County.
• 46:15
  Speaker 12: And in Sauk County, one of the larger municipalities is
• 46:18
  Speaker 12: the city of Reedsburg. Reedsburg is, you know, it's not
• 46:23
  Speaker 12: New York City. It is not Detroit. It has 9,508 people.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: But guess what?
• 46:30
  Speaker 12: The total margin in the presidential race in 2020 in
• 46:32
  Speaker 12: Wisconsin was 20,682. So you take a city of 9,508
• 46:33
  Speaker 12: people and that matters a lot. in determining what happens
• 46:42
  Speaker 12: to the entire country. It's insane that our system is
• 46:45
  Speaker 12: set up this way, but it is set up this
• 46:47
  Speaker 12: way for now.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: So we have to fight in these races.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, we do.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: And we will be.
• 46:51
  Speaker 12: And let me say one other thing. In Wisconsin, when
• 46:55
  Speaker 12: you request an absentee ballot to vote for the mayor
• 46:58
  Speaker 12: of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, you can request your absentee ballot. You
• 47:01
  Speaker 12: can click a box on the myvote.wi.gov website and click
• 47:05
  Speaker 12: a box to request absentee ballots for the entire year.
• 47:08
  Speaker 12: And what that means is that every vote that we
• 47:11
  Speaker 12: get out through absentee ballots in the spring election this
• 47:13
  Speaker 12: year is a voter who we can get to be
• 47:16
  Speaker 12: an absentee voter in the fall of 2022 as well.
• 47:19
  Speaker 12: It means we're doing GOTV for the November elections while
• 47:22
  Speaker 12: we're working on the spring election. And that is a super, super,
• 47:25
  Speaker 12: super powerful thing.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: You don't have to.
• 47:27
  Speaker 12: Wait until election day to actually get out the vote
• 47:30
  Speaker 12: to win races up and down the ballot and save democracy.
• 47:33
  Speaker 12: You can work on Wisconsin local elections this spring and
• 47:35
  Speaker 12: do exactly that.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: And, you know, I know there's a primary in the
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: Democratic side in the Senate race, so I will not
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: ask you to choose between all the potential children that
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: you will one day love, no matter who wins that race.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: But what people need to understand is I'm a monthly
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: recurring donor to the Democratic Party in Wisconsin. It's the
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: best money I spend every month. And it's a way
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: that I can start working to defeat Ron Johnson right now,
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: even before he has an opponent and there's a candidate
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: to donate to, et cetera. So, Ben, you know, we...
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: we talk often like, what have you been doing? What
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: has the Wisconsin Democratic Party been doing over the last
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: year to prepare for today? And if, you know, a hundred,
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: a thousand listeners decide to join me and become, you know,
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: recurring donors, give you 10 bucks, like what else could
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: you be doing? What's on your wishlist that you wish
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: you were getting done right now?
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: First of all, thank you.
• 48:27
  Speaker 12: As a monthly recurring donor, you are powering the organizing
• 48:31
  Speaker 12: juggernaut that is the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. And I
• 48:33
  Speaker 12: want to say, you led the Wisconsin adopt the state
• 48:36
  Speaker 12: team for, for pod save America in 2020, the adopt
• 48:39
  Speaker 12: the staters, the pod save America listeners who volunteered to
• 48:41
  Speaker 12: support our work, like legitimately turned out more voters.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Than the margin of victory in Wisconsin.
• 48:48
  Speaker 12: It is, it's a giant gift and infusion of not
• 48:52
  Speaker 12: just resources, but the volunteer energy and time and talent
• 48:55
  Speaker 12: and all of your humanity.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: That, that helped win that election. So thank you.
• 49:00
  Speaker 12: And what we did is in 2020, uh, Our organizing model,
• 49:04
  Speaker 12: it's the Obama model. It's something you know very well.
• 49:07
  Speaker 12: It's the model where our organizers actually build local teams
• 49:11
  Speaker 12: across our state. So we have hundreds of local Democratic
• 49:14
  Speaker 12: Party of Wisconsin neighborhood action teams all over Wisconsin that
• 49:18
  Speaker 12: know every inch of their community. where they mobilize people.
• 49:21
  Speaker 12: They have a contact at each apartment building who will
• 49:23
  Speaker 12: let them in to knock on the door of people
• 49:24
  Speaker 12: who just moved there.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: They know which areas you.
• 49:27
  Speaker 12: Got to have a driver who can drive the mile
• 49:30
  Speaker 12: between farms to make sure that someone else can jump
• 49:33
  Speaker 12: out and knock on the door. Those teams are still
• 49:36
  Speaker 12: in place from 2020 and And we organized all over
• 49:39
  Speaker 12: Wisconsin throughout 2021. We had a spring election, which we
• 49:43
  Speaker 12: won by 16 percentage points for the superintendent of public
• 49:46
  Speaker 12: instruction against a candidate who got hundreds of thousands of
• 49:50
  Speaker 12: dollars of dark money ads from Betsy DeVos. The Republican
• 49:54
  Speaker 12: attack on education that happened in Virginia, they tried it
• 49:56
  Speaker 12: in Wisconsin and it totally failed. And then in the fall,
• 50:00
  Speaker 12: we went back on the doors. We actually knocked on
• 50:03
  Speaker 12: the doors of and called and texted more voters in
• 50:05
  Speaker 12: the fall of 2021 than we did in the fall
• 50:08
  Speaker 12: of 2019 before the presidential election.
• 50:11
  Speaker 10: Wow.
• 50:11
  Speaker 12: Like more than twice as many. We've been building momentum.
• 50:16
  Speaker 12: And all of that momentum will be necessary. But we're
• 50:18
  Speaker 12: bursting into this year now with this kind of the
• 50:21
  Speaker 12: infrastructure set to be able to scale up organizing this year.
• 50:25
  Speaker 12: Now that the year has begun, Every hour of someone's
• 50:29
  Speaker 12: time that you volunteer with our party, every dollar that
• 50:32
  Speaker 12: we can use to hire another organizer to build more teams,
• 50:35
  Speaker 12: those folks can get folks to request absentee ballots for
• 50:38
  Speaker 12: the entire year, to win the local elections in the spring,
• 50:41
  Speaker 12: and to turn out in the fall. Those folks can
• 50:43
  Speaker 12: help us recruit and train and turn out poll workers who,
• 50:47
  Speaker 12: this is another Bannonite obsession. Steve Bannon is trying to
• 50:50
  Speaker 12: get far-right anti-democracy authoritarians to become poll workers and mess
• 50:55
  Speaker 12: with people's right to vote. we're out organizing the right
• 50:58
  Speaker 12: in poll worker recruitment because we have people in English
• 51:01
  Speaker 12: and in Spanish recruiting poll workers, um, making sure they
• 51:05
  Speaker 12: go through trainings. People can work the polls this spring
• 51:07
  Speaker 12: that qualifies them to move up the chain of command
• 51:10
  Speaker 12: in the fall. We want people who believe in everyone's.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Right to vote.
• 51:13
  Speaker 12: We're not trying to suppress anyone's vote, but we want
• 51:15
  Speaker 12: people who believe in democracy to be working the polls.
• 51:18
  Speaker 12: It allows us to hire candidate services managers. So people
• 51:21
  Speaker 12: who are running for these local offices, um, Maybe they've
• 51:24
  Speaker 12: run for something before or even served, but they've often
• 51:26
  Speaker 12: never had a real contested election. And so we actually
• 51:29
  Speaker 12: have staff that will help people set up their campaign
• 51:31
  Speaker 12: website and figure out how to set up a Facebook
• 51:33
  Speaker 12: page and figure out how to run some digital ads
• 51:35
  Speaker 12: and get a list of the voters who they need
• 51:37
  Speaker 12: to talk to, which a lot of people don't realize
• 51:39
  Speaker 12: that you can get. All of this stuff, it just
• 51:41
  Speaker 12: takes human time to be able to do. And we
• 51:44
  Speaker 12: have systems to scale it. But what that means is
• 51:47
  Speaker 12: we can put money to work to actually support dozens,
• 51:50
  Speaker 12: hundreds of local candidates across the state in the course
• 51:52
  Speaker 12: of this spring and And all that work, all those
• 51:56
  Speaker 12: people then become terrific staffers for state legislative races in
• 51:58
  Speaker 12: the fall because Republicans are going to shoot for super
• 52:01
  Speaker 12: majorities in our state legislature again. We know that that's
• 52:03
  Speaker 12: their goal. So the impact of early support, of early contributions,
• 52:08
  Speaker 12: of early hours volunteering, it has a multiplier effect. It
• 52:11
  Speaker 12: echoes throughout the whole year and it echoes from election
• 52:14
  Speaker 12: cycle to election cycle. That's the power of a party.
• 52:16
  Speaker 12: It's like a battery that can get charged up with
• 52:20
  Speaker 12: energy and then push it all out on election time.
• 52:24
  Speaker 12: it's not something where you buy an ad, it airs
• 52:27
  Speaker 12: once and it's gone. We actually are building something. And
• 52:29
  Speaker 12: that's the reason why we've won 10 of the last
• 52:31
  Speaker 12: 11 races in Wisconsin. And that is the thing we
• 52:33
  Speaker 12: need to put every ounce of our energy into to
• 52:36
  Speaker 12: win in the fall of 2022.
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: I think that's such an important point. And look, people
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: listen to the show, they've given a lot of money.
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: They've been asked by us to give a lot of money.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: We're so grateful for that. All the people who adopted
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: a state. But it's just worth knowing what we're talking
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: about here is not you know, an October donation to
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: run an ad for November election. You're talking about getting,
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: hiring one more person who's going to work for an
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: entire year because of contributions that came in today and
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: the multiplier of that. Ben, if we could clone your team,
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: I think we would never lose another election, but give
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: us the website one more time where people can donate
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: and then we'll let you go to dinner time or
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: whatever you're doing with your family tonight.
• 53:16
  Speaker 12: WIS like Wisconsin, W-I-S. Dems like Democrats, D-E-M-S. So it's
• 53:21
  Speaker 12: WIS Dems. Your autocorrect will try to change it to Wisdoms.
• 53:24
  Speaker 12: What even is Wisdoms? WisDems.org slash donate or slash volunteer.
• 53:30
  Speaker 12: We're so grateful for all the support. And after you
• 53:34
  Speaker 12: give and support us, join your local state party wherever
• 53:37
  Speaker 12: it may be and go to your county party meetings
• 53:38
  Speaker 12: and plug in because this is the fight to win
• 53:41
  Speaker 12: power at the local level and make sure Republicans can't
• 53:43
  Speaker 12: shred our democracy from the bottom up.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: It's happening everywhere.
• 53:46
  Speaker 13: Yeah.
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: And Steve Bannon is going to be there if you're not.
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: Ben Wickler, thank you again. Thanks for all the work
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: you're doing. Let's win this thing. And Ron Johnson sucks.
• 53:55
  Speaker 10: All right.
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: Before we go, we have to call your attention to
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: one of the saddest, most pathetic displays of political groveling
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: we've seen from someone who basically owns the genre. After
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: describing the January 6th attack as a, quote, violent terrorist
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: attack on the Capitol, Beta Cuck Senator Ted Cruz crawled
• 54:23
  Speaker 6: onto Tucker Carlson's show to beg for forgiveness, and it
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: didn't go so well.
• 54:27
  Speaker 13: And you never use words carelessly, and yet you called
• 54:33
  Speaker 13: this a terror attack when by no definition was it
• 54:36
  Speaker 13: a terror attack.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: That's a lie.
• 54:38
  Speaker 13: You told that lie on purpose, and I'm wondering why
• 54:40
  Speaker 13: you did.
• 54:42
  Speaker 9: Well, Tucker, thank you for having me on when you
• 54:44
  Speaker 9: aired your episode last night. I sent you a text
• 54:46
  Speaker 9: shortly thereafter and said, listen, I'd like to go on
• 54:49
  Speaker 9: because the way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy
• 54:53
  Speaker 9: and it was frankly dumb.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: I don't buy that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: buy that.
• 54:57
  Speaker 13: Look, I've known you a long time since before you
• 54:59
  Speaker 13: went to the Senate. You're a Supreme Court contender. You
• 55:02
  Speaker 13: take words as seriously as any man who's ever served
• 55:04
  Speaker 13: in the Senate. And every word you repeated that phrase,
• 55:07
  Speaker 13: I do not believe that you use that accidentally.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: I just don't.
• 55:11
  Speaker 9: So, Tucker, as a result of my sloppy phrasing, it's
• 55:14
  Speaker 9: caused a lot of people to misunderstand what I meant.
• 55:17
  Speaker 7: When Ted Cruz sends you a text, this is the
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: sound it makes. Oh, a text from Ted Cruz came in.
• 55:27
  Speaker 9: Wow.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: Was it tough for you guys to figure out who
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: to root for in that exchange?
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: No.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: Who'd you root for?
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: The viewer.
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: What's funny is, you know, people did five seconds of
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: Googling and they found that Ted Cruz had used the
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: word terrorist in conjunction with the January 6th attack many,
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: many times.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: It was not an accident. Tucker was absolutely right.
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: It was a purposeful, deliberate choice of words, as it
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: should be, because if you look up the legal definition
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: of terrorism, it's a bunch of people using violence to
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: impact the government.
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: In fact, some of the charges that were brought against
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: the January 6th attackers were domestic terrorism charges.
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not saying that.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that.
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: I don't want to be accused of attempting to trump
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: up domestic terrorism charges and create more surveillance.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: None of that.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: Just on a technical, legal basis. One, he'd said it
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: many times. Two, what I find funniest about this is
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: Ted Cruz thinks that his political future required eating shit,
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: groveling to Tucker Carlson, and walking that back so the
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: MAGA people didn't hate him. What he doesn't seem to
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: get is when you look that pathetic, it's unfixable forever.
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: You're winning no side. You're winning no converts when you're
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: that pathetic. No one wants to vote for that person.
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: That person can't be president.
• 56:40
  Speaker 7: There's a scene in Mad Men that I always think
• 56:43
  Speaker 7: of when I think of Ted Cruz, which is the
• 56:46
  Speaker 7: Ted Cruz character of Mad Men is Pete Campbell. And
• 56:48
  Speaker 7: he doesn't get a promotion. He doesn't understand why. And
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: I always think, I think Ted Cruz captures this perfectly,
• 56:53
  Speaker 7: which is that like Ted Cruz goes to these conservatives
• 56:57
  Speaker 7: and is like, look, look, I'm meeting all your needs.
• 56:59
  Speaker 7: I'm meeting all your needs. And then like, sorry, Trump
• 57:01
  Speaker 7: makes us feel like we have no needs.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Also, he's just an asshole. No, like it.
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: The shocking thing to me is that so many people
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: in Texas vote for the guy. He's just like, it's
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: it's incredible. He's the the ambition.
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: And the fact that like, even Tucker Carlson knows that
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: he can have some fun and introduce him and say like,
• 57:24
  Speaker 7: people don't like this guy, but they respect him.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: Here he is, Ted Cruz. I don't believe you. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: you kind of like, it's, first of all, it's the first.
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: Time in a long time you've seen Ted Cruz, like
• 57:34
  Speaker 7: someone actually call him on his sort of bullshit, the
• 57:37
  Speaker 7: way he like kind of, just wheedles and spins and
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: sort of makes things up as he goes.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: It was kind of nice to see.
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: Which is why he gets away with it all the
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: time because he doesn't sit down for interviews that are contentious, right?
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: He's in his right-wing media bubble. He goes on the
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: Senate floor and does his bullshit. He tweets bullshit at people.
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: But he's never made to answer for his garbage.
• 57:55
  Speaker 8: No.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: No. It was pretty great, actually.
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: Look, if I were to answer your question honestly, who
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: was I rooting for? Tucker. I was rooting for Tucker
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: the whole time because he was calling... Like, every once
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: in a while you see, uh, a Republican get called
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: out on Fox news by another Republican because usually because
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: they broke with whatever, you know, Trump's dictate was that week.
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: And this is one of those instances. And it's amazing
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: to just watch the piercing of the bubble.
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: One of my thoughts in my head was, wouldn't it
• 58:25
  Speaker 6: be great to see any Sunday show host do that
• 58:30
  Speaker 6: to a Republican when they get them on aside from
• 58:33
  Speaker 6: like Jake Tapper?
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: Well, that's it.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: That's the thing about it.
• 58:36
  Speaker 7: It's, um, I think that the power Tucker Carlson has
• 58:41
  Speaker 7: on that show, I mean, look, I think it was yesterday,
• 58:45
  Speaker 7: he basically referred to the insurrection as a bunch of
• 58:48
  Speaker 7: people taking a tour through the Capitol.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: It's basically how he describes it. So obviously he has
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: a sick and sinister worldview.
• 58:54
  Speaker 7: I do think he's like a genuine representation of what
• 58:56
  Speaker 7: fascism in America looks like.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: He's talking about overpopulation. He doesn't believe in democracy anymore.
• 59:01
  Speaker 7: But there's real power in what he has, which is
• 59:03
  Speaker 7: an ideology that and a set of beliefs that inform
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: everything he does on that show now. It's a character
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: that he's playing. he's a character he has adopted but
• 59:11
  Speaker 7: nonetheless he's playing it so fully that he has a
• 59:13
  Speaker 7: lot of power and a lot of confidence and a
• 59:15
  Speaker 7: lot of kind of there's a he's comfortable in his
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: fascism yes he's comfortable and there's a confident and there's
• 59:20
  Speaker 7: a coherence to it that gives him strength in every
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: kind of conversation he can have on that show gives
• 59:24
  Speaker 7: him a place to go in every single show and
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: And the difference is I actually think there's a reason
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: that I think Jake Tapper is one of the only
• 59:29
  Speaker 7: people that does anything even remotely like that is because
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: the kinds of people that are hosting nonpartisan shows do
• 59:35
  Speaker 7: not have any confidence in their own worldview.
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: They feel buffeted by Twitter.
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: They feel buffeted by the right, the left on Twitter,
• 59:42
  Speaker 7: the right on their own platforms. And there is a
• 59:44
  Speaker 7: lack of confidence and assuredness and coherence to what they're
• 59:48
  Speaker 7: supposed to be doing. to the point where they don't
• 59:50
  Speaker 7: even necessarily view themselves as partisans for democracy, and it's
• 59:53
  Speaker 7: why people like Ron Johnson and all of these creeps
• 59:54
  Speaker 7: can go on these shows, Ted Cruz included, and feel
• 59:57
  Speaker 7: like they have a safer platform than they do with
• 59:58
  Speaker 7: fucking Tucker Carlson.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: That's why Tucker's so dangerous, too.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, if you watch enough, Tucker, you realize
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: that he's advocating for the, he's talking about the great
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: replacement theory, which is basically saying that Democrats want to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: bring in people of color to this country to replace
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: white voters. He repeatedly does segments on how the January
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: 6th attacks were a false flag and how the FBI
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: had informants or agents in there who were the ones
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: who were actually fomenting violence. And that's why all the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: bad things happened. I mean, it is that dark. But
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: the power of the show is that Ted Cruz wants
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: to run for president and he knows Tucker's audience. And
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: when Tucker says jump, he says, how high? I'll be
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: on tonight. I'll be on tomorrow. I'll be on anytime
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: you want. I'll come to your house. I'll do your
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: streaming show. I'll do whatever you say, Tucker. They're all
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: falling all over themselves for him.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: Truly wild that Ted Cruz thinks that he can run
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 6: for president again. And it's just, wow, it's impressive.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: People need therapy.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Tougher question, tougher question.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 6: Where do you think the Tucker appearance ranks in the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: pantheon of Ted Cruz debasement? As a refresher, her two
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: other contenders.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 9: And after a couple of days, after the girls being
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 9: really cold at being in the teens and the 20s outside,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 9: our girls asked, said, look, school's been canceled for the week.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 9: Can we take a trip and go somewhere warm? We
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 9: left yesterday. The plan had been to stay through the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 9: weekend with the family. That was the plan. I started
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 9: having second thoughts almost the moment I sat down on
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 9: the plane.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: Just to be clear here, Senator Cruz is claiming he
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: had second thoughts the minute he sat down on the flight.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 9: That's because people were taking his picture on the airplane.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: So he knew that he was caught.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: So that was that was Ted Cruz, of course, blaming
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: his family for abandoning his constituents during a blackout to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: go to Cancun. And of course, there's this all time favorite.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 14: What happened to vote your conscience? He questioned your wife's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 14: physical appearance. He accused your father of being associated with
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 14: the Kennedy assassination. He called your citizenship and your eligibility
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 14: to be president into question. You have decided to forgive
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 14: him for those things.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: Has he apologized?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: He has not.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: What I'm going to tell you is this. We're in
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: a general election now.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 9: I don't think it is productive for me to criticize
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 9: the Republican nominee today.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: So you can ask me to, but I'm going to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: decline to do so.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: Just amazing. I still think that's the worst.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 7: The photo of him in front of that Trump-Pence sign
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 7: making the fucking phone calls and Trump never walked it back. Really, really,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 7: really incredible. I will say, Ted Cruz saying, I had
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 7: second thoughts the second I sat down on the plane.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 7: The most relatable he ever was his whole life. The
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 7: most I ever kind of bought. He was like, this is.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: Obviously a mistake. Hard to disagree there. I think he's
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: a bad actor who tries to act all the time.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: In that sense, he should be on your favorite show
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: and just like that.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: Just kidding. They're good actors.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: Did you guys have dinner with Sarah Jessica Parker or something?
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: It's a.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: I have no dog in this film.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: It's a cynical show.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: On that line, though, he goes.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: Like, like he does like a voice, like he's just, uh,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: sipping a Coke for the first time in his life.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: It's, it's absurd.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: And on the Tucker, he's like, tries to do this
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: sort of earnest, like furrowed brow, you know, it's not
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: the Mike Pence, Reagan impersonation, but it's just a way
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: worse version. I think, I think the most sort of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: pathetic he's ever been was when he pretended to stand
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: up for Heidi, his wife, because there's a longer cut
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: of it. I think where he's like, y'all ready? It
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: was like sort of talking to the press and staging
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: this ridiculous thing in front of his campaign bus or whatever.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: And you can kind of see reporters near him smirking
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: and laughing at him in real time.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, lying Ted, not actually a good liar.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: Does it a lot.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: Pretty easy to know when he's doing it. Really has
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: a tell, which is just all of his body language
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: and the bullshit that comes out of his mouth.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: But I'll always have a soft spot for him.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know why you do.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Do you really?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: You think he's some intellectual giant.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 7: Yes, that's right. I think Ted Cruz is... That's right.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: You got me.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: I think Ted Cruz is an intellectual giant.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 8: No.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: You think he's a bad, smart guy.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: I think he's a bad, smart guy. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: And I think he was the.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: Intellectual guy.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 7: And I think he went harder and smarter at Trump
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 7: than anyone else in that Republican... primary, and he was
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 7: the only one who had a shot to win.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: He beat him in Iowa.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: I think maybe he's book smart and not clever. I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: think he's not very clever.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 7: And the other thing is, I will always, you know,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: I will always pick Ted Cruz over Marco Rubio. Because
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 7: Ted Cruz knows what Ted Cruz is, but Marco Rubio
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: is still telling himself stories, you know?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: Do you think he is?
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: It's just, it says something, like... Everyone you ask who
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: has worked with, among, around Ted Cruz.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: Hates his guts.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 5: George Bush will say it on the record. Everyone will
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: say it.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: Remember Lindsey Graham's quote, if someone killed him on the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: Senate floor.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 5: I mean, no one would care. If I had nobody
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: to testify. What does it say about American politics? That
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: guy's like, aha, my path is to run for office.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: But I'm just saying.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: One thing that can unite Democrats and Republicans, which they
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: hate Ted Cruz.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: John Boehner's quotes, remember? Oh, those are good.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: That's cool.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: This is not a guy. He has zero friends. He
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 7: doesn't know how to make friends. He's not nice. He's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 7: not fun.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: He seems to have no hobbies whatsoever. I admire him.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Okay. His hobby is power.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to be around him.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: Anyway, Ted Cruz. Here's to you, Ted Cruz. Here's to you, Ted.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: Raise a glass.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 6: Thanks for giving us so much fodder for today. Thank you,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 6: Ben Wickler, for joining us and talking about Wisconsin.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: And I want to thank you both for not bringing
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 7: up the fact that Ted Cruz likes incest cockporn. Because
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 7: there's nothing wrong with that. That's not a problem. It
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 7: is just like, how did they... How does he get
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 7: through all these things? It's not important that he likes
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 7: that kind of porn.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: Didn't they blame a staffer?
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: It's the politics today selects for the most shameless.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: And he is truly one of the... Donald Trump, Ted Cruz,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: these people are completely shameless.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: It's been long enough. How is there not like a
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: deep dive New York Magazine piece on what actually happened?
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: Who.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: did or did not like the incest cuck porn.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: Of course, we are talking about, for those of you
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: who haven't seen, I'm sure you all have, the Twitter.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 7: If you've gotten to this far in Pod Save America,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 7: you know that Ted Cruz.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: Click like on some incest pornography. And then blamed a staffer.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: And then blamed a staffer.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: I don't think it was incest. I think it was... Yeah,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: where'd you get the incest from?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 7: My understanding is that it was both. My understanding is
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 7: that it was both. Honestly, I thought it was... Because someone's...
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 7: You know why?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: Because someone.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 7: This is now maybe fake news. Ted Cruz likes incest porn.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: Is the music playing now? Should the music be playing?
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: Play us out. Big time. Play us out five minutes ago.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: Play us out after the Wickler interview.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: Look, maybe it was incest porn. Maybe it wasn't. But
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: here's one thing I know for certain.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: It was on 9-11.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 11: Oh, my God.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: I did not know that. You bet.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 6: Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: Sedlin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: Hallie Kiefer, Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 6: slash crookedmedia.