Latest / Pod Save America / “Trump’s Fauci fetish.”

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“Trump’s Fauci fetish.” · 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 the pod today, Joe Manchin says he's voting against
0:26
Speaker 1: democracy reform. Donald Trump inches closer to a second run.
0:29
Speaker 1: And the most in-depth democratic analysis of the 2020 election
0:32
Speaker 1: yet offers the party some advice on message and organization
0:36
Speaker 1: heading into the midterms. Then, Lovett talks to the great
0:39
Speaker 1: Kara Swisher about Facebook's announcement that it's keeping Trump off
0:41
Speaker 1: their platform for two more years. But first, our friends
0:45
Speaker 1: at Keep It are celebrating pride with a full month
0:47
Speaker 1: of LGBT guests, including writer John Paul Bramer, musician Rostam,
0:52
Speaker 1: writer Brandon Taylor, and comedian Sam Jay. Check it out
0:55
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. All right. I don't know
1:00
Speaker 1: about you two, but I was having a great weekend
1:02
Speaker 1: until I woke up Sunday morning to a piece written
1:05
Speaker 1: by the most powerful Joe in America with the headline,
1:08
Speaker 1: Why I'm Voting Against the For the People Act. If
1:12
Speaker 1: you all haven't read it, I'll save you the trouble.
1:15
Speaker 1: The only reason the Democratic Senator Manchin gives for opposing
1:18
Speaker 1: the most sweeping democracy reform since the civil rights era
1:21
Speaker 1: is that, quote, this more than 800 page bill has
1:24
Speaker 1: garnered zero Republican support. That's right, Manchin is killing the
1:28
Speaker 1: bill because the same Republican Party that's actively making it
1:31
Speaker 1: harder to vote doesn't support legislation that would make it
1:34
Speaker 1: easier to vote. Manchin also reiterated that he will not
1:38
Speaker 1: vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster, a statement he
1:41
Speaker 1: was later asked about by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
1:44
Speaker 1: Here's a clip.
1:45
Speaker 4: If you were to keep the idea that maybe you
1:49
Speaker 4: would vote to kill the filibuster, wouldn't that give Republicans
1:53
Speaker 4: an incentive to actually negotiate because old Joe Manchin's out
1:57
Speaker 4: there and who knows what he's going to.
1:58
Speaker 1: Do by taking it off the table.
2:00
Speaker 4: Haven't you empowered Republicans to be obstructionists?
2:06
Speaker 5: I don't think so, because we have seven brave Republicans
2:08
Speaker 5: that continue to vote for what they know is right
2:10
Speaker 5: and the facts as they see them, not worrying about
2:12
Speaker 5: the political consequences. I believe there's a lot more of
2:15
Speaker 5: my Republican colleagues and friends that feel the same way.
2:18
Speaker 5: I'm just hoping they are able to rise to the
2:20
Speaker 5: occasion to defend our country and support our country.
2:23
Speaker 1: Lovett, how awesome is Joe Manchin's reasoning on both H.R.
2:27
Speaker 1: 1 and the filibuster?
2:28
Speaker 2: It's... Obviously, we need to engage the arguments that Joe
2:32
Speaker 2: Manchin is making on the merits. It is obviously, I think,
2:35
Speaker 2: valuable for it to be ripped to shreds by smart
2:40
Speaker 2: people to make a kind of high-level intellectual argument against
2:43
Speaker 2: what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are doing. But there's
2:46
Speaker 2: something that has been striking about the past couple of
2:49
Speaker 2: weeks specifically about this, which is Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin,
2:53
Speaker 2: they are asked about this constantly. They don't really engage
2:56
Speaker 2: with the arguments against their position. They make sort of
2:58
Speaker 2: specious defenses of bipartisanship in the gauziest of ways. And
3:03
Speaker 2: I think it's because we need to stop thinking that
3:05
Speaker 2: they're making an argument and realize that what they are
3:07
Speaker 2: doing is creating an identity. They identify as bipartisan. And
3:12
Speaker 2: we see this in our politics all over the place.
3:14
Speaker 2: We see it when climate change becomes identity, when Donald
3:20
Speaker 2: Trump makes masks an identity. Turning politics into identity makes
3:24
Speaker 2: everything harder. But they have made bipartisanship and identity. And
3:27
Speaker 2: so I increasingly, how I see it is we need
3:30
Speaker 2: to find a way to respect. We need to argue
3:33
Speaker 2: inside of their worldview in a way that makes them
3:36
Speaker 2: feel that they're upholding their bipartisan identity because, uh, the
3:39
Speaker 2: truth has not really broken through because they, they see
3:42
Speaker 2: themselves a certain way and it's not rational.
3:45
Speaker 1: Tommy, uh, Lovett has an opinion there that is not
3:48
Speaker 1: quite reflected on Twitter. I've seen people suggest that Biden, Schumer,
3:51
Speaker 1: and the Democrats should get tough on Manchin, strip him
3:54
Speaker 1: of his committee chairmanships, threaten him with the primary challenge.
3:57
Speaker 1: What do you think about all that?
3:58
Speaker 3: So I'm going to choose to be a little more optimistic, right?
4:02
Speaker 3: So I'm going to cut this question in half, separate
4:05
Speaker 3: out the filibuster part, because that's going to lead me
4:08
Speaker 3: to a nihilistic despair and just focus on H.R.1. His
4:12
Speaker 3: response is infuriating. because he refuses to specifically engage on
4:17
Speaker 3: what parts of HR1 he does or does not like.
4:20
Speaker 3: And that's annoying because I think it is fair to
4:23
Speaker 3: be critical of HR1. You could argue that it's too sweeping,
4:27
Speaker 3: like he seems to do, and that a version that
4:29
Speaker 3: didn't include creating new ethics rules for the Supreme Court
4:33
Speaker 3: or whatever could be stripped out, right? But when we
4:37
Speaker 3: can't hear him engage on the substance, we don't know
4:40
Speaker 3: how to come back at him to find a bill
4:42
Speaker 3: That is more narrow and that he will support. So,
4:45
Speaker 3: you know, when people say we need to get tougher
4:48
Speaker 3: on Joe Manchin, like I don't I don't totally know
4:50
Speaker 3: what that means. I mean, John, you and I have
4:52
Speaker 3: a different, I think, opinion on Joe Manchin's motivation here.
4:57
Speaker 3: I go into this assuming he's a politician. He likes
5:00
Speaker 3: being an elected official, even at times, even if if
5:04
Speaker 3: even if at times he hates being a U.S. senator,
5:06
Speaker 3: as he's been known to sort of ruminate out loud
5:08
Speaker 3: to his colleagues about quitting and running for the governor.
5:10
Speaker 3: ownership of West Virginia. So I assume he's just like
5:12
Speaker 3: trying to keep his options open and only talk about
5:16
Speaker 3: things that he thinks West Virginia voters would like. So
5:19
Speaker 3: I just don't see like pressure from the left on
5:23
Speaker 3: this front being as effective as like, one, I think
5:26
Speaker 3: basic grassroots organizing in West Virginia is good and important
5:29
Speaker 3: and people should do that. But then two, I think
5:31
Speaker 3: Schumer is going to have to work with his caucus
5:34
Speaker 3: to figure out, okay, what's a narrower version of S1
5:36
Speaker 3: that could actually pass and that does tackle like the
5:39
Speaker 3: sort of specific buckets that you talked about with Stacey
5:42
Speaker 3: Abrams last week. I mean, HR1 is a big, great, sweeping,
5:46
Speaker 3: comprehensive bill, but there's a narrower version of it that
5:48
Speaker 3: I think we could all be really happy with. It's
5:50
Speaker 3: just that Joe Manchin won't tell us if that's what
5:52
Speaker 3: he wants. And then there's the filibuster issue, which is separate.
5:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. I think whether you believe
5:58
Speaker 1: That he is sort of fetishizing bipartisanship as an identity
6:01
Speaker 1: like Lovett does or whether you think he's just in
6:04
Speaker 1: it to be reelected again or mostly in it to
6:06
Speaker 1: be reelected again like you do. I sort of think
6:07
Speaker 1: the effect of all that is the same, whatever his
6:11
Speaker 1: motivation may be. So like. We can all call him
6:14
Speaker 1: names all we want on Twitter. It might make us
6:17
Speaker 1: feel great. I don't think that will be very effective.
6:20
Speaker 1: I don't think threatening him with a primary challenge in
6:23
Speaker 1: West Virginia will scare him very much. In fact, he
6:26
Speaker 1: has said before, if you want to do that, I
6:28
Speaker 1: welcome that. It'll make me look better in West Virginia.
6:30
Speaker 1: Please bring it on. So he's certainly not scared of that.
6:33
Speaker 2: A state where Joe Biden got, what, 30 percent of
6:35
Speaker 2: the vote?
6:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for it. Primary in West Virginia. See how
6:38
Speaker 1: that works. I think that if Democrats stripped him of
6:41
Speaker 1: his committee chairmanship, the next thing that would happen is
6:43
Speaker 1: that Mitch McConnell would call up Joe Manchin and say, hey,
6:47
Speaker 1: I'll give you your chairmanship back if you switch parties
6:50
Speaker 1: and give Republicans the Senate majority. And why wouldn't Manchin
6:53
Speaker 1: take that deal? And then some people are like, oh, well,
6:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if he's not. He's basically Republican anyway.
6:58
Speaker 1: We lose Joe Manchin and Schumer's not the majority leader anymore.
7:01
Speaker 1: We don't confirm any judges ever. Joe Biden has 20
7:05
Speaker 1: judges on deck. A lot of them are progressive, diverse,
7:08
Speaker 1: great judges. Schumer just asked him to nominate two judges
7:12
Speaker 1: to the circuit court who were voting rights specialists, right?
7:15
Speaker 1: We don't get those. We don't get any economic plan.
7:17
Speaker 1: We get nothing. Joe Biden gets no more nominations. We
7:19
Speaker 1: get nothing if Joe Manchin is a Republican. So just
7:23
Speaker 1: keep that in mind.
7:24
Speaker 3: Manchin's incoherence has applied to other bills as well. Like
7:26
Speaker 3: Jonathan Shait pointed out that on infrastructure, he has alternatively
7:29
Speaker 3: demanded that the bill be huge, that it be fully
7:32
Speaker 3: paid for, that it obtain Republican support. which are all
7:35
Speaker 3: difficult in their own right, but also collectively impossible because
7:38
Speaker 3: none of those people agree on all of those things, right?
7:41
Speaker 3: So it's like he just is incoherent in his criticisms
7:44
Speaker 3: of all the policies that we are talking about or
7:47
Speaker 3: that he says he supports.
7:48
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that. It's like his arguments are
7:50
Speaker 1: just pretty dumb. And I think we should be open
7:52
Speaker 1: to the possibility that the guy just makes some dumb
7:54
Speaker 1: arguments that he believes.
7:56
Speaker 3: That's the Favreau position. The Favreau position is He believes
7:59
Speaker 3: stupid stuff sincerely. My position is sort of maximal cynicism.
8:04
Speaker 3: He's keeping all his options open by just kind of
8:07
Speaker 3: being obtuse.
8:09
Speaker 1: Honestly, I think there's I think there's like a fusion
8:11
Speaker 1: between those two, which is that like he makes pretty
8:13
Speaker 1: dumb arguments. But the one thing he thinks about is
8:16
Speaker 1: the only way I'm getting elected in West Virginia is
8:18
Speaker 1: if I look bipartisan all the time, no matter what,
8:21
Speaker 1: which leads him to dumb arguments.
8:22
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's right. I think that like all
8:24
Speaker 2: of these things feed each other, you know, like I.
8:27
Speaker 2: it is impossible to get a man to believe something.
8:30
Speaker 2: His livelihood depends on not believing. He sees a lot
8:32
Speaker 2: of interest in being seen as a bipartisan thorn in
8:35
Speaker 2: the left side. That said, you look at somebody like Sinema,
8:38
Speaker 2: it is not clear that she is doing what is
8:40
Speaker 2: in her political interest right now. The people who sent
8:46
Speaker 2: her to the Senate are extremely frustrated. She is not
8:49
Speaker 2: where her more popular Democratic colleague is, Mark Kelly. So like,
8:55
Speaker 2: I do think with cinema, there is a mix of
8:57
Speaker 2: kind of a gut political instinct around triangulation, plus some
9:00
Speaker 2: like genuine bro minds that they've taken to be true.
9:04
Speaker 2: And it's obviously deeply unsatisfying to approach it from a
9:07
Speaker 2: place of trying to persuade them inside of their own convoluted, messy,
9:12
Speaker 2: incoherent logic. But I don't know what else to do.
9:15
Speaker 2: I don't know what else we're supposed to do. And
9:16
Speaker 2: it does argue, the one thing it does argue for
9:19
Speaker 2: is sort of what they're heading towards, which is show
9:22
Speaker 2: these filibuster holdouts, a bunch of broadly popular, what should
9:26
Speaker 2: be bipartisan bills fail. And that's what they're planning to do.
9:29
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
9:31
Speaker 6: Yeah.
9:31
Speaker 1: I would say the question is like, what to do now?
9:34
Speaker 1: I would suggest, look, first of all, I think there's
9:36
Speaker 1: a bunch of shitty options. I don't think there's a
9:38
Speaker 1: silver bullet here. I think if there was, we would,
9:41
Speaker 1: someone in power would have pursued it by now. I
9:43
Speaker 1: think that the best play here is like an inside
9:46
Speaker 1: outside strategy. I would sort of keep up the outside
9:49
Speaker 1: pressure on Manchin through marches and protests and office visits like,
9:53
Speaker 1: you know, the Poor People's Campaign led by Reverend Barber
9:56
Speaker 1: is holding a march in West Virginia, the NAACP. and
10:00
Speaker 1: a bunch of civil rights leaders are meeting with Manchin
10:02
Speaker 1: this week. I think that's good. And then in terms
10:04
Speaker 1: of the inside game, love it, like you were saying,
10:07
Speaker 1: if I were Biden and Schumer, I'd basically start calling
10:10
Speaker 1: Manchin's bluff, right? First, hold a vote on the John
10:13
Speaker 1: Lewis Voting Rights Act, which Manchin supports. And then prove
10:16
Speaker 1: on the floor of the Senate, Schumer should prove that
10:18
Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican who will support it.
10:21
Speaker 1: And then once that goes down, and of course, Joe
10:22
Speaker 1: Manchin said over the weekend, oh, God help us if
10:25
Speaker 1: we can't agree on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
10:27
Speaker 3: Well, great.
10:27
Speaker 1: Let's throw it on the floor and see what happens.
10:28
Speaker 1: See if you get your 10 Republicans.
10:30
Speaker 2: Maybe God can help us.
10:32
Speaker 1: Maybe God can help us. Maybe that's a solution. And
10:34
Speaker 1: then if that fails, I think Biden should publicly invite
10:37
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin to come to the White House with the
10:39
Speaker 1: 10 Republican senators he believes are most likely to vote
10:42
Speaker 1: for a bipartisan election reform bill that would have three
10:46
Speaker 1: major elements, protect the right to vote, prevent elections from
10:50
Speaker 1: being overturned by one party, which H.R. 1 doesn't even
10:53
Speaker 1: do right now. And I was talking to Stacey and
10:55
Speaker 1: everyone's about on Thursday. And a bill and prevent partisan gerrymandering.
10:59
Speaker 4: Right.
10:59
Speaker 1: And then ask them, you guys write the bill. Bring
11:02
Speaker 1: me a bill that can get 10 Republicans and, you know,
11:05
Speaker 1: make Joe Manchin own the outcome. Make him responsible for
11:08
Speaker 1: achieving the bipartisanship that he hopes for.
11:11
Speaker 3: Sounds like we got a beer summit. Sorry, moonshine summit.
11:15
Speaker 1: Moonshine summit.
11:16
Speaker 3: Moonshine summit at the White House. Let's let's sketch this
11:18
Speaker 3: bill out. We can do this.
11:20
Speaker 1: I like the moonshine summit. He's apparently been known to
11:22
Speaker 1: give moonshine to people who come to his office, West Virginia.
11:26
Speaker 1: Maybe we just get him drunk enough.
11:28
Speaker 2: He also apparently has lovely little shindigs on the Almost Heaven,
11:32
Speaker 2: his houseboat in which he resides in DC. The name
11:35
Speaker 2: is Almost Heaven. And honestly, great name. I think I
11:37
Speaker 2: support it. Perfect name for a houseboat for a center
11:39
Speaker 2: from West Virginia. A plus on the naming of the houseboat.
11:44
Speaker 2: One piece of this, it's like, yeah, let's all let's
11:46
Speaker 2: go through that great motion. Like there's two possibilities. They
11:49
Speaker 2: don't find a compromise. Most likely they do. It doesn't
11:52
Speaker 2: do nearly enough.
11:53
Speaker 7: Why?
11:53
Speaker 2: Because there's a contradiction at the core of this, which
11:56
Speaker 2: is Republicans don't want to pass a bill that makes
11:58
Speaker 2: it harder for Republicans to win elections. The Voting Rights
12:02
Speaker 2: Act was severely limited by the John Roberts courts. what,
12:05
Speaker 2: seven or eight years ago at this point? We've been
12:07
Speaker 2: trying to pass something ever since. A bunch of Republicans
12:09
Speaker 2: have seen that it has been good for them to
12:12
Speaker 2: not have the oversight of the Justice Department in a
12:14
Speaker 2: bunch of these states on their election laws. So it's like,
12:17
Speaker 2: you're gonna get- Of course. So it's like, when Republicans
12:20
Speaker 2: are in a partisan way in states across the country,
12:22
Speaker 2: restricting the right to vote to the benefit of Republican
12:24
Speaker 2: politicians- Any compromise that doesn't fundamentally alter that dynamic is useless.
12:29
Speaker 2: The Venn diagrams, they don't go together.
12:31
Speaker 1: They don't overlap. I totally agree with that. But Joe
12:34
Speaker 1: Manchin thinks he's the hero of his own story. So
12:36
Speaker 1: publicly embarrass him by proving that the story he's imagining
12:40
Speaker 1: in his head is not going to come to pass. No,
12:43
Speaker 1: I'm with you on the plan. I still think you
12:46
Speaker 1: don't get anywhere, but I think there are a few
12:47
Speaker 1: more steps to play out here. before this is over.
12:51
Speaker 3: He's winning his own Truman Show. I mean, what's so
12:53
Speaker 3: annoying is that the ideas that we really are talking about,
12:56
Speaker 3: automatic or same-day voter registration, vote-by-mail, independent redistricting, those are
13:02
Speaker 3: actually bipartisan ideas. Those are actually things that would benefit
13:04
Speaker 3: both sides in a lot of ways and that people
13:07
Speaker 3: can support. What's happening in states is the exact opposite.
13:10
Speaker 3: It is gerrymandered legislatures passing laws that are designed to
13:15
Speaker 3: hurt the specifically by making it harder for black and
13:18
Speaker 3: brown people to vote. And Joe Manchin just won't engage
13:21
Speaker 3: with that reality. He just pretends it doesn't exist and just,
13:24
Speaker 3: you know, defaults to some bromide about bipartisanship. So.
13:29
Speaker 6: Yeah.
13:29
Speaker 1: And I think I think we're going to have to
13:30
Speaker 1: start planning for a world in which we don't have,
13:33
Speaker 1: you know, H.R. one passing or the John Lewis Voting
13:37
Speaker 1: Rights Act even. And we figure out a way to
13:39
Speaker 1: overcome a lot of these voter restrictions like we've done
13:41
Speaker 1: in the past. This isn't the first time Republicans have
13:43
Speaker 1: thrown up voter restrictions. With a lot of money in organizing,
13:47
Speaker 1: you can potentially overcome that. I do worry even more about,
13:50
Speaker 1: more than the voting restrictions, I worry about the gerrymandering
13:53
Speaker 1: with redistricting coming up and Republicans just winning the House
13:57
Speaker 1: purely by drawing new maps. And then I worry about
14:00
Speaker 1: election subversion, which H.R. 1 doesn't address and the John
14:03
Speaker 1: Lewis Voting Rights Act doesn't address.
14:05
Speaker 2: There's very little policy. There's very little policy addressing... What
14:10
Speaker 2: happens when legislatures or local governments decide to overturn elections?
14:13
Speaker 2: It's because it's a it's.
14:15
Speaker 1: We need some. Someone should do some fucking soon, you know,
14:19
Speaker 1: and like and that again, that's where that should be
14:23
Speaker 1: in theory. You know, Joe mentioned seven brave Republican senators
14:28
Speaker 1: who voted to impeach Trump and voted for the commission
14:30
Speaker 1: should want to stop elections of version two because they
14:33
Speaker 1: were against, you know, the decertification of the election. But
14:36
Speaker 1: we'll see.
14:38
Speaker 3: All right.
14:39
Speaker 1: So while Joe Manchin is making it easier for Republicans
14:41
Speaker 1: to steal the next election, we got the guy who
14:44
Speaker 1: lost the last one just waiting in the wings. Donald
14:47
Speaker 1: Trump's blog may be gone and his Facebook ban was
14:49
Speaker 1: just extended for two years. But over the last few weeks,
14:51
Speaker 1: he has cemented his status as the front runner for
14:53
Speaker 1: the 2024 Republican nomination. Here he is in a fundraising
14:57
Speaker 1: video sent out by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
15:00
Speaker 6: I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support you've shown.
15:04
Speaker 6: We're going to take back the Senate, take back the House.
15:06
Speaker 2: We're going to take back the White House.
15:08
Speaker 6: And sooner than you think, it's going to be really
15:11
Speaker 6: something special.
15:12
Speaker 1: Sooner than you think. And here he is at the
15:14
Speaker 1: North Carolina Republican Convention on Saturday night, still telling Republican
15:18
Speaker 1: voters that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
15:21
Speaker 6: That election will go down as the crime of the century.
15:23
Speaker 6: And our country is being destroyed by people who perhaps
15:27
Speaker 6: have no right to destroy it.
15:30
Speaker 2: They use COVID.
15:32
Speaker 7: And they used the.
15:33
Speaker 6: Mail-in ballots to steal an election.
15:37
Speaker 2: It was the third world.
15:40
Speaker 6: Country election like we've never seen before. I am not
15:44
Speaker 6: the one trying to undermine American democracy.
15:48
Speaker 7: I'm the one that's trying to save it. Please remember that.
15:52
Speaker 1: So sadly, sadly, we do have to begin here by
15:55
Speaker 1: debunking a dangerous conspiracy that was spreading on social media
15:58
Speaker 1: after the speech. Donald Trump did not have his pants
16:01
Speaker 1: on backwards. despite some fairly horrendous jokes from resistance Twitter
16:06
Speaker 1: accounts about a video close-up of Trump's pants that has
16:09
Speaker 1: over 8 million views and led to the trending hashtag
16:13
Speaker 1: Trump pants.
16:16
Speaker 3: Creative. Yeah, the only accomplishment from that horrible, stupid waste
16:22
Speaker 3: of time was they got crisscross trending. So there you go.
16:26
Speaker 3: That's a throwback. That's just, come on, guys.
16:29
Speaker 2: I received five points in my point system for not
16:32
Speaker 2: commenting on this nonsense.
16:34
Speaker 3: Um, good.
16:34
Speaker 1: I forgot about your point system.
16:36
Speaker 2: I got five points. I almost gave them back. Cause
16:38
Speaker 2: I saw one of the dumbest things I'd ever seen,
16:41
Speaker 2: which is someone, and I, I guess I have to
16:43
Speaker 2: give the points back because I think this counts as
16:45
Speaker 2: a tweet, which is someone saying, I spoke to a
16:48
Speaker 2: doctor who told me that Trump is probably wearing a
16:52
Speaker 2: diaper and therefore has a form of mental decline, maybe
16:56
Speaker 2: fluid in the brain. And I wanted to make a
16:58
Speaker 2: couple points about this. One, all the best doctors do
17:01
Speaker 2: diagnose mental conditions based on pants. That's actually real. That's
17:05
Speaker 2: something that happens. Two... Very dangerous people can wear diapers
17:10
Speaker 2: and be incontinent. It's not a relief. It has absolutely
17:14
Speaker 2: nothing to do with anything. You can be a very
17:16
Speaker 2: powerful figure and have no control over your bladder or bowels.
17:20
Speaker 3: I love how you award yourself points for not tweeting
17:22
Speaker 3: things and then bring your rebuttals to like random Twitter
17:26
Speaker 3: accounts to the podcast heard by many, many more people.
17:29
Speaker 3: What's the book? What's our swear jar?
17:32
Speaker 1: And also like specifically debunking each part of the tweet.
17:36
Speaker 2: Well, this is all over the place. And no, but no, there's,
17:39
Speaker 2: it's bullshit about, and then the other thing about it
17:41
Speaker 2: that pisses me off and this happens all the time
17:43
Speaker 2: is Trump's in decline. Trump's in decline. I've fallen for
17:46
Speaker 2: it in the past. Why don't we do this? If
17:49
Speaker 2: God is going to take care of our Trump problem, terrific.
17:52
Speaker 2: Let's not count on it. Let's do the part of
17:55
Speaker 2: humanity as we go and assume he's going to be
17:58
Speaker 2: perfectly healthy and cogent. Yeah, he was a little slow
18:01
Speaker 2: up there. He's been, he's had terrible nights at these
18:04
Speaker 2: awful rallies in the past. And inevitably everyone's like, that's it.
18:07
Speaker 2: It's the beginning of the end. The man is indefatigable
18:10
Speaker 2: in defense of his own ego. And we should just
18:12
Speaker 2: assume that going forward. No more decline bullshit.
18:15
Speaker 3: He is- He's so eager to get back out there
18:18
Speaker 3: that he's doing a virtual event with Diamond and Silk
18:21
Speaker 3: and Dinesh D'Souza, I think in Milwaukee or something. So yeah,
18:24
Speaker 3: he's full speed ahead.
18:27
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to mention that it was
18:29
Speaker 1: announced today too, he's going on tour with Bill O'Reilly
18:31
Speaker 1: this summer to do a series of televised events.
18:34
Speaker 3: Who's opening up for him? Also, can I just point
18:39
Speaker 3: out real quick, I was gone for a week, right?
18:41
Speaker 3: I was on the East Coast last week. I was
18:42
Speaker 3: like half checked out and not really paying attention to Twitter.
18:44
Speaker 3: And it's very funny how A week ago today, it
18:47
Speaker 3: was like a million people yelling at Maggie Haberman for
18:50
Speaker 3: propagating some lie about whether Trump is going to like
18:53
Speaker 3: resume office. And then a week later, it's like part
18:55
Speaker 3: of an NRSC video, which just speaks to the fact
18:57
Speaker 3: that there's no such thing as supporting pieces of the
19:00
Speaker 3: Trump agenda. There's no supporting Trump without embracing the entire
19:03
Speaker 3: election lie. It is completely a litmus test to be
19:06
Speaker 3: in his orbit or supported by him politically. It's like
19:09
Speaker 3: the core of who he is now.
19:11
Speaker 1: I mean, there is that brings up a point of
19:13
Speaker 1: the Maggie thing. Like there's been this debate about how
19:16
Speaker 1: much media coverage Trump should be getting these days, especially
19:20
Speaker 1: since he's, you know, about to go back to holding
19:22
Speaker 1: rallies on Saturday night. MSNBC had commentators talking about the
19:25
Speaker 1: speech while it ran in the background. CNN and even
19:28
Speaker 1: Fox decided against running the speech at all. Of course,
19:31
Speaker 1: Newsmax and OAN ran the whole speech live. So did C-SPAN. Like,
19:34
Speaker 1: what do you guys where do you guys come down
19:36
Speaker 1: on this? Like how much Trump should be talked about
19:39
Speaker 1: in this post-presidential but pre-2024 phase?
19:43
Speaker 2: It's a good question. I will say two things. One, look,
19:48
Speaker 2: we are critical of the media. very often. There's this
19:51
Speaker 2: knee-jerk reaction to a lot of reporters who cover Trump
19:56
Speaker 2: and specifically Maggie Haverman and a few other women that
19:59
Speaker 2: are like, how dare you tell us what he said?
20:01
Speaker 2: And it's like, there's a famous moment in The Simpsons
20:04
Speaker 2: where they want to rip down the observatory so they
20:06
Speaker 2: don't find out about meteors heading to Earth. That's not
20:09
Speaker 2: a good thing to emulate.
20:10
Speaker 1: That is exactly right.
20:14
Speaker 2: But what I come down on this is the fact
20:18
Speaker 2: that Trump is speaking is not news. and should not
20:21
Speaker 2: be presumed to be news. What matters is what he says.
20:23
Speaker 2: Is it different than what he said in the past?
20:25
Speaker 2: Does it go further in talking about a coup? In
20:28
Speaker 2: the same way that Michael Flynn speaking at a QAnon
20:30
Speaker 2: convention is not inherently news at this point because he
20:32
Speaker 2: has been radicalized and he will do that all the time.
20:34
Speaker 2: But when he says we should have a Myanmar-style coup
20:36
Speaker 2: in the US, that's important. We should know that a
20:38
Speaker 2: former national security advisor said that. So I start from
20:41
Speaker 2: saying his speaking itself is no longer news and shouldn't
20:44
Speaker 2: be blanketed across the airwaves. But When he does say
20:47
Speaker 2: something that is important and unusual, he is a leading
20:49
Speaker 2: figure in our politics, and it should be covered. And
20:51
Speaker 2: we should stop pretending otherwise, because it hasn't helped.
20:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:54
Speaker 3: I mean, look, he's the former president of the United States,
20:57
Speaker 3: the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, and
21:01
Speaker 3: the de facto, if not official, head of the Republican Party.
21:05
Speaker 3: So yeah, of course we should cover him. That doesn't
21:07
Speaker 3: mean that CNN should live stream his podium like they
21:11
Speaker 3: were doing in 2016, but But what is the recommendation here?
21:13
Speaker 3: That Maggie Haberman should mute the name Trump on Twitter
21:16
Speaker 3: or something like that's their job. They cover candidates. They
21:20
Speaker 3: report out things that are new or newsworthy. That's just
21:23
Speaker 3: how it is. And I think the sort of head
21:26
Speaker 3: in the sand approach to Trump is not going to work. And,
21:30
Speaker 3: you know, any more than like the cover every single
21:33
Speaker 3: utterance he made approach worked in 2015. Right. We get
21:37
Speaker 3: to cover him like a normal candidate based on all
21:39
Speaker 3: the things we learned over the past four or five years.
21:42
Speaker 1: I would also add that there is a closed media
21:45
Speaker 1: ecosystem on the right. And Donald Trump is running for
21:49
Speaker 1: the probably is running for the Republican nomination. And so
21:54
Speaker 1: he will be able to communicate with his voters. anytime
21:57
Speaker 1: he wants through the right-wing media system. If none of
22:00
Speaker 1: us ever mentioned Trump, if no mainstream news organization ever
22:04
Speaker 1: mentioned Trump for the next year, he would still have
22:07
Speaker 1: an open line of communication to the people who could
22:09
Speaker 1: make him the Republican nominee. Just remember that. We're in
22:12
Speaker 1: different silos here, people. It does not, like us talking
22:16
Speaker 1: about him does not make it any more likely or
22:18
Speaker 1: less likely that he ends up as the Republican nominee.
22:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, the don't amplify him scolds are a little frustrating.
22:24
Speaker 3: Did you guys see that Don Jr. is now on Cameo?
22:28
Speaker 1: I did. I did. I feel like it was a
22:29
Speaker 1: high price for a Don Jr. cameo there. It's like 400,
22:32
Speaker 1: 500 bucks or something.
22:34
Speaker 3: It's like 500, yeah.
22:35
Speaker 2: 500 bucks, but not what a billionaire would charge.
22:38
Speaker 6: No.
22:38
Speaker 1: No, that's true.
22:39
Speaker 2: No.
22:39
Speaker 1: So I did think, love it to your point about
22:41
Speaker 1: news or something different in Trump's speeches. Like, obviously, he
22:44
Speaker 1: repeated the big lie. That's old by now. I do
22:47
Speaker 1: think it's useful to check on his speeches to hear
22:49
Speaker 1: where he and the Republican Party are going in terms
22:51
Speaker 1: of message. like what's the latest grievance, who's the latest villain,
22:53
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Axios ran a story headlined Trump's New
22:57
Speaker 1: Hillary on Friday, where a bunch of Trump advisors said
22:59
Speaker 1: that their top target will now be Dr. Fauci, who
23:01
Speaker 1: they somehow blame for the still unproven theory that the
23:04
Speaker 1: coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Sure enough,
23:07
Speaker 1: Trump delivered on Saturday night. Here's a clip.
23:10
Speaker 6: Dr. Fauci, who I actually got along with, he's a
23:12
Speaker 6: nice guy. He's a great promoter, you know?
23:15
Speaker 2: Not a great doctor, but he's a hell of a promoter.
23:18
Speaker 6: He likes television more than any politician in this room.
23:22
Speaker 6: And they like television. But he's been wrong on almost
23:27
Speaker 6: every issue. And he was wrong on Wuhan and the
23:31
Speaker 6: lab also. Very wrong. Fauci said powerfully at the beginning,
23:35
Speaker 6: no masks. You remember that? No, masks don't work. Masks
23:38
Speaker 6: don't work. And then he went into masks. And then
23:41
Speaker 6: he became a radical masker. I would call it.
23:43
Speaker 7: If you have three, if you have four....
23:48
Speaker 6: Get a pair of goggles also, ideally. The time has
23:51
Speaker 6: come for America and the world to demand reparations and
23:56
Speaker 6: accountability from the Communist Party of China. As a first step,
24:01
Speaker 6: all countries should collectively cancel any debt they owe to
24:06
Speaker 6: China as a down payment on reparations.
24:09
Speaker 1: Tommy, why do you think they're going after Dr. Fauci now?
24:12
Speaker 1: What's the conspiracy they're trying to sell?
24:15
Speaker 3: This is interesting.
24:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean.
24:17
Speaker 3: I am a little confused by the strategy. No doubt
24:19
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people on the right who are
24:22
Speaker 3: enraged at Fauci. They blame him for COVID, the lockdowns,
24:25
Speaker 3: like their kids hating them. But like overall, he is
24:28
Speaker 3: a pretty popular figure, more popular than most politicians by
24:32
Speaker 3: a lot. So Fauci is not going to be on
24:34
Speaker 3: the ballot. Knock on wood. Hopefully COVID won't be the
24:37
Speaker 3: focus of the election. So this seems a little dumb
24:39
Speaker 3: to me. So I think it's like two parts. One,
24:42
Speaker 3: Trump's not always strategic, right? Like it's all about grievances
24:44
Speaker 3: and fighting the last battle. And this is the ongoing
24:47
Speaker 3: effort to spin the disastrous response to the coronavirus by
24:51
Speaker 3: Trump and his team. But two, they do seem to
24:54
Speaker 3: want to really kick up the lab leak theory and
24:57
Speaker 3: seem to view that as a panacea that allows them
25:01
Speaker 3: to get back into making this a fight about China
25:04
Speaker 3: with China, right? I mean, I can't imagine something that
25:07
Speaker 3: polls higher than like demanding reparations from the Chinese government
25:11
Speaker 3: over COVID-19. I do think the response for Democrats is
25:14
Speaker 3: actually pretty easy. I don't know whether or not this
25:17
Speaker 3: virus leaked from a lab. The WHO investigation was insufficient.
25:21
Speaker 3: We should do everything we can to run it to
25:24
Speaker 3: ground to get all the answers we need from the
25:26
Speaker 3: Chinese and continue that until we get to the truth.
25:32
Speaker 3: That said, the US response to COVID during Trump was
25:36
Speaker 3: inexcusable and a failure on any number of levels, no
25:39
Speaker 3: matter where the virus came from. I think you can
25:41
Speaker 3: handle this one.
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I admit I'm confused about why anyone would be
25:47
Speaker 1: against like a full investigation into whether the lab leak
25:49
Speaker 1: theory is correct or not.
25:50
Speaker 8: Right.
25:51
Speaker 1: Like I realize there's a couple of different theories here.
25:53
Speaker 1: There's the theory that it might have leaked from the lab.
25:55
Speaker 1: The Trump and the Republicans and people on the right
25:58
Speaker 1: are also spreading a conspiracy that it was bioengineered in
26:02
Speaker 1: the lab and then spread intentionally, of course. Then they're
26:05
Speaker 1: doing an extra connection where they're literally floating the idea
26:07
Speaker 1: that the NIH funded the creation of the virus themselves.
26:10
Speaker 1: because they made a grant to an organization that then
26:12
Speaker 1: made a separate smaller grant to the Wuhan Institute of
26:15
Speaker 1: Virology for monitoring bats. And so now it's like, not
26:18
Speaker 1: only did the Chinese invent a bioweapon, but Dr. Fauci
26:21
Speaker 1: funded the Chinese bioweapon that then let loose COVID on
26:25
Speaker 1: the planet, which is really something. Lovett, what do you
26:28
Speaker 1: think about the politics of villainizing Fauci and China for
26:31
Speaker 1: COVID origins?
26:32
Speaker 2: I think Fauci got a lot of good press. Trump
26:35
Speaker 2: got a lot of bad press. It really pisses Trump off, right?
26:37
Speaker 2: It pissed him off. It was the same pandemic response.
26:41
Speaker 2: I'm the failure. He's the hero. I think it just
26:43
Speaker 2: bothers him. I do think it's a part of the
26:45
Speaker 2: big lie, which is the Democrats stole the election. They
26:49
Speaker 2: shut down the economy, which was my big selling point,
26:53
Speaker 2: based on a Democrat like Fauci spreading misinformation. And China
26:59
Speaker 2: caused it. So China causes it. The Democrats make it
27:02
Speaker 2: all worse. And then they steal the election. It's all
27:05
Speaker 2: part of the story he's going to tell when he
27:07
Speaker 2: comes roaring back. that we're going to hold the Chinese
27:10
Speaker 2: accountable for what they did to our country, which is
27:12
Speaker 2: going to be a big part of his campaign and
27:15
Speaker 2: has been in the past. So I don't think it
27:17
Speaker 2: needs to be more complicated than that.
27:19
Speaker 6: Yeah.
27:19
Speaker 1: And Joe Biden and his entire administration are in bed
27:22
Speaker 1: with the Chinese and they're helping to cover this up.
27:25
Speaker 1: And the Washington Post already reported that Trump's planning to
27:27
Speaker 1: make it a chief argument. Republicans are trying to make
27:30
Speaker 1: it a centerpiece of their midterm election campaigns, pledging to
27:32
Speaker 1: hold congressional investigations if they win back the House majority.
27:35
Speaker 1: So you can already start to see Republicans win the House.
27:38
Speaker 1: They start holding investigations into the origins of COVID. They
27:41
Speaker 1: try to accuse Fauci of covering it up. But I mean,
27:44
Speaker 1: it's like a.
27:44
Speaker 2: But let's beat them to it. I don't... Hold our
27:47
Speaker 2: own investigation. Look, I want to know where.
27:48
Speaker 7: Well, that is true.
27:49
Speaker 2: I want to know where it came from. If it
27:50
Speaker 2: came from a lab in China... Well, Tommy's response is the.
27:53
Speaker 1: Right one for Democrats. Which is what Joe Biden is saying,
27:55
Speaker 1: you know?
28:23
Speaker 3: But hopefully we can get an answer that way. That's
28:25
Speaker 3: like back to the politics though. It's like, this is,
28:28
Speaker 3: you know, another approach strategy message that seems pretty fringe
28:33
Speaker 3: and seems pretty nutty to people like us. But you know,
28:36
Speaker 3: when you think about a base election, yeah, I mean, look,
28:40
Speaker 3: this could be the kind of thing that gets people
28:42
Speaker 3: pretty fired up, keeps them angry, keeps them motivated, uh,
28:46
Speaker 3: keeps the conspiracy theories alive. Like love it. I thought
28:48
Speaker 3: you actually, you stitched that all together pretty well. And then, uh,
28:51
Speaker 3: made me a little more unnerved about the whole thing
28:53
Speaker 3: than I was before. So thank you for that. Cool.
28:56
Speaker 2: That's why I'm here.
28:58
Speaker 1: Dan argued in the, in his message box this morning that, um,
29:02
Speaker 1: you know, the one way, the one reason it might
29:04
Speaker 1: not work is because by the time you get to
29:06
Speaker 1: the midterms or even the presidential in 2024, COVID fades
29:09
Speaker 1: from memory and arguments about COVID don't really carry a
29:12
Speaker 1: lot of weight. But again, there's not a lot of, um,
29:16
Speaker 1: logic to these conspiracies and how they take off and
29:19
Speaker 1: trying to like, you know, make, everyone in the United
29:22
Speaker 1: States victims to China and throwing the Democrats into the
29:28
Speaker 1: mix as allies of China instead of Americans is right
29:31
Speaker 1: in Trump's wheelhouse, right in the wheelhouse of grievance politics
29:34
Speaker 1: and everything that the Republican Party stands for now. So
29:36
Speaker 1: it does fit.
29:37
Speaker 2: And also, one thing also is like when Democrats like
29:40
Speaker 2: the democratic position will inevitably, I think obviously will be
29:44
Speaker 2: less xenophobic and more complicated as it should be. But
29:49
Speaker 2: like when we see these issues, when we don't talk
29:51
Speaker 2: about these issues, like, like one thing that Donald Trump
29:54
Speaker 2: has a, you know, a savant like ability to understand
29:58
Speaker 2: is like, places where there's real emotional resonance in the culture.
30:02
Speaker 2: You've got John Cena recording hostage videos for referring to
30:06
Speaker 2: Taiwan as a country. You have US multinational corporations making
30:11
Speaker 2: movies catering to censors from other countries. That is chilling.
30:17
Speaker 2: There's a serious, serious challenge there. And Trump gets that.
30:22
Speaker 2: Republicans get that. They're going to go full xenophobic about it.
30:25
Speaker 2: What are we going to say? How do we talk
30:27
Speaker 2: about this? And it's and I do think it's important
30:31
Speaker 2: that we figure out how to talk about it.
30:40
Speaker 1: Before we get to Lovett's interview with Kara Swisher, I
30:42
Speaker 1: do want to talk about a really interesting new Democratic
30:44
Speaker 1: analysis about the 2020 election that, according to The New
30:47
Speaker 1: York Times, quote, has concluded that the party is at
30:50
Speaker 1: risk of losing ground with black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters
30:53
Speaker 1: unless it has a better job presenting an economic agenda.
30:56
Speaker 1: and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all
31:00
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates to the far left. The 73-page report was
31:03
Speaker 1: commissioned by three Democratic groups, Third Way, a centrist think tank,
31:07
Speaker 1: and the Collective PAC and Latino Victory Fund, which worked
31:10
Speaker 1: to elect Black and Hispanic candidates. It was written by
31:13
Speaker 1: two very talented Democratic operatives that we know, Marlon Marshall
31:17
Speaker 1: and Linda Tran, who included nearly six months of data
31:20
Speaker 1: analysis and interviews with 143 Democratic lawmakers, candidates, and pollsters
31:24
Speaker 1: from key House and Senate races. So they basically come
31:27
Speaker 1: up with six main findings. I thought the first was
31:30
Speaker 1: the most relevant and something that we've talked a little
31:32
Speaker 1: bit about before, which is voters of color are persuasion
31:35
Speaker 1: voters who need to be convinced. Tommy, what did you
31:39
Speaker 1: think about that?
31:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, this section rang particularly true because
31:42
Speaker 3: I think we've heard this criticism before, which is to
31:44
Speaker 3: say that the Democratic Party too often takes votes from
31:48
Speaker 3: voters of color for granted. So more specifically, The report
31:52
Speaker 3: talked about how the Democratic Party treats Latino voters like
31:55
Speaker 3: a monolith and doesn't account for regional or country of
31:58
Speaker 3: origin differences that might change how people vote. They also
32:01
Speaker 3: talked about how some campaigns, again, just assumed they would
32:04
Speaker 3: get support from Latino voters and didn't try to persuade them.
32:08
Speaker 3: They instead just focused on turning them out, which means
32:10
Speaker 3: you could actually be turning out voters who are supporting
32:12
Speaker 3: your opponent, which is extremely foolish. It talked about the
32:15
Speaker 3: rapid growth in the number of AAPI voters in the U.S.
32:18
Speaker 3: and how they're becoming a really powerful voting bloc, but
32:21
Speaker 3: some congressional candidates in California in particular could have actually
32:25
Speaker 3: won their races if they'd just done a better job
32:27
Speaker 3: reaching out to and persuading AAPI voters, specifically, I think
32:30
Speaker 3: it was Vietnamese and Filipino voters here in California. And
32:34
Speaker 3: then they also talked about how generally campaigns were not
32:38
Speaker 3: doing enough messaging research with communities of color. That means
32:42
Speaker 3: like larger polling samples of Latino voters in polls. That
32:47
Speaker 3: means canvassing and focus groups to help candidates figure out, okay,
32:51
Speaker 3: what issues do these communities care about? How do we
32:53
Speaker 3: reach them? What messages are the most persuasive? And it
32:57
Speaker 3: also confirmed that a lot of communities of color were
33:00
Speaker 3: most often targeted with disinformation and that Democrats failed to
33:04
Speaker 3: respond effectively because one, they often didn't know it was happening.
33:08
Speaker 3: And two, we weren't knocking on doors, which is the
33:10
Speaker 3: most effective way to rebut some of this stuff. And so,
33:13
Speaker 3: you know, it was a very interesting, I thought, thoughtful
33:15
Speaker 3: report and well done, especially this section.
33:19
Speaker 6: Love it.
33:19
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to that first finding?
33:22
Speaker 2: So this builds on something we understood, which is that
33:27
Speaker 2: our victories were based on huge turnout, but then lower
33:32
Speaker 2: proportional votes among the communities we turned out, right? That
33:36
Speaker 2: was sort of true across the board. And what I
33:38
Speaker 2: don't totally understand in looking at this, so, and I
33:43
Speaker 2: agree with everything Tommy just said in describing it, and
33:45
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ways to act upon this information,
33:47
Speaker 2: but there's a part of this that's a little bit
33:49
Speaker 2: hard to understand, which is, okay, so Let's say we
33:53
Speaker 2: wanted to turn out 19-year-old white women, right? That was
33:57
Speaker 2: the group we were targeting. Well, we would assume that
34:00
Speaker 2: 19-year-old white women that participated in the past and that
34:03
Speaker 2: will participate in this election are likely to vote for
34:05
Speaker 2: a Democrat because that's what they've done in the past.
34:07
Speaker 2: So we start turning them out. We start trying to
34:08
Speaker 2: get more and more 19-year-old white women to vote. Well,
34:11
Speaker 2: as you go deeper and deeper into that pool of people,
34:13
Speaker 2: you start reaching people that maybe haven't voted in the past,
34:15
Speaker 2: that are maybe less engaged. And all of a sudden,
34:17
Speaker 2: they look a little bit less like the group that
34:18
Speaker 2: has been participating all the time. So it's some piece
34:21
Speaker 2: of this, like when you drive turnout to new heights,
34:24
Speaker 2: you end up pulling in a more heterodox sample, maybe
34:27
Speaker 2: inevitably as you do that. And so what I don't
34:29
Speaker 2: understand in looking at this is how do you deal
34:32
Speaker 2: with the fact that part of this will always be inevitable?
34:35
Speaker 2: And how do you think about that distinction, turning out
34:37
Speaker 2: more voters, but that bigger pool of voters doesn't look
34:41
Speaker 2: as democratic as before? Because sometimes that'll deliver you the
34:44
Speaker 2: White House.
34:45
Speaker 1: So I think what happens here is, this is an oversimplification,
34:49
Speaker 1: but right now, starting at the beginning of a race,
34:53
Speaker 1: campaigns spend a lot of money trying to persuade white
34:57
Speaker 1: swing voters, usually, through targeted advertising and direct voter contact.
35:03
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the race, usually the
35:06
Speaker 1: last few weeks, they spend money trying to get out
35:09
Speaker 1: the vote in communities of color, assuming that those voters
35:13
Speaker 1: already agree with us. And basically- all this is saying
35:16
Speaker 1: is like, we should treat voters of color like we
35:19
Speaker 1: treat white swing voters, invest early in persuasion through advertising
35:23
Speaker 1: and direct voter contact. And the other interesting thing is
35:27
Speaker 1: that's basically what happened in Georgia. And that's why you
35:29
Speaker 1: saw a higher turnout and better margins among all voters
35:32
Speaker 1: of color, not just black voters, than you saw in
35:35
Speaker 1: some other swing states. So there's this You know, we've
35:37
Speaker 1: talked a million times about how the Latino vote share
35:40
Speaker 1: for Democrats went down. Well, it went down by less
35:43
Speaker 1: in Georgia than any other state.
35:45
Speaker 6: Why?
35:45
Speaker 1: Because organizers in Georgia were on the ground early. They
35:48
Speaker 1: invested early in communities of color. They invested in voter
35:51
Speaker 1: contact early. It's just, I mean, you can go into
35:54
Speaker 1: all the details, but the basic assumption has to be
35:56
Speaker 1: that voters of color are just not automatically with us
35:59
Speaker 1: and they're not automatically progressive. White progressive activists wouldn't think
36:02
Speaker 1: that about all white voters. So why do we think
36:04
Speaker 1: that about all black voters and all Latino voters and
36:07
Speaker 1: all Asian American voters?
36:08
Speaker 2: Why do you assume that new voters you're trying to
36:11
Speaker 2: turn out look like voters that have been turning out
36:13
Speaker 2: for years? Why do you assume they have the same assumptions?
36:15
Speaker 1: You should never assume that.
36:17
Speaker 2: That to me is what ties those things together.
36:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, don't assume anything. Their final, you know,
36:23
Speaker 3: they wrote a little note at the end from the
36:25
Speaker 3: authors themselves with recommendations. And the final recommendation basically is
36:29
Speaker 3: get rid of the distinction between persuasion and GOTV canvassing.
36:34
Speaker 3: Like campaigns too often do persuasion early. And then at
36:37
Speaker 3: some point, like the campaign manager is like, OK, it's
36:39
Speaker 3: GOTV time. They say just erase that distinction. Make every
36:44
Speaker 3: interaction with voters about persuasion and about turnout. It's a
36:47
Speaker 3: both and approach. let's stop with this, you know, sort
36:50
Speaker 3: of like silly distinction, which, you know, the impact is
36:54
Speaker 3: you end up knocking on different lists, right? You go
36:56
Speaker 3: to different doors, you're spending money in different places, and
36:59
Speaker 3: they want to just say, stop that.
37:02
Speaker 1: I think it's the most important, you know, recommendation from
37:04
Speaker 1: the whole report. I thought the other most actionable finding
37:07
Speaker 1: was number two, which they found that Republican attempts to
37:11
Speaker 1: brand Democrats as radicals worked. It didn't work against Joe
37:15
Speaker 1: Biden at the top of the ticket as well as
37:17
Speaker 1: it did with Senate candidates, as well as it did
37:19
Speaker 1: with House candidates. What do you think about their arguments
37:23
Speaker 1: about this? And what can we do about it next time, Tommy?
37:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so like, they were pretty clear that
37:28
Speaker 3: they found that this overall framework of calling Democrats radical
37:31
Speaker 3: was effective in some races. You know, that that frame includes,
37:36
Speaker 3: you know, claims that Democratic candidates want to defund the police,
37:40
Speaker 3: that they're socialists, that they are just Pelosi stooges, right?
37:43
Speaker 3: They didn't try to unpack which of those messages were
37:46
Speaker 3: the most salient, because you know, it's case by case
37:49
Speaker 3: and the effectiveness of the attack often depends on how
37:52
Speaker 3: well or how poorly you respond to it. They did
37:54
Speaker 3: note a couple of things, which was that heavy law
37:57
Speaker 3: and order messaging from Republicans correlated with higher Republican shares
38:02
Speaker 3: of the vote among Latino, AAPI and black voters. And
38:06
Speaker 3: they found that it was particularly hard for candidates of
38:08
Speaker 3: color to rebut attacks that inaccurately accused them of wanting
38:13
Speaker 3: to defund the police. The lesson they drew from that
38:16
Speaker 3: was these law and order attacks are, they're not new.
38:20
Speaker 3: They're really part of a long line of racist dog
38:22
Speaker 3: whistle messages that we've heard forever. So again, you know,
38:25
Speaker 3: their recommendation was we need to take these attacks head on.
38:28
Speaker 3: We should not shy away from hard conversations about race.
38:32
Speaker 3: We need to reimagine the Democratic Party's economic message as
38:35
Speaker 3: being for all working people and commit to long-term organizing
38:39
Speaker 3: like in Georgia and invest more money in that organizing earlier.
38:43
Speaker 3: And then, you know, sort of generally when it comes
38:45
Speaker 3: to questions of racial justice or, you know, policing, like
38:50
Speaker 3: do a better job of painting a picture of what
38:52
Speaker 3: Democrats are for and in the policies that we're pushing
38:56
Speaker 3: for and not just sort of be gone the defensive
38:58
Speaker 3: and putting up ads in response to Republican attacks. I
39:01
Speaker 3: think we should get ahead of it all.
39:02
Speaker 1: Well, but what did you think if you were like
39:04
Speaker 1: a Democratic campaign trying to figure out how to rebut
39:07
Speaker 1: what they called in this the Dempo-Pourri attack, which includes socialism,
39:12
Speaker 1: Medicare for all, Green New Deal, Pelosi, AOC squad, defund
39:15
Speaker 1: the police. They sort of, it was interesting that they
39:17
Speaker 1: said that all of those attacks sort of together had
39:20
Speaker 1: an effect and it wasn't just one attack specifically. It
39:22
Speaker 1: was sort of a potpourri as they said.
39:24
Speaker 2: So here's, my reaction. So one thing they noted is
39:27
Speaker 2: that you could get ahead of it by having a
39:30
Speaker 2: positive message early, both in terms of what your campaigns before,
39:34
Speaker 2: but also your bio, that there was an ability to
39:36
Speaker 2: kind of get ahead of it with your own bio.
39:38
Speaker 2: Now they point to people like Mark Kelly, and it
39:40
Speaker 2: would be nice if all of our candidates have the
39:44
Speaker 2: most compelling story a human being could fucking possibly have.
39:47
Speaker 3: Been to space.
39:49
Speaker 1: We got to run a bunch of astronauts.
39:50
Speaker 2: Astronauts win elections.
39:52
Speaker 1: Astronauts in 2022.
39:54
Speaker 2: Love astronauts. Hard to get me to vote against an
39:56
Speaker 2: astronaut other than Jeff Bezos.
39:58
Speaker 1: Bill Nelson did lose in 2018, though.
40:01
Speaker 2: But it worked for a while. He was kind of
40:03
Speaker 2: a nut.
40:05
Speaker 1: You think he's the NASA administrator now?
40:07
Speaker 2: And a great job he's doing.
40:09
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
40:10
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. I didn't know.
40:11
Speaker 3: Because I saw it.
40:12
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, they put Bill Nelson in charge
40:13
Speaker 2: of NASA? Yeah. Cut this? No, keep it. Who cares?
40:18
Speaker 2: Love you, Bill. Just kidding. Just kidding. What were we
40:22
Speaker 2: talking about?
40:23
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
40:23
Speaker 2: So getting ahead of it. Here's the one thing I
40:25
Speaker 2: did also take away from this, which is like there
40:26
Speaker 2: was that incredibly unhelpful round of debate where some of
40:30
Speaker 2: the Democratic moderates blamed the squad for some of their misfortune.
40:36
Speaker 2: And I understand that impulse, but I think it's like
40:39
Speaker 2: we need to stop like Republicans have a machine here.
40:43
Speaker 2: They will find somebody to use some argument, some way
40:45
Speaker 2: of making you a socialist. You would defund the police
40:48
Speaker 2: person no matter what you say. You actually have some agency,
40:51
Speaker 2: according to this report, to deal with it, right? You
40:54
Speaker 2: talked about this on Thursday, about that special election. They
40:56
Speaker 2: accused Stansbury of wanting to defund the police, but she
40:58
Speaker 2: did ads showing that she was not against reform, but
41:01
Speaker 2: also had this record on law enforcement, right? So there's
41:04
Speaker 2: ways to respond. And I think the kind of Circle
41:06
Speaker 2: Fire Squad, what's that called?
41:08
Speaker 1: A circular firing squad.
41:11
Speaker 2: A circular firing squad, I think, is not helpful.
41:13
Speaker 1: Not to be confused with the squad, the squad.
41:15
Speaker 3: No, no.
41:16
Speaker 2: Different squad. Different squad. But that is not particularly helpful. Like,
41:20
Speaker 2: don't blame, like, there will, the activists, the left, they're
41:24
Speaker 2: going to say what they're going to say. That is
41:25
Speaker 2: not your problem. Your problem is the way that that
41:27
Speaker 2: information is manipulated by the right and what you're going
41:29
Speaker 2: to do to respond to it in your own campaign.
41:32
Speaker 1: Well, you're never going to be able to stop it
41:34
Speaker 1: for the end of time.
41:35
Speaker 5: Right.
41:35
Speaker 1: Like there are always going to be activists who go
41:37
Speaker 1: out there and say what they believe. And not only
41:39
Speaker 1: should we not try to silence them, no one's going
41:42
Speaker 1: to be able to.
41:43
Speaker 6: Right.
41:44
Speaker 1: Even if you wanted to.
41:45
Speaker 2: Right.
41:45
Speaker 1: They're always going to be out there saying what they want.
41:47
Speaker 1: And so you have to figure out a way to
41:48
Speaker 1: deal with this. I did think it was most interesting
41:50
Speaker 1: that like the earlier you go on TV with bio
41:53
Speaker 1: spots about who you are, the more voters are going
41:55
Speaker 1: to know you. And then when you try to rebut
41:58
Speaker 1: these attacks, they will trust you rebutting the attacks because
42:00
Speaker 1: they feel like they know you better and that you're
42:02
Speaker 1: not some just new candidate that they can't trust.
42:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:04
Speaker 3: And the report also spoke to the need. Look, one
42:08
Speaker 3: of the findings was basically it was a weird year
42:11
Speaker 3: because of COVID, right? Like, no shit. But how you
42:14
Speaker 3: responded to that weird year actually materially impacted how well
42:17
Speaker 3: you did. So they talked about how Antonio Delgado, who's
42:20
Speaker 3: a member of Congress in New York, had his field
42:23
Speaker 3: team shift to basically a constituent service message in their
42:28
Speaker 3: field campaign, rather than just asking for their votes. And
42:31
Speaker 3: that was an interesting way to sort of make it
42:32
Speaker 3: feel more meaningful people. It also talked about how in
42:36
Speaker 3: the midst of the pandemic, just an anti-Trump message really
42:40
Speaker 3: was hurting. There was a lack of economic message or agenda,
42:44
Speaker 3: especially when Democrats were painted as pro-lockdown and people maybe
42:49
Speaker 3: began to blame the Democratic Party in part for losing
42:52
Speaker 3: their jobs or being home or their kids being out
42:55
Speaker 3: of school. And then just, it seems like not resuming
42:58
Speaker 3: canvassing was a real problem that was felt not just
43:02
Speaker 3: in the presidential campaign and in our ability to understand
43:06
Speaker 3: what voters were thinking, but also in these down ballot races.
43:10
Speaker 3: So that's a good lesson learned.
43:12
Speaker 1: Not being able to drive a consistent economic message has
43:16
Speaker 1: been a challenge of the Democratic Party for years. And like,
43:20
Speaker 1: Here's two Democratic candidates from sort of different ends of
43:22
Speaker 1: the spectrum that were able to do it. Bernie Sanders
43:25
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden.
43:26
Speaker 4: Right.
43:27
Speaker 1: Like Joe Biden's is a little more to the center
43:28
Speaker 1: than Bernie's. But like at least they were both able
43:31
Speaker 1: to drive an economic message. And I think, you know,
43:33
Speaker 1: like I just think Democrats have to. It's hard because
43:36
Speaker 1: an economic message doesn't break through as much sometimes that,
43:40
Speaker 1: you know, the media tends to cover other flashpoints. But
43:44
Speaker 1: it's clearly important with working class voters, white, black, brown, right,
43:49
Speaker 1: with everyone. And the ability to drive that message, I think,
43:51
Speaker 1: is key to success in the future.
43:53
Speaker 6: Yeah.
43:54
Speaker 2: I'll also say, though, that like Bernie had a incredibly consistent, obviously,
43:57
Speaker 2: economic message at the core of his campaign. I'm not
44:00
Speaker 2: saying Biden didn't have an economic message, but the situation
44:03
Speaker 2: in the country was the economic message. You know, like
44:06
Speaker 2: that was a unique circumstance. And I think looking at
44:08
Speaker 2: some of the down ballot losses, it's interesting, right, because
44:12
Speaker 2: the I found this, I didn't realize how few it
44:15
Speaker 2: was that only 15 federal offices had split ticket voting
44:19
Speaker 2: that basically Biden did have coattails. They just weren't enough
44:22
Speaker 2: where we needed them to flip legislatures and win more
44:25
Speaker 2: seats in the Senate. But it is true that like
44:28
Speaker 2: a lot of this is a fight over kind of
44:31
Speaker 2: in the same way candidates can rebut disinformation by getting
44:34
Speaker 2: up with bio spots earlier. Like the democratic party needs
44:37
Speaker 2: their version of that. A set of core principles, values
44:40
Speaker 2: that we kind of, use over and over again, go
44:42
Speaker 2: back to over and over again, because we've talked about
44:45
Speaker 2: this in the past that like, we're not going to
44:47
Speaker 2: be able to respond and rebut misinformation coming at us
44:50
Speaker 2: from all directions with facts like that just doesn't work.
44:53
Speaker 2: That doesn't do anything. But if we start with a
44:54
Speaker 2: baseline set of values, set of core truths that people
44:57
Speaker 2: recognize as being central to the party, then there's a
45:00
Speaker 2: hope that you can do a better job of overcoming that,
45:02
Speaker 2: especially when we've seen Medicare, Medicaid expansion, voting rights, legalizing marijuana,
45:10
Speaker 2: like all of these pro-union bills passing in red states
45:13
Speaker 2: across the country.
45:14
Speaker 1: Well, I would suggest that everyone go read the report.
45:17
Speaker 1: We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
45:20
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. And when we come back, we will
45:24
Speaker 1: have Lovett's interview with Kara Swisher.
45:35
Speaker 2: Joining us on the pod, she is a contributing opinion
45:38
Speaker 2: writer for the New York Times and the host of
45:39
Speaker 2: the paper's podcast, Sway. She is also the co-host of
45:42
Speaker 2: the podcast, Pivot. Please welcome back, Kara Swisher. Kara, good
45:46
Speaker 2: to see you.
45:47
Speaker 7: Good to see you.
45:48
Speaker 2: All right, so we had some big news. Word got
45:51
Speaker 2: out late last week that Facebook was going to make
45:52
Speaker 2: a big announcement affecting Donald Trump's place on the platform.
45:55
Speaker 2: They announced that Trump would be suspended for two years,
46:00
Speaker 2: starting from January 7th, a fitting day, the day after
46:04
Speaker 2: the insurrection happened. I think that's actually quite notable. And
46:07
Speaker 2: that in time, they will evaluate whether or not the
46:09
Speaker 2: threat has receded. What led to this decision and what
46:14
Speaker 2: was your reaction to it?
46:15
Speaker 8: Well, you know, they've been kicking this can down the
46:17
Speaker 8: road forever, right? They've been trying, they've been sort of
46:19
Speaker 8: indulging him for the past five years or four years
46:22
Speaker 8: or whatever, from way back, way back before he was president.
46:26
Speaker 8: And so He's been sort of allowed to misbehave the
46:28
Speaker 8: entire time and it's and continues to escalate it up
46:32
Speaker 8: until and including January 7th, when he really his posts
46:36
Speaker 8: were rather dangerous and they inflamed people and incited violence,
46:39
Speaker 8: among other things. He gave a speech to there were
46:41
Speaker 8: other things, but the way he behaved on social media
46:43
Speaker 8: certainly didn't help.
46:44
Speaker 7: The situation, as they say. And so, and he kept
46:47
Speaker 7: posting his speeches.
46:48
Speaker 8: And when he posted several of his speeches, they were
46:50
Speaker 8: problematic because they were sort of egging people on. That's
46:52
Speaker 8: what it was under the determination.
46:54
Speaker 7: And so he.
46:55
Speaker 8: Finally, after, after violating their rules quite a lot, they
46:59
Speaker 8: kicked him off, you know, and that was that he
47:01
Speaker 8: just violated the rules one too many times.
47:03
Speaker 7: And so then they decided then to sort of kick it.
47:06
Speaker 8: They, what they did is they gave him Facebook, Twitter.
47:09
Speaker 7: Permanently banned Trump, you know, just forget it. That's enough.
47:12
Speaker 7: We've had enough.
47:12
Speaker 8: And, Which they should have done much earlier. Lots of
47:16
Speaker 8: people could see where this was going. And then YouTube,
47:20
Speaker 8: he's still sort of in limbo there a little bit.
47:22
Speaker 8: But Facebook did this weird thing called indefinitely ban, which
47:25
Speaker 8: is like, I didn't like either. You can't indefinitely jail someone.
47:29
Speaker 8: You can't, you know, it was just weird. And what
47:31
Speaker 8: it was, was they didn't want to make a decision
47:33
Speaker 8: in any direction whatsoever. So they didn't piss off anyone,
47:36
Speaker 8: but they ended up pissing off everybody.
47:38
Speaker 7: And so then they kicked it.
47:40
Speaker 8: Over to the Facebook board, which is a board, an
47:43
Speaker 8: independent board that is paid for by Facebook and was
47:46
Speaker 8: was selected by Facebook of 20 people. It's supposed to
47:50
Speaker 8: be 40 around the globe.
47:51
Speaker 7: And they kicked it over to that group, which which
47:54
Speaker 7: is independent.
47:54
Speaker 6: It's not.
47:55
Speaker 8: But it isn't like, you know what I mean? It's
47:57
Speaker 8: hard to be independent when it's paid, paid and picked
47:59
Speaker 8: by Facebook.
48:00
Speaker 2: But isn't it a trust? Isn't it now paid for
48:03
Speaker 2: by some kind of a trust?
48:04
Speaker 7: It is.
48:04
Speaker 8: It's just the origins are. problematic, no matter how they
48:07
Speaker 8: slice it. And I have called them a UN, but
48:11
Speaker 8: 100% less effective. Like, how can they deal with this thing?
48:14
Speaker 8: But this is a very good people on this board.
48:16
Speaker 8: Not enough critics, but that's okay. And so what they did,
48:20
Speaker 8: which I thought was pretty terrific, is they pointed out
48:23
Speaker 8: the obvious, which a lot of us have been pointing out,
48:24
Speaker 8: is you have no rules, and we're not ruling on
48:27
Speaker 8: it for you.
48:28
Speaker 7: You don't have any policies.
48:30
Speaker 8: And in fact, the policy you kept pointing to about
48:33
Speaker 8: newsworthiness doesn't even exist anymore.
48:35
Speaker 7: And so it was crazy. I was like, yeah, yeah. Like,
48:40
Speaker 7: why don't you do it?
48:41
Speaker 8: So they kicked it back to Zuckerberg and said, you
48:43
Speaker 8: figure it out. This is your problem. You created it.
48:46
Speaker 8: We're not going to solve it for you. And then later,
48:48
Speaker 8: if we don't agree with your policy, we'll talk about that.
48:52
Speaker 8: But you're the ones that have to make the policy,
48:54
Speaker 8: not us.
48:55
Speaker 7: And so they kicked it back to them.
48:56
Speaker 8: And now this was the decision, which is sort of
48:58
Speaker 8: a half measure, which is two years. We'll see how
49:00
Speaker 8: he does. And then we'll evaluate it then. And I
49:03
Speaker 8: think they're hoping something will happen in the two-year interim.
49:06
Speaker 7: I don't know what.
49:07
Speaker 8: They don't have to make a decision, whether he, like,
49:10
Speaker 8: whatever happens to him. And so in two years, they'll
49:13
Speaker 8: decide if he continues to be a problem or if
49:16
Speaker 8: the if the public discourse is so inflamed by Trumpism that,
49:20
Speaker 8: and the, and the sort of mini, you know, you know,
49:22
Speaker 8: the thousand duck size Trump's are around like Marjorie Taylor green.
49:25
Speaker 8: And what's interesting is there was a story in the
49:28
Speaker 8: New York times today showing that the minute they kicked
49:30
Speaker 8: him off, there was definitely a decline in, um, in
49:34
Speaker 8: people being inflamed, but then all these other things, other
49:37
Speaker 8: things keep, um, keep amplifying him.
49:40
Speaker 7: So it's the same difference.
49:42
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask you about next, actually.
49:44
Speaker 2: So because Facebook and we all do this, we're doing this.
49:51
Speaker 2: Trump has an ability to make us do this. We
49:53
Speaker 2: focus on this individual to the detriment of the systems
49:56
Speaker 2: and processes taking place all around them. The point that
49:58
Speaker 2: you make is, yes, the Times today has this great analysis.
50:01
Speaker 2: They use some information from the Global Disinformation Index, and
50:04
Speaker 2: they found that on a host of issues. Yeah, Trump
50:07
Speaker 2: is gone. Trump doesn't have the reach he once did,
50:10
Speaker 2: but his words are promoted, his ideas are promoted in
50:14
Speaker 2: some cases to the same degree, except on issues of
50:18
Speaker 2: election disinformation because the platforms had other rules irrespective of
50:23
Speaker 2: Trump as one person that prevented that information from being spread.
50:27
Speaker 2: And it sort of goes to the systemic problems that
50:29
Speaker 2: Facebook still is not willing to address, right?
50:32
Speaker 3: Right.
50:32
Speaker 8: And I think that's the problem is that the die
50:34
Speaker 8: is already cast here. And the people who run these
50:36
Speaker 8: systems Not the not the Facebook people, people who use
50:39
Speaker 8: them know how to manipulate them and move them around.
50:41
Speaker 7: You don't have to have. Now, look, a Donald Trump tweet.
50:44
Speaker 7: Good for cable discussion. Good for this. Good for that.
50:47
Speaker 7: The plug thing.
50:48
Speaker 8: That didn't work out like nobody was like rushing to
50:50
Speaker 8: report it. They're just like, oh, he said this crazy thing.
50:53
Speaker 7: But it didn't have the same impact.
50:55
Speaker 8: Right.
50:55
Speaker 7: Or the same urgency.
50:58
Speaker 8: And he didn't have the global platform of the White House,
51:01
Speaker 8: which is another thing. You can walk downstairs and say
51:03
Speaker 8: whatever he wants. And so there is some, it not
51:06
Speaker 8: coming from him and his speech was kind of like,
51:08
Speaker 8: it's kind of flopped and, you know, it didn't get
51:10
Speaker 8: the same kind of pickup, like the, oh, wow, pickup.
51:13
Speaker 8: And then everything was focused on his pants, which was
51:15
Speaker 8: a lie, which is, you know, wearing his pants on.
51:18
Speaker 8: That was a fake photo shoot, whatever that was. So
51:21
Speaker 8: it was, it didn't, he doesn't have the same ability
51:24
Speaker 8: to generate attention to himself, but it doesn't mean his
51:27
Speaker 8: ideas don't get out there.
51:28
Speaker 7: And so The system's in place.
51:31
Speaker 8: For amplification of bad things. And that's one of the
51:35
Speaker 8: big issues, obviously, because of the size of these platforms.
51:38
Speaker 2: So there are two other pieces of this decision that
51:42
Speaker 2: actually have, I think, larger implications. One is around this
51:46
Speaker 2: completely gauzy, cloudy idea, foggy idea of newsworthiness as an
51:52
Speaker 2: exception for honesty or the rules of their platform. Um,
51:56
Speaker 2: and they're going to keep that, but apply it to everybody.
51:58
Speaker 2: It's a bit confusing, but the bigger decision was saying
52:01
Speaker 2: that they're going to treat politicians like they treat any
52:03
Speaker 2: old user. Um, that seems good. That seems like a
52:07
Speaker 2: really positive change when, what would you make of it?
52:10
Speaker 7: Well, he, he, Mark was very particular.
52:13
Speaker 8: Like we're, we didn't want to, that speech she gave,
52:15
Speaker 8: I happen to be at that speech at Georgetown where
52:17
Speaker 8: he talked about that.
52:18
Speaker 7: Let's have the politicians speak.
52:19
Speaker 8: It's more important to have them speak than to police
52:22
Speaker 8: what they're saying, especially if it's bad, you.
52:24
Speaker 7: Know, including if it's bad.
52:25
Speaker 8: And I was there and he was sort of describing
52:28
Speaker 8: a state of free speech in the first amendment that
52:31
Speaker 8: didn't exist.
52:32
Speaker 7: You know what I mean?
52:32
Speaker 8: Like, I was like, why can they violate platform rules
52:36
Speaker 8: that you have for everybody else?
52:37
Speaker 7: Why can't everybody else say it then? And it had no,
52:40
Speaker 7: it had no intellect. I literally almost jumped up from
52:42
Speaker 7: the audience and started yelling at them. Like, go take
52:44
Speaker 7: a history course. Here at Georgetown, where I went, like,
52:47
Speaker 7: you can learn. Here's a law class. Here's a this class.
52:51
Speaker 8: And so they, you know, what's interesting about them is
52:53
Speaker 8: that they change their tune all the time.
52:56
Speaker 7: Like they change, this is.
52:57
Speaker 3: The way it is.
52:58
Speaker 7: And then this is the way it is.
52:59
Speaker 8: And one of the things that drives me crazy is
53:01
Speaker 8: A couple of years ago, I had this famous interview
53:03
Speaker 8: where he talked about Holocaust deniers and.
53:05
Speaker 7: We're going to keep them on the platform. And then
53:07
Speaker 7: two years later, no, they're terrible.
53:09
Speaker 8: And then, you know, people can change their minds, but
53:11
Speaker 8: the damage in the interim, same thing with Alex Jones.
53:14
Speaker 7: No, Kara, we're not taking them off.
53:16
Speaker 5: Oh, you will.
53:17
Speaker 8: Oh, you will, because he keeps violating your rules and
53:19
Speaker 8: eventually you're going to have to. Then they take them off.
53:22
Speaker 8: Same thing here. Like, I'm glad they did it, but
53:25
Speaker 8: it was like way too late. And I hate to
53:27
Speaker 8: be like, well, too little, too late, but that's really
53:30
Speaker 8: what it feels like in.
53:31
Speaker 7: A lot of ways. And it's not enough either.
53:33
Speaker 8: It's not a, they don't want to, they want to
53:36
Speaker 8: sort of stutter step their way into this while huge
53:39
Speaker 8: amounts of damage is happening all over the place.
53:41
Speaker 7: And that's my problem with it.
53:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. It does seem, you know, you talked about this
53:45
Speaker 2: in your piece. You said that, that, that Mark Zuckerberg
53:48
Speaker 2: is naive. And I, and I found that interesting.
53:51
Speaker 7: I I didn't use the word naive. The headline was,
53:53
Speaker 7: but go ahead. I think it's a jump. I think
53:55
Speaker 7: it's a jump, but go ahead.
53:57
Speaker 1: Okay.
53:58
Speaker 2: Well, I would say the headline was fair, a fair
54:00
Speaker 2: description of what you said in the piece, which is
54:02
Speaker 2: basically has this sort of like college dorm room idea
54:07
Speaker 2: of how speech works, right? Well, if a politician lies,
54:09
Speaker 2: people should see the lie so that they know that
54:12
Speaker 2: they're a liar as if people are these great adjudicators
54:14
Speaker 2: of fact because they have access to some other body
54:16
Speaker 2: of information and that Trump took advantage of that. But
54:19
Speaker 2: it does seem like That reluctance that he has is
54:22
Speaker 2: like infused in everything that Facebook does, including this decision.
54:26
Speaker 2: You have Nick Clegg, the spokesperson for Facebook, basically saying how, oh,
54:31
Speaker 2: you know, we can't please everybody. This is a problem
54:34
Speaker 2: from both sides.
54:36
Speaker 7: Yeah.
54:37
Speaker 2: And then he says, well, and now we're waiting for
54:39
Speaker 2: really it shouldn't be up to Facebook. It should be
54:41
Speaker 2: up to government. He's just sort of like, you know.
54:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
54:44
Speaker 2: It's a very like, almost like S & M thing. Like,
54:46
Speaker 2: like bind us, bind us, but daddy.
54:49
Speaker 6: You know.
54:50
Speaker 7: Yes, the government has the first amendment. Like they can't.
54:53
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense.
54:54
Speaker 7: It doesn't make any, of course it doesn't.
54:56
Speaker 8: Nick Clegg is highly paid to not make sense for
54:58
Speaker 8: a lot of things that I like Nick Clegg. And
54:59
Speaker 8: I think he's very smart. He did call me that
55:01
Speaker 8: commentator on TV this week. It was that commentator, that one,
55:07
Speaker 8: that one. And it always says, But you know, it's
55:09
Speaker 8: kind of irritating to have them try to play games.
55:11
Speaker 8: It's like, look, taking Donald Trump off was the correct
55:16
Speaker 8: thing to do. You can scream censorship all you want,
55:19
Speaker 8: but he broke the rules. And in any other business,
55:21
Speaker 8: if he broke the rules the way he broke the
55:23
Speaker 8: rules here, if he kept crashing his car, drunkenly into people,
55:27
Speaker 8: he would be taken.
55:28
Speaker 7: Off the road.
55:29
Speaker 8: If he ran into a restaurant and peed in people's soup,
55:32
Speaker 8: he'd be not allowed to go into restaurants and he'd
55:35
Speaker 8: be arrested. If he walked around naked, God forbid, he'd
55:40
Speaker 8: be arrested. We all follow rules all the time. And
55:43
Speaker 8: for some reason, the idea that he has the God-given
55:46
Speaker 8: right to be on Facebook is ridiculous.
55:49
Speaker 7: It's ridiculous.
55:50
Speaker 8: That said, we can have a big discussion about the
55:52
Speaker 8: fact that there's one major social platform and it's too
55:55
Speaker 8: big and it shouldn't be the one to decide the
55:58
Speaker 8: fate of the American president. That is a really good
56:01
Speaker 8: debate to have. It's separate from this other debate and
56:04
Speaker 8: it's about size and scope and power. And that's, there's
56:07
Speaker 8: two things going on here. Did Donald Trump break the
56:09
Speaker 8: rules of Facebook and Twitter.
56:11
Speaker 7: Badly over and over and over again?
56:12
Speaker 8: Did he, you know, it was interesting, the Times used
56:15
Speaker 8: the word desecrate their rules. I had piss on and
56:18
Speaker 8: then kicked. Like that's what he did. He pissed on them,
56:21
Speaker 8: then he kicked them, and then he kicked them again
56:23
Speaker 8: for good measure. And he gets kicked off for that.
56:26
Speaker 8: That's a separate argument. And then what do we do
56:29
Speaker 8: about the fact that these companies are so big and
56:31
Speaker 8: powerful that they become public utilities? Should we designate them
56:35
Speaker 8: public utilities, which is what Clarence Thomas was sort of arguing?
56:39
Speaker 7: I don't know. We should talk about it. Maybe, maybe not.
56:42
Speaker 8: I don't agree with that, but we certainly should have
56:45
Speaker 8: a cogent debate about their power at the same time
56:47
Speaker 8: and separate the two.
56:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's interesting though. You said two things. You
56:51
Speaker 2: said size and you said scope. And it's actually, I
56:54
Speaker 2: think there's an important distinction there because in some sense,
56:56
Speaker 2: social networks depend on size, right? Like a social network
57:01
Speaker 2: is only as good as the base of users that
57:03
Speaker 2: it's had. There's a network effect, right? Like one of
57:05
Speaker 2: these things takes off, kills the rest, RIP MySpace, RIP Friendster, right?
57:09
Speaker 2: But so in some sense, there's an inherent monopolistic part
57:13
Speaker 2: of social networking that they're really They're only as useful
57:16
Speaker 2: as the size of how many people they reach. And
57:18
Speaker 2: then you talked about scope, right? Facebook gobbles up WhatsApp,
57:20
Speaker 2: it gobbles up Instagram, it copies Snapchat, it does all
57:23
Speaker 2: of these things. How do you make that distinction, right? Like,
57:26
Speaker 2: I want these companies to be less powerful, but I
57:28
Speaker 2: also recognize that social networks that reach everybody are valuable.
57:32
Speaker 2: That's part of their value.
57:34
Speaker 3: They are.
57:34
Speaker 7: There's a lot of things you could do. There's interoperability.
57:36
Speaker 8: Facebook shares information that there could be new companies that
57:39
Speaker 8: talk to each other, right?
57:40
Speaker 7: That there's all kinds of ways to do this. But
57:43
Speaker 7: you're right.
57:43
Speaker 8: These social networks benefit by being larger and they're more
57:45
Speaker 8: useful by being larger. And as they suck up everything,
57:49
Speaker 8: they get to be the arbiters of truth, which Mark
57:51
Speaker 8: never wanted to be. But that's what, you know, I
57:54
Speaker 8: always think, in that speech, he said, I don't want
57:57
Speaker 8: to be an arbiter of truth. And I'm like, then
57:59
Speaker 8: why did you build a platform that forced it to
58:02
Speaker 8: needing one?
58:03
Speaker 7: You need one here.
58:04
Speaker 8: And even if your truth is different than other people's,
58:07
Speaker 8: this is what this platform requires.
58:09
Speaker 7: And so when it comes down to it, you have
58:11
Speaker 7: to build, you have to, you know, we're smart people.
58:13
Speaker 8: We can figure out how to make these networks so
58:15
Speaker 8: that there could be many more companies like this that
58:18
Speaker 8: can interoperate with each other. You know, texts now, remember
58:21
Speaker 8: in text didn't interoperate with each other when you were
58:24
Speaker 8: only in the Apple text or on this text, they
58:26
Speaker 8: figured it out, right? And so how can we create
58:28
Speaker 8: social networks? So there's all kinds of social networks where
58:31
Speaker 8: you see, you know, where you can look at things
58:33
Speaker 8: and belong to things and yet move, there's, I don't know,
58:36
Speaker 8: or make it a public utility. And then the government
58:38
Speaker 8: can step in and regulate it more. I still think
58:41
Speaker 8: the government will never be able to regulate speech on
58:43
Speaker 8: any of these platforms.
58:44
Speaker 7: Never.
58:44
Speaker 2: No, I think that, you know, it has all the
58:47
Speaker 2: same challenges that Facebook is facing when it is basically
58:50
Speaker 2: a quasi government entity at this point, plus a whole
58:52
Speaker 2: host of others that are far more dangerous because it's
58:54
Speaker 2: the government and they have tanks. Yeah.
58:56
Speaker 8: And one of the things that drives me crazy, the
58:57
Speaker 8: last thing is the right, the right, like the one
58:59
Speaker 8: from Louisiana, the Senator, um, she was going on and
59:03
Speaker 8: on about it being a free speech question. And if
59:06
Speaker 8: it's Trump today, it's you tomorrow. And what's incredible is
59:10
Speaker 8: the lack of understanding about the First Amendment.
59:12
Speaker 7: No, it's not.
59:13
Speaker 8: If you do something like Trump did, which is incite violence, yes,
59:16
Speaker 8: it will be you tomorrow. The whole anti-cancel culture crowd,
59:21
Speaker 8: I appreciate a lot of some of the stuff that
59:23
Speaker 8: people talk about cancel culture. But in some ways, it's
59:26
Speaker 8: ridiculously out of hand in that if people violate.
59:29
Speaker 7: Rules, guess what? You get arrested. You just do.
59:33
Speaker 8: And that's really one of the things. And to conflate
59:36
Speaker 8: it with free speech is another thing. And to conflate
59:38
Speaker 8: it with the ability of people to be heard is
59:41
Speaker 8: a wholly different argument. And mashing them together creates a
59:44
Speaker 8: real problem for all of us because you have to
59:46
Speaker 8: separate them.
59:48
Speaker 2: You know, Mark Zuckerberg saying, I don't want to be
59:50
Speaker 2: an arbiter of truth yet burying within the options, the
59:53
Speaker 2: ability to see posts as they happen, right? Like there's,
59:56
Speaker 2: it's really, it's, I don't want to be seen as
59:57
Speaker 2: the arbiter of truth, or I don't want to be
59:59
Speaker 2: held accountable as an arbiter of truth. You know, Dan
1:00:01
Speaker 2: Pfeiffer pointed this out on Pod Save America last week,
1:00:04
Speaker 2: which is, you know, Donald Trump just shut down his
1:00:06
Speaker 2: blog because he didn't like the, he didn't like it
1:00:07
Speaker 2: being made fun of because nobody was going to it.
1:00:09
Speaker 2: Here is this figure, this larger than life political figure,
1:00:12
Speaker 2: leader of the Republican party, dominated social media, dominated Twitter,
1:00:15
Speaker 2: dominated Facebook. Absent the automatic algorithm-based sharing of his content,
1:00:23
Speaker 2: it foundered. And that tells you something.
1:00:26
Speaker 7: Yep. Twitter's good for him. He needs to be on Twitter.
1:00:29
Speaker 8: That's what it tells me. I wrote that column. I said,
1:00:31
Speaker 8: without Twitter, he's nothing. He doesn't have anywhere to go.
1:00:34
Speaker 8: Even Facebook isn't good enough because he can't do as
1:00:37
Speaker 8: much damage there. And so I think three years ago,
1:00:40
Speaker 8: I'm like, if he gets kicked off Twitter, that's the
1:00:42
Speaker 8: end of this for this part. That said, I still
1:00:44
Speaker 8: think he has enormous influence because there's all these polling.
1:00:46
Speaker 7: Of course. The support among Republicans of Donald Trump is
1:00:51
Speaker 7: quite strong. And that's all that matters.
1:00:53
Speaker 8: In the end, not whether he has a million, zillion
1:00:56
Speaker 8: social media followers. It's what he can do to them,
1:01:00
Speaker 8: what his influence can do to them with the voters.
1:01:02
Speaker 8: And that's why you have all these relatively reasonable people
1:01:06
Speaker 8: mouthing this endless bullshit. They're just looking at those polls
1:01:09
Speaker 8: and they're seeing a lot of support for Donald Trump.
1:01:12
Speaker 8: And until that ends, they will continue to make them
1:01:15
Speaker 8: do any kind of pretzel, uh, around him. And then
1:01:18
Speaker 8: the crazies will stick with them no matter what. So
1:01:20
Speaker 8: that's what they do. Like the Marjorie Taylor greens are
1:01:22
Speaker 8: just going to go on to the bitter end.
1:01:25
Speaker 2: And, you know, we have QAnon conferences. And so, and
1:01:28
Speaker 2: as we started, it will be bitter.
1:01:30
Speaker 7: It will be a bitter end for them.
1:01:32
Speaker 2: You know, one hopes, um, for us, uh, Or someone.
1:01:37
Speaker 2: There will be bitterness and there will be an end.
1:01:40
Speaker 2: But yeah, and just to go back to where we started,
1:01:43
Speaker 2: it's not just about removing a person. It's about removing
1:01:45
Speaker 2: the systems of spreading misinformation, which mattered far more than
1:01:49
Speaker 2: just deplatforming individuals. You have to actually have a system
1:01:52
Speaker 2: in place for saying, hey, this is beyond the pale.
1:01:54
Speaker 2: This doesn't exist here. And I hope what Facebook and
1:01:57
Speaker 2: Twitter learned from this is that If you don't enforce
1:02:00
Speaker 2: your rules, you will pay double later. If you wait,
1:02:03
Speaker 2: you will pay double later. One last question for you, Kara.
1:02:07
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos is going to space. What should we do
1:02:10
Speaker 2: while he's gone? Uh, and do you think it's at
1:02:13
Speaker 2: all odd that this will be the first time, uh,
1:02:15
Speaker 2: in his, uh, career as an Amazon employee, he will
1:02:17
Speaker 2: be peeing into a container.
1:02:19
Speaker 7: Uh, someone was putting that on Twitter. He can wear
1:02:22
Speaker 7: diapers like his employees.
1:02:24
Speaker 8: Um, I do want to comment on that. Uh, I
1:02:26
Speaker 8: think it's a funny tweet. Um, you know, he's, he
1:02:30
Speaker 8: really is a, is a geek. He's, uh, he was
1:02:32
Speaker 8: always a sort of a Star Trek fan, uh, particularly
1:02:34
Speaker 8: Star Trek. Um, and I think has always, um, wanted
1:02:39
Speaker 8: to do this, you know, wanted to go into space.
1:02:41
Speaker 7: He has, it's something he's talked about. He likes the outfits.
1:02:45
Speaker 8: Same thing, I think Richard Branson's heading there. And of course,
1:02:47
Speaker 8: Elon hasn't told us when he's going yet. So it's
1:02:50
Speaker 8: kind of an interesting lost in space moment. It would
1:02:52
Speaker 8: be interesting if he.
1:02:53
Speaker 7: Got lost in space. Like if like that was like
1:02:55
Speaker 7: a plot, you know, you could have like a movie.
1:02:57
Speaker 2: It's, it's, it's like, there's this like midlife crisis billionaire escalation.
1:03:02
Speaker 3: It's like.
1:03:03
Speaker 8: He's, I applaud him for that.
1:03:05
Speaker 7: Like, it's not just sex.
1:03:06
Speaker 2: Not a yacht.
1:03:07
Speaker 7: It's not. No, but he liked it. And then he
1:03:10
Speaker 7: like got an outfit. He got an outfit. He changed
1:03:12
Speaker 7: his body. He like, you know, he may have a yacht.
1:03:16
Speaker 7: I'm sure he has a yacht. You know, he did
1:03:18
Speaker 7: the whole nine years and now it's space. I'm like, okay.
1:03:21
Speaker 7: All right.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: You know what?
1:03:23
Speaker 2: Maybe if you go far enough into space, Jeff, you'll
1:03:28
Speaker 2: be popular in high school. It's possible. It's possible.
1:03:31
Speaker 7: I don't think he wasn't popular. I don't think that's
1:03:34
Speaker 7: what he suffers from. I don't think that's his.
1:03:36
Speaker 8: I think many people in tech possibly suffer from that,
1:03:38
Speaker 8: although it's kind of a trope. But he's a character.
1:03:44
Speaker 8: Let's just say he's a character. I wonder what Elon
1:03:46
Speaker 8: Musk is thinking today because they don't like each other.
1:03:48
Speaker 7: That seems to be obvious.
1:03:53
Speaker 2: Well, we always, we always wonder what Elon is thinking.
1:03:55
Speaker 7: I want Elon in space. I think that'll be, that'll
1:03:57
Speaker 7: just be fantastic. Like, what does he do up there? Like,
1:04:01
Speaker 7: who knows what he'll do? I know he can be
1:04:03
Speaker 7: so amusing.
1:04:04
Speaker 8: Sometimes he says terrible things, but, and he does a
1:04:07
Speaker 8: lot that, does that a lot. But, but I want
1:04:10
Speaker 8: to see, I want to see them both. I have
1:04:12
Speaker 8: an idea for a TV series where they both end
1:04:14
Speaker 8: up on Mars by themselves.
1:04:16
Speaker 7: And they can't get back. And they're together in one
1:04:19
Speaker 7: of those Matt Damon huts. And they have to grow
1:04:21
Speaker 7: potatoes together. That's what I want to see.
1:04:24
Speaker 2: I'm into it. I'm into it. That's a great idea.
1:04:27
Speaker 2: I could go with them. Let's get that made. Look,
1:04:30
Speaker 2: I've said this on this show before. But if you
1:04:32
Speaker 2: do pitch an idea on a podcast, technically Netflix owns
1:04:35
Speaker 2: the rights. So we should just be really careful.
1:04:37
Speaker 8: I already have whatever to copyright it anyway.
1:04:42
Speaker 2: Kara Swisher, always good to see you.
1:04:45
Speaker 3: Okay.
1:04:45
Speaker 2: All right.
1:04:46
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
1:04:46
Speaker 3: Thank you.
1:04:47
Speaker 7: All right. Bye.
1:04:52
Speaker 1: Thanks to Kara for joining us today. And we'll talk
1:04:54
Speaker 1: to you soon. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
1:05:00
Speaker 1: The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is
1:05:04
Speaker 1: Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez.
1:05:09
Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
1:05:12
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
1:05:19
Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
1:05:23
Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
1:05:26
Speaker 1: every week.