Latest / Pod Save America / “The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”

Transcript

“The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.” · 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.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Tommy talks to Maria Teresa Kumar, the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: president and CEO of Voto Latino. Before that, we'll talk
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: about Donald Trump's near-perfect interview with Chris Wallace. He just
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: aced it. We'll also talk about the administration sending unidentified
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: federal agents to crack down on protesters in Portland and
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the legacies of Congressman John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, civil
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: rights heroes who passed away this weekend. But first, Lovett,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: how was the show?
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: Great, love it or leave it. Adam Schiff came by.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: We talked about.
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: Ways we can hold Trump accountable after he leaves office,
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: if that can happen.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Is he going to impeach him again?
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: We did not talk about a post-presidency impeachment, but we
• 1:05
  Speaker 5: talked about how to resist the pressure of moving on
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: when we know how important it is to make sure
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: we understand what happened during the Trump administration. We had
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: Zeynep Tufekci to talk about social media and the pandemic,
• 1:17
  Speaker 5: Michaela Watkins to played Betsy DeVos, and Nagin Farsad joined
• 1:21
  Speaker 5: for the monologue.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: It was a great show.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Cool. Also, everyone, please subscribe to Crooked's YouTube channel where
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: you can find video versions of all your favorite Crooked
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Media pods, fantastic original series like Dan Pfeiffer's Campaign Experts React,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and live streams of major political, cultural, and news events.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Smash that subscribe button at YouTube.com.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Slash Crooked Media. You can't smash it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: Smash it.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I love smashing that subscribe button. Finally, a little bit
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of exciting news here. One year ago this week, we
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: started a fund to help flip the Senate called Get
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Mitch or Die Trying. It's a Vote Save America fund. Today,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a year later, over 25,000 of you have raised $ 2
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: million for 14 Democratic Senate candidates. And we've already sent
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: checks to the following candidates. Doug Jones in Alabama, John
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Hickenlooper in Colorado, John Ossoff in Georgia, and Teresa Greenfield
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Sarah Gideon in Maine,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Gary Peters in Michigan, Steve Bullock in Montana, Cal Cunningham
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: in North Carolina, Jamie Harrison in South Carolina, and MJ
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Hager in Texas. We'll also be sending money to the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: nominees in Arizona, Alaska, and Kansas when those primaries happen.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: But we will not be done until Mitch McConnell loses
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: his job as majority leader. So keep donating at votesaveamerica.com
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: slash getmitch.
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: I wanted to send a big giant publisher's clearinghouse checks.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: I did too.
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: We didn't come together. Me too.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Why did that not happen?
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I know, the big Mitch turtle head on it.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: Get those checks printed. Come on.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Where's our big check? Well, we also have the Unify
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: or Die Fund. And when that is finished out and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: we give the Biden campaign their money, I think we
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: should definitely give it to Joe Biden with a big
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: publisher's clearinghouse.
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: Listen, we know that, look, we're not in favor of
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: quid pro quos here, but I do think it should
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: be a kind of like Push over the money.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: You push over the candidate. All right. We'll push the
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: money towards you.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: You don't bring anybody. You come alone. You push Joe
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Biden towards us. We'll interview him. Then you get your money.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: All right. That's the deal. It's going to be more
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: of a it's more of a ransom situation.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. The bad stretch of polling
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: for the Trump campaign continued into this weekend. with ABC
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and the Washington Post finding that the president is losing
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to Biden among registered voters by 55 to 40%. Fox
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: News has Trump trailing 49 to 41%. Both polls showed
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that voters are most concerned about Trump's handling of the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: pandemic and race relations, as well as his dishonesty and incompetence.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And so the White House thought, let's disabuse people of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: these silly views by having the president sit down with
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Chris Wallace of Fox News for a 40-minute interview that
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: aired on Sunday morning. Here's what happened next.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: I'll be right eventually.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: I will be right eventually.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I said it's going to disappear. I'll say
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: it again. It's going to disappear. Does that discredit you?
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: And I'll be right.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. Right. I don't think so. You
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: know why it doesn't discredit me? Because I've been right
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: probably more than anybody else. Everybody was saying, don't wear
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: a mask. All of a sudden, everybody's got to wear
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: a mask. And as you know, masks cause problems, too.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: With that being said, I'm a believer in masks. I
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: think masks are good. But I leave it up to
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the governors. Many of the governors are changing. They're more
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: mask into. They like masks. the concept of masks, but
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: some of them don't agree. It depends on who you're
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: talking about, when you're talking about. When people proudly had
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: their Confederate flags, they're not talking about racism. They love
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: their flag. It represents the South. They like the South.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: People right now like the South. I say it's freedom
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: of Many things. Now they want to change 1492, Columbus
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: discovered America.
• 5:05
  Speaker 7: You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: That's what we learned. Now they want to make it
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: the 1619 project. Where did that come from? What does
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: it represent? I don't even know.
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: It's slavery.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: That's what they're saying, but they don't even know it.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Joe doesn't know he's alive, okay? He doesn't know he's alive.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Let's take a test. Let's take a test right now.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Let's go down. Joe and I will take a test.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Let him take the same test. that I took.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Incidentally, I took the test too when I heard that
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you passed it.
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: Yeah, how did you do it?
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Well, it's not the hardest test.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: No, but the last- It's a picture and it says,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: what's that? And it's an elephant.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: No, no, no.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: You see, that's all misrepresentation.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what it was on the web.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: It's all misrepresentation because yes, the first few questions are easy,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: but I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I'll bet you couldn't.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: They get very hard, the last five questions.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: And let me tell you, You couldn't answer.
• 5:54
  Speaker 7: You couldn't answer. All right. What's the question?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Many of the questions. I'd get you the test.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: I'd like to give it.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: But I guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: those questions.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: At first, it's easy. At first, it's easy. You take
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: a triangle. You put it to a triangle shaped hole.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: But then next thing you know, you got a square.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: You got a square.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is that it's hard to hear is
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: after Chris Wallace says one of the questions is count
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: backwards from 100 by seven. And then Trump starts talking
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: in the background. You just hear Wallace go 93. He
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: spots him and answer. So I want to dig in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: more on the parts about the pandemic and racism specifically.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: But first, I just want to get your overall reactions
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: to the interview itself. For me, it was a reminder
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that like Trump's pathological dishonesty is rarely challenged with sustained
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: questioning from a real journalist. And when it does happen,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: he really falls apart. But Tommy, what did you think?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: What was your reaction?
• 6:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that we just saw the danger
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: of living in your own bubble of like a right-wing
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: reality and of surrounding yourselves with staffers who are offering,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: I think, the political equivalent of palliative care, right? They're
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: not really trying to treat the problem here. They're just
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: making the pain go away. And so I'm sure he's
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: probably read somewhere or was told by his staff that
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Biden wants to defund the police, but it is not
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: true and he couldn't prove it. And it was a
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: humiliating moment. I think that I bet you that he
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: and Jared walk around the West Wing with a little
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: coterie of advisors and they talk about how unfair the
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: coronavirus coverage is because they're just doing more testing. But
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: when you say that out loud, you sound deranged. If
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: you have only white friends and advisors, your response to
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: police brutality is to say, yeah, well, white people are
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: getting shot too and not realize how tone deaf and
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: broken it is. And then, of course, he has his
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: staff commissioning their own polls that show him winning everywhere
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: because that makes him feel better. So I'm not saying
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: this to be cocky or argue that the election is
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: a done deal, like far from it. It's just you
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: can tell how divorced he is from reality. And so
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: the other takeaway for me was good for Chris Wallace
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: for pushing back. The interview itself was surprising, not just
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: because normally Fox News is propaganda. This was also a
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: tougher interview than CBS's Catherine Herridge did last week or
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: David Muir from ABC did recently. I don't get why
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: every interview isn't like this. It's very easy to fact
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: check him. He's predictable. He says the same lies. The
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: claims are demonstrably false, and he makes news when challenged.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: So good for Chris, good for Fox for poking a
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: hole in this bubble. I wish everybody would do it.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: What'd you think?
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: I watched the whole thing.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: I feel like I saw that you guys were watching
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: it in real time because you're political cutters, but I
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: waited until it was on YouTube so that I could
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: watch it at 1.75 speed because- He's taken enough of
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: my time.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: I did both.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: That's how sad I am.
• 8:46
  Speaker 7: Oh, no.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: But so I would say all.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: That's... Yeah, I had to find those clips. I watched
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it again last night.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now you're just a fan.
• 8:54
  Speaker 7: Brutal.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: You're just a Chris Wallace fan.
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: You follow Chris Wallace around over the summer for all
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: of his live events.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: But no, I would say all that's right.
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: I would say, too, that I think I watched it
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: and I tried to step back because I'd already seen
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: so much reaction about how crazy it was. And I
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: actually found that for most of the interview, it was
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: just sort of like normal Trump deception. The part about
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: the cognitive test does take it into a new level
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: of almost art. But the part that I do think was,
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: I think, chilling to me was obviously, I think, three parts. One,
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: where he talks about the Supreme Court's decision on DACA
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: is going to give him the ability to do a
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: bunch of things with executive action.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: That is worrying. I want to know what those are.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: What is that?
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: He said they were about health care.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: They're about immigration.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: What are those going to look like?
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: Two- Obviously, I think people are taking his usual we'll see,
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: we'll see to make a news cycle about what will
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: happen if he loses and not accepting results. But obviously,
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: that's a terrifying prospect. I think a lot of people
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: get themselves spun up about it. But it is worth
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: noting that he is saying now that he is not
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: committed to accepting the results, obviously. And then the third
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: thing is that final question where he's asked basically, what
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: do you want your legacy to be? Or what are
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: you going to say about your presidency in hindsight? And
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: he says, I was treated very unfairly. That's like the
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: biggest and most important thing that he can take away
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: from it. And as we're about to enter a period
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: of time in which he's going to be doing these
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: coronavirus briefings again at a moment of incredible crisis. No
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: matter what we do, it is clear that over the
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: next few months, he is going to waste this period
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: of time, fail to take the coronavirus seriously, and put
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: the country in jeopardy. And it's extremely sad. It's extremely enraging.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: And those were my points.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought the same thing as you, Levitt, that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the answer to the last question sums up the whole
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: presidency and Donald Trump. And it's everything you need to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: know about him, which is everything is about himself and
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: how he's treated. And he can't even muster some bullshit
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: about a second term agenda or the American people or anything.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: And it also reminded me that like, he is incapable
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of course correction, right? This is a point in a
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: campaign where if you're down by this much against your opponent,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you try some new things, you try some new messages,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: you try some new strategies, like none of that's going
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: to happen. He may win, but he will either win
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: or lose on this message being this Donald Trump, Like,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you know, they announced today that he's going to bring
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: back the briefings. Like, what do we think? Do we
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: think there's going to be a new Trump at the briefings?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: He's going to start taking the pandemic seriously. He's going
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to start. No, none of that's going to happen. He's
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: going to do this. And like, maybe this is enough
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to have him win. I mean, it's not it's not
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: so far, according to the polls, but this is who
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: he is. This is what we're going to get till November.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Wallace started the interview by challenging Trump on his pandemic response.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And this is what happened when he fact-checked Trump on
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: his lie that the United States has the lowest COVID
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: mortality rate in the world.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: But when you talk about mortality rates, I think it's
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: the opposite. I think we have one of the lowest
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: mortality rates in the world.
• 11:51
  Speaker 7: Well, we're going to take a look.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: We had 900 deaths on a single day.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: We will take a look.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: This week.
• 11:57
  Speaker 7: Ready?
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: You can check it out.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Could you please get me the mortality rate? Yeah. Kayleigh's
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: right here. I heard we have one of the lowest,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Do you have the numbers, please?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Because I heard we had the best mortality rate. Number
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: one low mortality rate. I hope you show the scenario
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: because it shows what fake news is all about.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think I'm fake news. It's really not. I mean,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: his message about the pandemic throughout the whole interview and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: in general is everything's fine. It's not that bad. Media
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: is making it out to be more than it is. Like,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: don't worry about it. But it's not just a message.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: You know, he also threatened in this interview to block
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: funding for schools that don't open. Washington Post reports that
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the administration is threatening to block funding for testing, contact tracing,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and the CDC in the next pandemic relief bill. Like,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine Republicans who are up for reelection actually
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: going along with this insanity.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: But.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, on the school's point, the latest Navigator poll
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: shows that I think 32% of the country approves of
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: his handling of the school reopening question. And 67% of
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: the country wants Trump to stay out of it and
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: to let local communities make these decisions. So that position
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: is already incredibly unpopular. And then he's confronted with the
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: fact that the 8% to 10% of funding that comes
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: from the federal government is for poor kids, kids who
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: have special needs. I mean, Chris Wallace really, I think,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: spells out just how cruel this little ineffective punitive approach
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: he's taking is in the first place. And so you're
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: not going to find a lot of issues with like
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: 67% agreement period in this country. I do suspect that
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: blocking funding for testing for the coronavirus and for the
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: CDC is might beat it, might hit like 90% in
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: this environment. It's like nowhere in this interview do you
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: see a strategy. There's a lot of like buck passing.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: He talks, he says it's one point, like they got
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: a lot wrong. Some of them said the virus would
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: go away in the summer. You were the one who
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: was pushing that line, buddy. Like that was your big thing.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: And so none of this is like accountability or owning
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the problem, which is why like you, I'm not at
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: all worried about the task force briefing starting again. I mean, yeah,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: it's a mess. There's no path forward here.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Lovett, what do you think? I did see in the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: New York Times, there was the monthly story last night
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: about how Republicans are starting to break from Trump. This
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: is it? This is finally the time?
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Is that time of year again?
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, this is a good example of arguing with
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump makes you dumber even when you're winning. Where
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: are we in the mortality charts? None of that is
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: about a process of fixing anything. None of that is
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: about addressing the disease. That is, purely about Donald Trump's ratings, right?
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: That's purely about how is he doing compared to other countries.
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: Like where we are in that chart, bickering with Chris
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: Wallace over where we are in terms of like our
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: line compared to other countries, it's irrelevant. A real president,
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: a person of any kind of substance or character would
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: say in that moment, look, the bottom line is, Chris,
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: we can quibble over the numbers. The most important thing
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: is we have to do everything in our power to
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: protect our people, get this virus under control so we
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: can open up our schools, right? There's a very clear, natural, uh,
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: moment for leadership that never comes. Obviously we've done this
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: a million times.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: So, uh, yeah.
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: And then as for Republicans breaking with Trump, uh, a
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: little bit late, you know, there've been, you know, reports
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: that he has, you know, Trump's got till Labor Day.
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: If he doesn't get this fixed up by Labor Day,
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: then we're really, it's like, you're going to, you're going.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: To break with him.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Circle it on the calendar. Yeah.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: The finish, like three, three years and nine months into
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: the administration, you draw the line. No, it's about your
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: own political fortunes and trying to save what's left of
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: your Senate majority.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the conventional wisdom of no one pays attention to
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: politics till after Labor Day seems to touch off when
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: everyone's locked inside their homes and can do nothing but
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: watch the news in horror. But go on, pundits.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're trapped. The other notable section of the interview
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was about police brutality and racism. First, Wallace challenged Trump
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: on his lie that Joe Biden supports defunding the police.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Liberal Democrats have been running cities in this country for decades.
• 16:09
  Speaker 7: Poorly.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Why is it so bad right now?
• 16:13
  Speaker 7: They've run them poorly.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: It was always bad. But now it's gotten totally out
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: of control. And it's really because they want to defund
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: the police. And Biden wants to defund the police.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Sir, he does not.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It says nothing about defunding the police.
• 16:29
  Speaker 7: Oh, really?
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: It says abolish.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It says defund. Let's go.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Get me the charter, please.
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Get me the charter.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: Let's do this.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Where did he get charter from?
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Chart.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: What are they signing?
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: I think he said chart.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: No, charter.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be a chart of the stats?
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: No, no, he's saying charter.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: No, it's charter.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: Because he's bigging up, because he doesn't, you know, his
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: vocabulary is down to like 500 words, and he's trying
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: to big up the plans, right?
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: He doesn't want to say they have a plan with
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: the charter.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, the Bernie thing, yeah.
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: Because it's an agreement with Bernie. He's basically, it's a
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: charter to hand over the government to Antifa.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: That's what he's building towards.
• 17:09
  Speaker 8: Right, right.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: That's what it is.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: I've seen that.
• 17:11
  Speaker 7: Well, so.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: So the Post reported over the weekend that Trump's central
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: message about Biden now is that he'll allow the radical
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: left to usher in a new dystopia.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: It seems like there's a hole in that strategy. But
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: what do you think? Is that a smart message that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's going to usher in a new dystopia?
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: There's a real logical problem in all these arguments, which
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: is all of their ads are like, if Joe Biden
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: becomes president, what's happening now is going to happen.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I'm like, wait, you're president. You're president now. It's you.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, he's been in Washington forever, and he's going
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to be with the radical left. It's like, Joe Biden,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: more of the same radical change.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: You can't be both.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: One of the first days I worked for Barack Obama,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I remember Robert Gibbs telling me, the first rule of
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: spin is it has to be believable. And maybe $ 100
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: million worth of attack ads could prove me wrong, but
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: It seems like their other message is that Joe Biden
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: is senile and can't do the job. So I think
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: what they're expecting us to believe is that Joe Biden
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: is so senile that during the day, AOC will sneak
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: into the Oval Office and start writing executive orders. And
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: that's how things are going to go south. Like this,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: the whole thing is ridiculous. I don't it's just I'm
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: so burned by 2016 and scared of making predictions. But
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: this doesn't seem like it's working in any way, shape
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: or form.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: The squad is going to weekend at Bernie's, Joe Biden.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's what they want.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And it's just like, what are you trying to
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: drive turnout?
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: OK.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: So in another exchange, the president said that he doesn't
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: care if the military and a bipartisan majority in Congress
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: want to rename bases that are named after Confederate leaders.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And then he said this.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: I don't care what the military says.
• 19:02
  Speaker 8: I do.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I'm supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: big deal. We won two world wars. Nobody even knows
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: General Bragg. We won two world wars. Go to that
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: community where Fort Bragg is in a great state.
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: I love that state.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Go to go to the community. Say, how do you
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg?
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: And then what are we going to name it?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: You're going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: What are you going to name it, Chris? Tell me
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: what you're going to name it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: Subtle, subtle, subtle stuff.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, That comment about Al Sharpton really tells you
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: everything you need to know about Donald Trump and his
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: particular brand of racism, which is like a very you know,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: living through the 80s.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: It's a New York Post. It's New York Post.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a New York Post.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: New York Post.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: It's the wood of the New York Post in 1984.
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: That is who is president. The wood, as they used
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: to say, I guess, you know, back in the day.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: It's just amazing to me that he, like, we all
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: know he's racist, but that he is going to run
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: to the right on race and like the right of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the Mississippi State Legislature that took down the Confederate flag.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: You got the military wanting to rename the bases. You
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: got Republicans in Congress. And he still has staked out
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: this position. I don't understand it.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Sharpton being what he blurts out is
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: incredibly telling. I mean, you know, a name he didn't
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: know is Army Sergeant William H. Carney, the first African-American
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: to win the Medal of Honor for his bravery in
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: the Civil fucking War. How about that guy? is what
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Fort Bragg is renamed after because, you know, there have
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: been 3,500 Medal of Honor recipients. Only 88 of them
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: have been black. That in and of itself is a scandal.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: But all of those people would do more honor to
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: the military if they had bases named after them than, like,
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Confederate traders.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he sort of gives away the game, too, in
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that aside when he's like, no one even knows who
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Bragg is. So who cares?
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: He doesn't know.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Well, then.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know. Well, then what the fuck's your problem?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Why do you want to keep the name so badly?
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: As if like Donald Trump from Queens has this great
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: connection to the Confederacy from his days of doing reenactments.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: He's full. It's just it's he's again. Well, we know
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: what this is. We've been doing this a long time.
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: He's talking to a sliver of the country who will
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: either help him stay president or help him turn OAN
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: into Trump TV. And either either way is a fine
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: option for him.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about what's going on in Portland,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: where hundreds of protesters have been on the streets for
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: more than 50 days now, many of them protesting police
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: brutality and systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd's murder.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Most of the protesters have been peaceful, but to deal
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: with those who are not, Donald Trump has deployed unidentified
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security who so
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: far have used tear gas and rubber bullets, fractured a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: person's skull with a, quote, non-lethal weapon, and pulled people
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: into unmarked vans. where they've been detained without a warrant.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: So state and local officials in Oregon have explicitly asked
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: these federal agents to leave, but the Trump administration claims
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: they have the authority to be there because the president
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: signed an executive order to protect monuments, statues, and federal property. Tommy,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: are they right? How unusual and alarming is this?
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: I think this is pretty alarming. It's a scary precedent.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: It's a big deal. So the administration says that under
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the DHS secretary has
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: the power to deputize other federal agents to assist in
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: this agency called the Federal Protective Service that protects federal
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: property like the courthouse in Portland, like a bunch of
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: monuments that we're all now really worried about apparently. And
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: so the administration has deployed 2000 officials from like CBP, ICE, TSA,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: the Coast Guard in support of this agency to protect
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: federal properties ostensibly. But what you're seeing in practice is,
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: you know, guys jumping out of unmarked vans who don't
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: have clear markings of what agency they're from. And by
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: the way, who would expect to be detained by CBP
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: in Portland? We're not very close to the border at
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: the moment. And so The ACLU says, you know, usually
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: when you see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: off the street, we call it kidnapping. I think that's
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: a pretty good point. The Oregon Department of Justice is
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: going to sue them for civil rights abuses through these
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: federal agencies. The U.S. senators from Oregon are introducing an
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: amendment to stop the deployment of these paramilitary squads. It
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: looks like they're trying to deploy 150 of these, I
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: don't know what we call them, paramilitary DHS people to
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Chicago there. So To me, this feels like a very
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: purposeful effort to increase conflict, to create scenes of chaos
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: on the streets. Every time protests have gone badly in
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: the last four or five months, it's when the cops overreach.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: It's when there's police brutality. It's when protesters are beaten
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: and the violence escalates. And sometimes you have to wonder
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: if that's not the strategy because those images are what
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: they want on Fox News.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: It does seem like a, a purposeful strategy.
• 24:13
  Speaker 8: Love it.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And also, you know, by all accounts, it seems like
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the protests were dying down until Trump sent in these agents. Um,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and now they're bigger than ever. It seems like he is, uh,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: trying to provoke, uh, these people.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right.
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: You know, there was an interview in the times Charlie
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: Wurzel interviewed Robert Evans, who has been covering this on
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: the ground in Portland for the last 50 days and
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: just sort of get a feeling of what's been happening. And, and, and,
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: what that reporter describes is basically there's been a ton
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: of overreach by the Portland PD, right? That what the
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: federal agents are doing, what the, you know, basically acting
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: like a secret police are doing is in line with
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: what we've seen in Portland. But the difference is there's
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: a kind of randomness to it and an unpredictability to
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: it when there's been a rhythm to these exchanges, which
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: has made, I think, a lot of the protesters incredibly wary.
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: And yes, it does seem as though they're looking for
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: a confrontation. They're not I mean, this has been a
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: problem in Portland now for 50 days, but it doesn't
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: seem like anyone on the law enforcement side is interested
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: in de-escalation, right? If we had de-escalation that was effective,
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: these protests would have died down. Instead, the federal agents
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: doing this has only brought out more protests, has only
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: caused more unrest, has only caused a greater response. And
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: there has to be a greater response because you can't
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: just allow unidentified people in fatigues to go around grabbing people.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: There's a whole bunch. Obviously, it's dangerous in a ton
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: of ways. Why should we presume that these are from
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: the government? If somebody is just pulled and grabbed off
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: the street, the reason police need to identify themselves, the
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: reason that there are procedures, the reason that this kind
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: of thing is not allowed is because you have a
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: right to defend yourself. You have a right to know
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: who's picking you up, who's pulling you off the street.
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: You have a right to know that this is legal
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: and not extra legal, which is what's happening now.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, one of the protesters said that when
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: he was pulled into a van, he didn't know if
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: they were federal officials or like a right-wing paramilitary group.
• 26:05
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Because they've been out in these protests as well. And
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: how would you know the difference when you're just like
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: thrown into a van? No, it's great. I mean, it's
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly scary. I also think it's fairly
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: stupid as a political strategy anyway. I mean, you looked
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: at that Washington Post ABC poll, and Trump is trying
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: really hard for sort of crime and law and disorder
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: to be like a top issue on people's minds. It's
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: not in all these polls. It's not the coronaviruses, the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: economy is, and crime is way down there. But even
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: on the issue of crime, Trump is behind Joe Biden
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: by nine points on who would do better handling crime
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: and handling law and order. So the idea that Trump
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: is now going to, you know, gain in the polls
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: by sending paramilitary groups to liberal cities across America, to
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: crack down on protesters in disgusting ways is just, you know,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it will both not
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: help him politically, but also sort of push us to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a much scarier place as a country.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: I just want to say one more thing, too, which
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: is that, you know, I've seen people try to, you know,
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: look at where the kind of responsibility for this lies.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: And I think there's people that have been talking about how,
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: you know, the Abolish ICE movement, you know, was predicting
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: or at least sort of pointing out some of the
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: dangers of having this kind of an unaccountable police force
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: in this country. I think that's fair. But in a
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: broader sense, what we're seeing is, like, you know, Tommy
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: pointed out that there's this debate about the legality. You know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: one of the big goals after Trump is gone has
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: to be not just to make sure we figure out
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: what crimes were committed, not just to make sure that
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: the president is accountable and that there's, you know, anti-corruption
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: efforts to make sure the president can't abuse the Department
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: of Justice as he's done.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: There also needs to be a.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: Real look at some of the laws that were passed
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: in the wake of 9-11, at some of the other
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: powers that have been granted to the federal government and
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: to the president in particular. And those powers need to
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: be devolved back to Congress, devolved back to the states,
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: because right now this guy, you know, Chad Wolf, the
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: acting Secretary of Homeland Security, He's making these incredibly broad
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: statement about what his prerogatives are as the head of
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: Homeland Security. And I think even I think we are
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: we end up trapped in these kind of legalistic debates
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: about what's allowed. And it's all very murky and it's
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: all very foggy. And it has to be the job
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: of Congress in the beginning of the next administration to
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: really lay down some new barriers to abuse of power
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: in this way.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: That's all. It does seem like the Department of Homeland
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Security has some fairly broad, extraordinary powers. to do some
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of this.
• 28:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: And in part because of those powers. I mean, I
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: think you have people even within some of these agencies
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: worrying that they're becoming this unaccountable paramilitary sort of pseudo
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: intelligence community force that seems to only respond to Donald
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Trump and to nobody else. I mean, the US senators
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: from the state can't get answers about who these guys
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: are chucking people into vans and detaining them in their
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: own state. That's not a well-functioning democracy. That's not a
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: well-functioning police force or national security infrastructure. So, yeah, we
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: got to really fix this shit. Yeah, and I think,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, Congress is demanding answers. They probably have to
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: act as well, whether it's investigations or whether it's holding
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: up funding in whatever way they can. because I don't
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: think just asking Donald Trump for answers is going to
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: get you anywhere. No, and I think the Oregon senators,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: to John's point, I think they're trying to put an
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: amendment onto the NDAA, the Defense Department Funding Act, that
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: would prevent the deployment of these individuals to their state
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: and hopefully to other states if they're actually planning on
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: sending these guys to Chicago, because that is not going
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: to go well.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So there was also some sad news over the weekend.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: We lost two giants of the civil rights movement.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: C.T.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Vivian, a Baptist minister and a key leader of the
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who was described as one of
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. 's field generals, passed away on
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Friday at 95. And on the same day, we also
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: lost Congressman John Lewis, who was 80 years old. Lewis
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: was known as the conscience of the Congress where he
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: was first elected to in 1986. Before that, he was
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: one of the younger leaders of the civil rights movement.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Most famously, he led the march across the Edmund Pettus
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Bridge on Bloody Sunday. He was deeply involved in the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and he was the last living
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: leader to have spoken at the March on Washington, which
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: he did when he was just 23 years old. Here's
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: some of what he said that day.
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: We're talking about slow down and stop.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: We will not stop.
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: All of the forces of Eastland, Barnett, Wallace, and Thurman
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: will not stop this revolution. If we do not get
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: when we will.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: Not confine our march into Washington.
• 30:47
  Speaker 6: We will march through the South, through the streets of Jackson,
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: through the streets of Danville, through the streets of.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham.
• 31:02
  Speaker 6: But we will march with the spirit of love and
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: By the forces of our demand, our determination, and our numbers,
• 31:18
  Speaker 6: we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces.
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: put them together in the image of God and democracy.
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: We must say, wake up, America, wake up, for we
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: cannot stop and we will not and cannot be patient.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Tommy, your reflections on John Lewis?
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: It is truly astonishing how young those civil rights leaders
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: were when they were changing the course of history. It
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: is remarkable. I mean, look, I think that John Lewis
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: is one of the greatest human beings this country has
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: ever produced in that I suspect that our kids will
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: be taught about him in school in the same way
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: that we were taught about George Washington. And it starts
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: with the incredible bravery he showed as a civil rights
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: leader in the 50s and 60s. And we talk about
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: nonviolent protests a lot, but I think it's a bit
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: of a misnomer because the response to the nonviolent protests
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: was so unbelievably violent. We've all seen the iconic photo
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: of Lewis being clogged by an Alabama state trooper on
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But before that, he was nearly
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: beaten to death for trying to use a whites-only bathroom
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: in Mississippi. One obit I read talked about how Lewis
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: and a friend were staging a sit-in in a restaurant,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: and the owner locked them in, started fumigating the place,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: and nearly killed them with pesticide. So the courage they
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: showed was superhuman, and the visual image of violence from
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: white thugs is what changed the hearts and minds of
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: people across the country, and I think allowed for so
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: much change with the Civil Rights Act. The other thing
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: that's so awe-inspiring about John Lewis is that the guy
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: stayed in the fight for decades, right? I mean, he
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: came out in support of gay marriage in the early 2000s,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: long before many others. He let us sit in on
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: the floor of the House in 2016 to support gun violence.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: So he's just a towering human being. He was also
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: as kind and humble and decent a human being as
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I think anyone new in Washington. And, you know, it just,
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: it made me very sad. Uh, I went on a, uh,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: a John Lewis related book, buying spree, starting with these
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: great ones, these March animated, uh, books.
• 33:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: And so anyway, I just, you know, very, very sad day.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: It's incredibly sad when there's a generation of people who
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: were part of something so monumental, like the civil rights
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: generation or, you know, Holocaust survivors, right. When you sort
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: of lose that, that living history of, of these moments,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: it's incredibly sad. And I think it's even more incumbent
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: upon us to learn about and understand and pass along
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: that story and what happened so we can all learn
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: from it. Love it.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there was a piece in The Times by Bernard
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: Lafayette about what it was like to fight to desegregate
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: the buses. And there were two points that that piece
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: made that I think were striking. One was the fear
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: when they split up when John Lewis got off the
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: bus and Bernard Lafayette was still on the bus. And
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: they didn't know where it was safe. They didn't know
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: what would happen when the bus got to its final
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: destination because it was dangerous. And they were beaten.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: They were arrested.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: And what the piece talks about is what it was
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: like to sort of look into the eyes of that
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: bus driver and know that it wasn't safe, to know
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: that this was somebody that wasn't on their side at
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: a time in which the law, the government, was on
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: the side of segregation, on the side of violence. inflicting
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: pain on black people throughout the South and throughout the country.
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: And to Tommy's point, you know, the experience of John Lewis,
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: the experience of people like Bernard Lafayette, the experience of
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: people like CT Vivian, of looking into the eyes of
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: white people enforcing legal racism, how acceptable it was, how
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: taken for granted it was, I do think is something
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: we're losing as this generation passes on in the same way,
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: as Tommy pointed out, that we're seeing the last of
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: the World War II generation. And the other part of
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: the piece that was striking too is talking about what
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: it was like to be arrested before there was a
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: national conversation around nonviolent protests, before it was accepted, right?
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: We've all talked about the fact that the polling around
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: the civil rights movement was, you know, now it is
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: part of legend. Now there's bipartisan statements when someone like
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: John Lewis passes away. At the time, it was extremely
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: divisive in the sense that white people were against it,
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: and it took a long time for white people to
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: come on board. And so, you know, we're talking about
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: people who were arrested and beaten before they were legends,
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: before it was lore, before it was clear what would happen,
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: before they would be revered, when they were just taking
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: great personal risk of their reputation, of their livelihoods, of
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: their safety to do this.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I remember the first major speech I ever worked on
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: with Obama was a tribute to John Lewis in Atlanta
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: on his 65th birthday. It was in the winter of 2005.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: And to prepare for it, because that's not one that
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you want to screw up, I remember reading his memoir
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: about his time in the civil rights movement, Walking with
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the Wind, over a weekend. And I have been in
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: awe of the man ever since. And one thing that
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Obama always went back to on Lewis was, the discipline
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: required to sort of live a nonviolent philosophy in the movement. And,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: you know, Tommy, you were saying this, that like, it's not,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: it's sometimes a misnomer because nonviolence is not about shying
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: away from violence. It's certainly not about perpetrating violence, but
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: it's actually, it's about like putting yourself in harm's way.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And in many instances, knowing that violence will be committed
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: against you. And that is actually part of the strategy.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: And he also talks about the fact that, you know,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: you have to look into the eye of someone who
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: just put a cigarette out in the back of your
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: throat and think that that person is just as much
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of a victim of a larger system as you are,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: which is sort of like just a view that is
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: so hard to grasp. And nonviolence was not easy, both
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: because he was beaten to within an inch of his
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: life multiple times, But also, you know, later in the movement,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: in the late 60s, you know, he leaves the student
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: nonviolence coordinating committee because Stokely Carmichael and others thought that,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe violence was a tactic that we needed. And,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: you know, he was seen as too close to LBJ
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and then Martin Luther King at that time. And so
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to sort of to balance this and to have the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: discipline that he did throughout his life, he was almost
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: sort of the perfect example of the activist politician, someone
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: who starts in the movement and organizes and then becomes
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: an elected official, even as, while he's an elected official,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: continues to protest. He was arrested at least, I think,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: five times while he was a member of Congress. There's
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: that sort of iconic picture of him marching with the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Parkland students after gun violence. So he was, right up
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: until the end, he was still part of social movements
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: all across the country. So it is a giant loss. So,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you know, as you mentioned, Lovett, you know, tributes sort
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: of to Lewis poured in from just about everyone, including
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: elected officials in both parties. Many of these tributes were
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: quite moving. Some rang a bit hollow. Mitch McConnell and
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp praised Lewis as a giant and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a hero, despite spending most of their careers fighting against
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the voting rights that he risked his life for. Marco
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Rubio's first attempt at a John Lewis tribute featured a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: picture of Rubio and Elijah Cummings. which, believe it or not,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: is a mistake that Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan also made. Lovett,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: what do you think about all these new John Lewis fans?
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: It's very easy to praise someone when they're dead because
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: they're no longer working against you.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: That is about right.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: I just, you know, well, it's, no, the serious point
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: is only that, like, it is a positive, you know,
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: I talked about, you know, whatever, changing polls, like, it
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: is a positive, when people like John Lewis become revered
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: in our national consciousness because it's a model of leadership
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: of human virtue and values to elevate, of course, but
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: the danger is in the elevation, in the making of
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: a legend, you divorce it from the actual hard substance
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: of what they fought for, even parts of that agenda
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: that are either political or partisan or what have you.
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: And just making sure that as we elevate someone like
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: John Lewis, it's not denuded of the actual radicalism that
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: he fought for for huge parts of his career and
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: for the continued relevance of some of the things he
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: fought for all the way back in the late 50s
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: and 60s is really, really important because, you know, we're
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: in the midst of a fight over whether or not
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: people are going to be able to vote. And Mitch
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: McConnell right now is sitting on restoration of the Voting
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: Rights Act.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know there's a lot of commentary on Twitter
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: about like, why hasn't Donald Trump done a statement yet?
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Like I almost prefer Trump's relative silence to like just
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: naked hypocrisy from Republicans.
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: Who wants, what are you going to do with a John, John,
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: what are you gonna do with a John Lewis statement
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: from Donald Trump?
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Who needs that?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do with that? What will
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you do?
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I think it's a, it's a threshold amount of decency
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: to show respect for like one of the greatest human
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: beings in our country. And so the fact that he,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: you know, put out one with a typo from the
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: golf course, does speak to how little he cares about
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: the black community in this country and people like John Lewis.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, it's fun to dunk on Marco Rubio
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: for being dumb enough to post a photo of the
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: wrong person. But so many of these Republicans were just
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: gaslighting and releasing these statements. I mean, Mitch McConnell, like
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Lovett mentioned, has actively fought legislation that would end voter
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: suppression for decades. And his statement really pissed me off.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: The one that might have been the worst was from
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who stole the election from Stacey
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Abrams and has done more to disenfranchise black voters in
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Georgia maybe than anyone else alive at this moment. So
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: it was pretty disgusting cynicism. They are clinging to the
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: legacy of a heroic man, despite doing whatever they can
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: to unpack and undo that legacy. And we need to
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: call them out for it.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do think it's worth talking about
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: sort of the best way to honor John Lewis's legacy.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a bit of a movement on Twitter
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after Lewis, though, you know,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Lewis himself said in 2015 that's a decision that should
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: be made by the people of Selma. More substantively, a
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: lot of progressives and Democrats have proposed restoring the Voting
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Rights Act. Lovett, what do you think?
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think take the names of horrific
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: racists off of bridges, replace them with the names of heroes.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: I think that that's a good thing to do.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: That seems like an easy one.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: I do think if there's a way in which connecting
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: the restoration of the Voting Rights Act to John Lewis's
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: legacy is a really important and positive step that we
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: can take, I think we should do it. I'm also
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: thinking about right now how we're in the midst of
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: a fight in Florida where, despite the fact that voters
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: in Florida.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: Voted to restore.
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: The rights of former felons in that state, there's now
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: been an effort to kind of get around that by
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: making sure people can't vote if they have to pay fines.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: This is the culmination of a racist effort to disenfranchise
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: black people in Florida, those kinds of efforts we need
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: to fight all across the country and are sort of
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: making sure we tie what's going on right now in
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: Florida to John Lewis's life, I think is really important.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean, one of the first things Congress
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: should do is if we are able to keep the
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: House and win the Senate and win the White House
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: is restore the Voting Rights Act in a way that
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: lives up to John Roberts's dumb opinion that stripped it
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: back and has caused a lot of these problems.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Tommy?
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: I think that John Lewis in that generation, but him
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: in particular, showed us the power of combining protest and
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: direct action with an inside legislative game that was designed
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: to pass legislation. And I talk about this in the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: interview today, but what's, I think, exciting and inspiring is
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: that we have seen these record historic protests led by
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Black Lives Matter And then in the wake of those
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: protests have seen registration bumps among young voters of color
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: all across the country. So people are clearly following that path.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: The other thing I think that you take away from
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: someone like John Lewis is the grace and the willingness
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: to redeem others. I mean, the decency, the moral certitude
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: it takes to tell someone like George Wallace that you
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: forgive them for what they did to you. It's such
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: a staggering amount of grace that it's almost incomprehensible to me.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: It's sorely lacking in the political conversation. It's sorely lacking
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: in the way I talk about politics. And I think
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: that's just something to emulate. And then lastly, I know
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: you guys both hit on this, but when I think
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: about month one or two of the Obama administration, I
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: wished more than almost anything else that we had just
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: jammed through some massive pro-democracy bill. And John, you were
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: tweeting about this over the weekend, like automatic voter registration,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: vote by mail, just generally making it easier to register
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: to vote, making it easier to get to the polls
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: on days that aren't election day or make it a
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: national holiday. There's a million things we can and should
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: do that will ultimately protect our democracy from another monster
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: like Donald Trump. But we need to get to work
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: on that on day one of the Biden administration if
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: he wins. And he can't sit and wait to negotiate
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: with Mitch McConnell over things like the filibuster or waste
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: any time. I think we got to really move on this.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think we should go really big on this.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with everyone who's called for introducing legislation
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to restore the gutted provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I think Joe Biden's first bill that he introduces if
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: he's president should be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: of 2021. And I think it should go beyond restoring
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act. I think it should expand voting
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: rights and basically have two guarantees in there, a guarantee
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: for the right to vote and to the right to
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: equal representation. And under the right to vote, I think
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: you do, like Tommy said, automatic voter registration, including those
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: who've been incarcerated. It means making sure everyone has mailed
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: a ballot, making sure everyone has the opportunity to cast
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: that ballot through universal early voting, making election day a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: national holiday, fully funding polling locations. And then I think
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: you have a second part that's the right to equal representation.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And that bill should offer the choice of statehood to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the people of D.C., Puerto Rico and other territories. We
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: should do equal representation in the House by ending partisan gerrymandering,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: more equal representation in the Senate by eliminating the filibuster
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: and more equal representation in the presidential elections by ratifying
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which essentially gets rid
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of the Electoral College. So I think we do. I think,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, Biden is going to confront, if he is president,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: obviously the pandemic, the recession, racial justice, climate. I think
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: his ability and the ability of future Democratic presidents and
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Congresses to deal with any of that is going to
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: be constrained by the reality of a system that gives
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: disproportionate power to mostly white and rural citizens. And so
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of jockeying. I'm like,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: what's his first bill? But like, you know, the good
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: news is, The Democrats, when they took over the House,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: when they passed H.R. 1, that was a bill that
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: includes some of these reforms. Joe Biden and a lot
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: of the other candidates, when they were running in the primary,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: said that this would be one of their first priorities.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I think you got to do it soon because you
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: only get a couple pieces of big legislation before the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: midterms come around. And once we hit 22, 2024, 2026,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: like it is going to be harder to get progressive
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: electoral victories and legislative victories than when you don't have
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: a historically unpopular Republican president in the middle of a pandemic.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And the map's going to get harder for us. And
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: this could be our last chance to institute pro-democracy reforms
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: that make it easier for everyone to vote and sort
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of change some of the anti-majoritarian institutions that we have
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: right now. So I think it's pretty important to do. And,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: you know, let Mitch McConnell try to filibuster the John
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2021. And that would be
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: such a perfect opportunity to finally end the filibuster on that.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's interesting.
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: I do think it's worth thinking through. I think sometimes
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: the filibuster is taken as this abstraction. Do you support
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: the filibuster? And it shouldn't be thought that way. There's
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: going to be a moment where there's going to be
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: a piece of historic legislation versus the filibuster.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: And I think it's worth thinking.
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: Through Pure politics, like what is the best message bill
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: to be the bill you break the filibuster?
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: It might be this. It could be climate.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: It could be immigration.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: It could be healthcare.
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: There's a host of big, like, even thinking about this,
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: it's like the staggering, there are people talking about what
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: an inauguration might be like, and we should not count
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: our chickens. But I don't, whatever happens, like January 2021,
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: even if Trump is gone, is not going to be
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: a moment of celebration. It's going to be a moment
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: of chaos and- grief in the country. And anyway, that's all.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I look, I totally agree. And there's going
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: to be a moment early on where that's why, like,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: you know, seeing a lot of people say, oh, we
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: shouldn't reintroduce the bill to restore the Voting Rights Act now. Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: But nothing's going to happen until we have a Democratic president,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Democratic Congress. And then when we get that opportunity, think big,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: go big, because like this is this will be if
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: we get it. a very rare chance to do something
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: big and meaningful. And so you got to take it. Okay.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Tommy's interview with
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino.
• 49:14
  Speaker 8: Voto Latino Maria Teresa Kumar is the founding president of
• 49:22
  Speaker 8: Voto Latino, a grassroots political organization focused on educating and
• 49:25
  Speaker 8: empowering a new generation of Latinx voters.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for doing the show. It's great
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: to talk with you.
• 49:31
  Speaker 7: Thanks for having me on, Tommy.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: So I feel like I've been, you know, watching your
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: work and following it for a long time. Can you
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: tell us a little bit, just to start, about Voto Latino,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: the work you guys do, and then how has that
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: work been impacted by the coronavirus?
• 49:46
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so Voto Latino, we started 15 years ago, and
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: it's going to sound counterintuitive, but it's like we were
• 49:51
  Speaker 7: made for this moment. Our focus is young Latinos because
• 49:55
  Speaker 7: we recognize that they play an outside influence on their families.
• 49:58
  Speaker 7: They are oftentimes first-generation, navigating America, telling their parents what
• 50:04
  Speaker 7: car to buy to what neighborhood to live in. And
• 50:07
  Speaker 7: we said, well, why don't we use the exact same
• 50:09
  Speaker 7: influencer and talk to them about democracy? And we use
• 50:13
  Speaker 7: it through, I always say we speak their language, meaning no,
• 50:15
  Speaker 7: not Spanish. We speak to them in English. We use technology,
• 50:18
  Speaker 7: we use the internets and really do mobilization online. And
• 50:22
  Speaker 7: so when COVID hit, Tommy, most people were devastated that
• 50:26
  Speaker 7: they wouldn't be able to continue their work on voter registration.
• 50:29
  Speaker 7: And if anything, we were just able to scale. In
• 50:33
  Speaker 7: the month of June, to give you an idea, because
• 50:35
  Speaker 7: of the George Floyd protest, Voto Latino knew that, you know,
• 50:39
  Speaker 7: from experience that young people were leading it, that young
• 50:41
  Speaker 7: Latinos were allied in the African-American experience when it comes
• 50:44
  Speaker 7: to police brutality. And so we started serving up ads
• 50:46
  Speaker 7: specifically tying protest to voting, basically selling democracy. And by
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: June 3rd, we had exhausted our voter registration and budget.
• 50:54
  Speaker 7: We expected to have registered like 21,000. By the whole
• 50:57
  Speaker 7: month of June, we had registered over 98,000.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: That's incredible.
• 51:01
  Speaker 7: In the states that matter, right? That's where we make
• 51:03
  Speaker 7: our investments. Young people are attuned. I don't have to
• 51:05
  Speaker 7: tell them that it's important. For us, we're trying to
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: close the last mile. Young people care about the environment.
• 51:12
  Speaker 7: They know that it's none of your business who you love.
• 51:15
  Speaker 7: And they know that women have a right to choose.
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: They care about gun control and they care about, you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 7: honest immigration. It's that cultural shift that oftentimes is harder
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: for older voters, not for young people. But our job
• 51:26
  Speaker 7: is to say, now let's get you to vote so
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: that you could actually make that change.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it makes sense that you were able to adapt.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: I've heard you talk about starting the starting the organization,
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: going to debt on credit cards, working out of Starbucks.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: So it's no surprise that you were scrappy.
• 51:41
  Speaker 7: This is good. Now I'm really going to like age
• 51:43
  Speaker 7: myself because it had high-speed connection at the time.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, free Wi-Fi, of course.
• 51:47
  Speaker 7: Free Wi-Fi.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: You buy a coffee, you refill it 700 times. Look,
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: I was deeply unemployed for a long time. I've spent
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: some time at Starbucks. So it's incredible that you've had
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: this success in the midst of the coronavirus. It's really
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: an affirming thing To hear that people understand that you
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: protest and then you vote and it's all a piece
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: of a puzzle. But, you know, the coronavirus hasn't just
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: changed the way we're doing voter contact. It is disproportionately
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: impacted communities of color. Has that changed the conversations themselves
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: that you're having? Are people more focused on the pandemic?
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: What's the difference?
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Huge.
• 52:21
  Speaker 7: I mean, the challenge is sadly that the Latino community
• 52:24
  Speaker 7: and the African-American community are at the forefront of who
• 52:28
  Speaker 7: the essential workers are. Oftentimes, our communities don't have the
• 52:31
  Speaker 7: choice of sheltering in place, but we are the economic
• 52:34
  Speaker 7: engine for the rest of the country. And the biggest challenge, though,
• 52:38
  Speaker 7: is that we're also sadly the leading causes of death
• 52:41
  Speaker 7: under COVID. For a long time in San Francisco General Hospital,
• 52:44
  Speaker 7: while Latinos are roughly 30% of the population, they were
• 52:48
  Speaker 7: over 81% of the COVID cases at the general hospital.
• 52:53
  Speaker 7: And 20% of the Latino workforce has been left out
• 52:56
  Speaker 7: of the CARES Act passed by Congress because Trump doesn't
• 53:00
  Speaker 7: want to provide benefits to people, to American citizens who
• 53:03
  Speaker 7: may have relatives that are undocumented living in their own households,
• 53:07
  Speaker 7: let alone undocumented individuals, even though we know that undocumented
• 53:11
  Speaker 7: pay $ 27 billion a year in federal taxes. And that
• 53:15
  Speaker 7: doesn't even include what they pay for Social Security. So
• 53:18
  Speaker 7: the way we've harnessed that is we realized that we
• 53:20
  Speaker 7: Voto Latino, yes, we do voter registration, but we're a
• 53:23
  Speaker 7: civic media organization. So we reach roughly about six and
• 53:26
  Speaker 7: a half million people a month before COVID. In the
• 53:28
  Speaker 7: month of June, we reached 92 million.
• 53:30
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: That's amazing.
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I mean, but that was because we started
• 53:34
  Speaker 7: providing people with the information they needed, right? We started
• 53:37
  Speaker 7: learning that a lot of young women were really concerned
• 53:39
  Speaker 7: that they couldn't access reproductive health and abortion care. So
• 53:42
  Speaker 7: we brought in Alexis McGill, the president of Planned Parenthood,
• 53:46
  Speaker 7: and had a frank conversation of what that looks like.
• 53:48
  Speaker 7: What did young women need to know so that they
• 53:50
  Speaker 7: could actually get the health they needed? We've had conversations
• 53:53
  Speaker 7: with Ruben Gallegos and Julian Castro around how do you
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: access PPP loans if you're part of a small business?
• 54:00
  Speaker 7: Really providing people with relevant information and obviously then sneaking
• 54:03
  Speaker 7: in that voting message that needs to happen.
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: Well, I'd love to talk more about the Trump administration,
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: some of these policy questions in a little bit, but
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: allow me to start with political tactics because that's where
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: my brain is these days. There is, I think, understandable
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: concern about Joe Biden's level of support in polling among
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Latino voters. I saw an article that mentioned how a
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: great polling firm, Latino Decisions, did a survey of six
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: battleground states. They found that Latinos, especially younger Latinos, had
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: a lower intensity or enthusiasm about 2020 elections. than they
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: did at this point in 2016. And I always cringe
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: a little bit when I hear like broad descriptions of
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Latino voters, because I suspect if you and I were
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: making those calls for the poll, we'd hear about different
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: issues from Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans than maybe here
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: in Los Angeles. But what is your sense of Joe
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: Biden's enthusiasm level? And if there's a deficit, what might
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: be driving that?
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: So we actually worked with the Void of Participation Center
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: and we actually helped craft that survey that you mentioned.
• 55:05
  Speaker 7: And it was the first one that we actually crafted
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: because we know that the house is on fire. And
• 55:10
  Speaker 7: we were able to one of the things that we
• 55:12
  Speaker 7: have been seeing is that in the Latino youth community,
• 55:15
  Speaker 7: after Bernie Sanders dropped out, there was a softness in participation.
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: And so for the first time, Voto Latino, we endorsed
• 55:22
  Speaker 7: a political candidate. We endorsed Joe Biden. after we requested
• 55:27
  Speaker 7: real serious policy changes from him. And now we have
• 55:30
  Speaker 7: the receipts, so to speak. But the reason we did
• 55:32
  Speaker 7: that is because we recognize that there is a huge gap.
• 55:36
  Speaker 7: And we wanted to know what was that level. 30%
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: of registered Latino youth actually will vote for Joe Biden
• 55:43
  Speaker 7: right now at a soft. That is a code red
• 55:46
  Speaker 7: for us because we recognize that unlike in black and
• 55:50
  Speaker 7: white households, where the parents tell the kids to go
• 55:53
  Speaker 7: register and vote. It's the opposite in the Latino community.
• 55:57
  Speaker 7: It's the young person who are first generation Americans that
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: are receiving voting messages. They influence their parents. You know,
• 56:03
  Speaker 7: everybody was like, what did Bernie Sanders do that got
• 56:06
  Speaker 7: all these folks in Nevada to vote? they targeted young people.
• 56:09
  Speaker 7: They used the vote Latino strategy. I mean, full disclosure,
• 56:12
  Speaker 7: our male guy for nine years was one of the
• 56:14
  Speaker 7: guys inside the Bernie campaign. And it was just like,
• 56:17
  Speaker 7: vote Latino almost on steroids, Tommy. That's what a vote
• 56:21
  Speaker 7: Latino fully funded campaign would look like, quite frankly.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: But just to underscore your point, I mean, Bernie Sanders
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: won 53% of the Latino vote in Nevada, 49% in California,
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: 39% in Texas. You talked about he literally had an
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: ace in the hole here with your strategist in the campaign.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: But do you think that strength was Bernie overperforming with
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: young voters generally? Was there sustained outreach? Was it all
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: of the above? What should Joe Biden steal from that primary?
• 56:50
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I think. So it's interesting. So Bernie wasn't going
• 56:53
  Speaker 7: bananas like he did among young people like he did
• 56:56
  Speaker 7: in 2016, right? There was actually a dampening. But in
• 56:58
  Speaker 7: the Latino community, he the focus on the young Latino influencers.
• 57:02
  Speaker 7: So I will give a completely anecdotal. I'll tell you
• 57:05
  Speaker 7: that when I started voting in my household, I would literally,
• 57:08
  Speaker 7: my aunt would arrange a call with my mother and
• 57:11
  Speaker 7: we would go down the list of who they should
• 57:12
  Speaker 7: be voting for. And then they would call my relatives, right?
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: That wasn't just me. That's how it happens. We have
• 57:18
  Speaker 7: our own little mafia of sorts of who's going to
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: vote for, right? But nobody has time, but young person
• 57:23
  Speaker 7: has time, right? And so that is emblematic of what
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: happens in millions of households in the Latino community and
• 57:30
  Speaker 7: in immigrant communities. I'd say the South Asian communities, the
• 57:32
  Speaker 7: Pan-Asian communities are very similar. And so for me, For
• 57:35
  Speaker 7: Joe Biden, I would encourage him to identify who are
• 57:38
  Speaker 7: those influencers that can make those changes. And it's not,
• 57:42
  Speaker 7: we use a lot of Hollywood celebrities to amplify our message,
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: but we partner them oftentimes with validators, with people who
• 57:50
  Speaker 7: are credentials, with people, you know, if we want to
• 57:52
  Speaker 7: talk about healthcare, for example, we would partner Rosario Dawson
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: with a medical professional and so that she can have
• 57:58
  Speaker 7: that conversation. Because I do believe that we are of
• 58:01
  Speaker 7: a generation where we don't want the glitz and the glam,
• 58:04
  Speaker 7: we want solutions. And we'll use Rosario's base to ask
• 58:07
  Speaker 7: really smart questions, but for amplification of what the facts are,
• 58:11
  Speaker 7: if that makes sense. That's the strategy he needs to deploy,
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: among others.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: And one of the things you always hear about the
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Democratic Party, especially when it comes to outreach to Latino
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: communities and the African-American community, is that it's too little,
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: too late. Is that the primary mistake that campaigns make
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: in your mind? Are there mistakes you see over and
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: over again? when it comes to outreach that drive you
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: crazy that you just want to shout at people right
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: now to stop doing?
• 58:36
  Speaker 7: Yes. Diversify your, your team, right? Like if at Voto Latino,
• 58:42
  Speaker 7: all we do every day is wake up and figure
• 58:44
  Speaker 7: out how are we going to register another voter? How
• 58:46
  Speaker 7: are we going to get another volunteer? How are we
• 58:47
  Speaker 7: going to make a voter contact? Because Latino community, we
• 58:50
  Speaker 7: have skin in the game. It has not gone well
• 58:52
  Speaker 7: for us under this presidency. And this is not just
• 58:55
  Speaker 7: under COVID, but the caging of children. He's, Trump has
• 58:58
  Speaker 7: created a denaturalization task force to denaturalize citizens. I mean,
• 59:02
  Speaker 7: the outrage should be marching in the street just on
• 59:05
  Speaker 7: these basic pieces of policy that he's done. And what
• 59:09
  Speaker 7: I find in oftentimes in campaigns is that the center
• 59:12
  Speaker 7: of gravity of the person who has the ear of
• 59:15
  Speaker 7: the candidate does not reflect the community that they want
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: to serve. It does not reflect the voting population. So
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: it's been since 1963, I think it is, that it
• 59:25
  Speaker 7: was the last time that the majority of white men
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: voted for a Democratic candidate. So who's voting for them
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: and getting them into office? It is a very diverse
• 59:36
  Speaker 7: population that happens to be young. Oftentimes it happens to
• 59:41
  Speaker 7: be women and that has to be people of color.
• 59:45
  Speaker 7: So that campaign strategy should include people that look of,
• 59:49
  Speaker 7: I would say, a whole bunch of smart young people,
• 59:51
  Speaker 7: a whole bunch of women that are particularly our mothers
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: because we actually have different issues that we care about
• 59:58
  Speaker 7: and people of color. And that's not the way it
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 7: usually happens.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: No, look, it's a lot of people that look like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: me when the reality is that white male voters are
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: the root of a lot of our problems.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 7: No, but I would say it's not even that they
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 7: look like you. It's because he needs youth in there.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 7: If I can call you youths. I'll take it. No,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 7: I mean, what Obama did brilliantly is that he had
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 7: whip-smart young people of all ethnicities in his ear crafting strategy.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 7: And that were curious. And it was not just the
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: field organizers. It was up and down the campaign. And
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 7: they transformed how we communicated because he was a digital
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 7: organizing president at the same time, right? So he opened
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 7: it up. And what I see oftentimes in these last
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 7: couple of campaigns, not just with Biden, but with many
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 7: of them, is that they become very insular. And that
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 7: insular nature actually gives you blind spots to what is
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 7: happening on the ground to be reactive. And I think
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 7: that is the challenge. I think what my concern is
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 7: that everybody right now wants to create almost like these
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 7: tribal pieces. I was like, no, no, there is a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 7: generation that is, that is incredibly diverse that actually has
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 7: a vision for what the future looks like. And it's
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 7: going to take all of us and that should be
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 7: reflected in the campaign.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally agree.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: Look, the strength Obama had was one, you know, he
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: was a, an organizer by trade and two, he was,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: he was still, he and the first lady were still
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: normal people at that point. Like they had just paid
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: off their loans. They, you know, their first condo was,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: you know, small, too tight for their kids. They were
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: human beings. They could relate on a different level too.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: You mentioned the administration. I mean, this White House is
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: full of people like Stephen Miller, who seems to wake
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: up every day and think like, how can we punish immigrants?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: How can we punish people from Mexico or Central or
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: South America in particular? The family separation policy is, I think,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: one of the cruelest chapters in our country's recent history.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: I think the conventional wisdom, or at least Washington would
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: be like, that should that people thought this is going
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: to turn off Latino voters forever. But, you know, when
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: you see estimates, like I saw something in The Atlantic
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: that said Trump seems on track to capture 25 to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: 30 percent of Latino voters. What do you think the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: disconnect is between that conventional wisdom and the reality of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: what the math may be?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I actually I don't think that I think they
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 7: always project folks project high oftentimes because where they find
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 7: a lot of these Latino voters and even African-American voters
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 7: is they we become a sub-sample of places like Westchester, Connecticut, right?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 7: If you're in Westchester, Connecticut and a person of color,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: you're okay, right? You don't have the same issues and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 7: they don't reflect the population at large. What I do
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 7: though think that is part of the challenge and the
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 7: campaign has an opportunity to demystify is that even when
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 7: I speak to the community in my, again, anecdotal nucleus
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 7: that is Sonoma, California, When I talk when I phone
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 7: back home, they're basically saying, well, you know, the neighbors
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 7: are saying that Trump gave me a twelve hundred dollar
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 7: check from the CARES Act. Like, well, that's actually not
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 7: from him.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 7: So there might be some sense that he's giving them
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: some sort of leg up under this pandemic when we
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 7: know that that is not the case. So it's a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 7: long winded of saying way of saying is that everybody
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 7: as a voter doesn't really turn on to campaign until
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 7: after Labor Day. And at that moment, we have to
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: demystify and tell the truth of what has happened under
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: this administration. People are dying needlessly because they haven't been
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 7: able to get their act together. When we started the pandemic,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 7: we started at the same time as South Korea. Italy
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 7: was at an all-time high. And they're recovered, right? They
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 7: are recovering. They actually have COVID under control. They have
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 7: systems in place. And we have an administration that people
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 7: say that it is incompetence. I actually say it's malpractice
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 7: because we have a president who was encouraging people to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 7: take Lysol as a way to combat the virus. That
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 7: is encouraging someone to harm themselves with potential death, right?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 7: So we're not playing around with him anymore. I think
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 7: a lot of times people were trying to figure out
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 7: how bad was he going to be. I remember Newt
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 7: Gingrich saying, well, let him be an apprentice president. And
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 7: from the beginning, I was always like, he told us
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 7: who he was. Yeah. And nothing that he's done, if anything,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 7: he's crueler than he's already promised us he would be.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 7: And we can point to Steve Miller, but Stephen Miller
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: has power only because the president allows him to. He
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 7: is right lockstep and center with whatever Stephen Miller proposes.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: And sadly, I can share with you that he starts
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 7: with the undocumented community, but it's also part of who
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 7: he considers American. And I say this because the administration
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: wanted to include a citizenship question in the census.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 7: And they were like, we just want to know who
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: our population is. Well, the Supreme Court struck the census
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 7: question because they were able to find on the GOP
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 7: operatives email, an email that literally said that they wanted
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 7: a census question because they wanted to create white, non-Hispanic
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: Republican districts. At that point, they don't even want Republicans.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: They just want a very specific, they have a very
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 7: specific worldview. And so when people say, well, you know,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 7: it's just rhetoric, it's like, oh, it's just policies. We
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: actually have during the pandemic, he wanted to cut SNAP,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 7: which is a food program for mostly for women and children,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 7: because it was going to disproportionately be for brown people.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 7: Like that's that's cruelty when we know. And then you say, well,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 7: what's your how do you translate it to the general population?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 7: He's actively trying to cut health care. the ACA, while
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 7: we have an all-time high of health crisis. I mean,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: none of it makes sense.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're right. Cruelty is the policy, and it's
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: not just Stephen Miller. It's the ill-fitting man in the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: ill-fitting suit at the top. Apologies for jumping around a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: little bit.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 7: No, no, no, no.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: We just went through and are still going through in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: some places this extraordinary protest movement after the murder of
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: George Floyd in Black Lives Matter. Has that protest movement
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: and the success of it and the power of it
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: changed the way your organization, the people you work with,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: think about ways to create change or how they want
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: to conduct themselves now until the election?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: Absolutely. So we were part of President Obama's 21st Century
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 7: Policing Task Force because we recognize that while the African-American population, sadly,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 7: is the most targeted, the Latino community is not far behind.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 7: One of the biggest challenges in the Latino community is
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 7: that we know that we suffer police brutality, but because
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 7: most precincts, Tommy, only record race based on black or white,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 7: there's no Asian and there's no Latino, depending on what
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 7: shade scale you fall in, that's how they record it.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 7: But we know that it's a problem. And so when
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 7: the George Floyd protests started happening, we started specifically talking
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 7: not just about voter registration and participation, But we also
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 7: had kind of a come to Jesus moment because 24%
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 7: of Latinos identify as Black. And that is because Latinos
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 7: come from different parts of the Americas. My family, my grandmother,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 7: she is Afro-Colombiana. That is her heritage of where she
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 7: comes from. And so it was an opportunity for us
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 7: to have a very blunt discussion of what was happening there.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 7: in the Latino community, even based not just on policing,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 7: but allyship about race, conversations that we need to have
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 7: with our parents to unpack it. And it provided, I think,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 7: also an opportunity to just speak truth and to figure
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 7: out how do we move the needle on policing itself.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 7: In the survey that you mentioned with Latino decisions, one
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 7: of the questions we asked was specifically that. And one
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 7: of the things that we learned was the top three
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 7: issues for Latinos, first it was healthcare, the second was jobs,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 7: the third one was social and racial justice for blacks
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 7: and Latinos. That was huge revelation. I mean, we, we
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 7: knew it instinctually, but for older Latinos to be part
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 7: of that, it speaks to how much awareness that innocent
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 7: created for us to actually give voice.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's, those are, those are very hopeful answers too,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: by the way, with the things people care about. Um,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: you know, so like a lot of people listen to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: this show, uh, are activists in their own life. They
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: make phone calls and they text on the weekends and,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: And I think sometimes when people think about voter contact
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: and persuasion, you imagine this scene where you come to
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: a door and you knock on it and you talk
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: to a Trump voter. And by the end, they've changed
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: their mind. And that's not really how a lot of
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: field works, right? A lot of it is like, how
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: do you turn a non-voter into a voter? Are there
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: best practices that you've learned over years of doing this
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: that you think are broadly applicable that people can steal
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: from you?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 7: This is the wildest thing. So in the last two
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 7: election cycles, 49% of registered Latinos never received a voter contact. Wow.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: That's terrible.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: From a political party.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: Or from a candidate. It's absolutely terrible because they already registered.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 7: Right. No.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 7: And so the biggest thing you can do is actually talk.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 7: And the reason being is because young voters and Latinos
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 7: specifically as well, don't have a voting history. And so
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 7: the way candidates like to work is like, well, these
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 7: folks are sure bets. Well, some of the sure bets
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 7: have no, are no longer part of our party. Like
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 7: they went to the Republican side. So your voter contact
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 7: by default becomes for the other side. I would encourage
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 7: you to look, you know, your listeners to look for
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 7: organizations that deal specifically with young voters and that talk
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 7: to communities of color. And, you know, when you talk
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 7: to Doug Jones, what he did, he's like, you know,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 7: thank you to the African-American community, the Latino community and
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 7: the Jewish and happy Hanukkah. That was his like, his
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 7: like thank you message. But you said, well, what did
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 7: you do? He's like, I contacted every voter.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 7: And every voter is on our side, you know, and
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 7: for relational organizing, if people want to volunteer with us,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 7: You know, text volunteer to 73179 and we will put
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: you to work to text every voter because the numbers
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 7: are on our side, Tommy. Our job is to ask.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 7: And one of the things that we know, at least
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 7: from best practice, is that when you ask a Latino
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 7: to register and ask them to vote, they turn out.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 7: Seventy nine percent of the people we register vote. It's
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 7: because no one's asking them. Because, again, if we're not
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 7: even asking people who are registered, let alone the opportunity.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: It's so basic. We make it so hard sometimes. It's
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: so basic.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah, no, no. It's like, everybody's like, well, you know,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 7: it's so funny. People are like, well, what should we do?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: I'm like, just register and talk to them because we
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 7: actually have, for the very first time, we're going to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 7: have 12 million more young voters than baby boomers. That's
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 7: a huge opportunity because for the first time in the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 7: midterm election, generation X, Y, and Z outvoted older voters.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 7: And we brought in the most diverse Congress. And when
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 7: people say, well, So what? I'm like, look, we have
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 7: 400 pieces of legislation that speak to our values as
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 7: a result of this diverse Congress that was ushered in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: by a new generation of voters. All of that is exciting.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 7: We need to finish the job.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I saw an incredible statistic that was said in
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: a news article by you, which was that of the- Well,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: quote me, please. Of the 32 million Latinos eligible to
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: cast a ballot in 2020, 4 million of them turned
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: 18 after the 2016 election, which just speaks to how
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: young and how powerful this emerging crop of voters is.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: That's a huge number.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 7: Yeah. So when we started 15 years ago, there was 30,000
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 7: Latinos turning 18 every single month. Now it's a million
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 7: every single year. And that tsunami of Latino voters won't
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 7: crest for 10 years. It's on our, I mean, it's
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 7: also why they, they decided to get the voting rights
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 7: act and to create all these voting barriers because they
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 7: saw a huge new young group of Not just Latino's,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 7: but literally a new generation of voters. The millennial generation
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 7: is larger than baby boomers. Generation Z is our largest generation.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 7: And they are coming into power. And what's deeply beautiful
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 7: about this generation is that they are clear-eyed. They don't
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 7: want platitudes, but they want solutions. And they're rolling up
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 7: their arms. I can't even.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 7: So this is where my ESL comes in. You know,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 7: I love to say these idioms and I always fail
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 7: at them. Sleeves. Thank you. I was like bootstraps. I'm like,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 7: that's not right.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: I like that too. I think that's actually better.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: I know, but they, they want to get people who
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 7: will work on their rehab.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. It is good. Um, Last question for you.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: who hear about Voto Latino. They want to get involved.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Or maybe they want to work with you or maybe
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: they just want to support you directly. Where can they go?
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: What should they do?
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah, if they go to votolatino.org, they can register to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 7: vote or they can donate 20 bucks and pay it forward.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 7: We're really good at registering voters. We're registering them roughly
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: at $ 12. And with the extra $ 3, we basically get
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: them out to the polls.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: That's amazing.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: Yeah. And then finally, please volunteer. So if they text
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 7: volunteer to 73179, we'll put you to work. That's not
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: a problem.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: I love it. Well, we have a lot of listeners
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: who are scared to death. And so I imagine you'll
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: get some texts from this. Maria, thank you so much
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: for doing the show. Thanks for all your work you're
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: doing with Voto Latino. And, you know, I guess we
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: all just work so our anxiety goes away until November.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: That's the deal now.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I think that there's, you know, people are
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 7: paying attention and that's good. I mean, the fact that
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 7: we saw such a surge in voter registration is that
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 7: people are fed up and our job is to close
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: that gap and folks flood the zone. There are 123
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 7: million of us sat it out last time, flood the zone.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 7: And that way we send a clear message, not just
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 7: to this president, but also to the Senate that they
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 7: have to get their act together, that we're paying attention.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: Amen, Senate and Joe Biden. Get rid of the filibuster.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: We're not messing around this time. Maria, thank you again.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: Great talking with you.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 7: It's a pleasure.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: Be well.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 7: Thank you.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Maria Teresa Kumar for joining us today. And
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: we'll talk to you guys later.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: Bye, everybody.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: every week.