Latest / Pod Save America / To the Winfrey, to the Walz (feat. Gretchen Whitmer)

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To the Winfrey, to the Walz (feat. Gretchen Whitmer) · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This week, we're going all out for the Democratic National Convention.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Here at Crooked Media, we're giving Friends of the Pod
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: subscribers access to a ton of behind-the-scenes content and community events,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: including a DNC subscriber live chat, a new subscriber-exclusive segment
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: featuring me, John, Tommy, and Dan, four, count them, four
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: back-to-back ad-free episodes of Pod Save America recapping the biggest
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: convention news of the night, and brand-new episodes of Inside
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: 2024 and Polar Coaster. It's going to be a hell
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of a week for content. And as a bonus, we'll
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: have a Democratic Party nominee by the end. Pretty good deal.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Get all of our exclusive DNC content and more when
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you subscribe to Friends of the Pod. Head to cricket.com
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: slash friends to sign up now. Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: We are back here at the United Center to recap
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: night three of the Democratic Convention.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Back here. I'm not sure we've ever left.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: We have not left. I've been here for most of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: my life now.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Most of our lives and most of that was a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Bill Clinton speech.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: On today's show, on tonight's show, Governor Tim Walz delivers
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a blockbuster convention speech here in Chicago. Donald Trump is
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: not happy about Barack Obama and other Democrats being mean
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: to him. And RFK Jr. reportedly plans to drop out
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: of the race and endorse Donald Trump. This all happened
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: while we were running around today. I barely even know
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: what happened here.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Take one second away to play cornhole with Harry Enten
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: in the CNN grill.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: You miss all this news. That's real, by the way.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: That's real. What I'm describing is real.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned to CNN. Plus, Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Harris
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Campaign Communications Director Michael Tyler stopped by. But first, another
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: night of the convention, another night of joy and democratic unity.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: This one was packed with democratic stars. Mayor Pete, Josh Shapiro,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and also fucking Oprah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Oprah.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Surprise guest.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: She's so good.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And the night's headliners, we have Bill Clinton and, of course,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Tim Walls. Let's start with Coach Walls. Just an absolute
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: banger of a speech.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: Listen, every night we say we're not going to drink
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: as much as we drank the night before, but then
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: we're so tired from the drinking from the previous evening
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: that the drinks are getting bigger as we get later
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: into this event. You have it wrong.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: We waited to drink earlier. The last couple nights, we
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: waited to drink later. Tonight, we were like, let's just
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: start earlier.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: You can hear that in the recording. Anyway, let's listen
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: to Coach Walls accept the vice presidential nomination.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: So there I was, a 40-something high school teacher with
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: little kids, zero political experience, and no money, running in
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: a deep red district. But you know what? Never underestimate
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: a public school teacher. And we made sure that every
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day.
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: Other states were banning books from their schools. We were banishing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Hunger from ours.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: government should be free to invade your doctor's office. Corporations,
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: free to pollute your air and water.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: And banks, free to.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: Take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom,
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: we mean the freedom to make a better life for
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: your own healthcare decisions. Your kids' freedom to go to
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: Clip and save it and send it to your undecided
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: relatives so they know. If you're a middle class family
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: or a family trying to get into the middle class,
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: Kamala Harris is going to cut your taxes. If you're
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: getting squeezed by prescription drug prices, Kamala Harris is going
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: to take on Big Pharma. If you're hoping to buy
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: a home, Kamala Harris is going to help make.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It more affordable.
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: And no matter who you are, Kamala Harris is going
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: to stand up and fight for your freedom to live
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: the life that you want to lead. Because that's what
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: we want for ourselves, and it's what we want for
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: our neighbors. You know, you might not know it, but
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: I haven't given a.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: Lot of big speeches like this.
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: But I have given a lot of pep talks. We're
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: down a field goal, but we're on offense and we've
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: got the ball.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: We're driving down the field.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: And boy, do we have the right team.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: Kamala Harris is top.
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: Kamala Harris is experienced and Kamala.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Harris is ready. Our job.
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: Our job, our job, our job for everyone watching is
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: One inch at a time.
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: One yard at a time.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: One phone call at a time.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: One door knock at a time.
• 5:46
  Speaker 6: One $ 5.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: Donation at a time.
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: And as the next president of the United States always says,
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: when we fight, we win.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: When we fight, we win.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: When we fight, we win.
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 6:00
  Speaker 7: God bless.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Coach Walls got the assignment.
• 6:05
  Speaker 8: Great.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He knew what to do. What did you guys think?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: You know what I loved about the speech?
• 6:10
  Speaker 9: First of all, if you put a bunch of washed-up,
• 6:14
  Speaker 9: middle-aged high school football players on a stage, you got me.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: You're speaking my love language, Tim Walls. That was how
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: they opened it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 9: They brought out their state championship football team in their jerseys,
• 6:25
  Speaker 9: looking great.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But then he focused most of his bio on being
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: a coach, being a teacher.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Why? Why?
• 6:31
  Speaker 9: Because people like coaches, and they like teachers. They don't
• 6:34
  Speaker 9: love politicians all the time. He talked about some of
• 6:37
  Speaker 9: giving free school lunches to kids and other legislative accomplishments,
• 6:40
  Speaker 9: but he connected as a human being.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: He just came away authentic.
• 6:43
  Speaker 9: He got calmer as the speech went on and more
• 6:47
  Speaker 9: conversational in the delivery.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: It was just excellent.
• 6:51
  Speaker 9: He had a line in there where he talked about
• 6:52
  Speaker 9: the hell of infertility, and hearing that part started to
• 6:56
  Speaker 9: get me choked up.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: But then they cut to his kid's who were crying
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: and beaming and saying, like, I love my dad.
• 7:04
  Speaker 9: And, like, everyone in this room started weeping. It was
• 7:07
  Speaker 9: just incredibly emotional.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: It was the first time I welled up the entire convention.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Me too. Me too, yeah. First time for me too.
• 7:14
  Speaker 9: When Monday night went after 11.30, I started to cry
• 7:16
  Speaker 9: a little bit.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Different reason.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah. There's also just, there's no faking what Tim Walz is.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: It was also funny because they cut to Hope, And
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: she's making a heart. And it cuts to Gus. And
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: Gus is just weeping and just like get on his
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: feet saying, I love you, Dad.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: It was funny and beautiful and real.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: It was like a high school football movie. That's what
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 7:43
  Speaker 10: I'll tell you where it hits really home. It is
• 7:45
  Speaker 10: older sister, little brother energy right there.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: And then you compare that to the like... capital from
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: the hunger games vibe of the Republican national committee of
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: all these kind of plastered fucking Botox grins of people
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: that barely can aren't speaking terms, pretending to be a
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: family for one fucking night.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: JD Vance in a basement on his laptop and some
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: fucking weird chat room.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Also, it was a, a pretty tight speech, incredibly tight.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And the message was clear. He said right at the top,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: maybe like the third or fourth line, we love this country.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: We help our neighbors. We believe in a country where
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: everybody belongs and everybody has a responsibility to contribute. And
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: then he told the story and then he told a
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: story about why Kamala Harris will be a great president
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and why she'll help people and why this whole campaign
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: is about helping people and why this country can be
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: about everyone helping each other and lifting each other up
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and turning the page on all the bullshit divisiveness of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the last however many years with Donald Trump in our lives.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It was fantastic.
• 8:45
  Speaker 10: The way this process goes often is the campaign manager,
• 8:50
  Speaker 10: political strategist, message person, the candidate, and the speech writer
• 8:53
  Speaker 10: will sit down, and the strategist will say, here are
• 8:55
  Speaker 10: the five things we need to accomplish. In the room,
• 8:57
  Speaker 10: the candidate will agree to that. Then the speech writer
• 8:59
  Speaker 10: will go write a speech that does those things. Then
• 9:01
  Speaker 10: the candidate will get a hold of the speech, and
• 9:03
  Speaker 10: they will decide to do crazy self-indulgent shit. This was
• 9:07
  Speaker 10: like he checked the box on every single thing that
• 9:10
  Speaker 10: if I had been in the room, I would have said,
• 9:11
  Speaker 10: this is what Tim Walz can do in a speech.
• 9:13
  Speaker 10: Introduce him to the nation, right? make the case for
• 9:17
  Speaker 10: Kamala Harris, do on very specific anti-Trump stuff. One of
• 9:21
  Speaker 10: the challenges that Democrats have is that Donald Trump is
• 9:24
  Speaker 10: not getting the blame he deserves for Dobbs. And there's
• 9:27
  Speaker 10: a CBS Bulls weekend that shows that majorities of voters
• 9:30
  Speaker 10: and majorities of independents do not believe that Donald Trump
• 9:33
  Speaker 10: will pass a federal abortion ban or try to ban
• 9:36
  Speaker 10: abortion nationally and really believe his leave it to the
• 9:38
  Speaker 10: states bullshit. So you got to do that. He went
• 9:40
  Speaker 10: explicitly at that. Project 2025, he goes at that. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 10: then he does something which is just so smart, which
• 9:47
  Speaker 10: is to pick the moment, he picked the moment that
• 9:50
  Speaker 10: was the most persuasive moment, and told people to send
• 9:52
  Speaker 10: it to their relatives. And then he ends the speech
• 9:55
  Speaker 10: giving people specific tasks of things to do to win
• 9:58
  Speaker 10: the election. Knock on doors, give funds, It's like soup
• 10:02
  Speaker 10: to nuts.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It just hits.
• 10:03
  Speaker 10: all the strategic high points for a campaign speech.
• 10:05
  Speaker 9: And just one thing, he said, clip this part and
• 10:08
  Speaker 9: save it. And he reminded me of being at the
• 10:10
  Speaker 9: supermarket with my mother when the checkout lady would say, like, hon,
• 10:13
  Speaker 9: do you have a coupon?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Like, it was that kind of vibe.
• 10:15
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it was, like, the
• 10:17
  Speaker 10: exact right verbiage, but that's also charming.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You love that.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: There's also something just that, like, about the, why that
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: speech was so excellent. There's, like, an interview some celebrities
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: have been giving about how, like, Hollywood used to think
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: IP wasn't just Marvel comics, but, like, Your sweet 16
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: was IP, right? IP were things that happen to actual people.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: And so often, like, in speech writing, people think you
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: need to use cliches to convey, like, basic values, that
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: you'd use the cliche to... to get at the values underneath.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: But that was a speech about values, and it didn't
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: have a lot of cliches. It expressed the values through
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: his experience and his own words. And if you do
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: that well enough, you make a new cliche. You make
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: something real from your actual experience that conveys the values.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: It goes in the other direction, and it was a
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: lot better. There were some, you know, Tim Wallace, that
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: was one of the best speeches we've ever heard. Would
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: you say it's.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Better than Doug and Bob?
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: No, it's close, but, but that was an incredible speech
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: by the vice presidential candidate. and it would have been
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: better if it had been an hour earlier. And one
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: of the reasons it wasn't, because there's a lot of
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: indulgent people spreading a lot of fucking pablum out there.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: We have this later in the program, but you just
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: couldn't wait.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: I'm good now.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: You're right about the imagery.
• 11:31
  Speaker 9: They weren't cliches, but he was like, it's the fourth quarter,
• 11:34
  Speaker 9: we're down a field goal, we have the ball. You
• 11:36
  Speaker 9: paint a picture, you see that in your mind's eye,
• 11:38
  Speaker 9: and you imagine Tim Walls hiking the ball. He's probably
• 11:40
  Speaker 9: the center in this scenario, if we're being honest, not
• 11:43
  Speaker 9: the quarterback. And that's what I saw.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Well, and also, that fits him. If another speaker tonight
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: used that imagery, it would be like, what are you doing?
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: That sounds so cheesy, but it fits him so perfectly,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: which is the whole point of why, if you want
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to deliver a great speech at a convention or anywhere,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: You can't just look at other good speakers and be like,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going to copy that. You have to do something
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that is true to you, right? And like Tim Walls,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: you have to also have the confidence to know that
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: you can deliver that speech and you can figure out
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: what fits you best and just go for it. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Tim Walls clearly had that confidence. What we saw in
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that clip when he was like, you know, You might
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: not know that I don't give a lot of big
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: speeches like this. It's like, yeah, he doesn't, but he
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: seems like he does.
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: He does, but you also, by the way, like, just,
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: you see him, and, like, he's bouncing between the two
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: sides of the teleprompter. Like, you wouldn't notice he's an
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: incredible speaker. But, like, he is new to doing that,
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: and there's a rawness to it and an authenticity to
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: it that carries through because he just... I mean, if
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Tim Walz didn't exist, you'd have to invent him.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: He does the aw shucks thing. Like, I'm not used
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: to this.
• 12:45
  Speaker 9: And there was reporting that one of the things he
• 12:47
  Speaker 9: talked about with Kamala Harris when she chose him is
• 12:48
  Speaker 9: that he'd never used.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: A teleprompter before.
• 12:50
  Speaker 10: The first teleprompter speech he ever gave was at that
• 12:51
  Speaker 10: rally in Philadelphia when it was announced.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Like a couple weeks ago.
• 12:54
  Speaker 9: And then his confidence and comfort in his own skin
• 12:57
  Speaker 9: just grew and grew and grew.
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: That is a very rare thing. It's so funny.
• 13:00
  Speaker 11: It's like, J.D.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Vance is going to stand across from me. He's Simone
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: fucking Biles.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I was just thinking that. I'm like, if I was J.D.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Vance and I was his team, like, I think the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: only way to advise him to debate Tim Walz is
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: to just do your own thing, talk about your own policies,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: talk about why their policies aren't good for people. That
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: would be the smart thing.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: You can't do that for Trump, though.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Right, you can't do that for Trump. And I think
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: being mean to Tim Walz and trying to poke at
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: him through a whole debate, that strategy, I think, will
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: fail spectacularly.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: It is just so.
• 13:38
  Speaker 10: funny now having watched this speech and watched the last
• 13:40
  Speaker 10: few weeks of this campaign, that the Republicans initial plan
• 13:43
  Speaker 10: was to make Tim Walz.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: A radical liberal. It's so funny. He shot a pheasant
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: on video at the convention.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I know this, the students and the football players and everything.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: It's like, Oh yeah, that guy doesn't seem like a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: radical liberal to anyone who watched that.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Tonight's other headliner, Bill Clinton. who delivered a healthy dose
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of that famous Arkansas folksiness. Here's a sampling.
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: my family of four generations. And the only personal vanity
• 14:14
  Speaker 6: I want to assert is I'm still younger than Donald Trump.
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: She will break my record as the president who spent
• 14:24
  Speaker 6: the most time at McDonald's. The next time you Hear him,
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: don't count the lies. Count the eyes. What are they
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: supposed to make to these endless tributes to the late,
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: great Hannibal Lecter? President Obama once gave me the great
• 14:47
  Speaker 6: honor of saying I was the explainer-in-chief. Folks, I've thought
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: and thought about it, and I don't know what to say.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Take it!
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: From a man who once had the honor to be.
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: Called in this convention the man from hope. We need,
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: we need Kamala Harris, the president of joy, to lead us.
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: What did.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You guys think of the explainer-in-chief? Anyone?
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I think there's some good parts. He was
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: supposed to speak for 12 minutes. He spoke for 25 minutes,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: something like that.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Was it 25? I don't know. It was double the length,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: which is pretty standard for Bill Clinton.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: That's fine. That's fine.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: Anybody that pushed Tim Walz out of primetime, I'm not
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: a fan of tonight. That's it.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: They're on your list.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: That's it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Hakeem Jeffries, too long. Not Speaker of the House yet.
• 15:46
  Speaker 9: I think I enjoyed the breaking my record as the
• 15:50
  Speaker 9: president who spent the most time in a McDonald's joke.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: That was a very Gen X slash, mostly Gen X joke.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: We're close.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: We get it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Gen X and elder millennial nerds. I think he has
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: some political talent.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Boomers certainly get that.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: Boomers are still around. He warmed up as he went.
• 16:05
  Speaker 9: You forgot the boomers yes yes for sure i think
• 16:08
  Speaker 9: it started a little slow and meandering i was kind
• 16:10
  Speaker 9: of like where are we going with this by the
• 16:12
  Speaker 9: end i thought it got stronger it did some good lines.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: It was it was the one speech that like improved
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the most over the course of the speech.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah the lighter moments were great yeah he did take
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: him a beat to warm up i think the more
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: rhetorical parts didn't totally i was like okay but then
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: the parts where he was like that kind of old
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: bill clinton charm where he's sort of kind of like
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: stepping back and be like what's going on here it's
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: actually kind of obama's too yeah I thought worked.
• 16:31
  Speaker 10: I mean, there's political value in it, right? I mean,
• 16:34
  Speaker 10: there are a lot of people who vote for Trump
• 16:35
  Speaker 10: who also voted for Bill Clinton, right? And we know there's,
• 16:40
  Speaker 10: and this was true for, it was part of Bill
• 16:41
  Speaker 10: Clinton's superpower, it's still true now, is that a white
• 16:44
  Speaker 10: guy with a Southern accent endorsing Kamala Harris helps. And
• 16:48
  Speaker 10: we just know like from pure numbers, she has gained
• 16:51
  Speaker 10: with all parts of the Democratic coalition. The big question is,
• 16:54
  Speaker 10: will she hold, the only way to make the math work,
• 16:57
  Speaker 10: unless we're going to dramatically overperform with black voters or
• 16:59
  Speaker 10: Latino voters, is to hold Biden's share of white voters,
• 17:02
  Speaker 10: particularly non-college white voters.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And that's a group that has voted for Bill Clinton.
• 17:06
  Speaker 10: Bill Clinton has credibility and credence there. You hear some
• 17:10
  Speaker 10: of those people talk, it's like, they missed the Democratic
• 17:12
  Speaker 10: Party of Bill Clinton. And so that explains why he
• 17:15
  Speaker 10: was on stage tonight, and that's sort of the value
• 17:17
  Speaker 10: of that. I also thought he made an important point about,
• 17:21
  Speaker 10: because this has been driving me crazy for a long time, about,
• 17:24
  Speaker 10: he basically said, at least that line was, don't count
• 17:26
  Speaker 10: the lies.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I was just about to say this. I'm glad you're
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: saying it. It's been driving me crazy, too.
• 17:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 17:30
  Speaker 10: Everyone knows Donald Trump's full of shit. They've always known
• 17:32
  Speaker 10: he's full of shit. That's not what is going to
• 17:34
  Speaker 10: defeat him. You have to go beyond that, right?
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And just to put a fine point on this, it
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: is important to fact-check Donald Trump, to acknowledge, especially for
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: reporters and journalists, to acknowledge that he lies.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: We want Daniel Dale to eat.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: We want Daniel Dale to eat, right. We want all
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the fact-checkers. We want to know if he lies. But
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: a super majority of voters believe that Donald Trump is dishonest.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But he is not losing by a super majority of voters, right? Like,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: so there's like 60% of voters think he's a dishonest person,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: but he's still like, you know, he's, it's a, it's
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a pretty close, almost tied race for president, right?
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Most politicians are liars.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So they think most politicians are liars and all
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the energy we expend on, but he's a liar, but
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: we got to call out the lies, but the headline
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't call it the lies and the stories and call
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: it lies. And why don't we call it the lies?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And I will say that the, it was a, it
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: was a Biden campaign strategy for a while and around
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the debate, Now, I think part of it was because
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Biden did so poorly at the debate that they all
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: had to come out of the debate saying, like, the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: only thing they could say is, like, well, what about
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's lies? But then Biden sort of did that, too. Like,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: going into this next debate between Kamala Harris, like, Donald
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Trump is going to lie at this debate. He's going
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to lie a ton at this debate. That is not
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: pointing out his lies is not what's going to move people.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Fact-checking him is not what's going to move people. And
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton told us that actually... sending the message that
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: all he cares about is himself, which has been a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: running theme of a lot of the convention speakers, some
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of the really good ones this whole week, like that's
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: going to move people.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Do you think it was like, it felt like a
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: little bit of a, at Biden, just like a little,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: a little, a little rebuke.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Cause I, yeah, I think, well, but it's not just Biden.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's like a, the entire sort of liberal ecosystem.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: The democratic party for seven years now, eight years.
• 19:17
  Speaker 9: We've had candidates, we've had elected officials, uh, mentioning in
• 19:21
  Speaker 9: television interviews how many Pinocchios Donald Trump was awarded by
• 19:24
  Speaker 9: the Washington Post.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Like, we've got to get away from that shit. The
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: number of lies. Whoa, he had 70 lies. Like, yeah, no,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I know he's the fucking liar. We all know that. So,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: as Lovett pointed out, the list of speakers was already
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: very long tonight, but no one complained at the surprise speaker,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey, here in her hometown of Chicago. As always,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: she had everyone eating out of her hand. Here's a
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: bit of what she said.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Soon and very soon, we're going to be teaching our
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic, energetic immigrants, how
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: this child.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Grew up to become the 47th president of the United States.
• 20:12
  Speaker 7: And let us choose joy. Together, let's all choose Kamala Harris.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I love Oprah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: You have to.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's just, again, our age or older?
• 20:34
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Like, I was wondering, too. I'm like, younger than us
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: are people like, oh, yeah, Oprah. I've heard of her.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: She's cool. Like, I see her come out. I'm just like,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: this is a huge deal. Oprah's out here. Everyone loves Oprah.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: She's giving a speech. She's, like, such a great speaker.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: She's inspiring.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Well, as old as we are, and I know I'm older.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: A lot of people.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Most people are older than us.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of voters, yeah.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Most voters are older than us.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:55
  Speaker 9: I mean, she might be ironically cool on TikTok. We
• 20:57
  Speaker 9: don't know because it's not her algo. But listen, I
• 21:01
  Speaker 9: will never forget 2007. It's like Tim Wall saying, clip
• 21:06
  Speaker 9: it and share it. I'll never forget 2007. Oprah came
• 21:10
  Speaker 9: to Des Moines, Iowa. We did a huge event. It
• 21:12
  Speaker 9: was absolutely bitterly cold, freezing day. I think it was
• 21:15
  Speaker 9: snowing outside. We were like, I hope people will come.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: This should be interesting.
• 21:19
  Speaker 9: Absolutely packed the house. She did another one for us
• 21:21
  Speaker 9: in Cedar Rapids. brought the crowds to their feet. People
• 21:24
  Speaker 9: were going nuts. We collected all this data.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Like, I think that was a huge moment for Obama,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: but we had Madeline Albright.
• 21:29
  Speaker 9: So, so, you know, both sides had their stars and
• 21:34
  Speaker 9: there was, you know, there was something, there was something
• 21:36
  Speaker 9: novel to that endorsement. I think it was the first
• 21:38
  Speaker 9: time she'd ever really endorsed a candidate and come out and.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Get involved in politics.
• 21:40
  Speaker 9: It was special and unique, but I, I think she
• 21:43
  Speaker 9: is huge cache. If you're 50 and over huge cache.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And I saw, um, Liam Donovan, Republican strategist on Twitter,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: he was like, you know, of all the speakers, and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: he's like, Trump's clearly mad about the Obamas and everything.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: He's like, but what really probably sticks in his craw
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is Oprah Winfrey because Trump has known Oprah Winfrey for
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a long time, you know, came of age in the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Oprah era and is probably.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: Really pissed about that. I think Oprah is a leader
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: and Oprah is saying, I'm not political anymore. but I'm
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: getting political here. I want you all to do it.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: And making a specific plea to undecided voters, I think
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: that carries weight with a lot of people.
• 22:22
  Speaker 10: Also, all politics is attention wars, and you want to
• 22:25
  Speaker 10: get attention for this convention. You want people to know
• 22:27
  Speaker 10: about it, pay attention. And having Oprah, that is playing
• 22:30
  Speaker 10: an ace right there. And I also just thought the
• 22:33
  Speaker 10: way she told the story about the idea that a
• 22:38
  Speaker 10: child of two immigrants would be president of the United States...
• 22:40
  Speaker 10: in a time in which the other party is demonizing
• 22:42
  Speaker 10: immigrants in the most offensive and xenophobic ways, it's just
• 22:47
  Speaker 10: such a powerful thing to think about, about the stakes
• 22:50
  Speaker 10: of this election, what it means when she wins.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So we used to think about that with Obama, right?
• 22:54
  Speaker 10: Like what it would mean for him to do it,
• 22:55
  Speaker 10: what it would mean for her to do it, for
• 22:56
  Speaker 10: all of the barriers that she would break. It's like
• 22:58
  Speaker 10: a reason for people who heard Oprah say it. Maybe
• 23:01
  Speaker 10: it's not going to persuade a ton of people who
• 23:03
  Speaker 10: aren't paying attention to politics, but people who aren't sure
• 23:06
  Speaker 10: they're going to vote, maybe they'll vote. People are going
• 23:07
  Speaker 10: to vote, maybe they'll volunteer, right? Maybe if they're volunteering,
• 23:10
  Speaker 10: maybe they'll donate now. It's a very powerful call to arms.
• 23:13
  Speaker 10: We still have work to do on our side.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Also, pivotal group of swing voters, older white women. You
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: know who loves Oprah? Older white women.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is exactly true.
• 23:23
  Speaker 10: When you look at the numbers, the big question around
• 23:27
  Speaker 10: the working class white voters is, can Kamala Harris exceed
• 23:30
  Speaker 10: Biden's numbers with working class white voters?
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Part of that's abortion.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And she's probably not going to do it with men.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: And she may lose some with men.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:38
  Speaker 10: So you got to find more voters somewhere. One potential
• 23:41
  Speaker 10: pocket is working class white women. Oprah, incredibly influential with them.
• 23:46
  Speaker 10: They are anti all these abortion bans.
• 23:47
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 23:47
  Speaker 10: They're upset about that. So like that is the when
• 23:51
  Speaker 10: you we know people work on this campaign. We know
• 23:52
  Speaker 10: how they think about the numbers. You sort of go
• 23:55
  Speaker 10: through the choice of Oprah, how walls it is speech.
• 23:57
  Speaker 10: You can see how they are getting to they're trying
• 23:59
  Speaker 10: to have the messages they get to their vote goal.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't think, you know, we just we watched
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: the whole Republican National Convention. It was this like, you know,
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: victory lap. I can't think of the moments that you
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: would take from that convention to share on social to
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: persuade undecided people. But I can think of five.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Hulk Hogan.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: Hulk Hogan.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Dana White. Those were the moment. Those were the celebrity moment.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: But in terms of like that. But that was all
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: kind of whatever.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:25
  Speaker 8: Like.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Celebrity and showmanship not an argument like you can see
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: the moments that are coming from these speeches that are
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: going to go that are going to be spread around
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: on social media to reach people who aren't paying attention
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: to this.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: All right love it this one's for you what did
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you think of the overall program tonight.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: It is crazy like clearly it was not a plan
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: to you know uh pull the strings to get joe
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: biden to be late because those same people aren't trying
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: to put tim waltz After 11 o'clock Eastern, people are
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: going too long and like they're making it about themselves.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: They're giving speeches that they want to give, not the
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: most helpful speech possible. And that was an incredible speech
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: by Tim Walz. It should have happened an hour earlier.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: And it's like very frustrating that that didn't happen. And like,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: that's it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been thinking about this because Stephanie Carter is
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: in charge of the convention. She put together one of
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the best Democratic conventions ever in 2020 in the middle
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: of a pandemic. And Stephanie clearly gets the timing. And
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I think the people they've had problems with are the speakers.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Speakers who were like, no, you're not cutting my time
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: or you're not cutting me from the program or you're
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: not doing this. And I again, I also think this
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I think like 80 to 90 percent of this program
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: was put together when Biden was going to be the nominee.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: And when Kamala Harris became the nominee, they couldn't just
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: turn around and be like, oh, hey. you're gone, you're gone,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: you're gone, you know, and there's like inter-democratic, whatever, it
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and I think they tried to do their best, but yeah,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: if you're, like, again, tomorrow night, like, even tonight, you know, like, Walls,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: we should have heard him in primetime for sure, tomorrow night,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: If Kamala Harris has to get on that stage by
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: like 9.15 Central Time.
• 26:07
  Speaker 10: We need Nancy Pelosi backstage. A giant hook for Kermit
• 26:13
  Speaker 10: the Frog pulling people off.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: There's no excuse tomorrow.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: Amy Klobuchar went through the whole fucking geography of the
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: United States of America.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Cut it. Hakeem Jeffries named every day of the week.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: Cut it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do? Throw me out of
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: the side of her car?
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Cut it.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not going to get in that car. Not
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: after tonight. And I'm a fan of hers. Senator Klobuchar,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to say, I'm sorry.
• 26:39
  Speaker 12: Please don't hurt me. Oh yeah, fucking hell, I'm alone.
• 26:44
  Speaker 12: They told me I would be out to dry if
• 26:45
  Speaker 12: I did this. They told me before, they warned me.
• 26:49
  Speaker 12: There's me and Bullet Rye out here.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Speaking of killers, I also wanted to mention Nancy Pelosi.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Our pal Mindy Kaling, who did a fantastic job as MC.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Quite funny. Very funny. She introduced Pelosi as Mother of Dragons,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: which I loved. So, you know, Pelosi's speech wasn't amazing,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: but it didn't need to be. It didn't need to be, because...
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Every single person in that hall knows what she did
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in this election and that she is the absolute pinnacle
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: of her power. That said, there was a report in
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: The Washington Post this morning. And, you know, it was
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: extensive in The Post, but it's been everywhere. This has
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: been all over the place, little bits and pieces.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to see where this is going.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And here's the quote. A group of Democrats, including within
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Biden's orbit and the Democratic National Committee, remain bitterly upset
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: with Pelosi over her public pressure campaign to push Biden out.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Some have privately pledged to find ways to diminish Pelosi's
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: influence in the party after the November election. Bold strategy.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Good luck with that.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, have somebody else start your fucking cars.
• 27:52
  Speaker 12: What are you going to do?
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Change your E-Trade password? Yeah, man.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Look, I don't want to keep talking about this because
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's happy, we're unified, whatever. But the reason
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: that we have to keep talking about it is because
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Some people, and maybe it's just one or two in
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the whole orbit, just keep talking to reporters about how
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: fucking pissed they are in the middle of the Democratic
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Convention about what Nancy Pelosi did, which was absolutely correct.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: First of all, Nancy Pelosi didn't make one phone call.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Except to us.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It is wild. This is not helping anything.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: It's so silly.
• 28:33
  Speaker 9: Threatening the former Speaker of the House on background to
• 28:36
  Speaker 9: the Washington Post is some.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do? Diminish her power? She's
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: probably not running again. Are you going to go primary
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: her in San Francisco? What are you doing?
• 28:46
  Speaker 9: Also, folks who are saying this, you're not going to
• 28:49
  Speaker 9: have a job in six months, presumably.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: You're going to go do something else.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: What are we talking about? All right, so Trump has
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: been doing his best, I think, to bracket the DNC
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: programming with message events of his own. And boy, has
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: he been on message. Today he held a rally in
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: North Carolina that was supposed to be about national security.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Didn't see that in the headlines. What seemed to be
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: on his mind was all the not nice things people
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: said about him here at the convention the night before.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: First and foremost, very predictable, Barack Obama. Let's listen.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I think her name will be Comrade because I think
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: that's the most accurate name.
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: You know, I've been looking for a name.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: People are saying, sir, don't do it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: You know all my names.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: They've all worked. They've all been very successful.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: And I really didn't find one with her.
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: It could have been Barack Hussein Obama, perhaps we should
• 29:33
  Speaker 6: ask him.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Now, he was very nasty last night.
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: I try and be nice to people, you know, but
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: it's a little tough when they get personal. please again
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: remember please.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Sir don't get personal talk about policy let me ask
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: you about that we're going to do a free poll
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: here's the two questions should I get personal should I
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: not get personal ready should I get personal should I
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: not get personal.
• 30:01
  Speaker 8: I don't know.
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: My advisors are fired.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Great message.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: I like that on one side he has his advisors,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: and then the other side is, like, the loudest racist
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: contractors in the area who came to the rally. And, like,
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: these are the two groups of people that are being
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: weighed against each other.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: Good.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: I think you should listen to the contractors.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: It is just so funny that, like, Oh, you know,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I thought about being nice, which is, you know, sort
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of my style. But I don't know. After last night,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I think that the guy who I accused of not
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: being born in America and demanding to see his birth
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: certificate for the better part of a decade.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I think I'm going to sort of unload on him.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, he is actually campaigning this week.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: He was doing like one event every two weeks before.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Now he was out every day this week.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Boy, did it break through.
• 30:49
  Speaker 10: It was so funny because, you know, it's been very
• 30:51
  Speaker 10: hard to like follow the news here. We're running around
• 30:53
  Speaker 10: doing stuff. You can't ever really sit down and look
• 30:55
  Speaker 10: at your phone or your computer. So I finally sat
• 30:57
  Speaker 10: down to catch up and I saw all the tweets,
• 30:59
  Speaker 10: all the clips, and I finally read an article. And
• 31:01
  Speaker 10: in the seventh paragraph of the article, after the insult stuff,
• 31:04
  Speaker 10: the policy stuff, it's like in an.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Event that was supposed to be about national security. It's like, what?
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: The one thing that he's doing that is interesting is
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: he's like, he is doing this sort of like Theo
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: Vaughn and like reaching out to these like... He's doing
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: smart interviews. He's doing some smart stuff. Like there are
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: clips going around that interview where he's like, is like,
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: like the rally Trump, It's not helping him.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: He should be doing all that. That's good. That's great.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: But that interview, he, like, comes across, he does, like,
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: as a kind of, like, First of all, he asks
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: another human being a question, something I've never seen him
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: do in years of watching him. And he seems kind
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: of approachable and like a cool grandpa. It's not great.
• 31:40
  Speaker 9: It reminded me of my FBI background check interview because
• 31:44
  Speaker 9: when they kept saying, how do you do that one?
• 31:45
  Speaker 9: He kept asking extensive questions about various drugs.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: That Theo Vaughn was into.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: He was very curious about cocaine. He really wanted to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: hear about cocaine.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen this yet.
• 31:55
  Speaker 9: But Theo Vaughn, for those who don't know, he's a comedian.
• 31:58
  Speaker 9: He's sort of in the Joe Rogan universe.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: He's probably got a huge.
• 32:00
  Speaker 9: huge, young male audience. And this is where the Trump
• 32:04
  Speaker 9: campaign has been really smart. They're putting him in these
• 32:06
  Speaker 9: spaces to find these young men.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: And I can't remember if.
• 32:08
  Speaker 9: We were talking about this on mic or off mic anymore,
• 32:10
  Speaker 9: but it was a huge gender split among Gen Z
• 32:13
  Speaker 9: in particular, the electorate generally, but Gen Z, I think
• 32:16
  Speaker 9: it's emerging even more in the Trump campaign is going
• 32:19
  Speaker 9: after those young men and very effectively.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: In fact, you're going to hear about that in just
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: a bit because Lovett and I asked Gretchen Whitmer about that.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: Oh, nice. What'd she say? I'll listen later.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: I'll check it out. You know what time?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Go to bed.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Wake up.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: You don't hear the pod.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: You just listen to it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Go, go, go.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So Mark Caputo at the Bulwark published a piece today.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, I hate my opponent. And it starts, Donald
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Trump has no plans to heed the advice of his
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: aides and limit himself to policy contrasts when he debates
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. He wants to make it personal. Quote, this
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: is just the way I am. I hate my opponent.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I hate my opponents. Hillary, Joe, Kamala, it doesn't matter.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I just hate them. To another advisor, he said, I'm
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: going to be mean.
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: Oh, whoa.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Watch out.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: He just, this is going to be the debate. You
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: don't think that's like a head fake, do you?
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: He just comes out there with a get well soon
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: card or something.
• 33:13
  Speaker 10: I mean, as we're sitting here at this convention, it
• 33:16
  Speaker 10: is wild that the only 90 minutes of self-control that
• 33:19
  Speaker 10: Donald Trump has ever had in his entire life was
• 33:21
  Speaker 10: during that debate with Joe Biden.
• 33:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 33:22
  Speaker 10: Where he actually managed to, like, he was terrible in
• 33:25
  Speaker 10: what he said, but he did manage to control himself
• 33:29
  Speaker 10: enough to allow Joe Biden to be exposed.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: But you know what? Looking back on it, I don't
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: think he exercised any discipline or control. He just wasn't
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: triggered enough or attacked in any way by Joe Biden
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: or the moderators. So it didn't make it when he gets,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: when you make him mad by, saying anything to him
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that is not like, you're awesome. Or, you know, he'll
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: do his thing.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: Well, what would some criticism by a smart and capable
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: and unafraid black woman do to set Donald Trump off
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: on a national television stage?
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: That will be interesting.
• 34:01
  Speaker 9: I mean, I think in the debate, Trump was just
• 34:03
  Speaker 9: as shocked as the rest of us were by sort
• 34:05
  Speaker 9: of how things were going down. He sort of says
• 34:06
  Speaker 9: as much at rallies because he keeps joking about how
• 34:08
  Speaker 9: the moderators would be like, Mr. President, you have 82
• 34:11
  Speaker 9: seconds left in your 90 second answer. That's sort of
• 34:13
  Speaker 9: like his bit. But yeah, Kamala Harris is going to
• 34:17
  Speaker 9: make him flip his shit.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: But it's been a month now. He still does not.
• 34:20
  Speaker 10: Well, his campaign has a message and they are pouring
• 34:24
  Speaker 10: money behind it. He is unwilling to or unable to
• 34:27
  Speaker 10: adopt the message. And the Comrade Kamala thing is idiotic.
• 34:31
  Speaker 10: It's like, what year is this that the big.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Threat is communism?
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And that's his campaign, not just him, too.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: I think that is them throwing a bone to the
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: guy here. They're probably like, you know what?
• 34:42
  Speaker 10: Truth Social is his safe space. We're going to let
• 34:44
  Speaker 10: him do what he wants to do there, and then.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: We're going to run the answer.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Right, it's not explicitly racial or misogynistic, so it's about communism.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: We'll let him have that one.
• 34:52
  Speaker 11: Imagine the other things left on the cutting room floor
• 34:54
  Speaker 11: that ended up at Comrade Kamala.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: We'll probably hear that during the debate. Meanwhile, in less
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: funny news, it was widely reported today that RFK Jr.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: will give a speech on Friday morning announcing that he's
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: dropping out of the race and endorsing Donald Trump. Dan,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: what do you make of the impact on the race?
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's pretty hard to say.
• 35:10
  Speaker 11: So right now, if you look at the New York
• 35:12
  Speaker 11: Times polling average, in a two-way race, Kamala Harris has
• 35:17
  Speaker 11: a two-point lead.
• 35:18
  Speaker 10: If you include RFK Jr. in the poll, she also
• 35:21
  Speaker 10: has a two-point lead. And so what is happening here
• 35:25
  Speaker 10: is that they are mostly splitting the vote. But it's
• 35:30
  Speaker 10: not going to be the same in every state. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 10: so the downside here from a Kamala Harris perspective is,
• 35:37
  Speaker 10: Some of these voters could go to Trump, right? But
• 35:41
  Speaker 10: from what we know of the voters, they are disproportionately
• 35:44
  Speaker 10: black and Latino. And therefore, our voters that we should
• 35:48
  Speaker 10: have a shot at, many of them have voted for
• 35:50
  Speaker 10: Democrats before, might have voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
• 35:53
  Speaker 10: And so we're just going to have to see how
• 35:54
  Speaker 10: it plays out. What I don't think, Matt, I think
• 35:56
  Speaker 10: him dropping out matters. I do not believe that his
• 36:00
  Speaker 10: endorsement of Trump is going to move his voters to Trump.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: I think I agree.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: The question is, what is the share of voters for
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: RFK Jr. that are going to him because they, like him,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: value him, care what he has to say, versus are
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: just looking for an alternative?
• 36:16
  Speaker 9: I mean, you and I were debating this in the
• 36:19
  Speaker 9: car on the way over because we do the pod
• 36:21
  Speaker 9: off air.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: It's unfortunate for our wives. We don't have personal things
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to talk about.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: How is your family? I understand you all have children.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: The most, like, simplest... terms, right? Like people like RFK Jr.
• 36:38
  Speaker 9: Because he's anti-vax. I think that's where a lot of
• 36:40
  Speaker 9: his energy comes from. So I can imagine that most
• 36:43
  Speaker 9: of his votes would probably go to Trump then because
• 36:45
  Speaker 9: Trump is the most anti-vax adjacent. The counterpoint to that
• 36:48
  Speaker 9: is the lowest of the low information voters maybe don't
• 36:52
  Speaker 9: like Kamala or Trump and they see a Kennedy and
• 36:55
  Speaker 9: they think, oh, that's an easy alternative for me. I
• 36:57
  Speaker 9: think that was sort of your perspective. So it might
• 36:59
  Speaker 9: benefit him.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: That and I.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Was trying to think of the vote, like I'm thinking
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: about Joe Rogan, right? Who has... Seems like he doesn't
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: like Donald Trump.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: He has said that he is not voting for Donald Trump.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: And he quasi-endorsed RFK Jr. and then sort of walked
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: back and said, I just like him, whatever. So RFK Jr.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: dropping out is not making Joe Rogan go to Donald Trump.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: But what happens? Maybe he doesn't like Kamala Harris. Maybe
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: he doesn't vote at all. I don't know. I'm trying
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to figure out the voter who was like, you know what?
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: They've seen Donald Trump for the last nine years. They've decided, eh,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: maybe I'll do RFK Jr. RFK Jr. drops up. They're like,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: you know what? If you've already decided that you might
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: leave Trump for RFK Jr., do you go back to
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump or do you stay home?
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: Where do we think Cheryl Hines is in all this?
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: So there was a report that Cheryl Hines is very
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: much against her husband endorsing Donald Trump.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: I saw that and I just.
• 37:54
  Speaker 9: I feel like we've got to get Larry David on
• 37:58
  Speaker 9: the case here.
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: It's just sort of a strange thing to think that
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Cheryl Hines is in this moment of incredible power over
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: the democracy.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I don't like it.
• 38:09
  Speaker 10: The thing I think is important to just think about
• 38:11
  Speaker 10: here is it is going to be different in every
• 38:12
  Speaker 10: state because RFK Jr. is just a placeholder for people
• 38:17
  Speaker 10: who don't want Biden or Trump or now Harris or Trump.
• 38:21
  Speaker 10: And that looks different in Michigan than it does in Georgia.
• 38:23
  Speaker 10: It looks different in Pennsylvania than it does in Georgia.
• 38:26
  Speaker 10: And each place they're going to sort of profile differently
• 38:28
  Speaker 10: and i mean we talked to liz smith who was
• 38:30
  Speaker 10: working on this for the dnc on the podcast many
• 38:32
  Speaker 10: months ago and that was one of the points is
• 38:34
  Speaker 10: that the rfk voter varies by battleground state the other
• 38:38
  Speaker 10: thing just from an alarm a more alarming perspective is
• 38:42
  Speaker 10: if rfk jr is not on the ballot and i
• 38:44
  Speaker 10: assume that if he drops out that the timing on
• 38:47
  Speaker 10: friday is based on ballot printing deadlines that he will
• 38:50
  Speaker 10: not be on the ballot i don't like where this
• 38:52
  Speaker 10: is going but is that you will end up with
• 38:54
  Speaker 10: the only non-Harris or Trump alternatives would be Jill Stein.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Cornel West.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: It may be a... Chase Oliver.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Chase Oliver. Not Gary Oliver, as we learned after the
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: last podcast. Chase Oliver.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Libertarian candidate.
• 39:08
  Speaker 10: Libertarian, but not a super conservative libertarian candidate. Gary Johnson hurt,
• 39:14
  Speaker 10: by some studies, hurt Hillary more than Trump in 2016.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: So there's a number of candidates that could pull from Harris,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: or more likely to pull from Harris than Trump, is
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the issue.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: But it's like how many of the... If a RFK Jr.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: voter goes to.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: If there's a third party voter who is third party
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: but would lean right, they might go to Trump. But
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: if it's a third party voter, they'll have an alternative,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: which is Jill Stein. There's nobody, RFK Jr. dropping out
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean Kamala Harris voters will go to Jill Stein,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: but it might mean more of the RFK Jr. 's
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: go to Trump than go to Harris because they have
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: somewhere else to go. If a third party voter leaves
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: Cleveland at noon, Did.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: You bring out the whiteboard and some strings?
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Actually, don't front run the next episode of Polar Coaster.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Sorry. We'll continue this in the subscribers only pod.
• 39:59
  Speaker 9: What I want to know is if the August 28th
• 40:02
  Speaker 9: RFK Jr. campaign sunset cruise that includes Alicia Silverstone and
• 40:07
  Speaker 9: Meta World Beast will happen either way.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: Wait, Alicia Silverstone is... I just said something so nice
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: about her on Terminally Online today. Oh, really? Because she
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: accidentally ate a poison berry she found on the street.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: And I thought that's unfortunate. Why is she eating fruit
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: on the street?
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: Why is she endorsing RFK Jr.? There's some judgment issues here.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: But nonetheless, I thought she deserved a bit of a
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: cultural reanalysis based on how she was so mistreated in
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: the 90s. But now I'm second-guessing myself.
• 40:32
  Speaker 10: Elijah went home hours ago. Someone has to call him,
• 40:34
  Speaker 10: wake him up, and get him to cut that out.
• 40:36
  Speaker 10: Stop the presses, Elijah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to end this here. Okay, when we
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: come back, more of today's DNC coverage brought to you
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: by Policy Genius. Starting with our conversation with Harris Campaign
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Communications Director, Michael Tyler.
• 40:59
  Speaker 10: Joining us now is the communications director for the Kamala
• 41:02
  Speaker 10: Harris campaign, Michael Tyler. Michael, how's this convention treating you?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: It's treating me well. I'm not getting quite as much
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: sleep as I would have liked to. Because you're at
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: parties all the time? I wish.
• 41:11
  Speaker 11: I'm looking forward to Thursday night when I can finally
• 41:12
  Speaker 11: go to one of the after parties. But it's been
• 41:15
  Speaker 11: a good week. I think the energy, the enthusiasm has
• 41:17
  Speaker 11: been on full display. We're feeling very good about the
• 41:20
  Speaker 11: story that we're telling and the story that we're contrasting
• 41:22
  Speaker 11: against our opponents in Donald Trump and J.D.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Vance.
• 41:25
  Speaker 11: When you guys were planning this convention, obviously over the
• 41:27
  Speaker 11: last month here, how were you thinking about the balance
• 41:30
  Speaker 11: between telling the vice president's story and deepening people's understanding
• 41:35
  Speaker 11: of Trump's agenda or the negative message? Yeah, I think
• 41:38
  Speaker 11: for us, we understood that you kind of have to
• 41:41
  Speaker 11: do both, to be completely honest about it. I think
• 41:43
  Speaker 11: we're clear-eyed about the fact that there's more work that
• 41:46
  Speaker 11: we need to do and have to over-index on fully
• 41:49
  Speaker 11: introducing the vice president and Governor Walz to a wider
• 41:52
  Speaker 11: swath of the American electorate. People were obviously entering this
• 41:56
  Speaker 11: election cycle with President Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
• 41:59
  Speaker 11: All of that changed over the course of the last month.
• 42:01
  Speaker 11: And so I think you've seen us approach this convention differently.
• 42:05
  Speaker 11: with that new dynamic in mind, understanding that you have
• 42:07
  Speaker 11: more work to do to introduce the vice president, introduce
• 42:09
  Speaker 11: the governor, but also remind folks that the stakes of
• 42:13
  Speaker 11: the election are fundamentally the same, right? The threat posed
• 42:16
  Speaker 11: by Donald Trump is the exact same. His dangerous and
• 42:18
  Speaker 11: extreme Project 2025 agenda is ever clear, ever present as
• 42:23
  Speaker 11: it was before. And so for us, that's true of
• 42:26
  Speaker 11: not only how we plan this convention, but if you
• 42:27
  Speaker 11: looked at the work that we've done with the vice
• 42:30
  Speaker 11: president and the governor crisscrossing all the battleground states, if
• 42:32
  Speaker 11: you look at our paid media investments to date, right,
• 42:34
  Speaker 11: it is both simultaneously fully introducing the new Democratic ticket
• 42:39
  Speaker 11: while also constantly reminding voters of the stakes and the
• 42:43
  Speaker 11: choice in this election.
• 42:44
  Speaker 10: Have you been surprised by how Trump has sort of
• 42:49
  Speaker 10: struggled to find a message, some sort of anti-Kamala Harris
• 42:52
  Speaker 10: or Tim Walz message?
• 42:54
  Speaker 11: Have you enjoyed his inability to do so? The thing
• 42:56
  Speaker 11: about Donald Trump is his messages remain the same, too, right?
• 42:58
  Speaker 11: The message has always been personal grievance. The message has
• 43:01
  Speaker 11: always been about Donald Trump and what's best for Donald Trump.
• 43:04
  Speaker 11: Maybe there's more of a magnifying glass on that right
• 43:06
  Speaker 11: now as we sort of hit prime time of the
• 43:09
  Speaker 11: general election mode. But this fundamentally is a contrast between
• 43:13
  Speaker 11: Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, who are fighting for
• 43:15
  Speaker 11: the American people, and Donald Trump, who... I guess when
• 43:18
  Speaker 11: he does decide to go to a swing state, which
• 43:20
  Speaker 11: is a little more often than it has been as
• 43:22
  Speaker 11: of late, but it's usually just Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster. It's
• 43:25
  Speaker 11: all about himself. It's all about his own personal grievance.
• 43:27
  Speaker 11: It's all about lobbying personal insults. It's all about chaos.
• 43:30
  Speaker 11: It's all about fear. It's all about division. It's all
• 43:33
  Speaker 11: about personal invective.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: It's nothing.
• 43:35
  Speaker 11: About solutions for the American people, right? And so for us,
• 43:38
  Speaker 11: we're gonna allow him to do that. When he wants
• 43:40
  Speaker 11: to pop out, right, he can pop out. But the
• 43:42
  Speaker 11: message that you see from Donald Trump is nothing that
• 43:45
  Speaker 11: the American people actually wanna buy. And so we're excited
• 43:48
  Speaker 11: to continue to press the case and show that contrast,
• 43:51
  Speaker 11: not only in high profile moments like this, but for
• 43:53
  Speaker 11: the next 75 days.
• 43:54
  Speaker 10: Last night you guys pulled off something that was pretty tricky.
• 43:57
  Speaker 10: which was to fill up an entire rally arena 90
• 44:01
  Speaker 10: miles away from Chicago and then have the convention go
• 44:04
  Speaker 10: live on live television to the vice president.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: How did you guys pull that off? Was there any
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: good behind-the-scenes stuff there?
• 44:12
  Speaker 11: Well, listen, I think what we wanted to do as
• 44:14
  Speaker 11: we approached Chicago was not just think about this as
• 44:17
  Speaker 11: solely one television production. You want to use this as
• 44:21
  Speaker 11: an opportunity to fully engage, number one, the voters that
• 44:24
  Speaker 11: are going to decide the pathway to 270 electoral votes.
• 44:27
  Speaker 11: but also to engage our grassroots base, right? The people
• 44:31
  Speaker 11: who are going to go do the door knocking, go
• 44:32
  Speaker 11: do the phone banking, talk to their folks on their
• 44:35
  Speaker 11: social networks. And so we've approached this with those two
• 44:38
  Speaker 11: imperatives in mind. It's why the vice president and the governor,
• 44:41
  Speaker 11: before they got to Chicago, went on a bus tour
• 44:43
  Speaker 11: through Western Pennsylvania, making sure that we were talking about
• 44:47
  Speaker 11: their values and their vision going into Chicago and a
• 44:49
  Speaker 11: crucial part of a swing state in Pennsylvania. And it's
• 44:53
  Speaker 11: why we decided on day two of the convention, not
• 44:56
  Speaker 11: just to focus on the programming that we've got here
• 44:58
  Speaker 11: in Chicago, but to make sure that we actually took
• 45:01
  Speaker 11: our candidates to a swing state, knowing that it was
• 45:03
  Speaker 11: only 90 miles up the road, right? We have the
• 45:05
  Speaker 11: opportunity to go to Milwaukee, an important city and one
• 45:07
  Speaker 11: of the most crucial swing states and directly engage with
• 45:11
  Speaker 11: the electorate there. And what we're excited about is like, yeah,
• 45:13
  Speaker 11: I believe the final tally was actually 18,000 Not that
• 45:16
  Speaker 11: Donald Trump would be counting the difference between what he
• 45:18
  Speaker 11: had in Pfizer.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And what we had.
• 45:19
  Speaker 10: I heard something about Donald Trump in crowd signs in
• 45:22
  Speaker 10: the last 24 hours here.
• 45:23
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I heard 44 referenced that a little bit last night.
• 45:25
  Speaker 11: But listen, I think what we're excited about is not
• 45:27
  Speaker 11: just the crowds, right, who show up to these events,
• 45:30
  Speaker 11: but whether it's 18,000 in Pfizer for them. or 20,000
• 45:34
  Speaker 11: in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, 10,000 down in Atlanta,
• 45:37
  Speaker 11: or even places like Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It's not just
• 45:40
  Speaker 11: the attendance rate, right? It's the volunteer conversion rate. These
• 45:42
  Speaker 11: are people who are coming to our events and then
• 45:44
  Speaker 11: signing up to volunteer. You had 10,000 people in Atlanta, 1,500
• 45:47
  Speaker 11: of them signed up to volunteer for this campaign, right?
• 45:49
  Speaker 11: And so those are people who are now going and
• 45:52
  Speaker 11: spreading the gospel in their own neighborhoods, in their own
• 45:54
  Speaker 11: personal networks, making sure that the people in their lives
• 45:57
  Speaker 11: are understand why this election is so important and understand
• 46:00
  Speaker 11: why Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the ones who
• 46:02
  Speaker 11: are going to have their back. So we're incredibly excited
• 46:05
  Speaker 11: to have moments like this where we can not just
• 46:07
  Speaker 11: speak to a wider swath of the electorate, but where
• 46:10
  Speaker 11: we can truly engage the people who are going to
• 46:12
  Speaker 11: do the critical work over the course of the last
• 46:16
  Speaker 11: few weeks of this election.
• 46:17
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I saw that 20 million people watched the coverage
• 46:19
  Speaker 10: last night, which is... Not that he would care, but
• 46:23
  Speaker 10: a lot more than watch the second half of the
• 46:24
  Speaker 10: Republican convention as well.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: I think they had 14.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: 14, yeah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 11: We had 20 million. On TV alone, I think the
• 46:30
  Speaker 11: other thing that we're proud of as it relates to
• 46:31
  Speaker 11: this convention is the fact that not only do you
• 46:35
  Speaker 11: have the 15,000 credentialed members of the traditional press corps,
• 46:38
  Speaker 11: but we also have, for the first time, about 200
• 46:41
  Speaker 11: credentialed content creators, right? These are people who are walking
• 46:44
  Speaker 11: around the convention hall documenting the comings and goings of
• 46:47
  Speaker 11: the convention and then sharing that content with their followers, right?
• 46:50
  Speaker 11: Generating like millions more impressions. The vice president has actually
• 46:53
  Speaker 11: like sat down and interviewed with a couple of the
• 46:55
  Speaker 11: content creators who were here. And we've had, you know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 11: all the surrogates do so as well. So again, for us,
• 47:00
  Speaker 11: our North Star is making sure that we're actually meeting
• 47:03
  Speaker 11: voters where they are, right? Tapping into people's true media
• 47:06
  Speaker 11: consumption habits. So it's why you have credentialed content creators
• 47:10
  Speaker 11: at the convention. And it's why if you look at
• 47:12
  Speaker 11: our fall media reservations that we just unveiled, to begin
• 47:16
  Speaker 11: convention week. If you look at the overall budget, it's
• 47:19
  Speaker 11: $ 370 million. That's going to grow, of course. But it
• 47:22
  Speaker 11: was about $ 170 million traditional television. But we're laying down
• 47:25
  Speaker 11: $ 200 million in digital advertising, right? Because you know, in
• 47:28
  Speaker 11: an electorate that is increasingly millennial, increasingly Gen Z, you're
• 47:32
  Speaker 11: not going to reach folks with running ads on Jeopardy
• 47:35
  Speaker 11: every single night. You're going to get a lot of folks,
• 47:37
  Speaker 11: but you're not going to get every single voter who
• 47:38
  Speaker 11: you need to reach 270. So We're constantly thinking about
• 47:41
  Speaker 11: how we break through, reach the voters that are going
• 47:44
  Speaker 11: to truly decide the pathway.
• 47:45
  Speaker 10: I mean, what you guys have done with the content
• 47:48
  Speaker 10: creator thing is very cool, the way you guys are
• 47:49
  Speaker 10: allocating your advertising.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: A lot of the flood of online.
• 47:54
  Speaker 11: Content about the vice president is something that's happening totally organically, right?
• 47:59
  Speaker 11: The coconut memes, the brat stuff, the feminine, all of that.
• 48:04
  Speaker 10: And you're a communications director. I'm a quasi-retired communications director.
• 48:08
  Speaker 10: People like us, we love control. and there is no
• 48:12
  Speaker 10: control there, right? How do you sort of balance the
• 48:16
  Speaker 10: memes with the message? How do you balance the memes
• 48:19
  Speaker 10: and the message, I guess is the way to say it? Yeah,
• 48:21
  Speaker 10: I mean, honestly, you got to embrace it and accept it, right?
• 48:24
  Speaker 10: Because when the zeitgeist is speaking, they're going to do
• 48:28
  Speaker 10: a far better job of communicating than anything that we
• 48:32
  Speaker 10: could come up with, craft ourselves, right? I think you
• 48:34
  Speaker 10: just talked about it on our side of the ledger.
• 48:36
  Speaker 10: I think the other example of this, of course, is
• 48:38
  Speaker 10: Project 2025. where you saw organic conversations about this popping
• 48:42
  Speaker 10: up on the Internet as far back as last fall. Now,
• 48:45
  Speaker 10: this is a campaign. We saw that and started speaking
• 48:48
  Speaker 10: to it ourselves.
• 48:49
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 48:49
  Speaker 11: So when Donald Trump is out here paraphrasing Mein Kampf,
• 48:52
  Speaker 11: talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of this country, well,
• 48:55
  Speaker 11: then you go look at like Project 2025, the architect,
• 48:57
  Speaker 11: but also what's in the plan. And you see things
• 48:59
  Speaker 11: like mass deportation. You see things like the return of
• 49:02
  Speaker 11: family separation. You see things like the end of birthright citizenship.
• 49:05
  Speaker 11: The campaign can help connect the dots to what people
• 49:07
  Speaker 11: are already organically calling out themselves and put a stronger
• 49:12
  Speaker 11: magnifying glass on it. But I think to a degree
• 49:14
  Speaker 11: you have to simply see what people are tapping into
• 49:16
  Speaker 11: and accept it.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 49:20
  Speaker 10: 2025 thing this week, and it is shocking, the growth
• 49:24
  Speaker 10: in awareness over an eight-month period from basically no one
• 49:28
  Speaker 10: knowing what Project 2025 was to everyone. And that is
• 49:30
  Speaker 10: really a credit to the.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: It's like a.
• 49:35
  Speaker 10: validation of that when Democrats want people to know something,
• 49:38
  Speaker 10: we can actually make it happen. Because sometimes we have
• 49:40
  Speaker 10: that defeatist mentality of it. What's been going on with
• 49:43
  Speaker 10: the coconut memes and all that, that is just organic
• 49:46
  Speaker 10: enthusiasm for the Vice President. The Project 2025 thing is
• 49:50
  Speaker 10: something that a bunch of people decided to make a thing.
• 49:52
  Speaker 11: It was relentless message discipline across the ecosystem. And with
• 49:55
  Speaker 11: a huge focus on social, which is really what... Because
• 50:00
  Speaker 11: the press, to their credit, was writing about Project 2025.
• 50:02
  Speaker 11: It just wasn't breaking out of the bubble. And then
• 50:04
  Speaker 11: People are doing the TikTok explainers about it. That's what's
• 50:07
  Speaker 11: very cool. And Donald Trump himself knows it now. That's
• 50:09
  Speaker 11: why he's trying to run away from it. Like, bro,
• 50:11
  Speaker 11: is your people written for you by your folks? And
• 50:14
  Speaker 11: you keep talking about exactly what's in it every single day.
• 50:17
  Speaker 10: How's the vice president's speech prep going here? Look, I
• 50:19
  Speaker 10: think she's ready. Is it fully locked?
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Done? It's never done until it's done. That's right.
• 50:25
  Speaker 11: It'll certainly be done by about 10 p.m. Central time
• 50:28
  Speaker 11: tomorrow night.
• 50:29
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: 10 p.m. She'll be on at 10 p.m.? You're making
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: news now. Breaking programming note here. That's right. That's great.
• 50:37
  Speaker 10: As we head out of the last question for you.
• 50:40
  Speaker 10: What happens after the convention? Where are you guys going?
• 50:42
  Speaker 10: And how are you thinking about debate prep? Because I
• 50:44
  Speaker 10: was looking at the calendar. That debate's coming around the
• 50:46
  Speaker 10: corner pretty fast.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: It is. It is.
• 50:48
  Speaker 11: So listen, I mean, obviously, I think, as we said
• 50:50
  Speaker 11: at the beginning of this conversation, I think in many ways,
• 50:52
  Speaker 11: the convention sort of serves as a capstone to this
• 50:54
  Speaker 11: introductory phase of the campaign. I think for us right now, obviously,
• 50:59
  Speaker 11: you come off of the convention and the candidates themselves
• 51:02
  Speaker 11: are going to start putting in the sweat equity, as
• 51:04
  Speaker 11: they did when the vice president announced the governor is
• 51:07
  Speaker 11: her running mate, right?
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: They're going to get back on the stump. go to
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: all the battleground states.
• 51:11
  Speaker 11: And I think for us as a campaign, it's about
• 51:13
  Speaker 11: making sure that we can continue to translate the energy
• 51:16
  Speaker 11: and the enthusiasm that you see here in Chicago into
• 51:18
  Speaker 11: action across the battlegrounds, right? How are you leveraging the
• 51:21
  Speaker 11: candidate travel to further build your organizing infrastructure in the
• 51:26
  Speaker 11: battleground states, right? We've got 300 field offices opened up
• 51:28
  Speaker 11: across all the battleground states, 1,600 staff across the battlegrounds.
• 51:32
  Speaker 11: We're going to continue to scale that up, make sure
• 51:34
  Speaker 11: that we're taking advantage of the high-profile moments that we create.
• 51:37
  Speaker 11: And then, of course, looking forward to some of these
• 51:39
  Speaker 11: more high-profile moments that you spoke to, right, where you've
• 51:42
  Speaker 11: got September 10th, assuming that Donald Trump, again, keeps his word.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Shows up. Shows up.
• 51:47
  Speaker 11: We will have the first presidential debate. In October, we'll
• 51:52
  Speaker 11: have the first vice presidential debate. And then hopefully, assuming, again,
• 51:55
  Speaker 11: that Donald Trump keeps his word, we'll have another opportunity
• 51:57
  Speaker 11: for the American people to see the choice front and
• 51:59
  Speaker 11: center in prime time at a second presidential debate. So
• 52:02
  Speaker 11: we want to use all of those to make sure
• 52:04
  Speaker 11: that the split screen is front and center for the
• 52:06
  Speaker 11: American people throughout the totality of the voting period. Early
• 52:10
  Speaker 11: voting begins in late September. So we are going to
• 52:15
  Speaker 11: have a moment here coming up very soon after the
• 52:18
  Speaker 11: first debate where we're already in mobilization mode. It's going
• 52:21
  Speaker 11: to be GLTV mode here for about six weeks. And
• 52:23
  Speaker 11: so it's going to be incumbent upon us to use
• 52:26
  Speaker 11: every tool at our disposal starting then to use this energy,
• 52:30
  Speaker 11: use the enthusiasm, turn it into mobilization action at the
• 52:33
  Speaker 11: ballot box. So increasingly, we're going to start pivoting our
• 52:36
  Speaker 11: operation to that really, that acute GOTV effort.
• 52:39
  Speaker 10: Michael Tyler, thanks so much for joining us. I know
• 52:42
  Speaker 10: you have a crazy busy week for you. Take a moment,
• 52:44
  Speaker 10: enjoy it. Something special is happening here.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it. I'm going to go get some coffee now.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Go for that.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: All right, when we come back from the break, you'll
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: hear our interview with Big Gretch herself, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: But before we do that, A brand new episode of
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is out now. This week,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Stacey recorded live from the DNC floor with the youngest
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: member of Congress, Maxwell Frost, and civic engagement influencer, Haley Lickstein,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: to talk about what matters to the youngest generation of
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: voters and how their generation is working to mobilize their
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: peers this election. This episode is so good, but it's
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: also just the start of what Assembly Required has in store.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: From deepfakes and NIL deals to the rights-aggressive war on books,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Stacey is taking on all the big issues to answer,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: how can we get good done? New episodes drop Thursdays.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Listen to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams right now wherever
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. When we come back, Gretchen Whitmer.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Joining us today, the governor of the great state of
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Michigan and author of a new memoir, True Gretch, Gretchen Whitmer.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save America.
• 53:53
  Speaker 13: It's good to be here.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: This is obviously a very different convention than any of
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: us imagined it would be. I know you're a huge
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: fan of Joe Biden, as are we. How do you
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: feel about him passing the torch to Kamala Harris? And
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: how are folks in Michigan reacting to the new nominee?
• 54:08
  Speaker 8: Well, I'm grateful for so much of what Joe Biden
• 54:10
  Speaker 8: has done for this country. I am also grateful that
• 54:13
  Speaker 8: we are in a spot where We're now talking about
• 54:16
  Speaker 8: a brand new chapter in America. I am proud to
• 54:19
  Speaker 8: be here as a Harris co-chair of the campaign. I've
• 54:23
  Speaker 8: got my daughters in tow with me. I think that
• 54:25
  Speaker 8: this is historic. But most importantly, we've got an opportunity
• 54:29
  Speaker 8: to hire a president who actually has lived a normal life,
• 54:32
  Speaker 8: who cares about people, who knows how to get shit done,
• 54:36
  Speaker 8: and is a strong leader. And this is what we
• 54:38
  Speaker 8: need now more than anything. So I'm really excited.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: I'll go. I knew it was my turn.
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: So when there was a sudden rush of VP speculation,
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: you took yourself out of it pretty quickly.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Why'd you do that?
• 54:57
  Speaker 8: I've made a commitment to serve out my term as
• 54:59
  Speaker 8: governor of Michigan, and I really believe I can be
• 55:02
  Speaker 8: a great ally to a Harris administration. whomever administration. Now
• 55:06
  Speaker 8: we know it's Harris-Walls administration, which I'm thrilled about. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 8: I'm excited. You know, I love my job. I've made
• 55:12
  Speaker 8: this commitment over and over again. I know people never
• 55:14
  Speaker 8: believe anything politicians say, but I mean it when I
• 55:16
  Speaker 8: say it.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: That's good. And Tim Wall seems like a real asshole.
• 55:19
  Speaker 8: I mean, my kids said he is like the male
• 55:22
  Speaker 8: version of me. So yes, he is an asshole.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: What do you think is the most persuasive single argument
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris can make to the people of Michigan as
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: someone who has one, an incredibly close state on the
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: national level, crushing margins both times.
• 55:41
  Speaker 13: I think she's going to make a seat at the
• 55:42
  Speaker 13: table for everyone.
• 55:43
  Speaker 8: She and Tim Walz are people who've lived normal, middle-class lives.
• 55:48
  Speaker 8: They understand what Americans are going through, whether it's child
• 55:51
  Speaker 8: care or health care, access to food for kids in schools.
• 55:56
  Speaker 13: I mean, they've got receipts.
• 55:58
  Speaker 8: They've done the work, and they're going to make sure
• 56:01
  Speaker 8: that every person has a seat at the table. So
• 56:02
  Speaker 8: even if you are an independent or a Republican who
• 56:06
  Speaker 8: doesn't identify as a Trump Republican, there's a seat for
• 56:09
  Speaker 8: you at this table. You don't have to agree with
• 56:11
  Speaker 8: everything in this platform, but if you agree that women
• 56:13
  Speaker 8: should be able to make their own damn choices, come
• 56:15
  Speaker 8: on over. If you agree that we need an economy
• 56:18
  Speaker 8: that levels the financial barriers to people getting skills to
• 56:22
  Speaker 8: get into good-paying jobs, onshore and supply chains, there is
• 56:26
  Speaker 8: a place for you at this table. And that's the
• 56:28
  Speaker 8: message I think we've got to take directly to the
• 56:30
  Speaker 8: voters in Michigan and all these swing states.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: So you're somebody that's won decisively in a state that's
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: now 50-50 in this presidential election. How do you explain
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: that space between voters who proudly voted for you and
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: are right now saying they're undecided?
• 56:46
  Speaker 13: Well, I think Washington, D.C.
• 56:47
  Speaker 8: Is a lot further from people's lives than Lansing, Michigan is.
• 56:51
  Speaker 8: And as governor, I can point exactly to how the
• 56:54
  Speaker 8: things that we've done have made people's lives better. It's
• 56:56
  Speaker 8: a lot harder to do from the federal government. But
• 56:59
  Speaker 8: I think there's a compelling case to be made. The
• 57:01
  Speaker 8: Biden-Harris administration delivered on their work on advanced manufacturing. We
• 57:06
  Speaker 8: are seeing a boom in manufacturing, and a lot of
• 57:08
  Speaker 8: it's happening in the state of Michigan. We've got to
• 57:10
  Speaker 8: connect that work to what it means for people's lives.
• 57:14
  Speaker 8: And we're seeing groups like Republicans for Harris coming together.
• 57:17
  Speaker 13: That's important.
• 57:19
  Speaker 8: It's a legitimate invitation for people to come over and
• 57:21
  Speaker 8: be a part of this.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: So, past few elections... Democrats tend to win. Women voters,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Republicans tend to win. Male voters, polling now is showing
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: an even bigger gender gap than there's been in the past.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And there are signs the gap is unusually large among
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Gen Z, with younger men potentially drifting away from the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. I looked at your 2022 results. You basically
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: broke even with men, which is better than most Democratic candidates,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: man or woman. What do you think Kamala Harris and
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: other Democrats can do to get a result like that?
• 57:55
  Speaker 8: It's boring to say, but it is about the fundamentals.
• 57:58
  Speaker 8: As I talk to young voters, we had historic high
• 58:01
  Speaker 8: youth voter turnout in Michigan, where they had the best
• 58:03
  Speaker 8: in the country in 2022.
• 58:05
  Speaker 13: We were on campuses. We were engaging with young people.
• 58:08
  Speaker 8: One of the things that we're trying to do is
• 58:10
  Speaker 8: encourage more young people to produce content to talk to
• 58:12
  Speaker 8: one another. I'm a lot closer to voters' ages than
• 58:15
  Speaker 8: Donald Trump is, right? So maybe I'm a little more persuasive,
• 58:18
  Speaker 8: but A Gen Z person talking to another Gen Z
• 58:21
  Speaker 8: person is powerful in a way that my messaging on
• 58:25
  Speaker 8: their behalf isn't. So that's why I think it's really
• 58:28
  Speaker 8: important to stay focused on fundamental rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change,
• 58:34
  Speaker 8: safe storage, like common sense gun safety laws, which we've
• 58:37
  Speaker 8: gotten done in Michigan, and affordable housing. These are the
• 58:40
  Speaker 8: economic issues that young people are worried about that we
• 58:43
  Speaker 8: have delivered on in Michigan and that a Harris-Walls administration
• 58:46
  Speaker 8: I know will stay focused on too.
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: If we wake up, look, you're doing everything you can
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: to make sure we win Michigan, but it's close. If
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: we wake up and we've lost Michigan, what do you
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: think the reasons are? What are the places where you're worried?
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: There's so much enthusiasm now, which is a great change
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: of pace, but where do you think we need to
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: be concerned keeping our eye on the ball?
• 59:08
  Speaker 13: There is a lot of enthusiasm. I mean, I do
• 59:10
  Speaker 13: want to bolster that point.
• 59:11
  Speaker 8: We are seeing people calling into our campaign headquarters all
• 59:13
  Speaker 8: across the state saying, how do I volunteer? I mean,
• 59:16
  Speaker 8: it is a dramatic shift, and that's really encouraging. But
• 59:19
  Speaker 8: I think Know that our voter contact work has got
• 59:22
  Speaker 8: to improve, frankly, and it is something that we've got
• 59:25
  Speaker 8: to be on the doors. We've got to be connecting
• 59:27
  Speaker 8: with people. You know, I won Michigan by almost 11 points.
• 59:30
  Speaker 8: We didn't write off any community. We didn't say, oh,
• 59:33
  Speaker 8: that county looks red on this map, so let's not
• 59:36
  Speaker 8: spend a lot.
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: Of time there.
• 59:37
  Speaker 13: No, we went in.
• 59:38
  Speaker 8: When you lose by seven points instead of 11 points
• 59:41
  Speaker 8: over and over again in red counties, you drive up
• 59:43
  Speaker 8: your margin in blue counties. That's how you win by
• 59:44
  Speaker 8: 11 points and flip your legislature for the first time
• 59:47
  Speaker 8: in 40 years. That's the kind of work that we
• 59:49
  Speaker 8: are going to do going into this election. And I
• 59:51
  Speaker 8: think not doing that would be a reason that we
• 59:54
  Speaker 8: might fall short. And that's why I'm not going to
• 59:56
  Speaker 8: let that happen.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Michigan Senator Gary Peters said this week that he thinks
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris has differences with Joe Biden on Gaza and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that she should speak publicly about those differences. What do
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 8: You know, I think what Kamala Harris has already done
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 8: has gone a long way toward acknowledging the pain that
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 8: so many people are feeling. The only universal truth in
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 8: this moment is that our Jewish community, as well as
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 8: our Arab and Palestinian and Muslim communities, they are not
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 8: all one and the same, and it's always important to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 8: highlight that. Everyone's hurting right now. Everyone wants the violence
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 8: to stop, want the hostages returned. I think staying in
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 8: that space, acknowledging the pain that people are feeling, and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 8: recommitting to trying to bring a cessation of the violence
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 8: and return of the hostages and rebuilding the region is
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: going to be really important. And she's doing that, and
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 8: so is Tim Walz. And so big, big kudos to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 8: both of them. I want them to spend a lot
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 8: more time in Michigan with all of our communities. And
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 8: I think that they will, and I know that they're
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 8: resonating in a much more positive way.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about your book, True Gretch. What
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: really struck me is how candid and conversational it is.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: You swear, you tell stories about getting drunk, about getting tattoos.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: What made you decide to write an interesting but potentially
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: risky book as opposed to just a safe politician book?
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 13: Well, I figured, Christy, no, roll one. Why can't I?
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: And how many dogs have you?
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: No animals were harmed in the making of your book.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: And you've not murdered a dog. None were executed.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 13: No goats even.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Were executed in my book. Okay, well, that's pretty good.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 8: The question I get the most is how do I
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 8: stay so positive when everything's so damn heavy? 28 recall attempts.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 8: You weren't counting, but I sure as heck was. You know, pandemic,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 8: a plot to kidnap and kill me, climate events. I mean,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 8: it's been crazy six years. And still, I love my job.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 8: I ran for re-election.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 13: People are like, why do you want to keep doing this?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 13: And that's what it is.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 8: These are 10 things I've learned in my life that
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 8: I have used over these last six years to get through.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 8: And if I give you a laugh at my expense
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 8: or maybe there's a story of inspiration or just some
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 8: light reading, I've accomplished my goal in this heavy time.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: So there's sort of like a contradiction here, right? You
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: talk about why you've outperformed other Democrats. You talk about
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: getting practical. You talk about policy. But It's obviously more
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: than that. There's a lot of Democrats out there who
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: say like, oh, they've been trying to do the exact
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: same thing, make the exact same case. They don't do
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: as well with people. They don't persuade people. Put policy aside.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: What is it that you think Democrats fail to do
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: to communicate with people, to be authentic with people that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: you seem to be able to do?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 8: You know, I really think, so one of the things
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 8: I talk about in the book is the power of listening.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 8: It is really important, and it might sound like, you know, oh,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 8: what a lofty, wonderful thing. Like, shocker, Whitmer, that's a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 8: great lesson. Like, who doesn't know this? Most people don't
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 8: listen very well, though. In my first election, I got
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 8: into all 83 counties. I asked people, if I'm lucky
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 8: enough to get elected, what can I do that will
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 8: make your life better? And people said, fix the damn roads.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 8: I didn't come up with this. I didn't poll test it.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 8: I didn't say, oh, I want to swear. No, it
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 8: was just, this is how people talked about it. But
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 8: it was in a conversation with a woman in the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 8: Detroit Children's Hospital. And I said, you know, I asked
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 8: her the same question.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 13: She's there.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 8: Her son's in a brace. Like, what can I do
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 8: that will make your life better? She said, fix the
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 8: damn roads. And I was shocked because I thought we'd
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 8: talk about health care or child care or education.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 13: She wanted to talk about the roads. And I said,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 13: tell me more. And she explained.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: You know, she was driving from Flint to Detroit, hit
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 8: a pothole, it busted the rim on her wheel, sidelined
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 8: her for a whole day, hundreds of bucks out of
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 8: her pocket. She didn't see her kid in the hospital,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 8: paid for child care for kids that she couldn't spend
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 8: time with either.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 13: And this was like rent. It was child care. It
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 13: was time with her kids. It was like the fundamentals.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 8: And if I hadn't asked that follow-up question, if I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 8: hadn't asked in the first place, I might not know
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 8: that this is something that's important to everyone.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: So you don't just wait for your turn to talk?
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Is that not how you do this?
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: That is not how you do it.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Did you catch any of that?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: That's why you're not running for office.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 13: It's novel.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: I know. How's the speech coming for tomorrow night? You're
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: speaking at the convention.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: Good.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 13: Every night it gets a little bit shorter, though. These
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 13: people talk too long. What the hell?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Everyone is talking way too long. Way too long. They're
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: talking too slow.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: Everybody is waiting for all the applause to die down.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: People got to keep moving.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: This is on television.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Agreed, man.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 13: So time me tomorrow and let me know how I rate.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: I want words per minute. I want everybody to pick
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 12: Pick up.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Give us a preview. What do you want to communicate
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: tomorrow night?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 8: Well, tomorrow night's obviously about setting the stage for Kamala Harris,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 8: making sure that people know She and Tim Walls have
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 8: lived normal, middle-class lives. They're just like us, and that
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 8: other guy is not. So you'll hear me talk a
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 8: little bit about that.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: She gets the assignment.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go. We've been saying that. The assignment is making
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: sure that people elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. That's
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the assignment of this week.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 7: Boom.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: What should we eat when we're in Ann Arbor?
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 8: What should you eat when you're in Ann Arbor? I mean,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 8: Zingerman's is always, you know, my favorite.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 13: I love it. For the record, Tim Walls is not
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 13: an asshole. That was a joke.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: We knew that.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 8: He is one of my all-time favorite people.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: You can do clean-up all you want. We all heard
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: what you said.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: We just had Gavin Newsom on. He said the same thing.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: He's like, everyone apologizes and says, oh, this guy's nice.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Tim Walls, really nice guy. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, thank you
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: so much for coming back on to Pod Save America.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I've been talking too long for five days in a row.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 13: Thank you.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: That's our show for tonight, but we've got more from
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: the DNC for our Friends of the Pod subscribers. Lovett
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: and Dan did some behind the scenes, and there's a
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: new segment with Reed and Elijah, which I'm just going
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: to let you, you have to subscribe to hear what
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: it's called.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: I'll just tell you, you might not know this, but Reed,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: who helps produce this show, is reading every novel by
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: Charles Dickens.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: Before he dies.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: Before he dies, which is how he describes it. And
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: have you gotten to Bleak House yet? He's finished Bleak House.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Reed has two young children and works his ass off
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: on this show.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think he's making a lot of progress. Honestly,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: I think he may not live long enough to finish
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: all these fucking books.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: That's going to be your regret. If you're a subscriber,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: these segments should be showing up as a separate episode
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: in your Pod Save America feed. If you aren't a subscriber,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: head to cricket.com slash friends or sign up through the
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcast app.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: Do you guys see that Mike Lindell argued with a
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: child here?
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Clip it and send it to your uncle. We'll be
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: back in the field tomorrow with our reaction to the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: final night, thank God, of the DNC and Kamala Harris'
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: big speech.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: All right, boys, get out the sleeping bags.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: Let's go home.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at cricket.com
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• 1:06:54
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  Speaker 1: randos you want in on this conversation. Pod Save America
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reid
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Cherlin is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:07:24
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• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
• 1:07:31
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• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones,
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