Latest / Pod Save America / "Trumper Tantrum."

Transcript

"Trumper Tantrum." · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, I talk to the great Rebecca
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Traister about the Republican attack on reproductive rights and what's
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: at stake in the 2020 elections. Before that, we're going
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to run through a lot of other news. We've got
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Trump's latest tantrum, House Democrats inching towards impeachment, and a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: new analysis of the 2018 midterms that may tell us
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: quite a bit about 2020. On Pod Save the World
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: this week, Tommy and Ben check in on our on-again,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: off-again war with Iran, explain why Fox News loves war crimes,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and explore Bernie Sanders' foreign policy record from his time
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: as mayor of Burlington. Do you have a foreign policy
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: record as mayor of Burlington? I guess you do. Also,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: in case you missed it, check out our Fuck Jerry
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Mandarin Fund at votesaveamerica.com slash donate. We've teamed up with
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: our friends at Data for Progress to target 10 winnable
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: down-ballot races in Virginia this year that could help Democrats
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: flip the state legislature and draw the congressional districts for
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the next 10 years. Very important. Check that out. Also,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a reminder, Tuesday, May 28th, is going to be the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: premiere of the Running with Beto documentary on HBO. that
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: we at Crooked Media helped produce. It's a fantastic documentary.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It's not just about Beto himself, but it's about all
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of the volunteers and activists that took part in this
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Texas Senate campaign, people who, after Donald Trump was elected,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: wanted to get involved, and they found this race, and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: we got involved with it way back before anyone had
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: ever heard of Beto O'Rourke, and we're really proud of it.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So check it out on HBO, Tuesday, May 28th. Finally,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: big news. Crooked Media is launching a brand new podcast
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on June 3rd called This Land. It's hosted by Rebecca Nagel,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: a Cherokee journalist and advocate based in Oklahoma. And at
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the very end of today's show, for the very first time,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to play the official trailer. It's a really
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: cool story about a pair of murders and a Supreme
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Court case that will decide the fate of half the
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: land in Oklahoma. So subscribe to This Land and listen
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: to the trailer now at thislandpodcast.com. And wherever you get
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: your podcasts, first episode drops June 3rd.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: It sounds great.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very, very cool.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I got a question for you before we get started.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Do you know where you were one year ago today?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: One year ago today. It is Thursday, May 23rd, 2018. No,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: where was I, Dan?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: You were in New York City preparing... For your Radio
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: City Music Hall show. You know what I was doing?
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: What were you doing?
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I was in the hospital.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: That's right!
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Because one year ago today was the day Kyla was born.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: She is one years old today.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Happy birthday, Kyla!
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: We've been celebrating since 6.30 this morning. I've already made
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse pancakes. We are rolling through the day.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Do you guys have a... You and Holly have a
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: big first birthday party planned?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: We have a very large first birthday party Saturday. Today
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: is like Actual birthday on Saturday is quite... Rager.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Rager. Well, that's exciting. That's very, very exciting.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: So, happy birthday, Kyla.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I can't believe it's been a whole year. That is amazing.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: You're telling me.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. To the news. On Wednesday, the President of the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: United States stormed out of an Oval Office meeting with
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: congressional leaders after only three minutes and threw a temper
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: tantrum in the Rose Garden. Trump said that he refuses
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: to work with Congress on infrastructure, prescription drug prices... or
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: basically any legislation at all, unless the Democrats allow him
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: to obstruct justice and commit his crimes in peace, Dan. Later,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: after the tantrum, he tweeted, you can't investigate and legislate simultaneously.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't work that way. So, Trump's meeting with
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Pelosi and Schumer was supposed to be about working together
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: on this $ 2 trillion infrastructure bill that had previously interested
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the president. The White House spin is that Trump blew
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: up the meeting because Pelosi accused him of committing a coverup.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Is that really what did it? Do you think that's a,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: that's a believable spin?
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I am going to guess that it's a little more
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: complicated or maybe even more stunningly simple than that. But
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: you know, I, uh, I, before this, I Googled Trump
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: storms out Pelosi to read the latest coverage on this. And,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: The thing you realize is it was only five months
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: ago that he did the exact same thing during a
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: shutdown meeting. The exact same thing. This is a.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: He does not have a very thick playbook, but this
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: is one of the plays in it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: So you think this was perhaps a setup that had
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: been planned in advance?
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't say that I am an ace detective,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: but the fact that there was a fully printed sign
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: hanging on the podium in the Oval Office as the
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: temper tantrum was happening suggests to me based on my
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: own personal knowledge of the printing time in the print
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: shop in the EEOB basement in the White House, that
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: they knew this in advance.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it also seemed like, to me, this
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: infrastructure bill never really stood a chance. After the first
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: meeting about an infrastructure bill, it was shortly after that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that Republican leaders in Congress and people in the White
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: House like Mick Mulvaney, Trump's chief of staff, basically said, Yeah, no,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: there's absolutely no way Republicans are going to spend $ 2
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: trillion on infrastructure, particularly if it requires raising taxes on
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: rich people, which, you know, they're not down to do.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: And then right before the meeting on Wednesday, the night
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: before the meeting, Trump sent a letter to Democratic leaders
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: saying there would be no infrastructure bill until Congress passes
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: his revised new, whatever you want to call it, NAFTA agreement. Um,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you know, this, this whole idea that it's, it's the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: investigations that are preventing legislation from happening on infrastructure. Well,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the investigations were going on three weeks ago when Trump
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: met with Schumer and Pelosi for the first time and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: said he wanted an infrastructure bill. So it really wasn't
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the investigations because they didn't seem to be a problem
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: three weeks ago. Um, And then, you know, like you said,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the sign was already printed. Is there a strategy, Dan,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: behind this whole no legislating until you stop investigating threat?
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: What's Trump trying to do here?
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's always such the question, right? Which is, like,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: is there a plan? And the truth with Trump is
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: he kind of stumbles into a strategy. There's, like, no
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: whiteboard with an actual plan on it. He just, he, like, operates...
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: by gut. And I, I do think there is like,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: you could follow this up with a strategy. If Trump
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: didn't have the attention span, um, of a two year old, uh,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: after eating fun dip, but is that the, like every
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: incumbent president serving that time, a divided government wants to
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: run against Congress. Congress is less popular than Trump, which
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: is fucking unbelievable because pond scum is near Trump in
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the polls. And, and, So you want, you want to foil, right?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: You want to run against something to change the conversation,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: at least until the moment when you have an actual
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: opponent change conversation between a referendum on you to a
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: choice between two visions. This has been, everyone has wanted
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to do this since, uh, Truman won reelection by running
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: against the do nothing Congress. Um, Bill Clinton won reelection
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: before Bob Dole was even nominated in 96 by running
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: against Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the house. We,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama had real success, um, laying some of the
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: blame for lack of economic progress at the feet of
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: the Republicans who were blocking his initiatives in the fall
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of 2011. So there is a world in which there
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: is a strategy where Trump wants to run against the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: investigate everything, do nothing Congress. That is a foil. And
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the question of whether that works or not is going
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: to depend on how Democrats respond to this attack.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And how do you think they should respond to that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: attack and not get sucked into looking like the do nothing... investigate,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: not legislate type Congress? I think that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: They should respond. There are several paths to respond to work.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I listen to a couple of these. One is you
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: could stop investigating. The other one is you could investigate
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: and legislate. And that's the path I think the Democrats
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: should take. You can easily walk and chew gum at
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: the same time and they should do that. They should
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: aggressively investigate every ounce of corruption that's coming out of
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: this administration. They should do the duty of oversight, even
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: on things that are not corrupt in the sense that
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: it's like the usual Trump grift, but it is incompetence,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: like what happened in Puerto Rico during the hurricane a
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: couple years ago. They should do oversight because it is
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: their job. But that doesn't mean you can't also legislate.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: If I was in the Democratic leadership, the way I
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: would respond to this is I would get an infrastructure
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: bill It doesn't have to be a trillion dollars or
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: two trillion dollars, but a significant investment infrastructure paid for
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: by the least popular Trump tax breaks. Put it on
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the floor, pass it, and then be able to go
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: out and tell the world that we've done infrastructure. Trump hasn't.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: And move the onus to him. And you can do
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that on a whole host of things. Bills to shore
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: up the Affordable Care Act. They've already done it. some
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: stuff around electoral reform and other things. But pass bills
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: to show that you can legislate and investigate at the
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: same time.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, look, Trump and the Republicans had complete
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: control over Washington for the first two years. And what
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: we got from that complete control was a tax bill
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that gave tax cuts to the wealthiest that the majority
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: of Americans don't approve of, an attempt to rip away
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: health care from 20 million Americans, probably more, and now
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a trade war that's hurting farmers in the Midwest and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: all kinds of people and consumers everywhere, and a criminal
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: justice reform bill that the Trump administration is now dragging
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: their feet in implementing. you know, complete Republican control of Washington.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: And since Democrats have been in the House, they have
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: passed a slew of bills, whether it's the Equality Act,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: whether it's gun control, whether it's voting reform, whether it's
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: health care reform, that, you know, a Democratic president and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: a Democratic Senate would sign into law, would pass and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: sign into law tomorrow if you gave them the chance.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And the reason Republicans aren't doing anything right now is
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: not because of investigation. It's because they want to protect
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: their rich friends. They don't want to raise taxes on
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: rich people. And they want to gut all kinds of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: popular programs like, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and the rest.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: That's why nothing's getting done because Republicans have this ideology
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and they refuse to work with Democrats on that. I mean,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it seems fairly simple to sort of get around.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's sort of what they're doing, right?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: They're already passing these bills and they're doing the investigations.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: We will talk about the right context for doing those
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: investigations and how successful or unsuccessful they have been. But
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: People will hear this and say, yeah, that's great, you
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: passed bills, but no one knows what they are. The
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: press won't cover them. They get no attention. You're getting
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: drowned out by tweets and Trumpism and absurdity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And that's all true. And that's not a fixable problem
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: in the interim. And it's not even... It's even hard
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: to yell at the press and say you should cover
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: this more because even when Republicans were in charge of
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: the House and they were passing absurd bills that were
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: going nowhere, which is the opposite of our sensible bills
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that are currently going nowhere, they didn't get covered because
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: there's no chant. A quote-unquote message vote has never gotten
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of coverage, at least in my time in politics.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: But when it comes time for these members to campaign
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: for re-election, they have things they can point to. They
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: have things they can talk about on the stump. They
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: have things that their door knockers can tell voters. And
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: they have things they can advertise on. And that's why
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: it's important to do that. And it gives you a
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: response in the immediate discourse about what's happening in Washington. Say, yeah, no,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: it's not us. It's not legislating. We passed this bill.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: We passed this bill. We passed this bill. Trump has
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: done nothing, right?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: On the infrastructure proposal specifically, did Schumer and Pelosi like
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: walk into a trap here with this and A, trying
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: to negotiate with Trump on this in the first place
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: and B, you know, walking into the Oval yesterday when
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Trump had already decided that he was going to storm
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: out and complain about investigations? Or do you think they
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: got the better of this exchange?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I think that the original sin here was going to
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: the White House three weeks ago for that meeting and
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: then walking out of the White House and trumpeting your
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: quote-unquote infrastructure agreement with the president. I think that was
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: a mistake. Is it a fatal mistake?
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: No.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Is it the end of the world?
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: No.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: But Ultimately, Schumer and Pelosi are very smart. Not for
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: one second did they think they were going to get
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: an actual $ 2 trillion infrastructure bill. They'd all go to
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: the signing ceremony, and they'd go to ribbon cuttings together,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: and we'd have better roads and bridges and airports. That's
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: not what they thought. It was sort of a both
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: sides were trying to manage the endgame. Like, this is
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: not going to work. How can we set this up
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: so that we look like we wanted to do the
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: right thing, and the other side is responsible for why
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: it went down. And I think in Schumer and Pelosi's head,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: their goal was, and some of their aides even said this,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: and I think Schumer himself may have said it publicly
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: after we, after a lot of people criticized them for,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: which was sort of laying out that we're going to
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: show we're for it. Republicans are going to show what
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that they're against, that they won't do this
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: because of their affinity for tax cuts for the wealthy.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And we'll come out on the high side of the
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: polar agreement. The problem was Trump dumped them before they
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: could dump Trump. And he was the, he, he has
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: first mover advantage here and he got to blame them
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: you know, or at least wrap them into the blame
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: of the death of this idea that was never going
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to happen and blaming it on a totally factual and
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: normal statement that Nancy Pelosi had. And then the press
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: in their general, both sides, faux balance, terribleness aided and
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: abetted in that effort.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was, I was going to say the most surprising,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: but it should not be surprising at this point. It
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: was certainly the more infuriating part of yesterday's back and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: forth that somehow, you know, this is another both sides
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: issue when, you know, because Nancy Pelosi said that Donald
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Trump was engaged in a cover-up. It's like, well, yeah.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Robert Mueller wrote a 400-page report laying out 10 instances
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: where the president obstructed justice, complete with lots of evidence.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And part of what he was covering up was a crime,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: as you pointed out on Twitter yesterday, Dan, a crime
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: committed by his lawyer, who is now sitting in jail... that,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in. So, yeah,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: of course he's fucking engaged in a cover-up.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: And that crime was covering up.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, he is literally, like, using literally correctly in
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: this situation, he is literally mentioned in a court document
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: for being involved in an actual cover-up. Like, that is
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the crime. The crime is actually the cover-up here. Trump
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: was involved in paying hush money to prevent... information about
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: his relationship with Stormy Daniels coming out, like there's an
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: actual cover-up. What Nancy Pelosi said is totally accurate. And
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: the fact that the press treated it as some sort
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: of breach of decorum, like how dare she say this
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: factual thing, go to the White House. Trump has repeatedly,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: repeatedly tweeted that Nancy Pelosi is pro-crime.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And no one cares about that. Like we're holding her
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and Democrats to a different standard. And there's a larger
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: lesson about how absolutely fucked up the media is and
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: how it gives a structural advantage to the people who
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: make bad faith arguments because the media is incapable of
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: calling out bad faith without somehow feeling like they've lost
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: their sense of faux balance.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And look, and the Republicans and Donald Trump understand
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: this and their political strategy reflects their knowledge that the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: media is always going to, no matter how much they lie,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: no matter how many crazy conspiracy theories they throw out there,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the media is always going to cover their side and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: give it equal time and equal consideration as they do
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: people who are acting in good faith. And so they
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: can work the refs and it works.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I think this is like the 10 millionth time that
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: we've had the opportunity to learn this lesson. But I
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: think as we think about the role the media plays
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: in American politics, there is a very important role in
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: the sense that Their job is to uncover information and
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: show it to the public. They're very good at that,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: whether it's investigative pieces about Trump or this amazing series
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: in the New York Times about taxi medallions. There are
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: a million very important things they have. But the role
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: that we have assigned to the press in American politics
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: is referee. It is your job to adjudicate disputes, to
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: show who is right, who is wrong, what is factual,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: what is a lie. And that is a role in
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: which they have proven themselves over the last two decades
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: incapable of playing. And we as Democrats have to adjust
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: our strategies to reflect that, A, we believe that the
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: media has an important role to play. B, they have
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: a constitutional right to play that role. C, it is
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: the wrong thing to do. It is counterproductive to try
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: to emulate Trump's anti-media strategy. But D, we can't rely
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: on the media to make our argument for us. We
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: have to make it ourselves. And we cannot just say
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: that if we say this, The New York Times will
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: call it right, and then the voters will know the difference.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: This is not how it works anymore, and we're getting
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: our ass kicked up and down the political road because
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're not like— I have so many thoughts
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: on this, and I'm so worked up about it.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, we do this too when we're on Twitter,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: but we are not like one piece where the New
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: York Times finally calls a lie a lie away from
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: getting rid of Donald Trump. That's right. It's fine to
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: argue about it. It's fine to get upset about it.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: It's fine to yell at whoever— the social media editor
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: is at these papers who are, you know, sending out
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: these absurd tweets, um, that frame the debate wrong. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: then we get them to change it. And then we
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: all had a little celebration on Twitter, RT, if you agree. Um,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: but that's not, uh, that's not changing the fundamental dynamic
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and the media is like, the media is not on
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: our team. And I've said this before. They're not, their
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: job is not to help get Democrats elected. Their job
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: is to tell the truth and prize truth over balance,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: which as we say often, they fail to do. because
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: they prize balance over almost anything else for some fucked
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: up reason and so but like yeah but we you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: know that we just we got to focus our energy
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: elsewhere at least the bulk of our energy um.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah like if you were to do a sports metaphor
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: of this like our side is one team their side
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: is the other team the media is not the referees
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: they are the commentators right they're the ones who were
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: just as part of a business commentating on what is
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: happening not trying to decide who wins or loses or
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: call balls and strikes right like that we have thought
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: we have for too long thought of the fourth estate
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: as an adjudicator of disputes in american politics and that
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: is a if it ever played that role it no
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: longer does.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are no referees anymore. Okay, let's talk about
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the debate over impeachment proceedings, which this week it seemed
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: like the House was inching towards after the White House
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: continued to defy subpoenas, tamper with witnesses, and obstruct all
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: congressional oversight. Dan, probably the biggest development this week was
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: when former White House counsel Don McGahn who was Robert
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Mueller's star witness, refused to testify before Congress after Trump
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: told him not to. What else has pushed quite a
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: few more prominent House Democrats towards impeachment over this last week?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I think McGahn is the latest example, but whether it's
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the refusal to turn over the tax returns, it's the
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: fact that here we are, what, six, seven weeks since
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: the Mueller report, and Mueller hasn't testified. Bill Barr has
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: refused to go to the House. There's been Discussion of contempt,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: but there's no actual contempt citation that is being voted on.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: There's just this feeling that at every turn, Trump is
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: refusing to cooperate. And it's not happening in this world
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: where we're having an actual back and forth about which–
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: you're going to get documents. We're going to negotiate over
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: which ones or how you get them. And it's not
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: about debating about whether a witness is coming in open
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: or closed testimony or– whether they're going to testify for
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: three hours or seven hours or whatever it is, Trump
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: has made the argument that Congress does not have the
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: power of oversight. He has said that he has disagreed
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: with the interpretation of the Constitution that has existed for
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: 250 years. And that is a punch right to the
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: mouth of Congress and what it stands for and what
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: they see their role is. And so he's leaving, he
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: is sort of closing off all paths for people who
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: think Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but are nervous about
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: the act of starting an impeachment inquiry.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: And by the way, that's not just Trump's view that
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: he is expressing in angry tweets. His lawyers, when they
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: went to court over Democrats requesting some of these documents,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: basically laid out as a legal argument that Congress has
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: no authority to investigate the president. The lawyers were even
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: basically admitted under questioning from the judge, that they believe
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the Watergate impeachment inquiry wasn't the correct use of Congress's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: oversight authority, which is stunning. And the judge was rightly
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: stunned because the judge ruled against the Trump White House.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you think, by the way, that these,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we've had a couple, two legal rulings this
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: week that basically the judges ruled against Donald Trump and said, yes,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: you do actually have to cooperate with Congress. You do
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: have to turn documents over. Do you think that changes
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the dynamic at all now that, you know, I think
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: for a while we thought, oh, the problem is going
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to be that we we, you know, take these fights
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to the courts, but then they get tied up in
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the courts for years and years and years. And so
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: basically Trump is able to stonewall until after reelection. But
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: now that the courts are moving quickly and siding against Trump,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: do you think that changes anything?
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: It definitely gave Nancy Pelosi an argument to push back
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: against Trump. sort of this growing wave of members who
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: were publicly calling for impeachment, which, you know, as you
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: point out, has increased significantly in the last week or so.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And they had, today's Thursday, they had a meeting, I think, yesterday,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: where she basically made this argument, which is, we don't
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: need to go, we don't need to start an impeachment
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: inquiry to win the court cases because we're winning the
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: court cases. Now, that is proven true thus far, but
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: we got a couple more steps to go, and we
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: still don't have documents. It's not like these court cases
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: are adjudicated, documents come, they get appealed, they go to
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: the next, They go to the appellate court, and then
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: they're going to go to the Supreme Court. And so
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: we are talking a very long time. Now, I think
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi is also correct, and there's another argument I
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: read somewhere that she made, which is that timeline is
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: not going to get– she does not believe the timeline
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: will get significantly sped up if there is an impeachment inquiry.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: We'll still be operating on this timeline. So to her,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: it's not clear, at least as long as we're winning cases,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: that you need to take this step. And that was
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: apparently persuasive– for some, at least temporarily in the democratic
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: caucus meeting this week.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, so as you point out, there's, you know,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: there's more Democrats are in favor of impeachment now, uh,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: multiple judiciary committee members, um, that would be the committee
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that would open an impeachment inquiry, um, have said they're
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: now in favor of opening such an inquiry, uh, at
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: least five people on Nancy Pelosi's leadership team, five Democrats
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: on the leadership team, uh, pushed her this week to
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: support an impeachment inquiry. She is still against the move. Um,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Why is that and how does she see the politics
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: This is something that I've really tried to think a
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: lot about because Nancy Pelosi is one of the smartest,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: toughest strategists, not just in the party right now, but
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: in all of politics. She's probably the best speaker who
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: has ever lived. And, you know, it's like we had
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: this world where after the like the last Trump meeting,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: every every Democrat changed their Twitter avatar to a picture
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: of Nancy Pelosi in sunglasses and that coat. And then
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: everyone uses 17 times a day the gif of Nancy
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Pelosi clapping at the State of the Union. And we
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: say Nancy Pelosi is the best. And then she makes
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: a decision or makes an argument. And then everyone is like,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: why is she so weak and dumb and that? She
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: has more than earned the benefit of the doubt to
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: try to understand what her strategy is. Now, I have
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: disagreed with a lot of the public argument she has
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: made against impeachment, which is it'll motivate his base, which
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: everything motivates his base.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: They are pretty motivated.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about this a little bit later, but that
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: is not an argument against impeachment. That is just stating
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: a fact if something's already going to happen. But she
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: obviously has a very real political concern. My guess is
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: that there is a significant portion of her caucus– I
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: don't know whether it's a majority or a very large
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: minority– who believes impeachment should not happen or should– it
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: would be a mistake to do for whatever reasons, right?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Almost certainly political. And that she is taking the arrows
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: for them, right? She is going to be the– she's
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: going to stand in the way so that she gets
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: the blame. And the members– the freshmen who won in
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: purple and red districts are not out there doing it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: They can say, well, Nancy Pelosi says we're not doing it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: So I think that is what she's doing. Does Nancy
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Pelosi think Trump committed impeachable offenses 100 percent? Yeah, she
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: said that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: That's not even a question. She said that today.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: And so I do think that like as we– like
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: if you believe Trump should be impeached, we should push
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the House Democrats to do that. We should push Pelosi.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: But– I think we just have to put her decisions
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: here in the context of all the other decisions that
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: she has done. And one last thing on this, which
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: is do people think that she is someone who just
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: reads the polls and does whatever is politically popular in
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the moment, that this is some sign of overt political calculation?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: I would just note that you and I worked in
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the White House when the Affordable Care Act was hanging
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: on by a string. And many, many of her members,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: like almost the entire Blue Dog Coalition, the moderates in
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the House, a lot of other people who were facing
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: incredibly tough reelections in 2010, wanted us to walk away.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: And Nancy Pelosi knew that this was the last best
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: chance to massively expand access to health care in this country.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: And she worked a slow and arduous and at sometimes
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: frustrating process to people on the outside. but she got
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: it done. And so she did the thing that was
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: politically risky because it was the right thing to do.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And I'm not convinced she's not going to do that
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: here in the end.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And yeah, she did that on the Affordable Care Act.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: The House also voted for a pretty significant, back then
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in 2009, climate change legislation where the Senate Democrats, because
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of them were from red states and pretty
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: conservative at the time, sort of hung them out to dry,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: hung the House out to dry. And so you have
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: all these House Democrats in 2009 taking a vote on
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a nearly trillion-dollar recovery package, the Affordable Care Act, which
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: at the time was seen as, you know, was depicted
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: as this extreme government takeover of health care by the Republicans,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: still is, and then climate change legislation. And they took
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the votes on all three of those things, and Pelosi,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you know, must have known that it could cost her
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: her speakership and cost Democrats the House in 2010, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: she did it anyway, you know? So she deserves a
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: lot of credit for that.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean she's right here, but it does mean
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: that we should indict her.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I do think this is a question
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: of what the politics of impeachment are. And for how
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: much we've talked about it, I still feel like we
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: don't really know that much. You know, I saw some
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: private polling a couple of weeks ago where they tested...
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you know, ex-Democratic candidate is running on a platform of impeachment.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And how do you feel about that? And it decreased
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: support for the Democratic candidate versus the Republican candidate by
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: five points. But that to me was a sort of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: silly question too, because no one's running on the fucking
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: platform of impeachment. That's insane. You know, like if you're
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: going to go, if you're like, my main platform is impeachment. Like, yeah, well,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: good luck to you. You're not going to do that well. Like,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen any polling that asks people the question,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: would you be more or less likely to vote for
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: X candidate if X candidate voted to open impeachment proceedings
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: against the president? I'd be interested to see that polling.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I'd be interested to see that polling specifically in swing
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: districts because I do think, like you said, a lot
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: of the reticence to move forward on impeachment is coming
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: from some of these new members who won seats in
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: pretty red, Trumpy districts. Although I should say Katie Hill,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: who won right here north of Los Angeles, she was
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: on Chris Hayes the other day. And she said that
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: calls to her office have flipped from being two to
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: one against impeachment to now being three or four to
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: one for impeachment. So, again, we can't treat the politics
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: of impeachment as static. As Democrats make the case, as
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Trump continues to obstruct almost every effort by Congress to
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: conduct oversight, you know, public opinion can change. And that's
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: something the Democrats have to keep in mind, too. It's
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: not static.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: So there's a Pew poll out today, I think, which
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: asked Democrats how concerned you are about investigation of the
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Trump administration. Are you concerned that Democrats will focus too
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: much on investigations?
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: 51%.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Concerned they won't focus enough on investigations? 47%. Conservative, moderate Democrats, 55%, 43%,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: too much first, not enough. And liberals, 46%, 52%. Too much,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: not enough. And what that tells me is that we
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: are a nation of pundits and people are just reading
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: and projecting what they think the politics are. And so
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: people are like when you have Nancy Pelosi basically saying
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: that we're in big political trouble if we investigate too
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: much or overreach or impeach, then that is reflected in
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: voter sentiment. To your point that the politics of impeachment
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: are totally unknown, like we just don't know. If I
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: were to just guess right now, not predict, but guess,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I think there's a real chance that the politics of
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: impeachment are dramatically overstated both directions.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I tend to agree with that as well.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Voters care about it less than, voters writ large care
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: about it much less than the Twitterverse and people who
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: are highly engaged in politics. I do think there is
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: an element of this which is causing me to change
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit of my political calculus on it, which
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: is I think the politics of impeachment is an unknown question,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: but the politics of weakness have a centuries-long record. And
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: if Democrats look weak, like they are walking away from
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: an obvious duty to impeach, or they keep getting rebuffed
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: by Trump, who's refusing to give them witnesses and documents,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: et cetera, and they don't respond to that, I think
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: there is a danger in that sort of politics, right?
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: If the message to the people who turned out, who
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: turned 2018 into a presidential election year size turnout as
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: opposed to a traditional midterm one, if the message to
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: them is we are not going to be the Chuck
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: on Trump that we said we were, that could be
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: deflating for 2020.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, is getting dragged into impeachment sort of the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: worst of all worlds?
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: You would think on its face, yes, because in the outline,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: I wrote the term dragged, which getting dragged anywhere is
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: not great.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Not a positive connotation.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: There's another way to look at it, which is, is
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: reluctance helpful politically here? Which is like, you're not frothing
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: at the mouth to do this. You can say Trump
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: forced your hand. We wanted to proceed through the normal
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: course of business, through the normal oversight, the traditional Congress
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: has played. Trump has taken this extraordinary approach, this... above
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the Constitution, above the law approach, and that has forced
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: our hand to do this, maybe there's a way of
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: thinking about where that could be a better argument. What
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: won't work would be if it just looks like you
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: got beaten into it by your own voters, which is
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: essentially what happened to the Republicans in 1998 against Bill Clinton.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: They tried to walk away. Their voters wouldn't let him
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: do it. And then they sort of look like they
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: were being, that they were the, that the base was
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the tail that wagged the dog.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I worry about, you know, Democrats in disarray and
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Democrats divided over impeachment is not a great storyline. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I do worry about that being the storyline heading into impeachment.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: And I think more and more you're seeing Democrats able
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: to make the case, which is the case you just made. Like,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't come here to impeach the president. I didn't
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: think I wanted to impeach the president. I want to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: talk about jobs. I want to talk about health care.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about wages. And we're going to
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: legislate on those things. And we're going to fight for
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: those things. But, you know, this is a question of
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: separation of powers. This is about a president who's acting
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: like he's above the law. And this is about making
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: sure that, you know, we that the one branch of
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: government is able to hold the other branch of government
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: accountable when the president is acting lawless, like an autocrat.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And that's very important. So I regret that I have
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: to do this, but I have to do this. And
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I think Elizabeth Warren, when she came out for impeachment,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: said something like that. I saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made that
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: made that argument. I saw Beto O'Rourke make that argument
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: during his CNN town hall the other night. And I
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: do think starting by saying, look, this is not something
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I wanted. This is not something we wanted to do
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: as Democrats. We're not frothing at the mouth to impeach
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: this president. But at some point we have to confront
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: this lawlessness because it's the right thing to do and
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: because he could abuse his power even more if we
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: do nothing. And that's dangerous. That's dangerous to people's lives.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: That's dangerous to the country. That's dangerous to the world.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: And so I do think you can make that reluctant
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: argument in a pretty powerful way.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: And the other part, if we go down this path
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: as Democrats, this is where we end up. And I
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: think it is getting more likely every day that that
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: is where we end up because these things tend to
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: gain momentum and it sort of snowballs. But if it is,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to make the subject of the
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: inquiry much broader than just the findings of the Mueller report.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: The Mueller people have sort of just made their opinions
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: on what happened in 2016. Obstruction is wrapped up with collusion.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: But there is a broader issue with Trump, a set
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: of– there's corruption. There's criminality. There's abuse of power. And
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: not that this should be this broad giant fishing expedition,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: but it should– the subject of the inquiry should be broader.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And the benefit of that is it allows you to
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: make a broader argument than an argument over something that
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: happened three years ago. I know that's not really how
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: it is, but that's how it'll be framed by the media.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: But also the ability to discover new information, because we
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: should be clear that it seems unlikely that while an
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: impeachment inquiry may allow us to have an actual person
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: say the things that were in Mueller's report, which is powerful,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: don't get me wrong. A person is more politically powerful
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: than a PDF. But it seems unlikely that the investigators
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: in the Judiciary Committee are going to find huge pieces
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: of information that Bob Mueller and his team did not.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: But if there's a broader scope of inquiry, it does
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: mean that there may be some new information that could
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: be uncovered that would be persuasive to people.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy is pardoning war criminals, or at least
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: talking about pardoning war criminals, pardoning his friends and benefactors.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: The guy is using the Department of Justice and law
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: enforcement to now target his political enemies. He was at
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a fucking rally this week where he accused Democrats of
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: treason and said the Attorney General is going to look
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: at that, and they all started cheering, lock them up.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is much, much bigger than merely the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: crimes he committed with regards to obstructing justice. These are
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: serious abuses of power, and now he's telling Congress, fuck off,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: you can't check my behavior, you can't conduct oversight, I'm
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: all powerful and Congress can't do anything. And by the way,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not even going to work on compromising with you
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and legislating on behalf of the American people to try
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: to improve their lives because I'm pissed off that you're
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: investigating me. I mean, this is a president who is
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: now completely out of control. And I think you're right. Like,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think the impeachment inquiry should have everything we
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: disagree with Donald Trump about, like policy differences, even if
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: they're serious policy differences, because those aren't impeachable necessarily. But
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: I do think you're right that they should have all
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: of the ways that he has seriously abused people his power, and,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and committed all kinds of crimes. So we
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: shall see. Oh, one last thing. Robert Mueller, Robert Mueller
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: still hasn't scheduled an appearance before Congress. And this week,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: CNN said that Mueller's team doesn't really want him to
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: testify at all, that the special counsel, quote, does not
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: want to appear political after staying behind the scenes for
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: two years. I'm sorry. It's like, again, dude, you wrote
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a 400-page report laying out all of this evidence that
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the president of the United States obstructed justice. You didn't
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: think it was going to get political at some point?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, Bob Mueller, tough shit. You got to do it.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: You knew this was going to happen when you took
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: on this job. You got to do it. You have
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: a duty to the country to say whatever it is
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: you believe, but to say it in public, regardless of
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: whether you're going to be called partisan one way or
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: the other. So you just have to do it, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: you should do it soon because you're not doing yourself
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: or the country any favors by dilly-dallying here.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does make me think that we should– tamp
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: down our expectations on what Mueller's testimony may reveal.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: If you're still willing to have high expectations for anything
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: in entering year three of the Trump administration, that's your
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: own fault.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about 2020. With a brand new
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: analysis of 2018, Catalyst, which is a data firm that
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: operates a huge voter database... just did a very detailed
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: analysis of the midterms. They collected precinct-level results, matched them
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: up with individual vote history records from every state. So
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: this is very specific. This is like the most detailed
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: analysis we're going to get of 2018. And what they
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: learned is that, one, something we already knew, which is
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: turnout was up dramatically, but it was up dramatically, especially
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: among young voters and voters of color, particularly Latinx voters.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And two, and this is a quote from the analysis,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: A big piece of the Democratic victory was due to
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: The report concludes, quote, It is reasonable to expect another
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: historic level of turnout, perhaps approaching 160 million voters or
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: more in 2020. It is not safe, however, to assume
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: that Democratic gains from 2016 to 2018 will hold. Dan,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: what were some of the most interesting findings to you
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and was anything surprising to you?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple things. Well, first, the main takeaway from
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: this report to me is great fucking job, people. The
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: American people really crushed it in 2018. And specifically, the
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: grassroots activists, the people who got involved after the 2016 disaster,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: who knocked door. We basically had two years of intense
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: grassroots-driven volunteer voter contact, and it paid off. And it's
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: truly unbelievable what was achieved in terms of turnout. That
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: is really amazing. And so everyone's got to pat themselves
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: on the back and get working for 2020 because we
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: need to be doing all of that voter contact that
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: we did, the door knocking, the phone calls registration that
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: we were doing in 2017 to win in 2018. We
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: need to be doing 2019 to win in 2020. So
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: that's takeaway one. The second takeaway was it's a validation
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: of– The stupidity of the false choice presented by pundits
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: about base mobilization versus persuasion. What it makes very clear
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: here is our success in 2018 was based on both.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: That we were able to turn out more Democratic-based voters,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: but we also were able to flip votes. And we're
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: going to have to do that again in 2020 to win.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And I think the other thing that I think is
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: the unwritten story is we've talked so much about the–
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: suburban revolt against Trump. And I think the reason we
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: talk about that is because there's definitely merit to it,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: but also reporters and political pundits often live in the suburbs,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: and so they see it happening. But the rural areas,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: which moved dramatically for Trump from 2012 to 2016, moved
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: in large way towards the Democrats in 2018. There were
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: big Democratic gains in the rural areas. Now, that often
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: wasn't enough to flip rural seats or to hold on
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: to Senate seats in very Republican, very rural states like
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: North Dakota, but it will have impact in important presidential
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: swing states with large rural areas like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: as examples that may be important in 2020. Who knows?
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When you look at the map, and we will
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: tweet this out, the report, but the map that shows
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the change between 2016 and 2018, the swing towards the Democrats,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the deepest blue is in places like Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: some of these very, um, Midwestern states. And by the way,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: some of the sort of the Southwestern Sunbelt states, um,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: in Arizona and Texas and Georgia, um, where, you know,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: there was like pretty rural areas, some pretty Republican leaning areas. Um,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by how much the margin depended on
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Trump voters, people who had voted for Trump in 2016,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: switching to Democrats. Like, I knew that was the case,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: but I think partly because we have made the argument
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: against the deluge of pieces about, you know, the Obama
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Trump voter or the, you know, white guy at the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: bar in Pennsylvania who voted for Trump and what's he
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: going to do. And there have been way too many
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: of these pieces and way too much focus on these voters.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And yet, the Democrats would not have a House majority
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: today were it not for a lot of people who
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016 coming out
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: in 2018 and deciding, no, we're going to vote for
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: a Democratic candidate. Now, it also, as you pointed out,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't have happened, the majority wouldn't have happened if
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: it were not for young voters, voters of color, new voters,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: people voting for the very first time, coming out, knocking
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: on doors, and voting for these candidates. But we have
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to be we have to acknowledge the reality that both
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: things are necessary and that we need to keep some
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: of these voters or actually most of these voters who
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: voted for Trump in 2016 and then voted for Democrats
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: in 2018 in order to win in 2020.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: That is a scary part of this, which it is
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: one thing to convince a Republican leading independent or Obama
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Trump voter or someone that there should be a check
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: against Trump like that. That's a very important argument, but
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: it is a much easier one than to pick a
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Democrat over Trump in the White House to replace Trump.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: And so we've got to finish that argument. You've got
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: to take it the next step, which is challenging. Just
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: because someone voted for a Democrat for Congress in 2018
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: they are, as of right now, prepared to vote for
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: a Democrat, certainly one who has been under the– who
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: will have spent months– if not years, under the sort
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: of caricature-making lens of Trump's Twitter feed and his propaganda machine, right?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of work to do to get
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: across the finish line here.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would love to, and may do some
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: exploring on this, I would love to know more about
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: who these voters are, what they believe, what they want,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: what gets them involved in politics. I do think at
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: this point, the people who voted for Obama in 8
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: and 12, then voted for Trump in 16, and then
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: voted for a Republican in 18... are probably fairly lost
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: to Democrats, and we shouldn't spend a lot of time
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: worrying about those. But the people who switched back, who
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: voted for a Democrat, even though they voted for Trump
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: in 16 and then had voted for Obama in the past,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: those people I do think we need to spend some
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: time thinking about, learning about, talking to, and wondering sort
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of what drives their vote and what would make them
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: finally say, okay, I voted for a Democrat in 2018,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and now I'm also, you know, I'm fed up with
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Trump and I'm willing to walk away from him and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: vote for a Democrat in 2020. I think it would
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: do Democrats good to figure out what's on those people's minds.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really wish, like there is an ungodly amount
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: of very limited media budgets being spent on horse race
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: polling for a national horse race polling on the Democratic
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: primary that is relatively irrelevant to anything since we don't,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: since we pick our nominees based on states in a
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: very particular and somewhat bizarre order of states. Um, so,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: but I would love it if some, one of these, uh,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: you know, the wall street journal, the New York times,
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: someone who spends a lot of money on polling to
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: dig deep into the following groups of voters, right? And
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: this would be a large survey followed by focus groups.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: So qualitative and quantitative research one, like let's learn a
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: lot about the 4 million Obama, 12 voters who sat
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: out 16. How many of them came back in 18?
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Why did they come back? What made them come back?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Who are the people who didn't come back in 18?
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: How do we get those people? That is a hugely
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: important group. Another group of people are the Obama-Trump voters, right?
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: And then you can cut that across how they voted
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: in 18. So Obama-Trump, Democrat 18. Let's find out what
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: made them make those decisions and what they care about
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: in 20. And another group are This other group that
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't get talked about as much, which are Romney-Clinton voters.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: They are people who voted for Mitt Romney. They picked
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. So that tells you something.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Who then picked Clinton over Trump. And I'd love to
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: know if some of those people sort of decided they're
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Republicans and they're just going to stick with the Republican president.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Are some of them available to Democrats? And then the
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: other group would be third-party voters, the Johnson-Stein voters of Trump. 16. Like,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: let's understand what those people think, what they care about.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Let's have that information impact not just campaign strategies, but
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: also media coverage about what these people want. Like, this
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: is a very doable thing, but per usual, the general
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: political commentary sphere is focused on the wrong thing, not
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: the most valuable pieces of information.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: And again, specifically the third-party voters... the Johnson-Stein voters who
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: turned around and then cast a ballot for Democrats in 18.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: You know, because I think everyone's first reaction to both
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the Obama-Trump voters and some of these third-party voters is,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: fuck these people. You know, they made their vote. They
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: voted for Trump or they voted for third party. Now
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: look at the mess we're in. Like, we can't count
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: on those people. We shouldn't expend energy on those people.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And maybe that's true for the people who either sat
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: out in 18 or voted for a Republican again in 18.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of people who either voted third
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: party in 16 or voted for Donald Trump in 16
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: who said, you know what, I'm voting for a Democrat
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: in 18. And we need to keep those people. Democrats
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: need to keep those people in 2020 if we are
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: to win, as well as, by the way, like you said.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: figure out how to bring back some of the 4
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: million people who voted for Barack Obama who just decided
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to sit out in 16. Because we know those people
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: have voted for Democrats in the past. Where are they?
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: What are they thinking? So I do think that those
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: people are important.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: One thing that we should all just internalize is that
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Telling any group of voters or non-voters to fuck off
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: is not a good strategy to get them to vote
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: for your candidate, right? To just yell at them for
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: not voting. And I think all the time about the
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: conversation that I had during one of our HBO's Pots
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: of America specials last year with LaTosha Brown, who has
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: been organizing non-voters, primarily African-American in the South. And what
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: she said is that non-voters are not ambivalent. they make
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: a decision not to vote and it is up to
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: politicians to understand why they made that decision and tailor
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: their arguments and their agendas to changing their mind. And
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: just simply saying like, you, you know, yeah, it's like
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: we have to, every time Trump does something, we have
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: to yell at Susan Sarandon. Like, yes, like that seems fair,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: but it's not doing that across the country to everyone
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: who voted either for no one who didn't vote or
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or whatever else.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: is not a good way to win the 2020 election.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: There's a way to understand why people made their decisions
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: and then understand if you can, within the context of
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: your agenda and your policies and your beliefs, can bring
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: those people back into our democracy.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: And look, I see this a lot on Twitter when
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: people talk about a lot of these farmers now in
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the Midwest who were hurt by Trump's trade wars and say,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I voted for Donald Trump and now you know, I'm
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: struggling because of this trade war and I'm not going
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: to vote for him again. And the response to that
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: from a lot of people is, I don't care about
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: these people. They voted for Donald Trump. They deserve it.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: And I don't believe they deserve it. But even if
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: you do believe they deserve it, it is in your
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: own political self-interest as someone who wants to see Donald
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Trump leave this office in 2020 to say, we want
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: to bring those people in. We want their votes. Maybe
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: we don't agree with them on everything. Maybe they have
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of views that we've strongly disagree with, but
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: if we're trying to build a majority, then we need
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: their votes. And we want, we, we want them to
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: vote Democrat in 2020 because we want to fucking get
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: rid of this guy. And we want to get rid
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: of all the Republicans in Congress who are obstructing everything
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: and have been for the last 10 years, you know?
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: So I do think that's, that's important. And it's equally
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: important to go out there and find people who didn't
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: want to participate, who haven't been paid attention to, who
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: have been, or voters who've been taken for granted and
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Over the last several years and to go to those
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: places and try to get those people to vote for Democrats, too.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: So both both are important. That's that's sort of what
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I took from this analysis. OK, when we return, we
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: will have my interview with Rebecca Traister. On the pod today,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the author of Good and Mad, the Revolutionary Power of
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Women's Anger, Rebecca Traister. Rebecca, thanks for joining.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: You wrote a.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Powerful piece in The Cut last week about the latest
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: wave of attacks on reproductive rights. And you noted that
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: even in conservative states, 7 in 10 Americans want abortion
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: to remain legal. I saw a poll on the other
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: day that said even a third of those who self-identify
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: as pro-life believe abortion should be legal. So with that
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: kind of public support, what do you think are the
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: political failings that led us to this point?
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that the political failings in the Democratic
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: Party have been in play for years. There has been
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: a resistance to making a vociferous defense of reproductive rights
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: that has persisted, really, if you think about it, the
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Hyde Amendment, which is the legislative rider that prohibits the
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: use of federal insurance programs to pay for abortion, which
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: makes abortion inaccessible to low-income women. the most vulnerable populations
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: in this country, predominantly women of color. That rider was
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: first passed in 1976, just three years after Roe was decided.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: So essentially, since abortion became legal, and there were Democrats
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: who voted for Hyde, including, as I note in the piece,
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden, who is a current candidate for the Democratic
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: nomination for the presidency. So basically, since abortion became legal,
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: there has been a massive aggressive movement to roll back
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: access to abortion. And Democrats have not been on the
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: front lines willing to aggressively and energetically defend reproductive rights
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: and autonomy. And that polling that you note, and that
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: I note in the piece, the sort of 7 out
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: of 10 Americans want abortion to remain legal. Those new numbers,
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: they've been around for a few years, and they stem
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: from a change in how pollsters ask questions about abortion.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: Because for decades, pollsters, many of whom, a lot of
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: them were men, older white men, the question was, are
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: you for abortion or against abortion? And for decades, what
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: you got in those polls was a 50-50 split which
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: led to this narrative that America was irrevocably torn on
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: the subject of abortion. And it was really only recently
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: when a new generation of pollsters began to ask the
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: question differently and first say, personally, do you believe in abortion?
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: And then you get the more even split. And then
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: as a follow-up say, do you think it should remain legal?
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: Which of course is the political and legal question at
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: hand when you talk about policy and where a party
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: should stand and then you got those seven in ten
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: numbers that said actually Whether or not they as you
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: point out whether or not they personally oppose abortion. They
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: support Roe they support its its legality and I But Democrats,
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: even though those numbers have been around for a while,
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Democrats have refused to sort of absorb the reality that
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: what that means is that defense of abortion's legality and
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: the right to reproductive autonomy is one of the most
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: popular issues that they stand for.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, how much of the support for even
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: limited restrictions on reproductive rights comes from sort of this
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: political miscalculation, political cowardice, if you will? Or do you
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: think it comes from sort of a fundamental misunderstanding of
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: how reproduction works in the first place?
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: Or both?
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: I think both. I think both.
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: I think there is, we can tell when we listen
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: to the lawmakers who are making these laws, you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: how pitiful our education is about how bodies work, how
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: reproduction works, our sex education. There are repercussions in this country.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: to the sort of antipathy toward a good, healthy sex
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: education for everybody, which is that a lot of people
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: we're talking about, lawmakers and voters, don't actually have the
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: correct medical information about the very process and the bodies
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: that they're working to legislate and police, right? So that's
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: one of the big problems. Secondary, yes, I would say
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: that the fact that the party that has officially, nominally,
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: been on the side of reproductive rights and autonomy. The
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: fact that it has been unwilling over decades to make
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: a vociferous moral argument and make it chief among their concerns. And,
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: you know, we can hear this in all kinds of ways.
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: You know, the constant calls to have a big tent that,
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: you know, and it's always with regard to to anti-abortion
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Democrats that those calls are made. And they were made
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel said, no, we're gonna get
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: a Democratic majority in the House by, in part, by
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: inviting in anti-abortion Democrats who we think can win in
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: these areas. And you know what? He did get a
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: Democratic majority, but it was one that then stood in
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: the way of healthcare reform because of some of their
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: opposition to abortion, which is what happened during the healthcare
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: reform debate. So you may have your majority, but it's
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: not one that's willing to defend reproductive autonomy and rights.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: But those calls for Big Tent a big tent were
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: echoed just in 2017 by Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: Nancy Pelosi, Claire McCaskill, right? This argument that we have
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: to be able to bring in people who oppose reproductive
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: rights into the Democratic Party means that there is not
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: a strong and fervent moral framework that gives voters the
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: idea that this is something that their party is invested
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: in fighting for.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: And it perhaps.
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: Permits this idea that, oh, this is an area where
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: we should be making compromises because there hasn't been the
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: moral argument put forth with the kind of ferocity that
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: I believe it should be.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: It does seem like in some ways, this is a
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: political problem that Democrats often create for themselves. I mean,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I remember talking to Elise Hogue of NARAL on this
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: pod about this Last year when we were talking about
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Perez going to that, the mayor in Nebraska that was
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Heath Mello. Heath Mello. Thank you. Who was, you know,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: personally opposed to abortion. And, you know, Elise was saying, look,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: we we have Democrats in the party who are maybe
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: personally opposed to abortion. but they don't legislate those views.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Harry Reid was an example of this.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Right, or even Tim Kaine went on a, you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: sort of he's evolved his views over time as well,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: I think she mentioned. And so it's like we have
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: a party that is a big tent in the sense that,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: you know, if you have a personal viewpoint, that's fine,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: just please don't legislate those views and stand up for
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: reproductive rights as they should be codified into law.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly.
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: And that's, you know, and you've seen... There are several other,
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: I actually write in my piece about growing up in
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: Pennsylvania where the governor, Bob Casey, was Democrat, virulently anti-abortion.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: And his son, Bob Casey Jr., who's the senior senator
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: from Pennsylvania now, has, I mean, I'm always told, and
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: it's true, he has gotten better, like Tim Kaine, perhaps.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: He has evolved on abortion and is officially better now.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: on issues of reproductive autonomy. But last year, he was
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: one of the Democrats who voted for the 20-week abortion ban, federally. So,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, you actually, I agree with Elise. Part of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: what is patently obvious is that what matters in politics
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: and legislation is not how you feel personally and the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: choices that you might make or not make personally. It's
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: about the policy you want to apply to the people
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: you're representing.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: And it's how you want to legislate and their bodies, police, their,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: their bodies and their healthcare, how, and, and so what
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: we need is a commitment, a proven commitment to standing
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: up on behalf of the ability of people to control when, if,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: and under what circumstances they reproduce. And of course, also
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: as the reproductive justice movement, tells us. It's about the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: whole spate of other policies that we too often disconnect
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: from the question of abortion. Everything from wages and paid
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: leave and.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: Education, housing policy.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: This is part of what a Democratic Party needs to
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: stand up for and make the very clear moral argument
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: that all of this protection around all of these policies
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: determines how Americans, if, when, and under what circumstances they
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: can have families and raise them and make sure they
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: have housing, food, healthcare.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: And I think that there is a.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Huge opportunity for the party to begin to make that
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: argument with a moral conviction and a kind of clarity
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: about how all of these policies are interconnected that it
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: has not effectively done over the past decades since abortion
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: has officially been legal, but for far too many people, inaccessible.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you make the point in the piece
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: that abortion is an economic issue. It's always talked about
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party as one of the social issues,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: but it is an economic issue. And as you point out,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: it's been an economic issue since the very beginning, precisely
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: because of the debate around the Hyde Amendment, because that's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: about economic inequality. I mean- You know, wealthy Republicans who,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: and wealthy Democrats for that matter, who oppose abortion are
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: always going to have access to abortion if you're wealthy enough.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: But it's... Of course.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: It's a massive class issue and always has been and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: will continue to be. But it's also simply in terms of,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: I think, I think because it is imaginatively tied to women.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: There is a way in which you hear it termed
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: a social issue rather than an economic one. You hear
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: it brushed off as part of the so-called culture wars,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: you know, as if the question of reproductive autonomy comes
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: down to like culture, social conversations around sex or God
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: or whatever. But in fact, questions around reproduction, in addition
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: to being about like who gets access to this healthcare
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: to begin with, The questions around whether or not to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: continue a pregnancy are profoundly economic in nature for the
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: people who can become pregnant, right? These are questions about
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: being able to afford to feed or whether or not
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: a future child– whether or not, you know, how it's
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: going to shape your professional life and your economic stability
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: moving forward, whether or not you're going to be able
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: to afford childcare or to take any leave, whether there's
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: healthcare accessible for the family you may or may not have.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: All of these, whether you're going to have access yourself
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: to the kind of obstetric care that you need, all
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: of these are economic issues. And we make a real
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: error and have for a long time in sort of
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: writing them off, I think, in feminized terms, you know,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: with words like social and culture and not acknowledging that
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: women's lives are also economic lives.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Well, the other thing I found interesting sort of going
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: through the polling on this, which sort of surprised me,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: is there's actually very little difference between male and female
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: views on whether abortion should be legal. And yet there's
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: a 35 point gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: And so the fundamental divide is partisan and not gendered.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: What do you make of that?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: That's always been true.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: And there are a lot of people who have worked
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: on trying to explain why, um, in some cases, I
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: think it has to do with the fact that a
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: lot of the opposition to abortion is rooted in, um,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: evangelical communities, and women tend to be more religious than men.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: We also know, obviously, that there are a lot of
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: women in partisan politics. White women, the majority of them
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: vote Republican, right? In ways that still miraculously come as
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: a surprise, even though this has been the pattern as
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: long as we've been keeping track, and certainly before that.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: It is interesting though, one of the things, it's absolutely
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: true that it's split along partisan lines, not gender lines,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: but one of the things I've observed reporting on reproductive
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: rights and justice movements over the years is that the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: activists on behalf of reproductive rights and justice, and this
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: is observed, but I think if there were a study
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: of it, you'd find it to be true, are so
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: much more likely to be um, female, um, or non-gender normative.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: And I think, I keep, I think about that all
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: the time. It is absolutely true that opinion is pretty,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: is pretty evenly divided gender wise, but, and it's something
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: we need to think about. I hope that progressive men
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: think about this, that those who've been out there, because
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: I think I haven't done this study in the anti-abortion community.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of very prominent men who, and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: prominent women, right? And I haven't done the numbers, but
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: from the outside, it seems to me that the anti-abortion
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: movement is, is pretty gender equal, um, in terms of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: men and women who are its, um, its sort of
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: leading activists. But I find too often on, on the,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: in the reproductive rights and justice world that the people
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: doing the work of this hard work of opposition hard
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: with a party that's not willing to support it with
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: the energy that it should, which of course is not
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: true on the other side, right? Republicans are very eager
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: and have become ever more eager to embrace anti-abortion politics.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: So the people.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: Doing the hard work of advocating and making this crucial
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: moral argument on behalf of reproductive autonomy and justice are
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: too often the women without the men.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: Doing the work.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: What do you think that progressive men who want to,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: you know, who believe in reproductive rights, what role should
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: they play? What should they be doing right now?
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: Well, pressuring the party to take it more seriously. I mean,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: this is where, and progressive men in general can be
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: doing more of this, of doing the actual work of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: making the phone calls and writing the postcards.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, so many of the of.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: The polls over the past couple of years where you've
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: seen this uptick in activism and engagement between you know,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: between people and their representatives, so many of those calls
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: have been made and postcards written by women, you know,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: as study after study shows. So men, A, can get
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: more engaged to begin with by contacting their representatives, going
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: to the town halls, writing the letters, specifically on behalf
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: of reproductive rights, too. Sort of affirming that this is
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: not just an issue that affects women or people with uteruses.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: That that questions of reproduction are issues that shape the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: lives of men as well. And I think there can
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: be a lot more clarity about that. There can also,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: on a more personal level, be a lot more questioning
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: and education and reading and listening. Right.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: That's a sort of more quotidian thing to do. But
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: in activism around abortion and reproductive rights, there are so
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: many women who have of late told.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: Their stories of abortion.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: And I also.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: Wanna hear men telling their stories of abortion because they
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: have them too.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that we have to do
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: is make publicly clearer.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: That these are all of our stories and all of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: our lives and our familial, economic, political lives are shaped
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: by the question of who has access to healthcare, who
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: has autonomy, over their bodies.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so a few of the presidential candidates
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: have come out and called on Congress to pass new
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: federal laws. Are they on the right track? And what
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: more do you want to see from the people who
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: are running for president on the Democratic side in terms
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: of standing up for reproductive rights?
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: Right off the bat, I was very impressed by Kirsten
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, you know, both of whom came
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: out with an aggressive set of ideas and energy. Because
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: the one thing that is um, that's clear to me.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: And again, some of this is rooted in my longtime
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: critique of the party itself, that we can't just keep
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: doing what we've been doing, which is treating the issue
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: as sort of icky and not something that we can,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: you know, for years, the anti-abortion movement, um, use the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: language of morality, life, family, love, and, and, The left
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: was far too hesitant about applying that language when they
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: obviously can and should have.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: And so I am going.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: To be impressed by any politician in the Democratic Party
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: who comes at this with clear commitment, unequivocal support. and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: new fresh ideas about how to tackle this. And I
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: think Gillibrand and Warren did that. I liked very much
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: the collaborative video made along with Kamala Harris and Stacey
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: Abrams and Amy Klobuchar.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: That was great.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: Great, right?
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: I actually think Pete Buttigieg gave a terrific answer on abortion.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: In that Foxtown Hall?
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was in the Foxtown Hall.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It was really good, yeah.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: It was one of the stronger.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: Especially, you see a lot of Democratic politicians, there are
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: a series of traps that tend to be laid as
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: soon as you go into a public forum and start
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: talking about your support for access to abortion. Somebody will say, oh,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: but what about gender selective abortion? abortion, which isn't an
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: issue in the United States, and try to trap you there,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: somebody will say, but what about the late abortions? And Buttigieg,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: that's one of the other favorite ones. And we saw
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: Trump do that in the third presidential debate with Hillary Clinton,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: if you remember.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: And Hillary Clinton, and I was shocked.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: Because that is one of the traps that is that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: is historically laid for anybody coming out and vociferously defending
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: reproductive autonomy is, oh, but what about the late abortion?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: Do you really mean up until the, you know, and
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: Clinton in that debate gave the most full throated and
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: righteous response to that trap that I had ever seen.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: I couldn't believe, I thought it was one of the
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: best moments of that campaign.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: Was that answer. And I loved it.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: And much to my surprise, it was Pete Buttigieg who
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: gave a really astoundingly good answer just in this past
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: couple of weeks. So I think Democrats need to prepare better.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: Do your homework. Learn about the traps that are going
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: to be laid for you.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: Learn about the actual questions of health care that are,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: you know, talk to doctors and advocates. You know, they
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: all need to learn better how this actually happens, what's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: at stake, what it means, and be better able to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: navigate the traps that are going to be set. I
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: can guarantee you it has been clear long before these
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: bans that the way that Trump has been talking about
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: abortion and talking, his bananas lie about infanticide. I don't
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: know if he, that he uses all the time where
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: the doctors wrap up the.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: Baby and the blanket.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Every stump speech. Now it's a line in his stump speech.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: And a, it is a, a foul and poisonous fiction
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: based in nothing. And B, it is clearly what he
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: is going to be talking about for the next year
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: and a half. And everybody who wants to oppose him
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: in the general election needs to learn everything they can
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: learn about medical reality, about people who have had experiences
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: of abortion and termination at every stage. They need to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: be prepared to have this conversation. Because if there are candidates,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: and I may or may not be looking directly at
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden, who have lived... who have lived their political
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: life either opposing abortion and reproductive autonomy or being squicked
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: out about it and just taking some kind of paternalistic,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: distant stand about wanting to protect these vulnerable young women.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: And they walk into a debate with a man who's
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: going to start talking about spinning these insane, horrifying fantasies
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: about infanticide.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: Like this is going to be, this is going to
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: be a disaster.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I mean, I, I think it's, it's not
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: enough to just hear Trump say that and say like, Oh,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: obviously that's a crazy lie. And everyone understands that's a
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: crazy lie. And by the way, you know, I'm for
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: reproductive rights and I stand with women. Like, I think
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: that's seems very insufficient. Like you actually have to realize
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: that when Trump says shit like that, it's going to
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: stick with some people and you have to figure out
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: a way to sort of reframe the argument and And
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: in a way that I think Pete did in that
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: town hall, reframe the argument so that people really understand
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: just how vile and poisonous that lie is and why.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: And I would strongly urge, truly, anybody who wants to,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: you know, representatives who want to be better at representing
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: these issues to think about the morality of women's lives
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: and those who have babies.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: It's not just women, right? Right.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: And think about morality, life, family, the value of life
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: as attached to the people who are having the babies,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: the human beings who may find themselves pregnant, who may
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: find themselves in need of healthcare. And I mean, we
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: have been, the anti-abortion movement made the fetus the center
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: of a moral conversation and took away any sense of
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: morality or value that was attached to the people who
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: might find themselves pregnant.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: And what those who.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: Want to advocate on behalf of comprehensive healthcare need to
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: start doing without apologizing or without feeling strange about it
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: is remembering that women and people with uteruses are moral
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: beings themselves. And being clear about stating that alongside their
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: right to to legal healthcare.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: So, um, just turning to the presidential race, um, you know,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of years after Hillary Clinton was the first
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: female nominee of any major party, uh, we have six
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: women running for president in a 23, I think that
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: was the last count, 23 person field. Um, two of
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: those women, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are currently pulling
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: ahead of all but two or maybe three of the men. Um,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: What do you make of the gender dynamics at play
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: in this race and in the media coverage right now?
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Do you think they've improved since 2016 or have we
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: learned nothing?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: I think we learn a little bit each time. I
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: don't want to say we've learned nothing.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: Baby steps.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: I also think it's the dynamics are so different because
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: you have six women in the race. And we, the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: thing that we do is we try to, tell this
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: flattering lie about ourselves, which is that we're cool. We're cool.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: We got this, like, we know how to, you know,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: we learned everything we needed to learn. Um, and I
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: don't think that we're being honest about the fact that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: this is unprecedented.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, on.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: With, without precedent to have multiple women in a primary race. And,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: you know, we want to behave. We're, constantly wanting to
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: behave like gender is not an issue. But of course
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: it is. It's in the fact that consistently two and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: often three white men are polling above any of these
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: very strong female candidates.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: And some of the candidates are very strong, right? Right.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: That's operating for a variety of reasons, in part because
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: of name recognition and, you know, fundraising networks that were
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: in place that meant that they brought in a lot
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: of money at first. But it's also operating because political
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: media institutions are simply more comfortable covering white men, men
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: in presidential races.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: They know how to do it. And as a.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: This, Joe Biden's getting more coverage by like some massive
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: factor than really any other candidates, but especially the women. Um,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: just cause it's a comfortable, everybody knows Joe, right? People
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: still know Bernie from 2016, right? They know the stories,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: they know how to tell the stories around these people. Um,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: You're seeing all kinds of questions being asked about some
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: of the female candidates, about their likability and relatability and
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: authenticity that we know get asked about female candidates in
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: ways that they're not asked about male candidates.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: So of course gender is shaping how this has happened.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: That said, if I thought.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: That the gender dynamics in this race were going to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: be unchangeable, I would sort of go to bed and
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: not wake up again for a.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: Couple of years.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, I actually, I can't move forward if I didn't,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't be able to move forward if I didn't
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: have hope that we could learn more and faster. And
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: that in fact, the changing of Faces of who we're
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: seeing we're gonna be seeing in some screwy bananas debate
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: situation Hearing multiple multiple All kinds and it's not just women,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: of course it's it's Pete Buttigieg is gay and Julian
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: Castro is running and You know, we have Jews right
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: there are Jews and you know what we're we're we're
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: looking at a wildly diverse slate of candidates. And what
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: I have to believe is that the diversity itself alters
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: our models for who can be presidential, who our candidates
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: can be, how they can express themselves, how we change,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: how we receive them.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: And so I cannot.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: Move forward if I believe that all the errors of
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: the past would simply predict the future. I have to
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: believe that the process that we're in the midst of
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: is about changing the way we receive these candidates. And
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: so for that, even though there are all kinds of
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: daunting and possibly scary things about how we continue to
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: treat male candidates versus female candidates, I want to believe
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: that the process that we're in the midst of is
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: about redressing those past errors.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I want to believe that too. And so we
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: will end on that very hopeful note because there's too
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: much bad news out there to not end on that
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: hopeful note.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: I'm nothing if not hopeful.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. And please
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: come on again soon.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much, John.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Now, the official trailer for the brand new Crooked Media
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: pod that will be out on June 3rd This Land,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: hosted by Rebecca Nagel, a Cherokee journalist and advocate based
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Here's the trailer. Enjoy.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 5: This summer, the Supreme Court will decide the future of
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 5: half the land in Oklahoma. Their decision could result in
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Every tribe has sovereignty, and this is not given to us.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: It's within us.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 5: In this podcast, we're going to go way back to
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 5: the Trail of Tears. To the story of my family,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 5: the treaty they signed, and why they were killed for
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 5: our land. This case has involved mistakes.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: And the agent that was.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: In charge of it somehow just got the location wrong.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: And the Trump administration.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: I really do think that there was pressure from oil
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: and gas interests in Oklahoma that encouraged them to intervene quickly.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 5: But for the people of my tribe and the four
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 5: other tribes in Oklahoma, this case has never been about
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: any of that. It's about our survival. We're still here.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: What our ancestors went through to get us from the
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: homeland back east to here is just, it's incredible that
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: any of us.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: Are here today.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 5: My name is Rebecca Nagel, and I'm a citizen of
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 5: Cherokee Nation. You're listening to This Land from Crooked Media.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 5: Subscribe to This Land wherever you listen to podcasts.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Rebecca Tracer for joining us, and everyone have
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: a great Memorial Day weekend. We will be off on Monday,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: and we will be recording the pod Tuesday morning, and
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: so it'll be on your phones Tuesday afternoon.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: And we'll know from your tweets which of you listened
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: all the way to the end of this podcast.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Bye, everyone.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: Bye. So