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“Trump Mini-Me’s and Wannabe’s.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Democrats have an eye on the midterms
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as they prepare to pass most of Joe Biden's agenda
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in one giant bill, while Republicans seem to believe that
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: their path to victory runs right through Donald Trump. Then
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The Atlantic's Adam Serwer is here to talk to Dan
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: about his new book, The Cruelty is the Point. But first,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: don't miss this week's Hysteria, where Aaron and Alyssa are
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: joined by Tien Tran and Julissa Arce to discuss this
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: year's controversy-ridden Olympic Games, the IOC's problematic rules, and how
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: we can continue to support our favorite athletes. And check
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: out this week's episode of Keep It, where Black Widow
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: star David Harbour stops to talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: mentoring the Stranger Things kids, and even his relationship with
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: singer Lily Allen. Big shows this week. Big shows.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. Because we love you, we
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: are not going to depress you with another conversation about
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Joe Manchin and the filibuster and all the shit that
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Congress can't seem to get done. We are instead going
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: to focus on the good news. In addition to the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: bipartisan infrastructure deal, which the White House apparently refers to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: as the BIF internally, we have learned, Democrats now seem
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: to be united around the need to pass a a
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: budget reconciliation bill that spends at least $ 2 trillion on climate, healthcare, childcare, education, housing,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and more, all paid for by raising taxes on corporations
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and the 1%. The president tried to drum up excitement
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: for his agenda in a barn burner of a speech
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in Crystal Lake, Illinois on Wednesday. Here he is just
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: selling the hell out of this plan. Thank you, ladies
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and gentlemen.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I know that's a boring speech, but it's an important speech.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Every speechwriter's dream ad-lib, Dan. The end of a speech.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I know that's a boring speech. Thanks, boss. So I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: want to start with the policy here before moving on
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to the politics, because I think this reconciliation bill has
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the potential to be the most progressive, transformative piece of
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: legislation since the New Deal or the Great Society or
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I think it deserves a lot more excitement and attention
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: than it's getting. Am I wrong? What do you think?
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to need you to re-ask the question because
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I fell asleep when you said reconciliation bill.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I know. We've got to figure out step number one.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: We've got to figure out the branding here because now
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: we've got the Biff floating around. We've got the and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't understand this. And
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I also don't blame them. We've got the American Families Plan,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the American Jobs Plan. Some of it ended up in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the BIF. And now all of the leftover stuff we're
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: trying to package into something that everyone's calling the budget
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: reconciliation bill, which no one probably has any fucking idea
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: what that means. So understood if you're not either if
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you're not excited or you don't quite get what's going on.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm glad to talk about this with you,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: the author of many boring but important speeches, something that
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama thought but kindly, I guess, did not say
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: out loud.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: He would say, he would say, he would say, I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: think that was a good speech. It was, it was workmanlike.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Workmanlike, yes, yes.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Or he would say, or the other thing he would
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: say if it was a speech that you know he
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: didn't like, he would say, this was serviceable. Yes.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Workmanlike and serviceable are the faint praise that Barack Obama
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: will damn you with. Also, you're competent. That was competent.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I never got that one. I never got that one.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: A competent messenger, a competent communications professional. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. That's right.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: This is a mess messaging-wise, but it's not a mess
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: of the White House's making. I know you said we
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: were not going to talk about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: but you cannot ask questions about them. It doesn't mean
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I can't answer some of my answers.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to focus on them.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to focus on another round of.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: How it passes, who does what, all that kind of shit.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Basically, we had to negotiate this topic because if we
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: were going to talk about infrastructure, the only way we
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: would agree to do it would be if we did
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: not talk about life in the mansion cul-de-sac. But for
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the purposes of unpacking this messaging mess— no one would,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: from a political storytelling perspective, no one would ever design
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: this two-step process this way, where you would do this
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: bipartisan bill that was good by any, in large, by
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: any normal definition, but did not include the most exciting
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: parts of your agenda. And you would not have to
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: have a debate about where and when you would, what
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: the sequence would be and all of that. Like that's
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: not how it would be. And it's just like, you
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: and I know this, that If you're in a White
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: House messaging meeting and the head of the alleged affairs
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: office walks in, you're fucked. It's over. You're no longer
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: doing the thing that your experience, instincts, and the polling
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: says you should do, what makes the most sense. Instead
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: of developing a story that resonates with swing voters in
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Wisconsin or base voters in Georgia or anything like that,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you're now being forced to talk in a way that
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: keeps some number of the problem solvers caucus on board.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: You are solving a micro-legislative problem with a macro messaging.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I think this will get better when we know what's
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: in the reconciliation package. The problem right now is there's
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: a specific– and I said the word reconciliation. So I
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: got to put two quarters in the jargon jar. I
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Look, we're taking suggestions. Send them in. What are we
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: going to call this thing? We're taking suggestions.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I mean it should just be the American Jobs Plan.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: We should just call it the American Jobs Plan.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: But there's also the American Families Plan, which is going
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to be a lot of it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: That's fine, right? Combine them, right? How about the American
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Jobs and Family Plan?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Jobs and Families Plan. The AJFP? Yeah, it should never
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: be the AJFP.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And I also understand that as someone who thought ARRA
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: for stimulus was terrible and ACA for Affordable Care Act
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: was terrible. But you got to write a lot of
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: fucking emails in the White House and having to write
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: those things out is exhausting and you end up with
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the BIF. That's how it happens.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: But once you have an actual thing to sell, that
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: is the larger, more progressive, more transformative, more popular bill,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: it's going to help a lot. Because right now it's
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: specific thing here, which is good, but not super exciting.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: And then other vague thing, which could be between $ 2
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: trillion and $ 6 trillion, could include this, could include that.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: We don't know. The other hard part to disentangle here is,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: you know, you have Biden and Secretary Buttigieg, there's other
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: people running around the country selling the bipartisan infrastructure to Framework? Also,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: get framework out of your language. Framework is a terrible term.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Horrible. Right. Infrastructure is a terrible word. I mean, we
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: are so far fucking over the Rubicon with bad words, right,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: in this legislative process.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: You're selling this thing, and one of your major selling
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: points for it is bipartisanship. It's important. It shows that
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: we can work together. It's progress to build on. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: then on this other track, you're trying to pass this
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: other thing that is also very popular with bipartisan groups
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: of voters, but that is lacking the number one selling
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: point of part one. And so it is a mess.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: It is a mess because you're trying to pass a bill,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: not tell a story. And hopefully you can pass the
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: bill and then tell the story. But this is why
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: presidential approval ratings tend to go down the more enmeshed
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: in legislative wrangling they get.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I just want to point out a few policies that
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: could end up in this bill, each of which would
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: be a huge deal on its own. Much of Biden's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: climate agenda, which would achieve net zero carbon emissions by
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: no later than 2050, that was his campaign plan. Unlikely
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: he gets all of it into the reconciliation bill. He
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: got a little bit into the bipartisan infrastructure framework, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: then hopefully he gets the rest of the climate stuff
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: into this reconciliation bill. I think chances of that are
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: relatively good since so many Senate Democrats are saying no climate,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: no deal. I think Bernie Sanders, who's going to be
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: writing the bill as the chairman of the budget committee,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: is going to make sure there's a lot of climate stuff.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: We could get a renewable, a clean energy standard, renewable
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: energy standard in there, which would be gigantic, transformative. So climate, huge.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: A permanent child tax credit, which is basically social security
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: for kids, would cut child poverty in half. We have
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that now, thanks to the American Rescue Plan, cut child
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: poverty in half over the course of a year. But
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: if we make this permanent, that is essentially creating social
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: security for kids forever. That would be a huge achievement
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: on its own. Lower health care premiums and cheaper prescription drugs,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: hugely popular. Two years of free community college, universal preschool,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: universal paid family and medical leave, one of the only
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: countries without that. And then affordable care for children, for seniors,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and for people with disabilities. That is a huge policy agenda.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: People have fought so hard for those policies for so
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: many years. And if Joe Biden and the Democrats could
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: get some of that passed, even most of that passed
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: in the reconciliation bill, it would be transformative. People should
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: be excited about that. They should fight for it. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I think this is why it's easy to just sort
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of have your eyes glaze over when you hear negotiations, infrastructure, reconciliation,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: all this bullshit. But these are the very real policies
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: that would transform people's lives that we're talking about here.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And they are absolutely worth fighting for and worth paying
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: attention to as this process goes.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: On would you call it a biff deal.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I almost i almost i stole that i saw.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: That joke from a hundred people just for the.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Record i almost asked for a Right now, but I
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: don't know if it would be dating ourselves too much.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you might as well just like some meme that
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: just shows how old we are. Aren't we just to
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: be– I mean, not to delve on this, but aren't
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: we actually past the future?
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're definitely– we're past the future. I think it
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was 2020. Oh. I don't know. I can't remember now.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie in a while. Anyway, the
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: challenge for Democrats now is which policies to prioritize if
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Manchin and other moderates limit the bill to $ 2 trillion.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: You mentioned this, but Bernie Sanders' idea is a $ 6
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: trillion bill. In addition to the policies that I mentioned,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: he's got lowering the Medicare age to 60. He's got
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: including dental and other benefits as part of Medicare. He's
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: got some other health care priorities. He's got immigration in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: his so that not only do we protect the dreamers
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: but also offer a path to citizenship. So Bernie's got
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a lot in his. Manchin has basically said, I don't
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: think I can go over $ 2 trillion, though he hasn't
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: drawn a line in the sand. But if you have
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to limit it to $ 2 trillion, which sounds weird because
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: $ 2 trillion is still a lot of fucking money. Then
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to figure out which policies of
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the ones that I mentioned and that Bernie has that
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to actually put in the final bill. We
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: thought it would be helpful to know what voters care about.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: So we asked our friends at Data for Progress, who
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: polled about a thousand voters last week. The most popular
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: policies turned out to be health care, corporate tax hikes,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: clean energy investments and the child tax credit in that order.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Anything about that polling surprise you? And what do you
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: think Democrats should prioritize in this bill?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: It's so funny to even– it's like such a departure
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: from the conversation about what gets Manchin, Sinema, some Republicans,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: keep Shelley Moore Capito happy, whatever like inside the Beltway
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: legislative bullshit we're talking about to be like, let's just
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: ask voters what they want and then see if we
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: should do that.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: And it's like– Wild.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Wild.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And so all of those– The people.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Who sent us here, what would you like us to do?
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. And it's just worth noting how these are incredibly
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: popular policies. And not just popular with Democrats or independents,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: but broadly popular with everyone. And so I think there's
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: a way to look at this and say– You have
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: to do A, B, and C because they're the most popular.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: But we are operating off of, I think, how much
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: of my life I viewed. I think maybe we currently
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: view the Outback menu, which is no wrong choices.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Now you got me paying attention.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: I was going to do Taco Bell, but it's like,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: that's the other John.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I'm an Outback guy. I'm looking for the cheese fries.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I want to bloom an onion soon. I got to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: go to the Outback soon.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, thank you, Joe Biden. Now you can.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Now that I'm double vaxxed. Also, Emily and Charlie are
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: still on vacation because Emily would not go with me
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to the Outback, I'm sure. Maybe I'll just go to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the Outback alone one of these days.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: You absolutely, probably as the parent of a toddler, be
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: one of the great luxuries of your life is my guess.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: It will, I know.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And also really hardy.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: Yes, anyway.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I got distracted, get excited about the Outback. Okay, go ahead.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: The takeaway from this poll is that Democrats have a
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: broad permission structure from the public to go big and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: bold here. I think from a substantive and political perspective,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: not including a– paying for this with a corporate tax
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: hike would be insane. It is something that we have
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: to do, we should do. All of the bulk of
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: the polling, a lot of the debt for progress polling
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: we've done, the navigator polling, some other polling is like,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: it makes things become more popular when you say that
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: corporations are paying for them with higher tax rates. Like
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: that is, we should do it. We should make Republicans
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: vote against it and we should run on it. But,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I think there's like, well, this is 80%
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: popular and this is 68% popular. They're all really fucking popular.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So you should go do them and not worry about it.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Because what is interesting is, There's such worry about backlash
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: where we're going to do these big things and then
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it's going to cause this backlash among people on the right.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: This polling suggests that there is not a backlash problem
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: with these policies. There are going to be some voters
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: who are going to be pissed no matter what Joe
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Biden and the Democrats do, but that's going to happen
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: whether they pass something small, something big, something two trillion,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: something five trillion. We are in the point where you're
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: better off doing the big popular things than worrying about
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the reaction from the right who are going to react
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: no matter what you do.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I will say that the way this becomes unpopular with
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: people is and the media coverage does this. It just
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: reports on the number, the size of the number, the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: size of the bill.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: If you just hear that Democrats are ramming through this,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to see these headlines everywhere and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: these leads everywhere. So we just have to prepare for it.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Democrats are ramming through a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill that's partisan,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have any Republicans, right? And if all people
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: here who don't pay close attention to the news or
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to politics is that Democrats are just spending trillions of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: dollars and they don't actually know what the policies are
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and they don't know how it's going to improve their lives, yeah,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: then I think there is a potential for backlash, not
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: just among the right, but among sort of the broad
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: spectrum of voters. And so I do think it's incumbent
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: on the White House, which I know they're going to
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: try their hardest, and all of us, by the way,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to talk about the policies in this bill and to
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: sell the policies in this bill. One of the reasons
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this today is I feel
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: like we have even been guilty of just sort of
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: glossing over what could possibly be in this bill. And
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's not as popular if you just treat
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: it as some behemoth, you know, trillion dollar package that's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: moving through Congress really slowly, but start talking about all
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the policies that could actually change people's lives. Policies that
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: we have advocated for and fought for for years and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: years and years and many, many campaigns.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: You mean because we sometimes become Punchbowl Saves America?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: A real test now if Jake Sherman listens to this podcast. OK.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Can I say one more thing about this that I
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: think is important? Yeah, sure. Is all these policies are popular.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And we should sell the policies. But I think in
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: terms of political messaging, policies are a means, not an end.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: They are data points that prove a political narrative, that
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: buttress a political narrative. And so when you get into, well,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: we gave you health care. We gave you a higher
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: minimum wage. We did this. Now vote for us. You're
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: sort of devolving into sort of– that does not work.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of evidence that does not work. This
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: is why I think the corporate tax hike is so
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: important from a political perspective is it is inevitable about
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: who you are and who you fight for. And if
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: it's just about we gave you these policies and you
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: like these policies, we know that does not work. Just
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: look at the minimum wage in Florida where the minimum wage,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: $ 50 minimum wage initiative got 60%. And Trump won the
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: state pretty easily. And so I think it was like
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: a 13%, 14% gap between people who voted for $ 15
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: minimum wage and people who voted for the candidate that
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: supports $ 15 minimum wage. And so it has to become
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: a narrative about the parties and what they're going to
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: deliver and why Democrats have to hold the majority, not
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: just we gave you good shit, now give us your vote.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, you know, Democrats should be able to say
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: that we inherited a country where rich people and big
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: corporations were getting to get off without paying many taxes
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and pollute the planet however they wanted. And what we
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: decided is that we were going to fight for the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: middle class, deliver, and actually save the planet for future generations, right?
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Like that's just an example of the larger story you
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: can tell with sort of all these policies, that we're
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: going to sort of reduce economic inequality, that we're going
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to save the planet for our children, that we're going
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to make sure the children aren't in poverty. Like I
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: think you need to talk about them in value-based statements.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: as our guest hosts are not from last week would,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: would surely agree, would surely agree.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: There's also a political question here about which voters Democrats
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: are trying to persuade by passing these policies and whether
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it's even possible to persuade voters by passing policies, which
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: you just touched on, uh, Pew research released their 2020
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: election analysis last week, which is one of the more
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: trusted and respected analysis because they identify people based on
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: their actual voting records. So it's not just polls. Um,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: But Pew basically tells the same story as every other
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: post-election analysis. It is one of those years where the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: four or five or six different post-election analysis have all
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: converged together on sort of the same story. And that
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: story is this. Joe Biden ran better than Hillary Clinton
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: against Donald Trump largely because he improved his performance among
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: married men. veteran households, suburbanites, independents, and Democrats who consider
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: themselves moderate or conservative. Of course, Joe Biden wouldn't have
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: won without incredibly strong turnout among young voters and voters
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of color. But Biden didn't do any better with these
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: voters than Hillary did. And in most cases, he did worse,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: especially among Latinos. Instead, it was Biden's improvement among more
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: moderate and conservative voters that marked the biggest difference between
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: the 2016 election and the 2020 election. Did anything else
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: jump out at you from this analysis? And what does
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: it tell you about 2022 and beyond?
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: I want to be very careful about drawing too many
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: conclusions for this as it relates to 2022. There was
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: very little evidence in recent years about the durability and
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: transferability of presidential coalitions. The Obama coalition did not turn
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: out in 2010, 2014, and 2016 when Obama was not
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: on the ballot. The Trump coalition, that's around 2018. And
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: this Biden coalition, as we found in these analyses, seems
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: particularly unlikely to vote in the– whether– turn out, not
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: just turn out, but vote choice in the same way
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: without Joe Biden on the ballot and without Trump on
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: the ballot, right? A coalition that depends on more moderate
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: conservative voters is going to, by definition, struggle to keep
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: unified control of government in the hands of Democrats.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And you're saying that because in midterm elections, you tend
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to get more committed voters turning out on both sides,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Republican and Democrat. And so the voters in the middle,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: whether they're independents, moderate Democrats, liberal Republicans, people who tend
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to come in and out of the electorate from cycle
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to cycle, you don't see those people as often in
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: midterm elections as you do in a presidential election.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It's both things, right? So it is. So it's, there's
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: a turnout question about, you know, What drop-off do you have?
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: What's the delta between your presidential year turnout and your
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: midterm turnout? And there are reasons to believe that has
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: traditionally been a huge problem for Democrats. There are reasons
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: to believe, based on this, it may actually be a
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: bigger problem for Republicans as the Democratic coalition has shifted
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: in the Trump era to include more suburban voters. It
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: sort of helped us in 2018. There are reasons to
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: believe a lot of those people will turn out. Where
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I worry is if your margin of victory depends on
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: moderate and conservative voters who did not like Donald Trump.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: They are the sort of voters who tend to, in
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: previous elections, shift back to default to divided government. It's
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: important to remember that we don't know exactly how this
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: played out, but in polling heading into the election, there
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: were suggestions that Joe Biden was only going to get
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: a quarter to a third of Trump voters who voted
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: for a Democrat in the 2018 elections. Right. Right. So
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: you can see a world that we, I mean, we've
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: talked about this before, but there was an Axios focus
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: group a few months ago, which talked to a bunch
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: of Trump Biden voters from Trump in 16 to Biden
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: in 20, who were very, very open to, many of
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: them were very open to, and potentially likely to vote
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: for a Republican in the congressional elections.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And so Which is a big warning sign, right? They
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: voted for– they voted for Donald Trump in 2016. They
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: voted for Joe Biden in 2020. And now they're like, yeah,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: maybe I'll go back and vote for a Republican.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a Democrat in 18, right? So they went Republican, Democrat, Democrat.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: And so– but if you want to step out of
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: character for a minute, look at the glass half full
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: nature of this, both in the short term and the
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: long term. The short term is– I.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Was going to do that. I'm not stepping out of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: any character right there.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Let me clear out and let you just let the
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: optimism flow.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Go. No, I was going to say, because while we
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: have concerns in our coalition that some of the moderate
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to conservative voters that turned out for Biden might either
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: return to the Republican fold or stay home in 2022.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: On the other side, there's a bunch of people who
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: came out to vote for Trump in 2020 who did
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: not show up in 2018 to the polls at all.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of like rabid Trump supporters who just stayed
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: home in 2018. And without Trump on the ballot in 2022,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: they may stay home as well.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: That's right. And I think there's a long-term issue or long-term,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: there's a finding in this study that is so optimistic
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: for Democrats in the long-term, which is the silent generation
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: and boomers are shrinking as a percentage of the electorate
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: every passing year. And millennials and Gen Z are growing
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: and And Biden won millennials and Gen Z by 20 points.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And so just from a pure mathematical perspective, now you
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: have to hold on to those numbers. But the Trump coalition,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the Republican coalition, is just simply becoming a smaller part
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: of the electorate every year. Now, that doesn't play itself
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: out exactly the same way in the Electoral College and
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the Senate map. But in general, the trends in America
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: are deeply dangerous for Republicans if we as a planet
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: and a democracy can just survive long enough to reap
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the benefits of that.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Big if, big if. Does this change anything for you
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: in terms of what kind of reconciliation bill Democrats should
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: be fighting for, which leads to sort of a bigger
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: question for you, like how much do you think that
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: any of the legislation Democrats pass or have passed or
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: might pass will matter to voters?
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think it has any specific impact on what
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: I think Democrats should pass in the reconciliation package. What
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: it does suggest to me is that this finally is
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: consistent with the model of the electorate that the Biden
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: presidential campaign had going into the election. And it explains
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the focus on unity, the focus on bipartisanship, on where
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: their gains were coming from. And it wasn't from a
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: massive increase in base turnout. It was going to be
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: in persuasion. And they ran a campaign that was based
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: on persuasion. And it delivered. And so I think that
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I don't like, when I look at the reconciliation, I'm
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: not like the things in there, like are all super
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: popular though. If I am picking one thing that you
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: absolutely have to make the central focus of the reconciliation package,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: once again, more money in the jargon jar, but is
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy where, you know,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: where if you want to find, like, there's a disturbing
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: finding the Pew study, which is, Even though Biden did,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I think, three points better with non-college white voters than
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton did, which kind of was the– that was
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the– how he won.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Given the makeups of Wisconsin.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: That's how he won those– I was going to say
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: specifically those upper Midwest states. That's how he won Wisconsin, Michigan,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania because a bunch of non-college white voters– not
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a bunch, but enough, just a small amount– went from
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: voting against Hillary to voting for Joe Biden.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: But where Trump actually gained massively on 2016 was in
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: rural areas.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And so if you look at, it's a huge gain
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: from 16 to 20, but when you look from 12
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: to 20, it's a gigantic gain. And one of the
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: things that I think is critical to Democrats is we
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: have to become the people who are fighting powerful special
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: interests on the behalf of middle and working class people.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: And one of the ways in which you do that
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: is you become the people who want to raise taxes
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: on corporations and the wealthy to pay for things that
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: actually help people's lives while Republicans are willing to sink
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: a infrastructure bill. They're willing to oppose all of these
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: things because, not because they think they're bad ideas or
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: anything like that, because they do not want to ask Amazon, Facebook, ExxonMobil,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: whoever else to pay a single penny more in taxes
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: to improve your life. I also think it's less about
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: the policies that we are passing from a political perspective
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and more about framing the Republican opposition to those policies
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: on terms that are most favorable with the broadest swath
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: of the electorate, which includes those moderate conservative voters, Democratic
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: base voters, and potentially keeping some of these Trump surge
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: voters home in the midterms, because that's not what they
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: signed up for when they put on the MAGA hat
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: in 2016.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Another way to frame that is we are trying to
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: create a multiracial working class, middle class coalition of voters.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: That is the most powerful coalition of voters for us.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And so it's not about how do I just reach
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: out to the moderate voters and the centrists and some
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: of the white people that go back and forth, or
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: how do I keep the base of young people and
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: women and Latinos and black Americans and Asian Americans? It
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: is If I'm asking corporations and the wealthy to pay
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: their fair share so we can invest in the working
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: class and middle class and lift people out of poverty,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: that is an attempt to try to stitch together a
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: multiracial working class coalition that is going to be very
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: powerful electorally for the Democratic Party in just about every
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: swing state that we need.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: To win it.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: The best political messaging tells a story that has... antagonists
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: and protagonists, right? What is the force that is stopping
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: you from achieving the financial security you want or the
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: dreams you want or that is making your life harder?
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Republicans tell a very consistent story about it being an
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: array of non-white people, immigrants, poor people, Hollywood elites, all
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: this whole– they have a story about it that are–
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: they are standing in the way of your life. The
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: true story, the more believable story, and I believe the
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: much more powerful political story is the one about growing
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: economic inequality and the rising power corporation. In a world
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: in which you, a teacher, a construction worker, a firefighter,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: an accountant, pays a higher tax rate than a billionaire
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: or Amazon, there are corporations running around this country who
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: pay nothing, that Peter Thiel is putting billions of dollars
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: in an IRA and Jeff Bezos is taking a child
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: tax credit because of very complicated tax accounting. That story
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: that was in that ProPublica story from a few months
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: ago should be something that should be the fodder for
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: a gazillionaire. It's a gazillion stump speeches. There was a
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: New York Times story about how hedge funds have been
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: jerking around the tax code for years. All of that,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: things are unfair. Here is why they're unfair.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Who's Which, by the way, there was a story this
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: week that all these conservative groups are rallying around the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: provision in the bipartisan infrastructure framework that we're going to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: beef up the IRA so the IRA can go after
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: wealthy tax cheats. And they're trying to get McConnell and
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the Republicans to say, I'm going to sink this deal
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: if the IRS is beefed up to go after wealthy
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: tax cheats. And I'm like, you know what? Fucking be
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: our guest. Sink the bill because you wanted to make
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: sure that your rich friends got away with cheating the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: tax system. Great. We'll take that to the ballot box.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: One pickup for you. I think you want to say
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: sink the biff.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Fuck you. Let's talk about the Republican midterm strategy where
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: who else but Donald Trump will be playing a starring role.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: You might be wondering whether the former president has been
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: laying low since his family business was indicted on 15
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: felony counts, including tax fraud and grand larceny. Of course not.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: At a rally in Florida over the weekend where he
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: attacked the New York prosecutors as fascist and authoritarian. You're
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the puppet. He also demanded to know why so many
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: people are still in jail for attacking the U.S. Capitol
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: on January 6th. And he tried to turn the crowd
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: against the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashley Babbitt
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: as she attempted to force her way into the room
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: where members of Congress were hiding from the mob, saying, quote,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: if it were on the other side, the person who
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: did the shooting would be strung up and hung. Very pro-police,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Now, you might be wondering,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: why do we still care what kind of crazy shit
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump says? Well, because if you're a Republican who
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: wants to run for office in 2022 and you don't
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: support Trump, Trumpism, and the big lie about the 2020 election,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: you will find yourself with the primary challenger who does.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: More than 700 Republican candidates for 2022 have now pushed
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Trump's election fraud conspiracies, including people running for the House,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the Senate, governor, state legislature, secretary of state, and other
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: offices that have the power to overturn elections. Dan, there's
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: two ways to look at this one. One, these are
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: candidates who don't really believe the big lie but are
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: embracing it to win a primary. And two, these are
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: candidates who, if they win, plan to avenge Trump by
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: overturning the next election. What do you think?
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Can I offer you a third way of looking at it?
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Both?
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It doesn't fucking matter.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: False choice?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: There are people in Congress or in the states or
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: wherever else and running in these campaigns who definitely believe
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: the big lie. Their brains have been pickled by Fox News.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: They take Tucker Carlson as the gospel. And then there
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: are people who do not believe it at all. Like
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: take Josh Hawley, for instance. Josh Hawley does not for
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: one fucking second believe one word of the idea that
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the election was stolen. And what's the difference between Josh
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Hawley and some other person who believes it?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Zero.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It all ends up being the same. Whether it's a
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: person who believes it, a person who doesn't believe it,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: they are the same people who are passing the voter
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: suppression laws based on it, the same ones who are
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: voted to overturn the election. If you believe almost all
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: of the Republican caucus in the House truly believes the
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: election was stolen, that is incorrect. A disturbing number of
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: them do, but Kevin McCarthy doesn't. And I think the
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: press should stop distinguishing between those two. That is the
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: thing we hear all the coverage of the Liz Cheney
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: thing was, no one really believes it. They just don't
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: want her to talk about it anymore. It doesn't fucking matter.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: If you are unwilling to stand up and say something
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: about it, you end up just being a vehicle for
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: putting in place the consequences of the big lie, right?
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: The laws that come from it, like if there is
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: a stolen election, an overturned election or an attempt at
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: that in 2024, it's going to be done from a
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: coalition of the believing and the unbelieving, right? And it's
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: just so it doesn't really matter. The danger is, is
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: it's become table stakes for being a Republican politician to
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: promulgate that lie.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I think there's another danger here. And Jonathan Chait wrote
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: about this on Wednesday, I believe, about how Trump is
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: now framing and talking about the insurrection. And he writes,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: the anti-anti-Trump right has dismissed the insurrection as overblown, a
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: protest march gone bad, perhaps ill-considered, but never posing any
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: serious threat to the republic, right? You hear Republicans do
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: this all the time. The far right's highlighting of Babbitt's
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: death sends a different message. the insurrection was good. Babbitt's
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: effort to penetrate the defensive barrier was brave and the
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: stopping of her charge a crime. And I do think
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: that is very scary and very frightening, very dangerous. And
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: it's right in line with Trump saying, why are these
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: people still being held, the insurrectionists, right? He's talking about
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: them in other right-wing media sources and everyone. They're talking
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: about them now as political prisoners that need to be released,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the people who stormed the fucking Capitol. And Trump saying
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that the police officer who shot someone who was trying
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: to attack members of Congress, that that person, if they
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: were on the other side, they'd be strung up and hung.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is a pretty, pretty dangerous way to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: head into the next election, saying that the people who
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: tried to attack the U.S. Capitol and attack members of
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Congress who wanted to hang Mike Pence need to somehow
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: be avenged and let free because they're just political prisoners.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: It's bad shit. Bad shit. And I don't know, like,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: I guess I have a question for you on this,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: which is how did Democrats talk about this? Because we
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: just laid out this entire message, right? Where Democrats are
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: focused on economic inequality, because that's the message that we
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: know that polls really well. And they talk about rich
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: people not paying taxes and investing in the middle class
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. And then again, in
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: an alternate reality here, where Donald Trump's running around the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: country saying, by the way, the insurrectionists were good. Like,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: how do we deal with that? How do we talk
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Seems hard. I mean, I talked about this a lot
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: last week, but I think there's two principles here, which
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: one is we have to frame the counter-majoritarian, authoritarian leanings
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: of the Republican Party as something born of weakness, not strength.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: That they have to do this because their agenda is
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: so unpopular. They can't win an election the normal way.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: The only way that they can hold on to political
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: powers to try to stop you from voting. They're going
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: to fail at that as 2020 proved, but that's what
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: they want to do. And then you have to explain
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: why they're doing it. And why they're doing is directly
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: connected to who benefits. All of this is about the
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: fact that the corporate plutocratic special interest agenda of the
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Republicans is opposed by the vast majority of Americans as
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: our polling trust is opposed by huge bipartisan majorities. The
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: only way it can be put in place is by
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: limiting the power of the majority, by trying to steal elections,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: to divide us on racial lines. This gets us right
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: back to the core tenets of the race class narrative.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: We have to say who benefits because people will naturally
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: believe that politicians will do things to benefit themselves and
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: they will not really penalize them for it. It's sort
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: of like, yeah, they're a politician. Of course, that's what
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: they're going to do. So if it's just like they're
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: doing this to stay in power, it's, in my mind,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: not a compelling enough argument to move people in the
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: direction we need to move. It has to be about
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: who benefits from that. Why are these people dividing you?
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Why are these people trying to steal elections? Why are
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: they engaging in this dangerous rhetoric? What are the consequences
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: of that? How does that affect your life?
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I do think how does it affect your life is
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: very important because I do think we talk about this,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: people write about this as sort of attacks on democracy
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: and our institutions. And we talk about authoritarianism. And I
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: think that's fine for everyone to be debating on Twitter
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and us talking about it. But it's pretty esoteric right
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: to the average voter. And I think you have to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: make it about their life. Like these are radical extremists
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: who want to take away your voice, right? They want
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: to take away your voice. They don't think that you
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: should have a say in how your country is run.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: They think they're going to make it harder for you
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to vote. And then when you do vote, they might
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: throw your vote away. They might overturn it if they
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: don't like the outcome. And so you don't get a
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: say in how your country is run, how your community
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: is run. You don't get that because you don't agree
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: with them. Like, I kind of think that has to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: be part of the message. And I don't, I don't
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: know that it's always easy to connect it to, like,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: powerful corporate interests when it's a bunch of people storming
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a Capitol. Like, sometimes it's a hard connection to make.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: But I do think you've got to always bring the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: argument back to people's lives and what it's going to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: mean for you. They're going to try to take away
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: your health care. They're going to try to take away
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: your child care. They're going to try to take away
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: your voice, your vote. Let's look at two high-profile examples
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of Trumpy Senate candidates. In Georgia, Trump took it upon
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: himself to announce on a right-wing radio show that Herschel
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Walker— plans on joining the crowded Republican field to take
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: on Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in 2022. Walker is, of course,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: a Heisman Trophy-winning running back for the University of Georgia,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: who briefly played for Trump's professional football team, the New
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Jersey Generals, and then campaigned for him in 2016 and 2020. Dan,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: what do you think about Herschel Walker as a Senate candidate?
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: On paper, great candidate.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Beloved in Georgia. Yeah, he's a legend.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: He's a legend in Georgia. He's a black candidate in
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Georgia where if you can just alter, you're just a
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: few points, um, to get a few additional black voters
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: that would, Raphael Warnock would lose, right? I mean, can't
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: forget how close that election was in the runoff in 20,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I guess it was 2021 when it actually happened. Um,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: incredibly close and benefited from depressed Republican turnout because Donald
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Trump was telling everyone that Republicans were stealing the election
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: from him. Um, So yeah, it's on paper worrisome. Now,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: the history of very famous celebrity novice politicians is pretty mixed, right?
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: In most cases, they flame out. Now, there's one big
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: giant counterexample that we shouldn't ignore, which is Donald Trump himself.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't know about that one. How he will actually
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: respond from a level of press scrutiny he's never had before,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: maybe able to answer questions like that. It's a really
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: open question. But you look at that and you're like, yeah,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: you'd much rather run against David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, some
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: other fucking nameless, faceless MAGA Republican than University of Georgia
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: football legend.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Now, a few things about Herschel Walker we should talk
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: about and that I'm guessing that the electorate will be
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: informed about over the next several months and year. A
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: lot of people are writing about him now. Tim Miller
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: at the Bulwark, a friend of ours, wrote a piece
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: on Herschel Walker a couple months ago. So, you know,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: he lives in Texas now. He'd have to move back
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: to Georgia. He has talked openly for many years about
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the fact that he has multiple personality disorder. Obviously don't
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: want to stigmatize mental health issues. But part of this
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: issue for him was at one point, and he has
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: told the story, He pulled a gun on his wife,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: threatened to kill her, her friend and his therapist during
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: a therapy session. He told ESPN that he used to
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: play Russian roulette with a loaded gun in front of
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: houseguests and urged them to play Russian roulette as well
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: before they competed against him in feats of strength. They
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: would play Russian roulette first with loaded guns. And then
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: after the election in 2020, he, of course, spread conspiracies
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: about voting fraud. dominion fraud, and said that Trump needs
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: to stay in power to punish the people who have
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: done bad things in the election. And he cheered on
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the insurrectionists. That is the kind of candidate that they
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: want to run in Georgia, and by the way, all
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: over the country. So I do think everything on paper,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and especially for voters who are less engaged in the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: political process, they hear Herschel Walker, you live in Georgia, legend,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that's easy, right? And that's going to get him a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: long way. But I do think it's going to be
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the Democrats' job to sort of educate people about all
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: that other shit as the next year continues. And we'll
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: see how he actually holds up as a candidate.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: It's a high floor, low ceiling candidate, right? It could,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: he could be a great candidate or it could be
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: an absolute fucking disaster.
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: And we, and we do not, we do not know.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Another competitive Republican center primary is in Ohio where hillbilly
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: elegy author, JD Vance announced his long anticipated candidacy to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: fill the seat being vacated by Rob Portman. Vance is
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a former Marine and Silicon Valley venture capitalist who who's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: running with the help of a $ 10 million super PAC
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: funded by his friend, Peter Thiel. But in his announcement speech,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: he tried to sell himself to Ohio voters as a
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Trumpy populist, saying the elites plunder this country and then
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: blame us for it in the process. Only problem? CNN's
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Andrew Kaczynski unearthed some of Vance's deleted tweets from 2016
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: where he called Trump reprehensible and said he was voting
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: for independent candidate Evan McMullin. Vance has since apologized. Take
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a listen.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: I like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: in 2016. And I asked folks not to judge me
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: by based on what I said in 2016, because I've
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: been very open about the fact that I did say
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: those critical things. And I regret them. And I regret
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: being wrong about the guy. I think that he was
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: a good president. I think he made a lot of
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: good decisions for people. And I think he took a
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: lot of flack.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Pathetic. What do you think of J.D. Vance's chances? Can
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: he win this primary as a Trumper come lately?
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: He could win the primary. I mean, a $ 10 million
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: in ads from Peter Thiel, a Facebook billionaire, could Help.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: In some of the stories I've read about this, internal
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: polling seems to suggest he's currently running in third to
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Josh Mandel and Jane Timpkin. Now, they have go into
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: this race with a much higher name ID. Josh Mandel
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: has run for Senate before. He's a famously miserable candidate.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Fucking world-class goober, Josh Mandel. Just a fucking bananas, that guy.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Take a look. Just scroll through Twitter, put in his name.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: We don't have to. Just have a good time.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Now, Jane Timken, I think, also very Trumpy candidate. There
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: is no non-Trump candidate.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: She ran the Ohio Republican Party during the Trump era,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: and many people think that Trump will ultimately endorse her,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: just so people know.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: And whoever Trump endorses will most likely and perhaps almost
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: certainly be the nominee. But I think the focus on J.D.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Vance is both a gigantic indictment of the D.C. media—
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: which is obsessed with J.D. Vance because they woke up
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: on election day 2016 and was like, oh my God,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: we have to learn everything we possibly can about the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: middle America. Where's a book? And they all read his book.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: And it became just like... It became like people were
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: walking around Washington.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Who are these? Yeah, they all suddenly turned into fucking anthropologists. Like,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: let's go out and let's find the diner. Let's go
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: to the white working class. You know, Jason Kander said this.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: He said people who treated middle America as a zoo exhibit, right?
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: It's like, let's see what's happening there. And then they
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: all like talked about it. They were like salon book
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: clubs about hillbilly elegy. And he would like come down
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: from his private equity or venture capital office to speak
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: at them. But I think the reason to focus on J.D.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Vance is just because it is the pitch-perfect fucking example
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: of modern republicanism in the Trump era. He is on–
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: this is who he is. One way to summarize your
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: intro with him. He is a Yale-educated, venture capital executive,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Evan McMullin voter– whose biggest supporter is a Facebook billionaire,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: running as a populist heir to Trumpism. And it's such
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: a giant- That's very good.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Very good.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: He knows it's a giant fraud. Everyone knows it's a fraud.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: And Trump is himself a shameless fucking fraud. And so
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: it's just like, the person who can most shamelessly embrace
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: their most fraudulent beliefs and instincts, it becomes the heir
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: to Trumpism. And so he probably won't win this primary.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe he will, maybe he won't. But it's just like,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: as a perfect way to understand this era, it is
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: to- understand JD Vance and how he got here and
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: what he's saying and who he really is. And that
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: he does not give two shits about how little he
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: believes the things he's saying.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And, you know, his rivals are on to this. The
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Club for Growth PAC, which supports Mandel, issued a statement
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: on Vance when he entered the race. He says he's
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: from Middletown, but he made a boatload dissing his former
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: neighbors to sell his book. He claims to be a
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Trump Republican, but in the short time Mr. Vance has
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: been active in politics, he spent the bulk of it
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: tearing down President Trump and mocking Trump voters. Other people
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: have noted that Middletown is not actually in Appalachia, even
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: though that's the way he claims to both represent and understand.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I think that, look, when you
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: have a choice even between someone who seems extremist and
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: someone who seems like a fraud, you probably go, a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: lot of voters go with the extremist, sadly. Like a
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: fraud is maybe the worst thing to be. And I
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: do think that if the Mandel campaign or the Timken
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: campaign are at all competent, which is a big if,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: they can just fucking tear J.D. Vance to pieces as
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: this carpet-bagging Silicon Valley guy who's just coming in and
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: telling them, being a sociologist about voters, they should be
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: able to make quick work of him, the other primary campaigns.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I do think if he somehow got through the primary,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: he may be a more formidable candidate than the other
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: two Republicans, but I think it's going to be hard
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: for him to get through that primary.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: It's just also so perfect that when it was revealed...
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: revealed that he opposed Trump, that the first thing he
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: had to do, his crisis communications move, was to apologize
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: to Fox News. Not to the people of Ohio, not
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: to Trump. He had to go on Fox News. And
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: then even better is just like in a world in
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: which things that should be disqualifying perhaps are not, is
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: he did an interview with Molly Ball of Time Magazine.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: He called himself a flip-flop flipper, which is one– 100
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: million times worse than John Kerry saying he voted for
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: something before he voted against it. It's unbelievable.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Well, there was that. And then he also said to her,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: she asked him about the insurrection and the attack on
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the Capitol. And he said, well, there were some bad
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: apples on January 6th, very clearly. But most of the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: people there were actually super peaceful. Like J.D. Vance. Once
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: called Donald Trump reprehensible. And now that he's running the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Republican primary after the attack on the Capitol, he's back
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: to like Donald Trump's view of Charlottesville. You know, they're
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: actually people were actually super peaceful there. Like he knows
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that's fucking bullshit. But you're right. That is the exact
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: story of Republicans in this era right now. And back
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: to the original question in this section. do these people
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: believe in the big lie or don't they? It really
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter, right? Because J.D. Vance clearly doesn't believe in
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the big lie, clearly doesn't think that most of the
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: people were super peaceful, but he's sitting there having to
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: apologize to Fox News and Donald Trump and Trump voters,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: and he's going to do whatever he can to appeal
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: to them. And that's what every Republican is going to do,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: whether they are committed to Trumpism or just feel like
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: they need to be committed to Trumpism. It doesn't make
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: a difference. This is the party now. He's still in
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: charge and, you know, all the dangers are still there.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: So Watch out. Watch out. When we come back, we
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: will have Dan's interview with Adam Serwer about his new book,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: The Cruelty is the Point.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I'm joined by Adam Serwer, a staff writer at The
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: Atlantic and author of The Cruelty is the Point, a
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: new essay collection on Trump and Trumpism in America. Adam,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: thank you for joining me today.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Well, I just want to congratulate you on the book.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: It is just an incredibly important piece of reading for
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: understanding and contextualizing the moment we are in and the
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: four years.
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: We just went through.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So congratulations.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: I want to start with asking how it is you
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: came to settle on cruelty as the defining theme of
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Trumpism and Trump over the last four years.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: So the title of the book, which comes from a
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: column I wrote in 2018, was basically, it was inspired by,
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: I was watching, this was during the Kavanaugh hearings, and
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: I was watching a rally that the president was holding,
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: the then president was holding, in defense of Brett Kavanaugh,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: who had been accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexually
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: assaulting her when she was a teenager. And in her testimony,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: one of the most notable parts of the testimony was
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: when she said, indelible in the hippocampus was a laughter,
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: basically referring to what she said was Kavanaugh and a
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: childhood friend laughing during the assault. And the president said, uh,
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: you know, heard that and he zeroed in on that
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: as a weakness. Um, and he, uh, during that rally,
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: he held her up for ridicule. Um, he mocked her. He,
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: he made his audience laugh at her. Um, and it
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: seemed to me that that was so precise and attentive. Um,
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: and also everyone there was enjoying it. Um, they were
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: having a good time. Um, and it wasn't just that
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: it was that it was the kind, there was a
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: kind of intimacy that was created. when the president was
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: mocking this woman who had claimed to be a victim
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: of sexual assault in a way that there was almost
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: no regard for the possibility, even if you thought she
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: in particular was lying, no regard for how this might
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: affect other women or other people who might wanna come
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: forward and might fear being laughed at if they told
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: the truth about their experience. And so, It just seemed
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: very clear to me that part of this act of
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: community creation that Trump was engaged in was cruelty. And
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: it's something that's part of human nature. You know, all
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: human beings are capable of cruelty. But this was sort
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: of like, you know, when you're a kid and you're,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: you know, you see a bunch of the cool kids
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: making fun of a nerdy kid. Maybe you stay silent.
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Maybe you join in because you want to be a
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: cool kid as well. you know, maybe rare circumstances or
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: one of those people who would stand up for a
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: kid who's getting picked on. But the point is that
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: there's an act of community creation by the mocking of
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: this other child by the kids who are in the
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: in crowd. And this is just something that had been
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: elevated to a political level by Trump. And, you know,
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: the column I wrote was just, I think the reason
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: it took off was because we all sort of instinctively
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: understood that this was a part of his politics and
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: a crucial part of his politics. But we had struggled
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: to articulate it in a concise way.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: You know, you also wrote that Trump didn't invent this
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: form of politics, that the politics of, it usually were
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: the politics of cruelty and exclusion had been around long
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: before Trump. Did he, how did he change? Did he
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: change as just a natural extension of something that's been
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: happening for a long time? Is there a going back
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: from this?
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I really think that Trump is a
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: manifestation of a conflict we've been having ever since the
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: founding of the country. After all, we had a country
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: that was founded on the idea that all men are
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: created equal, but what was really meant by that was
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: white men with property. And so when you exclude people
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: from this beautiful principle of human liberty and equality, you
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: have to find a reason to justify doing that. And,
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: you know, so ever since the founding, we've been trying to,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: you know, there has been an element of American society
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: that has tried to expand those rights and freedoms to
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: everyone and an element that says we've gone too far
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: or we should not extend these rights and freedoms to
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: these people because they don't deserve them for whatever reason.
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: And as it currently exists, our political system incentivizes this
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: kind of politics because, you know, you know, between Senate malapportionment,
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: gerrymandering in the House, or, you know, the Electoral College itself,
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: you know, Trump's coalition is ideally geographically distributed to hold
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: power in disproportion to its influence. So it becomes all
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: the more urgent to persuade that coalition that they're on
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: the verge of destruction, that they are being menaced by,
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: you know, their fellow Americans. And so anything they do
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: to prevent that destruction is justified. And not only that,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: but these acts of cruelty against people outside of the
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: community that they've created are heroic. They're not merely justified
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: by expedience. They are, in fact, heroic acts of defense
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: against people who are threatening your life for your way
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: of life, for the way America should be. And Donald
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: Trump uses this rhetoric constantly. He says, I'm the person
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: standing in between you this impending liberal apocalypse. And this
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: is how you end up justifying things like disenfranchising rival constituencies,
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: banning people on the basis of religion, doing laws that
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: are targeted at trans children. You justify this by saying
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: these people are threatening us, they're going to destroy us,
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: and so whatever we do to prevent that is acceptable.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: And he didn't invent this, but I think Donald Trump
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: was a particularly good practitioner of this politics and perhaps
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: More frighteningly, he showed the Republican Party how much they
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: could get away with and how far they could go
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: without backlash. And that's why you're seeing, you know, because
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: the structure of American politics has not changed, the incentives
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: for Republicans to hold on to power by frightening their
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: base into thinking they're sort of, you know, on the
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: verge of annihilation has not changed. And as long as
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: the structure stays the same, if the Democrats are not
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: willing to make changes to the system to make it
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: more fair, you know, this kind of politics is going
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: to continue because they can hold power that way indefinitely.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: It's one of the things I was struck by in
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: reading your book this weekend. I had read, you're one
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: of my favorite writers, I read you throughout the process
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: as you were writing these essays, reading them in real time.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: But so there's like one world where Joe Biden wins,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party walks back from the brink, there's some
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: sort of process to move away from Trumpism. And your
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: book is this very specific accounting of this one very
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: specific period in American history. But everything you write is just,
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: even though Trump is like, yes, he's going to may
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: run for president again. Yes, he's going to come in
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: for candidates, but he is largely receded from, even Fox
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: News isn't covering his rallies live. But all of the
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: points here, you take Trump's name out of it. It's
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: still very applicable to what the Republican Party is doing
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: I think it was a huge, I mean, I think
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: the pivotal point here was when Donald Trump and the
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: Republicans beat their polls in 2020, because if it had
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: been a kind of Hoover-style wipeout, like 1932 or something,
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: I think they would have reconsidered their approach. But because
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: Trumpism succeeded in defiance of expectations, I think the Republican
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: Party felt this was still a rational course of action.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: And it's going to continue. I mean, Democrats, because of
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: thermostatic public opinion, because the way midterms usually go, it's
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: very likely that Democrats will lose Congress. And if they do,
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: all this stuff, I mean, you think about the fact,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: the 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court, this entire approach
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: to politics, I think from their perspective, has been vindicated.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: So they have no reason to stop until they pay
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: an actual political cost for the course that they've chosen.
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: And it's not clear to me how that can happen
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: unless Democrats take some pretty drastic actions that thus far
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: they have been unwilling to take.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: You write in the book how in 2016, so both
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: in the run-up to the election, the aftermath, so many reporters,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: political pundits, even Democrats tried so hard to explain Trump's
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: victory in everything other than racial terms, right? Economic anxiety,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: the system is rigged. So two questions on that. I
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: was particularly struck by how you talked about the misinterpretation
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: of the system is rigged, how media elites interpreted it
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: and how you think Trump's supporters interpreted it. So if
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: you could help explain that, but then also, have we gotten, we,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: the political media complex, people who talk and write about
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: politics for a living, gotten better at calling this out
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: for what it is? Or as we deal with the
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: big lie in the 2020 election, are we just making
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: the same.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: Set of mistakes all over again? I'll say that, you know,
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: I think part of the, you know, I'm an opinion writer.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: I write my opinion, but I think that my job
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: is actually not that different from a regular mainstream objective
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: reporter in the sense that my job is to describe
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: what's happening accurately. And there are limitations to the tradition
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: of objective reporting in the United States that opinion writers
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: are free from. That's not to say you should only
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: read opinion writers or that objective news reporters are not
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: good at their jobs. That's not what I'm saying. But
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: I am saying that it's difficult to write, you know,
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: if it was easy simply to describe things as they are,
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: we wouldn't need journalists at all. We wouldn't need a media.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: So I think, you know, on the one hand, it
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: is a challenging thing to do, especially when you have something,
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: a phenomenon like Trump that seems to go against the
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: prevailing trend of the past few years. So the big
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: question in 2016 is like, how does a country that
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: elected Barack Obama president also elect Donald Trump president? And
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: I think that, you know, obviously there are economic factors here,
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: you know, recovery from the great recession was halting and
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: slow and painful. And a lot of people experienced a
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: great deal of misery as a result. A lot of
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: the people who experienced that misery voted for Hillary Clinton.
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: In particular, the housing crisis disproportionately affected homeowners of color.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: It's not that it didn't affect white people, but it
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: affected the whole country. So the question is, how is
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: that experience mediated by ideology? And I think that's how
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: you get from the economic conditions that were genuinely bad.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: And I think the Obama administration's response was genuinely inadequate
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: in many ways, despite other things that they did that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: I supported. And so, it's how you interpret those conditions
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: that leads you to a conclusion about whether or not
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump's proposed solutions are appropriate or adequate or justified
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: or effective. And I think people understandably wanted to stop
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: and give like a really simplistic economic explanation for it
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: because it staved off the more disturbing interpretations of what
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: it meant for a man who rose to prominence in 2011,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: rocketed to the top of the Republican field by stating
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: that the first black president was not born in the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: United States. I think from that point, and one of
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: the things that Trump did was that he, despite the
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: fact that there was a tremendous economic incentive to say,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: if you don't wanna alienate your viewers, your readers, your listeners,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: your audience by saying, you know, racism played a huge
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: role in Trump's election. You know, there's millions and millions
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: of people who voted for this man, who you want
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: to buy your products or to vote for you or
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: to listen to your show or to read your book
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: or read your newspaper. And that, you know, and for
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: a long time, people really resisted the idea For a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: long time, people really resisted accepting that race had played
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: such an important role in Trump's election. And I think
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: what changed that was the fact that Trump kept telling
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: us over and over and over again what he was about,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: why he was doing what he was doing, and what
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: he believed, to the point where it became undeniable except
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: to the people who still wanted to support Trump despite
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: these things and told themselves that he wasn't saying or
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: doing the things that he was saying or doing. I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: think in fact that a lot of what I write,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: there's not that much disagreement between me and Trump about
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: the nature of who he is and what he does
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: and what he believes. I think there is a lot
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: of disagreement between me and the sort of the layer
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: of people who want to continue supporting Trump with a
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: clean conscience who wanna tell themselves that he does not
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: believe and do these things or he did not do them.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: or that he does not revel in cruelty towards people
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: that he considers beneath him. But I actually don't think
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: that there's much that me and him are in much
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: disagreement about that or the nature of that.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: When you talk about the impact that Obama's election had
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: on the role of race in American politics, you talk
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: about how Obama was sort of everything became racialized post-Obama,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: whether it's economic policy, healthcare policy, you know, you mentioned
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: the selection of, you know, the choice of dog became
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: a racial thing. Portuguese water dogs.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Why doesn't Obama have white dogs? A actual Fox News
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: segment at one point.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: There's so much stuff we forget.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: In reading it, it was really interesting to go back
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: to some of those moments and be– when you sort
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: of– obviously, you provide a lot of additional context about
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: what you learned since then and the context for why
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: you wrote it. But reading some of these things, you
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: remember reading in those moments and then recognizing everything that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: came after was sort of a fascinating way to sort
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: of revisit those years. But when I was reading what
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: you wrote about Obama and politics, I thought back to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: a conversation that President Obama– and I had in 2014,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: where he said to me that sort of in passing
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: that he thought he might have been elected 10 years
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: too early, that it was sort of the circumstances of
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: that election post-Bush-Iraq war expedited the sort of brought before
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: people might have been ready for a black president, particularly
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: a black president, Barack Hussein Obama, with a different background.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: But do you think that we were always headed to
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: a place that American politics would be so racialized? Or
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: was that sort of inevitable? Or did Obama's election expedite it?
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Just sort of help me understand how you think about that.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: I think Obama was an extraordinarily good politician. And I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: think you can see that in the decisiveness of his victories.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: I think that perhaps when he says he was elected
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: 10 years too early, there's never a point at which
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: the election of a Black president was not going to
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: provoke backlash. Every major step forward in American history for
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: civil rights or for democracy has been met with backlash.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: And the backlashes can sometimes be horrifyingly complete, and sometimes
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: they can be less complete, and progress can be built
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: on the foundations that are left. I think that we
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: were heading in this direction regardless of whether Obama got elected.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: We might not have gotten there as fast without the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: combination of Barack Obama being elected and Donald Trump being elected.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, something that happened during the Obama
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: administration was not just racial polarization around public opinion on
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: trivial things that have nothing to do with race, like
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: Portuguese water dogs, but around 2014, 2015, when Ferguson happened,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of Americans started asking themselves, how
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: do we have a black president? And yet race is
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: still such a determining factor in American life. We still have,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: there's still, these racial disparities persist in spite of what
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: seems like a tremendous amount of symbolic progress. And I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: think that sort of reevaluation of American history was accelerated
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: by Donald Trump, because you have to ask yourself, you know,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: how does a guy who is running on such explicit
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: white identity politics, nevertheless, prevail in an American election to
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: succeed the first black president? But there were structural factors behind,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: you know, both of these things, like simply the racial
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: polarization of the parties preceded both Obama and Donald Trump.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you look back to 2006, you know, the,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: one of the, I think one of the important precipitating
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: events to Trumpism is the huge talk radio backlash to
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: the Bush immigration plan. So Karl Rove and Bush had
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: this idea of, you know, doing an amnesty like Ronald Reagan,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: in which they would legalize or provide a path to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: legalization to millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: And this would help bring Latino voters who had supported
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: Bush in very large numbers into the Republican column for
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: a longer period of time. And there was a huge
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: talk radio backlash, just massive, and it totally killed the planet.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: And I think you have to look at that and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: you can't, I think a big part of the Republican
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: base was waiting for someone like Trump. I think if
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: you look at Mitt Romney, he made birther jokes in Michigan.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: I think we've been heading in this direction for a
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: while because of the racial and religious and ideological polarization
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: of the two parties. I don't think it would have
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: necessarily happened like this without Obama or without Trump, but
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: I think we were something like this or something. We
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: were headed toward some kind of reckoning for American democracy,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: regardless of whether or not Obama had gotten elected, I think.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: But I do think he was a huge part of it.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: It's interesting you mentioning the 2006 backlash. I was working
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: in the Senate at the time, and it was a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: huge controversy because conservatives kept mailing conservative voters kept mailing
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: bricks to the Capitol because they wanted the Senate to
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: build a wall, right? Again, that seemed insane at the time,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: but there's so much predictive information about how you end
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: up with someone like Trump.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: And I think what people like Trump didn't, you know,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: he didn't like spend 10 years, you know, in the
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: stacks of a library reading like russell kirk you know
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: what i mean he just watched fox news every day
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: and then he repeated those grievances back to an audience
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: which validated them um validated those grievances for them and
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: in turn um that cultivated kind of trust and a
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: kind of intimacy with that audience your fears are real
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: the things that you're afraid of are the things that
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: I'm afraid of, and I'm going to fight those things
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: and protect you. That was tremendously powerful. And, and I
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: think as long as that coalition retains a sort of
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: disproportionate political influence as a result of our political system,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: it's going, I mean, it's basically, you know, it's hard
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: to imagine the Republican party taking another path than the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: one it's already on.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: It is. It's an, Interesting. It sort of speaks to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: how circumscribed our view of America is to the political system,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: because there's two ways to look at this, right? Not
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: just analyzing who's going to win an election, but what
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: forces are dominant in American life and where progress is heading.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: We analyze it in the context of the six and
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: 10 or seven and 10 people eligible voters who vote
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: without ever thinking about the other 30%. And we also,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: there's two ways to talk about the last two elections.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: One is the non-Trump side, the side that was pushing
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: for diversity and more progressive policies, one to overwhelming popular
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: vote victories that are growing in time.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: Overwhelming.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: And the other way, yeah. And the other way is
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump won once and came within a hair of
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: winning the second time because our political system is so
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: screwed up.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: The electoral college is a squeaker, despite the fact that
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: the anti-Trump majority is, you know, many millions larger.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: And growing.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: And growing. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: point of the point of that, you know, the 2006 thing, though,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: is to just, you know, and that anecdote that you
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: just gave about the bricks. I mean, look, Trump gave
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: people what they wanted, you know, and I think part
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: of the or like a certain part of the country wanted.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: And I think part of the point of the book
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: is to say. You know, he didn't create this. He
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: took advantage of it, but he didn't create it. And,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: you know, if you think he created it, then the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: fact that he's gone ends the story for you. But
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: Trumpism is continuing because he didn't create it, because it's
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: something that he merely manifested or was able to manipulate
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: or was able to embody in a way that no
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: other Republican politician has before. And to some extent, you know, it's...
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: Trumpism remains an awkward fit for the would-be heirs of Trump,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: because with him, it's really who he is, and with
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: other people, it's kind of a performance. But it persists
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: precisely because our political system grants it considerable advantages as
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: a result of the counter-majoritarian levers of American democracy.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: the book. Everyone go out and buy The Cruelty is
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: the Point. It is an essential read to understand what
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: we went through and what we're still going through.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Take care.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Adam for joining us today. Good to be back.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Everyone have a great weekend and we will see you
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: next week.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Bye everyone.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:12:23
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• 1:12:28
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• 1:12:35
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