Latest / Pod Save America / “Trump’s Covid confessions.”

Transcript

“Trump’s Covid confessions.” · Pod Save America

0:04
Speaker 1: This is a life-changing election. This will determine what America
0:07
Speaker 1: is going to look like for a long, long time.
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Speaker 2: This is the most important election in the history of
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Speaker 2: our country.
0:20
Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 4: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:23
Speaker 3: On today's pod, I talk to Carlos Odio of Equis Research,
0:25
Speaker 3: who has done the most extensive research of any pollster
0:28
Speaker 3: on the Latino vote, especially the Latino vote in Florida.
0:31
Speaker 3: Before that, we'll talk about Trump's taped confession to Bob
0:34
Speaker 3: Woodward that he intentionally downplayed the threat of COVID-19, the
0:37
Speaker 3: climate crisis that's currently engulfing the West Coast in flames,
0:41
Speaker 3: and what the Biden and Trump advertising strategies tell us
0:44
Speaker 3: about the state of the race. A few reminders. Don't
0:48
Speaker 3: miss this week's episode of Pod Save the World, where
0:49
Speaker 3: Tommy and Ben talk about Donald Trump denigrating American service members,
0:53
Speaker 3: the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, new trouble
0:57
Speaker 3: for Brexit, and another controversy involving Disney's new Mulan film. Also,
1:04
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1:06
Speaker 3: time to listen in a while, Aaron, Alyssa, and the
1:08
Speaker 3: crew have put out some truly outstanding episodes in recent
1:12
Speaker 3: weeks with guests like Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and legendary actress
1:16
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1:24
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1:29
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Speaker 3: there where we'll always have something to do for you.
1:53
Speaker 4: Can I ask a follow-up question?
1:56
Speaker 1: Sure.
1:57
Speaker 5: What's a weekend?
2:01
Speaker 4: Just any randomly chosen two days in a week in
2:05
Speaker 4: which you are also in your house can be your weekend.
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Speaker 3: Get up at the same time, do most of the
2:10
Speaker 3: same things, read the same tweets. You know, it's all
2:13
Speaker 3: the same. All right, let's get to the news. On Wednesday,
2:17
Speaker 3: we learned that in a series of taped conversations with
2:19
Speaker 3: journalist Bob Woodward between February and July... Donald Trump admitted
2:23
Speaker 3: that he intentionally downplayed the threat of COVID-19, even though
2:27
Speaker 3: he knew all along that the virus was deadlier than
2:29
Speaker 3: the flu and dangerous to children. That is, of course,
2:33
Speaker 3: not what he's been saying publicly for the last six months.
2:35
Speaker 3: Here's a quick ad from the Lincoln Project that plays
2:37
Speaker 3: Trump's comments to Woodward back to back with what he
2:41
Speaker 3: was saying about the virus publicly at the time. Let's
2:44
Speaker 3: take a listen.
2:45
Speaker 1: This is more deadly.
2:46
Speaker 2: This is five per... You know, this is 5% versus
2:51
Speaker 2: 1% and less than 1%. You know, so this is
2:54
Speaker 2: deadly stuff. We show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.
3:00
Speaker 2: Not just old people, to plenty of young people. Young
3:05
Speaker 2: people are almost immune to this disease. It's also more
3:15
Speaker 2: deadly than your... You know, even your strenuous flus. We
3:20
Speaker 2: lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu.
3:24
Speaker 2: We don't turn the country off. I wanted to always
3:27
Speaker 2: play it down. I still like playing it down.
3:31
Speaker 3: So these comments came as part of 18 separate interviews
3:35
Speaker 3: that Trump gave Woodward for his new book, Rage. We'll
3:38
Speaker 3: go through some of the other very normal things Trump
3:40
Speaker 3: said to Woodward in a bit. But to me, the
3:43
Speaker 3: comments about the pandemic are the most damning because The
3:46
Speaker 3: president knowingly lied to the public about the severity of
3:50
Speaker 3: a virus that has now killed almost 200,000 Americans. What
3:56
Speaker 3: was your reaction to these comments?
4:00
Speaker 4: I know we're not supposed to be shocked anymore by anything,
4:04
Speaker 4: but this is pretty damn shocking. It is, I mean,
4:06
Speaker 4: on every level of it, but you have the president
4:09
Speaker 4: on tape admitting that he lied to the American people
4:12
Speaker 4: and people died as a result. I mean, it's not...
4:14
Speaker 4: This is not... anonymous sources tell, sketchy, former now disillusioned
4:20
Speaker 4: Trump aide something. This is Donald Trump on tape saying
4:23
Speaker 4: that he downplayed the virus and lied to the American people.
4:27
Speaker 4: It is, I mean, it is open and shut and
4:29
Speaker 4: is incredibly disturbing and the consequences are devastating.
4:33
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I see a lot of people say,
4:34
Speaker 3: of course, Trump lied. We've all known that. But I
4:38
Speaker 3: think there was always a question as to whether Trump
4:41
Speaker 3: was just lying to himself, too, about the virus. As
4:45
Speaker 3: if he was just actually thinking, it's not that bad.
4:48
Speaker 3: I'm going to buy a bunch of conspiracies that, you know,
4:51
Speaker 3: wackos on Fox tell me. And it's actually going to
4:53
Speaker 3: be fine. And he's in a bubble. No, none of
4:56
Speaker 3: that is true.
4:57
Speaker 5: He knew.
4:58
Speaker 3: He knew how deadly it was. He knew it was
5:00
Speaker 3: harmful to children. As he's talking about opening fucking schools
5:04
Speaker 3: and how children are almost immune. It is so damning because...
5:09
Speaker 3: The president of the United States, by lying to people,
5:14
Speaker 3: by concealing information that he knew, it absolutely killed people.
5:21
Speaker 3: We would not have believed Trump either way anyway, because
5:24
Speaker 3: most Democrats don't believe Donald Trump after four years. A
5:28
Speaker 3: lot of independents don't believe Trump after four years. Think
5:30
Speaker 3: about his own supporters who listen to this guy, who
5:34
Speaker 3: believe this guy. And you turn on your TV and
5:37
Speaker 3: Donald Trump tells you not to worry. about this virus.
5:40
Speaker 3: Donald Trump tells you that it's not that deadly, that
5:42
Speaker 3: it's no worse than the flu. Donald Trump tells you
5:44
Speaker 3: that it can't kill children. And then you go make
5:46
Speaker 3: decisions in your own life based on what this guy
5:49
Speaker 3: told you, who you've trusted for the last several years.
5:53
Speaker 3: And then you contract a virus and you die. That
5:56
Speaker 3: is what we're talking about here. It's just, it is
5:58
Speaker 3: as black and white as that.
6:00
Speaker 4: It's interesting the way you say that because we, everyone,
6:03
Speaker 4: even Trump supporters, some of Trump supporters, take what he
6:07
Speaker 4: says with a grain of salt, but they sort of
6:11
Speaker 4: see him as, and I think a lot of the
6:13
Speaker 4: press sees him this way, which is just like, he
6:15
Speaker 4: is dishonest, but he is sincere, right? Like he is
6:18
Speaker 4: like the words he's saying are inaccurate in their lives,
6:22
Speaker 4: but they bespeak a, like what he's actually feeling. Like
6:26
Speaker 4: he is, he does not want to believe that this
6:29
Speaker 4: is bad. So he has convinced himself that is not.
6:31
Speaker 4: So he is saying things, but what we're actually finding
6:33
Speaker 4: here is he, he undertook a very specific and deliberate strategy.
6:36
Speaker 4: to lie in order to minimize the political and economic
6:40
Speaker 4: impact of what would happen, right? Keep the stock market up,
6:43
Speaker 4: keep his poll numbers up. And if people, including children, die,
6:47
Speaker 4: so be it. Because he's so unable to think through
6:51
Speaker 4: the consequences to anyone other than himself in any situation
6:55
Speaker 4: that you end up in this place. I mean, it
6:56
Speaker 4: is the most stunning thing a president has ever said
6:59
Speaker 4: on tape. And I include the Watergate tapes in that.
7:04
Speaker 3: It also, this is sort of a smaller thing, but
7:06
Speaker 3: it blows up his entire China defense where he said
7:10
Speaker 3: that China lied to us. China did this. We didn't
7:13
Speaker 3: know how bad it was.
7:15
Speaker 5: He knew.
7:15
Speaker 3: Of course he knew how bad it was. He can't
7:17
Speaker 3: blame China for this. He was sitting right there knowing
7:20
Speaker 3: how deadly it was. And he just decided to downplay
7:23
Speaker 3: it because, as he said, he likes to downplay it.
7:26
Speaker 3: So in response to all this. Trump defended his comments
7:29
Speaker 3: by telling White House reporters on Wednesday, quote, I don't
7:32
Speaker 3: want to create panic. Is that what it was? It
7:35
Speaker 3: was it was he didn't want to create panic over
7:38
Speaker 3: the easily transmissible airborne virus that's deadlier than the few.
7:42
Speaker 3: Don't panic about that.
7:45
Speaker 4: You know, the old saying, don't say airborne in a
7:48
Speaker 4: crowded theater. Like, well, it's it is insane because this
7:51
Speaker 4: is not like there are things you say that could
7:53
Speaker 4: create panic. Like you go out there and say everyone's
7:55
Speaker 4: going to die. But what he's instead doing is he
7:59
Speaker 4: is refusing to give people the information they could use
8:01
Speaker 4: to save their life.
8:03
Speaker 2: Right.
8:03
Speaker 4: He's not it's not that he's either saying fire quietly
8:07
Speaker 4: or loudly in a crowded theater. He's not saying fire
8:09
Speaker 4: at all. In fact, he's telling everyone everything's totally going
8:12
Speaker 4: to be fine and people died as a result.
8:15
Speaker 3: It's also I mean, yeah, Donald Trump. legendary for not
8:20
Speaker 3: wanting to cause panic. The guy who tells you every
8:22
Speaker 3: day that Joe Biden and his Antifa army are like
8:24
Speaker 3: coming to destroy the suburbs. This is not someone who
8:27
Speaker 3: wants to cause panic. Also, you know, Greg Sargent at
8:30
Speaker 3: the Washington Post pointed this out today. The reason that
8:33
Speaker 3: Trump didn't want to cause panic, and we know this
8:37
Speaker 3: from reporting and from what he said before, is he
8:38
Speaker 3: didn't want to panic the stock market. And he didn't
8:41
Speaker 3: want to hurt his reelection chances. As usual, all of
8:44
Speaker 3: Trump's excuses are not about everyone else. It's about himself.
8:47
Speaker 3: It's the same thing he said at the beginning of
8:49
Speaker 3: the pandemic when he said, I don't want to test
8:51
Speaker 3: that much because the numbers make us look bad. He
8:55
Speaker 3: thought that if he told people the truth about how
8:57
Speaker 3: deadly this virus is, that it would panic the stock
9:00
Speaker 3: market and that it would hurt his reelection chances. And
9:04
Speaker 3: he thought that even though it was deadly, maybe he
9:07
Speaker 3: could just wish the whole thing away and he could
9:10
Speaker 3: skate by without being politically damaged. That is exactly what happened.
9:14
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has now said this on tape. There is
9:16
Speaker 3: reporting that backs it up from a million different sources.
9:19
Speaker 3: He said it a million times. That is the story
9:22
Speaker 3: of this whole pandemic. A pandemic hit. The guy was
9:25
Speaker 3: worried it would hurt his reelection chances. So he lied
9:27
Speaker 3: about it. Didn't matter if people died as a result.
9:30
Speaker 3: That's it. That's the story.
9:32
Speaker 4: I mean, the thing about it is it is not
9:34
Speaker 4: just that he is an incredibly selfish narcissist. This is
9:38
Speaker 4: also evidence that he's an incredibly stupid, selfish narcissist. Because
9:42
Speaker 4: if you're viewing this with the prism of, how can
9:44
Speaker 4: I get through this pandemic and still get reelected? There's
9:49
Speaker 4: only one answer to that, which is solve the problem.
9:52
Speaker 4: Manage it. Deal with it. Minimize the human toll. Minimize
9:56
Speaker 4: the impact on the economy by actually solving the problem.
9:58
Speaker 4: But instead, he decided in the most short-term, fail the
10:01
Speaker 4: marshmallow test way possible, he decided to take a short-term
10:05
Speaker 4: benefit while making the pandemic worse and therefore his re-election
10:11
Speaker 4: less likely. I mean, it is just– he's so dumb.
10:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:15
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. Like, obviously it sounds, it sounds
10:18
Speaker 3: quite evil what he said and it is, but let's
10:21
Speaker 3: not forget how fucking stupid he is. Because if, even
10:25
Speaker 3: if you want, even if he was solely focused on
10:27
Speaker 3: his own reelection and didn't give a shit about the country,
10:29
Speaker 3: the best way to ensure his reelection would have been
10:31
Speaker 3: to fix the virus and do the hard things. And
10:34
Speaker 3: we've talked about this before. You can lay out an
10:37
Speaker 3: entire scenario where everyone rallies around Donald Trump, even, you know, we,
10:42
Speaker 3: we still hate him. We still wouldn't vote for him,
10:44
Speaker 3: but like, A lot of people in this country, swing voters,
10:46
Speaker 3: independent voters, all kinds of people would say, you know what?
10:49
Speaker 3: This guy's been an asshole for the last couple of years,
10:51
Speaker 3: but he's trying really hard. He's doing everything necessary for
10:54
Speaker 3: this virus. You can see it with Democratic and Republican
10:57
Speaker 3: governors across the country, world leaders.
11:00
Speaker 4: But it's actually even worse than that because like there
11:03
Speaker 4: is this mythical hypothetical situation where Trump rose to the
11:06
Speaker 4: occasion for the first time and only time in his
11:09
Speaker 4: entire life and like did a pretty good job, which
11:12
Speaker 4: he's never done on literally anything. At any point, business, entertainment, politics,
11:16
Speaker 4: never done a good job on anything. But there's a
11:19
Speaker 4: world where he just does the bare fucking minimum, right?
11:24
Speaker 4: Tells people to wear masks, right? Doesn't side with armed
11:28
Speaker 4: protesters demanding the opening of Subway sandwich restaurants. Like he
11:31
Speaker 4: just has the bare minimum, but he can't even do that.
11:36
Speaker 4: He actually has to actively go out as he was
11:39
Speaker 4: doing on Twitter today and try to make sure that
11:42
Speaker 4: more people get sick and die. It is just so–
11:46
Speaker 4: when you put it in the– we all know this.
11:48
Speaker 4: We don't need Bob Woodward to tell us this. But
11:51
Speaker 4: it is just once again another reminder of what a
11:55
Speaker 4: devastatingly stupid and dangerous person we have in charge of
11:58
Speaker 4: this country and perhaps the most dangerous time in nearly
12:00
Speaker 4: a century.
12:02
Speaker 3: So Joe Biden responded to the Woodward revelations during a
12:05
Speaker 3: campaign event in Michigan. Here's a clip of Biden.
12:07
Speaker 1: How many schools aren't open right now? How many kids
12:11
Speaker 1: are starting a new school year the same way they
12:14
Speaker 1: ended the last one at home? How many parents feel
12:18
Speaker 1: abandoned and overwhelmed? How many frontline workers are exhausted and
12:24
Speaker 1: pushed to their limits? And how many families are missing
12:28
Speaker 1: loved ones at their dinner table tonight?
12:32
Speaker 5: Because of his failures.
12:34
Speaker 1: It's beyond despicable.
12:37
Speaker 5: It's a dereliction of duty. It's a disgrace.
12:41
Speaker 3: I thought it was a pretty strong response. I think
12:44
Speaker 3: they also turned around a digital ad pretty quickly. What
12:47
Speaker 3: else do you think the Biden campaign should do with
12:49
Speaker 3: these comments?
12:51
Speaker 4: This is going to be one of the situations where
12:53
Speaker 4: Biden and his campaign have to do less to keep
12:55
Speaker 4: this in the news because Bob Woodburn is on a
12:57
Speaker 4: six-day high-profile news story. I mean, the thing that's amazing
13:00
Speaker 4: is this book doesn't even come out until Tuesday. So
13:03
Speaker 4: it's like we're getting nearly a week of this. And
13:07
Speaker 4: what I think is good– like I think tactically it
13:09
Speaker 4: seems like they're doing the right things. They put this
13:11
Speaker 4: topper at the front end of his remarks on the
13:14
Speaker 4: economy in Michigan recognizing that he probably wasn't going to
13:16
Speaker 4: break through on his plan to stop offshoring. On the
13:20
Speaker 4: day the Woodward revelations came out, they turned around a
13:22
Speaker 4: digital ad, which is important to make sure that people
13:24
Speaker 4: who did not see this news in its organic form
13:27
Speaker 4: will see it. But also what I like about it
13:30
Speaker 4: is the tone, which is I think Biden is perhaps
13:33
Speaker 4: at his best when he demonstrates righteous anger on behalf
13:37
Speaker 4: of the American people. And that's what that was, right?
13:39
Speaker 4: It is the flip side of Biden's tremendous decency and
13:43
Speaker 4: empathy is that he can get angry on behalf of others.
13:45
Speaker 4: And that's what that felt like. And I thought it
13:47
Speaker 4: was very, very strong.
13:49
Speaker 3: My first thought when I saw that was that is
13:51
Speaker 3: the exact tone that Biden should have in the debates,
13:54
Speaker 3: because Donald Trump is going to try to bait Joe
13:57
Speaker 3: Biden in these debates. And I'm sure that Trump people
14:00
Speaker 3: know that in debates, at least in the primary debates,
14:03
Speaker 3: Biden's weakness, I would say, is that he could get
14:05
Speaker 3: very defensive and angry. But he gets defensive and angry
14:08
Speaker 3: about his own record, about attacks on his own record,
14:11
Speaker 3: about attacks on himself. There's a lot that Donald Trump
14:13
Speaker 3: can do to make you angry. You can either be defensive,
14:15
Speaker 3: you can be angry at Donald Trump. I think either
14:17
Speaker 3: being angry at Trump or being angry that he attacked
14:20
Speaker 3: Biden's own record is not good for Biden. I think
14:22
Speaker 3: Biden being angry on behalf of the American people because
14:26
Speaker 3: of what Donald Trump has done for the last four
14:27
Speaker 3: years is exactly the right tone for him to take. Look,
14:32
Speaker 3: there was this whole debate that we had last week
14:36
Speaker 3: over the Atlantic story about Trump's comments disparaging the troops
14:40
Speaker 3: and people said, Will it really matter? How much should
14:42
Speaker 3: people focus on it? We can go back and forth
14:44
Speaker 3: about that. This is different because this is now the
14:47
Speaker 3: territory that Donald Trump doesn't want to be playing on,
14:51
Speaker 3: which is his response to the pandemic. It is his
14:54
Speaker 3: biggest weakness in this election. It is one of the
14:58
Speaker 3: top concerns, if not the top concern of voters right now.
15:02
Speaker 3: And people think that he badly, badly mismanaged it. And
15:06
Speaker 3: so keeping the pandemic in the news and keeping Donald
15:10
Speaker 3: Trump's response to it in the news is like, I
15:13
Speaker 3: don't make a lot of predictions here, but it's not
15:15
Speaker 3: great for Trump. The Trump campaign isn't happy about doing this.
15:18
Speaker 3: And I saw this, like I watched the stupid fucking
15:20
Speaker 3: Hannity interview of Donald Trump last night, which is like
15:22
Speaker 3: a waste of time. But I was watching Fox News
15:24
Speaker 3: for like 10 to 15 minutes before that. And it
15:27
Speaker 3: was notable that Hannity had to spend his entire show
15:31
Speaker 3: on the pandemic and not on cities burning and Joe
15:35
Speaker 3: Biden and Kamala Harris and the radical left and all
15:38
Speaker 3: this other stuff. Even on Fox, they had to spend
15:40
Speaker 3: an entire day talking about this, which with 54 days
15:45
Speaker 3: left of the election is not good for Donald Trump.
15:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
15:49
Speaker 4: I mean, this is one of the things that people
15:51
Speaker 4: are not going to miss. You're right. It has the
15:53
Speaker 4: potential to be like, we don't make predictions. It has
15:55
Speaker 4: potential to be tremendously damaging in a couple of respects. One,
15:58
Speaker 4: it is another seven to 10 days where Trump is
16:00
Speaker 4: not making the case for himself or a specific case
16:02
Speaker 4: against Biden. He's just on the defense of flailing about, um,
16:06
Speaker 4: sending out random tweets, but it also undermines the last
16:11
Speaker 4: remaining bit of credibility he could have possibly had on this,
16:16
Speaker 4: which is he was, he'd been able to convince some
16:17
Speaker 4: people that not his base, but some swing voters that
16:22
Speaker 4: no one could have known about this, right? This is a,
16:24
Speaker 4: an act of God. It is a, a, um, something
16:27
Speaker 4: that happened to him, right? And so he should not
16:30
Speaker 4: get full responsibility for it. But now you have him
16:31
Speaker 4: on tape admitting he knew about it, undermining his last
16:34
Speaker 4: remaining defense of his handling of it. And so it
16:37
Speaker 4: is definitely not good for him. How bad it is
16:41
Speaker 4: for him, obviously, we'll know the results of that in
16:44
Speaker 4: eight weekends or so you say.
16:46
Speaker 3: I think the most effective way to use it is
16:48
Speaker 3: not to say, oh, look, Trump lied about something in
16:51
Speaker 3: the past. It is to push it forward. We know
16:55
Speaker 3: he is continually lying to us to this day about
16:59
Speaker 3: the severity of the pandemic. And therefore, we cannot trust
17:04
Speaker 3: this man to lead us as we are still grappling
17:08
Speaker 3: with the pandemic, right? He is, like you just said,
17:10
Speaker 3: he's on Twitter today saying open schools. Because it's not
17:14
Speaker 3: a big deal and kids aren't going to get it.
17:16
Speaker 3: We know that's a lie now. There was this whole
17:19
Speaker 3: fucking debate where Kamala Harris said, yeah, of course I'm
17:22
Speaker 3: not going to take Donald Trump's word for it when
17:24
Speaker 3: it comes to a vaccine. I want to make sure
17:26
Speaker 3: the scientists say the vaccine is safe. And some people
17:29
Speaker 3: were saying, oh, she shouldn't have said that. It looks
17:31
Speaker 3: like she's, you know, not just Trump people. Like I
17:33
Speaker 3: heard other pundits say, it's fucking ridiculous. Donald Trump, we
17:36
Speaker 3: just caught him on tape lying about the severity of
17:38
Speaker 3: the pandemic, and we're just going to take his word
17:41
Speaker 3: for it on a vaccine? That's crazy. That is crazy.
17:45
Speaker 3: So I do think, again, it's not just about Trump
17:48
Speaker 3: is bad and Trump has a bad character. I don't
17:51
Speaker 3: think that's enough to win the election. I think it's
17:53
Speaker 3: Trump's character and his lies have consequences. And they didn't
17:57
Speaker 3: just have consequences in the past. They will have consequences
18:00
Speaker 3: going forward. And if you elect this man, he will
18:03
Speaker 3: lie to you again, and it will cause people to die.
18:07
Speaker 3: That is what's at stake in the election.
18:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mostly agree with that. I obviously don't think
18:13
Speaker 4: the argument should be Trump is a bad person. Everyone
18:15
Speaker 4: knows Trump's a bad person. That is fully understood and
18:18
Speaker 4: manifestly obvious for everyone. I think it is less about
18:24
Speaker 4: honesty than it is about credibility.
18:26
Speaker 2: Right.
18:26
Speaker 4: And I think there are two different things, which is
18:30
Speaker 4: people expect politicians to not tell the truth. Even people
18:34
Speaker 4: who like Joe Biden, right, who were seen as much
18:36
Speaker 4: more trusted than Trump. But there's this sort of view
18:39
Speaker 4: that most politicians, they kind of at minimum put spin
18:43
Speaker 4: on the ball.
18:44
Speaker 2: Right.
18:44
Speaker 4: And Trump, we like everyone sort of knows he lies.
18:47
Speaker 4: I think it is about the fact that someone who
18:51
Speaker 4: is unable and unwilling to even acknowledge the problem, who
18:54
Speaker 4: is not strong enough to tell the American people what
18:57
Speaker 4: they know, what they need to hear, cannot solve the problem.
19:01
Speaker 4: And so it's as much about credibility and capacity. It
19:04
Speaker 4: is about the very specific bit of honesty. Does that
19:08
Speaker 4: make sense?
19:09
Speaker 3: It's also what you lie about. People expect politicians to
19:11
Speaker 3: lie about all kinds of stuff to save their own asses.
19:14
Speaker 3: Life or death issues. that could have consequences for people,
19:17
Speaker 3: you hope that your leaders don't lie about those kind
19:19
Speaker 3: of things. So it will not surprise any of you
19:22
Speaker 3: to learn that Trump's COVID confessions were not the only
19:24
Speaker 3: crazy shit that he or his staff told Woodward. Trump
19:28
Speaker 3: said that he likes to refer to Obama, who he
19:31
Speaker 3: called dumb and overrated, as, quote, Barack Hussein, but wouldn't
19:34
Speaker 3: say that in front of him. When Woodward asked if
19:36
Speaker 3: they both had a responsibility to better understand the anger
19:39
Speaker 3: and pain of black Americans, Trump said, No, you really
19:43
Speaker 3: drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you.
19:45
Speaker 4: Wow.
19:45
Speaker 3: No, I don't feel like that at all. Trump went
19:47
Speaker 3: on at length about his chemistry with Kim Jong saying
19:51
Speaker 3: their relationship was like a quote fantasy film and that
19:54
Speaker 3: quote i'm the only one he smiles with he also
19:57
Speaker 3: said quote my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies
20:00
Speaker 3: and revealed the existence of a secret new weapon system
20:02
Speaker 3: that nobody in the world knows about something he told
20:05
Speaker 3: a reporter on the record um Let's start with why
20:12
Speaker 3: in the hell did Trump and his staff agree to
20:13
Speaker 3: talk to Bob Woodward in the first place? As someone
20:18
Speaker 3: who's dealt with Bob Woodward books in the White House,
20:20
Speaker 3: about White Houses.
20:22
Speaker 4: I had dealt with Bob Woodward and he did two
20:24
Speaker 4: books on Obama. I mostly dealt with the second one,
20:28
Speaker 4: which came out in 2012, which was a really bad
20:32
Speaker 4: book that was very wrong about many things. But Bob
20:34
Speaker 4: Woodward is someone, put aside Trump for a second. Here's
20:37
Speaker 4: how you end up talking to Bob Woodward is so
20:40
Speaker 4: Bob Woodward came in to meet with Jay Carney, who
20:42
Speaker 4: was the press secretary at the time, and I, to
20:43
Speaker 4: announce to us that he was writing this book, which
20:45
Speaker 4: we knew because he had already been calling people all
20:47
Speaker 4: around town. But he comes into Jay's office. And Bob
20:50
Speaker 4: Woodward is really the most legendary world-famous journalist probably in decades,
20:57
Speaker 4: if not history. And he comes in. He sits on
21:01
Speaker 4: the– and he's very low-key, very personally low-key. And he
21:05
Speaker 4: sits on the couch in Jay's office and he– makes
21:08
Speaker 4: some small talk, and then he opens up his like
21:12
Speaker 4: old beaten down leather briefcase and he takes out a
21:16
Speaker 4: series of White House memos, stamped confidential, and just lays
21:21
Speaker 4: them out on the coffee table. And he's like, you know,
21:24
Speaker 4: I've come into, I've come into possession of these and
21:28
Speaker 4: I've read them and they're really interesting. And it's really
21:30
Speaker 4: some stuff in here that, you know, I just.
21:33
Speaker 5: I don't know.
21:33
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's another side to the story of these
21:36
Speaker 4: things that maybe you want to share, maybe you don't.
21:38
Speaker 4: It's up to you guys, really. White House aides who
21:44
Speaker 4: have access and have top secret clearance have a safe
21:46
Speaker 4: in their office that you keep your top secret material.
21:48
Speaker 4: And he gestures to Jay's safe and he's like, I'm
21:50
Speaker 4: sure you have some things in there that might clear
21:52
Speaker 4: up some of the questions I have. But if you
21:54
Speaker 4: want to show them to me, you show them to me.
21:56
Speaker 4: It's up to you. I've got a lot of stuff.
21:58
Speaker 4: A lot of people have been telling me things. They're interesting.
22:01
Speaker 4: It's just how we do it. And then he left.
22:05
Speaker 4: It's like, I mean, you, you just, you like people
22:09
Speaker 4: like we made a decision as a white house, as
22:10
Speaker 4: every other one has, is that you would manage your
22:13
Speaker 4: cooperation the best you could, where you would have, you
22:15
Speaker 4: designate some people who would talk to Woodward and we
22:19
Speaker 4: would have, and we would record those conversations. So we
22:21
Speaker 4: would have our own evidence of those and the, and
22:24
Speaker 4: then Obama would do an interview at the end. But
22:26
Speaker 4: one thing we did not do was just have the,
22:28
Speaker 4: have Obama randomly dial up Woodward when he felt like
22:30
Speaker 4: it and just talk to him without any staff present.
22:32
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:33
Speaker 3: I was going to say, like, yeah, I guess it's
22:35
Speaker 3: one thing to cooperate when people have already leaked to
22:37
Speaker 3: the reporter. But, you know, allowing 18 separate interviews and
22:41
Speaker 3: a bunch of staff to talk to him, I heard
22:42
Speaker 3: Jared thought it was a great idea. So that's pretty good.
22:46
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, there's so many parts about this, which
22:48
Speaker 4: is just imagine Trump. Trump is just like, you know what?
22:54
Speaker 4: I see you, Richard Nixon. And I'm just going to
22:57
Speaker 4: cut out the middleman and just call Woodward directly. Like,
23:00
Speaker 4: why make him work for it? That's the sort of
23:02
Speaker 4: efficiency you get when you put a businessman in charge
23:04
Speaker 4: of the government.
23:06
Speaker 3: Well, apparently, I mean, I also read, I think someone
23:11
Speaker 3: reported this, that Trump was pissed about the last Woodward
23:16
Speaker 3: book that his staff didn't let him talk to Woodward
23:19
Speaker 3: for the last one. And so he thought the way
23:21
Speaker 3: to make himself look better in this one was to
23:24
Speaker 3: talk more. So per usual, Trump thinks the answer is
23:28
Speaker 3: always more Trump and that he can fix it. And
23:31
Speaker 3: he's too fucking stupid to realize that the most damaging
23:34
Speaker 3: thing that's going to end up in the book is
23:36
Speaker 3: what comes from Trump himself, not the staff, even though
23:38
Speaker 3: there's plenty of damaging things from the staff as well.
23:41
Speaker 3: I mean... The trick is with this Woodward thing, and
23:44
Speaker 3: I don't know what you think of this, I think
23:46
Speaker 3: that the comments about the pandemic are by far the
23:48
Speaker 3: most damning and will probably have the most lasting effect
23:51
Speaker 3: on the campaign, if at all. All the other stuff
23:54
Speaker 3: I just read, and we could spend like 10 minutes
23:57
Speaker 3: on each of those things I just read, and that's
23:58
Speaker 3: just a small portion of the revelations that are going
24:01
Speaker 3: to continue to spill out in the coming weeks. Do
24:03
Speaker 3: you think there's maybe going to be too many revelations
24:06
Speaker 3: for people to really digest and make a difference?
24:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, yes, that's true with all things in
24:12
Speaker 4: the Trump era is there are too many revelations to
24:15
Speaker 4: focus on any individual one of them. But as we
24:17
Speaker 4: know from the polling and Trump's terrible approval ratings, the
24:20
Speaker 4: people are picking up the general sense that things aren't
24:23
Speaker 4: going great and he's not particularly good at his job.
24:25
Speaker 4: And this certainly amplifies that. I mean, I just want
24:27
Speaker 4: to go back to just how this all happened, which
24:34
Speaker 4: is No one got tricked here, right? Like there are
24:38
Speaker 4: examples in time where sort of maybe naive political aides
24:44
Speaker 4: or politicians befriend a reporter or an author and they
24:48
Speaker 4: maybe sort of unburdened themselves too much, thinking that person
24:53
Speaker 4: is a friend. Donald Trump is a criminal president dying
24:56
Speaker 4: up a person who was famous entirely for bringing down
25:00
Speaker 4: a criminal president. They made a movie about it. I
25:02
Speaker 4: believe it won Oscars. No one got fucking surprised here.
25:06
Speaker 4: It's like, Fox, enter our hen house. Just come on in.
25:10
Speaker 4: It is just absolutely unbelievable that he did this. He
25:18
Speaker 4: let down his guard with Bob Woodward, who is the
25:22
Speaker 4: actual definition of somebody who brings down a president.
25:25
Speaker 3: I think this is more proof that the Trump is
25:27
Speaker 3: incompetent and ineffective as president argument is more powerful than
25:33
Speaker 3: any other argument because even Hannity, Hannity last night As
25:39
Speaker 3: he's talking to Trump on the phone, he's like, I
25:41
Speaker 3: would have told you not to sit down with Bob Woodward,
25:43
Speaker 3: which is the closest Hannity gets to ever disagreeing with
25:47
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. And of course, you know, then Hannity sets
25:50
Speaker 3: him up and asks him the question, like, isn't it
25:52
Speaker 3: horrible what he did to you? But Trump had to
25:54
Speaker 3: swing at the pitch and be like, well, let me
25:56
Speaker 3: tell you why I did it. You know, he had
25:57
Speaker 3: to defend himself. And then Tucker Carlson. and his show
26:00
Speaker 3: went on this whole thing with like, I can't believe
26:02
Speaker 3: Donald Trump sat down with him. He blamed Lindsey Graham
26:04
Speaker 3: for it because apparently Lindsey Graham brokered the first meeting
26:07
Speaker 3: between Woodward and Trump or whatever. Um, so he was
26:10
Speaker 3: even getting shit on Fox purely for being too stupid
26:14
Speaker 3: to sit down with Woodward, which, you know, if that
26:17
Speaker 3: bleeds into the Fox universe, that's pretty bad for him.
26:19
Speaker 3: I will say that it is very, it is very
26:22
Speaker 3: sad that, um, uh, Donald Trump's peace prize nomination was
26:26
Speaker 3: overshadowed by all this news yesterday.
26:28
Speaker 2: It was big.
26:28
Speaker 3: He woke up. It was, uh, Big day for him.
26:31
Speaker 3: He was nominated by like a right-wing politician in Norway
26:35
Speaker 3: for the Nobel Peace Prize for the UAE deal. Thought
26:38
Speaker 3: it was a big deal. He retweeted people congratulating him
26:42
Speaker 3: being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize about 100 times
26:46
Speaker 3: until the Woodward revelations came out. So tough day for
26:49
Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
26:49
Speaker 4: I'll tell you the big loser in this is. It's
26:51
Speaker 4: actually me because I had been stressing for 24 hours
26:55
Speaker 4: about what we were going to talk about today because–
26:59
Speaker 4: Because on holiday weekend, we did the Monday pod was
27:02
Speaker 4: on Tuesday. So there's basically 18 hours between when you
27:06
Speaker 4: finish recording that podcast and I have to start writing
27:08
Speaker 4: the outline for the next one. So I got my
27:10
Speaker 4: ass up at the crack of dawn. I like poured
27:12
Speaker 4: through everything I could possibly find to come up with
27:14
Speaker 4: some like off news topics that we could do. Did
27:18
Speaker 4: all of that. Sent it to you. We went back
27:20
Speaker 4: and forth on it. Michael and Jordan weighed in.
27:22
Speaker 5: Then I went and did a meeting.
27:23
Speaker 4: I get a text from you that is like, this
27:25
Speaker 4: Woodward stuff is crazy. I'm like, what are you talking about?
27:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, that made our lives easier. That's for sure. Let's
27:44
Speaker 3: talk about a story that should be leading the national
27:46
Speaker 3: news coverage everywhere right now. which is the climate disaster
27:50
Speaker 3: that's currently hammering the West coast of the United States,
27:52
Speaker 3: including here in California. One of the worst wildfire seasons
27:56
Speaker 3: on record has already burned millions of acres across multiple States,
27:59
Speaker 3: destroyed entire communities, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and
28:04
Speaker 3: left at least seven dead, including a one-year-old. The fires
28:07
Speaker 3: have been caused by a mix of dry conditions, heavy winds,
28:09
Speaker 3: and record high temperatures that have also caused rolling blackouts
28:12
Speaker 3: here in California, leaving people without air conditioning in a
28:15
Speaker 3: hundred degree weather last weekend. Um, I will say, you know,
28:20
Speaker 3: in the last day or so, I do think media
28:22
Speaker 3: outlets are generally paying more attention to this crisis. There
28:24
Speaker 3: have been quite a few pictures and videos of the
28:27
Speaker 3: orange sky that you've been seeing over the Bay Area.
28:31
Speaker 3: But Charlie Worzel had a pretty great column in the
28:33
Speaker 3: New York Times this week about how little coverage climate
28:36
Speaker 3: change gets in general. He wrote, quote, Since I moved west,
28:40
Speaker 3: I've been preoccupied with this question. Would Americans feel a
28:43
Speaker 3: greater sense of alarm about our rapidly warming planet and
28:46
Speaker 3: the disastrous effects perhaps irreversible effects of climate change if
28:50
Speaker 3: everyone could experience a fire season in person? Would cable
28:53
Speaker 3: news hosts devote the same nonstop coverage to fires as
28:56
Speaker 3: they do for hurricanes if more of their executives woke
28:59
Speaker 3: up each morning to falling ash? Would more lawmakers care
29:02
Speaker 3: if it looked like this outside the Capitol at high noon?
29:05
Speaker 3: What do you think about Charlie's argument?
29:07
Speaker 4: He's exactly right. I mean, I will say Charlie is
29:10
Speaker 4: just a must read on all topics. And for all
29:13
Speaker 4: of the shit that the New York Times op-ed page
29:16
Speaker 4: rightfully gets about a lot of really bad writers they
29:18
Speaker 4: have had recently. Charlie Worzel and a bunch of– Michelle
29:22
Speaker 4: Goldberg and Jamal Bowie are some really great ones. I
29:24
Speaker 4: think this– like I moved to California five years ago.
29:30
Speaker 4: It is stunning how much things have changed just in
29:33
Speaker 4: the five years since I've been here uh, in terms
29:35
Speaker 4: of what fire season is like, we have been in
29:38
Speaker 4: our home much of August, not just, not because of
29:42
Speaker 4: the pandemic, but because it's too smoky to go outside. Uh,
29:46
Speaker 4: you know, like, like my daughter thinks that smoky is
29:50
Speaker 4: a weather condition. When you ask her what the weather's like,
29:52
Speaker 4: she will say smoky. Um, And it's scary. I had
29:58
Speaker 4: to evacuate last year because of a fire that was
30:03
Speaker 4: near our home. And I'm home alone with Kyla. I
30:08
Speaker 4: get an alert that there's a fire in our community.
30:11
Speaker 4: I see it's a mile away. I look out my
30:14
Speaker 4: window and my neighbors are throwing suitcases in the back
30:18
Speaker 4: of their car and speeding off.
30:21
Speaker 5: I mean, it is.
30:22
Speaker 4: if politicians and the media had to live with this,
30:25
Speaker 4: they would hopefully approach, the media certainly would approach climate
30:30
Speaker 4: change differently. And some politicians would.
30:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:34
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I moved here in 2014. My parents
30:38
Speaker 3: moved here a couple of years after they live in
30:40
Speaker 3: thousand Oaks, which is just North of Los Angeles. Like
30:43
Speaker 3: one of the scariest moments in my life is getting
30:46
Speaker 3: a call from my parents, like in the middle of
30:48
Speaker 3: the night in 2018, like, The last time we had
30:51
Speaker 3: a really terrible fire season and them having to evacuate
30:55
Speaker 3: their house because the fire, the flames were next door. And,
30:59
Speaker 3: you know, driving down the 101 and seeing walls of
31:01
Speaker 3: flame and worrying they're going to get here in time
31:03
Speaker 3: and thinking that they were going to lose the house.
31:05
Speaker 3: And luckily everything was okay. But it is, it's really
31:09
Speaker 3: scary when you actually experience it and you live here.
31:12
Speaker 3: And it is something that like, you know, the media
31:17
Speaker 3: in general tends to be, New York centric and D.C. centric.
31:22
Speaker 3: And when there are problems in New York and D.C.,
31:24
Speaker 3: we hear about it a lot. And when there are
31:27
Speaker 3: problems elsewhere in the country, not just California, but especially,
31:30
Speaker 3: you know, drought in the Midwest, the derecho that hit Iowa,
31:33
Speaker 3: like there are climate disasters all over the country that
31:37
Speaker 3: you just don't hear as much about because they don't
31:39
Speaker 3: happen in major media centers. And that's not a knock
31:43
Speaker 3: on those places in New York and D.C. That's just
31:45
Speaker 3: that's what has happened. But of course, it's not just
31:48
Speaker 3: that the media isn't spending enough time on wildfires and
31:52
Speaker 3: even hurricanes. It's that they're not explicitly linking these disasters
31:56
Speaker 3: to climate change. Tommy tweeted yesterday a Media Matters report
32:00
Speaker 3: that showed in the month of August, just 4% of
32:03
Speaker 3: the 114 wildfire segments aired by ABC, CBS, and NBC
32:09
Speaker 3: mentioned climate change. Why do you think the media has
32:12
Speaker 3: such a tough time making the link explicit?
32:17
Speaker 4: Well, part of it is already the geographic location points
32:20
Speaker 4: you mentioned. Because DC and New York are not immune
32:24
Speaker 4: to climate change, like Hurricane Sandy hit eight years ago.
32:28
Speaker 3: Hurricane Sandy, yeah.
32:29
Speaker 4: They deal with hurricanes. But hurricane season is a period
32:33
Speaker 4: of time where you worry about hurricanes and maybe one
32:36
Speaker 4: or two hit you, hit your area at that time.
32:38
Speaker 4: Fire season is a period where things are on fire
32:41
Speaker 4: for sometimes months at a time, right? And it's just
32:44
Speaker 4: if hurricane season meant you were being hit by a
32:46
Speaker 4: hurricane every day or being worried about being hit by
32:50
Speaker 4: a specific hurricane every single day, that would be very different.
32:53
Speaker 4: The other thing is we dealt with this in the
32:55
Speaker 4: White House. This is one of your great frustrations was
32:57
Speaker 4: if you try to say that a specific weather event
33:00
Speaker 4: was tied to climate change, the fact checkers would ding you.
33:04
Speaker 4: You could say that the increase in frequency of storms
33:07
Speaker 4: like this or fires like this is related to climate change,
33:10
Speaker 4: but you could not draw a causal link between this
33:15
Speaker 4: event and climate change. Or someone would say that that
33:19
Speaker 4: was wrong, you shouldn't do that. And that is technically true, right?
33:22
Speaker 4: Like one of these fires was started by a malfunctioning
33:26
Speaker 4: gender reveal party device or something that was talked about here.
33:31
Speaker 4: But the conditions by which that fire happened are exactly
33:34
Speaker 4: a result of climate change. And it is fucking absurd
33:36
Speaker 4: to not put in that context. The second reason is
33:39
Speaker 4: just because we stupidly both sides an open and shut
33:41
Speaker 4: issue like climate change. Because the Republican Party has decided
33:44
Speaker 4: to advocate all responsibility and seriousness and pretend that climate
33:47
Speaker 4: change is not happening, it is seen as partisan by
33:51
Speaker 4: some media outlets to talk about climate change, that you
33:53
Speaker 4: were somehow picking a side on this issue. And that
33:58
Speaker 4: is just so dangerously absurd. And when we joke about
34:01
Speaker 4: how both sides of the punditry will kill us, this
34:03
Speaker 4: is one case where that is not actually a joke.
34:06
Speaker 3: This is the consequence of journalism that prizes balance over truth.
34:12
Speaker 3: This is it. And the Republican Party knows this. They
34:14
Speaker 3: can be as radical as they want. In their opinion,
34:17
Speaker 3: their stance on an issue is still held up as
34:20
Speaker 3: a legitimate side of the debate. And so therefore, if
34:25
Speaker 3: the media says that the severity and frequency of fires
34:30
Speaker 3: and droughts and hurricanes is linked to climate change, which
34:33
Speaker 3: is absolutely true. and that's the sort of nuance that
34:37
Speaker 3: you were talking about. It's both the severity of these
34:39
Speaker 3: storms and these disasters and their frequency is directly linked
34:42
Speaker 3: to climate change by science. If you say that, you
34:45
Speaker 3: are siding with the Democrats. You are siding with the
34:48
Speaker 3: Democrats and the worst thing in the world, worst thing
34:51
Speaker 3: in the world is to be accused of liberal bias.
34:54
Speaker 3: I will say, I think that over the last couple
34:56
Speaker 3: of years, I mean, that Media Matters study is pretty damning.
34:59
Speaker 3: I do think there are more individual reporters who, especially
35:03
Speaker 3: once you get past like network news.
35:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, print is better than TV here, yeah.
35:07
Speaker 3: Print is better than TV that will be honest about this.
35:10
Speaker 3: It's starting to turn a little bit, especially younger reporters
35:14
Speaker 3: will recognize this. So it's getting better, but I think
35:16
Speaker 3: it's still, it's a long way to go and we
35:18
Speaker 3: don't have any more time. That's the problem. We have
35:20
Speaker 3: no more time. Which brings us to what both candidates
35:24
Speaker 3: and parties would do about climate change. Trump, of course,
35:27
Speaker 3: believes it's a hoax, but he did go to Florida
35:29
Speaker 3: this week and declare himself a great environmentalist. after signing
35:33
Speaker 3: an order to ban oil drilling off the coast of
35:36
Speaker 3: a state he needs to win in November. Trump has,
35:38
Speaker 3: of course, spent the last four years opening up more
35:40
Speaker 3: land to oil and gas drilling, both on and offshore,
35:43
Speaker 3: allowing companies to release more carbon emissions, in fact, all
35:46
Speaker 3: the carbon emissions they want, and preventing states like California
35:50
Speaker 3: from setting tougher fuel economy standards for cars. Not only
35:53
Speaker 3: does Trump and the federal government not want to do
35:55
Speaker 3: anything about climate change, they actually want to prevent states
35:58
Speaker 3: who want to do something about climate change from doing it.
36:01
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, on the other hand, released a $ 2 trillion
36:04
Speaker 3: climate plan in July that would make America's electricity 100%
36:07
Speaker 3: carbon free by 2035 and zero emissions across the entire
36:12
Speaker 3: economy by 2050. Do you think Biden should talk more
36:15
Speaker 3: about his climate plan and Trump's climate record? And do
36:19
Speaker 3: you think that would break through it?
36:21
Speaker 5: I do.
36:21
Speaker 4: I mean, look, there are a million things happening at
36:23
Speaker 4: one time. We're in a pandemic. We are in an
36:27
Speaker 4: economic recession. We have a president who is doing unprecedentedly
36:30
Speaker 4: dangerous things every single day. So it's hard to be like,
36:33
Speaker 4: focus on this one particular issue. But I do think
36:37
Speaker 4: that you can very much tie Trump's failure to prepare
36:42
Speaker 4: for and respond to the pandemic with the Republican Party's
36:46
Speaker 4: approach to climate change. which is we are going to
36:48
Speaker 4: ignore science, we are going to deny reality, and we're
36:52
Speaker 4: going to focus on short-term economic gains over the long-term
36:55
Speaker 4: health of the American people and the planet. And so
36:58
Speaker 4: I do think you can make that tie there. There
37:01
Speaker 4: is an ad by a group called Climate Power 2020
37:04
Speaker 4: that we talked about on Campaign Experts React a few
37:06
Speaker 4: weeks ago that very cleverly ties together climate change and
37:10
Speaker 4: the coronavirus. I think One of the reasons to talk
37:15
Speaker 4: about climate is not that I can point you to
37:17
Speaker 4: a specific poll that it matters. Intuitively, I believe that
37:22
Speaker 4: young voters care a lot about this, but the fate
37:24
Speaker 4: of the fucking planet is on the line here. And
37:27
Speaker 4: I do think for voters who look at this and
37:32
Speaker 4: they're like, oh, is it Republicans and Democrats? Is there
37:36
Speaker 4: any real difference? Shades of gray? This is the issue, right?
37:41
Speaker 4: This is the issue where the differences are crystal fucking clear.
37:43
Speaker 4: You have Joe Biden and the Democrats want to save
37:47
Speaker 4: the planet. Donald Trump and the Republicans want to burn
37:51
Speaker 4: it to the ground. so that a bunch of rich
37:53
Speaker 4: old people can get richer. That's what this is. This
37:56
Speaker 4: is not our plan versus their plan. This is not
37:59
Speaker 4: liberal versus conservative. It's not government solution versus market solution.
38:02
Speaker 4: It is save the planet, kill the planet, full stop.
38:05
Speaker 5: That is it.
38:06
Speaker 4: That is what is at stake in this election. That
38:08
Speaker 4: undergirds everything else. When we talk about this being the
38:14
Speaker 4: most important election in American history, there's ways to talk
38:17
Speaker 4: about it in terms of the future of our democracy,
38:19
Speaker 4: the concerns about having an authoritarian for four more years,
38:21
Speaker 4: what it'll say about our institutions if Trump is reelected.
38:24
Speaker 4: The real reason is we don't have four more years
38:27
Speaker 4: to waste on the problem of climate change. And maybe
38:30
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's plan is not exactly what you want. You
38:32
Speaker 4: want it to be as progressive and bold as it is,
38:35
Speaker 4: and it is quite progressive and bold. You want it
38:37
Speaker 4: to be bigger or bolder or closer to the Green
38:39
Speaker 4: New Deal or whatever it is. You're not going to
38:42
Speaker 4: do any of those things if Donald Trump gets reelected.
38:45
Speaker 4: This is the only, if you care about this planet,
38:48
Speaker 4: if you want to ensure that our children and grandchildren
38:50
Speaker 4: have something resembling a normal life on this planet, we
38:54
Speaker 4: have to elect the Democrats in the White House and
38:57
Speaker 4: the Senate and everywhere else. That is the only choice.
38:59
Speaker 4: Everything else is noise.
39:01
Speaker 3: And if we do that, they have to get something done.
39:04
Speaker 3: They have to pass something significant. And you're right, we
39:07
Speaker 3: should push for the boldest, most ambitious plan possible, a
39:09
Speaker 3: Green New Deal. That'd be my preference. But something has
39:13
Speaker 3: to get done. The federal government has to pour billions
39:17
Speaker 3: and billions of dollars, probably trillions, definitely trillions, into the
39:22
Speaker 3: economy to transition this economy from a fossil fuel economy
39:26
Speaker 3: to a clean energy economy. We have to do it.
39:28
Speaker 3: We have to start doing it. And we can't. even
39:30
Speaker 3: let the perfect be the enemy of good. States have
39:31
Speaker 3: to start doing it. The federal government has to start
39:33
Speaker 3: doing it. And you're right. We don't do it in
39:36
Speaker 3: the next couple of years. We're fucked. This is what happened.
39:38
Speaker 3: We are now experiencing one degree Celsius of warming. The
39:42
Speaker 3: consensus is at the very least, we're going to hit two.
39:46
Speaker 3: So this, what we're experiencing now with these fires and
39:48
Speaker 3: these hurricanes is This is like baseline now. We're headed
39:53
Speaker 3: for something worse, almost definitely, if we don't start reversing
39:57
Speaker 3: this now. And I do think like, you know, part
39:59
Speaker 3: of the problem with getting people to care about climate
40:01
Speaker 3: change is it's always seemed like something far off in
40:03
Speaker 3: the distance. And so there's always a lot of rhetoric
40:06
Speaker 3: around like saving the planet for future generations. It's this
40:09
Speaker 3: generation now. We're here. This is it. There's no more future.
40:13
Speaker 3: And people can, there are a lot of parallels to
40:15
Speaker 3: the pandemic response to this. And, and, everything that Trump
40:18
Speaker 3: and the Republicans did to fuck up the pandemic response
40:20
Speaker 3: they've been doing on climate for a long time, only
40:23
Speaker 3: the effects will be just infinitely greater on climate, right?
40:26
Speaker 3: It's all short-termism. It's like, let's just get through now. Let's,
40:30
Speaker 3: you know, get quick profits today, not worry about this problem,
40:34
Speaker 3: not do something that seems like it's going to be
40:36
Speaker 3: hard to solve a problem, care only about ourselves and
40:39
Speaker 3: our rich friends, and we'll just get through this. That's
40:42
Speaker 3: their philosophy. It was their philosophy on pandemic. It's their
40:45
Speaker 3: philosophy on climate change. And we have to say that
40:48
Speaker 3: we want action and we want action now and we're
40:51
Speaker 3: willing to fight for it pretty hard. And to your
40:54
Speaker 3: point about the politics, that group you mentioned, Climate Power 2020,
40:57
Speaker 3: that did the ad, they recently did a poll with
41:00
Speaker 3: Leave Conservation of Voters in Pennsylvania, swing state Pennsylvania, found
41:04
Speaker 3: that 83% of voters said that climate change is a
41:07
Speaker 3: serious problem and 70% of them hold unfavorable views of
41:10
Speaker 3: politicians who deny climate change is a threat. 73% of
41:13
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania voters said support the government taking bold action to
41:18
Speaker 3: combat climate change. 74% support Biden's goal of 100% clean
41:22
Speaker 3: electricity by 2035. Even when you put a $ 2 trillion
41:27
Speaker 3: price tag on the plan, in Pennsylvania, 71% of voters
41:32
Speaker 3: support that plan. That's pretty, I mean, you know, you
41:35
Speaker 3: think about Pennsylvania and people talk about fracking and they
41:37
Speaker 3: talk about coal and they talk about, and you wouldn't
41:40
Speaker 3: assume that it's a state, especially since it's a swing state,
41:43
Speaker 3: that would be where voters would be in favor of
41:46
Speaker 3: really bold climate action. But the research doesn't show that.
41:50
Speaker 4: One more point on this to tie, let's put the
41:53
Speaker 4: whole thing, tie the whole thing up with a bow,
41:55
Speaker 4: which is this is actually just like the Woodward revelation
42:00
Speaker 4: about Trump knowing the virus was deadly. Even Donald Trump
42:04
Speaker 4: knows that climate change is real. Every one of these
42:06
Speaker 4: Republicans who denies it, calls it a hoax, they know
42:09
Speaker 4: it's fucking real. They absolutely know it's real, but they
42:11
Speaker 4: cannot say that. They will not say it because their
42:14
Speaker 4: only path to political success depends on massive political advertising
42:19
Speaker 4: campaigns paid for by the Koch brothers and other people
42:22
Speaker 4: in the fossil fuel industry. Their silence has been.
42:25
Speaker 5: Bought on this.
42:26
Speaker 4: They all know it's real. It is really, truly one
42:32
Speaker 4: of those morally reprehensible things that American politicians have done
42:35
Speaker 4: in our history. But they are lying about the fate
42:39
Speaker 4: of our planet for political power and political donations, full stop.
42:45
Speaker 4: If they would all just dial up Woodward like Trump
42:47
Speaker 4: did with stupidly under the advice of Jared Kushner, then
42:50
Speaker 4: we would all know this truth as well. This is
42:52
Speaker 4: not a question of they can't figure it out. They
42:54
Speaker 4: don't know. We just disagree on science. That is bullshit.
42:57
Speaker 4: They know. Marco Rubio lives in a part of the
43:01
Speaker 4: country that is likely to not exist in a few
43:03
Speaker 4: decades because it's going to be covered by water. Yet
43:06
Speaker 4: he runs around pretending like climate change is not real
43:08
Speaker 4: because he needs the Koch brothers to give him money.
43:11
Speaker 3: But it's not, I think it's not just the donations.
43:14
Speaker 3: It is their philosophy of government at its core, which
43:19
Speaker 3: is that they don't give a shit about anyone but themselves.
43:24
Speaker 3: They refuse to make any kind of self-sacrifice. They refuse
43:28
Speaker 3: to believe that they have any obligation to other human beings.
43:31
Speaker 3: They don't want to wear a fucking mask. You don't
43:33
Speaker 3: want to pay any more in taxes. You don't want
43:36
Speaker 3: to sort of buy a fuel-efficient car. You don't want
43:39
Speaker 3: to tell businesses that they have to not throw pollution
43:42
Speaker 3: in the air. You don't want to tell anyone to
43:44
Speaker 3: do anything that might be uncomfortable, that might involve sacrifice
43:48
Speaker 3: for the greater good. You are in it for yourself
43:51
Speaker 3: through to the end. That is the Republican governing philosophy
43:55
Speaker 3: to its core. It is now Trumpism. Trumpism is just
43:59
Speaker 3: what the conservative philosophy about government has been taken to
44:02
Speaker 3: its logical extremes. I don't give a shit about anyone
44:05
Speaker 3: but me.
44:06
Speaker 4: But that is definitely true. Let's remember that 12 years ago,
44:13
Speaker 4: the primary climate action bill in the Senate was bipartisan.
44:19
Speaker 4: And one of the things that has changed over that time,
44:21
Speaker 4: the Republican Party has become more radical for a whole
44:23
Speaker 4: host of reasons. But one very fundamental thing that's changed
44:25
Speaker 4: is the Citizens United decision which dramatically increased the influence
44:29
Speaker 4: of the Koch brothers and others. So yes, they are terrible.
44:34
Speaker 4: Their philosophy is what is good for me. It is
44:38
Speaker 4: all that matters. Everyone else has to sacrifice for my benefit.
44:41
Speaker 4: But here's a situation where they are sacrificing themselves. Florida
44:46
Speaker 4: has had a Republican governor for every year of this century.
44:49
Speaker 3: Well, as, as, as usual, there's always a big dose
44:51
Speaker 3: of stupidity in with the self.
44:53
Speaker 2: Yes.
44:54
Speaker 3: But I mean, it is, it is, this is Trump
44:56
Speaker 3: standing over John Kelly's son's grave and turning to him
45:01
Speaker 3: and saying, what was in it for them? Why did
45:03
Speaker 3: they do this? Why did they sign up? Because he
45:05
Speaker 3: cannot understand why you would make a decision that did
45:09
Speaker 3: not immediately benefit you in some way. That is, that
45:13
Speaker 3: is their philosophy. Um, So speaking of campaigns, you can
45:17
Speaker 3: tell a lot about a campaign's overall strategy based on
45:20
Speaker 3: where they're running ads and what those ads are about,
45:22
Speaker 3: especially in the final months of an election. Per the
45:25
Speaker 3: Medium Buying Twitter account, Biden is now running television ads
45:29
Speaker 3: this week in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
45:34
Speaker 3: and parts of Ohio. Trump is only up in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota,
45:38
Speaker 3: North Carolina, and Wisconsin. So obviously the campaigns are adding
45:42
Speaker 3: and subtracting states every week. But what do the Trump
45:45
Speaker 3: and Biden spending decisions so far tell us about how
45:50
Speaker 3: they see the map?
45:51
Speaker 4: You know, since 2016, I have tried very hard to
45:55
Speaker 4: resist the impulse to be immediately dismissive of what Trump
45:59
Speaker 4: and his campaign are doing.
46:00
Speaker 5: Right.
46:01
Speaker 4: Just like let's make sure. We're not missing something that,
46:05
Speaker 4: you know, will lead to a Trump victory, right? We're
46:06
Speaker 4: just sort of like arrogantly looking at it saying this
46:09
Speaker 4: can't possibly work. I spent a lot of time this
46:12
Speaker 4: morning looking at their spending decisions, trying to figure out
46:15
Speaker 4: what possible sense it could make. And ultimately, the only
46:18
Speaker 4: thing that matters is what is your path to 270
46:21
Speaker 4: electoral votes? In order to try to figure out what
46:24
Speaker 4: Trump is doing, I went and I took the electoral
46:26
Speaker 4: map and I gave Trump every state that he is
46:28
Speaker 4: currently advertising in, including Minnesota and Wisconsin. But I gave
46:33
Speaker 4: Biden the battleground states that Biden was advertising in, but
46:37
Speaker 4: Trump was not. So that gives Biden Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
46:43
Speaker 4: And when you do it that way, Biden wins the
46:46
Speaker 4: race by about 30 electoral votes. Trump is 20 votes
46:49
Speaker 4: short of 270. No matter how I look at this,
46:52
Speaker 4: I cannot figure out what Trump is trying to do
46:54
Speaker 4: because he is currently competing in states that do not
46:57
Speaker 4: get him to 270. It's like I cannot possibly figure
47:02
Speaker 4: out what possible logic.
47:04
Speaker 3: Do you think it's just the news this week that
47:06
Speaker 3: they have a cash crunch?
47:07
Speaker 4: But even that doesn't make sense because the way you
47:10
Speaker 4: do that, like the easiest Trump path to win reelection
47:15
Speaker 4: would be to hold on to everything he won except
47:19
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania and Michigan. So you keep Wisconsin and Arizona. Florida,
47:23
Speaker 4: North Carolina, Georgia. That gets you there. But he's not
47:25
Speaker 4: even doing that. I can't figure out why he's in
47:27
Speaker 4: Minnesota and not Arizona. There's no sense that makes. It
47:34
Speaker 4: is very, very strange to figure out. Biden has a
47:39
Speaker 4: lot of money and he's advertising everywhere. He's playing defense
47:42
Speaker 4: where defense needs to be played and he's playing offense
47:45
Speaker 4: everywhere he can. Trump's thing makes no sense to me.
47:49
Speaker 4: I will stipulate that I could be missing some other thing.
47:53
Speaker 4: But in general, it is best in a presidential campaign
47:56
Speaker 4: if you have a plan to get to 270. And
47:58
Speaker 4: Trump currently does not have that plan based on where
48:00
Speaker 4: he's spending his television advertising, at least.
48:03
Speaker 3: I noticed a few things from all the data on this.
48:07
Speaker 3: Trump is not in Pennsylvania right now, but it looks
48:10
Speaker 3: like both campaigns have spent the most money in Pennsylvania
48:13
Speaker 3: and Florida, which I thought was interesting. though it's unclear
48:16
Speaker 3: why Trump would leave Pennsylvania, though he's spent quite a
48:19
Speaker 3: bit of money there, more so than almost any other state.
48:22
Speaker 3: I thought it's interesting that he's not seriously contesting any
48:25
Speaker 3: Clinton state except Minnesota. Like, it doesn't seem like they...
48:29
Speaker 3: I thought that they put in ad buys for Nevada
48:31
Speaker 3: and New Hampshire, but they pulled them back or they've
48:33
Speaker 3: delayed them. So there's not real spending in Nevada and
48:35
Speaker 3: New Hampshire. So it seems like they're only seriously contesting Minnesota.
48:39
Speaker 3: It also... It looks like they're sort of giving up
48:44
Speaker 3: on Michigan because they have– first they pulled out for
48:48
Speaker 3: a week, but now they've been out of there for
48:49
Speaker 3: a while. Although I guess he's back up this week.
48:52
Speaker 3: What do you think is going on there? Do you
48:53
Speaker 3: think he's– do you think Michigan is bad enough for
48:56
Speaker 3: him that he's pulling out?
48:57
Speaker 4: Well, so there's like– I think it's worth looking at
49:00
Speaker 4: Trump's strategy in two periods, right? Earlier this year where
49:03
Speaker 4: it appeared like he would have a massive fundraising advantage
49:06
Speaker 4: over Biden. then he would spend a bunch of money
49:09
Speaker 4: in Pennsylvania, spend a bunch of money in Michigan, spend everywhere,
49:12
Speaker 4: press your advantage. But the fundamentals of the financials change.
49:18
Speaker 4: And so his strategy... would then make sense that you
49:21
Speaker 4: then move to a defense-only strategy, right? Just hold– like
49:24
Speaker 4: you won last time. Just hold most of the stuff
49:26
Speaker 4: you won. Trump does not need Pennsylvania or Michigan if
49:28
Speaker 4: he wins Wisconsin and Arizona, right? He does not need
49:32
Speaker 4: those states. And Pennsylvania is a pretty expensive state. Michigan
49:34
Speaker 4: is not a cheap state. It makes sense in a
49:37
Speaker 4: resource-constrained environment that you would not advertise there. It doesn't
49:40
Speaker 4: explain Minnesota. And it doesn't explain not advertising in Arizona
49:44
Speaker 4: right now. Just context, in 2012, incumbents usually just play defense.
49:49
Speaker 4: In 2012, we competed in no state that we did
49:52
Speaker 4: not win in 2008. We seeded some states. We won
49:55
Speaker 4: in 2008, like Indiana. Because we were in such danger
49:59
Speaker 4: of being outspent because of Citizens United and the Republican
50:02
Speaker 4: super PACs, our campaign did not advertise in Pennsylvania, Michigan,
50:05
Speaker 4: or Wisconsin, or Minnesota until the very end. We were
50:10
Speaker 4: just held on to the exact states that would get
50:12
Speaker 4: us across the finish line. And you would think that's
50:16
Speaker 4: what Trump would be doing, but he's not doing that
50:17
Speaker 4: because he's spending money in Minnesota. It is very, very strange.
50:20
Speaker 4: Like I said, there might be a reason why he's
50:22
Speaker 4: doing this, but I cannot possibly figure out what it is.
50:26
Speaker 3: Have you drawn any conclusions about each campaign strategy from
50:29
Speaker 3: the content of the ads they've been running? It seems
50:31
Speaker 3: to me like most of the Biden ads are about
50:33
Speaker 3: Trump's failure on the pandemic, his divisiveness, especially on racial issues,
50:37
Speaker 3: and his plan to cut Social Security, with some messaging
50:41
Speaker 3: about Biden's character and his plans in each of those ads.
50:44
Speaker 3: Trump's ads are mostly about Biden and Kamala as the
50:46
Speaker 3: puppets of the radical left. And there is one now
50:49
Speaker 3: where Biden's they're telling people that Biden would shut down
50:52
Speaker 3: the economy and ruin Trump's great economic comeback. But it
50:55
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like there's a lot of other ads out there.
50:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Biden strategy makes a lot of sense to
51:00
Speaker 4: me when you look at their ads. Biden is sort
51:03
Speaker 4: of two-tracking it. He is filling in the gaps on
51:07
Speaker 4: people's knowledge about Biden the person and Biden's plans. And
51:11
Speaker 4: then he is keeping the pressure on Trump on the
51:15
Speaker 4: coronavirus slash economy because they are tied together and it's
51:17
Speaker 4: very important for Biden to keep them tied together. And
51:20
Speaker 4: then the third piece of it is that he is
51:23
Speaker 4: advertising very specifically to seniors. He has a senior track
51:26
Speaker 4: of advertising. If you look at not just what state
51:31
Speaker 4: he's advertising in, but the shows he's advertising on, my
51:33
Speaker 4: understanding is that it's very targeted toward seniors because that
51:35
Speaker 4: is a place where Biden is overperforming and he does
51:37
Speaker 4: not want to give Trump any capacity to undermine that
51:40
Speaker 4: because that performance with seniors is what is giving him
51:44
Speaker 4: an advantage in states like Florida and elsewhere. There's other
51:47
Speaker 4: stuff that's happening on the digital side that I think
51:50
Speaker 4: is more targeted at other groups, but from a broadcast
51:52
Speaker 4: television perspective where I think we have the most visibility,
51:55
Speaker 4: that's Biden's strategy. Trump's strategy is quite conflicting right now.
52:01
Speaker 4: This new ad that went up today is his first
52:03
Speaker 4: ad that's mentioned coronavirus in months, I believe, that's been
52:06
Speaker 4: on broadcast television. and maybe indicating a sense that he's
52:09
Speaker 4: going to try to do something to fix, at least
52:14
Speaker 4: on the margins, his problem with the handling of the coronavirus.
52:18
Speaker 4: It's interesting that the yes that ad pivots to Biden's
52:22
Speaker 4: shutdown comments and has a lot about the state of
52:26
Speaker 4: the economy under Trump before this. But the big thing
52:28
Speaker 4: is that he's going to deliver a vaccine. He's trying
52:31
Speaker 4: to create some sort of permission structure for some number
52:35
Speaker 4: of voters who left him over the coronavirus to come back. I,
52:39
Speaker 4: you know, how that, he's not telling one story in
52:41
Speaker 4: his ad. Usually good, you know, good advertising strategy tells
52:44
Speaker 4: one broader story that's about why you're the right person,
52:46
Speaker 4: your opponent's the wrong person. His is, is conflicting about
52:50
Speaker 4: why Trump's right. It's conflicting about why Biden is wrong.
52:52
Speaker 4: He's got confusing narratives about Biden. There's still, it seems
52:55
Speaker 4: to be trying to get their, you know, sort of
52:59
Speaker 4: get their feet set on what their anti-Biden narrative looks like. Um,
53:04
Speaker 4: So it remains confusing.
53:05
Speaker 3: I've been trying to do that for like six months now.
53:07
Speaker 5: Yeah.
53:07
Speaker 4: I mean, it's very, very hard because they don't know how,
53:10
Speaker 4: if your entire reason for being in politics is to
53:15
Speaker 4: protect more conservative white Americans from a changing America that
53:20
Speaker 4: is going to lead to more power for people of color,
53:22
Speaker 4: Joe Biden is a very tricky person to vilify in
53:25
Speaker 4: that situation.
53:27
Speaker 3: How much do you think it matters that Biden is
53:28
Speaker 3: outspending Trump on ads when We know that Clinton outspent
53:32
Speaker 3: Trump on ads in 2016 and ultimately lost.
53:36
Speaker 4: You know, when I talked to David Axelrod on the
53:40
Speaker 4: YouTube series, Ax made the point that there's an inverse
53:43
Speaker 4: relationship between the value of television advertising and the amount
53:45
Speaker 4: of coverage a campaign gets. So a congressional race that
53:49
Speaker 4: gets almost no coverage, television advertising is very consequential. Statewide,
53:53
Speaker 4: you know, less consequential than the congressional, but more consequential
53:56
Speaker 4: than a presidential race. That is particularly true in this
53:58
Speaker 4: presidential race where the coverage is all consuming. There is
54:01
Speaker 4: like nothing else we talk about anywhere on the news,
54:04
Speaker 4: anywhere else other than Trump. And so I don't, it,
54:08
Speaker 4: I think it matters. I would be concerned if Biden
54:13
Speaker 4: was being outspent because Biden has work to do to
54:16
Speaker 4: define himself to voters and it is harder for him
54:18
Speaker 4: to get coverage about himself separate from Trump. So the
54:21
Speaker 4: only way to get sort of an unfiltered, uh, bit
54:26
Speaker 4: of information to the public is by paying for it.
54:30
Speaker 4: But I don't think we should think that Biden will
54:32
Speaker 4: definitely win because he has more money, because ultimately, I
54:35
Speaker 4: think the advertising is only additive to the larger sort
54:38
Speaker 4: of media, social media conversation.
54:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think for Biden, it's about filling in the gaps,
54:44
Speaker 3: like you were saying. I mean, yesterday, when Biden was
54:48
Speaker 3: in Michigan, he was giving a speech about a new
54:50
Speaker 3: economic policy proposal that would stop giving tax breaks to
54:53
Speaker 3: companies that ship jobs overseas. which is something we've been,
54:57
Speaker 3: you and I have been on campaigns talking about since,
55:00
Speaker 3: I don't know, 2004 earlier. It's like, we know it
55:03
Speaker 3: is like the most common policy for a Democratic candidate.
55:06
Speaker 3: It is one of the highest polling policies ever. People
55:11
Speaker 3: do not like outsourcing. They do not like jobs getting
55:14
Speaker 3: shipped overseas for good reason. But anyway, that announcement was
55:19
Speaker 3: completely overshadowed by Trump's comments to Woodward, right? And Biden
55:23
Speaker 3: had to talk about Trump's comments to Woodward. as he
55:25
Speaker 3: should have, but that meant that the coverage probably got buried.
55:29
Speaker 3: I'm sure in some local press in Michigan, he got
55:31
Speaker 3: some coverage about it, but generally it gets buried. And
55:33
Speaker 3: so I think that, and this of course happened to
55:35
Speaker 3: Hillary in 2016, Biden has a lot of plans and policies.
55:38
Speaker 3: He's got a lot of work to do talking about
55:40
Speaker 3: who he is, what drives him. And I think only ads,
55:44
Speaker 3: only a paid media campaign can do that for him
55:46
Speaker 3: because he's probably not going to be able to break
55:48
Speaker 3: through news coverage with all of that. He may be
55:52
Speaker 3: able to do it in the debates. He should do
55:53
Speaker 3: it in the debates. But he'll probably need paid advertising
55:57
Speaker 3: to fill in the gap for people about who he
56:00
Speaker 3: is and what policies he has.
56:01
Speaker 5: That's right.
56:02
Speaker 4: And the other thing that Biden is doing with his ads,
56:03
Speaker 4: and you mentioned it in reference to the digital ad
56:05
Speaker 4: on the Woodward stuff, there was a digital ad we
56:08
Speaker 4: talked about last week on the Atlantic story, which is
56:11
Speaker 4: Biden is now, his campaign is now very specifically and
56:15
Speaker 4: strategically taking things, taking information that they believe would be
56:19
Speaker 4: helpful for people to support Biden or hurtful to Trump.
56:23
Speaker 4: And they're paying to put it in front of voters
56:25
Speaker 4: because they recognize that in this media environment, particularly in
56:29
Speaker 4: The persuadable voter group that's going to decide this election
56:31
Speaker 4: who engage less with political news than certainly we do
56:35
Speaker 4: may not see it unless you pay to put it
56:37
Speaker 4: in their Facebook feed or on their phone or on
56:39
Speaker 4: their television. And they are now doing that very quickly.
56:42
Speaker 4: And that is something that Trump does not need to
56:44
Speaker 4: do because Trump can get his attacks on Biden covered.
56:46
Speaker 4: He can get his self-promotion covered. That is just harder
56:49
Speaker 4: for Biden to do with the challenger running against someone
56:51
Speaker 4: like Trump.
56:52
Speaker 3: That's right. All right. When we come back, I will
56:54
Speaker 3: talk to the co-founder of Eckie's Research, Carlos Odio. Joining
57:08
Speaker 3: us today, the co-founder of Equis Research, a firm that
57:10
Speaker 3: focuses on understanding the Latino vote, Carlos Odio. Carlos, welcome
57:14
Speaker 3: to the show.
57:15
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. Glad to be on.
57:17
Speaker 3: Can you start by telling us a little bit about
57:20
Speaker 3: what Equis does and what the challenges are in general
57:25
Speaker 3: with accurately polling Latino Americans?
57:28
Speaker 5: Yeah. So it's a great question. You know, Equis, we
57:31
Speaker 5: started it, Stephanie Valencia, my co-founder and I, you know,
57:34
Speaker 5: we'd worked, we'd met on the Obama campaign in 08.
57:37
Speaker 5: We've been talking about these issues for a very long time.
57:40
Speaker 5: There's just these gaps in understanding the Latino vote. Kind
57:44
Speaker 5: of our concept, how do you apply all of the
57:46
Speaker 5: different sophistication, tools, innovation that have been applied to understanding, say,
57:50
Speaker 5: the suburban white woman and apply it to Latino vote?
57:54
Speaker 5: And that's where we come out at both from a
57:55
Speaker 5: research perspective, digital testing, digital innovation on different fronts. And
58:01
Speaker 5: for polling, you know, it's, you know, the challenge is
58:03
Speaker 5: always it is a harder to reach population. You can't
58:06
Speaker 5: just reach it through one-on-one mode. So if you don't
58:09
Speaker 5: do landlines, you're missing out on older Cuban voters in Florida.
58:14
Speaker 5: If you don't do cell phones, you're missing out on
58:17
Speaker 5: younger voters. If you don't do bilingual phone calls, you're
58:21
Speaker 5: missing out on a very different Spanish speaker. If you
58:23
Speaker 5: don't get large enough sample sizes, then you're not going
58:25
Speaker 5: to be able to wait on all the different variables
58:27
Speaker 5: that affect the vote from things that normally don't get
58:30
Speaker 5: asked in mainstream polling, like what is your country of origin, right?
58:34
Speaker 5: What generation are you in the country? Are your parents immigrants?
58:38
Speaker 5: These are not questions you normally ask in a general
58:41
Speaker 5: poll that do affect the accuracy of Latino numbers.
58:46
Speaker 3: So I want to dig into Florida specifically, but I
58:49
Speaker 3: know you guys have also done polling across the battlegrounds.
58:52
Speaker 3: What are some of the big issues and concerns driving
58:54
Speaker 3: the decision about whether to vote and who to vote
58:57
Speaker 3: for in the Latino community?
59:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, what you see in Latino community, right, obviously there
59:02
Speaker 5: is a large amount of anti-Trump sentiment. And it has
59:07
Speaker 5: been a long time coming that the Republican Party leaned
59:10
Speaker 5: into nativism and lost large chunks of Latino vote that
59:14
Speaker 5: were probably available to him at some point, right? You
59:16
Speaker 5: look at the Bush numbers that he got in 2004.
59:17
Speaker 5: What we are seeing today is you have a lot
59:22
Speaker 5: of folks who are anti-Trump, but who have, for one
59:25
Speaker 5: reason or another, felt on the sidelines of the political process,
59:27
Speaker 5: felt left out of it. aren't sure that their vote
59:31
Speaker 5: is going to make a difference, and so want to
59:33
Speaker 5: understand and feel confident in their vote. I think there's
59:37
Speaker 5: this idea that sets in certain voters that they need
59:41
Speaker 5: a PhD in political science in order to be able
59:43
Speaker 5: to cast a vote, or they need to be MSNBC
59:45
Speaker 5: or Pod Save America nerds in order to be able
59:48
Speaker 5: to weigh in confidently. And so a big part of
59:51
Speaker 5: it's just helping folks feel like they have the confidence
59:55
Speaker 5: to make a choice here.
59:57
Speaker 3: What are some of the messaging that works on voters
1:00:00
Speaker 3: like that who aren't sure whether they're going to actually
1:00:02
Speaker 3: cast a ballot? Have you noticed anything that sort of
1:00:05
Speaker 3: gives people the confidence that their vote's going to count
1:00:08
Speaker 3: or lets them know that their vote will really make
1:00:10
Speaker 3: a difference?
1:00:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:00:12
Speaker 5: And, you know, what's fascinating here is it's not actually
1:00:15
Speaker 5: rocket science, right? So much of it's just communicating any
1:00:20
Speaker 5: message whatsoever, right? Like voters just want to feel... Voters
1:00:24
Speaker 5: need to understand that their votes going to be decisive
1:00:26
Speaker 5: and important and part of that is the signaling of
1:00:29
Speaker 5: campaigns and organizations who via You know inundating them with
1:00:33
Speaker 5: mail or digital ads or whatever else are signaling to them.
1:00:36
Speaker 5: You are important, right? It's not just saying it it's
1:00:38
Speaker 5: it's communicated through all of these contacts and and touches
1:00:41
Speaker 5: the message itself You know message matters, but is secondary
1:00:46
Speaker 5: to just frickin doing it Doing it at scale And
1:00:50
Speaker 5: the messengers as well. Right. But, you know, we do
1:00:52
Speaker 5: see it's just it's in this in this particular presidential race.
1:00:55
Speaker 5: It's people just want to know about Joe Biden. Right.
1:00:58
Speaker 5: They want to know, like his bio, his achievements and
1:01:01
Speaker 5: especially what he's going to do on covid, on health care,
1:01:04
Speaker 5: on college affordability. Go on down the list. People just
1:01:06
Speaker 5: want to be educated to some extent.
1:01:09
Speaker 3: Have you noticed any significant shifts in opinions about Trump
1:01:13
Speaker 3: or the Democratic Party since 2016?
1:01:16
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:01:17
Speaker 5: Trump himself, 2016 was such an outlier, right? I mean,
1:01:21
Speaker 5: the moment the guy comes down the escalator, I think
1:01:23
Speaker 5: every Latino and Black voter in the country was like, okay,
1:01:26
Speaker 5: we know what this guy's about, right? And so a
1:01:28
Speaker 5: lot of voters just fled him immediately. Whereas a lot
1:01:30
Speaker 5: of white voters were still like, well, let's play wait
1:01:32
Speaker 5: and see, right? And a lot of non-college white voters
1:01:34
Speaker 5: were excited about him. You didn't see the same thing
1:01:36
Speaker 5: among Latino and Black voters. He didn't really try very
1:01:39
Speaker 5: hard in courting Latino vote. And so I think people
1:01:42
Speaker 5: are a little freaked out by the fact that post-2016,
1:01:43
Speaker 5: you do see some growth in the Trump vote. Not
1:01:48
Speaker 5: massive growth, right? It's been fairly stable, but some growth.
1:01:52
Speaker 5: And a lot of that's just normalization, right? A lot
1:01:54
Speaker 5: of that's just that he hit historically low numbers in 2016.
1:01:58
Speaker 5: Now he is being normalized by things like Fox News
1:02:02
Speaker 5: and very proactive sort of right-wing media ecosystems online, right?
1:02:06
Speaker 5: If you're getting your news from YouTube, you have a
1:02:08
Speaker 5: very different idea of who Donald Trump is than if
1:02:11
Speaker 5: you're reading a newspaper every day.
1:02:14
Speaker 3: Do you see sort of that shift, maybe just a
1:02:18
Speaker 3: slight preference for Trump or normalization, as you called it,
1:02:21
Speaker 3: among specific subsets of the Latino community, different demographics, or
1:02:27
Speaker 3: is it just sort of spread out evenly?
1:02:29
Speaker 5: It totally differs by state. As with many things with
1:02:32
Speaker 5: the Latino vote, it's just every state is its own
1:02:35
Speaker 5: unique beast. I know we say that all the time.
1:02:37
Speaker 5: Every time you go into a state in a campaign,
1:02:38
Speaker 5: they say, oh, our state's different. With the Latino vote,
1:02:40
Speaker 5: there really are meaningful differences. Florida is the obvious example,
1:02:45
Speaker 5: but there's huge differences between Arizona and Nevada that affect
1:02:49
Speaker 5: the vote there. I would say, though, where there is
1:02:53
Speaker 5: a constant is the appeal to younger men. Latinas are
1:02:58
Speaker 5: driving the anti-Trump sentiment in this country. Latinas, I think,
1:03:02
Speaker 5: are going to be a decisive factor in this election.
1:03:03
Speaker 5: Where Latinas go, if Latinas turn out, that's going to
1:03:05
Speaker 5: decide this thing. Trump understood he couldn't move Latinas or
1:03:09
Speaker 5: other women of color, so he focused on the men.
1:03:11
Speaker 5: And I think he There are inroads that he's been
1:03:14
Speaker 5: able to make with the younger men.
1:03:17
Speaker 3: So turning to Florida, there was a minor freakout. I
1:03:20
Speaker 3: would classify it as a minor freakout this week over
1:03:23
Speaker 3: an NBC Marist poll of the state that showed Trump
1:03:25
Speaker 3: and Biden tied, with Trump actually ahead among Latinos. Now,
1:03:29
Speaker 3: it was an incredibly small subsample. Other polls like yours
1:03:33
Speaker 3: have shown Biden doing better among Latinos in Florida. But
1:03:36
Speaker 3: most of the data shows that he's still underperforming Hillary
1:03:39
Speaker 3: Clinton in the state. among Latinos, or at least coming
1:03:42
Speaker 3: close to matching her margin. What do you think is
1:03:44
Speaker 3: going on there?
1:03:46
Speaker 5: That's right. Can I talk about the Marist poll?
1:03:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, please.
1:03:49
Speaker 5: Let's do it. Listen, Marist is a great pollster. And
1:03:52
Speaker 5: I think the top line is probably right, right? It
1:03:53
Speaker 5: should shock nobody that this is going to be a
1:03:55
Speaker 5: close election in Florida. It's going to be a close election.
1:03:58
Speaker 5: I'm sorry to break this news to people who were
1:04:00
Speaker 5: hoping that election night would be over at 7 o'clock
1:04:03
Speaker 5: because we already knew the result. it's 138 interviews in
1:04:06
Speaker 5: that poll. There are so many different ways that that
1:04:09
Speaker 5: could go wrong in a place like Florida. So many
1:04:11
Speaker 5: different ways. And so it's to say, it's not the
1:04:13
Speaker 5: poll is bad. Don't throw the poll in the garbage.
1:04:16
Speaker 5: But if you want to understand Latino vote, please don't
1:04:18
Speaker 5: draw conclusions from any one poll. And don't even start
1:04:20
Speaker 5: with Quinnipiac when it comes to Florida, because they just
1:04:23
Speaker 5: always get it wrong. But the reality is, yeah, I mean,
1:04:28
Speaker 5: Biden is up at this point by 16 points in
1:04:32
Speaker 5: our polling. I think that's pretty consistent with Our previous
1:04:35
Speaker 5: polling has been remarkably consistent given everything that's happened in
1:04:38
Speaker 5: the last year. Other polling is probably in the same
1:04:42
Speaker 5: teens area. And so the reality is we think Biden
1:04:46
Speaker 5: is trending ahead of where Bill Nelson was in 2018.
1:04:48
Speaker 5: Bill Nelson loses by a little over 10,000 votes in Florida.
1:04:55
Speaker 5: You could attribute that to many different things, but Hispanic
1:04:57
Speaker 5: underperformance is a very obvious one. Clinton wins by 27
1:05:01
Speaker 5: points in 2016. That is a high.
1:05:04
Speaker 5: Watermark. We don't think we're going to exceed that point.
1:05:07
Speaker 5: I think it's the upper bounds. We've got to reach
1:05:09
Speaker 5: the upper bounds. But the reality is Biden's going to
1:05:11
Speaker 5: fall somewhere in the middle, which frankly means it's just
1:05:13
Speaker 5: more of a normal map in Florida. It's closer to
1:05:15
Speaker 5: what the Obama elections looked like. It's closer to the
1:05:18
Speaker 5: 2018 midterm. 2016 just is somewhat of an outlier year
1:05:22
Speaker 5: that we shouldn't really use as a comparison point, even
1:05:24
Speaker 5: though it's kind of interesting.
1:05:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say, what are your thoughts
1:05:27
Speaker 3: on why Clinton hit that high watermark among Latinos in
1:05:30
Speaker 3: the state and then As you noted in 2018, both
1:05:33
Speaker 3: Nelson and Gillum fell short of that. And now Biden
1:05:36
Speaker 3: may fall short of that, too. Is it a larger
1:05:37
Speaker 3: Democratic Party problem? Is it something else?
1:05:41
Speaker 5: I mentioned that Trump really didn't play very hard for
1:05:45
Speaker 5: the vote in 2016.
1:05:46
Speaker 2: Right.
1:05:47
Speaker 5: And didn't have a lot of time to kind of
1:05:49
Speaker 5: our interest in reintroducing himself in any real way. And
1:05:53
Speaker 5: so he hit low numbers. I think a part of
1:05:56
Speaker 5: that was skepticism among some Cubans in Miami-Dade County. There
1:06:01
Speaker 5: were Cuban Republicans who were skeptical of him. There were
1:06:03
Speaker 5: the stories about him doing business with Cuba. They didn't
1:06:06
Speaker 5: know who this guy was. All of that went away post-2016.
1:06:09
Speaker 5: There's a variety of factors there, but between sort of
1:06:14
Speaker 5: his bluster on this kind of socialism talk or bluster
1:06:18
Speaker 5: on Venezuela and Cuba, the economy doing better, the tax cuts.
1:06:24
Speaker 5: A lot of folks who were skeptical at that point
1:06:25
Speaker 5: came over. There's also more we could say about the
1:06:27
Speaker 5: Cuban vote that's very dynamic and a very proactive ecosystem,
1:06:30
Speaker 5: media ecosystem in Miami that was kind of taking advantage
1:06:33
Speaker 5: and exploiting all of this. But you had a certain
1:06:35
Speaker 5: number of people who moved post-2016 to Trump. And they
1:06:38
Speaker 5: were there for the 2018 midterm.
1:06:41
Speaker 3: Do you still see, I know that we saw this
1:06:43
Speaker 3: on the Obama campaigns in Florida, that sort of younger
1:06:47
Speaker 3: Cubans are still gettable or at least moving towards joe
1:06:52
Speaker 3: biden do you think that's like an area for growth
1:06:54
Speaker 3: for the biden campaign.
1:06:56
Speaker 5: The room for growth in the cuban vote is definitely
1:06:57
Speaker 5: under 50 uh especially on the younger side and the u.s
1:07:01
Speaker 5: born as a u.s born is actually the closest that
1:07:03
Speaker 5: there is to a democratic base there are complications that's
1:07:07
Speaker 5: why you know that's why it's so hard to capture
1:07:09
Speaker 5: all of this in 138 interviews yeah uh you know
1:07:12
Speaker 5: even the the younger set there are cubans um who've
1:07:15
Speaker 5: come uh to the United States since 1994, essentially. There
1:07:19
Speaker 5: were big migration waves. Those folks used to be very progressive,
1:07:23
Speaker 5: very pro-Obama. They have now shifted very solidly into the
1:07:27
Speaker 5: Trump column. And so age is less predictive than it
1:07:32
Speaker 5: once was, but U.S. born ends up being very. But
1:07:34
Speaker 5: even there, U.S. born, under 50, Biden has work to
1:07:36
Speaker 5: do there. He can definitely increase his margins when it comes.
1:07:41
Speaker 3: To- And I saw that in your polling, you mentioned
1:07:43
Speaker 3: that among Puerto Ricans and other Latinos from broader Latin
1:07:52
Speaker 3: American backgrounds that Biden has a lot of room there
1:07:57
Speaker 3: to sort of make up ground as well.
1:07:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. Clinton was probably in the 70s with
1:08:03
Speaker 5: the non-Cuban vote. Biden currently is low 60s. There's just
1:08:11
Speaker 5: room to push it. We talk all the time about
1:08:13
Speaker 5: the Cubans. I'm Cuban, I get it. It's fascinating. It's
1:08:17
Speaker 5: so different. It's exotic, whatever it is. And increasingly we're
1:08:21
Speaker 5: talking about the Puerto Ricans, which is great. At least
1:08:25
Speaker 5: 43% of the Hispanic vote in Florida is neither Cuban
1:08:27
Speaker 5: nor Puerto Rican. It's this constellation of other national origin groups.
1:08:32
Speaker 5: It's Nicaraguan, Colombian, Dominican, Mexican-American, Venezuelan. Venezuelan is probably like
1:08:36
Speaker 5: fifth on the list, even though they also get a
1:08:38
Speaker 5: lot of attention. There's just a lot of these different groups.
1:08:42
Speaker 5: And there is where there's a lot more room for
1:08:45
Speaker 5: Biden to grow just in introducing himself, right? Outside of
1:08:47
Speaker 5: Miami and places like West Palm. And so that's, I think, actually,
1:08:51
Speaker 5: as much as the Cuban and Puerto Rican votes, they're
1:08:55
Speaker 5: hotly contested, right? This other group is actually what is
1:08:58
Speaker 5: going to push this and decide. whether the vote ends
1:09:00
Speaker 5: up looking more like Clinton or looking more like Nelson.
1:09:03
Speaker 3: So you mentioned this, but, you know, Trump and the
1:09:05
Speaker 3: Republicans have spent a lot of time calling Democrats socialists,
1:09:08
Speaker 3: specifically comparing them to socialist leaders in Latin America. How
1:09:12
Speaker 3: much of an effect do you think this has had
1:09:14
Speaker 3: on Florida voters?
1:09:17
Speaker 5: Listen, it works, right? I mean, there's real trauma from
1:09:20
Speaker 5: folks like my family who fled Cuba, people who fled Venezuela,
1:09:23
Speaker 5: people who fled Nicaragua, people who left Colombia and had
1:09:29
Speaker 5: negative experiences around FARC. There's a lot of trauma there
1:09:33
Speaker 5: to be exploited. And Trump and his allies like Marco
1:09:36
Speaker 5: Rubio and Rick Scott have certainly tried to exploit that.
1:09:40
Speaker 5: What I would say is it does work. I would say, though,
1:09:44
Speaker 5: that the folks that it works on, it has already
1:09:47
Speaker 5: worked on past tense. It is not going to grow
1:09:50
Speaker 5: Trump's vote beyond where it is right now, that kind
1:09:52
Speaker 5: of fear mongering, because especially when the nominee is Joe Biden,
1:09:56
Speaker 5: it's a hard sell to say that Joe Biden is
1:09:59
Speaker 5: a radical leftist, even though they're trying.
1:10:03
Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting that in the primary, the
1:10:05
Speaker 3: candidate who did the best with Latinos nationally was actually
1:10:09
Speaker 3: a Democratic socialist. What lessons can Biden and the Democrats
1:10:12
Speaker 3: learn from Bernie Sanders campaign and the success that they
1:10:15
Speaker 3: had with Latino voters outside of Florida, mainly.
1:10:19
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mentioned earlier, like, this is not rocket science.
1:10:23
Speaker 5: You know, Bernie Sanders campaign, what they did was an
1:10:26
Speaker 5: all of the above blitz. I give a lot of
1:10:29
Speaker 5: credit to Chuck Rocha who ran that effort. He's now
1:10:31
Speaker 5: running a PAC, a Nuestro PAC that's doing a fantastic
1:10:34
Speaker 5: job on the IE side, boosting Biden and focusing on Biden,
1:10:38
Speaker 5: Bernie voters are trying to get them over. And what
1:10:40
Speaker 5: they just did is, you know, In every conversation on
1:10:43
Speaker 5: any kind of medium, what they were going to do,
1:10:45
Speaker 5: if they were going to send mail, if they were
1:10:46
Speaker 5: going to do radio, if they were going to do TV,
1:10:46
Speaker 5: they said, what are we doing for Latinos? And they
1:10:48
Speaker 5: included and they targeted Latinos in absolutely everything that they did.
1:10:53
Speaker 5: And so I wouldn't say it was any one specific thing. Obviously,
1:10:55
Speaker 5: they had a candidate who had a set of policies
1:10:59
Speaker 5: that you could say were resonance, right? There was a
1:11:01
Speaker 5: lot there, especially around the college piece, the health care piece,
1:11:04
Speaker 5: two of the biggest issues in this community. And he
1:11:06
Speaker 5: was pushing it so aggressively. But Bernie Sanders didn't do
1:11:08
Speaker 5: well with Latino vote in 2016. The difference between 2016
1:11:12
Speaker 5: and 2020 was the kind of campaign he ran in, again,
1:11:15
Speaker 5: signaling the importance of the vote to his campaign and
1:11:17
Speaker 5: actually asking for that vote.
1:11:19
Speaker 3: So if you're in the Biden campaign, the strategy going
1:11:22
Speaker 3: forward should be more engagement, more communication, and sort of
1:11:26
Speaker 3: letting people know, Latinos in Florida and elsewhere, who he
1:11:29
Speaker 3: is and what he stands for, just sort of basic
1:11:31
Speaker 3: blocking and tackling stuff.
1:11:33
Speaker 5: That's right. I mean, it's been hard to show up
1:11:34
Speaker 5: in person because of this pandemic we're in the middle of.
1:11:38
Speaker 5: You know, Kamala Harris was in is in Miami today.
1:11:41
Speaker 5: She stopped at like an arepa stand in Doral, you know,
1:11:44
Speaker 5: where Venezuelans like that smart stuff. Joe Biden will be
1:11:47
Speaker 5: in in Miami again next week. You know, that kind
1:11:50
Speaker 5: of outreach. Now, let's go to Arizona. Let's take the
1:11:53
Speaker 5: show to Arizona. Let's take it to everywhere where this
1:11:55
Speaker 5: vote is going to be influential. When Kamala was in Milwaukee,
1:11:57
Speaker 5: she stopped and met with Voces de la Frontera, which
1:11:59
Speaker 5: is a major immigrant rights group in Milwaukee. That's smart stuff, right?
1:12:03
Speaker 5: So much of this is just showing up and showing
1:12:05
Speaker 5: that you actually care. And you're actually gonna have a
1:12:07
Speaker 5: champion if you elect this person.
1:12:09
Speaker 3: Carlos Odeo, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks
1:12:12
Speaker 3: for all the good work you're doing at Eckies Research
1:12:14
Speaker 3: and take care.
1:12:15
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
1:12:20
Speaker 3: Thanks to Carlos Odeo for joining us today. Everyone have
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Speaker 3: a good weekend. Go adopt a state, make some calls
1:12:25
Speaker 3: and we'll talk to you next week.
1:12:27
Speaker 4: Bye everyone.
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Speaker 3: Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. The executive
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Speaker 3: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Wallach.
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Speaker 3: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
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Speaker 3: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
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Speaker 3: Caroline Rustin, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
1:12:48
Speaker 3: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
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Speaker 3: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
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Speaker 3: every week.