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Is Trump Winning the Sun Belt? · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:21
Speaker 2: I'm Jon Levitt.
0:22
Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
0:23
Speaker 1: On today's show, Donald Trump is too scared to debate
0:25
Speaker 1: again after the worst two weeks of his campaign. His
0:28
Speaker 1: pal Mark Robinson, a.k.a. Black Nazi, is staying in the
0:31
Speaker 1: North Carolina governor's race, even though most of his campaign
0:34
Speaker 1: staff has quit. Kamala Harris talks about her gun with
0:37
Speaker 1: Oprah and has a warning for would-be intruders. And Tommy
0:41
Speaker 1: talks with Chenjerai Kumunika about his excellent new series that
0:44
Speaker 1: we co-produced, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD.
0:49
Speaker 3: It's a really good show.
0:51
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. I'm excited to dive in.
0:53
Speaker 3: It's great. He goes way back. deep dive into the
0:56
Speaker 3: history of the NYPD, how it evolved and developed, and
0:59
Speaker 3: how that led to some of the systemic problems in
1:01
Speaker 3: policing we see today.
1:03
Speaker 1: It's really good. That's great. Everyone should check it out
1:06
Speaker 1: and stay tuned for the interview. But first, the polling
1:09
Speaker 1: gods giveth and the polling gods taketh away. On Friday's pod,
1:14
Speaker 1: Dan and I talked about the New York Times-Siena poll
1:16
Speaker 1: that showed Harris up 50-46 in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania,
1:21
Speaker 1: but oddly tied at 47 nationally. Then over the weekend,
1:24
Speaker 1: we got an NBC News national poll showing Harris up
1:27
Speaker 1: 49-44 on Trump. That is the largest lead for Democrats
1:31
Speaker 1: in over a year in the NBC poll. And then
1:34
Speaker 1: we got a CBS YouGov poll that showed her up
1:37
Speaker 1: 52-48 nationally and 51-49 in the battleground states. That was
1:42
Speaker 1: a slight improvement from their last poll. But then, when
1:45
Speaker 1: I woke up at 3 a.m. and checked my phone
1:47
Speaker 1: this morning, I saw that Nate Cohn punched us in
1:49
Speaker 1: the face with three new Sunbelt polls that show Trump leading...
1:54
Speaker 1: 50-45 in Arizona, 49-45 in Georgia, and 49-47 in North Carolina.
1:59
Speaker 1: This is all with just six weeks to go until
2:02
Speaker 1: election day.
2:03
Speaker 3: I think we need like a little pollster shrine or
2:06
Speaker 3: altar or something in here with like a candle and
2:09
Speaker 3: some incense.
2:10
Speaker 2: Some nights no yeah let's get some more um magic
2:13
Speaker 2: and mystique and mystery into.
2:15
Speaker 3: This we have a funny willis votive candle we could
2:18
Speaker 3: repurpose if we yeah.
2:20
Speaker 2: Right or is mercury in retrograde if.
2:22
Speaker 1: Someone could send us like a good nate yes candle
2:25
Speaker 1: and a bad nate candle and then.
2:27
Speaker 2: We swap them yeah like how there's a candle you
2:30
Speaker 2: that they light at the vet to let you know
2:31
Speaker 2: that someone around you is dealing with a pet loss.
2:33
Speaker 3: I'm sorry what what are you going to.
2:35
Speaker 2: Well i'm just Well, they, so that you don't get to,
2:37
Speaker 2: you know, like if they're letting you know that, hey,
2:39
Speaker 2: someone is, someone in this vet.
2:40
Speaker 1: You know. That just made me so sad. I didn't
2:42
Speaker 1: know that.
2:42
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that's why the candle's lit because everyone's
2:44
Speaker 2: in a bad mood because the Nate has given bad information.
2:47
Speaker 2: That's all I'm getting at.
2:48
Speaker 1: Dog's birthday yesterday. All right, let's get into the numbers.
2:50
Speaker 1: What's your take? What's your take, guys? And feel free
2:54
Speaker 1: to add anything about last week's Time Sienna polls because
2:58
Speaker 1: you two didn't get to weigh in on those.
3:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, the one, you and Dan talked a little bit
3:02
Speaker 2: about how the electoral college advantage may be slipping. And
3:08
Speaker 2: looking at these latest polls today, I thought it was
3:11
Speaker 2: sort of part of the same trend, which is, if
3:17
Speaker 2: you look at the exits from 2020, Joe Biden did
3:20
Speaker 2: much better among Hispanics. If you look at how Kamala
3:23
Speaker 2: Harris has sort of improved her standing over Joe Biden,
3:25
Speaker 2: she's kind of rebuilt the 2020 coalition in a lot
3:28
Speaker 2: of ways with black voters, with young voters. but not
3:30
Speaker 2: with Hispanic voters, not because she's lost people Biden had,
3:33
Speaker 2: it was that Biden had the same struggle too. And
3:37
Speaker 2: that's sort of what you'd expect with a bunch of
3:39
Speaker 2: polls that make us feel good about Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,
3:43
Speaker 2: and make us really nervous about Nevada and Arizona, and
3:46
Speaker 2: to a lesser extent, Georgia and North Carolina. That would
3:49
Speaker 2: also be about eroding electoral college advantage because you lose
3:52
Speaker 2: a few percentage of Hispanic voters in California and New
3:56
Speaker 2: York and Florida, and all of a sudden, that you
4:00
Speaker 2: don't need the three to four points you otherwise would
4:02
Speaker 2: have needed.
4:03
Speaker 3: Did you guys see the video like a month back
4:05
Speaker 3: of the people who are on a ride at Six
4:07
Speaker 3: Flags in Mexico and they just got caught like 250
4:10
Speaker 3: feet in the air because of a storm?
4:12
Speaker 4: No.
4:12
Speaker 2: No, I didn't see that.
4:13
Speaker 1: That's how I feel.
4:16
Speaker 3: That's how I feel right now. I mean, Nate Silver,
4:18
Speaker 3: I know we're talking about good Nate. Other Nate said,
4:20
Speaker 3: in 16 years of running election forecasts, I've never seen
4:23
Speaker 3: such a close election. So I think that kind of
4:25
Speaker 3: tells you everything you need to know about the state
4:27
Speaker 3: of the race. I guess on balance, I'd rather be
4:29
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris than Trump because of the recent strength in
4:31
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania and the blue wall states.
4:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is that hopeful? I think so. And we got
4:36
Speaker 1: some great news out of Nebraska today. We talked about
4:39
Speaker 1: this on Friday's pod as well. There was a push
4:41
Speaker 1: by Republicans to change the way they allocate their electoral votes.
4:46
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham went to the state. Trump called in a
4:47
Speaker 1: few times. But the key state senator, who was a
4:51
Speaker 1: Republican holdout, Mike McDonnell, has said today, no, he's not
4:56
Speaker 1: changing it. They don't have his vote, which means the
4:58
Speaker 1: governor basically gave up, said we're not calling the special session.
5:01
Speaker 1: Deb Fisher, who's the Republican senator from Nebraska, said it's over.
5:04
Speaker 1: So Nebraska's not going to a winner-take-all system for electoral votes,
5:09
Speaker 1: which means that if Kamala Harris wins the three blue
5:11
Speaker 1: wall states plus the second district of Nebraska, which includes Omaha,
5:17
Speaker 1: she will win 270 to 269. Yeah, the fact that.
5:21
Speaker 2: This Nebraska electoral vote was a little bit up in
5:24
Speaker 2: the air And the fact that you could look at
5:26
Speaker 2: the map and realize that that tie was one of
5:29
Speaker 2: the most likely outcomes was just sort of something emotional
5:32
Speaker 2: I don't think we could fully face. Yeah.
5:33
Speaker 3: Why do you think Trump keeps sending Lindsey Graham to
5:35
Speaker 3: do these negotiations?
5:37
Speaker 1: I think for fun.
5:38
Speaker 3: That's your henchman?
5:39
Speaker 1: Go, Lindsey.
5:40
Speaker 2: What are you going to send, Rudy? I don't know.
5:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's running out of respectable henchmen.
5:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
5:46
Speaker 2: Do you see Rudy yelling that he's going to stop?
5:49
Speaker 1: Yes. at a rally at a rally incredible just to
5:53
Speaker 1: go back to the the times polls for a second
5:55
Speaker 1: i think that the best thing to do here i
5:58
Speaker 1: know this is like cliche at this point is to
6:00
Speaker 1: throw them in the averages yeah um.
6:02
Speaker 3: Do what we say not what we do right don't
6:04
Speaker 3: freak out.
6:04
Speaker 1: Just throw them in the obviously the the new york
6:06
Speaker 1: times sienna polls are one of the highest rated set
6:09
Speaker 1: of polls they're a great polling outfit but even the
6:12
Speaker 1: best pollsters like they showed the race in august uh
6:17
Speaker 1: um Kamala Harris up five in Arizona, and now she's
6:19
Speaker 1: down five in Arizona a month later. The race in Arizona,
6:22
Speaker 1: and Nate Cohn will say this too, and the New
6:24
Speaker 1: York Times folks, it did not swing 10 points in
6:26
Speaker 1: one month. It just didn't happen.
6:27
Speaker 2: One thing I just would add to that too is
6:28
Speaker 2: in both of those polls, Gallego still has basically the
6:33
Speaker 2: same margin. It's 49-41 and then 50-41. So you're saying
6:34
Speaker 2: there's been a 10-point swing That is not affecting the
6:40
Speaker 2: Senate race either. It's just a little bit weird.
6:41
Speaker 1: It's just a different sample of voters, which is what
6:43
Speaker 1: you get. And look, I mean, the margin of error
6:45
Speaker 1: in these polls, according to the Times, is four to
6:47
Speaker 1: five points in terms of the difference between the two candidates.
6:50
Speaker 1: So a plus five Trump result in Arizona could be
6:56
Speaker 1: anything from a plus two Harris lead to a plus
7:00
Speaker 1: eight Trump lead. Like that's just what polling error is.
7:03
Speaker 1: So I don't I try to avoid doing like going
7:07
Speaker 1: crosstab diving. Stuff like this, just because the, you know,
7:11
Speaker 1: like the sample of Latino voters in that Arizona poll
7:14
Speaker 1: is like 100 voters, you know? And when you get
7:16
Speaker 1: to the subsamples, the margin of errors get even bigger.
7:19
Speaker 1: So it's just hard.
7:20
Speaker 4: I think it's, yes.
7:21
Speaker 2: I just think you can like, you can kind of
7:22
Speaker 2: blur your eyes and see a trend across these polls.
7:24
Speaker 2: And you see like the problem solidifying Hispanic voters is
7:28
Speaker 2: kind of what you'd expect to see. It's what you
7:29
Speaker 2: see in the NBC polls, what you see in the
7:30
Speaker 2: other Siena polls, just sort of, it kind of, it
7:33
Speaker 2: is what you see across the samples.
7:34
Speaker 1: There's a larger trend over the last couple cycles of
7:38
Speaker 1: racial depolarization, which is oddly enough in the Trump era,
7:43
Speaker 1: Democrats doing better with white voters, especially college educated white voters,
7:48
Speaker 1: but white voters overall. And because even Joe Biden did
7:51
Speaker 1: a little better in 2020 with non-college white voters. And
7:54
Speaker 1: then Republicans doing slightly better with black and especially Latino voters.
7:59
Speaker 1: It's just a very, I mean, we'll see if it
8:01
Speaker 1: holds up, but it's been in the polling. It's been
8:03
Speaker 1: in some of the special elections, the midterms. It's just,
8:06
Speaker 1: there've been hints of it. Yeah.
8:07
Speaker 3: And she's also just struggling on the questions on the economy.
8:10
Speaker 3: I mean, 31% of voters in these Sunbelt polls said
8:13
Speaker 3: the economy and inflation are their top issue. And 55%
8:16
Speaker 3: of people said that Trump was better on those two issues.
8:20
Speaker 3: And people just aren't sold on the idea that Kamala
8:22
Speaker 3: Harris's policies will help them yet. So there's just some
8:24
Speaker 3: work to do.
8:25
Speaker 1: That story, again, if you squint at all the polling
8:28
Speaker 1: and look at all the data, the people who want
8:31
Speaker 1: to know more about Kamala Harris's plans on the economy,
8:33
Speaker 1: who still think that Trump was better on the economy,
8:35
Speaker 1: they tend to be your low propensity voters who don't
8:39
Speaker 1: always show up in every election, independents, Latinos, non-college voters.
8:44
Speaker 1: They are worried about the economy, worried about cost of living,
8:48
Speaker 1: pessimistic about the direction of the country. It's like all
8:51
Speaker 1: the same.
8:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's two other points I want to make just
8:54
Speaker 2: looking at the Arizona poll. Specifically, this is a state
8:56
Speaker 2: where two-thirds say they're pro-choice or pro-abortion rights. 58% say
9:01
Speaker 2: they're going to support the ballot measure, which means there's
9:03
Speaker 2: a bunch of people telling pollsters that they're in favor
9:06
Speaker 2: of abortion rights. and they're voting for Ruben Gallego, but
9:09
Speaker 2: they're either voting for Trump or still not sure who
9:11
Speaker 2: they're going to vote for.
9:12
Speaker 1: I'm a little, I don't know what you guys think.
9:13
Speaker 1: I'm a little worried about that because I think if you,
9:16
Speaker 1: I know that the conventional wisdom is having the abortion
9:19
Speaker 1: ballot amendment is going to help drive turnout, but you
9:22
Speaker 1: can see voters thinking to themselves like, yeah, I like Trump,
9:25
Speaker 1: but I'm pro-choice and I could have Trump as president,
9:27
Speaker 1: but protect the right to choose in Arizona.
9:29
Speaker 2: That was sort of what you look at this and
9:31
Speaker 2: you're like, oh yeah, of course I'm pro-choice, but Trump
9:34
Speaker 2: is better on the economy. I'm voting to protect my
9:37
Speaker 2: access to abortion in Arizona. I'm voting for Ruben Gallego.
9:40
Speaker 2: And then I can throw a vote for Trump.
9:42
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like the situation in Georgia with
9:45
Speaker 1: Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. And it was like, well,
9:47
Speaker 1: we're not going to vote for Trump, but we can
9:49
Speaker 1: vote for, you know.
9:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.
9:50
Speaker 2: I worried about that too. The other question I had
9:52
Speaker 2: just looking at this, which you can't find in the
9:55
Speaker 2: data is, to Tommy's point, there's a lot of people
9:57
Speaker 2: who say the economy is their biggest issue and And
10:01
Speaker 2: there's also just a big chunk of independents who say
10:04
Speaker 2: that basically like a lot of independents say Trump's policies
10:08
Speaker 2: will hurt them. A few more independents say Kamala's policy
10:10
Speaker 2: will hurt them. Here's what I don't know looking at this.
10:13
Speaker 2: Is that a group of people that are polarized, some
10:15
Speaker 2: of whom think Trump is better and some of whom
10:16
Speaker 2: think Kamala is better? Or is that a group of
10:18
Speaker 2: people who just think neither will do right by them.
10:21
Speaker 2: And I just think we just don't know the answer
10:23
Speaker 2: based on this. And I'm interested in that only because like,
10:25
Speaker 2: what is our job here? Is our job to persuade
10:27
Speaker 2: a bunch of people who right now are saying Kamala
10:29
Speaker 2: isn't who they want on the economy, but care about
10:32
Speaker 2: a bunch of other things, including character, abortion, democracy, whatever,
10:35
Speaker 2: and persuade them that she is better on the economy
10:37
Speaker 2: or persuade them that actually these other issues are more salient?
10:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a very important question. I talked
10:43
Speaker 3: to someone very smart who's done a lot of races
10:45
Speaker 3: in Arizona about this poll. And this person said they
10:48
Speaker 3: think that voters don't think that either candidate understands them
10:51
Speaker 3: or really cares. But they think the Trump economy was
10:54
Speaker 3: better and maybe reelecting him will put some money back
10:57
Speaker 3: in their pocket. And also Arizona is a little more
11:00
Speaker 3: Republican than other states. I thought that was an interesting
11:02
Speaker 3: theory of the case. I also talked to some folks
11:04
Speaker 3: who see a lot of other polling data and they
11:06
Speaker 3: just think now that Arizona poll is bullshit. There's no
11:09
Speaker 3: way we moved 10 points in this period of time.
11:11
Speaker 3: And it's one of the two recent times polls was
11:14
Speaker 3: an outlier.
11:14
Speaker 1: So I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, I've heard. a
11:16
Speaker 1: lot of the internal stuff has it pretty close to tied.
11:20
Speaker 1: Super close.
11:21
Speaker 2: Which is what you would say if you just averaged
11:22
Speaker 2: these two polls together.
11:23
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. Plus five and minus five. I will say
11:25
Speaker 1: to your point, Tommy and Lovett, about the economy stuff, those,
11:29
Speaker 1: the people who think that again, if there's any lessons
11:31
Speaker 1: to take away from this, if you're the Kamala Harris campaign,
11:34
Speaker 1: is I think you've, they've got to figure out ways
11:38
Speaker 1: to reach these voters who are, it's a much smaller
11:40
Speaker 1: percentage now, but who are still not engaged following. They
11:45
Speaker 1: probably didn't watch the debate. They have no, like you said,
11:47
Speaker 1: they have no idea. They don't think Kamala Harris is
11:49
Speaker 1: going to improve their lives because they probably have no
11:50
Speaker 1: idea what she stands for. Right.
11:53
Speaker 3: Or they just have never, you know, they've seen a
11:54
Speaker 3: bunch of elections in their lives and they feel like
11:56
Speaker 3: it's never made a difference. And they think, eh, they're
11:58
Speaker 3: all the same.
11:59
Speaker 2: One, just one hopeful thing I took away from this,
12:01
Speaker 2: from these polls, like this is a poll that, that
12:03
Speaker 2: in which Kamala is down by five, it was a
12:05
Speaker 2: Republican leaning sample, 63 to 30. They are pro-immigration, believe
12:10
Speaker 2: being open to people coming to the country is more
12:13
Speaker 2: in line with their position than America's too open. similar
12:15
Speaker 2: results on immigrants strengthening rather than sapping the country. And like,
12:19
Speaker 2: this is a group of people who say that Donald
12:21
Speaker 2: Trump is better on the border than Kamala Harris, but
12:24
Speaker 2: are still very pro-immigration. And I think that just, it
12:28
Speaker 2: just points to the fact that we have to separate
12:30
Speaker 2: border security from immigration policy and how we talk to
12:33
Speaker 2: these voters and that there's a place there where she
12:35
Speaker 2: can make up ground.
12:35
Speaker 1: Well, one thing you're seeing in some of this polling
12:37
Speaker 1: too is that for the undecided crew voters, and again,
12:42
Speaker 1: everyone gets crazy when you say undecided because How could
12:44
Speaker 1: anyone be undecided, undecided between Harris and Trump or undecided
12:48
Speaker 1: about even voting at all? For those voters, abortion and immigration,
12:53
Speaker 1: which are big issues for Democrats who've decided and Republicans
12:58
Speaker 1: and independents that lean either way. For those voters, they
13:02
Speaker 1: are lower on the list than the economy.
13:04
Speaker 4: Right.
13:04
Speaker 1: So they the Trump campaign's insistence on making everything about immigration.
13:10
Speaker 1: I really don't know that it works beyond their base
13:13
Speaker 1: that much. And I do think that the final frontier
13:18
Speaker 1: of this race is going to be fought out on
13:19
Speaker 1: the economy, right? And whoever can really break through to
13:22
Speaker 1: that will win. One more fun thing before we go
13:25
Speaker 1: to the next. The NBC poll did favorability ratings with
13:29
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of public figures and issues. Top three
13:33
Speaker 1: most favorable items in the NBC News poll. Number one, capitalism,
13:38
Speaker 1: plus 26. Number two, Tim Walz, plus seven.
13:43
Speaker 2: That's American in a nutshell.
13:44
Speaker 1: Good for Tim. And number three. Well, one more. Number three,
13:46
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift plus six. Those are the top three most
13:49
Speaker 1: popular things. Now, three least popular things in the poll.
13:54
Speaker 1: Third from the bottom, J.D. Vance, negative 13. They tested
13:58
Speaker 1: about a dozen. Second least popular thing, socialism, negative 37.
14:03
Speaker 4: So.
14:05
Speaker 2: Twitter, you got some brand work to do.
14:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
14:07
Speaker 3: What a funny thing to pull.
14:08
Speaker 1: And then the least popular thing that they pulled, maybe
14:10
Speaker 1: the least popular thing they've ever pulled. Project 2025 is
14:14
Speaker 1: negative 53. Only 4% view it as positive. And it's
14:18
Speaker 1: not like no one's heard of it. 57% view it
14:22
Speaker 1: as negative.
14:22
Speaker 2: I found that to be so strange. I actually saw
14:26
Speaker 2: that and I really couldn't believe it because this is
14:29
Speaker 2: America and it is rare that you can't get 10%
14:32
Speaker 2: of people to believe fucking anything is good.
14:35
Speaker 5: Yeah.
14:36
Speaker 1: Ghosts.
14:36
Speaker 3: Well, Trump's disavowed it too.
14:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. So they might, it might be a
14:39
Speaker 1: letter of Trump voters just saying, no, no, no.
14:41
Speaker 2: They're supposed to not like it. Well, I took, I
14:42
Speaker 2: couldn't tell if that meant that a bunch of Republicans
14:45
Speaker 2: know the right thing to say is that they don't
14:46
Speaker 2: like it. Or is this, or is it another example
14:49
Speaker 2: of like one of the aspects of right-wing propaganda we
14:51
Speaker 2: don't talk about is it's not just what we hear.
14:53
Speaker 2: It's what right-wingers don't hear. Like, have they really not
14:56
Speaker 2: is Project 2025 not breaking through on their side enough?
14:58
Speaker 2: Because that is too low. 4% is too low. This
15:01
Speaker 2: is the United States of America. You can't find 10%
15:03
Speaker 2: of the country to say that Project 2025 is good.
15:05
Speaker 1: I don't buy it.
15:06
Speaker 4: Okay, okay.
15:08
Speaker 3: Well, that's how I felt.
15:09
Speaker 1: Don't be hanging around with J.D. Vance socialism or Project 2025.
15:11
Speaker 1: That's the lesson. That's so funny.
15:15
Speaker 2: Socialism is like, J.D. Vance, what's your secret?
15:20
Speaker 1: One could argue that Trump's latest good polling isn't because
15:22
Speaker 1: of the campaign he's been running for the last few weeks,
15:24
Speaker 1: but very much despite it, The Times and The Washington
15:27
Speaker 1: Post both ran stories over the weekend about just how
15:29
Speaker 1: deranged and undisciplined Trump and his operation have become lately.
15:33
Speaker 1: They're still pushing the pet-eating conspiracies and standing behind a
15:38
Speaker 1: self-proclaimed black Nazi. Trump has attacked Taylor Swift. He's flown
15:43
Speaker 1: around the country with 9-11 truther Laura Loomer, and he's
15:46
Speaker 1: threatened government shutdowns. He added a few more crazy comments
15:49
Speaker 1: to the list over the weekend at his events. Let's listen.
15:53
Speaker 5: If I don't win this election... And the Jewish people
15:57
Speaker 5: would really have a lot to do with that if
15:58
Speaker 5: that happens, because at 40%, that means 60% of the
16:01
Speaker 5: people are voting for the enemy. So let's talk about
16:04
Speaker 5: our great women, all right? Because women have gone through
16:08
Speaker 5: a lot.
16:09
Speaker 4: They've gone through a lot.
16:10
Speaker 5: Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will
16:15
Speaker 5: no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now
16:19
Speaker 5: where it always had to be, with the states.
16:23
Speaker 1: Real hypnotist there. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.
16:27
Speaker 1: You will be very sleepy. So one Trump confidant said
16:32
Speaker 1: this to the Post about the campaign strategy, quote, It's
16:36
Speaker 1: not even let Trump be Trump. It's let Trump be
16:38
Speaker 1: unsupervised at all times. We can't control him, so let's
16:41
Speaker 1: hope he wins anyways. If you look at the polls,
16:45
Speaker 1: strategy just might work. Why do you guys think none
16:47
Speaker 1: of this stuff is moving the needle?
16:51
Speaker 2: It's really a very dispiriting question.
16:53
Speaker 1: I would say this.
16:54
Speaker 2: First of all, I think, do we know that it's
16:56
Speaker 2: not moving the needle? I don't think we know that, right?
16:58
Speaker 1: It might have moved the needle already.
16:59
Speaker 2: Well, this is one, right. It may have moved the
17:01
Speaker 2: needle already, right? We don't know what the world looks
17:03
Speaker 2: like where Donald Trump is showing like a modicum of discipline.
17:06
Speaker 2: The other piece of this too.
17:07
Speaker 1: Almost much like he did during the time when Biden
17:09
Speaker 1: was in the race.
17:09
Speaker 3: Right.
17:10
Speaker 2: The other piece of this too is, I do also
17:13
Speaker 2: wonder sometimes like about why you might see a national
17:16
Speaker 2: poll that moves away from some of these swing state polls.
17:18
Speaker 2: And there is just a little bit of a kind
17:20
Speaker 2: of like maybe responsibility bias in some of these polls
17:23
Speaker 2: where people that are paying attention understand that their vote
17:26
Speaker 2: will determine what happens, maybe take these kinds of things
17:28
Speaker 2: more seriously. And people outside of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, or
17:31
Speaker 2: people in New York, other non-swing states just don't take
17:34
Speaker 2: it as seriously.
17:34
Speaker 1: We saw that in the midterms.
17:37
Speaker 4: Yeah.
17:37
Speaker 3: My guess is just partisans are aware of these stories
17:39
Speaker 3: and the swing voters are undecided or just not. If
17:42
Speaker 3: you got 100% of the country to know, you're like, hey, okay,
17:44
Speaker 3: just before you vote, Donald Trump brought Someone who said
17:48
Speaker 3: 9-11 was an inside job to the 9-11 commemorative event.
17:52
Speaker 1: Thoughts? They might be like, what?
17:54
Speaker 2: Well, maybe he's trying to change some minds.
17:57
Speaker 1: Well, also in these in these Times polls, 90 percent
18:01
Speaker 1: of voters said they don't need to know anything more
18:04
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump in order to make up their mind.
18:06
Speaker 1: It is, you know, I think reminding people what we
18:10
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about Trump Trump amnesia during the
18:13
Speaker 1: whole when Biden was in the race. Trump is solving
18:16
Speaker 1: Trump amnesia a bit by just giving everyone new material.
18:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:21
Speaker 1: Reminding them why they hated him. It's not, you know,
18:23
Speaker 1: ads about things that happened in the Trump presidency. It's like, oh,
18:26
Speaker 1: he's just doing it all again.
18:28
Speaker 4: Yeah.
18:28
Speaker 2: Like, you know, we've all had, like, people in our
18:30
Speaker 2: lives that we couldn't fucking stand. And then you don't
18:33
Speaker 2: see them for four or five years.
18:34
Speaker 4: They weren't that bad.
18:35
Speaker 2: And then you see them spend a couple hours with them,
18:37
Speaker 2: get stuck in a.
18:38
Speaker 1: That's enough till next year. Yeah. Lovett, what'd you make
18:42
Speaker 1: of Trump preemptively blaming the Jews?
18:44
Speaker 5: Ah.
18:45
Speaker 2: All right, well, you know, going back to the classics.
18:48
Speaker 1: Here we are again, yeah.
18:49
Speaker 2: So I have two points of this.
18:50
Speaker 1: One, I feel- It's more explicit than he said before.
18:53
Speaker 2: Yes.
18:54
Speaker 1: Well, no, no.
18:55
Speaker 2: Like, yes, absolutely more explicit than he said. When I
18:57
Speaker 2: say the classics, I mean the classics, not Trump classics.
19:00
Speaker 2: This is America classic. This is original formula. But I
19:05
Speaker 2: think there's two things happening. One is this feels to
19:08
Speaker 2: me like what rich right-wing Florida Jews sound like at Mar-a-Lago.
19:14
Speaker 2: There's a Kamala Harris sign in my neighborhood, very liberal neighborhood,
19:17
Speaker 2: most liberal state. And somebody keeps putting poop bags in
19:20
Speaker 2: front of it. Because I think that if you are
19:22
Speaker 2: a conservative in California, it makes you a little bit crazy.
19:26
Speaker 2: And there's something about being a right wing Floridian Jewish person.
19:31
Speaker 2: And you know that like I've had it happen to me,
19:34
Speaker 2: which is like politics comes up in some way and
19:36
Speaker 2: somebody sort of shaking with tension. and then just goes
19:39
Speaker 2: so fucking hard like, you think they're good for Israel?
19:42
Speaker 2: You know, you get like one of those like really
19:44
Speaker 2: intense right in your face. And I just know that
19:46
Speaker 2: Trump is hearing that all the time. And I think
19:48
Speaker 2: that's what's coming out here. The other piece of this is,
19:49
Speaker 2: there is a tension on the right between knowing that
19:52
Speaker 2: they can peel off some Jewish voters with this sort of,
19:54
Speaker 2: you know, pro Netanyahu shit and the classic kind of
19:58
Speaker 2: anti-Semitism that has driven the right for fucking ever. I
20:00
Speaker 2: do worry about what happens if Donald Trump loses. Once again,
20:04
Speaker 2: he feels as though He did everything he was supposed
20:07
Speaker 2: to do for the ungrateful Jews. And that becomes a
20:09
Speaker 2: big part of what he says after the election. And
20:11
Speaker 2: it just riles up all of this sort of anti-Semitism
20:14
Speaker 2: that's just right there under the surface or increasingly above
20:17
Speaker 2: the surface on the right.
20:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:18
Speaker 3: I mean, Jews are, I think, 2% of the U.S.
20:20
Speaker 1: Population.
20:21
Speaker 3: So presumably if Trump loses the election, it will be
20:23
Speaker 3: because of the rest of the people in the country.
20:27
Speaker 3: The goyim, per usual. And because of him. I mean,
20:29
Speaker 3: it is a wildly anti-Semitic comment. It was an event
20:33
Speaker 3: about combating anti-Semitism.
20:35
Speaker 1: By the way.
20:35
Speaker 3: I mean, accusing Jews of dual loyalty or being insufficiently
20:39
Speaker 3: loyal to Israel or to America is like the classic
20:42
Speaker 3: anti-Semitic trope.
20:44
Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think about him? He's trying to
20:47
Speaker 1: handle his struggles with women voters by telling them everything's
20:51
Speaker 1: going to be great and that they'll never have to
20:53
Speaker 1: worry about abortion.
20:54
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that he's hit on the most compelling
20:56
Speaker 3: abortion message yet.
20:57
Speaker 1: Fine-tune that one.
20:59
Speaker 2: I mean.
21:00
Speaker 3: Just from the data, the number of women who say
21:02
Speaker 3: abortion is the most important issue in deciding their vote
21:05
Speaker 3: has increased from May to August, according to the recent
21:08
Speaker 3: Times poll. 60% of the country wants abortion to be
21:11
Speaker 3: legal in most or all cases. That's from Pew. And
21:15
Speaker 3: then I think the latest NBC national poll found Trump
21:17
Speaker 3: trailing Kamala Harris by 21 points among women. So they
21:21
Speaker 3: have not nailed this one yet. That said, voters are
21:24
Speaker 3: not universally well-informed on this issue. Remember, There was a
21:27
Speaker 3: poll back in May that asked who is more responsible
21:30
Speaker 3: for overturning Roe versus Wade, Trump or Joe Biden. And
21:33
Speaker 3: nearly one in five battleground state voters said Joe Biden.
21:37
Speaker 3: And then 13% said, I don't know. So it just
21:40
Speaker 3: reminds you of the kind of information deficit that is
21:42
Speaker 3: out there about issues.
21:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. And those numbers have improved a lot thanks to
21:46
Speaker 1: the- Kamala Harris. Thanks to Kamala Harris, Trump himself, and
21:50
Speaker 1: then the millions and millions of dollars of ads that
21:52
Speaker 1: they've run. But it's, yeah, it's still an issue. Yeah.
21:55
Speaker 2: Somehow I think, I don't know. In politics, as in life,
21:59
Speaker 2: a kind of bloviating, chauvinist man telling women to relax,
22:04
Speaker 2: I think, is not the most effective.
22:19
Speaker 1: In terms of Trump's actual campaign, Axios noted that he's
22:21
Speaker 1: doing way fewer rallies this time than he did on
22:24
Speaker 1: his last two campaigns, possibly because he's old. Because they're
22:27
Speaker 1: expensive and because people already know him.
22:30
Speaker 2: Because they're expensive? How fucking dare?
22:33
Speaker 4: They're expensive?
22:34
Speaker 2: You're saying they're expensive? That's like the, look, who knows
22:38
Speaker 2: where the, like, oh, so this really is a fucking,
22:41
Speaker 2: where's the money going? Right. It's too expensive to do rallies?
22:43
Speaker 4: Legal fees.
22:44
Speaker 1: I have legal fees.
22:45
Speaker 2: But like, that is a, like, oh, so it's just
22:48
Speaker 2: not worth the money?
22:49
Speaker 1: Well, I think the strategy would be, let's spend the
22:52
Speaker 1: money on television. And not on rallies.
22:55
Speaker 2: So were they wrong to do rallies when he became president?
22:59
Speaker 2: The dozens and dozens of rallies that allowed him to win?
23:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
23:02
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense.
23:03
Speaker 1: Look, I think he's also lazy.
23:06
Speaker 5: Yeah.
23:06
Speaker 1: You know? The campaign did say for the story that
23:09
Speaker 1: they're going to be ramping up the campaign events. There
23:12
Speaker 1: was also an AP story about how Republican leaders in
23:15
Speaker 1: the swing states aren't seeing the campaign doing a lot
23:18
Speaker 1: of organizing, door knocking. How much do you think this matters, Tommy?
23:22
Speaker 3: I mean, it was interesting. A good ground game can
23:24
Speaker 3: move the needle like a percentage point, two percentage points,
23:27
Speaker 3: both in terms of persuasion and then get out the vote.
23:30
Speaker 3: I think what's interesting about those stories in this cycle
23:32
Speaker 3: in particular is the Trump campaign, thanks to increasingly pathetic
23:37
Speaker 3: campaign finance laws, has basically outsourced their ground game to
23:40
Speaker 3: super PACs and outside conservative groups like TPUSA, that little
23:44
Speaker 3: like right wing college fascist organization. And those groups don't
23:48
Speaker 3: have any track record of doing this well. And then
23:50
Speaker 3: one such group is Elon Musk's super PAC. And they
23:55
Speaker 3: fired the vendor who was overseeing all the door knocking.
23:59
Speaker 3: So that's not the best way to run a railroad.
24:02
Speaker 3: And again, like these are not like in Obama 08
24:04
Speaker 3: or 12, we had a bunch of excited, committed volunteers
24:08
Speaker 3: knocking on doors. These are just people getting paid by
24:10
Speaker 3: the hour to like go through a list.
24:13
Speaker 1: Their theory of the case seems to be that the rallies,
24:17
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts of campaigning, like all that really
24:20
Speaker 1: matters is reaching these low propensity voters who don't usually
24:26
Speaker 1: turn out. And the way they're doing that is, you know,
24:30
Speaker 1: Trump and the manosphere and going on all the podcasts
24:33
Speaker 1: and doing stuff like that. And then they're, they're kind
24:34
Speaker 1: of hoping that just the vibes and the gravitational pull
24:37
Speaker 1: of the election, which is, you know, I'm annoyed with
24:40
Speaker 1: the direction of the country and the economy. And I
24:42
Speaker 1: liked it was Trump, like that will do it and
24:44
Speaker 1: that they don't need to spend money on all this
24:45
Speaker 1: other stuff because not a lot of the people that,
24:48
Speaker 1: are undecided or paying attention. That seems to be the theory.
24:51
Speaker 2: It's a little bit also confusing, though, because this is
24:55
Speaker 2: a better operation than the operation Trump had in 2016
24:57
Speaker 2: or 2020. He didn't have operations in 2018 and 2022.
25:00
Speaker 2: And what we have seen is that Republicans were able
25:02
Speaker 2: to turn out their voters. And so I think on
25:03
Speaker 2: some level, they're also relying on all these other campaigns
25:06
Speaker 2: and all these other organizations to do the work for them.
25:08
Speaker 2: I think we should assume that they'll succeed. I think
25:10
Speaker 2: we should not assume that we get that one or
25:12
Speaker 2: two points from being better at organizing than they do,
25:14
Speaker 2: because even if Trump is incompetent or not, not, not
25:17
Speaker 2: paying enough attention to this, there are other organizations that will.
25:19
Speaker 1: I think never bet on Trump voters not turning up. Yeah, no,
25:23
Speaker 1: that's just one lesson from the last two cycles.
25:27
Speaker 3: I think in their theory of the case that he
25:29
Speaker 3: just kind of dominates the national narrative around the election
25:33
Speaker 3: and therefore can kind of turn people out that way.
25:36
Speaker 3: It's been proven right in a lot of instances. I
25:38
Speaker 3: do think, I mean, David Plouffe describes a presidential campaign
25:41
Speaker 3: as essentially You have seven battleground states. You have seven
25:44
Speaker 3: gubernatorial campaign style GOTD efforts. I would rather operate those myself,
25:50
Speaker 3: have a handle on them, know they're being done professionally
25:53
Speaker 3: than not. So like it's certainly not a good thing
25:56
Speaker 3: to have Elon Musk firing everybody who's supposed to be
25:59
Speaker 3: knocking doors like a couple months out. But I don't
26:01
Speaker 3: think we should bet on it.
26:03
Speaker 1: You guys notice the campaign intrigue? infighting in the Post
26:07
Speaker 1: story with the arrival of Corey Lewandowski. The Post says,
26:11
Speaker 1: Lewandowski soon began telling others he was in charge of
26:14
Speaker 1: the campaign as the chairman, which was not true. He
26:16
Speaker 1: raised questions with Trump and others about how Susie Wiles
26:19
Speaker 1: had spent money, particularly on advertisements, forcing her to spend
26:22
Speaker 1: time defending herself internally. Others on the campaign defended Wiles
26:26
Speaker 1: as frugal, and he also began calling staffers in swing
26:28
Speaker 1: states and asking if the campaign was being well-run, outreach
26:31
Speaker 1: that filtered back to Wiles and rattled the staff. That's
26:35
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign.
26:35
Speaker 3: I do like to hear them suffering.
26:37
Speaker 1: I know. That's the Trump campaign we know and love.
26:39
Speaker 2: But by the way, like, that's probably what he should
26:41
Speaker 2: be fucking doing. He's figuring out what the hell's going
26:43
Speaker 2: wrong for these people.
26:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing that Trump and his campaign clearly don't
26:47
Speaker 1: want to do again is debate. Over the weekend, the
26:49
Speaker 1: Harris campaign accepted an invitation from CNN to debate on
26:52
Speaker 1: October 23rd. Here's Trump responding to the invitation over the
26:56
Speaker 1: weekend and then Kamala responding to him on Monday morning.
26:59
Speaker 5: Kamala and her group have seen what's happening to their campaign,
27:03
Speaker 5: and it's not going well for them. And they would like,
27:07
Speaker 5: just announced a little while ago as I was coming
27:09
Speaker 5: off the plane, they would like to do another debate.
27:12
Speaker 5: The problem with another debate is that it's just too late.
27:15
Speaker 5: Voting has already started. She's had her chance to do
27:19
Speaker 5: it with Fox. You know, Fox invited us on, and
27:21
Speaker 5: I waited and waited.
27:23
Speaker 2: Join me on the debate stage.
27:24
Speaker 1: Let's have another debate. There's some more to talk about.
27:27
Speaker 1: And the voters of America deserve To hear the conversations
27:32
Speaker 1: that I think we should be having on substance, on issues,
27:34
Speaker 1: on policies. What's your plan? What's my plan?
27:38
Speaker 3: And we should have another one before Election Day.
27:41
Speaker 1: We should note Trump saying it wouldn't be fair to
27:42
Speaker 1: debate Harris again because early votes are already being cast,
27:46
Speaker 1: even though in 2020, Trump and Biden held their last
27:49
Speaker 1: debate on October 22nd. That was a month after early
27:53
Speaker 1: voting started. That seemed to be on a level. 13
27:55
Speaker 1: days before Election Day.
27:56
Speaker 2: Seems like bullshit. So....
28:00
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? You think you think Harris
28:01
Speaker 1: is onto something calling out Trump on the on trying
28:05
Speaker 1: to dodge the debate?
28:06
Speaker 3: Yes, I do.
28:08
Speaker 2: There was I couldn't tell for a while. Is he
28:10
Speaker 2: just negotiating for better terms? There was one more when
28:14
Speaker 2: Trump was rambling on about the debate. There was one
28:16
Speaker 2: thing he said that made me think he really actually
28:18
Speaker 2: doesn't want to have another debate, which is he was
28:20
Speaker 2: talking about how he did one debate with CNN. They
28:24
Speaker 2: were very fair. And I killed Joe Biden. And then
28:26
Speaker 2: I did the ABC debate and it was three on one.
28:28
Speaker 2: And people still say I did a good job. You know,
28:31
Speaker 2: CNN was very fair, which means they wouldn't be fair
28:33
Speaker 2: if they did it again. He like throws that in again.
28:35
Speaker 2: CNN was very fair to me, but they couldn't be
28:37
Speaker 2: fair again because they got in so much trouble, which
28:39
Speaker 2: was actually him ahead of an argument about then why
28:42
Speaker 2: not just say yes to the CNN debate, which made
28:43
Speaker 2: me think he really actually doesn't want to do it.
28:46
Speaker 4: He just looks weak. Yeah.
28:48
Speaker 3: He looks weak.
28:48
Speaker 1: Which is why I think if I was Kamala Harris,
28:51
Speaker 1: I'd do a whole push on this.
28:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, hit the gas.
28:53
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't make it to avoid making it just
28:55
Speaker 1: be like a process-y thing that no one cares about
28:58
Speaker 1: because of the debate. That's what will get the media
28:59
Speaker 1: to cover it. But to make it an actual message,
29:02
Speaker 1: it's Trump is weak. He's scared. The reason he won't
29:05
Speaker 1: debate is because he doesn't want to talk about his
29:07
Speaker 1: plan on the economy because he would slap a $ 5
29:10
Speaker 1: trillion tax hike on everyday goods that we buy. Right.
29:15
Speaker 1: Which is they just he just said again today, Trump,
29:17
Speaker 1: that he doesn't need Congress for his tariffs. He's going
29:19
Speaker 1: to slap tariffs on everything imported. And, you know, it
29:22
Speaker 1: turns out that that was one of the better testing
29:24
Speaker 1: lines from Kamala Harris in terms of voters saying strongest
29:27
Speaker 1: reasons to vote against Trump. It was her talking about
29:29
Speaker 1: the Trump the Trump tax on everyday goods. I would
29:32
Speaker 1: be like, why doesn't Trump want to talk? Why doesn't
29:35
Speaker 1: he want to defend his plan to raise taxes on you?
29:37
Speaker 1: And just i put ads behind it yeah the whole thing.
29:40
Speaker 2: I also like i think that's all true i i
29:43
Speaker 2: also think like we just saw you know rogan is
29:45
Speaker 2: out there being like wow she did really well in
29:47
Speaker 2: the debate he does it with this is conspiratorial like
29:49
Speaker 2: her minders or certainly did uh prepare her well but
29:52
Speaker 2: like trump scaled Is like a very, I think like
29:55
Speaker 2: pretty embarrassing.
29:56
Speaker 3: Cuts into his core.
29:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.
29:57
Speaker 2: And it would really break through.
29:58
Speaker 3: Well, she called him a P word at an event publicly.
30:01
Speaker 3: I don't hate it. It's a hard P.
30:02
Speaker 1: I like it. I don't hate it. She should do
30:04
Speaker 1: it on Fox. Go on Fox.
30:06
Speaker 3: Yeah.
30:08
Speaker 1: Run some of those ads on Fox or his favorite programs,
30:11
Speaker 1: whatever he's watching. Like get in his head on this.
30:13
Speaker 5: Yeah.
30:14
Speaker 2: Maybe an F word.
30:16
Speaker 3: Farmer.
30:19
Speaker 1: All right. So all these Trump clips that we played
30:22
Speaker 1: were from his rally in North Carolina over the weekend,
30:25
Speaker 1: which was notably not attended by previously announced guest Mark Robinson, a.k.a.
30:30
Speaker 1: Black Nazi, a.k.a. nude Africa posting enthusiast.
30:33
Speaker 2: Well, you might say he certainly has his hands full.
30:36
Speaker 1: Couldn't make it. Robinson has decided to stay in the
30:40
Speaker 1: race and is threatening legal challenges against CNN, even though
30:43
Speaker 1: he's provided no evidence to contradict their story. Sue them.
30:47
Speaker 1: Which might be why... Nearly his entire campaign staff quit
30:51
Speaker 1: and why the Republican Governors Association confirmed they're not spending
30:54
Speaker 1: any more money on the race. In fact, two of
30:57
Speaker 1: the only political leaders still standing behind the guy who
31:01
Speaker 1: said he wants to bring back slavery are Donald Trump
31:04
Speaker 1: and J.D. Vance. Vance said over the weekend he's keeping
31:07
Speaker 1: an open mind.
31:08
Speaker 3: Do you believe him that those were not his posts?
31:11
Speaker 3: I don't not believe him.
31:12
Speaker 1: I don't believe him.
31:12
Speaker 2: I just think that you have to let these things
31:14
Speaker 2: sometimes play out in the court of public opinion.
31:17
Speaker 1: I don't not believe him.
31:18
Speaker 2: I don't believe it or not believe it. It has
31:20
Speaker 2: to play out in the court of public opinion. So
31:24
Speaker 2: just you'll decide its truth will be determined based on.
31:26
Speaker 1: What does it mean to believe anything anyway? Incredible.
31:30
Speaker 2: What happened to the fucking traditional? What happened to the
31:32
Speaker 2: fucking classics? I thought you were supposed to. I thought
31:33
Speaker 2: there's a there's a moral truth that the postmodernist movement
31:37
Speaker 2: was destroying American society. Suddenly it's out the fucking window.
31:40
Speaker 2: Suddenly he's back at college.
31:42
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. What is true?
31:44
Speaker 3: J.D.
31:45
Speaker 1: Coordinated campaign in North Carolina on the Democratic side put
31:48
Speaker 1: out a memo talking about how they're going to tie
31:50
Speaker 1: Trump to Robinson and use it to Kamala's advantage, in
31:53
Speaker 1: particular going after counties where Nikki Haley did really well.
31:57
Speaker 1: Harris campaign's already running an ad featuring Trump's effusive praise
32:00
Speaker 1: for Robinson. We played some of that on Friday's pod. Tommy,
32:03
Speaker 1: what do you think of the strategy here from the
32:05
Speaker 1: Harris campaign?
32:06
Speaker 3: I think the strategy is just to depress Republican turnout.
32:09
Speaker 3: And Republican voters will be bombarded with stories about this.
32:13
Speaker 3: This has got to be the biggest thing in all
32:15
Speaker 3: of North Carolina right now, politically, news story-wise. across the board.
32:19
Speaker 3: I can imagine, you know, some Nikki Haley Republicans staying
32:23
Speaker 3: home because they're grossed out by it. And I also
32:24
Speaker 3: think in practice, the Robinson campaign imploding will mean less
32:28
Speaker 3: geo TV money, less TV, you know, less TV ads on,
32:31
Speaker 3: on air. It also just means every time Trump goes
32:33
Speaker 3: to North Carolina, his coverage is going to be fucked
32:36
Speaker 3: up by questions about this and JD Vance too, and everybody,
32:40
Speaker 3: every surrogate. So it's just kind of mischief making. And
32:43
Speaker 3: I think Republican voter suppression at this point.
32:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. One, one, point about all this that's sort of
32:49
Speaker 2: been bugging me. It's just like, listen, I personally find
32:53
Speaker 2: his posts on nude Africa to be disgusting. But he
32:57
Speaker 2: has a long history of despicable comments, many of which
33:00
Speaker 2: rival what were said on this website. He committed the
33:02
Speaker 2: sin of losing. That's sort of, I think, what ultimately
33:05
Speaker 2: led Republicans to want him to get out before the
33:07
Speaker 2: deadline and why a bunch of people quit. It became
33:08
Speaker 2: embarrassing to work from, not because of the horrible things
33:11
Speaker 2: he said. He said incredibly disgusting, racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic things.
33:17
Speaker 2: Over and over again, they plucked this guy from obscurity.
33:20
Speaker 2: He never had a backer check. He's the current lieutenant governor.
33:22
Speaker 2: No one is calling on him to resign. The only
33:24
Speaker 2: sin that's really a sin that they all can collectively
33:26
Speaker 2: agree on the Republican side is the sin of losing.
33:28
Speaker 1: I think you got to make this really simple, which
33:31
Speaker 1: is he has said a whole bunch of horrific things.
33:34
Speaker 1: I think calling himself a black Nazi, saying that he'd
33:37
Speaker 1: like to bring back slavery, that he would certainly buy
33:40
Speaker 1: a few, and that what's going on in Washington makes
33:44
Speaker 1: Hitler look good, look better. Those are three things I
33:49
Speaker 1: think worse than any of the other stuff we had
33:51
Speaker 1: heard from him.
33:53
Speaker 4: Sure.
33:54
Speaker 1: I think so.
33:55
Speaker 3: The extended fantasies about having sex with this wife's sister
33:58
Speaker 3: probably won't play well.
34:00
Speaker 1: Probably won't play well. But even that is like whatever
34:02
Speaker 1: your own stuff is your own stuff, right? Christmas. But
34:06
Speaker 1: the Hitler Nazi slavery stuff, really bad. And then you
34:10
Speaker 1: got Donald Trump who has not condemned him at all.
34:13
Speaker 1: And then you got plenty of footage of Donald Trump
34:14
Speaker 1: saying how wonderful he is. That's it. That's all you need.
34:17
Speaker 1: And I think then it's less about, you know, whether
34:21
Speaker 1: Robinson depresses turnout or not, or if someone's going to
34:24
Speaker 1: leave the Robinson thing blank or vote for Josh Stein
34:27
Speaker 1: and vote for Donald Trump. You've got to tie, you've
34:29
Speaker 1: got to use it to damage Trump by tying Trump
34:31
Speaker 1: to Robinson. Here is this guy that he just loves.
34:34
Speaker 1: And by the way, if Donald Trump wins, the whole
34:36
Speaker 1: government is going to be run by people just like
34:38
Speaker 1: Mark Robinson. If not Mark Robinson, maybe he'll get a
34:40
Speaker 1: spot in the administration, right? Along with Laura Loomer, along
34:43
Speaker 1: with J.D. All these people are going to be running
34:46
Speaker 1: the government. It's like, You don't want the government that
34:48
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is going to bring for the second time.
34:50
Speaker 1: I think that's a strong argument.
34:52
Speaker 3: I think that's a good extremism argument. I talked to
34:54
Speaker 3: some people in the campaign. I was like, what's the
34:55
Speaker 3: goal here? Is it just to kind of keep people
34:57
Speaker 3: from turning out? And they were like, yes, that's the
34:59
Speaker 3: real goal. It's just like people are going to be
35:01
Speaker 3: really bummed out. Republicans who thought that they were going
35:04
Speaker 3: to get to vote for the next governor and Donald
35:06
Speaker 3: Trump in this election. And now they're like, this guy's
35:08
Speaker 3: embarrassing us and humiliating and let's just not even bother.
35:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. A couple other things to cover before we go
35:15
Speaker 1: to the interview. One, Kamala Harris held a live-streamed event
35:19
Speaker 1: last Thursday with Oprah Winfrey and others focusing on reproductive rights.
35:23
Speaker 1: But the moment that got the most attention was this.
35:26
Speaker 3: I'm a gun owner.
35:27
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
35:31
Speaker 3: If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot. Yes, yes.
35:36
Speaker 4: I hear that.
35:37
Speaker 3: I hear that. Probably should not have said.
35:41
Speaker 2: That.
35:41
Speaker 1: My staff will deal with that later. What did you
35:45
Speaker 1: guys think of that?
35:47
Speaker 2: I liked it. Here's what I appreciate about it.
35:50
Speaker 1: I would say that did not seem planned. She just
35:54
Speaker 1: seemed very, even like the, my staff will clean it
35:57
Speaker 1: up later. Like it just seemed like it came out
35:59
Speaker 1: in the moment. Yeah.
36:00
Speaker 4: Well, it's great.
36:01
Speaker 2: I think like what I like about it is the,
36:05
Speaker 2: the kind of like joking about like, my staff's going
36:07
Speaker 2: to have to clean, clean this up a little bit. Like,
36:10
Speaker 2: Trump does that kind of thing all the time, which
36:12
Speaker 2: is like, I'm not going to read the prompter.
36:13
Speaker 1: I don't need the teleprompter.
36:14
Speaker 2: I probably shouldn't even say this. I get in trouble
36:16
Speaker 2: for saying these things. They tell me not to say it. Like,
36:19
Speaker 2: forget the substance of it. It was a moment where
36:22
Speaker 2: she was saying, fuck the talking points. I want you
36:25
Speaker 2: to hear a little bit more from me directly. And like,
36:29
Speaker 2: I think Kamala Harris is running an incredibly disciplined campaign.
36:32
Speaker 2: The problem is she's running an incredibly disciplined campaign. Yep.
36:35
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is an anti-establishment. It's just what, even though
36:37
Speaker 2: he is fighting to preserve democracy, the wealthiest prerogatives and
36:43
Speaker 2: the traditional prerogatives of some of those powerful forces in
36:45
Speaker 2: our country, he gets to run as this rebel figure.
36:48
Speaker 2: And the more that we can embody that spirit of like,
36:50
Speaker 2: fuck it, you know, like, I don't follow the talking points.
36:53
Speaker 2: I'm just going to tell you what I really think. Like,
36:55
Speaker 2: I'm going to break down the kind of, I'm going to,
36:56
Speaker 2: I'm going to, I'm not just going to be a
36:57
Speaker 2: typical politician. Moments like that, I think are really valuable.
37:01
Speaker 2: That's what made it more valuable to me. My staff's
37:02
Speaker 2: going to have to clean this up. Like that to
37:04
Speaker 2: me was my, the part that really made me think like, oh,
37:06
Speaker 2: that was good.
37:07
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing.
37:07
Speaker 3: He has crack jokes about shooting people with Oprah. Fucking
37:11
Speaker 3: normal campaign stuff.
37:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't think it's going to move anyone
37:15
Speaker 1: on gun policy necessarily. But I had the same thought
37:18
Speaker 1: as you, Lovett, is that she has been incredibly disciplined
37:22
Speaker 1: and on message in all these interviews. But a few
37:24
Speaker 1: moments where Obama was always very– his sense of humor
37:28
Speaker 1: was telling everyone, I know that this is a circus situation.
37:33
Speaker 1: and this is a game that we're all playing sometimes,
37:35
Speaker 1: and it's a little absurd, and I'm going to call
37:37
Speaker 1: that out. Like, she could do a little more of
37:39
Speaker 1: that to just let us know, like, break the third wall.
37:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
37:42
Speaker 1: It's me. It's Kamala Harris. I know all this is crazy.
37:44
Speaker 1: The staff's going to get mad at me because everyone's
37:46
Speaker 1: going to be freaking out about the gun thing, but whatever.
37:48
Speaker 1: It's the fourth wall.
37:48
Speaker 2: The third wall is still on the set.
37:49
Speaker 1: Sorry, the fourth wall.
37:50
Speaker 2: No, and I like that. No, the third wall is
37:51
Speaker 2: just a big fake boat behind you, you know?
37:56
Speaker 1: Or whatever. Also, for those of you capable of thinking
37:59
Speaker 1: beyond November 5th, which I am not.
38:03
Speaker 1: Trump did an interview with conservative commentator Cheryl Atkinson in
38:06
Speaker 1: which she asked him about his future plans. Let's listen.
38:10
Speaker 1: If you're not successful this time, do you see yourself
38:12
Speaker 1: running again in four years?
38:15
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
38:16
Speaker 1: No, I don't.
38:16
Speaker 2: I think that that will be, that will be it.
38:19
Speaker 1: I don't see that at all. Wow. No Trump 2028.
38:22
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? You believe him?
38:25
Speaker 5: Nope.
38:26
Speaker 4: Really?
38:27
Speaker 3: That he'll run again?
38:29
Speaker 2: You think he'll run again?
38:30
Speaker 4: It's all grift.
38:31
Speaker 3: Trump, well, he's got a new crypto coin to roll out.
38:33
Speaker 1: He's got a new NFT. He's got a.
38:35
Speaker 2: He just seems exhausted. He just seems like he's done
38:39
Speaker 2: all this retreat. This is the third time for him.
38:41
Speaker 1: He golfs five days a week. I know, I know.
38:43
Speaker 2: But he's fucking sick of this shit.
38:44
Speaker 1: I had forgotten that in 2020, he said that if
38:47
Speaker 1: he lost to Biden, quote, you'll never see me again.
38:50
Speaker 1: And then remember Biden turned it into an ad on
38:52
Speaker 1: Twitter and said, I approve this message.
38:55
Speaker 2: I forgot about that too. I just think he'll be
38:57
Speaker 2: so old.
38:58
Speaker 1: He will be by his age. He'd be 82. He'd
39:00
Speaker 1: be older than Biden.
39:00
Speaker 3: That's a lot of bronzer.
39:02
Speaker 2: That was with Cheryl Atkinson.
39:03
Speaker 1: I knew that's what you were going to pick up on.
39:05
Speaker 3: She was a CBS correspondent during the Obama years who
39:10
Speaker 3: just did the most insane Benghazi coverage.
39:13
Speaker 5: Yeah.
39:14
Speaker 2: Was she the one that got her space keys? The
39:18
Speaker 2: delete key got stuck on her laptop.
39:20
Speaker 3: And she thought she was hacked, but it was really
39:21
Speaker 3: just sort of a sticky button. Yeah, she videotaped her
39:25
Speaker 3: keyboard deleting letter by letter by letter, some document she
39:29
Speaker 3: was working on. She said it was like the NSA
39:31
Speaker 3: planted something to delete her Benghazi truths.
39:34
Speaker 2: Incredible.
39:36
Speaker 1: Anyway, it's something nice to think about that if we
39:38
Speaker 1: can just beat Trump one more time, he will be
39:41
Speaker 1: out of public life forever. Oh, wouldn't it be great?
39:46
Speaker 2: Just occasionally popping up at a conference like the fucking Babadook.
39:50
Speaker 1: Just hawking crypto stuff.
39:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, great.
39:53
Speaker 1: The grift.
39:54
Speaker 2: The grift can continue.
39:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fine. I don't care. Go for it. Okay.
39:58
Speaker 1: When we come back from the break, you're going to
39:59
Speaker 1: hear Tommy's interview with our friend Chenjerai Kumunika, the host
40:02
Speaker 1: of Empire City. But before we get to that, a
40:05
Speaker 1: lot can change in four years. Maybe you move, change
40:07
Speaker 1: your name, turned 18. Even if you voted in 2020,
40:10
Speaker 1: it's important to make sure you are still registered and
40:12
Speaker 1: up to date. The outcome, as we've talked about this episode,
40:15
Speaker 1: is going to come down to every single person showing
40:17
Speaker 1: up to vote. So, are you registered? What about your friends?
40:20
Speaker 1: What about your family? Thanks to Vote Save America, it's
40:23
Speaker 1: easier than ever to check your registration, apply for a
40:25
Speaker 1: mail-in ballot, and stay on top of your state's voting deadlines.
40:29
Speaker 1: It only takes two minutes. Check if you're ready to
40:31
Speaker 1: vote at votesaveamerica.com slash vote. This message has been paid
40:35
Speaker 1: for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com.
40:38
Speaker 1: And this ad has not been authorized by any candidate
40:40
Speaker 1: or candidate's committee. When we come back, change your eye, kumanika.
40:55
Speaker 3: I am so excited to welcome to the show Chenjerai Kumunika.
40:58
Speaker 3: He is the host of the truly excellent, truly, truly
41:01
Speaker 3: excellent new limited series, Empire City, which was produced by Wondery,
41:05
Speaker 3: Push Black, and yours truly here at Crooked Media. Chenjerai,
41:09
Speaker 3: great to see you.
41:09
Speaker 4: I'm so excited to be here. Big fan of the show.
41:12
Speaker 3: Listen, what makes this show so great is all the
41:15
Speaker 3: deep research you have done into the history of the
41:17
Speaker 3: NYPD over the last several years, but also You're not
41:20
Speaker 3: just coming at this as an academic. You have this
41:23
Speaker 3: deep personal connection to the story going all the way
41:26
Speaker 3: back to your father. Can you tell us a bit
41:28
Speaker 3: about your dad and his interactions with the NYPD and
41:30
Speaker 3: how that got you interested in pursuing the series?
41:33
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And I just want to say that, you know,
41:35
Speaker 4: the history of the NYPD and policing in America is
41:38
Speaker 4: something that people should be interested, period, right? Because so
41:42
Speaker 4: many of our conversations, people are talking about public safety,
41:45
Speaker 4: talking about policing, but not that many people know where
41:48
Speaker 4: policing really came from. And for me, it did start
41:51
Speaker 4: in a personal way. You know, I was, you know, basically,
41:57
Speaker 4: I had noticed that I hadn't really seen a moving
42:00
Speaker 4: image of my dad. You know, my dad died in 93.
42:03
Speaker 4: And that was before you could just easily get moving
42:06
Speaker 4: images of people. It wasn't like, you know, couldn't do
42:08
Speaker 4: this on your phones. And so, yeah, you know, and
42:12
Speaker 4: I did wind up seeing, someone sent me, you know,
42:15
Speaker 4: a link to this, you know, archive. And I wound
42:18
Speaker 4: up seeing this moving image of my father for the
42:22
Speaker 4: first time. And it was shot by NYPD. They were
42:25
Speaker 4: surveilling him because my father was the chairman of the
42:28
Speaker 4: Bronx chapter of CORE. And he was protesting an incident
42:31
Speaker 4: of police brutality. And so, yeah, and so I saw
42:34
Speaker 4: this moving image of him. And, you know, when you
42:36
Speaker 4: see someone, you know, I see my father, I haven't
42:38
Speaker 4: seen him in years. It felt like I wanted to
42:41
Speaker 4: hug him. He's right there. He's moving. But there was
42:43
Speaker 4: also this other thing going on, which is, you know,
42:46
Speaker 4: why were the police surveilling my dad?
42:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:49
Speaker 3: And just to be clear, like the police were not
42:51
Speaker 3: surveilling your father because there was any allegation of criminality
42:56
Speaker 3: or rule breaking. It was because he was organizing protests.
43:00
Speaker 4: Exactly. I mean, you know, the things that Congress of
43:02
Speaker 4: Racial Equality was fighting for, you know, and the activists like,
43:06
Speaker 4: you know, my dad and other activists that, you know,
43:08
Speaker 4: went into this police station. They were protesting police brutality,
43:10
Speaker 4: but they were also fighting against, you know, they were
43:12
Speaker 4: activists fighting against housing discrimination, you know, fighting for voting rights.
43:16
Speaker 4: These are things that I think people widely believe, you know,
43:19
Speaker 4: the rights we have today that people appreciate. But the
43:23
Speaker 4: NYPD formed an entire unit to surveil these people and,
43:28
Speaker 4: you know, and infiltrate and provoke them. And so because
43:31
Speaker 4: so many of our conversations start with these incidents of
43:34
Speaker 4: police brutality that can be They're discussed like, was this
43:37
Speaker 4: bad training or was it excessive force? And what I'm
43:39
Speaker 4: saying here is like, no, this incident was the NYPD
43:42
Speaker 4: created a unit to stop people who were fighting to
43:45
Speaker 4: make America a stronger democracy. Yeah.
43:48
Speaker 3: And clearly constitutionally protected rights in the process. The story
43:52
Speaker 3: doesn't start there. I mean, you went way back. You
43:54
Speaker 3: read a lot of really old newspapers. How did that
43:57
Speaker 3: early news coverage of crime and policing shape kind of
44:01
Speaker 3: the origins of the NYPD and its mission?
44:04
Speaker 4: Well, you know, of course, newspapers are great for historians
44:07
Speaker 4: who want to understand the past. But in this case,
44:10
Speaker 4: you know, yet newspapers actually were kind of driving the agenda.
44:13
Speaker 4: You have to remember that in the early 19th century,
44:16
Speaker 4: there wasn't TV. You couldn't go on TV if you
44:18
Speaker 4: were a politician and speak to the public. You couldn't
44:22
Speaker 4: go on like, you know, TikTok or whatever. You just literally,
44:25
Speaker 4: you had to, it was the newspapers that had the power.
44:28
Speaker 4: And so newspapers taught New Yorkers in America that, what
44:32
Speaker 4: was dangerous. And so you can imagine in the 19th century,
44:35
Speaker 4: the thing that was dangerous really was poor people, you know,
44:39
Speaker 4: and things that threatened business. And, you know, and then, and,
44:44
Speaker 4: you know, sad to say that also free black people,
44:46
Speaker 4: even in a state like New York, were considered dangerous.
44:49
Speaker 4: So the newspapers were teaching people that this was dangerous.
44:52
Speaker 4: And that really shaped the, that shaped the vision of
44:55
Speaker 4: what policing became. But, You know, the thing about it
44:58
Speaker 4: that I would also say is that there's almost like
45:00
Speaker 4: this symbiotic relationship, right? Where by painting the idea of
45:04
Speaker 4: a very dangerous New York, a dangerous America, newspapers are
45:08
Speaker 4: also creating headlines for them. You know what I'm saying?
45:10
Speaker 4: You heard the saying, if it bleeds, it leads. But
45:13
Speaker 4: they're actually setting our priorities up about what safety is
45:16
Speaker 4: going to look like, you know?
45:18
Speaker 3: And that included, I mean, you know, some of these
45:20
Speaker 3: early police officers, you know, not just returning escaped African-Americans,
45:27
Speaker 3: To slavery in the South, but essentially kidnapping free Black
45:31
Speaker 3: people on the streets of New York, right? And essentially
45:33
Speaker 3: selling them into slavery, into Southern slave states?
45:36
Speaker 4: That's correct. What you're going to learn when you hear
45:37
Speaker 4: the series is that the very first major deployment of
45:41
Speaker 4: the modern NYPD was deployed against a man named George Kirk,
45:45
Speaker 4: who had escaped to New York because New York was
45:47
Speaker 4: supposed to be a free state, and he thought he
45:50
Speaker 4: was going to be free. And what happened was that
45:53
Speaker 4: the NYPD, as a professional force, hunted him down. And,
45:57
Speaker 4: you know, New York was a kind of a precedent
46:00
Speaker 4: in that way to the fugitive slave law where, you know,
46:03
Speaker 4: you see the police department being used as a slave patrol.
46:07
Speaker 4: And then this became, this becomes the case around the country.
46:09
Speaker 4: And the first test cases of this are in New York, right?
46:13
Speaker 4: Whereas people are going to understand like, all right, New York,
46:16
Speaker 4: you're supposed to be this free state, but really we
46:18
Speaker 4: expect you to protect this plantation economy.
46:21
Speaker 5: Right.
46:21
Speaker 4: And I just thought that that was powerful because when
46:23
Speaker 4: you think of slave patrols, you know, it's like you
46:26
Speaker 4: think of Harriet Tubman, right? You think of like in
46:28
Speaker 4: the woods, you know, dogs hunting people down. You don't
46:30
Speaker 4: think of, you know, professional police officers, you know, in
46:35
Speaker 4: a place like New York, but that is in fact
46:36
Speaker 4: how this started.
46:38
Speaker 3: It's an amazing part of the first couple episodes that
46:41
Speaker 3: everyone should listen to. I thought your focus on the
46:43
Speaker 3: media and the origin of the police, it's sort of
46:46
Speaker 3: how the coverage shaped it was so interesting because I
46:48
Speaker 3: know Gallup, which is a great polling agency, they do
46:51
Speaker 3: regular polling about people's views on crimes. And I always
46:55
Speaker 3: found this statistic really remarkable, which is that in 23
46:59
Speaker 3: of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60%
47:04
Speaker 3: of adults said there is more crime nationally than there
47:07
Speaker 3: was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime
47:11
Speaker 3: rates during most of that period. Now, interestingly, people are
47:15
Speaker 3: less likely to say that crime is up where they
47:17
Speaker 3: live than they are to say it is up nationally.
47:20
Speaker 3: So that just seems to suggest that from the very
47:22
Speaker 3: beginning of policing until today, that the media has a
47:26
Speaker 3: huge impact on our views about crime. And I would
47:29
Speaker 3: imagine kind of the political context and debates about funding,
47:33
Speaker 3: et cetera, that then lead to how policing is actually
47:35
Speaker 3: conducted in this country.
47:37
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
47:37
Speaker 4: And so in that episode, that's one of the things
47:40
Speaker 4: we're seeing happening back then. And we're trying to call
47:43
Speaker 4: attention to the way that that still goes on. I
47:46
Speaker 4: talk in the series a lot about my father, but
47:48
Speaker 4: my mother is works in the field of public health.
47:51
Speaker 4: And so I have kind of an inside scoop on
47:53
Speaker 4: the things that actually threaten people's safety, and it's not
47:56
Speaker 4: the things that are being policed, right? And also, you know,
47:59
Speaker 4: if you've ever seen the work by Alec Karakatsanis, who
48:03
Speaker 4: talks about, like, propaganda, talks about, you know, wage theft
48:07
Speaker 4: and these kinds of threats to people's safety, all kinds
48:10
Speaker 4: of things that businesses are doing, you know, whether it
48:13
Speaker 4: has to do with climate change, violating those rules, those
48:15
Speaker 4: things aren't policed, right? But those are the things that
48:17
Speaker 4: at scale are harming the most people. And so usually
48:21
Speaker 4: what they'll do is take a particular murder or a
48:24
Speaker 4: particular instance of harm, which does have to be figured out.
48:27
Speaker 4: People do need protection from, but which is not representative
48:31
Speaker 4: of what's actually happening. And then they'll blow that up
48:33
Speaker 4: so big and make it so graphic that that sort
48:37
Speaker 4: of colonizes how people think about safety. And so in
48:41
Speaker 4: Empire City, we tell the story of a woman named
48:43
Speaker 4: Mary Rogers who was murdered. And, you know, that's terrible, right?
48:46
Speaker 4: We don't want to minimize the importance of her death
48:49
Speaker 4: or in the contemporary realm of the harm that's happening
48:52
Speaker 4: in some communities. But it turns out police actually, they
48:55
Speaker 4: never solved this crime. And just as today, police aren't
48:58
Speaker 4: very good. I mean, ask people in Uvalde how well
49:01
Speaker 4: police have done at protecting them from those kinds of things. So, yeah,
49:06
Speaker 4: it really is a media plays a role that's really important.
49:09
Speaker 4: And I think that I'm hoping that people see those
49:11
Speaker 4: connections and think about what needs to change.
49:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to unpack this a little more. Because
49:16
Speaker 3: in the series and in conversations I've had with you offline,
49:19
Speaker 3: and then I'll you know, your scholarship, you push back
49:22
Speaker 3: on the idea that police or policing actually keeps us safe.
49:24
Speaker 3: And certainly, like listeners are probably thinking, well, certainly there
49:28
Speaker 3: are instances of, you know, crimes being solved or prevented
49:31
Speaker 3: by the police on sort of individual basis. Even if
49:34
Speaker 3: the clearance rates broadly are shockingly low. I think the
49:38
Speaker 3: statistic is fewer than half of crimes in the U.S.
49:41
Speaker 3: are reported and fewer than half of reported crimes are solved.
49:45
Speaker 3: I think it was 36 percent of violent crimes and
49:48
Speaker 3: only 12 percent of property crimes. So quite low. But
49:51
Speaker 3: I imagine, are you talking about like the record of
49:53
Speaker 3: policing in the aggregate or are you measuring, you know,
49:56
Speaker 3: the efficacy on one hand versus the violence conducted by
50:01
Speaker 3: police against citizens? Like, how are you thinking about that?
50:04
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, in some ways, I would say both
50:07
Speaker 4: things are things that we should think critically about and
50:09
Speaker 4: we should think historically about. So, you know, the first
50:12
Speaker 4: question is, what are the things that are harming most
50:14
Speaker 4: people right in the city? And, you know, and, you know,
50:17
Speaker 4: is policing actually structured to really prevent and dig into
50:20
Speaker 4: those into those areas? And I think that we'll find that,
50:23
Speaker 4: you know, when it comes to that, you know, for example, like,
50:26
Speaker 4: you know, public health issues or even getting a little
50:29
Speaker 4: bit further down upstream in terms of some of the
50:32
Speaker 4: roots of these things. We find that police don't really
50:35
Speaker 4: attack those things or address those things at all. But
50:38
Speaker 4: I think that so there's that. But then there's these
50:40
Speaker 4: other things which are really the focus of the show,
50:42
Speaker 4: which is the political use of policing. And part of
50:45
Speaker 4: what I want to happen is that people need to
50:47
Speaker 4: think about policing and what it means, you know, in
50:50
Speaker 4: a democracy.
50:51
Speaker 1: Right.
50:52
Speaker 4: I mean, unfortunately, you know, we talk about, you know,
50:54
Speaker 4: people who are protesting to make, you know, you know,
50:58
Speaker 4: companies have better policies on climate change to make the
51:01
Speaker 4: country have better policies on climate change. when we talk
51:03
Speaker 4: about people who are trying to protect voting rights, all
51:06
Speaker 4: these things, a lot of times you wind up finding
51:09
Speaker 4: police on the opposite side historically of those, right? Like
51:12
Speaker 4: for a long, you know, it wasn't until after the
51:13
Speaker 4: Voting Rights Act, for example, that you could even pretend
51:16
Speaker 4: like Black folks really had the right to vote. And
51:18
Speaker 4: for all that time before that, police were against us, right,
51:22
Speaker 4: in trying to have those rights. And actually, when these
51:25
Speaker 4: states pass different laws in different places, whether it's abortion,
51:28
Speaker 4: whether it's all these other things, Once those laws get passed,
51:31
Speaker 4: police are enforcing them, even if those laws are anti-democratic, inhumane,
51:35
Speaker 4: and unjust. And so I think we really have to
51:37
Speaker 4: grapple with what police mean in terms of democracy. And
51:41
Speaker 4: to give something more concrete, right now in New York,
51:43
Speaker 4: we're going through a situation where a person was stopped
51:47
Speaker 4: You know, police chased down a person because they claimed
51:50
Speaker 4: that he stopped a subway, he hopped his subway or
51:53
Speaker 4: evaded his subway fare. And this instance gives you everything
51:57
Speaker 4: you need to know about policing, right? Here's a person
52:00
Speaker 4: who may or may not have paid the subway fare,
52:03
Speaker 4: and then the police chased them down. And what do
52:05
Speaker 4: they do? They tase the person, they wind up shooting,
52:09
Speaker 4: and they wind up shooting one of their own officers
52:11
Speaker 4: and three other people. And so no one was made
52:14
Speaker 4: safer by this. And the motivating incident, we're going to
52:17
Speaker 4: get body cam footage and there's still a lot of details,
52:19
Speaker 4: but what the motivating incident was that someone did not
52:21
Speaker 4: pay a $ 2. 90 fare and you shot three people, including
52:26
Speaker 4: a police officer. And then you talk about the media,
52:28
Speaker 4: you know, the mayor then goes and makes this press
52:30
Speaker 4: conference and he's talking about, you know, how proud he
52:34
Speaker 4: is of these officers. We should commend these officers because
52:36
Speaker 4: they showed restraint. He goes to the hospital of the officer,
52:40
Speaker 4: but not an innocent bystander who was shot in the
52:43
Speaker 4: head and probably will have brain damage for the rest
52:44
Speaker 4: of his life. So who was made safer by this, right?
52:47
Speaker 4: This is what we have to look at, right? And
52:49
Speaker 4: of course, the role that the media plays in scaring
52:52
Speaker 4: people about the subways and all these other things. So
52:55
Speaker 4: we're still getting facts about this case, but I was
52:57
Speaker 4: down at Sutter Ave on Monday where this happened. It's
53:00
Speaker 4: in Brownsville, It's in a community that is disproportionately black
53:04
Speaker 4: and has a long history with police. And people were incensed.
53:07
Speaker 4: They did not feel. Of course, the people in Brownsville
53:10
Speaker 4: are aware of different harms happening in their community. But
53:13
Speaker 4: when I was there, I heard a very clear message.
53:15
Speaker 4: It's like, we don't want you to do this. You're
53:19
Speaker 4: not helping us.
53:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I also read, I can't remember
53:22
Speaker 3: the source, so forgive me if this is off, but
53:25
Speaker 3: I think I read that the amount the NYPD spends
53:28
Speaker 3: on overtime to chase down people who did not pay
53:31
Speaker 3: their fares is about 10 times what could be recouped
53:35
Speaker 3: if everyone actually paid their fare. So at a micro level,
53:39
Speaker 3: the incident you described is a shockingly terrible.
53:43
Speaker 1: Use of policing.
53:43
Speaker 3: But even at a macro level, just as a public policy,
53:46
Speaker 3: it's like, why are we spending 10x the amount we
53:48
Speaker 3: could recoup? Isn't there a better use of resources than
53:51
Speaker 3: just chasing fare hoppers?
53:53
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a great point, right? Because of course,
53:56
Speaker 4: the subway is a wonderful public good Now that congestion
54:00
Speaker 4: pricing is not happening anymore, we're trying to figure out
54:03
Speaker 4: how do we fund this public good? And, you know,
54:05
Speaker 4: but I think that, you know, what you point out
54:07
Speaker 4: is there's all kinds of places to look rather than
54:09
Speaker 4: trying to chase down armed thugs, chasing down people who,
54:14
Speaker 4: you know, this person is, they said he has a
54:15
Speaker 4: history of mental illness for like a $ 3 fare. That
54:18
Speaker 4: can't be the solution. And I think that, you know,
54:21
Speaker 4: there's a long, again, there's a long history of this.
54:23
Speaker 4: In Empire City, in episode, I think, three, we're going
54:27
Speaker 4: to learn about someone named Elizabeth Jennings Graham. This is
54:29
Speaker 4: a Black woman in the 19th century who's trying to
54:32
Speaker 4: take a streetcar to church with her friend. And essentially,
54:35
Speaker 4: an incident unfolds where she winds up getting yanked off
54:37
Speaker 4: the train by the police. And we'll see how she
54:40
Speaker 4: responds to that, though. Because one thing that's really important
54:43
Speaker 4: about Empire City is I didn't want to tell a
54:45
Speaker 4: story in which it's just like sort of oppression after oppression,
54:50
Speaker 4: kind of what I call trauma porn, right? I wanted
54:53
Speaker 4: to talk about How have people, when they recognize that
54:55
Speaker 4: the police were not on their side, how did they
54:58
Speaker 4: find strategies to push back? One other thing I want
55:02
Speaker 4: to mention about your point about the Sutter Ave thing
55:04
Speaker 4: is that, as I understand it, the NYPD is currently
55:06
Speaker 4: under a consent decree based on previous instances. Maybe I
55:11
Speaker 4: think some of the things that happened in 2020. And
55:14
Speaker 4: they were literally, in the wake of that protest, doing
55:16
Speaker 4: everything that the consent decree asked them not to do.
55:19
Speaker 4: So I'll be very interested to see what happens after that? Like,
55:23
Speaker 4: will they be held accountable? Because the NYPD, right, I
55:25
Speaker 4: don't know if we're going to get to this, but
55:27
Speaker 4: the NYPD is, I mean, it's almost like they're timing
55:31
Speaker 4: all their scandals to match with the show.
55:34
Speaker 1: It really was.
55:35
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I do want to get to that next.
55:36
Speaker 3: I just, one last point on this. I mean, I
55:37
Speaker 3: do think it's really important to look as you did
55:41
Speaker 3: at the history of policing and sort of like where
55:43
Speaker 3: it came from and how it evolved to the version
55:45
Speaker 3: we see today, but also just the data in aggregate.
55:48
Speaker 3: Because someone who you probably know, Samson Youngway, a great
55:52
Speaker 3: data analyst and organization, he tweeted the other day, this
55:54
Speaker 3: is a quote from Sam, one in every three people
55:57
Speaker 3: killed by a stranger is killed by a police officer.
55:59
Speaker 3: So you might think the biggest threat to your life
56:01
Speaker 3: is some random shooter or gang, but one organized group
56:03
Speaker 3: that is most likely to shoot and kill you is
56:05
Speaker 3: the police, and it's not even close. And I just
56:07
Speaker 3: think that statement might shock people or sound offensive to
56:13
Speaker 3: some people, but it's just worth understanding that, yes, the
56:15
Speaker 3: New York Post is is going to write lots and
56:18
Speaker 3: lots of front page stories about, you know, sort of
56:20
Speaker 3: the mentally ill person who pushes someone into a subway car.
56:24
Speaker 3: And that is awful and that should never happen. And
56:26
Speaker 3: it is a tragedy and I'm in no way minimizing it.
56:29
Speaker 3: When you kind of look at the data in aggregate
56:31
Speaker 3: about risks to people from strangers, I mean, Sam, I
56:34
Speaker 3: think makes a pretty important point there.
56:36
Speaker 4: That's right. And, you know, I just want to say
56:38
Speaker 4: that these are lived experiences, right? part of what is
56:41
Speaker 4: happening in our show is that I'm seeing all these people.
56:44
Speaker 4: And by the way, it's not just black folks, right?
56:46
Speaker 4: It's all these immigrants, ethnics, people who came to America
56:50
Speaker 4: with this dream that they could participate in American democracy,
56:52
Speaker 4: whether it's Irish, Italians, Chinese immigrants, all kinds of folks.
56:58
Speaker 4: And these people face terrible, horrible oppression at the hands
57:02
Speaker 4: of the NYPD. And so I think that's important. You
57:06
Speaker 4: see this show, right? And it's kind of like, I
57:08
Speaker 4: know a lot of people who are working in law enforcement, right?
57:11
Speaker 4: And I'm sure when you have a force that's 36,000 people,
57:14
Speaker 4: a lot of people in New York have relatives, friends.
57:17
Speaker 4: I don't want to give the impression that I think
57:19
Speaker 4: every police officer actually signs up to do harm that
57:23
Speaker 4: these people all mean to do, you know, to do
57:26
Speaker 4: people harm. In fact, I just corrected somebody on social media.
57:29
Speaker 4: Someone was looking at a video that recently emerged of
57:32
Speaker 4: a police officer that entered a homeless shelter and is
57:34
Speaker 4: just pummeling them. And they said, I guess people who
57:37
Speaker 4: want to punch people just become cops. And I said, no,
57:39
Speaker 4: I don't think that's the case. I said, what's more
57:41
Speaker 4: scary than that is people who do join the NYPD,
57:45
Speaker 4: like Officer Edwin Raymond, who we'll meet in the show,
57:48
Speaker 4: who want to make a change. And the system of policing,
57:51
Speaker 4: the culture of policing requires them to do violence to people,
57:55
Speaker 4: requires them to uphold that blue wall of silence and
57:59
Speaker 4: not do what we all know is the basic principle
58:02
Speaker 4: of right and wrong. If you see wrong, speak on it.
58:04
Speaker 4: they're ostracized if they do that, right? And so that culture,
58:09
Speaker 4: what to me is more scary is if you have
58:11
Speaker 4: a system where good people can enter because it's a
58:13
Speaker 4: working class job that you can get, you know, one
58:16
Speaker 4: of the few, you know, jobs with some kind of security,
58:18
Speaker 4: you know, and then that job takes people's instincts and
58:22
Speaker 4: turns people into the examples of monsters that we see,
58:26
Speaker 4: that's what we have to worry about. And then where
58:29
Speaker 4: is the system that can hold this accountable, right? I mean,
58:32
Speaker 4: if all the, what body right now can hold the
58:35
Speaker 4: NYPD accountable for these things that people are putting people through.
58:38
Speaker 4: Because I saw, there was a guy, I'm going to
58:41
Speaker 4: go back to Sutter Ave. I mean, in addition to,
58:43
Speaker 4: let's just be clear, there's New Yorkers, three people in
58:46
Speaker 4: New York who were not police who got shot by
58:48
Speaker 4: the NYPD right now. Those are lived experiences that they're
58:51
Speaker 4: going to have to deal with, medical bills, all these
58:54
Speaker 4: other things. And I talked to a young man who
58:56
Speaker 4: was telling me how he had been pulled over and
58:58
Speaker 4: beaten by the cops. And those are lived experiences that
59:02
Speaker 4: people live through. So We who are interested in policy
59:05
Speaker 4: and solving these problems, there's a way where we can
59:07
Speaker 4: kind of look at the data points and just kind
59:08
Speaker 4: of start We kind of roll our eyes out. We've
59:10
Speaker 4: heard these stories before, but not if you live through it.
59:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. So you made this point. I mean, the
59:16
Speaker 3: NYPD is having a rough go at the moment. I mean,
59:18
Speaker 3: the police commissioner just resigned. after the feds used his
59:22
Speaker 3: phones as part of a corruption investigation, uh, mayor Adams
59:25
Speaker 3: is approval rating is, is in the toilet. I mean,
59:28
Speaker 3: I think it's below the drinking age in some polls.
59:30
Speaker 3: He was once a member of the NYPD and he's
59:32
Speaker 3: a stalwart defender of the NYPD. Do you think like
59:35
Speaker 3: the NYPD is, is unique in terms of, I don't
59:38
Speaker 3: know what a mess it is for lack of a
59:40
Speaker 3: better term and its challenges, or do you think it's
59:41
Speaker 3: representative of systemic challenges across forces across the country?
59:47
Speaker 4: I mean, I definitely think it's representative of, you can
59:51
Speaker 4: go to, you know, it's sort of like you name
59:53
Speaker 4: the police department. And if you dig a little bit
59:55
Speaker 4: beneath the surface, you start talking to people in the community,
59:58
Speaker 4: you start going into the court files, you're going to
1:00:00
Speaker 4: see some of these scandals, right? And it's, I think
1:00:03
Speaker 4: these represent problems that are, I think, endemic to policing
1:00:06
Speaker 4: and that mostly people have never really grappled with in
1:00:10
Speaker 4: a serious way beyond just like surface, you know, efforts
1:00:16
Speaker 4: that reform like body cams or training. Um, but it
1:00:20
Speaker 4: is true. The NYPD does seem kind of like right now,
1:00:23
Speaker 4: it's just, I mean, it's not funny, but it's like, woo.
1:00:25
Speaker 4: I mean, the way it's going down, I mean, as,
1:00:27
Speaker 4: you know, as we were getting ready to drop the show,
1:00:28
Speaker 4: I'm seeing the police commissioner, uh, is resigning. I think maybe,
1:00:32
Speaker 4: I don't know if he was, you know, he, he
1:00:34
Speaker 4: resigned very soon after the launch of the show. And
1:00:36
Speaker 4: so there is, the NYPD is kind of an egregious example.
1:00:39
Speaker 4: And I think that's telling because the NYPD was the
1:00:42
Speaker 4: first modern police force. So in theory, they should have
1:00:45
Speaker 4: the most experience, right?
1:00:48
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
1:00:48
Speaker 3: And they're probably what, you know, that experience is probably
1:00:50
Speaker 3: what a lot of other forces have drawn from for
1:00:53
Speaker 3: better or for worse in a lot of instances. So,
1:00:55
Speaker 3: I mean, I did want to talk to you about
1:00:56
Speaker 3: this broader debate over policing and police reform and defund
1:01:00
Speaker 3: the police, because like the conversation has kind of been
1:01:03
Speaker 3: all over the place since 2020. And 2020 is an
1:01:06
Speaker 3: arbitrary starting point. I mean, you could go back much further,
1:01:10
Speaker 3: you know, most recently to Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, right?
1:01:14
Speaker 3: So the BLM movement was really kind of 2013, 2014.
1:01:16
Speaker 3: But I think that starting in 2020 is instructive because
1:01:22
Speaker 3: the Black Lives Matter movement was the biggest story in
1:01:26
Speaker 3: the country, or at least in politics, for months and
1:01:28
Speaker 3: months and months in 2020. That's right. That was followed
1:01:31
Speaker 3: by Biden's election. He went a different direction. He embraced
1:01:34
Speaker 3: more funding and more cops on the street. Now we
1:01:38
Speaker 3: have Vice President Harris, who's a former prosecutor, as the
1:01:42
Speaker 3: Democratic nominee. So I'm just wondering what you think that
1:01:45
Speaker 3: means for conversation about reform and where to go, because
1:01:49
Speaker 3: I was looking at some polling from 2023 that found
1:01:52
Speaker 3: 47% of voters think major changes to policing are needed.
1:01:56
Speaker 3: 42% think minor changes are needed. Only 11% said no
1:02:01
Speaker 3: changes are needed. So it does seem like there is
1:02:03
Speaker 3: a broad mandate for reform. It's just not at all
1:02:07
Speaker 3: clear to me what that is and whether we're talking
1:02:10
Speaker 3: about a local level or something that needs to come
1:02:12
Speaker 3: out of Congress.
1:02:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm glad you're bringing this up. I mean, and
1:02:15
Speaker 4: You know, I always like to start from the standpoint
1:02:18
Speaker 4: that it's understandable why people would be confused about this, right? Like,
1:02:21
Speaker 4: you know, why it's like, well, they're like, yo, we need,
1:02:24
Speaker 4: we want some kind of solution to this. We want safety.
1:02:26
Speaker 4: People have grown up with police as the answer to
1:02:28
Speaker 4: that their whole lives. I mean, I think. There's one
1:02:32
Speaker 4: area that involves really a more robust conception of what
1:02:36
Speaker 4: safety actually means. And that means moving. It does, I think.
1:02:40
Speaker 4: I mean, it's funny. During the 2020 protests, I remember
1:02:43
Speaker 4: seeing this police chief. I believe he was in Texas.
1:02:47
Speaker 4: And he was like, people want police to do everything.
1:02:49
Speaker 4: They want us to be social workers. They want us
1:02:51
Speaker 4: to do this. They want us to do that. I'm like,
1:02:53
Speaker 4: you kind of are making the abolitionist argument. You realize that, right?
1:02:57
Speaker 4: We're saying the same thing. We don't want you to
1:02:59
Speaker 4: do all that. You know what I mean? You don't
1:03:00
Speaker 4: have training for that. Let us do that. But that
1:03:02
Speaker 4: has some budgetary implications, right? But then when you say defund,
1:03:07
Speaker 4: it's like we saw what that has done. But I
1:03:09
Speaker 4: think what the genius of defund was, I think, as
1:03:17
Speaker 4: a term was that what it should have done was
1:03:19
Speaker 4: to put that exact thing on the table and say,
1:03:22
Speaker 4: are we asking too much of police? Even if you're
1:03:24
Speaker 4: someone who believes in police, are we asking too much
1:03:26
Speaker 4: of them, you know, who actually is better at some
1:03:31
Speaker 4: of the things that could give us safety? So that's
1:03:33
Speaker 4: one element of this. But I think there's some more
1:03:36
Speaker 4: low-hanging fruit, which is like literally just to be able
1:03:39
Speaker 4: to hold folks accountable and be honest about the harms
1:03:44
Speaker 4: that are being done by the police And not just
1:03:46
Speaker 4: in New York, but all over the country, the harms
1:03:49
Speaker 4: that are happening in prisoners like Rikers. Right now in Rikers,
1:03:52
Speaker 4: there is, I think, there's like 700 allegations of sexual
1:03:56
Speaker 4: abuse and assault. And that this is not, I think
1:04:01
Speaker 4: this is under-reported story. That they're not even really being
1:04:04
Speaker 4: seriously investigated. And the NYPD has 86 public relations workers,
1:04:10
Speaker 4: or over 86 is the number, somewhere in that range
1:04:12
Speaker 4: of people who work as PR people. When you have
1:04:15
Speaker 4: 86 PR people, we're not having an honest, good faith conversation.
1:04:19
Speaker 4: And so for me, and this is part of why
1:04:21
Speaker 4: I wanted to move historically, because I wanted to leave room, right,
1:04:25
Speaker 4: for people who are operating in good faith, but may
1:04:28
Speaker 4: have very different senses of what is called for with
1:04:31
Speaker 4: police reform. But we have to be starting from the history,
1:04:34
Speaker 4: from some facts about what has happened. And, you know,
1:04:37
Speaker 4: when you have all those PR agents like that, we
1:04:40
Speaker 4: can't even get an honest accounting. I mean, listen, what...
1:04:44
Speaker 4: I mean, this is not funny at all, but what
1:04:45
Speaker 4: I'm trying to say is people are like, well, what
1:04:47
Speaker 4: do we do about police? I'm like, here's one thing
1:04:49
Speaker 4: we got to figure out. When the police shoot three
1:04:51
Speaker 4: people in the subway, including a cop, can we even
1:04:54
Speaker 4: hold them accountable? Right. Let's start there.
1:04:58
Speaker 3: Yeah. The lack of accountability is shocking. And there's so
1:05:01
Speaker 3: many systemic and structural reasons. And you're right that that
1:05:05
Speaker 3: conversation started, but it certainly hasn't finished. But I do think, listen,
1:05:10
Speaker 3: we could have a whole other conversation about the treatment
1:05:12
Speaker 3: of prisoners in this country. I mean, the fact that- Right.
1:05:15
Speaker 3: the fact that it was like culturally funny and okay
1:05:18
Speaker 3: to make jokes about dropping the soap and prison rape
1:05:21
Speaker 3: and like people who are in state or federal custody,
1:05:24
Speaker 3: like we're okay with that happening to human beings. I mean,
1:05:26
Speaker 3: it's just like, it's unconscionable. But I mean, the reason
1:05:29
Speaker 3: I think the show is so great is because I
1:05:31
Speaker 3: think understanding that this conversation didn't start in 2020 or 2013,
1:05:35
Speaker 3: and that it's grounded in this long history and in
1:05:38
Speaker 3: these systems that we've just come up with. And we
1:05:41
Speaker 3: think our, look, I'm a white guy in America, right?
1:05:44
Speaker 3: So if I, if I feel unsafe, I'm going to
1:05:46
Speaker 3: call the police and I would never think twice about it.
1:05:48
Speaker 3: But to understand that a lot of different people have
1:05:51
Speaker 3: a very different perspective based on lived experience, as you say,
1:05:54
Speaker 3: but also on how broken some of these systems are,
1:05:56
Speaker 3: I just think is an invaluable contribution to the broader
1:06:00
Speaker 3: conversation and why, uh, empire city is such a great
1:06:04
Speaker 3: show and why we're just so proud of it. Um,
1:06:07
Speaker 3: and grateful to you for doing it.
1:06:08
Speaker 4: Well, thank you. Um, I just want to say, we
1:06:10
Speaker 4: talked about a lot of stuff that's pretty depressing, but
1:06:13
Speaker 4: I think our show is actually fun to listen to.
1:06:16
Speaker 4: If maybe fun is a weird word, it's compelling. There's
1:06:19
Speaker 4: some funny moments, a lot of funny moments. We found
1:06:22
Speaker 4: those ways to find humor in the show. And I
1:06:25
Speaker 4: would also say that, for me, the history of police
1:06:28
Speaker 4: is kind of a unifier because the way that Americans
1:06:32
Speaker 4: have been policed is really the real story of America.
1:06:35
Speaker 4: And you see all these different groups that are trying
1:06:38
Speaker 4: to sort of be here and participate. And, you know,
1:06:41
Speaker 4: so in some ways, I think it's a chance for
1:06:43
Speaker 4: a lot of people to come together around understanding how
1:06:46
Speaker 4: we got to this moment, what strategies people have used,
1:06:49
Speaker 4: and also why our votes matter. You know, you all
1:06:52
Speaker 4: have done such great work sort of, you know, explaining
1:06:56
Speaker 4: to people what the stakes are of this upcoming election.
1:06:59
Speaker 4: And I think that, you know, being able to have
1:07:01
Speaker 4: an honest conversation about policing that's not dominated by political
1:07:06
Speaker 4: talking points That's not dominated by PR folks, but really
1:07:10
Speaker 4: getting to the real, you know, stories and history that
1:07:14
Speaker 4: reflects people's real experience. That's part of how you engage
1:07:17
Speaker 4: those voters who have lost faith. And so y'all are
1:07:19
Speaker 4: doing a great job. Listen to Empire City. You're going
1:07:22
Speaker 4: to be riveted. The episode is about to drop. Oh,
1:07:24
Speaker 4: my God. Oh, listen. Tommy, I'm trying to tell you.
1:07:27
Speaker 4: I can't wait.
1:07:28
Speaker 3: Listen, you're going to go on a fun walking tour
1:07:30
Speaker 3: of New York and hear about history you won't hear
1:07:32
Speaker 3: anywhere else. You'll learn about the actual history of Central
1:07:35
Speaker 3: Park and people who live there and what happened to them.
1:07:38
Speaker 3: You'll have some fun anecdotes with you and your daughter
1:07:41
Speaker 3: on a playground.
1:07:43
Speaker 1: What else?
1:07:43
Speaker 3: You'll learn about why the NYPD's own museum has been
1:07:47
Speaker 3: shut down and the implications of that. There's a lot
1:07:50
Speaker 3: of great stuff in the show. It's a tremendous show.
1:07:53
Speaker 3: So make sure you follow Empire City wherever you get
1:07:55
Speaker 3: your podcasts, and you can binge all of the episodes
1:07:58
Speaker 3: early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery
1:08:01
Speaker 3: app or on Apple Podcasts. Chen Jirai, thank you so
1:08:03
Speaker 3: much for doing the show.
1:08:04
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's our show for today. Thanks to Chen
1:08:12
Speaker 1: Jirai for coming on. Everyone check out Empire City. It's
1:08:15
Speaker 1: really great, and we will be back with a new
1:08:16
Speaker 1: show on Wednesday with Lovett and guest host Aaron Haynes
1:08:19
Speaker 1: from The 19th. Bye, everyone. If you want to get
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1:08:30
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Speaker 1: want in on this conversation. Pod Save America is a
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Speaker 1: Cricket Media production. Our producer is David Toledo. Our associate
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Speaker 1: producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is
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1:08:59
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1:09:01
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1:09:04
Speaker 1: Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline
1:09:08
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1:09:15
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1:09:31
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