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“Dems in disarray!” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Tommy's conversation with Warren Binford, one
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of the attorneys who's blown the whistle on the appalling conditions...
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in the detention centers holding migrant children near the border.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Before that, we'll talk about the latest in the census
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: rigging scandal, Nancy Pelosi versus AOC, and some concerning new
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: 2020 polling. Lovett, how did your 4th of July spectacular go?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We had a great time. It was me and Lovett
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: or leave it all star Emily Heller for the full
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: hour talking about why we're patriotic. talking about big little lies,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: talking about some of the all-time best debate moments. It
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: was a truly fun episode that you won't want to miss.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Check it out. Also, a new episode of This Land
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Is Out. This week's episode is titled The Postponement. It's
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: going to discuss the Supreme Court's punt on a decision
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: on Carpenter v. Murphy to the next term and what
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: this means for the tribes.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Mixed bag with this term, Supreme Court.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty mixed. Not a ton in the bag that's great.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yep, real trick-or-treat situation. A couple of raisinets in there, too.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Too many sweethearts. And a reminder that we have our
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: big live show at the Greek Theater on August 17th.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It will be guest co-hosted by Jamel Hill and will
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: feature performances by Amanda Seals, Best Coast, and Jim James.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We'll be donating the proceeds to Vote.org, Election Protection, the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: National Redistricting Foundation, and Think Social Impact. Tickets are going fast,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: so make sure to head to crooked.com slash the Greek
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to secure your seats. Come see us.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: It's for four good causes. Come on.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: The Greek is a great theater here. It's outdoors. We're
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: going to have a good time.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do? Nothing. If you don't
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: do it, you're going to do nothing. Waste another fucking
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: night of your life.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Waste it.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Just piss it away. Wow, is there another dystopian movie
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: on Netflix made just for you?
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: Look at those out-of-control teens on HBO.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Let's check back in with them. I missed it last night.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I've only seen the first one.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: It was I nearly got a mastectomy after, but.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Here we are. Okay, let's get to the news. Last week,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's reason for wanting
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to add a citizenship question to the census was a
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: complete lie, Justice Department lawyers said the decision was made
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: to eliminate the question once and for all. So we
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: thought that was that. Thought there was a little victory.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: That was until Trump tweeted fake news and said he
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: intends to add the question anyway, potentially through an executive
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: order that may come as soon as this week. And
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: on Sunday night, the Justice Department announced that a new
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: team of attorneys would be taking over the matter. Guys,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: what's going on here? Why isn't the Supreme Court decision
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the final say on the matter here, Tommy?
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: I think that the big picture answer is because when
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Republicans used to put forward blatantly racist and political efforts,
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: they would dress them up with a phony pretext to
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: mask how craving it was. Like, if Ted Cruz were
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: doing this, and he probably would have, he would have
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: said that it was... patriotic to declare that you're a
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: citizen on the census and called it the Liberty Promotion
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Act or some bullshit. Trump has dropped the pretense. They
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: say the quiet part out loud. The racism is part
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: of the political strategy and identity. So their long-term goal
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: by getting this question on the census is to help
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: states redistrict based on counts of only citizens in their states.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: So They're going to go as hard as they possibly can.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: They're going to ignore the Supreme Court because this is
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: a craven power grab.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Well, the reason the Supreme Court's not the final say
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in the matter is because the Supreme Court left them
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: out here.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Well, if you wanted a technical answer, that's also one
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: you would say.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Well, so the decision was pretty complicated, but it seems
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: that there's five justices that ruled, which is unfortunate and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: scary now, five justices basically ruled, five conservative justices, including
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: John Roberts, that the administration has very wide latitude to
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: add whatever the fuck question they want. But in another opinion,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Roberts sided with the liberals on the court and said, yes,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you can add a question, but The rationale needs to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: be real, and it can't be a complete lie.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: You called it a pretext.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And what you did is you lied. But what that
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: leaves open is Roberts basically said, if you can come
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: back to us with a real rationale for this, an
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: honest rationale, and prove that it's an honest rationale... then,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: you know, perhaps it could go forward.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the other thing about it, too, is it's,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: first of all, you look at it, you're like, wait,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, what are you suggesting? You need to come
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: up with a rationale that is the real rationale? Exactly, exactly.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Which is a funny situation they're in, because, of course,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: we know what the real rationale is. The real rationale
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: is what we found from, you know, it's from Chris
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Kobach and Steve Bannon and that dead guy's hard drive
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: that basically said, this helps you, first of all, to
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Tommy's point, move toward that long-term goal of counting not
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: people but citizens to redistrict in a way that once
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: again tilts the favor towards rural areas, towards white areas,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: against urban areas, against diverse areas, against Democratic areas, toward
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Republican areas, but also will help you undercount and make
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: sure the census favors Republican areas and white areas. That
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: is their actual rationale. Of course, they can't say that.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: So the directive from the Supreme Court is come up
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: with a more believable fake reason. And what I think
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: is so chilling about what's happened is this isn't Trump.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: This is intellectuals and bonies around Trump coming in and
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: trying to smooth over what he did and give him
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: a better basis. This is Hugh Hewitt. with the legal argument.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: This is people like former federal prosecutors, former judges coming
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in and saying, you really fuck this up.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Here's the way you get.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: This over on the Supreme Court. Here's the smart argument
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: that John Roberts would accept so that we can do
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: what we need to do, which is undercount people of
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: color and undercount Democrats and cement our minority rule status
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: in this country.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: This is my point. I mean, they did this with
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: the travel ban. They asked for a do-over.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: They're getting a do-over here and they did it with
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: the travel ban where they said, ignore all the previous statements.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Where we called this a Muslim ban. No, it's not.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: It's about these other things. They're asking for a do-over
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: in this case. They want the courts to ignore all
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: the previous statements and lies about how the citizen question
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: somehow had something to do with enforcing the voting rights acts,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: which is a clear, like as if that had been
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: a priority in anything else his administration had done. Roberts
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: basically struck down the relevant parts anyway, but, um, and
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: they want a newly constructed legal argument. Now, No human
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: being in an argument would accept this happening, right? But
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: in a legal proceeding, they might be able to make
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: it fly.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: We don't know.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: But, like, this is my point. They are craven enough
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: that they don't care about how it looks.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: They're just going to proceed.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so what's going to happen next? You know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of all the legal experts, like, no one
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: really knows. I guess there's a couple possibilities here, right? Like,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: some people you can make the argument that, okay, it's
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: going to be hard, like you just said, Lovett, to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: come up with a rationale that is true, that is
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: not just inherently like we want an undercount of the census,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: which is not a rationale that they would accept. But
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I'm a little worried that they might go with something
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: that is close to the truth, which is we want
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to do this because we want data on who's a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: citizen and who's not. Because by the way, we want
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: a district and draw the maps based on who's citizen
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and not based on the population, which is what Republicans
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: have been trying to do for a while. And that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: is a rationale that is somewhat true. And yet, as
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: we just saw in the gerrymandering case that was handed down,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Republicans basically, I mean, the Supreme Court, the conservative majority
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: basically said that it is okay to draw maps based
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: on partisan lines.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Well, that's also, and I guess in, I think it's
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: in Alito's, in one of Alito's footnotes. It says basically
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: you could say you're doing this because you need to
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: know about immigration policy. You need to know about various rules.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Alito gave them the rationale.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: The big picture is that basically the Trump administration got
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: a little bit cocky and didn't understand that they needed
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: to do a little bit better. And all the sophisticated
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: conservatives around this administration, and I think this is part
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: of the reason it's now the case has been fucking
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: reassigned inside the Department of Justice, were saying, like, you
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: fucking morons. You fucking halfwits. Here's how you fucking do it.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Here's how you make a sleazy goddamn argument.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the other thing is that, you know, obviously
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that Sunday night announcement that they're going to have a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: new team of lawyers. There's two reasons why they'd have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a new team of lawyers, right? The first reason is
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: that some of these career attorneys, which was mostly in
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the first team, decided we're not going to lie and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: come up with this awful rationale.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Further humiliate ourselves.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: But the second is that they've, that the first team
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of attorneys has already lied and humiliated themselves in front
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: of the court. And so if you're going to say,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, we gave you a rationale that was pretext,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that wasn't right. But we actually meant this original rationale.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: When we said Voting Rights Act, that was like a
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: slip of the tongue. What we actually meant was immigration policy,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: potential redistricting, and a bunch of issues about entitlements.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you need a new team for that.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: Just the other thing for people to know about the
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: sort of attempt at a good faith argument that John
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: was making that maybe, maybe there is a rational reason why.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: You'd want to know how many citizens or non-citizens there
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: are in the country. Okay.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: The census is actually a very bad way to count people.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: It turns out that statistical modeling and mathematics is advanced
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: since the constitution was written and you can, you know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: use regression analysis and other like advanced ways to figure
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: this shit out.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: Other data sets, right? They are only doing this.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Because they know it will lead to undercounting of minorities,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: which will lead to an advantage for white Republicans.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, their rationale is clear. What's the concerning part is
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: that Supreme Court decision. I mean, the real story here
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: is that five justices, including Roberts, said to the administration, look,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: people have added partial citizenship questions to the census in
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the past, even though those citizenship questions were directed at
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: certain demographic groups like a long, long time ago. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the administration has said, wide latitude to add questions if
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: they want. And literally the only problem was this rationale. Now,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Roberts also might've been thinking, well, this is going to be,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you know, if I say, um, you need a better rationale,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: they're not going to come up with one because also
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the government lied to the court and said, this has
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: to be taken care of by July 1st at the latest,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: or we can't print the forms. And now the government's saying,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, we'll print the forms anyway. and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we'll add an addendum if we win.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, perjured
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: himself in furtherance of this argument. So you would think
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: that that would have some political fallout, but don't hold
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: your breath.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess what happens next is, you know,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: they could have an executive, Trump could issue an executive
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: order this week. It will probably, we'll see what the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: new rationale is. It will end up back at the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and we'll see. You know, the one thing
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: that they, that the Supreme Court has not decided, and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: they didn't decide in the last case, is they haven't
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: decided anything on whether the question was added with the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: intent to discriminate on the basis of race. One of
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the cases right now against the census question is in
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the Fourth Circuit, I believe, and that's basically saying that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: this would violate the 14th Amendment by discriminating on the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: basis of race. The Supreme Court has not decided either
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: way on that, and we know at least on gerrymandering,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: They decided favorably on, okay, you can gerrymander on a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: partisan basis, but you can't gerrymander on a racial basis.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So there is some hope that maybe they could rule
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: on that.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: And again, this does go back to the fact that
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: there really is like a smoking gun piece of evidence
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: from one of the architects of these policies that basically
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: says this is a way to favor white people in
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the outcome of the census.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: So there is.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody, there's a lot of reasons to
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: be cynical about what's going to happen next, but I
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: do think it is premature to claim you know how
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: this is all going to turn out. No, we don't know.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Nor would either of you dare.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: There's another smoking gun, which was Trump at the press
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: avail the other day saying that you need this to
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: figure out congressional districts. I mean, he's too stupid to
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: hide the ball even.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Right. It was when he said that that made me think, oh,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: they've done this in the past where it's like, That
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: is sort of an odious thing that he just said
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and admitted, but I'm like, maybe that's just going to
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: be their rationale.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: It might be, but their Solicitor General previously called it
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: a conspiracy theory.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Nonsensical, even on its own terms. It's so bad. No,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: but I was saying, forget about us predicting. I was
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: reading about all this last night. There's very few people
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: who are even trying to predict how this is going
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to end because we're in such weird territory right now.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: It's also like, this sounds so in the weeds and
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: there's so much minutia. I mean, The census controls, I believe,
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: $ 880 billion in federal funding and where it will go.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: And the process of the census is like, it's a
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: massive undertaking. They have to print 1.5 billion distinct pieces
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: of material to conduct the census. No small thing to
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: start it late.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It's also, I mean, you know, we used to be
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: at a place where we were debating whether or how
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: or by what path we offer the 11 million people
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: who are here who are undocumented citizenship in this country.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: This is yet another example. The Trump administration wants to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: move towards not literally just erasing the idea of these
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: 11 million undocumented people from this country.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Like if you don't count them as citizens, if you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: don't draw districts based on where they are, if you
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: don't give political representation to the communities where undocumented immigrants are,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: if you don't give federal funding to communities where these
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants are. but you know all their information, you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: are eventually getting to a point where they're figuring we
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: don't count them in the country and we're trying to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: do whatever we can to deport them. I mean, that's
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: what they're doing.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Think about what this would mean for them politically. Forget even,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: you don't have to get that far. This is so
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: that Republican members of Congress can wave a piece of
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: paper and say there are 30,000 undocumented people right here
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: in our district and they're not paying taxes and we're
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: giving them health care. This is about giving every single
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Republican member of Congress a cudgel for them to use
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: in their re-elections before you get even to the major
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: policy shifts they'd want to use based on it.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: This is party over country, too. I mean, it would
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: hurt states like Texas and Florida, but Republicans in those
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: states see that there would be a greater good for
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: the National Republican Party, and they're cool with screwing over
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: their own states in the short term.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: It's very bad, and it's especially dangerous because this is
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: not a two-year problem, a four-year problem. As we know,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: the census is every 10 years, so we will be
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: stuck with this until 2030, and some of the effects
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: could be permanent. So, very bad. All right. Let's move
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: on to the latest episode of Dems in Disarray.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Love that movie.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Can you just say it again, and then we will
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: in post add something blowing up.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: The latest episode of Dems in Disarray. I'm glad you
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: made the noise so they knew where to put it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Everything is high tech here at Pod Save America. So
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: for reasons that I cannot fathom, Nancy Pelosi thought that
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a lunch with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: a good opportunity to get some things off her chest.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I want to make, before we get into the substance,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: there is one fact in this article that delighted me,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: which is midway through the lunch, while they were talking,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi reaches across the table and forks some of
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Maureen Dowd's potatoes. Her home fries, just stole them. Just
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: sort of reached across and ate off of Maureen Dowd's plate.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And I.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Love that so much. It is so intimate. It is
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: a power move. It is so aggressive. It is so personal.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: It is also something that the second she did it,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: she should have known that Maureen Dowd is going to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: write about that because that is the detail that Maureen
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Dowd lives for.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And if you're telling me that Nancy Pelosi did it
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: knowing it would go in the story, I like it
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: even more.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So more important than that.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: What? What could be more important than that? When asked
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: about the criticism.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Because you know Nancy Pelosi didn't order potatoes. She's not
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: going to have fucking potatoes on her plate. All right,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: she is going to have fruit or maybe sliced tomato,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: but she wants one potato. Fucking respect the hell.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: Out of it.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Sorry, last time I interrupted.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I hope you all drag him on Twitter for this.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Some comments sur la table from Mr.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Lovett here.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Just thinking it through.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So when Pelosi was asked by Dowd about the criticism
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: that followed a recent vote on a border funding bill
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: that failed to satisfy House members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar because it didn't include enough
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: protections for migrant children, Pelosi said the following, quote, All
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: these people have their public whatever in their Twitter world,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: but they didn't have any following. They're four people, and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that's how many votes they got. AOC responded by tweeting, quote,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: That public whatever is called public sentiment, and wielding the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: change in this country. So before we talk about the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: wisdom of the Dowd interview itself and doing such an interview,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning over the fight over the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: border funding bill that led to this whole controversy in
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the first place. What do Democrats like AOC want in
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the bill and why couldn't they get it?
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: They wanted language that would have done a few things.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: They wanted to ensure the release of unaccompanied migrant kids
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: from these temporary facilities after three months. They wanted lawmakers
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: to be able to visit without having to give notice,
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: which is ridiculous that these, you know, unelected officials can
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: bar them from entering a facility.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I don't understand how that's possible.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: And then they just wanted basic standards for humanitarian treatment
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: for these kids like two square meters of space to
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: sleep it not being freezing cold in in a facility
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: where there's no blankets the lights go off at night
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: so you can sleep so they wanted basic accountability to
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: be tied with I think everyone would argue some pretty
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: desperately needed funding to expand services or facilities or access
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: for these kids but they rightly don't trust what Stephen
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Miller is going to do with that cash I wouldn't either.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I thought Rashida Tlaib made a good
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: point in some piece where she said, you can't tell
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: me that the administration doesn't have the money. The reason
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: there's no toothbrushes, the reason there's not enough beds is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: because the administration just doesn't have the cash, you know?
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: And so they wanted to include these standards in there.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Why couldn't they get these standards included in there?
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Here's the rub, John. That's where the debate begins.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so I don't think anyone argues with
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: them on policy, right? I don't think anyone's disagreeing with...
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: the fact that Democrats have a better policy position and
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: wanted better treatment for these kids and wanted a bill
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: that did more. The question is, did they have the
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: power to achieve that in these negotiations? Some have laid
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: this at the feet of Nancy Pelosi, but others have said, well,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: hold on a second. This is what came out of
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the Senate, out of Mitch McConnell's Senate. It is not
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: clear how Nancy Pelosi could have gotten to a better
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: outcome in the House based on what had already taken
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: place in the Senate.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I mean, So you read all these stories
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: about the back and forth of what transpired over these
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: few weeks in these negotiations, right? And I do think
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it's important, like, number one, the reason that we don't
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: have these protections in the bill is because of Mitch
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: McConnell and Donald Trump. We should all keep that in mind.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: The question then is, could Pelosi and Schumer have fought
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: harder to try to get some of this stuff in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: there to negotiate? And, you know, and who's to blame, right? Lovey,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you just said it passed the Senate, but It passed
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the Senate with by a wide bipartisan margin. So the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats do bear some responsibility. Absolutely. And Chuck Schumer
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: does bear like a lot of the lot of this
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: is focused on Nancy Pelosi. Like Nancy Pelosi had to
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: turn to her caucus after Chuck Schumer decided to go
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: along with the Senate bill and a ton. of Senate
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Democrats went along with it as well.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: That's my point. That's my point.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I'm saying it's not just McConnell.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: No, of course not. It's what came out of the
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Senate and was handed to Nancy Pelosi. And it's hard
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: to look at this and view it as a problem
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: that took place in the House when so many Democrats...
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: went along with what happened.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: In the Senate. Now, where it gets to Pelosi is
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the Senate sends over the bill. And the original plan
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was for Pelosi to attach all those protections onto the
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Senate bill. And then you send it back and then
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: you negotiate before it goes to the White House. She
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: intended to do this. She wanted to do this. And
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: then a bunch of blue dog Democrats in the problem
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: solvers caucus said, no, we're nearing the break. We are
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: not going to get this stuff in any way because
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: McConnell's never going to allow it and Trump's never going
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to allow it. So let's just vote on the clean
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Senate vote.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: And reportedly they were worried about being seen as cutting
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: ICE funding, which is surprising.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: This is super important because, Lovett, you said, I don't
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: think anyone disagrees on policy grounds. On the protections that
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Tommy mentions, that's true. But there's a bunch of moderates
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: in the House that said, okay, some of the liberals
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: want to include a provision that literally cuts ICE funding by,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, tens of billions of dollars. And We
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: are not going to sign on to cutting ICE funding
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: because we think that could be used as a cudgel
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: against us in our elections. So while everyone was for
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the protections and bond policy, there was this policy disagreement
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: over ICE funding.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: They didn't want the fight. Part of the House didn't
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: want the fight over the parts where Democrats don't agree.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Democrats agree on the treatment along the border where the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: attention has been drawn, where Democrats didn't want the fight.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: is on the issues ancillary to them.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a suggestion that moderate Democrats in both
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: the House and the Senate wanted to do something before
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: the July 4th recess where they go home and they
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: see tons of constituents and might get asked about this, etc.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that's true. I haven't talked to them,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: but you hear that often.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Here's what I think about this. Like, I agree that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it's very unlikely that Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump would
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: have allowed even some of these protections into the bill.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But you don't know if you don't try.
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think, you know, we always used to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: have a saying in the White House, get caught trying, right? Like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: they could have, I know the July 4th break was coming,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: but imagine a scenario where the House Democrats and the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats stood together and said, we are not going
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: to leave here until there are the most basic protections
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: in this bill, the things that Tommy just talked about, right?
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Health and safety standards, making sure that these kids are actually,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: that we follow the law. and that these kids are
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: transferred after a certain amount of time, making sure they
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: have enough beds, making sure they have toothbrushes, making sure
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that members of Congress can visit these things. Those are
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: very popular. I guarantee you those are not swing district issues.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: Those are very popular. Those are not complicated message events either.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: You can explain to someone that a kid needs a toothbrush.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And maybe you lose anyway, and I have to say
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: there's a good likelihood they would have lost, but imagine
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: if There were scenes of these House Democrats and Senate
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Democrats staying in Washington over the break, holding these events,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: making a big deal out of this. I don't know.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, the thing that I find hard to parse
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: is I think it's similar sometimes to critiques on the media.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Sometimes Nancy Pelosi is takes the criticism not for the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: positions she holds, but for understanding the positions for members. Right.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And so I don't know exactly what happens if Democrats
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: pick that fight when the bill has passed the Senate
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: with so many Democratic votes and she doesn't have unity
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: inside of the caucus.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Well, this is an important point in that there's so
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: much focus on Nancy Pelosi. I saw a piece, it's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: not just enough to oppose Trump, you have to oppose
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Pelosi too now because she's fighting against the interests of
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the party. It's a lot overdone, okay? Because it's not
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: just Nancy Pelosi. It's Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, a bunch
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of Senate Democrats, and they're not just like blue dog
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Democrats in the House. There's a lot of Democrats in
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the House that we all know and love who we
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: just voted for in 18, who were new young members.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: It's not just the old ones. I was looking at
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: the list of the people who ended up voting in
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: favor of the bill. Lauren Underwood, Antonio Delgado, Katie Porter,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: some of these people that we really like. They're all
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: involved in this.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: And I sort of think that's the point Pelosi was
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: trying to make to Maureen Dowd.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Maybe we get to that.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, I haven't read a transcript of the Maureen
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: Dowd interview, but I have staffed some of them. I
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: have been the victim of some of her columns. She
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: is a master of doing this. She can find ways
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: to get you to speak a little more loosely, ways
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: to set up a question, way to excerpt a quote,
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: and then a controversy is born. That said, the phrasing
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: from Pelosi seemed very condescending and dismissive, and it's not
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: the first time that she's talked about some of these
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: freshman lawmakers in this way, and it would have pissed
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: me off.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: I mean... you know, she talked about the.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Green dream when she met the Green New Deal, right?
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: She's a little too eager to kind of brush them off.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: But I do think that Nancy Pelosi's worldview is entirely
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: through the lens of how many votes you got, right?
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: You telling me you got a bunch of tweets and
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: four votes? Get the fuck out of here. Like, that's
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: kind of her point.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And so I'm not defending that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying that's the right way to view the world,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: but it's like brass knuckle politics. And it's kind of
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: why we also love Pelosi at times because she kicked
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: the shit out of president Trump on some fights because
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: through on these same grounds.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: There was a very legitimate, easy answer for Nancy Pelosi
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: to give Maureen Dowd as Maureen Dowd was egging her
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: on to cause trouble, which.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Was, I'm out of town that morning.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: No, that's number one.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: She should have never sat, never sat to sit down
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: with Maureen Dowd in the first place. This is not
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: to say anything against Maureen Dowd.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: She's too good.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Maureen Dowd's job is to get you to say something controversial,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: so she writes a column that's controversial. That's her job.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: She's very good at it. Nancy Pelosi's job is to
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: not give her that stuff, is to not do that.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, when asked about this, could have very easily said,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you know, we disagreed on this one. They had their views.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: They didn't persuade enough people to go along with them,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: so they didn't have the vote, so we had to
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: move in another direction, but I respect them and I
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: respect their views. That's it. And you have the disagreement
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and some people would have still been annoyed with her,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: but I don't think she would have gotten all this
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: shit and she shouldn't have gotten all, you know, and she,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and she wouldn't have deserved to get in all this shit.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Like we are in a environment right now where every word,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: every one of these Democrats, whether you're running for president,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: whether you're in Congress, everything they say could like screw
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: up another fucking news cycle on the way until from
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: now until 2020. Like we have to exhibit some message
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: discipline as a party and, from now until the election
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: because every fucking day counts. And Nancy Pelosi is just
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: too smart to let herself slip like that.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: I do think it's just a weird pattern of her
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: being dismissive of these new members. And it would be
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: much smarter of her to recognize the fact that she's
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: got some rock stars in this caucus and bring them
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: into leadership, bring them into the tent, try to find
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: a better way to work with them, and.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Harness the tools that they've built. Don't mock getting retweets. Right?
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: It's a primary way that we communicate. The President of
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: the United States communicates primarily through social media, so we
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: should do that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think what's important to realize here is
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Pelosi was the one who screwed up by making it
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: personal in that column. And the person who handled it
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: in a much more adult way was AOC in her
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: responses because she made it about the fight and the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: substance and she did not take a personal shot at
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi in response, which I think you know, says
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: a lot about her.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: It also wasn't the only weird thing in the column. Like,
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: the term self-impeachment, that was ill-considered.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I know Brian Boiler was... It drove him completely nuts.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I've been tweeting about it.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: David Ensign, why? Impeachment.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: And then the response to the Eugene Carroll rape allegation
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: against the president. I just thought it was an odd,
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: tonally off way to deal with the fact the president
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: of the United States was accused of rape.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: That's not a thing we blow past.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a fact, which is we Democrats do not
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: have the power to impeach and convict the president. We
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: do not have the power to force better standards at
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: these facilities right now. We control the House. We do
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: not control the Senate. We do not control the presidency.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: That is a fact, right? And so the question is,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: when you know that you don't have the power to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: do these things, what does the fight look like and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: how hard should you fight? And my argument on impeachment
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: has been it's more of a media play and a
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: message war play than it is about, you know, doing
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the morally right thing or convicting him, right? It's about
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: grabbing the megaphone away from Donald Trump. And similarly, I
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: think if they had fought over this border bill, it's
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: not about will they get the bill that they want.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It's about Democrats who voted, who put these people in
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: power saying, you know what? They fought really hard. They
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: lost the fight because McConnell and Trump are still there,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: but These people are fighting for me, and they are
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: fighting for this country, and I feel pretty good about that. And,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't matter as much as having power,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: but it matters because that might be how you get power.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And it's also, I think going back to the E.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Jean Carroll point, too, I think what some of the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: new members have been pushing against is a kind of
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: learned helplessness. There's choosing your battles, and then it's deciding that, well,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: you know, because he'll get away with this, best not
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: to fight. But, of course, because you're not fighting, you
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: make it easier to get away with it.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: You guarantee it.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: You guarantee it.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: You guarantee it.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: It's frustrating. It's frustrating.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: And none of these are easy questions because ultimately, you know,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: you can't fight every fight all the way to the end.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And you, you know, Donald Trump has been accused of
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: a serious, I mean, look at what we're talking about
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: at once. We were talking about the president of the
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: United States being accused of a rape. And we were
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: talking about human rights abuses against children at the border
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: of our country. And we need to fight on all fronts.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And it's hard and it's hard and it's hard to
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: know where you'll strike a blow and win and where
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: you'll have wasted time that you could have used to
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: fight on some other front. These are incredibly difficult questions
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: at a time in which what we have is one
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: branch of of the one half of one branch of
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the government.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's what we said with impeachment. You
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: either believe that we are in a national emergency and
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: you act like it, or you don't say things like that. Yeah.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about 2020. According to a new
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: poll from the Washington Post and ABC News, President Trump
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: is currently receiving the highest approval ratings of his entire presidency.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Among registered voters, 47% say they approve of Trump, while
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: 50% disapprove. In April, his approval was at 42%, with
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a disapproval of 54%. Again, this is registered voters. Trump
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: is basically running even when matched up against Warren, Harris, Sanders,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and Buttigieg, while he trails Joe Biden 53 to 43.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Biden's lead over Trump is due to a seven-point edge
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: among independents. While the other Democrats are even or trailing
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: with this group, he also has a 28-point edge with moderates,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and the other Democrats have a much smaller advantage among moderates.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: The poll was taken in the days following the first
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: two Democratic primary debates. So with all the usual polling
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: caveats in place, snapshot in time, just one poll, blah, blah, blah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: how alarmed are you by these numbers? Tommy, you want
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to start? I'm alarmed.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I'm alarmed every day.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Because I think that we all just need to realize
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: that despite the news cycle.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: The latest poll, or what's going to happen, that most
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: presidents are reelected.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: And that there's actually a lot of structural advantages for
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump that we don't talk about every day.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Like fundraising, right? He just raised, what, $ 105 million?
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: So regardless of what this poll says, regardless of.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: What a poll says in two months after he had
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: a bad news cycle, we have to realize that we
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: have to get our shit together as a party. We
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: have to have a nominee that's not too banged up,
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: that comes out strong. And that we have to work
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: twice as hard as we did in 2016 if we
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: want to beat him. There's no guarantee. We think he's
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: the worst president in the world. Half the country doesn't.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: It's a fight for the middle. It's a fight for turnout.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's going to be a rinse repeat
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: for me.
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: It's one poll. And it's terrifying. It's a terrifying poll.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It's a poll that says Donald Trump is very much
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: in sight of being reelected president despite... how much energy
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: we have, despite how terrible a president he is, that
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: he can be reelected and we should be terrified of that.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And one thing I would look at this poll and
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: think about is, what has the news been like? What
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: have we been talking about? What have our debates been
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: over the last several weeks and months that would lead
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: for him to see an uptick in his approval, right?
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: And to me, what I see is a kind of twilight,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: endless conversation amongst Democrats about whether or not to impeach him,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: this kind of semi-process, semi-impeach situation in which we're not
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: talking about healthcare very much, we're not talking about policy
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: very much, we're talking about Trump, and we're talking about
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: whether or not it's the right thing to do to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: impeach Donald Trump. And when I look at that, I
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: think we've got to find a way out of this
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: kind of a conversation. And I think that now there's
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: a debate, I think, to be had as to whether
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: or not it's through impeachment or just putting impeachment aside.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: My argument would be we've got to do the impeachment
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: thing or this will be hanging over us until the
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: end of the election, and we have to make our
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: case and put it out there because the kind of
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: stalemate we're in right now is one in which we're
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: not talking about anything at all.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I slightly disagree only because this poll was in the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: field immediately following the Democratic debate. So what we were
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: talking about, we actually haven't been talking about impeachment in
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a couple weeks now. What we were talking about when
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: this poll was in the field was what happened in
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the Democratic debate, the positions the Democrats took. We saw
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: this in 2016, we saw this in 2018, when The
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: news cycle is about Donald Trump and Donald Trump being
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: awful and Donald Trump doing something awful. He actually does
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: do a little worse when it's about the Democratic Party,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Democratic infighting his opponent, whether it was about Hillary Clinton,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: then he tends to do a little better. If he
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: recedes into the background a little bit, he tends to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: do a little bit better in this poll.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: When people are just left with the daily experience where
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: how bad could he be? My life is pretty normal.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Well, and so that's a key stat in this poll.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: 65% say that Trump has acted unpresidential, unfit for office,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But majority gives him credit
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: for the economy. So the question is, if you have
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people who are like, yeah, we're used
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: to his awful behavior. We feel like the economy is okay.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Then what are you left with? I mean, the other
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: thing I think we really have to dig into in
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: this poll is Joe Biden leading by 10 points among
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: registered voters when matched up against Donald Trump. And both
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: of them have very high name IDs, so that's a
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: number you can really take to the bank, or at
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: least one that's real because it's been repeated in multiple
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: polls over time now. And you can look at the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: other candidates, and for sure on some you can say, okay,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: their name ID is a little lower than Joe Biden,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: so give him more time to get known and that
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: number could close. Bernie Sanders, you can't say as much
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: because his name ID is nearly universally known, but he
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: trails Biden in that matchup. And so then the question is,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: who are these people out there who, when it's Joe Biden,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: say they're going to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: When it's not, say they're going to vote for Donald
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Trump or say that they're undecided. That's not to say it's,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: you know, these people have a certain ideology, that they're
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: more moderate, that they're more this and that. We don't
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: know any of this yet. But there's something, there's something
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: about that that should at least give us pause and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: make us think.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: I do think, though, that Joe Biden has more than
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: just name I.D., And if he and Bernie had 100%
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: name ID, he still has been able to tell a
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: story about himself for the past eight years. It is
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: far bigger that is about his values and vision and
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: an association with Barack Obama that is going to be
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: hard to wear off. Whoever we nominate is going to
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: get the shit kicked out of them by the Republicans
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: and the RNC, and they'll try to define them as
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: the worst thing they can think of. But that person
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: will also have a convention and TV ads and more
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: debates and a chance to tell a story about him
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: or herself that hopefully will counteract the kind of thing
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: you're talking about.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: It is undeniable.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: That as of today, before any votes have been cast
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: or caucus goers caucused, that Biden has an advantage.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would just say there is a consensus
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: among opinion havers on Twitter and some on the left
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: that Democrats do not need to win moderate voters, go
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: after moderate voters, go after independent voters. Independent is tough
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: because you could be independent for reasons that aren't ideological. Um,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: but that we don't need those voters at all. We
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: need to do is there's a whole bunch of voters,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: 4 million Obama voters who stayed home in 2016 and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: they're younger and they're more likely to be people of
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: color and they're more likely to have more liberal values.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: And if we just, you know, are progressive enough, we
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: can bring all these non voters in and we can
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: win that way. And, um, We don't know that that's
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: definitely true. We've been saying it's not either or, it's
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: both and. A Democratic nominee has to be able to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: appeal to moderate voters, to independent voters, to swing voters,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and they have to be able to excite the base
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party at the same time. You have
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to be able to do both. And I think to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: completely dismiss this idea that we don't have to worry
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: about folks in the middle at all, it flies in
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the face of a whole bunch of evidence.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would also say, put aside... candidates that
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: you want.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Right. Exactly.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Put as like candidates you want. Just think about the argument.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Use this as a way to come to kind of
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: to think about what argument is playing out for a
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: lot of people.
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to debate if you just should get new
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: voters versus independent voters or moderate voters, suburban voters, whatever
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: you want to call them. Let's think about what it
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: means that there are these people out there that are
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: willing to vote for Trump, but who might be more
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: likely right now based on being asked to vote for Biden,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: whether it lasts, whether or not. And to me, what
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: I hear when I think that is that Biden is safe.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: You know what you get with Joe Biden, right? You
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: get a kind of you get you get something you're
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: quite comfortable with, familiar with the years that we had
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: before Donald Trump was president. I've said this before, but
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I always think it's worth coming back. Like we talk
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: about you're listening to this. You are you are in
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: the fight. You know why Donald Trump is unfit. You
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: are fully aware every day of the machinations and malevolence
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: and incompetence and chaos and cruelty and racism of his administration.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: But there's an implicit promise Donald Trump is offering to
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of people who aren't paying attention as closely,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: which is, yeah, I'm a dick, and I'm a liar,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: and I'm kind of racist, and I say some shit
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: you hate, some stuff that makes you uncomfortable, maybe some
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: stuff you secretly agree with but you know is maybe
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: not totally on the level. But how bad am I really?
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: How bad could things be when the economy is doing fine,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: you have a job, your community looks the same, I'm
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: not chaos, I'm not crazy, everything is fine.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or... I am pretty bad, but what do you care?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Not hurting your life.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Not hurting you. All right. And, you know, all this
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: crazy talk about how evil I am, corrupt I am, Russia,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: all the rest. It's all a big show for the cameras.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: It's all a big DC thing that doesn't really affect you.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Think about your day-to-day experience. How bad am I really?
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Do you really want to mess with what's going on
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: with the economy doing well? You really want to fuck
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: things up? I don't think so. Don't take a chance
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: on these crazy people. Don't listen to them when they
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: say how terrible I am. It's all a big show.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: I'm fine.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: You're fine. Stay with what's working.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: There's two and there's and there's two ways to handle that.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: One is to have a greater focus on just how
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: bad and dangerous and unstable Donald Trump is and what
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: he might do if he is elected another four years,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: which is another argument for, um you know having a
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: bunch of impeachment hearings that focus on his crimes and
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: misdeeds it's also a focus on just you know every
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: time it every time a foreign policy disaster happens i
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: think to myself that's an opportunity for people to say
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: donald trump's elected for another four years really awful things
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: could happen so there's upping the stakes in the election
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and And then there's doing what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Sanders are doing, which is make a larger structural argument about, yeah,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: maybe the economy's fine on the surface, the numbers, but
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: below that, people are having a really hard.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Time in this country.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: And the news is not paying attention to all the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: people who are really struggling. And I think that doing
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: both of those things is really important for Democrats.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: I do think the third piece of that, too, though,
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: is a policy argument, I think probably around health care,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: some other issues that say, look at what he's going
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: to do if he wins re-election. If you give him
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the mandate, he's going to come for your health care.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: He's going to continue to tilt the tax code against you.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: He's going to fuck with the things that you rely
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: on in your day-to-day life. I think that has to
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: be a big part of this, because I think that
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: works for both the kind of people who don't want
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: to rock the boat, who are afraid of losing their
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: health care, and are afraid of Donald Trump's policies on
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: health care, and for those who are part.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Of the Democratic base. All right, let's talk about some
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of these candidates. Joe Biden spent his 4th of July
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: trying to right the ship after a tough debate. In
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: a speech in South Carolina this weekend, Biden apologized for
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Fondly recalling his work with segregationist senators, quote, was I
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: wrong a few weeks ago to somehow give the impression
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: to people that I was praising those men who I
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: successfully opposed time and again? Yes, I was. I regret it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry for any of the pain and misconception I
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: may have caused anybody. Biden also said, quote, I'm not
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the same person I was as a 29-year-old elected to
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the Senate. America has changed and I have too. And
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: then pre-butted other potential attacks on his past votes for
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the Iraq war, the bankruptcy bill and the crime bill. Tommy,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: what do you think Biden was trying to do here
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and do you think it was effective?
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: The speech was interesting.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think like on its face, he was
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: trying to set the record straight in his opinion about
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: his record on civil rights and race. And I don't
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: I can't judge from here whether it worked or not.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: We'll see.
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: But I think what was odd about the speech is
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: he goes on to try to defend a bunch of other.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Policies that he was criticized for.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: For example, he talked about an Iraq war vote again
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: and said, yeah, I voted for the Iraq war. But
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: then Obama told me to be the guy to manage
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: the process to wind it down. And I thought that
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: it was strange to hear these other unrelated issues in
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: the speech. And then I still don't think that Iraq
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: answer is particularly effective. I think the challenge for Biden
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: is that what hurt him in that moment was not
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: necessarily a debate about busing policy or a debate about race.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: It was that he looked like he got his clock
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: cleaned on the debate stage. And I think that's why
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: you've seen Kamala Harris jump up in the polls is
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: because she looked poised and smart and effective and like
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: a prosecutor that could take down Donald Trump. Right. So like,
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: A lot of this is performance art, as much as
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: we all wish it were not. We will see if
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: Biden's numbers with African-American voters continue to go.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Down or go down at all. I don't know yet.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: But, you know, I think, look, big picture, I'm glad
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: he seems to have internalized the criticism and knows that
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: it wasn't just bad faith political attacks, that there were
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: some people who over many years have been genuinely hurt
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: by a weird relationship with Strom Thurmond or conversations about
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: segregationists as if they were just kind of okay guys
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: you had to work with. That bothered a lot of people,
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: and that night wasn't the first time we had heard
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: this having worked with Biden.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and look, I totally agree with that, and it
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: showed me that he has a team around him that
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: knows what the right message is, that knows when you
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: should apologize, that knows what you should say and what
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't say, and that this is about him internalizing
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: it because... if he had said some of these things
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: on the debate stage, he would not have had the
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks that he had. And I, again, knowing
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: his team, knowing people like Ron Klain and Anita Dunn,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: who prepped him, I am sure they had a lot
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of these exact lines from the speech in debate prep
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: ready to go, and he couldn't execute. And there's been
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: sort of a slowness from the Biden campaign in general
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: to sort of like correct these things as they go wrong.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And You have to be unbelievably nimble and quick in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: this environment, especially when we get to a general election
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: against Donald Trump. It's not just about performance. It's about
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: reacting on stage in a debate or having your team
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: be able to put out a response to some controversy
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: within a couple minutes and not having it go through
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: a committee of 50 people and all that bullshit. You
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: have to be fast.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: I think that what, to me, happened over the weekend
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: is Joe Biden entered the primary a bit. Uh, you know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: there was a quality of, it's a little bit like,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: you know, he's got these, he's got his, he's got
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: this great team about him, but he's like, you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: he's sitting on the couch and he's eating Cheetos and
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: he got to train. This is going to be like
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: a pretty big fight.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: We got to like lace up and like put the
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: gloves on and do some sparring and get ready for
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: the fight. And he's like, I'm fine. Like I've been
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: doing this a really long time and these guys can't,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: they're not going to land a punch on me.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm Joe Biden. I'm going to be fine.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: He's, you know, moves over to the pork rinds, relaxes,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: puts on a little bit of weight, puts the gloves on,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: goes out for the debate, gets ready to take, throw
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: some punches, thinks it's going to be a great time.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And just by the end of it, it's just fucking
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: crawling off the debate stage, bloodied and battered, gets down
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: to South Carolina and barely get on his feet. So
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: I think what we have now is somebody who's like, okay, this.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Is a real fight.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I got to train. I got to get up.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I got to say the things I'm supposed to say.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: I take this seriously. I'm not going to be handed
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: this thing. It's going to be, it's going to require
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: genuine learning and being live and not just trying to
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: kind of eke out a victory here, but actually do
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: the work and try to win.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's basically got a two-pronged strategy here now, which is, one,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: he wants to make every debate about the future, because
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want to talk about all the past weird stuff.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: And if people do want to talk about the past,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: he had a line in the speech, it's as if
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: my opponents want you to believe I served from 1972
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: until 2008 and then took a hiatus for the next
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: eight years. They don't want to talk about my time
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: as Vice President of the United States. And then he
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: said of Obama, quote, he selected me. I'll take his
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: judgment about my record, my character, my ability to handle
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: the job over anyone else's. which is a pretty powerful
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: line and one that I imagine a lot of people who,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you know, Barack Obama has a 96% approval rating among
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Democrats will think to themselves, yeah, Obama did pick him.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: It's certainly less complicated than understanding du jour versus local bus.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: It is high level and can be used rinse-repeat. We'll
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: see if he'll be able to shield himself from other
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: attacks with it, but I thought in the speech it
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: was an effective line.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Now, there's also, we should point out that It's not
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: a guarantee that even in a debate about the future,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: he can avoid stepping in it. You know, he was
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: asked about, would you consider appointing Merrick Garland again as
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice? And he said, sure, I'd consider it.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: You know, the headlines made it to be like he
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: proposed Merrick Garland, you know, but he did say, sure,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I'd consider it. And you have to think to yourself, OK,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: in the political environment where the next Democratic president comes around,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Is he going to appoint a 66-year-old moderate Merrick Garland
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: if she or he has a Supreme Court appointment?
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: No.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: You say, I'm going to put AOC through law school
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: and get that 31-year-old on the fucking court.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Doesn't even have to be going.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Through law school.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't need law school.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: As Dan Pfeiffer said, yeah, you run the Harvard Law
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: 10 case, you win and name that person.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, Joe Biden has to do what
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: every candidate does when they want to kind of make
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: a moment for themselves, attack Beto O'Rourke.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny, but next debate, the lesson that these
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: candidates learned from the first debate, and more so than
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the Beto Castro thing, the Kamala Biden thing, is... Just
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: go after someone. Yeah.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: No, it's you got to walk into that.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: And that's a moment. Well, I don't know is the
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: it's a good short term incentive in the primary. It
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: worries me longer term about the party.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Mixing it up.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: But it's funny. It is an interesting question, right? Because
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Biden can't go on the stage now and be like, hey,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Kamala Harris, I'm back, you know, and I've.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Learned some new moves. Jerk store call.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: But he's got to go after somebody. And, you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I just it depends on that draw. Who could it be?
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe it'll be Dom Steyer.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Well, it's good that CNN's holding a live drawing like
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: it's the fucking draft in July for the next two debates.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: They're going to do a live drawing.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: I did not know that.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: That's ridiculous. It's classic. It's transparent.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: So finally, the New York Times published a piece on
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Sunday about how Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have challenged
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the frontrunner status of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: about how Harris and Warren's campaigns are viewing each other.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I thought that was the interesting part of this piece.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: It notes that Warren's camp wonders whether Harris can, quote,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: sustain the energy she has generated with set piece moments
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: like her takedown of Mr. Biden. And Harris's advisers are, quote,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: convinced that Ms. Warren will ultimately suffer for her fixation
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: on her policy agenda and relative lack of interest in
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: going after Mr. Trump directly. And it also says, well,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: they have distinct political bases.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Ms.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Warren and Ms. Harris are both relying on the support
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: of women and educated liberals to propel their candidacies. That
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: strategy also means they are dividing up powerful constituencies that could,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: in theory, make one of them a dominant figure.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: One's messy, one's neat.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: Terrible.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: But yet, as roommates, they make it work. They complement
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: each other.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: What do you make of the assessments of each camp
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: of the other camp?
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, eye-rolling spin.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: Like, whatever gets you through the call with Jonathan Martin
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: or whoever wrote the piece.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Here's what I'd say.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I'd say our strengths are our strengths, and her strengths
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: are her weaknesses.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: That's so weird.
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, here's some relevant data that we do know.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: Warren just raised $ 19 million this quarter, which is pretty
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: astounding given the limitations she's put on herself in terms
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: of fundraising.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Kamala Harris raised $ 12 million.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: We'll see if that number gets a continued boost from
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: the afterglow of the debates.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Look, I don't know. We don't know anything yet. I mean,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: they're shadowboxing each other.
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: I do think that Warren has really built an amazing
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: operation in Iowa and is in. fully in the state
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: early on. Kamala seems to be piling in a little
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: bit later, knowing that you will need to do well
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: there probably to keep going in the process. So I
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: wonder if that wouldn't give Warren a bit of a
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: political advantage, but we'll see.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I think there is some truth to the assessments of
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: the other campaign, just from what I've seen before I
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: read that, which is that, again, Kamala Harris has done
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: particularly well during the set piece moments, her announcement every
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: time she's in Congress questioning someone at a debate. And
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: we have said many times here that what has been
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: missing is more of a cogent rationale for a candidacy
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: that wraps it all up, which is something that Elizabeth
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Warren has in spades and the, on the Warren front,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I do think fixation on a policy agenda is ridiculous. Like,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Oh no, she's, she just cares about her policies and
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: plans too much. That's, that's going to really trip her up.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: But I do think this, the, um, the reluctance to
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: go directly after Trump, you know, Warren had this, this moment,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I think in 2017 where she was in sort of
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: during the Clinton camp at the 2016 race where she
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: was going toted to with Trump all the time and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: sort of sucked into the vortex. And I don't think
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: that worked for her very well. She may have now
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: overcorrected to the point where, I mean, we all had
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: this reaction watching the debate with Kamala and Biden. It
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the substance of what Kamala was taking on.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: It was, oh, I'm watching Kamala Harris on stage and
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I could see her go after Trump like that because
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: she's not afraid to mix it up and she's a
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: fighter and stuff like that. And Warren, her message and
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the way she is could be a message for 2016,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: for 2012, like it's this larger structural debate about the economy,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: but you might, You might have to bring Trump into
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: it a little bit, I think, to sort of round
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: it out and to show people I can go after
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: this asshole and I can do this.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. The quotes directed at each other gives
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: each of them a set of marching orders to try
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: to flesh out their candidacy. Elizabeth Warren people, they know
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: they trust her on policy. They know she's really smart.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: They want to know if she can win. And that's
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: going to take set piece moments where you pick fights,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: throw punches in the debate, what have you, that shows
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: that she's tough, she'll fight, and she can win the fight.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Well, look, a good, healthy primary makes the ultimate nominee
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: better because that nominee sees the other strengths of the
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: other candidates and starts, you know, improving. I mean, so
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: it could work, you know.
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I guess as Warren is seeing a bunch of
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: data in early states that says voters want to hear
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: what you're going to do for them.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: They don't want to hear about Trump all the time.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: They're sick of that.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: And so I think that her strategy is smart and right.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: And I don't think she needs to focus on Trump necessarily.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: And I still think you can conduct that kind of
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: strategy while mixing it up at debates with your opponents
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: and looking tough. Because we all think Kamala Harris could
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: kick Trump's ass now because she was really tough on Biden.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Right. She turned Biden into an avatar for Trump. Warren
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: can do that on the debate stage. She can do
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: that in another fight. She can do that with a
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: banker at a congressional committee.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be Trump.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Doesn't have to be Trump. But that's the... That's what
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: we learn from that Kamala fight.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, we will have Tommy's interview
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: with Warren Binford.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: On the line is Warren Binford.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: She's a law professor from Wilmette University and the director
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: of the school's clinical law program. She was among the
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: attorneys who recently inspected the detention center in Clint, Texas,
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: that you've been hearing a lot about. Professor Binford, thank
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: you so much for joining the show.
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: So as I sensed in the intro, you were with
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: a group of attorneys. You inspected the facility in Clint, Texas,
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: to make sure it was compliant with the Flores settlement.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: For those who haven't read the reporting based on what
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: you found, can you share what you saw and a
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: little bit about the Flores settlement and what you saw
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: was in compliance with the law?
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: Well, basically what we saw is that there were literally
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: hundreds of children who were being kept in inhumane conditions
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: for an extended period of time at a Border Patrol
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: facility outside of El Paso, Texas. These children ranged in
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: age from just a few months old to 18 years
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: of age. And what was shocking about this was that
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: we had no idea that this facility was even holding children,
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: let alone so many children and for such a long
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: period of time. And that so many of the children
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: who were there were so young. This facility was, it's
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: a fairly new facility. It's a smaller facility that's only
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: intended for 104 adult males. And basically, our first day there,
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: they told us that they had recently expanded the facility
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: and now had capacity for 600. But it wasn't really
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: clear to us where they would be keeping that many
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: children or adults. And they handed us a roster that
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: showed that there were 351 children then on site as
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: of that day. We later found out that they had
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: as many as 700 children on that site. And basically...
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: We asked for a tour of the facility. They refused
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: to give it to us. And so we asked them
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: to start bringing to us the youngest children. We saw
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: that there were a number of child mothers who were
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: also on the roster. And so we asked them to
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: bring the child mothers and their infants. And then we
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: also asked them to bring us the children who had
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: been at this facility the longest. And when they walked
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: in the conference room, about 20 minutes later, our breath
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: was taken away. These children were filthy dirty. They were
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: extremely just traumatized by what they had been experiencing. They
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: were very hungry. They were sleep-deprived. We had never seen
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: anything like it. We've been to a number of facilities
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: around the country. A number of people from our group
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: have been to many Border Patrol facilities. We've also been
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: to the Walmart and the... The Tenth City and such.
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: And so we've seen a lot, but this particular group
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: of children was so concerning that we actually went to
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: the press for the first time in over 20 years
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: of doing these visits. You asked me about the Flores settlement.
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: And basically what happened under Flores is that in the 1980s,
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: there were these two attorneys, Alice Boussier from the Youth
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: Law Center, who was a mentor of mine, and also
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: Carlos Holquin from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: who found out that at the time the INS, which
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: is the precursor to ICE, was keeping children in places
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: where they were basically holding them as bait and trying
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: to get the parents to come and claim their children
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: so that they then could arrest both the parents and
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: the children and deport them, the entire family. And the
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: children who were in these facilities were basically being locked
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: up behind razor wire. Girls were being subject to both...
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: body searches and vaginal searches. They were not being given
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: sufficient amounts of food. They were not being given access
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: to education. They also were being housed, you know, in
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: old dilapidated hotels and such with unrelated adults. And so
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: based upon what Carlos and Alice found, they brought a
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: class action suit on behalf of the children who were
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: in government custody and That suit was active for the
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: next 10 years approximately. It went up and down again.
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: Sometimes the courts would side with the children. Sometimes they
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: would side with the government until finally in the late 1990s,
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: the government and the florist attorneys on behalf of the
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: children came together and said, okay, let's agree that we
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: will feed the children in our care, that we will
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: provide them with the appropriate levels of care and custody.
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: that children should be provided, and this was interpreted as
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: feeding them, providing them with education, providing them with toothbrushes
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: and toothpaste. These are some of the details that have
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: come out over time, that the children should be given
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: access to soap. There's nothing really shocking about what the
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: government has promised to do. What's really shocking is that
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: here we are 20 years later after that Flores settlement,
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: and the current administration is saying things such as that
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: we're not convinced that we have an obligation to provide
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: children with soap. And as a result of those policies,
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: we've had at least six children die in the last
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: few months of Border Patrol custody. And children who are
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: in Border Patrol custody have died. And a lot of
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: those deaths appear to be related to the poor hygiene
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: and conditions that these children are being subjected to. They're
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: dying from deaths that you would expect to see in
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: a developing country, not among children who are in a
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: government facility in the United States of America.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, under the terms of the Flores settlement, I mean,
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: they should be, these kids should be held in places
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: that are safe and sanitary. They're supposed to be moved
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: into different longer term custody for after a short period
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: of time. I mean, it sounds like what you witnessed
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: was illegal, but is that accurate?
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, are they breaking the law?
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. Oh, they are breaking so many laws. And
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: I think that this is one of my greatest frustrations
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: with what I've witnessed is that, you know, we currently
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: have an administration who all the time is talking about,
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: we're just trying to enforce the law and we just
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: want everybody to follow the law. And yet, in what
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: I've witnessed, they're breaking the law more than anybody I know.
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: And you have to remember that first and foremost, that
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: the studies that have been done of this population of
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: children suggest that somewhere approximately 70% or higher the children
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: have valid legal claims to asylum in the United States
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: of America. And so when you have a credible fear
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: of persecution in your home country, you are legally allowed
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: to enter into another country without documentation for the purpose
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: of claiming asylum. And that's what the overwhelming majority of
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: children here are trying to do. And so they are
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: here lawfully, many of them. And so to suggest that
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: they're breaking the law and that because they're breaking the
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: law that there's allowed to be abused and neglected and
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: that the government is allowed to flout laws and break
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: those laws in its care and custody of the children
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: is quite absurd. There's a tremendous amount of hypocrisy to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: the point of it being lethal for these children, that
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: children are literally dying because this administration is breaking the law.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: And I want to push back on something that you
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: said earlier. where you talked about the children are supposed
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: to be moved into longer-term care facilities. They are actually not.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: They are supposed to be placed with their families in
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: the United States. The way that Flores is set up,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: the children are supposed to be placed with the parents
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: in the United States. If the parents aren't in the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: United States, then they're supposed to be placed with another
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: family member in the United States. If there's no other
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: family member living in the United States, the child is
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: supposed to be placed with another adult authorized by the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: parents not by the government, but by the parents to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: care for that child. And only if there's no parent,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: other family member, or other adult living in the United
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: States who can care for the child, only then is
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: the child supposed to be moved into a long-term care placement.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: And that's supposed to be in the least restrictive environment possible,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: which in American child welfare speak means foster care. So
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: 89% of the children currently in custody don't need to
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: be put into long-term care, you know, such as foster care.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: They can go to one of these other three categories
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: that the government's supposed to place them in, which is,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: you know, with their family or other potential guardians. And
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 5: the fact is that the current government appears to be
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: holding thousands of children hostage on a regular basis in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: order to achieve certain political objectives.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an important correction.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: I just meant that they're supposed to be moved out
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: of these god-awful temporary facilities as quickly as possible.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Question for you.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: In 72 hours, maximum.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: So a bunch of members of Congress just went down
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: to visit some different facilities in the region, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: And they said that they were treated incredibly disrespectfully by
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: officials on site.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: There was jeering.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: It seemed like they were mocking both the people being
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: held there and members of Congress seeking access. How was
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: your group treated? And what was your sense of the
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: individuals who are working in these facilities, who are seeing
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: the things you are seeing on a daily basis, seeing
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: things that reasonably, that horrified you and seemingly any other
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: reasonable person, but this is their workplace. What is the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: staff's response?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's mixed. You know, I tend to have
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: a positive view of people overall that, you know, I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: do believe in the inherent goodness of people. I do
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: think that sometimes good people can do bad things. And
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: I also think that there are bad actors. And there
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: is no doubt in my mind that in this facility,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: as well as every other facility where I have conducted,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: you know, a site visit, that there are bad actors,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: but I'm deeply concerned about several of the bad actors
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: at this facility. You know, that being said, we were
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: blocked access to the facility. You know, we were not
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: given a tour, and they have given a lot of
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: tours since then, including to pastors who have nothing to
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: do with Flores and, you know, nothing to do with
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: our team and nothing to do with Congress, and they
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: seem to have been placed there by Fox News. is
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: the only connection I can find. But in any event,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: you know, so they would not give us a tour
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: of the facility, and we later found out why, and
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: I'll tell you about that in a moment. They also
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: would not give us access to the significant number of
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 5: children who were being held in isolation at this facility.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: We repeatedly asked to meet with certain children and were
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: told that they weren't available to meet with us. Either
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: they've been transferred out or that they were in isolation
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: and they would not give us access. Also, there were
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: several children that we were deeply concerned about that were
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: severely neglected at this facility. And as we tried to
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: do follow-up visits with these children to make sure that
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: they were being given the care that they needed, we
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 5: were told that those children were no longer available to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: meet with because they had been, you know, transferred, which
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: hopefully they were transferred to a different place. But there
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: comes a point when you start to worry about what's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: really going on. You know, it sometimes happens that when
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: we try and meet with children, they're no longer there
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: the next day or, you know, whatever. You know, they're
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: supposed to be transferring the kids to ORR facilities. But
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: there were so many children that we asked for who
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: were on the roster that we were provided at 8 a.m.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: who were not available to meet with us at 9 a.m.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: or 9.30 a.m. that it seemed pretty suspicious. You know,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: at the same time that the process raised lots of questions,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: I do try and talk to employees in the hallways
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: and I try and talk to them. Yes, we're starting
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: our day and leaving at the end of the day.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: And I try and give people the benefit of it out.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: And in those conversations, I'll share with you that. they
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: expressed deep concern about the children being there, that they
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 5: did not think that children belonged there, that they expressly
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: told me that they were on our side, that they
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 5: wanted us to be successful, that they wanted the children
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: transferred out of these facilities. You've got to remember that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: these facilities literally have cells. The roster that we were
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: given on Thursday included the children's cell assignments, and that's
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: how they're referred to. They are referred to as being
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: in cell 304. Children were literally being warehoused, and this
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: is what I told you that I'd get back to.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: You know, we asked the, although the agent in charge
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: would not give us a tour of the facility, we
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: did talk to some of the Border Patrol agents, and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: they did confirm, and other employees, and they did confirm
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: that there were children being kept in a warehouse there.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: And it was only, we discovered that warehouse only ourselves
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: after hours on Monday when we were trying to figure
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: out where they were keeping these hundreds of children because
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: they clearly weren't keeping them in the main building. That
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: building only had capacity for about 100 detainees. And when
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: we drove around the outside of the facility, we saw
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: this metal warehouse that was just flimsy and cheap and
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: didn't really have any windows or anything. And we couldn't
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: find any other place that they possibly could be keeping
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: the children. And we then drove around a side road
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: And we saw that there was a line of porta-potties
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: next to this warehouse. And it all of a sudden
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: dawned on us that, my God, they are warehousing children.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: The United States government is literally warehousing children. And if
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: that's the only expansion that they had referred to that morning,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: then that meant that they had to be keeping hundreds
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: of kids in that warehouse. And, in fact, we talked
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: to a child later on who said that there were
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 5: currently 100 children there But then when he first arrived,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: there were 300 children in that warehouse. And we talked
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: to some agents the next day, and they confirmed that
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: there were children being kept in that warehouse. And although
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: it was initially denied, when we went to the media,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: it's since been confirmed that, you know, there have been
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: hundreds of children who have been kept in a windowless
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: warehouse in the middle of the Texas desert.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: My God.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, so if we had a normal president, he
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: or she would hear your story, read about these conditions.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: presumably be just offended and mortified on a human level
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: and then take action because of fear of potential political fallout.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: But that feedback loop seems to be broken in this
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: White House because they view cruelty as part of their
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: policy objective. So for people listening, I mean, what tools
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: are available to us as citizens to push for changes,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: knowing that this administration so far has refused to listen?
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: Well, you have to remember that this administration hasn't always
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: refused to listen. That what gives me hope is that
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: when the American public found out about the separated child
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: policy last spring, that they literally marched in the streets,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: that they contacted the White House, they contacted their members
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: of Congress, that they You know, we met outside these
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 5: facilities that the people, the contractors who were being hired
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: to do this work, such as the Baptist Child and
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 5: Family Services, which was running the Torneo 10th City, they
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: refused to renew the contract when they found out that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: their services were being used. used to carry out a
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: policy that was immoral and hurtful. And I think that
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: all of those things are available to us now, that
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: when the public responded so passionately and so resolutely and said, no,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: we are not tearing babies from their parents' arms, that
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: the president for the first and only time that I
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: can recall during his presidency went to the public and
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: announced that he was going to end the child separation policy.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: And I do think that we have the ability to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: persuade him that these policies are a mistake and that
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: we need to change them. But I think that we
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: have to be resolute in standing up for these children
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: and not just for these children, but if you want
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: to look at it from a self-interested way, standing up
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: for our own humanity as a nation. Any country that
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: is willing to tolerate what is essentially the abuse, the neglect,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: the torture of innocent children cannot survive. You have lost
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: your spiritual integrity at that point, and we will fall
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: as a nation unless we reject these practices and through
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: how we vote, through the assemblies that we undertake, the
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: speech that we speak out. I mean, I think that
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: every person in this country should be trying to amplify
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: these children's voices. We have dozens of declarations from these
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: kids publicly available that people can quote from. There should
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: be artwork. People should be renting billboards and putting these
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: children's quotes about being hit by guards, being grabbed by guards, having,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: you know, being... They had to put a diaper on
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 5: a six-year-old. An older brother had to put a diaper
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 5: on a six-year-old brother because they won't let the children
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: go to the bathroom at night. I think that people
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 5: should be looking at the declarations and creating plays about them,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 5: theatrical performances that celebrities should be reading from these declarations
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: and going on social media and reading what these kids
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: describe as the way that they're being treated. They're not
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: being fed adequately. They're being sleep deprived. They're being made
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 5: to sleep on concrete floors, cement blocks. They're sometimes sleeping
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: six kids to a mat. I mean, it's just absolutely insane,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: the Lord of the Flies scenario that's being created. So
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: I think that the I think the public needs to
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: organize and continue to speak out. And I think they
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: need to put a lot of pressure on both Congress
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: and the White House to end these practices.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: Agreed and amen to that.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: Well, Professor, thank you so much for the work you're
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: doing to support these kids, to bring these stories to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: light and for talking to me today. It is truly
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: one of the worst things I have ever read about
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: or heard about in all the Trump era.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: But thank you for everything you're doing.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: Well, thank you for letting me tell the American public
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 5: what's happening to these children.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: Well, I hope we'll check back in when there's better
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: news about progress that's been made.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: I hope so, too. You take care.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Warren Binford for joining us today, and we
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: will talk to you later this week.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: Bye. Bye.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Bye.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: Bye.