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Transcript

“Ratings to die for.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Lovett talks with PBS White House correspondent
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yamiche Alcindor. Before that, we'll talk about America's new position
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: as the epicenter of this global pandemic, Trump's impulse to
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: make it all about Trump, and how all of this
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: might reframe what we talk about in the 2020 election.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But first, Lovett, how was the show this week? Another
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: big crowd?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: The applause in my mind was deafening, John. No, we
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: did our first episode from the couch yesterday. Stephen Merchant,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Kara Swisher, Beck Bennett, all were incredibly funny, incredibly smart guests.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: We spoke to some listeners about their weird new hobbies.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: And all in all, I'm going to say love it
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: or leave it, yet another huge success.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Fantastic. Fantastic. A few other quick notes. It's hard to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: keep up with all the news out there. So if
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: you want a quick summary at the end of the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: day that comes with a much needed dose of humor
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and a little hope, have we got the newsletter for you.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Sign up for what a day at crooked.com slash newsletter. Guys,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I think the newsletter has never been better. What do
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. You will love what a day. And if you
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: haven't signed up yet, do it.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: There is always something that makes me laugh out loud,
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: which is increasingly difficult these days.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Well put. Finally, while you're sheltering in place
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: with nothing to do, go ahead and fill out your census.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Why is that so important to do other than the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: fact that it's required by law? because the census determines
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: how many members of Congress, electoral votes, and resources your
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: community gets for the next 10 years. It's a very
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: big deal, so take five minutes and fill it out.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Remind your friends, my2020census. gov. That's my2020census. gov. Okay, here's where we
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: are today. The United States has passed a grim milestone.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We now have more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: other country on Earth. And we have almost lost more
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Americans to the pandemic than we did on 9-11. On Sunday, Dr.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Fauci estimated that the U.S. could see millions of infections
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and anywhere between 100 and 200,000 deaths. Hours later, Donald Trump,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: who hadn't offered a word of condolences all weekend about
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the thousands of Americans who've died, instead tweeted a long
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: quote about the popularity of his daily press briefings that began, quote,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: President Trump is a ratings hit. So we're going to
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: get to Trump's sociopathic narcissism in a bit, but I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: want to start with the question of why we've already
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: become the country with the most confirmed cases of coronavirus. Tommy?
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Oof, a grim milestone. So, you know, you use the
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: word confirmed cases in there, which is probably an important caveat.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I bet we don't actually have anything close to a
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: good handle on the real number of people who have
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: had the virus in the U.S., We probably don't have
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: accurate figures out of China. I'm worried about what happens
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: when this rages through India. So a few caveats. But
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: the reason for why we are where we are is
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: a couple of things. I mean, with the response, the
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: original sin was Trump downplaying the virus, or at least
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: not taking it seriously for months. Our failure to ramp
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: up testing, which we'll get back to. And then there's
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: the spread. And the reason we now have the most
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: cases is because the virus got to the US way
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: earlier than anyone realized. I mean, there were clearly pockets
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: in Washington State, LA, New York, New Orleans now is
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: seeing community spread. But no one knew for sure because
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: we couldn't test. We didn't know how widely that spread was.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: And that led to slow, inconsistent government responses, right? I mean,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: like the best case was the Bay Area, which issued
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: a shelter in place on March 17th. The entire state
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: of California follows suit pretty closely after. But New York,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: for example, didn't move some more restrictive steps until the 24th.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So there was already that lag there. And on top
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: of that, the federal government response was all over the place.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Trump went through as many phases of denial. He delayed
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the process at every stage. He modeled bad behavior. He
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: wouldn't use the powers of the presidency to prepare us
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: or force social distancing. Like in February, Mike Pompeo was
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: tweeting about the State Department facilitating the transfer of masks
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: and protective suits and gloves to China.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I think it was 18 tons.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: So That's a good and decent thing to do, but
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: maybe not the step you'd see the White House taking
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: if we had an actual handle on the problem. So
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: now we've tested, I think, 850,000 people as of this recording.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: In fairness, that large number of tests is probably why
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: we now have a larger number of confirmed cases, but
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: it's still too late to prevent the spread. And, you know,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: if we tested 850,000 people in February, maybe officials in
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Louisiana would have known to shut down Mardi Gras. But instead,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: people partied for weeks and now People look at that
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: as the reason why Louisiana has the biggest explosion of
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: cases maybe anywhere. So it's a very horrible series of
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: missteps and missed opportunities.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Lovett, you got anything to add there?
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, we can talk about the Times piece
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: that looked at what happened in this last month when
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: they weren't ramping up testing. I think what's striking in
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: reading that piece is that What Trump was doing publicly
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: to fail to demonstrate leadership was also going on behind
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: the scenes. They really didn't take it seriously enough. And,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: you know, the piece is methodical, right? It goes through
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: the CDC. It talks about the FDA's failures. It talks
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: about the failure of the White House to take this
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: seriously enough, including the fact that Mick Mulvaney was ostensibly
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the person at the White House who was point on
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: this as he was being pushed out. But when you
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: look at all these different variables, and we should talk
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: about them, they're important. The hardest thing to talk about
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: is what isn't in the piece, which is just genuine
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: presidential leadership. That when there was this delay on testing,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: there's nobody at the White House saying, where are we
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: on this? Where are we on this? This is important.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: When the FDA is dragging their heels about letting private
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: companies get involved, one really stark example is South Korea
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: convened 20 companies. to help them get ahead on testing. Meanwhile,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: American companies and international companies were beating down the door
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: of the FDA saying, please change these restrictive rules about
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: getting our tests approved. We want to get you tests,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: and right now we can't do it. But because no
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: one was taking this seriously, nobody was really in charge,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: things could languish for days and days and days. I mean,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: we know this from all kinds of government responses. It's
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: really important that there's someone who says, where are we
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: on this? I want this done today. I want this
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: done by the end of the week. Because a group
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: of people where no one's in charge can talk and
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: talk and talk for weeks. And it seems like that's
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: exactly what happened.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the Times piece, which is called The
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Lost Month, which is very accurate, just lays out a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: pretty simple timeline. And there's a couple of dates that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: we know from other reporting as well. They have our
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: CDC director on the phone with his Chinese counterpart on
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: New Year's. And they said in one conversation, the Chinese counterpart,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the head of the CDC in China, actually burst into
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: tears telling our CDC director how bad this was. That's
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: New Year's. January 20th is when the first case is
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: detected in Washington state. February 5th, Alex Azar, the Secretary
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: of Health and Human Services, is pleading with the White
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: House to buy $ 2 billion worth of masks and other
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: supplies to Trump cuts the request by 75%. February 7th
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: is what Tommy mentioned earlier, a tweet from our own
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, talking about how we're sending
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: 18 tons of medical supplies to China to help them
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: deal with the crisis. This was after our own Health
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and Human Services Secretary said, we need to buy more equipment.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And then on February 10th, Trump proposed cutting the CDC's budget.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Those are just a few of the dates and a
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: few of the things that happened in this last month
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: while government officials in the United States knew exactly what
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: was going on, knew what was happening in China, knew
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: what the threat was, and fell behind in testing. And
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: this last month cost, I don't know, like, how many
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: lives is it going to cost? How many more cases
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: are we going to have because of this? Like, it's
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: almost immeasurable at this point.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, what I learned at the White House, especially
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: on the NSC, is that leadership isn't making a big
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: decision and that's the end of it. It is constant management. Like,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: like the, the apparatus of government, it can be slow
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: and bureaucratic and cumbersome. And that New York times report
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: made me think that in a lot of these jobs,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: Trump had the wrong person in place, even in places like,
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: you know, the CDC, FDA, other more technocratic institutions, but
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: it's a, it's a bigger conversation, but you know, like,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: It doesn't sound like he was going to the coronavirus
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: task force meetings. He wasn't saying, why aren't we testing?
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Get us up to speed right now and like pushing
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: the government to act. And it was just it's a
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: leadership failure that is catastrophic. And we will be trying
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: to deal with until, I don't know, two years from
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: now when we have a vaccine and everyone's vaccinated.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, they really fucked up
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the preparation for this. A lot of the more popular
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: ads and videos over the last few weeks have been
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: about this, about Trump's failure to prepare. How much do
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you think it's important to focus on what he fucked
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: up then versus what he's fucking up now as we
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: continue to sort of hold him accountable for the administration's failures? Lubbock,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: what do you think?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I think it's a really hard question. And I think
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about it more when we talk about how
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: this is affecting the politics of this moment. I do
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: think you start to see Nancy Pelosi say things that
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: are kind of, I don't know, from the from the
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: playbook of we need to do investigations. What did the
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: president know and when did he know it? Language. And
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: I think that that's really important. You know, and I
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: do think sometimes you see Bill de Blasio, who is
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: taking correctly heat for his, you know, the critical loss
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: of days in terms of New York's response, said, well,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: we shouldn't be looking backwards. And I understand why a
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: politician would say that. I also understand why people of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: good faith might say, hold on a second, we shouldn't
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: be spending our time talking about what happened before, because
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: we have an emergency right now. But it isn't a
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: choice because Trump is still fucking up right now. He
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: is still actively the same twisted motivations, lack of discipline, narcissism, ego,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: ignorance that led to that last month are guiding the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: decision making right now. So the heat we bring on
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: the bad process and bad response from January, February, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: March is going to make sure that these people are
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: accountable in what they're doing right now. So, you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: we just have to talk about it because we need
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the White House and we need the people managing this
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: response to know that their eyes are on their continuing
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: sort of misadventures.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, you can't understand why things are
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: so bad now unless you understand the record that got
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: us here and the series of catastrophic failures. And I
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: think you know, to love its point, like prioritizing the
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: stock market reaction in that might come from taking drastic
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: steps led to everything getting worse. That mentality is still
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: sort of coursing through this administration. We'll get to them
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: walking back this absurd Easter reopening timeframe that Trump had prioritized.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: But the key is like the only time he walks
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: back bad decisions is in the face of bad press
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: and criticism. And clearly he got a ton of blowback
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: on this Easter deadline. I think That's why pressure on
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: him is so important. I mean, we have to tell
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: the story of his record for the election in November.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: But then on top of that, we need to be
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: course correcting him every day and making clear to the
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: American people that they should not trust his response. They
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: shouldn't believe what he's saying at these, you know, massively
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: watched White House briefings every day. It's pure propaganda. And
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: we need to rebut those lies or people will believe
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: them because his political brilliance is repetition. He will say
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: this was unprecedented. No one saw it coming. The response
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: has been great. And if you hear that enough times,
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: you will believe him. And we have to say the truth.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what Trump is fucking up now,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: which is making sure there's enough masks, gloves and protective
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: gear for health care workers and enough ventilators to keep
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: sick people alive. So David Sanger and Maggie Haberman at
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: The New York Times have a great story about the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: two big reasons why the self-proclaimed manufacturing president failed at
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: getting enough ventilators made. One, because he ignored all the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: warnings that it was a problem in the first place.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And two, because he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are terrible,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: terrible fucking managers of the process. Tommy, what'd you think
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: about that story?
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, like it was devastating, but it was also
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: totally predictable. I mean, this is why you need competent technocrats, right?
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, What I loved about working at the White
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: House on the National Security Council was like when the
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Fukushima nuclear disaster happens, the next day you have the
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: foremost authorities in the government, in the situation room, talking
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: through what happened, how bad it's going to get, what
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: needs to be done. During the BP oil spill, Stephen Chu,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: a Nobel laureate secretary of energy, compare that to fucking
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Rick Perry or whoever's in there now, was part of
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: the team trying to figure out how to fix it.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Like when it came to surge production of ventilators, Trump
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: sent in Jared Kushner. And now he's apparently asking Peter Navarro,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: like his anti-trade zealot guy, to oversee the Defense Production
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Act work. And that is a recipe for disaster because, like,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: you can't just invoke the Defense Production Act and that's
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: a panacea. You don't flip the switch and say, aha,
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: now we have ventilators. It's management of the process. And so, like, yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: it sounds simple and great to say GM made tanks
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: in World War II. They can make ventilators now. But
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: you need someone who understands insanely complex supply chains, right?
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: And instead, you have Trump tweeting that he wants GM
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: to build ventilators at a Lordstown, Ohio facility that they
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: had closed and sold and that didn't have the facilities
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: necessary to make masks to begin with. So again, like
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: we need technocrats, we need scientists, we need an effort
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: that is coordinated by the White House so that all
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: the well-meaning people who are trying to solve the problem
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: out in industry aren't coming at odds with each other
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: and like buying the same supplies, jacking up the prices,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: slowing everything down. And so the frame of the story
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: is brutal and accurate. It also unravels the narrative that
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: he was ever a real manufacturing or building guy, or
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: he was a prick who inherited money from his dad,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: used government loans, and stiffed contractors. That's how you turn
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: a profit, but that's not going to make a bunch
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: of ventilators. He needs people like Craig Fugate running the show.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: He ran FEMA for Bush and then Obama. And the
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: thing Obama liked about him was the dude could rattle
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: off How many pallets of water had to be pre-positioned
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: in the Miami area when a hurricane was coming? Like
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: stuff like that, that only people who are immersed in
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: this understand.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. It sort of reminded me that
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: like the last couple of years, we've sort of had
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: this running debate, you know, about incompetence versus malevolence. And
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: is Trump this like dangerous authoritarian who has a plan and,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you know, strategy? Or is the administration filled with just
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a bunch of fucking incompetent buffoons? And this story and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: basically most of the response thus far makes me think
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the latter, that he's just a really bad manager who
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to pay attention to anything other than what
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: helps him politically in the short term. In the short term.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: In the short term. Yeah. It has to be in
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the short term because he's not helping himself politically in
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the long term either.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: No, he isn't, right? You know, Donald Trump is, as always...
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: you know, is his own worst enemy. And that has
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: been politically advantageous to those looking to remove him or
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: at least fight him. And, you know, had he mounted
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: a significant response and taken it seriously, it would be
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: a politically saving thing for him.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: One of the only things that it could have changed
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: the underlying political dynamics that we're in.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, they go hand in hand. You know, I
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: was thinking about Katrina. I remember during Katrina, one of
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: the messages that the Bush White House was putting out
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: repeatedly was we didn't have enough authority to address this.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: And so the connection between malevolence and incompetence is you
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: make up for a bad response by claiming you weren't incompetent.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: You didn't lack imagination. You didn't lack foresight. You didn't
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: lack the right people. You didn't lack discipline. You just
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: didn't have the tools you needed. So give me more power.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: And we've seen consistently the Trump administration tried to do that.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: The other piece of this too is Tommy makes the point,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: and he's right, about competence, just sort of knowing how
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: to do things. But Susan Rice, talking to you and
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Ben on Pod Save the World, made this point about
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: all the other things that the military could be doing
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: right now to help. They just simply aren't happening. They're
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: not happening. Well, why not? Well, expertise is not just
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: about knowing how to do things. It's about a wealth
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: of experience and background that gives you the imagination and
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: knowledge and arsenal in your mind for different things that
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: a government can do to help people in an emergency.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: You know that, hey, we have these resources at this facility.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: We have these experts at this research center. And because
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: this has been an administration with an incredible amount of
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: turnover and has not attracted the best of Republican politics,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: let alone politics, yes, there is Trump's narcissism and ego
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: guiding this, but this is also a group of people
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: who are in over their head and have been from
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: day one of the administration.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Well, and like you said, so that's the incompetent side
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of it. The malevolence comes when you respond to criticism
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: about how you failed. So let's talk about how the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: president is handling that. Over the last few days, He
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: has responded to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's public request for
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: more federal support by calling her names and saying she's
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a failure. He said that he didn't believe Governor Cuomo
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: when he said that New York needed 30,000 more ventilators.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And during his Rose Garden press conference on Sunday, floated
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: a conspiracy that health care workers have been hoarding and
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: maybe even stealing masks because they keep asking for what
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: he feels are too many. He said, quote, something's going
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: on and you ought to look into it as reporters.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Where are the masks going? Are they going out the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: back door? Why? Why is he doing this?
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I think like I just was like, look, I just
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: think a lot of these nurses got into this game
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: because they saw an opportunity to make a quick buck.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Like when you see a nurse, just remember they are
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: fucking just like shifty nurses. money-grubbing people. That's the thing
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: about nurses and doctors. Obviously, it's incredibly offensive. All of
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: us know doctors and nurses that we've been touching base
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: with this whole time, and they are exhausted. They are worried.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: They are scared. They are away from their own families
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: to protect them. They are trying to decide how much
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: of a risk they're willing to take themselves when they
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: intubate a patient, when they go into a dangerous circumstance.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: They are wondering when they're going to run out of ventilators.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: They're wondering when they run out of beds. They do
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: not have enough masks. They are reusing their masks. They
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: are desperately trying to figure out workarounds because they don't
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: lack the equipment. And Donald Trump thinks that Goodfellas is
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: happening with the masks he's sending. It's obviously, you know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: it's despicable.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what'd you think of that?
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I just, I mean, the, the, the playing assignment editor
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: about the stolen mass was just like such madness. I
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: could barely stomach it, but like, I keep thinking about
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: the attacks on these blue state governors. I mean, imagine
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: George W. Bush saying he wouldn't call back some democratic
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: governor who is worried about an Al Qaeda attack.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: It's, it's inconceivable, right?
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: And like, so the question is why, I mean, I
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: don't want to go all psychoanalyst here, but clearly he's
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: a total narcissist. He clears more about his political standing
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: and treatment in the press than actually helping people. And
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: we didn't need the coronavirus to tell us that. We
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: saw it during Hurricane Maria with his treatment of Puerto
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Rico and the elected officials there and the people there.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if that means that states with
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Democratic governors are getting purposefully harmed or getting less than
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: they need. I mean, these governors seem to suggest that
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Mike Pence is working with them in good faith. And
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I think there's probably a lot of people in the
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: response effort working in good faith, right? Like no one's
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: doubting Fauci's motives. And even within the White House, like
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: we reached out about booking Fauci on Pod Save America.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: A nice person called us back, talked about the interview.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: That person probably thinks my political views are abominable and
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: my tweets are caustic and awful, but they gave us
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: consideration because they want technocratic people to know what's going on.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: So like a lot of people are doing the right thing,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: but the problem is Trump himself is And so we
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: don't know if he's reducing shipments to Michigan of masks,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: but we do know how much it matters when a
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: president personally gets involved in a matter and says, get
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Jay Inslee or Gretchen Whitmer what they need in Washington
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: and Michigan right now. And instead he's saying he's not
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: gonna call them. And it is like maybe one of
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: the most insane things I could imagine a politician doing
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: from a policy or humane sort of response level, but
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: also politically, he's telling the state of Michigan, that they're
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: second-class citizens in the run-up to an election. And it's
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: maybe the dumbest thing you could ever imagine.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Well, he said on that Fox News town hall, you know,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: it's a two-way street. They have to treat us well,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: both the governors. He said it's a two-way street. White
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: House aides have said, this was in a New York
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Times piece, it's understood that governors who say nice things
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: about the federal response are more likely to be spared
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: public criticism from the White House or threats of withheld assistance.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: And remember, we knew this before this pandemic, this was
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: why he was impeached. And remember, there's a moment in
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the hearings, in the impeachment hearings, when Pamela Carlin, who
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: was one of the law professors that tried to talk
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: about why this was impeachable, she said, imagine, imagine Donald
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Trump during a national emergency calling a governor of a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: state and saying, I'm not going to release disaster assistance
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: funds unless you do me a favor. And a couple
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: months later, Here we are. And Rudy Giuliani spelled it out.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, he said on Fox News, sometimes you got
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to lose to the boss in golf.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Like what? What are you talking about? Well, it's obviously
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: you can explain it with psychology, but you can also
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: look at it in politics, right? Donald Trump is afraid
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: of the politics of coronavirus turning against him. Well, who
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: are the people who have the power to do that?
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: He doesn't think CNN has the power to do that.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: He doesn't think MSNBC has the power to do that.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: He thinks that the governors have the power to do that.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And so when he brushes Andrew, well, Andrew Cuomo, who
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: has been, I think, trying to be deft in being
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: critical of the administration while not pressing any buttons that
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: create a storm that might hurt his state, you know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: New York, my state, issued like a criticism about ventilators,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: very carefully worded. And Trump hit the roof and came
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to the podium with Oppo to say, like, actually, it
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: was Andrew Cuomo who didn't have the right amount of
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: ventilators and he's hiding ventilators and he's got ventilators in
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: his basement. Like, why is he doing that? Like, why
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: is he doing that? He's doing that to send a
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: signal to all of these other governors. Do not attack me.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I will make your life miserable before I even get
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: to the impeachable offenses of not calling you, not giving
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: you the supplies you need, not helping you.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And it's not just a signal to the other governors.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It's a signal to all of the right wing propaganda
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: outlets and to his voters that when things get tough,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: The people you should blame are not me. It's other politicians.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter which party, mostly Democrats, but any politician that
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: crosses me, it's the media, which he's been blaming nonstop.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And you saw it in the tweet where he started
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: flipping out at GM about the ventilators, which as we
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: saw from the New York Times article was his administration's fault,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: but he started blaming the head of GM. So he's
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: going to blame business leaders. He's going to blame the media.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: He's going to blame politicians, all of the fucking tricks
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: in the book as things start to get tough for him. And,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: you know, that was part of why he sort of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: like tweeted those fucking that disgusting, you know, quote from
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the New York Times about how President Trump is a
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: ratings hit because he saw that people don't want to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: take the briefings live. And he decided to blame the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: media for like, well, I'm doing so well. And now
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: they're mad that I'm doing well. And that's why they
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: don't want to take it live. They just hate me.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: So hate the media.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: It's always. blaming someone else that the buck never stops
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: with him. I was thinking there's a little bit of
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: good old fashioned excitement in his head. The old apprentice
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: star was pretty pumped about those. He really cares about
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: these things. And the fact that he doesn't realize just
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: how disgusting that is to brag about the nation being
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: so terrified that they're tuning in to a briefing about
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: whether they might live or die and to think that
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: somehow reflects on you and makes you look good. It's
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: like there's something there's a wire broken up there. That
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: means I just fundamentally can't understand him as a human
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: being and nor can most people. I mean, I have
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: been like plenty enraged by Trump over the last four years.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Like that tweet in the middle of, you know, we
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: had just passed 2000 Americans had just died. from this pandemic.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And he tweets that hadn't offered any condolences that just
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: fucking broke me. I was like, this guy is he's it's,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: it's true. Socio. It's like, he's a real sociopath. He
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: has no human emotion.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I will say like, you know, we've talked a lot
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: about how, okay. There's like, you know, there's these two,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: there's these two ways in, right. One is the actual
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: substance of the response, right. There's the actual Where has
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: he got, where are the tests? Where are the ventilators?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Where's your attention? And then there's this, the PR side
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: of it, right? The tone he takes, the way he
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: treats people, the way he talks to reporters. And we've
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: been talking a lot about over years now, like we've
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: got to stay over here on the substance because it
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: just seems like a lot of people tune out the
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: noise and that's sort of baked in to the Trump
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: cake at this point. But there's a real, it's interesting,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: like to me, the Easter, we're going to be open
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: by Easter. and that moment where he was talking about
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: the county-by-county maps, that to me, when I saw the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: ratings tweet, it didn't floor me because I was so
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: much more taken aback by what he said about Easter
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: because I do think that's where there's this connection between
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: the PR side of it and the substance. You see
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: it with Ron DeSantis in Florida trying to blame New
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: York because he didn't close the beaches and he didn't
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: do his job.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Still hasn't.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Still hasn't. The county plan, the... attacking New York, attacking Michigan,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: attacking Washington, until this weekend where he did seem to
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: be shaken by what Fauci said, and I think actually
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: by someone he knows getting sick, which is the only
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: thing that could get into his narcissistic brain, you saw
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: that they were moving towards this PR front to try
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: to blame the states for their own failings. But in
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: order to do that, considering opening up the country early
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: so that he could push it out to other places.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And so to me, like, That is where the substance
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: and the politics and the PR kind of come together
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: and why his way of behaving is actually going to
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: cost people's lives.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Well, so Joe Biden called Trump's comments about the conspiracy
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: about the health care workers selling masks on the black market.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: He'd call them among the most reckless and ignorant moves
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that Trump has made during this crisis and challenged the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: president to use the Defense Production Act within the next
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: 48 hours to direct the production and distribution of protective
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: gear and ventilators to completely fill the request of every governor.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I thought that was smart, partly because of what you
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: just said, Lovett, is he hits sort of the awful,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: disgusting thing Trump said, but then he also offers a
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: substantive criticism and a challenge for him to actually use
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the DPA.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's the obvious route for Joe Biden. He's
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a presidential candidate. How do you handle it if you're
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: like a governor or a mayor, right? Like, how does
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Newsom handle this? How does Cuomo handle this? How does
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Whitmer handle this? Like, you do need this lifesaving equipment.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And so you need a working relationship with the federal
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: government and the White House. But you also now have
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the president out there attacking you every time you say, hey,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: I actually need more help.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, very carefully. You know, I'm like
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: of two minds of this because... I was actually thinking
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: this morning, you know, wow, Cuomo, Inslee, Newsom, Whitmer, modeling
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: as best they can the kind of leadership traits you'd
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: rather see in your president than what we're seeing. But
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I remember when Inslee took that call from Pence and
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: he criticized Pence right away, right after the call. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: I understood why he did that. He was correct on
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: the merits, completely correct on the merits. But I remember
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: thinking that's a dangerous game to play with this White
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: House because they're terrible people and they're vindictive and they
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: care more about their own politics than they do the
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: people of any state in this country. So I think
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: the unfortunate reality is like you saw this with the
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: fires in California, that the leadership in California, whether it
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: was Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom, like being very careful
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: in how they talk about what the Trump administration is
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: doing because they're trying to get things they need. And
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: I do think, sadly, like these governors like do need
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: to eat some shit because they have to protect their people.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and stay out of the fight with Trump while making
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: sure they do signal at really important moments where the
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: administration is failing, being really fact-based, being really clear, being
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: really direct about it while knowing that they have to
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: play that game.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, I don't have the responsibility of managing
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: this relationship or getting what I need from a federal government.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: So it's very easy for me to sit here and say,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, the thing that's in the back of my
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: head is, like this Easter timeline reversal. I'm very glad
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: that Trump apparently listened to Fauci and all the scientists
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: and backed him off this crazy Easter deadline to reopen
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the government. But that still meant that lots of people
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: endured days of panic, that our government was going to
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: do something that would endanger all of our lives. And
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: like the Trump propagandists spent weeks priming their adherence to
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: believe that this Easter deadline was real and that hurting
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: the economy was worse than the virus itself and that
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: grandma was willing to sacrifice herself to allow the S
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: & P 500 index to go up a couple points.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: And you can't turn on a dime and fix that.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: So I do think that the Cuomos of the world
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: who are trying to not be ad hominem but are
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: like rebutting misstatements and bad ideas repeatedly and speaking truth
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: to power in that sense, I do think that's the
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: right approach. I also don't think like Trump's sending Florida
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: whatever they need because he thinks it's a swing state
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: that he needs to win. I don't think he's ever
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: going to do a solid to a bunch of blue
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: state governors, whether they're nice to him or not.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: That's just like not in his DNA. So I think
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: they should say what they need and like let voters
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: treat him accordingly and be accountable. I, you know, I
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: wouldn't take shots at him necessarily that felt, you know,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: childish or, you know, personal. But I do think like
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: you can't. pull punches on what you need and what
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: you're getting and how you get the responses going or
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: bad policy proposals in the name of keeping him happy.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: That would be my. I completely agree. I also think, look,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: all these governors have higher approval ratings than him right now.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: He's gotten a bump, but they've gotten bigger bumps. Andrew
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Cuomo is sitting at like 70 percent right now. Gretchen
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Whitmer is between 16, 70 percent. And I think, look,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I think criticizing him or at least criticizing the response
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and asking for what you need is a life or
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: death situation. It's not just about politics. And I think
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you're right. There's a balance that you have to strike there,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: which I actually think Gretchen Whitmer did quite well on
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: one of the Sunday shows this weekend. I can't remember
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: where she was. She basically said like, yeah, meet the press.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: She's like, we, we don't want a fight right now.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: She's like, people's lives are at stake. We need to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: be working together. We don't need to be divided and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to be pit against each other right now. What people,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: one thing people hate about Trump, most voters, not just
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: partisan Democrats is but they don't like what? They don't
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: like the tweeting, the fights, the pettiness, the childness, the chaos,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the divisiveness. So if these Democratic governors and other Democratic
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: officials can talk about how Trump has turned this into
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a political issue, has turned this into a partisan football,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: has decided to use this crisis to divide people, to
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: deflect the blame from himself, I think that's a message
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: that doesn't seem like it's a cheap shot, but it
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: also rings true. And I do think if these governors
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: don't lead the criticism of the administration's response then no
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: one else will say it or and like people will
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: still believe that he's doing a great job like at
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: some point we all have to just you know like
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: we can all yell about it on podcasts and reporters
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: can do it but right now a lot of americans
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: are looking to their local and state leaders and they're
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: approving of their handling and they're looking to them for
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: cues on what's happening and i think they all need
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to be honest about where the federal government is falling
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: short even if it means that trump goes crazy.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I also like the leader, the scientific leader, the expert
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: of America's response to the coronavirus signaled that he believes
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: there may be between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths. And Trump's
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: response to that is to go to the podium and say,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: but it could have been 2 million to try to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: set expectations down.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Well, he actually said, if it ends up between 100
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: and 200,000 fatalities, quote, We all together have done a
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: very good job. That's what he said at the podium
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: on Sunday.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: I do think one of the challenges here, and I
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: do think one of the reasons, you know, seeing Trump's
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: approval rating going up is very disheartening. It's very sad
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to see. His approval rating should be going down because
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: he failed his country dramatically. But yes, you see the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: comparison to other governors who have gone up even more.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And that's a sign, OK, there's something going on here
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: that maybe you can wrap your head around. But also
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the vastness of what's about to happen, I don't think
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: has really hit people. The scale of what we're talking about.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: We're talking about 50 9-11s. That's what we're talking about.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: All because they missed their opportunity to do the testing
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: when it could have contained it to a few key places.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: That is a world historic failure. That is not Donald
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Trump's Katrina. That is Donald Trump's Iraq. And everything about
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the next year... is about solving this incredible crisis, but
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: also telling that story to protect us from the next crisis.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: We saw some polling and focus groups a while back,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: long before the virus hit, that showed that a lot
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: of the things that I think liberals, myself included, focus
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: on on Twitter, the personal characteristics of Trump don't really
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: resonate with voters. But the best argument against him is
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: really that he's incompetent. and that he has made a broken,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: corrupt system worse. And I think tragically, nothing has borne
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: that out more than this response. It was predictable because
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: of the disdain for expertise, the nepotism, the vetting of
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: staffers for political views and not qualifications. And so I
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: do think focusing on that every single day is the
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: way Democrats will do well. Biden needs to show leadership
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: and resolve and make clear how he would be different
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: and empower scientists. But, you know, I do think like
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: we're going to need governors and other elected officials to
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: really carry the more brutal argument against Trump in this response. And,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: you know, look, tragically, it might just play out on
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: our screens anyway, because like you said, love it.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to get worse. Well, that sort
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: of leads us into the conversation about 2020 and the campaign.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about how the pandemic will change
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the way the 2020 campaign is run. And there was
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: a big New York Times story over the weekend about
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: how the way candidates communicate and organize and fundraising will change.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about how this pandemic could change what
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the campaign is actually about. The Times has a lot
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of candidates talking about how the pandemic will either affect
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: or dominate just about every other issue in politics. And
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: it quotes Republican Congressman Tom Cole saying, quote, this is
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the question that is going to dominate the election. How
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: did you perform in the great crisis? Do you guys
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: think he's right about that? Is everything that happened over
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the last three, four years now sort of out the
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: window and this is the main event?
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I think so. I mean, I think after 9-11, that
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: was a paradigm changing event in American politics. And the
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: fear and the desire to prevent a future 9-11 became
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: all consuming. And I think this is similar. And I
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: think whoever does the best job of addressing that fear
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: and showing the how you'd handle it is going to
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: get elected or if it's Trump reelected. And I, you know,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I just don't know that it's hard for me to
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: imagine Trump stumping and saying, talking about record stock market
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: gains that have been erased or trade fights with China
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: that feel small and meaningless, right? I mean, the only
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: enduring damage that is done in terms of his record
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: before this is these fucking judges that we have to
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: live with for the rest of our lives. But I do,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: it's hard for me to imagine a November election that
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: is about anything but this issue. And so, yes, I mean,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I do think like Biden has to show competence and
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: leadership and resolves. But, you know, it's a harder job
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: for Trump because of how much he's failed to date
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: and defending that record will become impossible.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Love it. What do you think?
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I'd say two things. One, yeah, I
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: think Tommy's right. I do think I read that that
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: piece and I just found myself feeling completely uncertain about
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: I'm uncertain about what it looks like to campaign in
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: this environment. Yes, I do believe, obviously, it's going to
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: be dominating our politics indefinitely, but a lot depends on
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: what happens with this response. Where are we in the fall?
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: How many cases are there? Have we come out of
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: self-quarantine or staying at home? Have we not yet? How
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: much has the country gotten past this? Those are all
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: questions I think we just don't, that are just sort
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of swirling around. The other piece of this, though, is
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I do think that there's sort of two kinds of races.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: One is the presidential. and Joe Biden is known. He
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: is a known figure. I think about all of the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: unknown house candidates, all of the unknown Senate candidates, all
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: of the candidates who are not just going to try
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: to define the issue, but try to define themselves in
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: an environment which they may or may not be able
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: to do campaign events. They may or may not be
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: able to do fundraisers. They may or may not be
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: able to go to TV studios. So right now, I
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: do think we're just in the very early stages of it.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: And I just feel like it feels like there's so
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: many unintended and unknown consequences of what we're seeing and
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: how it will shape the campaign that I just think
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: it's going to be incumbent upon very, very smart people
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: to be thinking about this and try things and make
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: mistakes and realize what's working and what's not working because
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: no one's ever had to campaign for president during a
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: pandemic in 100 years.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, re-election campaigns are usually about the incumbent and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a referendum on the incumbent. And the incumbent's vote share
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: usually matches pretty closely what their approval rating, what their
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: job rating is at the time of the election. That's
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: usually the case. And we've debated this on the pod before.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Dan has argued that this time around. It's not just
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: a referendum. The Democrats need to make it a choice
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: as well. And I think in a regular election with
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: someone irregular like Trump on the ballot, that might be true.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I wonder now with this pandemic, with this dominating everything else,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: and I do think even in the most optimistic scenarios,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: if Trump says, oh, we'll be raring to go by
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: June 1st. Well, if we're raring to go by June 1st,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: that still means how many thousands and thousands and thousands
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: of Americans have died, what the economy will look like
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: at that point. The pandemic will not have gone away
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: at that point. Maybe it will have subsided, but there
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: will still be outbreaks in different parts of the country.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I also find it really hard to imagine this not
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: sort of dominating the election. And I think as much
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: as what Joe Biden, we've talked in the last couple
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: of weeks about Joe Biden's got to figure out how
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to communicate and break through. And I think what Joe
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Biden does is important here, of course, but I think
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: that more than ever, this is going to hinge on
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump as it was in the beginning. It's going
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to be all about Trump. And I worry too that
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the dark scenario is, and we sort of alluded to
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: this earlier, this thing drags on and there's a lot
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of suffering and a lot of death and a lot
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of pain, financial and health wise. And what Donald Trump
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: does is he starts blaming everyone else and he starts
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: being Racist and xenophobic and partisan and divisive. And he
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: blames governors and he blames Democrats and he blames the media. And,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: you know, he makes the fall campaign a very, very
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: dark campaign where he tries to pit the country against
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: each other, which is even worse than the original campaign
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: he was going to run, which is to try to
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: make Joe Biden look like a corrupt old coop. You know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that's that's not enough anymore.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Get ready for the covid caravans that are coming to
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: every border. I mean, to your point, I have no
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: idea who will be helped or harmed by this pandemic
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: in the election. The disgusting thing to say, I just
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: think that it will be all consuming. I just think
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: we all need to remember, like why we're doing social distancing.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: It's not because it's going to make the virus go
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: away and life goes back to normal.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: It's so that we don't.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Overwhelm all of our hospital systems and people die in
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: the parking lot, right? And so if we start living
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: like we did before, before there's a vaccine, which is
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: likely to take a year at least, cases are going
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: to explode again. So I just think we are going
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: to be living with some version of life as it
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: is right now for a year, year and a half,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: two years, which certainly encompasses the election. And I just
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: think the whole thing will become about this new way
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: of life and how we get through it.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I also, you know, this is new for Democratic politics
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: it's new for Republican politics. It's new for Trump's politics,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: you know Trump wants to you know to John's point
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: wants to go to fear wants to go to the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: dark places to excite his base and you know foment
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: chaos and uncertainty and a lack of trust in the
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: media and all the rest but you know the fears
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Trump is interested in I wonder if they're fears of
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: a disease and of a pandemic coming for your family,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: coming for your parents. Like we're talking about mass death.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: We are talking about people dying alone, gasping for air.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: That's what we're talking about on a huge scale. And
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: so I do think the emotion of that, the depth
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: of that is something we are not fully understanding, not
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: fully letting in because it is so powerful and it
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: is so painful. And I do think right now from
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: this new position of being at home and learning about
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: this in real time for the first few months, I
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: don't think yet we fully understand how this will reshape
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: our politics. We just can't. We just can't.
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: No, but I think what Democrats can do is be
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like knowing that so much of this will hinge, whatever,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you know, we can't predict much. But knowing that so
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: much of this will hinge on, in the substance, not
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: just the politics, on Trump's performance, how Trump responds. I
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: think continuing to hold him accountable, to point out the
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: administration's failings, to say what should be done differently, to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: point to, you know, this is what we could have
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: done to save lives. This is what we still can
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: do to save lives. And not being afraid of his
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: bullshit is probably going to be the best way. not
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: knowing where this lands and what the political outcome is.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: He is Hoover. He is Bush. He's all of it.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: He's all the worst things in American politics, in American history,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: rolled into one, right?
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: And I do think that as sad as this moment is,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: what I think to myself is like, well, what's our mission?
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: What's our job? It is to tell this story and
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: remember that every point above fucking zero of his approval
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: rating on the coronavirus is a failure.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: And, you know, there was some criticism of Biden over
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: the weekend because Chuck Todd said, you know, is there
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: blood on Donald Trump's hands? And, you know, he didn't
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: take the bait on that question. And I think I
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: am a OK with Joe Biden not letting Sunday show
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: hosts put words in his mouth, because what I think
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: people want from Biden is someone to show some leadership
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: and some resolve and to tell us that we're going
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: to get through this. And not in a fucking saccharine, phony,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: there will be no sacrifice way, but to finally level
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: with the American people who just went through three months
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: of a president telling you that the virus is going
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: to miraculously go away and we're at 15 cases and
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: soon we'll be down to zero. And now we're at, oh, 100,000
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: dead is a good job. That's not going to be
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: lost on anybody. They know what's happened. They're living through
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: this together. And so Biden can just project competence and
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: like he's a good human and all the empathy that
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: we know is inside him. I suspect, I don't know,
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: that that will be a compelling alternative to what we're
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: living with now with Trump.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I agree. And look, and you know, if you don't
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: care for Joe Biden, it's not just Joe Biden that's
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: doing that, that people are approving of. Like that's what
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Andrew Cuomo is doing. That's what Gretchen Whitmer is doing.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: That's what Gavin Newsom is doing. And a lot of
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: these governors and mayors who now have sort of sky
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: high approval ratings because they are carrying themselves like that.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: You know, a competent leader who calls on the country
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: to pull itself together. And it's funny because clearly there's
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: someone in Trump's White House who knows that's what he
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: should be doing because he goes to these fucking briefings
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and he reads his dumb speech. And when he gets
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to the end about Americans must come together and overcome it,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the C plus Santa Monica fascist
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: writing there. And he seems so uncomfortable and it seems
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: so out of character and he just can't fucking wait
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: to just dive into some press questions where he can
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: start attacking the press because that's where he feels good.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: He doesn't feel good as someone trying to bring people together.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Even love it when he was talking about the friend
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: of his who has it or Elmhurst Hospital, which he knew.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: because he used to live by there, it should have
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: been this real human personal moment. And it came off
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: sounding so phony and weird and robotic because he's a
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: fucking sociopath. He doesn't have the capacity to lead a
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: nation through the crisis, even if he wanted to.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't even have the capacity to fake it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Because leadership is hearing a criticism from Gretchen Whitmer and saying,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: thank you for telling me.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: And he can't do it. And so he will bite
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: off his nose to spite his face and he will
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: hurt all of us in the process.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Because I'm bummed out all the time. Can I tell
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: you guys two things that made me happy over the weekend?
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Please. Sure. One.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: So there's this incredible hospital ship called the USNS Comfort.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: It has a thousand patient beds. It just steamed into
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: New York Harbor today. And back in 2010, Alyssa Mastromonaco
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: and I were down in Haiti trying to help out
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: with the earthquake relief stuff there. And we got to
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: go on the comfort and meet those people and tour
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: it and see their capability. And it's like the greatest
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: human beings in the world are on this boat, like
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: saving lives. And just seeing it steam into port this
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: morning made me hopeful. And then also like seeing the
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: press conference yesterday with Trump berating our guest made me enraged.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: But then CNN's Jeremy Diamond said, Finally showed press corps
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: solidarity by giving his question back to Yamiche when Trump
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: had cut her off rudely and repeatedly. And so seeing
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: that kind of solidarity happen and not let reporters get steamrolled.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: it made me think, OK, we're figuring out how to
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: do this live press conference thing. So it's not a
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: propaganda festival.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, and then and one more thing that that just
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: reminded me of the other thing that makes us all
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: hopeful here at Crooked Media is how much you have
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: all donated to our coronavirus relief fund. And so if
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: you can, again, this is going to the people who
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: need help the most. And we had no idea it
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: would be this much money because we know this is
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: like a tough time and a scary time. And we've
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: been overwhelmed by the number of donations and how many
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: people have donated. So if you can, please go and give.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: We've set a goal of a million dollars. We originally
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: set a goal of 250,000. We're over 700,000 now. If
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: you go to cricket.com slash coronavirus, you can donate to
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the fund.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back, we will have Lovett's
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: interview with PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: I'm joined today by PBS NewsHour's White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, I want to start with this.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: Your colleague, Hunter Walker from Yahoo News... He's self-quarantined with
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: a suspected case of COVID-19. He tweeted over the weekend
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: that he believes his most likely exposure was in covering
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: the White House. How are you protecting yourself and how
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: are you doing?
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: I'm protecting myself by being very, very diligent about wiping
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: everything down, washing my hands a ton of times, not
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: going into the White House unless I really have to.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: And just also staying away from people that I love.
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: Unfortunately, I have a really good friend that's 96 years old,
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: and I would love to go visit her, but I'm
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: staying away from her. So even though that's more me
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: keeping other people safe, I also think that I have
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: a lot of exposure because I'm at the White House.
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: So that's kind of how we're living our lives now,
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: washing our hands and I have a husband that I've
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: been still talking to and seeing every day. I have
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: not quarantined away from him because we're newlyweds, so we
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: can't do that.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: So, you know, yesterday at the briefing, Trump accused you
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: of trying to get him, told you to be nice,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: not to be threatening. Meanwhile, you were quoting Trump himself.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: You were just quoting him on Sean Hannity. Why do
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: you think that specific question elicited such a caustic response?
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: I think yesterday, as the president has lashed out in
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: the past, he was in a position where he had
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: to backtrack after giving out some misleading information. So the
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: president had been saying he wanted to see church packed
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: on Easter Sunday, that this was going to be a miracle,
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: the coronavirus and cases would go down to zero. And
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: then he had to get up in front of the
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: world and say, actually, we have to extend our guidelines
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: till the end of April and And by the way,
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: if 100,000 people to 200,000 Americans die, that's a job
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: well done. So I think he was in that frame
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: of mind when he was already taking questions. And my
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: question was one that was, I think, pretty straightforward, which
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: is you said very clearly that that you think governors
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: are asking for medical equipment that they don't need. And
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: I think the president was just caught off guard with
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: the idea that he would have to answer to his
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: own words and that would have to explain what that
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: would mean for governors who are desperately trying to get
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: ventilators and masks and all sort of medical equipment. So
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: I think that's why he was so upset. There was
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: the frame of mind of what was going on before
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: I asked my question. And then there's this, of course,
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: this reporter now coming up and saying, here are the
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: words that you used. Could you explain this to the
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: American people?
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: And he, of course, didn't like that.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Right. There's something he finds really outrageous to be confronted
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: by things he said even a day ago, days ago,
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: weeks ago throughout this. Now, that's always been true, but
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: it's a specifically pronounced now. And yet it seems like
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: he lashes out, he attacks the questioner, he attacks the press,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: he attacks the media so that he doesn't actually ever
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: get around to commenting on the substance of the question itself.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: How do you manage that strategically in that room when
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: the whole point of the briefing is to try to
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: get someone to be accountable for their words and actions
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: and he has no He has no shame. He has
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: no appetite for actually participating in that dialogue.
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: I think it's by continuing to press him on the
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: subject that you decided you want to press him on.
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: For me yesterday, it was about the fact that I
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: really wanted to know. how his thinking was going to
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: be impacted when you don't believe that governors need what
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: they're telling you they need. So for me, as the
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: president was lashing out, I continued to say, my question is,
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: my question is, my question is. And then afterwards, I
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: just pointed out, hey, the president didn't answer me directly.
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: So we should just note that for whenever we come
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: back to this subject down the line so that if
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: in two weeks, New York says, actually, President Trump didn't
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: follow through on the orders of ventilators we need. And
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: by the way, maybe this amount of people suffered because
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: of that decision. We can go back to that moment
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: and say, well, here was the moment where we pushed
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: the president on that specific issue and he didn't answer.
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: So even if he doesn't answer, I think a non-answer
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: is a very illuminating answer.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: And clearly there's like value, even if he's not answering,
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: there's value to how his thinking has evolved and there's
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: sort of a record of when he said there wouldn't
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: be more cases, when it would be behind us, you know,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: when he would open us up for Easter and all
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: the rest. But at the same time, you know, there's
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: this question now about whether the briefing should be taken live,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: because even as you point out, you're able to kind
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: of get important information. You know, an NPR station in
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Seattle last week said they weren't going to air them
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: live anymore because it's impossible to prevent dissemination of misinformation
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: in real time, you know, you're in that room, you're
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: trying to kind of hold the task force accountable to
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: the truth. Where do you stand on that question of
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: whether this information should be broadcast live?
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: I think it's a tough question. I'm not a network executive.
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: I am a reporter. So in some ways, I will frankly.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: Say that that issue, that decision is so above my.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: Pay grade, literally. Yeah.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: As I talk to my two two room apartment that
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: we're quarantining in here. But what I can tell you
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: is that I think that American Americans are so thirsty
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: for information. People are so hungry. eager to know when
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: are their lives going to go back to normal. And
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: I think having Dr. Fauci, having the president explain, hey,
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: this might be going on until June. There might be 200,000
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: Americans who die. I think that that information is important
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: and that people can choose for themselves whether or not
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: they want to take that in live or not. I
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: do think this president is a president who begs for
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: fact checks and context. And I think when I tweet
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: his press conferences live, I try to really have notes
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: or context Because I think that just quoting him without
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: actually saying, well, here's the actual numbers that he's talking about.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: Here's where he's right. Here's where he's wrong.
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: It's a disservice to viewers and to audience members. So
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: I think reporters have been really good at that. Even
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: if it's after the briefing, people say, OK, let's walk
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: through all the things that the president said that aren't true.
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: I think people stick around for that information.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: And I also think.
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: Republicans and Democrats, having interviewed a lot of Trump supporters,
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: they also understand that even if you support the president,
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: that he's at least, in best case in people's minds,
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: an exaggerator, and at worst case, a full-on liar. So
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: I think people, Americans, unfortunately, have gotten to the point
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: where his credibility is shaky, even if you're a supporter
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: of President Trump.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: So there's been this very rapid evolution. He said last
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: week that he was looking at Easter Sunday is this
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: very important date, obviously, because he's such a spiritual person.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: But now he said, no, they're extending the guidelines. And
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: then he let slip in the briefing, he says the
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: word June, which is not something he did by accident.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: What have you learned from your reporting about that shift?
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: The shift is something that's always been there from the
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: very beginning. The federal plan, the White House plan, it
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: was leaked to The New York Times. I got a
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: copy of it afterwards. The policymakers were warned that this
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: could go on, this coronavirus outbreak, this need for social
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: distancing could go on for about 18 months.
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: That was the original idea.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: So the president, even before yesterday saying June, before that
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: he had said this might go till August. So there
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: are every now and then there are times where the
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: president kind of lets slip what health officials are telling him.
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: These numbers of people, 100,000 to 200,000 Americans dying, those
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: numbers have been out there for a while.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: I think they're just now.
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: Sinking in to the president because he's watching TV and
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: he's seeing body bags in his old neighborhood in Queens,
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: New York. And he's saying, wow, this is really bad.
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: So I think for a lot of health experts and reporters,
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: we've all kind of known that.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: The worst was coming.
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: And I think that the president's just now becoming sober
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: with that idea.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: One of your colleagues during the briefing, so you had
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: asked your question, the president behaved the way that he did,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: and the briefing continues. And then one of your colleagues
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: in the briefing room said, actually, I want to go
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: back and let Yamiche ask the question she was going
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: to ask her follow-up. And it was a striking moment
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: because it's not something that seems to happen very often.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: Is there any move to kind of work together to
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: follow up now that there are a fewer reporters able
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: to do these briefings? and be collectively we're all focused
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: on one story?
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: I think so.
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: I think especially well, for one, I have to say
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: it's thank you so much to Jeremy Diamond of CNN.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: It was a gracious moment. He had my back.
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: I felt like, I felt seen and heard. And I
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: felt like those are all the things that you want
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: as a journalist. And as someone who, especially for me,
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: who I feel like is rooted in civil rights journalism
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: and thinks that like people's, I represent a certain people's perspective.
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: And I think that that's everyday Americans who are working class,
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: who are just trying to figure out what the heck
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: is going on. So I think that that was what
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: was going on in that moment. So I'm eternally grateful.
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: I also think that reporters are understanding that like covering
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: President Trump is sort of.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: A team sport.
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: And I think that we've started to learn that I
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: would say over the last two to three years, really,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: because you realize now there have to be follow up
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: questions to colleagues questions. If I ask a question and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: it doesn't get answered, I know that sometimes an NBC
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: reporter or CBS reporter will follow up. And it's just
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: what has to happen, especially because now, as you just noted,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: the questions are kind of basic. It's like, well, when
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: are people going to get, are people going to get
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: enough validators? Are people going to get tested? Are the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: governors going to get what they're asking for? Are we
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: all going to die of this? Like, I need real,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: we have simple questions. So in some ways, the fact
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: that the questions are so whittled down, I think that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: it makes it easier to follow up on colleagues' questions.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Do you think that the briefing is combative enough? Do
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: you think reporters are pushing back hard enough when Trump
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: is not telling the truth, when Pence is misleading, when
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Azar is misleading? Do you believe there is still too
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: much solicitousness in that room?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: I'll say this.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: I think that when I'm asking questions, I don't even
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: think I'm being combative. So I think I'm literally trying
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: to hold people accountable and asking simple questions and asking
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: people about the statements that they've made in the past,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: namely the president of the United States.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: So I don't know if.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: if these settings are combative enough, because I think that,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: I don't know if the setting is supposed to be combative.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: I think it's supposed to be getting at the truth.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: And I don't know, you know, I know that that
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: looks at times like I'm fighting with the president, but
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: I like joke that like people when they like people
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: who know me know what I look like when I'm
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: fighting and.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: I'm not fighting.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: I'm actually just like asking questions that then turn into like,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: you know, moments where the president's mad.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: No, that's totally fair. I guess I don't mean right.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: That's that's a combative is the wrong word. I suppose
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: I mean questions that make the White House combative because
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: they're exposing in some way. Like, do you believe that
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: there's enough of that?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think my yeah, I think my colleagues I
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: respect so much of so many of my colleagues in
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: the White House press corps that ask a lot of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: smart questions. that come, especially I love when, I used
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: to be a print reporter, I love when print reporters
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: ask questions because they kind of read long statements. On TV,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: you're kind of taught to try to simplify your questions
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: as much. But sometimes you really do need a long
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: intro to understand what's going on. So I think there
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: are a lot of people that are asking really smart questions.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: And in this moment, I am proud of the journalists
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: that are sitting around me because, like I said, I
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: think the questions are simple. It's like, what are we
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: doing to stop this? And why are we behind other countries?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: And what is the federal government doing?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: So I want to ask one more question about just
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: some of the sort of cast of characters that are
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: coming out to the briefing. You know, there's sort of
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Pence as the leader of this task force representing, you know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Trump and kind of being deferential to Trump and protective
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: of Trump, to put it mildly. You have Fauci, who
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: I think is widely respected and someone is generally regarded
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: as doing his best to get real information out there
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: while delicately balancing Trump's ego. There have been a lot
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: of questions, I think, about Dr. Birx specifically as to
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: whether she should be in the kind of Fauci camp
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: as we think about what she's offering as someone who's
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: trying to get us real information. And then at times
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: when she's behaving more like a Trump administration political figure,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: like when she held up that chart showing the testing
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: process that turned out to not be true, some of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: her defense's of the administration. To your mind, sitting in
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: that briefing, examining these people every day, do you believe
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Birx is an honest interlocutor, an honest scientific viewpoint that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: we can rely on?
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: So I think that as a reporter who's objectively covering them,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: it's probably not my place to say whether.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: Or not I think someone's honest or not.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: What I can say is that based on like my
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: health expert sources, people say that Dr. Birx is someone
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: who is credible, who has been a scientist and been
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: working on infectious diseases for a very long time.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: So I take her at her word a lot of times.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: And I have not found her to be someone who,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: I guess, is intentionally misleading people in some sort of
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: pattern that seems nefarious. But again, I think that there
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: are people who will write columns who can say what
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: they personally think of kind of different administration officials. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: my job is really to ask them questions and not
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: to make judgments on who they are.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: I guess right then, fair enough. I guess it's more,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: do you, in asking Burke's questions, expect to get scientific
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: information or do you expect it to be more political?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: I guess when I'm asking her information, I mean, her
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: role is both, it seems like. Her title is like
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: So that title is both Dr.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: Burke or Burke's as a scientist and also Burke's as
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: an administration official who's who's coordinating information.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: So I think her title is both.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: One last question. There have been times in the briefing
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: room where reporters look for chances to mix it up.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Some of the TV reporters do that, maybe make a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: moment out of it. But Trump has come after you
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: before repeatedly. And this is just my observation, and you
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: can tell me if I'm wrong, but sincerely, you don't
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: seem like you relish in it. You seem tough and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: poised and unshaken, but you also seem sad. And I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: say that because it seems like even in the moment,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: you are open to a dialogue with a president that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: doesn't come to the table with that same sense of openness.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: So how do you maintain that posture day after day?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: I maintain that because the reason why I became a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: journalist was because Emmett Till, this 14-year-old boy in Mississippi
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: was killed and it sparked the civil rights movement.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: And I am at my heart a civil rights journalist.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: And I'm at my heart Someone who is constantly thinking
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: we don't have time for foolishness.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: We don't have time for sideshows.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: The reason why I'm a reporter is because I really
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: believe vulnerable people in this country don't have a voice.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: And I think about them every day as I craft
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: my questions.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: It can never be about me. It should never be
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: about me because I'm so focused on all the people
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: in this country who will never see the White House,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: who will never get to speak to a president. And
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: they deserve me to be professional and to not lose
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: my cool and for me to be so focused on
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: the truth that I'm not wavering on anything else that's
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: going on around me.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Yamiche Alcindor, thank you so much for coming on Pod
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Save America. Stay safe. And thanks for joining us.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Yamiche Alcindor. And all right, guys. It's good
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: talking to you again. You too.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: Listen, I just want you to know that I tried
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: the ring light, okay?
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: I got a present from Lovett delivered to my house.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: You sent that to us, Lovett?
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: I did. I sent you so sorry. I didn't realize that.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, you know, I had help, but I
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: sent you ring lights.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: So Brian sent us the ring lights.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Excuse me. It's the thought that counts, all right? It
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: is a thought. Listen, like Steve Jobs in the film
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, I play the orchestra.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: By the way, we're at $ 820, 000 towards our million-dollar goal.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. You guys are the best. Thank you. All right, everyone.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you soon.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: Bye.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Bye, everybody.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: every week.