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“Trump, unmasked.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Lovett talks to Chase Strangio, one of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the attorneys from the ACLU legal team that was part
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of today's 6-3 Supreme Court decision that prevents discrimination against
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: LGBTQ Americans in the workplace. He also talks to Pulitzer
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Prize winning journalist Wesley Lowry about his reporting on the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: nationwide protest that continued this weekend. Before that, we'll talk
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: about the police killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: status of the police reform debate in Congress. and how
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing his best to put himself on the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: wrong side of the protests and the pandemic that is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: still on the rise in way too many states. First, Lovett,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: how was the show this weekend?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Great, love it or leave it. Judd Apatow ridiculed the monologue.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Melina Abdullah came back to talk about the protests. Rosemary Ketchum,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: who just became the first trans person ever elected in
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the state of West Virginia, came to talk about what
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: it was like to be a first-time candidate. It was
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: a real barn burner.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's exciting. Also exciting, we have a brand new
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: podcast at Crooked Media. It's called Unholier Than Thou. Award-winning
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: journalist and editor Philip Picardy is on a quest to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: better understand his relationship with spirituality by learning how faith
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: plays a role in other people's lives. First episode, conversation
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: about miracles with Dr. Darian Sutton, an ER doctor who's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: been on the front lines of the pandemic, also Phil's fiance.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: The second episode is a conversation with the rector of St.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: John's Episcopal Church, who was there when Trump staged his
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: photo op the other week. Guys, it's an outstanding podcast.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: It's great.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I love it. You'll really, really enjoy this. It is different.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It is moving. Phil is an outstanding interviewer. It's really,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: really great. Subscribe to Unholier Than Thou on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Finally, it's not
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: too late to adopt a swing state. It is not
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: too late. We have already had two digital organizing trainings.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: with about 15,000, 16,000 people each. But we have a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: few more coming up. If you want to join, sign
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: up to adopt a state at votesaveamerica.com slash adopt. We'll
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: send you all the details you need. The next training
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: is Thursday at 5 p.m. It's about vote by mail
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and special guest, John Lovett.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Neither sleet nor hail shall keep me. It's a mail joke.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think you know.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I'm really sorry, everybody. I'm really sorry.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's get to the news on Friday night, Atlanta
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: police shot and killed 27 year old Rayshard Brooks outside
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of a Wendy's parking lot where he had fallen asleep
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: at the wheel of his car and the drive through line.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: When the officers were called, he struggled as they tried
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to arrest him, grabbed one of the officers tasers and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: was shot twice in the back. As he ran away,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Atlanta's police chief stepped down following the incident. Uh, and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: mayor Keisha Lance bottoms is calling for the officer who
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: shot Brooks to be fired. Um, Guys, your reaction to
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the terrible news and how do you think it affects
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the ongoing debate over how to fix the undeniably broken
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: institution of policing in America? Love it?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, what I took away from it, honestly,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: is even amidst this incredible national focus on police brutality,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: on excessive force, on racism in policing, that this situation
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: could take place, that the police could escalate in this way,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: that this person could be shot twice in the back
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: while running, that a person whose crime was falling asleep
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: in a drive-through could end in death, I think is
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: a reminder that these protests were needed. It is a
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: reminder that this is a systemic, deeply ingrained problem. And,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: you know, the focus on these events is the reason
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: why you saw action take place really quickly, where in
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: the past it took days, weeks, months. Sometimes it never
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: takes place for there to be accountability for officers to
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: be fired or officers to be charged. We saw in
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: this case that there's a real understanding that in this
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: moment it is unacceptable to not respond quickly, to not
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: immediately address the concerns of protesters. Now, I don't think
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: anybody believes that what's happened so far in Atlanta is
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: enough in response, including the resignation of the police chief.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: But that it could happen amidst all these protests, I think,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: is a you know, a really sad statement about the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: state of policing.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Tommy?
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, it's just, it's horrifying. I mean,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: it is a, like Levitt said, his offense was falling asleep.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: And you can watch on video as this escalates and escalates.
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: And, you know, I.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Do think this underscores why a lot of activists believe
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: that more training or internal police department changes just can't
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: possibly be enough, because we're so clearly at a moment
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: of maximum attention and concern about police brutality and police violence.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: And you would imagine, or at least I would, that
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: mayors and police chiefs and others are advising police officers
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: to be even more cautious than normal given the moment.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And yet we watched this man clearly running away from
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: the police be murdered in cold blood. And it speaks
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: to the need for drastic systemic reform immediately.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: There was no reason that that kind of force was
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: necessary to stop someone who was running away You had
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: his license plate right there. You identified who the person was.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that within the Atlanta, at least
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Department, two officers, multiple officers were fired just
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago for tasing a couple in their
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: car for no reason. So these officers knew that had
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: happened in their own police department. They had clearly seen
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the protests, seen the incidences of police brutality all across
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the country. And still the instinct was to protest. draw
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a weapon, a deadly weapon, and shoot a suspect. That
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: tells you that there is something deeply wrong with the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: institution of policing in this country that needs systemic reform.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the debate over reform that's happening in
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Congress right now. Over the weekend, Republicans ruled out two
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: significant reforms that have been pushed by activists, Democrats, and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: even a few Republicans, a national use of force standard
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and an end to qualified immunity and which is something
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that currently protects officers from lawsuits to hold them accountable
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: for using excessive force. Senator Tim Scott, who the Republicans
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: put in charge of police reform, called ending qualified immunity, quote,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a poison pill for this bill and said, quote, I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: think it's really difficult to establish a codified in law
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: standard for use of force. So without these reforms, without
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: doing something about qualified immunity, national use of force standard,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Democrats are left with, hopefully, a ban on chokeholds, a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: federal law against lynching, better training, and more transparent reporting
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: of police misconduct. So what should Democrats do? I mean,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: do they have any leverage here, Tommy?
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think they have leverage. I mean, look,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: some experts I've read suggest that you want to do
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: three big things at the federal level. One is get
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: rid of qualified immunity. One is get better data on
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: the use of force by these police departments. And then three,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: set some policy standards and better resource departments and cut
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: off funding if those standards aren't met. And I don't
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: think this bill meets the moment. And the leverage, I believe,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: are that 82% of Americans want to ban police from
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: using chokeholds. This is a recent Reuters poll. 92% want
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: body cameras. 91% want to allow independent investigations of police
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: departments that show patterns of misconduct. 75% want to allow
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: people to sue for misconduct. So The American people are
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: on the side of reform. This bill falls very far short.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, I struggle with this. Normally, I'm someone who
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: thinks that progress is incremental and sometimes you need to
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: pocket things. But I think I personally would rather wait
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: until after the election where we might have the Senate.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: We hopefully will have a new president, pray to God.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And so, I don't know, this just feels like it's
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: not even close to enough.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Well, but what do you think? I mean, are these...
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Are these reforms worth a big White House signing ceremony
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: where Republicans and Donald Trump can say they did something
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: on police reform?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It's a good question. I also think one of the
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: things I want to understand better is how much of
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: what we're seeing is where we're heading in terms of
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: a final bill and how much of this is the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: kind of negotiation and back and forth, right? You had
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Cory Booker. saying that qualified immunity is on the table.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Then you have Senator Tim Scott saying that it's off
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the table. You have Tim Scott making an argument that
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: isn't against qualified immunity. It's that he wants to make
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: sure something won't get vetoed, that something is possible. So
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: at the same time, you've even seen Republicans in the
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: House come out in favor of a number of the
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: pieces of the Democratic bill while trying to decry the
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Democrats for writing a bill without them, which is pretty rich.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: So I actually don't know. I think it really depends
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: on what actually comes out of Congress. And I don't
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: totally understand yet if the fight over qualified immunity is
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: truly over or if it is still being negotiated in
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: some way.
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that no matter what happens, Democrats
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in Congress need to make clear that they are on
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the side of systemic reform, that they're not just about
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: getting something done to get something done. I think the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: most important number That Tommy just mentioned in terms of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: that Reuters poll was the 75 percent of people who
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: support allowing victims of police misconduct to sue police departments
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: for damages that would require changing qualified immunity. That's what's
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: that about. So this reform that Republicans seem to be,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, balking at is something that's supported by 75%
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of the American people, including six of 10 Republicans. So no, look,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I'm the same way, Tommy. I usually think about like,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: we just, you know, getting something done is important. We
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: want progress. But it's very clear that Republicans have been
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: scared by the protests politically, and they are dying to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: get something done before an election year to say that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: they did something. And I don't know if I'd give
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: them that because the momentum to do something on this,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: you know, it's hard for me to see that we
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: do something now on this. And then after the election,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: we come back to this and pass extra reforms. I
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: hope so. I trust that Joe Biden will do that.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I hope that Joe Biden will do that. People should
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: put pressure on him to do that. But It does
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: seem like if they're going to just do Band-Aid solutions,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, some of these use of force policies, they've
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: been adopted in cities all across the country. There's no
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: reason to not have a national use of force standard.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: It's like the least that Congress can do from a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: federal level. And in qualified immunity is the least that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Congress can do on a federal level. A whole bunch
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of like extra reporting and training stuff is just not
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: going to do it this time around, you know?
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, the other one big number from that poll
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: I should have mentioned was that 76% of the people.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Responded, said they support moving some money that's currently going
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: to police budgets into better officer training or local programs
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: for homelessness, mental health assistance and domestic violence. And those
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: are really some of the big pieces that people are
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: talking about when they talk about defund the police. It's
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: sort of completely reimagining how we keep people safe in
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: this country. including different kind of responders for mental health crises,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: better investments in schools and other domestic priorities versus policing
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: communities or over-policing communities. So I do think we need
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: to think about this in a big, holistic way. And
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: I do worry about checking the box, saying we did something,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: and then five years from now, the same stuff is happening.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: You know, to Tommy's point also, you know, the polling
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: is shifting so rapidly.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And I think that it is, if this is considered
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: to be a moment where There's a consensus for action.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of attention. That consensus may fade or change.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: That would be the argument for doing whatever you can
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: right now. But we're in the midst of an incredible
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: flux in opinion. In that same poll, these incredibly popular
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: positions are really, it's surprising to see how much of
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: a consensus there is around some of these reforms. But
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: even the more aggressively framed defund position, which is, to
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: completely dismantle police departments and give more financial support to
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: address homelessness, mental health, and domestic violence, even that being
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: at 39%, almost 40% of the country, getting behind that
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: aggressive a position tells you that something really historic is happening,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: something really big is happening. And it argues for not
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: just getting this done quickly, but making sure that as
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: this momentum builds, you end up with a really significant
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: piece of legislation.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I will say something else on this that's different. You know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: when we were debating immigration reform and some activists were
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: talking about abolishing ICE, those reforms, reforms to immigration, largely
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: happen on a federal level. You can have sanctuary city laws,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of course, in localities, but mainly big changes have to
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: happen on a federal level. They have to have Congress
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and they have to have a president. With police reform,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: especially for some of these calls to reimagine public safety,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: change the funding in police departments, that can happen at
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a local level. So absent action in Congress right now,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: because we're waiting for more systemic reform and we need
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: an election where we have more Democrats in power, activists
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: can make a big difference on a local level. Over
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the weekend in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed announced that
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: San Francisco will try replacing police officers with trained unarmed
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: professionals to respond to calls about non-criminal matters involving mental health,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the homeless, school discipline, and neighbor disputes. Of course, we
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: talked about Minneapolis City Council voting to eventually disband that
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: police department as well. So this is an issue where
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you can see a lot of change on the local
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: level absent what's happening in Washington, D.C., which is hopeful. Yeah, agreed.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Trump, who's handling all of this with
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: his usual deft touch. On Thursday, we talked about how
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: he planned to hold a huge MAGA rally in Tulsa,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the site of one of the worst race massacres in history,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and decided to do it on Juneteenth, the holiday that
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: commemorates the end of slavery in America. As an encore,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Trump sat down on Friday with Harris Faulkner of Fox News,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: who I'm pretty sure is the only black woman he's
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: done a full interview with as president, and he said
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the following.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: I think I've.
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: Done more for the black community than any other president.
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: And let's take a pass on Abraham Lincoln, because he
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: did good, although it's always questionable.
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: You know, in other words, the end result.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Well, we are free, Mr. President.
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: But we are free.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: He did pretty well.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: You understand what I mean. So I'm going to take
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: a pass on Abe.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And on police reforms, he said this.
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: And I think the concept of chokehold sounds so innocent,
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: so perfect. And then you realize if it's a one-on-one, now,
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: if it's two-on-one, that's a little bit of a different story, depending.
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: Depending on the toughness and strength. You know, we're talking
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: about toughness and strength. We are talking, there's a physical
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: thing here also.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So after the very predictable uproar that ensued to all
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: of these statements and announcements, Trump tweeted on Friday night that, quote,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: after hearing from many of my African-American friends and supporters,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: he'd be moving the date of the rally to the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: day after Juneteenth out of, quote, respect for this holiday.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Not sure that fixes all of the other racist buffoonery
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: over the past several days. But, um, Tommy, why do
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you think he did it? Why do you think he
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: moved the rally?
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Um, so Senator Tim Scott, who is the, uh, we
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: were talking about earlier is the only African-American Republican in
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: the Senate said that president Trump was unfamiliar with the
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: significance of that date of Juneteenth, June 19th. Um, It
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: is inexcusable if that is true, but frankly, it wouldn't
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: surprise me if Trump personally was unaware of the significance,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: but his staff must have been, right? And like members
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: of his staff also undoubtedly know that Tulsa was the
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: site of horrific white on black violence and terrorism in
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: 1921 that led to at least 300 people being murdered, African-Americans,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: the destruction of thousands of black owned businesses and homes
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: and the forced internment of these families. And so I
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: think that his staff scheduled this event on purpose, right?
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: He does not need votes in Oklahoma. That's not what
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: this is about. This is giving the finger to people
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: who care about social justice and decency. And that is
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: what the modern Republican Party is about. It's about trolling
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: and intentionally hurting people they dismiss as social justice warriors.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: And so I'm glad he moved the event. He tried
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: initially to say it was a celebration of Juneteenth, which
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: is as stupid a thing as you can say. But
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I think there's a direct line between this event and
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: the date of it, and then announcing a bunch of
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: policies we'll talk about later that attack LGBT people at
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: the beginning of Pride Month. I think that's all on purpose.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So apparently this morning, Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: said that the staff did know that it was on Juneteenth,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: and they did know the significance of the holiday, but
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: they weren't prepared for the blowback. is what he said,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: which is ridiculous. Lovett, what do you think about him
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: making the decision to move it? Because like Tommy just said,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you know, he did say, well, it's a celebration of Juneteenth.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And then he walked it back, which is rare to
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: have a Trump walk back.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always strange when normal politics works on Trump,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: you know, that his staff thought they could get away
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: with the dog whistle of going to Tulsa on this
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: day when, as Tommy points out, everyone would be like,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: why are you going to Oklahoma? It is not a
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: swing state. They thought they could maybe, you know, send
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: that signal without it leading to an uproar. But that,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: of course, is not what happened. There is a long
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: tradition of this in Republican politics, with Reagan giving a
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: speech outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, around states' rights to send a
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: signal to his racist Southern supporters. So now as to
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: why he moved it, maybe like so many others, the
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Trump administration and team has been caught off guard by
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: the scale of these protests and the tenor of this moment,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: surprised by how much attention has come down on him
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: over going to Tulsa, but also even though we'll talk
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: about it, but the difficult position he's now put in
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: between wanting to go back to his comfort zone of
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: lashing out at protesters, lashing out at the Black Lives
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Matter movement, and where the country is right now, which
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: is a broad-based consensus around reform.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, as Tommy just noted, they're
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: sort of having this internal debate on a whole number
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of issues within the Trump campaign. Should you be like
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: true MAGA or should you try to expand your coalition?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Because that's usually how you win an election. On the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump's Department of Health
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and Human Services finalized a rule to remove protections that
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: would have stopped health care providers from discriminating against transgender Americans. And,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you know, then you've got Ivanka tweeting about pride and everything.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So this is this is clearly a divide that is
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: within the administration. There's NBC story from Friday about this
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: internal debate. Basically, there's a debate over just how much
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: racism will help the president win reelection. NBC has three
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: sources that heard Trump dismiss the people in the streets
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: protesting racism and police violence by saying, quote, these aren't
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: my voters. And while one of his advisers said, quote,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: he should be leading on police reform because he doesn't
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: have any room to write off sets of potential voters,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: another said, we're losing the culture war. because we're so
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: scared to be called racist and that Trump should be
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: taking on the Black Lives Matter movement by calling it, quote,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a front organization for a lot of crazy leftist ideas
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: that are unpopular. What do you think? Is Trump losing
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: because he hasn't been racist enough, Tommy? I mean.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I guess let me just step back. No one should
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: be surprised by a Republican presidential candidate using racism as
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: a strategy, right? Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, they created and
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: adopted the Southern strategy where they courted Southern white voters
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: who had been Democrats by stoking racial fears. Nixon went
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: on to use euphemisms like silent majority or law and
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: order to code his racial appeals. But even his entire
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: war on drugs was an effort to go after the
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: anti-war movement and and the black community. I mean, his
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: former top domestic policy staffer, John Ehrlichman, said that on
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: the record, that they criminalized drugs to target and vilify
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: black leaders. Ronald Reagan supported housing discrimination when he ran
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: for governor in 1966. One of his first events in
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: 1980 was a speech about states' rights in Mississippi, which
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: everyone interpreted as an attack on civil rights legislation. So
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: we could go on and on here. This is in
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: many ways a continuation of strategies we've seen from Republicans
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: for a very long time. While he did walk back
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: this event, he also, Trump quickly came out in favor
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: of keeping Confederate monuments and keeping military bases named after
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: Confederate generals, even after basically the entire military said they
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: should be talking about getting rid of them. So look,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: his base, when they talk about his base, that is
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: code for almost exclusively white people in this country. And
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: so of course, that is who he thinks about in
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: every move he makes as president. Because everything he does
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: as president is about getting reelected.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Love it. On the politics of this, it seems at
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: least so far that this strategy of only playing to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: the base is not working in any way. And, you know,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: who knows what the future may hold. But it's been
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a couple weeks now. We're past sort of like the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: snap polls that were occurring in the immediate aftermath of
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the protests. And he is still sort of losing by
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: a larger margin now. and has a worse approval rating
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: than he has in a couple years.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: You know, when he says, those aren't my voters, he's right.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: That's true. The people out on the streets are not
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: his voters. They will not vote for him. They will
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: not support him. That's absolutely right. I think the struggle here,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: and you see him kind of, whenever there is kind
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: of dissensus inside of the Trump, I don't know, what
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: would you call it? Evil, evil clockworks. Whenever inside of
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: this machine, there's things, the gears aren't- Clusterfuck. Clusterfuck, whatever
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: you want to call it. They just do everything, right?
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: So he's cautiously trying to figure out what he can
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: support in terms of reform from Congress. He's still tweeting that, oh,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: you know, this protest movement wants to abolish the police.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: How crazy, right? They're trying both things at once. But
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: what I think is interesting to me is the original
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: way Trump becomes president, which is about inflaming and exciting-
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: his core base around some of these racial issues or
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: on some of these cultural issues while appealing to enough
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: people who are not animated by that, maybe even turned
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: off by that, but yet still are willing to kind
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of reluctantly pull the lever for him based on a
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: bunch of other things, based on overlooking racism, what have you.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: that that coalition may be changing, right? That actually that
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: appeal may still work for the base, but it's alienating
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: enough people who have now had enough time with Donald
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Trump to see what it's actually like, and they don't
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: care for it. That that basic way of campaigning doesn't work,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: and he doesn't have a lot of other arrows in
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: his quiver. He doesn't have a lot of other tools
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: because he can't do empathy. He can't do unity. He
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: can't do any of the things a normal president might do.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there was this talk about him
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: giving a race speech. Does anyone actually think that that
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: race speech would have been aimed at anyone other than
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: white people, especially his white base?
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: I don't.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Of course not.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So so he's sort of limited and they're dealing with
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: this limited person.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: And I don't think they're totally sure what to do.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it seems to me that it's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: a pretty fundamental misreading of the broader electorate. You're right, Lovett,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that he looks at the protesters in the streets and says,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: these aren't my voters. And yes, those aren't his voters.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: And then you're talking about his base. There's a lot
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of other voters in the country besides his base and
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: people who are on the streets, particularly people who have
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: sort of made a big difference in the elections since
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Trump has become president, which are people who live in
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: the suburbs. And I think the suburbs have changed. Their
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: political views have changed over the last several decades, even
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: more so in the last couple of years. And when
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: you look at some of these polls, when you look
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: at some of the support for police reform, support for
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter movement, Support for the protesters in
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the streets. We're talking 60, 70, 80 percent.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: We're not talking 51, 52. You look at how Joe
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Biden is doing among suburbanites in places like Wisconsin, winning
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: suburban women by like, you know, 20, 30 points. Now,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: this might change, but like Yasha Monk from The Atlantic
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was tweeting last week that he sat in a focus
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: group of 2016 Trump voters who were undecided. And he
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: said that more than the pandemic, more than the economic crisis,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: what they most didn't like about Trump was his divisiveness
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: over the last couple of weeks, how he has inflamed
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the divisions in this country, how he has poured gasoline
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: on the fire of what's happening in this country. And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I think what the Trump people don't quite get is
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: if they want to get a majority, not a majority
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: of the popular vote, but even a majority in the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: states that add up to 270, They're going to need
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to get a lot of suburban voters who do not
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: like this style that Trump has. And it reminds me
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: of what happened sort of at the end of the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: 2018 midterms when we were all very worried about his
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: fears about MS-13 and the caravan and immigration. And in
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of very key states and key districts, it
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: turned people off of Trump.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, this is what happens when your campaign
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: team brings you a bunch of polls showing you getting
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: creamed and you throw them out of the office and
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: commission a new poll that is more to your liking, right?
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's not living in political reality. And look,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: I feel very burned like everybody else did by the
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: 2016 predictions made by myself included in this. But there
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: is a large volume of data that shows that Trump
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: is really struggling in this moment because of the divisiveness
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: that we've always known Even Trump supporters don't like they
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: don't like the tweets. They don't like the misogyny. They
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: don't like the overt racism. It bothers them. It makes
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: them embarrassed to support him. And that has been supercharged
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: this last month, basically.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And that, of course, is the difference. Like the Trump fans,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the people that are going to show up at the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Tulsa rally, they love all that shit. Um, but a
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: lot of people who may have cast a ballot for Trump, uh,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: or didn't cast a ballot at all and are thinking
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: about voting this time, it's, it's much different. And again,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: this is where we are right now, you know, five
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: months ago, who the hell knows?
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's just worth pointing out, like this may
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: well be the, the, the, the conditions of this race
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: till election day. This also may be a nadir for
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Trump and the conversation moves on and we have a
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: short memory. I mean, there were incredible low moments for
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Trump in 2016, which all of this was part of
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the conversation, but Our ability to forget how awful Trump is,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: it's pretty strong. And so we just have to remember that,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I think, that this could be a nadir and it
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: could get better for him.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: So Trump was somehow able to avoid overt racism during
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: his West Point commencement address over the weekend, but he
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: did have a few other issues. At one point, he
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: had trouble lifting his right arm to take a sip
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of water and had to use his left hand... to
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: push the glass all the way up to his mouth.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: And then after the speech was over, Trump looked like
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: he was struggling to walk down the ramp after the speech.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So videos of these moments went viral. And I wasn't
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: even going to maybe talk about them until Trump decided
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to tweet about this on Saturday night. He tweeted, quote,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the ramp that I descended after my West Point commencement
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: was very long and steep, had no handrail, And most importantly,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: going to do is fall, in quotations, for the fake
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: news to have fun with. Final 10 feet, I ran
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: down to level ground. Momentum. Momentum. Momentum is my favorite part.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: So the ramp wasn't steep, slippery, or something that he
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: ran down in any way. But what do you guys
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: make of this? I did enjoy the New York Times headline,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Trump's halting walk-down ramp raises new health questions.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It was such a surprising thing to see a story
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: like that about a Republican in the Times. Raising questions
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: is what we do about Democrats. But Tommy, I don't
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: have anything insightful to say.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: No, look, I mean, I don't know what to make
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: of those videos. I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: of diagnosing people from afar. I think that a lot
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: of people, including many on the left, disgraced themselves when
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: they asserted that Joe Biden had some sort of cognitive
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: issue based on heavily edited videos in an attempt to
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: influence the primary when it was still going. That said,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: the health and wellness of candidates is a very legitimate discussion.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: And Trump has refused to meet the basic standards that
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: we've required of past presidents when it comes to transparency
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: around his health. So first it was, everyone remembers our buddy, Dr.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Harold Bornstein, right? Who later admitted that the letter he
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: released about Trump's fitness was dictated to him by the
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: now president, Then there was this mysterious unannounced visit Trump
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: took to Walter Reed last year, which has never been explained.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: It's also relevant in terms of the coronavirus and the
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: continued peddling of hydroxychloroquine. even when Trump says he took
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: it himself. But today the FDA said the drug is
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: no longer authorized for use in treating COVID. And he's
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: out there saying like there's something wrong with Joe Biden, right?
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: So this White House will lie about literally anything. They
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: drew on weather maps. I don't know how to interpret it.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: But what we do know politically is that this shit
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: gets in his head real fast. Like the Lincoln Project
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: and some other anti-Trump groups are going hard at his insecurities.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: They're calling him weak. They're calling him frail. They're calling
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: him unhealthy. And it is leading him to lash out
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: and respond in ways that are unhelpful to his own campaign.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: You know, there was a report that Trump's campaign spent $ 400, 000
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: on TV ads in D.C. because they felt like they
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: needed to show the boss that they were responding to
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the Lincoln Project. So that is, you might as well
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: light that money on fire. There's no voters in D.C.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: if that wasn't clear to folks listening. So it's in
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: his head in a big way. I don't know what
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: to make of it.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: It was weird. Yeah, I mean, like, Call me bewildered
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: about what it all means and what was going on there.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: You're bewildered. I'm bewildered. The point is, on Saturday night,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: as this country is in the midst of a pandemic
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: that is still raging through the country, an economic recession
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the likes of which we haven't seen since the Depression,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and a moment of racial and social upheaval that we
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: haven't seen in decades, the president's tweeting about his fucking
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: trip down a ramp. and complaining about it. That's the president.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And we know that what really bothers people about him
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: is that he is ineffective, that he cannot seem to
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: solve any of the problems we're facing because he's more
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: focused on himself than he is focused on the American people.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And this fits right into that frame perfectly because he
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: just gets so upset about this bullshit. And as you mentioned, Tommy,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: they have previewed, they have said to reporters, Trump has
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: said it, Kellyanne Conway has said it, that their whole
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: a big part of their strategy in defining Joe Biden
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: is that he is, uh, there's something wrong with them
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: that he's too old that he's, you know, and if
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: they're going to do that, if they're going to make
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: inferences about Joe Biden's health and wellbeing, then of course
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: this is fair game. And of course, Democrats are justified
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: in running those videos as much as they want. If
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: he's going to do this about Biden. Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: It's a, um, really strange way to drink a glass from,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: from a glass. Like it's just a, it's just like.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I don't, I'm just trying to, it was like, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: he was very ginger. Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: He's done it before too.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: The glass was weirder than the ramp to me. It
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: looked like a shoulder problem to me. Like I have
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: screwed up shoulders and sometimes they kind of like get
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: off up here, but I don't know.
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: Again.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: But he's grabbed the glass with both hands. I mean, look,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: there's also a question, you know, Ashley Feinberg wrote that
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: piece about the fact that her theory is that he
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: just can't fucking see that he's just, he's too vain
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: to wear glasses and doesn't want to be seen in glasses.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: I like, I also just think like I see people
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: making fun of them. I'm glad people are making fun
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: of Trump whenever it happens. Generally, there are ads that
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: are getting under his skin.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: But like as Trump is a mortal threat, you know,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: he is a dangerous demagogue. He is a racist.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Horrible on all these axes that are so much more
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: important and so much more salient to me than this.
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: That's all.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: But.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Throw everything at him you got. So one last note
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: about the West Point speech. You may remember that Trump
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: basically forced the graduates to come back to campus for
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: the speech after they had been sent home months earlier
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: because of COVID, which meant that to be at the speech,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: they had to be in quarantine for two weeks just
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: so Trump could get his photo op for the speech.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: He's also decided to hold this Saturday's possibly 20,000 person
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Tulsa rally indoors in With no social distancing requirements, no
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: mask requirements, though attendees will now receive apparently a mask,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: some hand sanitizer, and they will be required to sign
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a liability waiver where you agree to not sue the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign if you get COVID. So Trump seems to
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: have forgotten about the virus, but the virus has not
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: forgotten about us. Cases are now climbing in 22 states.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: And even though some of that is due to more testing,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: A few states are now seeing a record number of hospitalizations,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: including Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, North and South Carolina. How much
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: of this is Trump's fault, Tommy? And how much is
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: people and local officials, you know, who just refuse to
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: deal with lockdowns anymore?
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: You know, look, the answer is probably unknowable. I mean,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: certainly they botched the response from the very beginning and
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: everything that has come after is associated with that botched
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: early response, the lack of testing and the lack of
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: modeling good behavior. So all of that started on day one.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: I do think that Trump has expedited the push to
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: reopen states. He refuses to wear a mask in a
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: mask factory. That's not a great way to model basic
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: personal behaviors that might actually help us do better. I mean,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: I do think there are some states that have locked
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: down that are still struggling. So I'm not sure. But
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Holding a rally indoors when the health commissioner in Tulsa
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: asked you not to is an insane escalation of that
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: irresponsible behavior that could lead to a bunch of people
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: getting killed. So I think people will be closely watching
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: the fallout from that event, if any, right? Because for
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: all the concern about protests, and it's a legitimate concern,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: I read today that we've seen at least 30 cases
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: linked to protests today. which actually seems to be pretty
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: low given the scale of these protests, but maybe more
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: better data will come out at some point.
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: Love it.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: What did you think?
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, having been at a number of
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: these protests now, the vast majority of people are wearing
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: masks and they're outside. And that makes it a wholly
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: different thing than being, and that doesn't mean that there's
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: no risk. And I think that people denying that risk
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: are not, are being kind of defensive. But it's a
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: wholly different thing than a massive indoor rally where people
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: are potentially not wearing masks. There's this debate about how
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: culpable Trump is. Would Hillary Clinton have done better? I'm
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: not particularly interested in it. How late was Trump? How
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: much faster should he have gotten to this? Well, here
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: we are now.
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: It is June.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: We were supposed to go into stay at home so
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: that the government would have time to build a proper
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: national response. Didn't happen. There's still not enough masks. We
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: still don't have enough testing. We still don't have a
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: proper plan for making sure that we can reopen while
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: socially distancing and remaining safe. And what's missing is that
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: basic leadership. from a president saying, hey, everybody, wear masks,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: especially because one of the things we've learned from experts
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: in recent weeks is just how important masks can be.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: It is one of the most important things we have
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: learned that actually may be one of the mistakes we
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: made early on was not pushing masks hard enough. And
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: that masks themselves may allow us to have some amount
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: of reopening and some amount of safety while being able
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: to go back to our lives, maybe not, certainly not fully,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: not as much as before, not in restaurants close to
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: one another. And so- If the fact that Donald Trump
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: can't just say to everybody, hey, wear a mask, which
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: would certainly save lives, save thousands of lives perhaps, save billions,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: trillions for the economy, we have no idea. The fact
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: that he won't do that when it is fucking free
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: is outrageous.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: It's outrageous.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: It's outrageous. And here's the thing.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Murderous.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I do not think you can lay at Trump's feet
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the mixed messages on masks that we had at the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: beginning of this pandemic. I think and I don't even
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: public health officials and epidemiologists didn't really know enough about
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the virus at first. And so we've learned more over time.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: But, you know, you talked about the like, what if
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton was president? OK, what if anyone else was president?
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: We now have studies, multiple studies, not just one, multiple
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: studies that say even if 50 percent of the population
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: wore masks in public, it could significantly reduce the spread
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: of the virus by up to 80 percent. It would
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: get it below 50. R1, which means the virus stops,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: eventually dies out. When you look to multiple Asian countries, Japan, Taiwan,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of countries where people wear masks
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: because they've had other pandemics like this that were respiratory
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: diseases and they wore masks. And so it's more of
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: a tradition there. And they have done so much better
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: than us in tamping down this virus. It's not just
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: about If Trump wore a mask, like I have imagined
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: for a while, if like Obama had been president during this,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: not only would he wore a mask, we would have
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: this entire public education campaign. We'd get celebrities to wear masks, artists, entertainers,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: like media people, influential people all across the country because
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: we would make it a cultural norm. And if you
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: could do that, you could open up the economy, right?
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Like I understand people saying we can't be locked down forever.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: We can't keep the economy close forever. I get that, right?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: But I don't understand people not being able, not being
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: willing to like fucking put a piece of cloth over
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: your face.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Cases are climbing on a daily basis in 22 states
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: right now. And as far as I can tell, the
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: coronavirus task force is no longer meeting. They have given
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: up on having a federal response to this pandemic. All
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: of it has been pushed upon states or just individual citizens.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: And that's with 115,000 Americans dead. So like, Yeah, it
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: is just priced into the equation that they have completely
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: given up. He is betting and hoping that he can
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: just bullshit his way through this like he's done everything
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: else in life. Fake it till you make it. And
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: then look, if things are really bad in the fall,
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: he's probably thinking, well, I'm going to lose anyway. So
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: I might as well predict that they're going to be better.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: And then if I guess right, I can tell all these,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: you know, lefty liberals that they were wrong. It's an
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: insane political strategy. There's so much more you could be
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: doing that seems pretty basic that would improve the economy.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: That would mean fewer people died. He just refuses to
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: do it. They want to move on. It is it
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: is it is unfathomable that this is where we are.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: But That's what he chose.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you said, it's not just like his
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: actions are going to lead to more infections and more deaths,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: which is the thing we should be most concerned about
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: is awful. even from a pure political standpoint for him, right?
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Like the economy would be better if everyone wore masks, right?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Because more people go back to work. Fewer people would die.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: That's better for him, like even politically. And there's also,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: there is no substitute for national leadership on this, right? Like,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we're in Los Angeles, you know, our public
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: health director, Barbara Frere and Eric Garcetti, our mayor, tell
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: us every day in press conferences to like wear masks everywhere.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: There's a requirement. They're local officials. Who pays attention to that, right? Like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: people pay attention to, like, they turn on the news,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: they see the president, they see national figures. It should
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: be a national effort in this country to get everyone
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: to wear masks. You cannot do it on a local level.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: You just can't.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I also, you know, I think one of the things
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: that I have just sort of really internalized just during
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: these protests is the real connection between the callousness with
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: which police departments, with our culture has treated whole swaths
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: of the country, black people, people in our cities, people,
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: you know, brown people, immigrants, what have you, and the
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: callousness that Trump is using to respond to this crisis.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: It is the fact that there has been a right-wing
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: propaganda outfit that has such disdain for its viewers and
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: such disdain for the people who aren't watching that can
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: dismiss whole swaths of the country, just dehumanize whole swaths
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: of the country. It is not that big of a leap.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: from that kind of disregard for lives, for safety, for
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: human beings, to disregarding the lives and safety of your
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: own people, of your own supporters, to simply give up
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: on caring about anybody. And so as we sort of,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: as we try to take on Trump, it is worth
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: looking at just how quickly the Fox News mentality metastasized
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: into not even caring about their own supporters, their own
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: people who will show up, sign away their release. These
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: are not healthy people.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: A lot of them showing up at these Trump rallies.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And these Fox personalities you're talking about, guess what they're doing?
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: They're working from home. Yeah, they're recording from home. You know,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: people who are super rich, they have access to testing.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: They're fine. They're going to stay indoors. Or they're going
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: to go outside. You know, they're going to do it. Like,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it's just, you're right. They have disregard for the people
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: that they claim to be their people. They only have
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: regard for themselves. Okay. When we come back, Love It
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: will talk to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Wesley Lowery.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, correspondent for the
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: new show 60 and 6 on Quibi, and author of
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: They Can't Kill Us All, Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Era in America's Racial Justice Movement, Wesley Lowry. Thanks for
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: joining us.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: Of course. Thanks for having me, John.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: I want to start at 30,000 feet. Over the past
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: few weeks, we've seen protest and conversation around reimagining policing,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: around racism in our society, that so many of the
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: other stories... the killings, examples of police brutality did not ignite.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: What do you think happened that allowed for this kind
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: of a moment to be unlocked where in the past
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: it didn't happen?
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: So when I think about all of this, given both
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: my own reporting on the ground and the history here,
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: and we talk about policing and police violence, particularly as
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: it relates to Black Americans, one of the key debates,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: one of the key grapples here is, is this a
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: set of isolated incidents, bad police officers doing bad things,
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: perhaps an individual officer who happens to be a racist
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: or whatnot? Or is there something like systemically and structurally
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: broken in policing? And is that brokenness a reflection of
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: a broader inequity or inequality, right? So for years, literally
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: going back to slavery, Black Americans and Black American activists
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: have said, the police are broken, they harm us, and
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: they don't protect us.
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: And they've had to fight and fight and fight and
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: fight on this.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: And the white majority of the country has largely said, first, well,
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: that's not true. And then eventually got to the point
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: where they said, well, maybe there are some bad police, right?
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: And so you see this as it progresses, right? And
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: you see this even in this five or six year
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: period that we've had recently, where at the very beginning,
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: it was all about the hyper litigation of the specific cases.
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: How far up were Michael Brown's hands? Were they kind
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: of up?
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: Were they not?
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, Tamir Rice kind of had a toy gun, right?
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: So didn't he deserve it? Well, Walter Scott had gotten
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: in a fight with that guy. And so it's okay
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: that he shot at me. Like it was these hyper
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: situationally specific pieces.
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: Of litigation, right? And what we see now, right? Because again,
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: black Americans have always argued.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: Always that it's like a structural problem that like, it's,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: it's bigger than, I'm not saying every cop is a racist.
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: I'm not, it's like, it's bigger than that.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: Right. And white Americans have always said, Hmm, I don't
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: know about that. What we're seeing now is a plurality
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: of white Americans for the first time that we've ever pulled, like,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: you know, like, I mean, this like in a real,
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: it's not like my feelings, like the numbers show that
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: for the first time ever, a majority of white Americans say,
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: perhaps there's actually something structurally wrong with policing. Now, What
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: leads to that in this moment versus others, a big
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: part of it is cell phone cameras and body cameras, right?
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: That suddenly white Americans are seeing with their own eyes
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: interactions that previously they would have had to believe black people.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: To know existed, right?
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: So black people are going like, the cops are beating
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: us up. And the white people are like, I don't
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: know about that.
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: Maybe you guys deserved it. And now they're watching on
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: their phone and going, That guy didn't deserve to get
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: beat up. That guy didn't need to be dead.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: And then they close their phone, and the next day
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: there's another video. And a month later, there's another video.
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: And then two years later, there's another video. And they're like,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: I thought we solved that stuff back in 2014. And
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: I think that has been the moment where, again, in
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: the type of democracy we have, you basically can't change
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: anything unless you get a majority.
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: Of white people to agree to it. It's just the
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: way it works, statistically.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: And on this issue, you finally have at least a
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: plurality of white people who are willing to even engage
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: the conversation that maybe there's something bigger or structurally broken
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: about policing.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. There was a poll that just came
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: out and there's been lots of polling and obviously in
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: a issue in flux like this, the wording really matters.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: But what I was really struck by is, you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: there's a huge majority, even a majority of Republicans that
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: are in favor of a version of defunding the police
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: that is framed as shifting some resources from police departments
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: to to mental health services, social services, and other ways
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: of handling disputes. But what was remarkable is that I
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: believe it was 38 or 39% supported even the kind
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: of more aggressive definition around defunding and abolition. Now, you're right.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: It does seem as though the conversation has shifted away
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: from litigating every specific incident to prove which larger argument
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: is correct. How much of that is it turning out
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: that police departments weren't telling the truth versus how much
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: of it was simply seeing things even as accurately described
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: allowed white people specifically to come to understand something deeper?
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: So I think it was a combination of both of
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: those things.
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: I do think that, look, in a lot of these cases,
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: the police were not telling the truth.
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: And that should not surprise us.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: As humans, a lot of times we don't tell the
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: truth Or we bend the truth a little bit for
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: our own means to protect ourselves, right?
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: That's human nature. The police are not especially vile or
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: villainous because they do this. Now, one might argue because
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: they're the police they shouldn't, but that's a different discussion, right?
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: That was part of it, unquestionably part of it, right?
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: But what also these videos, what these videos allowed was
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: it allowed for cases where, and this is one of
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: the things I've always been most interested in, cases where
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: we otherwise would have written it off Even based on
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: the police account, not even that the police are necessarily
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: lying or misleading, right?
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: But that even those of us in the media, right?
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: Philando Castile is an armed black man who the officer
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: says reached for his gun during a traffic stop. That's
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: not a front page story, right? We don't care about
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: that at all. Now that we watch that video, suddenly
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: we go, wait a second. I mean, just because he
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: had a gun. So suddenly all these nuances and complexities
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: of human interactions are laid bare.
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: And again.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: Black Americans always kind of understood that because it was
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: their uncle who was getting killed by the cops. And
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: so they were always interested in figuring out the nuances. Well,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: just because he was drunk and mouthing off to you
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean he needs to be dead. Or just because
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: he had his gun on him, does that mean, you know,
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: they always were aware of that while a lot of
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: other people were disinterested in any type of nuanced litigation.
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: More people now, and again, more white Americans, and I don't,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: like I said, I don't even, I don't mean that
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: in any way like derogatorily. I just mean that as
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: a group of people who have a separate set of
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: beliefs collectively that black Americans do, right? more white Americans
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: are now willing to entertain the idea that perhaps not
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: every word that the police say is gospel, that they
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: in fact are political actors who bend narratives, who don't
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: always tell the truth, who aren't always held accountable, who are.
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: Defensive, right? I think that's a.
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: Really big part of this, and I think that's really
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: important in kind of this moment now. The other thing
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: I'd say, though, kind of getting back to what you
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: were talking about in terms of the polling around defunding, right,
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: is one of the things that's always been most interesting
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: to me in this space is that the abolitionists and
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: the police say a lot of the same things, right?
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: If you talk to the cops, I spend a lot
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: of time talking to cops, right? They will tell you, look,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: we have to deal with every part of society. You
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: guys have underfunded the homelessness shelters and you've underfunded the
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: mental health clinics and the drugs, and we're the ones
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: who get the call and we have to show up, right?
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: And they use this to make this argument about how
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: overworked they are and how hard their jobs are, all.
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: Of which is true, right?
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: And the abolitionists say the exact same thing. They're like, yes,
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: I don't want the cops showing up to deal with
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: homeless people. Yes, I don't want the cops showing up
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: to deal with mental illness. We should have a whole
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: different number. This argument is basically that we've allowed our society,
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: so much of the safety net of our society, to
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: get gutted. And so now the only number we have
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: is 911, and a guy with a gun shows up.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I actually wanted to ask you about that.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: The police associations seem like they're doing two functions here
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: at part of these debates. One is about just protecting
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: their members from accountability, okay? And the other is protecting
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: resources and funding because also this comes down to just jobs,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: just jobs and making sure that their members keep their
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: jobs and keep their employment, keep their pensions, what have you.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: But in a lot of ways, what's happening is showing
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: that those two sides are in tension because If the
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: police are conceding that they're responding to things that aren't
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: in their expertise that actually escalate problems that shouldn't be escalated,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: in many ways, they're conceding that, yes, their jobs are impossible.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: And so they should not be doing these kinds of jobs.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: And yet, because we've built this system over decades that
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: shifted all the resources to police, it puts them in
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: a position of having to advocate to keep those jobs
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: in place, which prevents the money from going to these
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: services that would make it so that they were not
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: needed in those areas of contradiction there. Is there a
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: way out of that paradox? Is there a way to
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: shift resources and actually accept the argument made by both
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: sides that mental illness, drug abuse, sort of quotidian, nonviolent
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: work that the police are forced to do, to shift
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: it away from police without creating this incredibly divisive and
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: difficult local political problem of police do not want to
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: give up those resources?
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: It's really difficult.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: And I don't know that I know of a place
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: that has fully handled that or navigated that. It's playing
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: out in a lot of different places. One, the police
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: unions are extremely locally politically powerful. They have a membership
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: that shows up in votes.
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: They give money.
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: No one wants to be the politician who the cops
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: are saying hates cops. It's a poison pill no matter
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: what side of the aisle you're on. No one wants
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: to be the cop-hating politician. And many of the police unions,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: not all of them, many of the police unions very
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: willingly use such rhetoric, right?
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: Like, wait, you want to cut our budget? You want
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: dead cops. Well, like, all right.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: It makes it very difficult to now have any, like,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: nuanced conversation about what should be happening or what shouldn't.
• 52:12
  Speaker 7: Be, right?
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: And so the, and so it's really tough.
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, and it's hard, you know, I think the
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: union issue is very fascinating to me because it's an
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: issue that perplexes and challenges our very often Democrats and
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: Republicans' understanding of politics, right?
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: This is a case where.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: Republicans love the police unions because the Republicans love the police.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: And the Democrats are saying, what do you mean get
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: rid of a public sector union?
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: What are you talking about? We love labor.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: It's this position where everyone is subservient to the police union,
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: no matter their politics, except for the black people who
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: are like, could you please stop killing us?
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: This would be great if we could not do this anymore.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: But all of our political structure is, like I said,
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: is deferential to police unions because What's also true, and again,
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: I don't even mean this to.
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: Villainize the police unions at all. They are doing a
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: job and they play a role in this. I do
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: think their role looks different. Look, I'm a member of
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: a union as a writer.
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: If I go down in some plagiarism scandal tomorrow, the
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: union is not holding press conferences talking about, well, if
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: you criticize him, you hate writers unless you want them dead.
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: Well, no.
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: But I don't know of an example where a cop
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: has killed someone or been involved in one of these
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: incidents and his union didn't like hyperbolically stand by him,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: not just saying we're going to represent him and give
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: him a lawyer, but wasn't out there giving a press
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: conference saying, screw you if you criticize him, right? That
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: doesn't exist in a lot of other unions, that level
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: of support publicly. And beyond that, though, you know, we
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: are coming out of a period of time, economic downturn, recession,
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, going back decades, right, where municipal budgets were crunched.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: They were squeezed.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: And first, what the police unions did, I think wisely, right,
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: was that they weren't receiving.
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: hiring, you know, additional positions, nor raises, right?
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: And that was, by the way, the only thing that
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: the local papers were covering in terms of union negotiations.
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: Do the cops and firefighters get a raise or do
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: they not, right? End of discussion.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: Well, those union negotiations include all types of other negotiations,
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: including the policies that govern accountability. And so what police
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: unions were able to do over the last 25 years
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: was to write into the governing law all types of
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: things that the.
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: Average American would find absolutely insane, right?
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: The way we handle what happens when a cop kills someone,
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: your average person, no matter their politics, would go, this
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: doesn't make sense. Why would we handle this this way?
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: And the unions were able to get all these concessions
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: and get them nationally. And if you didn't agree to them,
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: you hated the cops, right?
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: It was there.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: And so because of that, we have a system that
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: is not constructed to hold police officers particularly accountable because
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: the unions have been able to successfully wield their power
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: and their weight to create a system that leans so
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: far over in favor of their members.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: I want to turn to the way the media has
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: been covering some of these protests. There was a killing
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: in Georgia. Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police, shot
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: twice in the back. That led to mass protests, including
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: a fire at that Wendy's. That image has been everywhere, right?
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: The image of the burning Wendy's. How are images of
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: destruction to your mind driving the way media outlets cover this?
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: And what do you think the responsible coverage that takes
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: into account that this fire takes place while putting it
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: in larger context looks like?
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: You know, I think that it's a hard question, right?
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's like a clear and obvious, this
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: is the answer. This is what works in every single
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: scenario because it's tough, right? Each of these stories is
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: a little bit different. each story informs the next one, right?
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: So a fire, a Wendy's burning in Atlanta yesterday comes
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: in the context of the fires that were in Minneapolis
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: week before versus Minneapolis where that hadn't happened yet, right?
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: And so there's some different, but what I will say
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: is there are a few things, a few things I
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: think about broadly, right? The first is that I do
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: think all of our coverage has to be rooted in
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: what it is downstream from, right? That Wendy's is burning
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: because the police killed someone. It is not a story
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: of a Wendy's that's on fire. It's a story of
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: the police killing someone and the public being so upset
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: that there's stuff on fire. And I think sometimes it's
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: our kind of newness bias. But the thing that just
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: happened five minutes ago is the story. Well, but if
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: the thing that happened five minutes ago is because of
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: a thing that happened an hour ago, perhaps the thing.
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: That happened an hour ago remains the story.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: I think also there's a lot of difficulty in kind
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: of our online up-to-the-minute media coverage as well as our
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: live cable news coverage. That can be really difficult because, again,
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: it prioritizes literally what is happening in this moment. And
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: by the nature of being there with all those cameras,
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: we keep things going on for hours longer than perhaps
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: they would have gone on. And so I do think
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: that that's something we have to think about. Again, I
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: don't know that there's a perfect answer to this, but
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: I'm always struck by, I think a lot about when
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: I got back from Ferguson. I went back home to
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: Cleveland where my parents are from, where my parents live.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: And I was sitting in the living room, and this
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: is like December 2014. I'd been in Ferguson for three months, right?
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: And my parents had read probably more coverage than basically
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: anyone else because they read everything I wrote about it, right?
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: So they were not.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: Just the average American who checked in and out. Every
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: single day they were following the story. And yet their
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: question still was, so what's that place like? Because the
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: only thing they'd ever seen was like the one gas
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: station on fire on loop for three months.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: The average person consuming the coverage would have thought this
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: entire town had burned to the ground.
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: And it was like two strip malls. I mean, and again,
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: and that's.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: Not to, I don't even mean that to diminish the
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: like real pain and loss of violence.
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: Like there was some dangerous and scary nights out there.
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: It was tough. All that's real.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: And also Ferguson is a suburb with like, a fountain
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: in its town square and white people walking their dogs.
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: Ferguson, Missouri was not burned to the ground at any point.
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: Didn't happen, right?
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: But the average viewer walks away from our coverage and
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: thinks the entire city is that burned down gas station.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: I think that's a failing of us to the collective
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: us in terms of that coverage.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially with the context of Republicans. You see
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Ted Cruz saying that the left... the left gets rid
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: of Gone with the Wind and Burns Atlanta. And it's like, well,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: first of all, I don't believe the HBO Max executives were...
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: It's like, what is this left? But it is an
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: effort to exploit these kinds of things. I want to
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: ask one final question on the role of the media,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: because you've talked about this. I do not want to
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: add words to the Tom Cotton op-ed fracas, which The
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Times has been covering daily ever since.
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: It's the biggest story in all of America.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: But you said something that I think goes to a
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: deeper question, which is on Twitter, you said, American view
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: from nowhere, objectivity obsessed, both sides journalism is a failed experiment.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: from a place of moral clarity. What does that actually
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: look like in practice to you?
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: I think a big part of it is that we
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: need to rebuild our industry.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: Of it, I've been thinking about this right now and
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: I'm actually thinking about, people keep trying to talk me
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: into writing something on this because everyone liked that tweet
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: and now a bunch of bad faith actors are telling
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: me what that tweet meant, right? But that said, one
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: of the things I think about in the most simplest sense, right,
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: is that journalism in many ways is a field that
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: skews very specifically to norms and standards to avoid any
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: creativity and any individualized decision making.
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: This is what we do and this is how we
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: do it. We never make a decision. We never have
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: a discussion. We never think about it. This is how
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: we do it.
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: And I think that, which by the way, is very
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: different than the process for most of the highest end journalism.
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: If you're doing investigative work, if you're doing big, you're
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: having all types of at the sentence level discussions of
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: what's the right way to do this?
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: What's the most considered? It's never, well, but we did
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: it this way.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: No, no, no.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: What's the best thing for the story? But the vast
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: majority of journalism doesn't go through a process like that
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: at all. And so Tom Cotton ends up getting to
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: publish a unquestionably, objectively inflammatory column that unquestionably and objectively had.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: Factual errors in it.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: And the reason and the rationale is, well, because we
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: publish columns.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: That people submit, right?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: That is not a good enough reason to do something, right?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: That nothing we do, and again, and that is not
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: to say that there is a singular reason set of
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: moral decisions you and i can both be moral actors
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: and considerate actors and come down with a different decision
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: on whether or not that should be published right but
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: what a journalism of moral clarity requires is that we
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: even have the discussion in the first place and that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: perhaps that's a discussion that includes a bunch of different
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: types of people at the table and not just a
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: bunch of rich white guys right and so it speaks
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: to like our ability you know we act as if
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: journalism is not a series of decisions but it is
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: a series of subjective decisions whose story is worth telling,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: what source is credible, who we give an op-ed to.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: I don't remember any Antifa op-eds or any actually burn
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: down the rest of the country op-eds, right?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: Those are opinions, right?
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: Like a subjective decision was made over who gets that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: platform or not. And all I'm suggesting is that we
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: need to not fall back on this is because this
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: is how we've always done it rationale, but rather be
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: willing to say, let's create a journalism that's smart enough
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: to like show that it's read a book.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: Let's create a journalism that's smart enough to like Make deliberate.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: Decisions and then stand by those decisions, not have people
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: be able to poke holes in all these.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: Well, we did this because of this. And then someone goes, well,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 5: but what about all the errors in it? Oh, all right.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: Maybe you have a point, right? We shouldn't be in
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: that position.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: At the very least, also, it's not what was clear
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: in the publishing of that op-ed not to be on
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: that one topic. But this happens all the time is.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: not just a suspension of politics, but a suspension of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: intellectual honesty for the sake of achieving balance of some kind.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: One last question, and thank you for your time this morning.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: I just want to come back to where we started,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: which is you've been covering this for years. You were
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: arrested in Ferguson, and then it was noted widely that
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: people were shocked to see reporters mistreated now. So there
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: are many things that are surprising people who haven't been
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: paying attention, myself included, right? But as someone who's been
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: on the ground covering this, what has surprised you most
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: over the last sort of three weeks?
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: That's a really good question, you know, because it is.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: It's really tough. I mean, I will say I am
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: surprised genuinely by how much has shifted and changed so quickly, right?
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: That I became kind of a pretty hard cynic and
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: skeptic of this, right?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: That like, look, I got arrested in a viral video
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: and all of journalism, right? And all of journalism told
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: me how I deserved it and it was my own fault.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: And now it's like, how dare they arrest those reporters?
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: This is insane. Things have shifted so drastically. You have
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: media companies that are putting out Black Lives Matter statements.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: I had this one mini controversy in 2014 where I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: tweeted a video of the protesters during live coverage and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: they were chanting Black Lives Matter. And I didn't use
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: a quotation mark. And so all these right-wing trolls were like,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: look at him, he's part of the pro... And I
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: was like, guys, it's clearly the caption of the video.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: And now CBS Viacom is like, we would like to
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: be clear, Black Lives Matter.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: And I'm like, what? Where'd this come from?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: And so I can't... I do, as cynical as I
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: can be, I am very struck by how much has
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: shifted and how much has changed and how quickly that
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: has happened. And again, I'm not sure that there's much
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: explanation beyond the fact that like people can see this
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: stuff with their own eyes now in a way they couldn't.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: And I think that that really has begun to weigh
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: on people.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: And what I'll also say too is the energy that
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: we see the kind of the center left that's being
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: absorbed into this moment. is stuff that's been building for
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: years during the Trump presidency, right? You have people out
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: in the streets who are out in the street for
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: the Women's March. They're out in the street for the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: kids in the cages. They're out in the street after Parkland.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: They're out in the street for climate. You know, people
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: are very fed up in general. And this is a moment,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: and this is one of many things that people are
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: very fed up about. And I think that has created
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: more of a impassioned multiracial coalition kind of among the
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: progressive left that had existed previously, but before it was
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: a bunch of kind of, semi-groups that were all theoretically
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: allies of each other, but the Women's March is all
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: white and the Black Lives Matter March is all black.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: And now there is, I think, a little bit of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: an overlap in a way that's different.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Well, Wesley Lowry, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: And everybody should check out 60 on 6. 6 on 60?
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: Did I say it?
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: 60 on 6. Something like, no one knows what it's called.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: Just open the Quibi app, which you also don't know
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: what it is, but open it.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: But I will say, I watched the first episode, and
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: it's a really great, and because it is, it's only
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: 10 minutes, it's a really quick and fast-paced look at
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the protests on the ground. I really recommend it. Wesley Lowry,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: thank you so much.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: Anytime, Joe.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Wesley Lowry. When we come back, I'm going
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: to talk to Chase Strangio from the ACLU about this
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: landmark ruling on LGBTQ rights. Joining us now, one of
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: the attorneys from the ACLU's legal team that was part
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: of today's landmark LGBTQ plus rights ruling and the ACLU's
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: deputy director for transgender justice, Chase Strangio. Welcome back to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America.
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  Speaker 7: Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 2: What a day.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, what a day.
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  Speaker 7: I am in shock in a good way.
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  Speaker 2: So this morning, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling
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  Speaker 2: that prevents discrimination against LGBTQ plus individuals in the workplace.
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  Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about the ruling
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  Speaker 2: and how big a deal it is?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: So, you know, we have been working on these issues
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  Speaker 7: for so long and working on this case for so long.
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  Speaker 7: It involved three individuals who were fired for being LGBTQ plus.
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  Speaker 7: And it was a really straightforward question before the court,
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  Speaker 7: which is just under the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination,
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  Speaker 7: is it illegal to fire someone for being LGBTQ? And
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  Speaker 7: today in a 6-3 opinion, the court unequivocally said it
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  Speaker 7: is illegal. LGBTQ people are unquestionably covered under the plain
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  Speaker 7: language of the statute. And so in all 50 states,
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  Speaker 7: it is now illegal to discriminate against someone for being LGBTQ.
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  Speaker 7: And that will also have an impact on all of
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  Speaker 7: the federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination, including in education,
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  Speaker 7: in healthcare, in housing, and in credit. So this truly
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  Speaker 7: is an incredible, incredible victory for our communities.
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  Speaker 2: Were you surprised to see a 6-3 ruling? And were
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  Speaker 2: you surprised to see the name Gorsuch as the author
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  Speaker 2: of that ruling?
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  Speaker 7: So what I will say is that the case was
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  Speaker 7: litigated for Gorsuch. He was our target. He is the textualist.
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  Speaker 7: And every decision that we made in so many ways
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  Speaker 7: was just to make plain for him that his judicial
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  Speaker 7: philosophy aligns completely with the theory of the workers themselves.
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  Speaker 7: So to rule for the employees would be you know,
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  Speaker 7: Gorsuch just applying his textual reading of the statute. And
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  Speaker 7: so that was less surprising than seeing Roberts, honestly. And
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  Speaker 7: so getting both of them, I think, just, and in
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  Speaker 7: such unequivocal terms, you know, with such clear language, to me,
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  Speaker 7: just really shuts down some of the lower court hesitation
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  Speaker 7: that could come as a result of this. And then
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  Speaker 7: it completely shuts down the Trump administration's attempt to promulgate
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  Speaker 7: anti-LGBTQ regulations and other executive action through sub-regulatory action in
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  Speaker 7: every federal agency. So this is just a complete rebuke
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  Speaker 7: of so much of what the Trump administration has done.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to ask you about that. So last week,
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  Speaker 2: they rolled out their efforts to roll back Obama-era rules
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  Speaker 2: around protecting LGBTQ access to health care. we've had anti-trans
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  Speaker 2: rules in the military being put forward. What does this
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  Speaker 2: mean for those rules?
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, so starting with the HHS rule, which is the
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  Speaker 7: healthcare rule implementing the non-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act,
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  Speaker 7: and the Obama administration had put forth incredibly robust, affirmative,
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  Speaker 7: interpretations of the federal prohibitions on sex discrimination. And the
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  Speaker 7: Trump administration rescinded those and put forth essentially a 340-page
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  Speaker 7: anti-trans screed on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m.
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  Speaker 4: Eastern.
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  Speaker 7: They knew in doing that that the entire thing hinged
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  Speaker 7: on the outcome of this case from the Supreme Court.
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  Speaker 7: So they really wanted to beat the court to it.
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  Speaker 7: And they know and they reference in the rule themselves
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  Speaker 7: that there really won't be legal authority to enforce that
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  Speaker 7: rule if the court doesn't adopt the position of the
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  Speaker 7: United States and the employers in the Title VII cases.
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  Speaker 7: So they didn't, but they did put forth the rule anyways,
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  Speaker 7: and it will essentially have no legal effect at this
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  Speaker 7: point as to the anti-LGBTQ provisions. And just to be clear,
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  Speaker 7: there's also a ton of other horrible things in that
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  Speaker 7: rule around access to abortion care and other language access,
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  Speaker 7: other disability concerns. So there's a lot of terrible things
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  Speaker 7: in the rule as to the anti-LGBTQ provisions. You know,
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  Speaker 7: it many cases in the lower courts are dealing with these,
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  Speaker 7: but there's no way that they have any legal authority
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  Speaker 7: subsequent to this decision. The military rule is more complicated
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  Speaker 7: in so far as the executive has a lot more
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  Speaker 7: authority over the military and it wasn't enforcing any particular statute.
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  Speaker 7: But I think for that, a lot of the arguments
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  Speaker 7: that the administration made in support of the rule don't
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  Speaker 7: really stand in light of this interpretation of prohibitions on
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  Speaker 7: sex discrimination. So certainly there's arguments to be made. I
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  Speaker 7: think that at the end of the day, getting rid
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  Speaker 7: of the anti-trans rule in the context of the military
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  Speaker 7: is going to come down to who wins the election
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  Speaker 7: and the presidency. I mean, there's litigation in court, but
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  Speaker 7: a new president could change that rule right away. But
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  Speaker 7: there are other things, you know, they rescinded student guidance
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  Speaker 7: for trans students under Title IX within the first few
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  Speaker 7: months of coming into office in 2017. They're about to
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  Speaker 7: publish in the Federal Register a rule that attempts to
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  Speaker 7: allow homeless shelters to turn away trans people. That is
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  Speaker 7: also premised on this same interpretation that they just lost
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  Speaker 7: before the Supreme Court. So there is seriously no wind
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  Speaker 7: in their sails and actually no legal authority to justify
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  Speaker 7: these actions any further. So it really will be a
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  Speaker 7: decision that reaches into all aspects of federal legal protections
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  Speaker 7: and will have huge consequences for people across areas of
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  Speaker 7: federal law.
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  Speaker 2: On the congressional front, there's been a long-term fight to
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  Speaker 2: pass an inclusive ENDA. How does this ruling affect that campaign?
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  Speaker 2: Is an inclusive ENDA still required or has the Supreme
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  Speaker 2: Court made it unnecessary?
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  Speaker 7: You know, it's still absolutely required because so the the
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  Speaker 7: current bill is the Equality Act. It's already passed through
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  Speaker 7: the House. And it's absolutely essential for a few reasons.
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  Speaker 7: The first is or the clearest is that the Title
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  Speaker 7: II of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against discrimination
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  Speaker 7: in public accommodations, doesn't include sex at all. So that
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  Speaker 7: means that there are no protections for LGBTQ people or
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  Speaker 7: or cisgender women in or men. There are just no
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  Speaker 7: sex-based protections. So there needs to be a sort of
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  Speaker 7: comprehensive overhaul of the civil rights laws to make them
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  Speaker 7: more expansive generally, particularly with respect to public accommodations. The
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  Speaker 7: other thing about Title II and public accommodations is that
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  Speaker 7: the definition of public accommodations under federal law currently is
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  Speaker 7: incredibly limited. So the Equality Act now would not only
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  Speaker 7: add explicit protections for sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity
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  Speaker 7: into Title II, but would also expand protections for everyone
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  Speaker 7: by expanding the definition of public accommodations and just fill
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  Speaker 7: in gaps in federal law that needs to be updated
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  Speaker 7: to ensure a comprehensive protections for everyone. Obviously this is
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  Speaker 7: a critical step because the existing law is what it
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  Speaker 7: is and we wanna make sure we're covered as it is,
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  Speaker 7: but passing the Equality Act, which requires a different Senate
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  Speaker 7: and a different president is critical too.
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  Speaker 2: I also want to talk about what's next for the courts.
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  Speaker 2: So there's language in the ruling that is pretty vague
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  Speaker 2: around religious institutions, religious organizations. Clearly, in getting to this
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  Speaker 2: 6-3 ruling, there's an internal debate about how far it
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  Speaker 2: will go. What do you expect to happen next in
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  Speaker 2: terms of religious institutions suing to prevent gay people, women,
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  Speaker 2: whoever is going to seek to try to enforce this
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  Speaker 2: in religious schools elsewhere? What's next on the legal front?
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, so there's already the existing religious exemption
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  Speaker 7: within Title VII, and so that obviously still applies. I
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  Speaker 7: think the court has already taken the Fulton case, which
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  Speaker 7: is a case about sort of the scope of generally
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  Speaker 7: applicable non-discrimination laws when it comes to, and that's in
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  Speaker 7: the context of a child welfare case. But I think
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  Speaker 7: The next area where the Supreme Court is very likely
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  Speaker 7: to try to chip away at this ruling is in
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  Speaker 7: the context of religious-based objections, and not just from religious institutions.
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  Speaker 7: I think we're likely to see, as we saw in Masterpiece,
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  Speaker 7: by businesses that are objecting on religious grounds. And so that,
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  Speaker 7: I think, is definitely going to be the next area
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  Speaker 7: of the fight and next term when we see the
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  Speaker 7: outcome of Fulton. It's very possible that we get this
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  Speaker 7: win and it's abrogated by, you know, some very broad
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  Speaker 7: interpretation of a constitutionally based exemption. I also think that
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  Speaker 7: we're going to continue to have to litigate the meeting
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  Speaker 7: and application of this decision, though it is incredibly strong
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  Speaker 7: and will be incredibly important in the context of trans
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  Speaker 7: students and in restrooms. There's cases pending in the lower courts.
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  Speaker 4: Athletics.
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  Speaker 7: We're litigating several cases in the lower courts. So as
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  Speaker 7: to just the legal future itself, there is a lot
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  Speaker 7: more to resolve. And then I just, I would be
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  Speaker 7: remiss if I didn't mention that the law, you know,
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  Speaker 7: the formal mechanisms of the law only protect people so far.
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  Speaker 7: And there are black and brown people dying every single
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  Speaker 7: day because they're LGBTQ and because they're black and because
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  Speaker 7: they're brown. And so I think two black trans women
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  Speaker 7: were murdered this week. You know, will this law stop that?
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  Speaker 7: You know, will this decision change that? Not on its
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  Speaker 7: own terms. I mean, you know, and so I think ultimately,
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  Speaker 7: you know, this, this is just a part of the
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  Speaker 7: fight and, you know, the 15,000 people who showed up
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  Speaker 7: in Brooklyn yesterday to rally for Black trans lives. I mean,
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  Speaker 7: to me, that is, that is the future of justice
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  Speaker 7: and that is the future of the work.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was going to be my next question. You know,
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  Speaker 2: Amy Stevens, one of the plaintiffs in the case, she
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  Speaker 2: passed away about a month ago. She was fired from
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  Speaker 2: her job at a funeral home. And she said, and
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  Speaker 2: before she was fired, she reached out to the people
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  Speaker 2: she worked with and she said, what I must tell
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  Speaker 2: you is very difficult for me and it has taken
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: all the courage I could muster. I have felt imprisoned
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: in a body that does not match my mind. And
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  Speaker 2: this has caused me great despair and loneliness. She extends
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: this incredibly heartfelt note to the people in her life
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: and they fire her. They fire her. We also saw
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: protests across this country, as you mentioned. We've seen these
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: deaths of black trans people this ruling is a watershed,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: as you said, but we have to change the culture.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: What role do you think moments like this play in
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: the broader fight for acceptance? How important is it that
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: we have a conservative court affirming the rights and existence
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: of trans people in this way?
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  Speaker 7: You know, I think that it is an incredibly important
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: part of the broader, both discursive and norm-setting changes that
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 7: are happening. I mean, this is is an incredibly big deal.
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  Speaker 7: And it's the result. I think what makes it a
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 7: big deal is naming the fact that it is the
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 7: result of people actually rising up and demanding to be
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 7: seen and named. On the day of the arguments, Amy
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: was there. As you mentioned, she tragically passed away before
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 7: she could see the outcome of her seven-year fight for justice.
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  Speaker 5: But she was there.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: As she's going across the plaza, you have hundreds of
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 7: trans people led by Black trans women who are organizing rallies, chanting,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 7: we love you, Amy. And that ultimately we live in
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 7: a moment where the discourse inside the courtroom is being
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 7: complemented by the discourse outside the courtroom. And so I
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 7: think it makes a difference so long as we tell
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 7: the right story. And that story begins a long time
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 7: ago with a lot of people fighting and that, you know,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 7: we do have this conservative court and there are very
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 7: likely to do a lot of terrible things in the
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 7: coming weeks and we have to hold them to account
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 7: for that. DACA's before them, abortions before them, many other,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 7: lots of damage that could be done. I think what
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 7: changes things and what sets the tone for transformation for
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 7: our communities is actually leveraging this moment and connecting it
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 7: to the leadership of the people who have fought and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 7: died for so many trans people to live and for
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 7: the entire LGBTQ community. And I think hopefully we can
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 7: gain the momentum from today from yesterday in LA and
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 7: New York and people showing up for Black Trans Lives
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 7: from the last several weeks for people, you know, fighting
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 7: back against police murders, you know, to me, that is
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 7: how we leverage both the sort of reform-based realities of
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 7: legal work with the transformative realities of organizing and resistance.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: Jay Strangio, a lot of work still to go. I
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: know you're not done, but Congratulations to you, to the ACLU.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Thank you for all your hard work. I hope you
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: can take a moment, even as this work is not done,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: even as there are still terrible obstacles to overcome, to
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: celebrate what is a landmark, landmark achievement.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 5: Thanks, John. And we will.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 7: We'll celebrate and we'll honor that joy.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Chase, thank you very much.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: Thanks so much.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Wesley Lowery and thanks to Chase Strangio. And
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: we will talk to you guys later.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, and just one final note. Hey, Ivanka, how about,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: you know, fuck you? Thanks for the tweet, you absolute monster.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: You don't think that did anything?
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: Every gay person you have ever known fucking hates you.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: They hate you.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: And you know what pride's about? Pride's about you never
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: knowing because some of them are nice to your face
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: because that's pride too. Okay?
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: That's pride too. In case you're listening, Ivanka Trump.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: There's a chance.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: There's a chance.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: There's a chance.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: There's a chance.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: Maybe that cousin who leaked the documents and is writing
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: a tell-all or whatever she is.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: Text this to her. Maybe the good Kushner. Maybe the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: good Kushner.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: Which is only slightly better than the bad Kushner, let's
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: face it. But maybe the good Kushner can help. Bye.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:19:01
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• 1:19:05
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• 1:19:07
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