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“The AP Bows to the Right-Wing Mob.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Joe Biden's ambitious agenda confronts the reality
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of a broken Congress. The Associated Press sets off a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: debate over objectivity in journalism after firing a reporter for
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: having political beliefs. And Lovett talks to New York political
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: reporter Jeff Colton about the upcoming New York City mayoral race.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But first, check out the latest episode of With Friends
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Like These, where Ana Marie Cox is joined by former
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to talk about his sobriety, his recovery,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and the work he's doing to destigmatize mental health. Great episode.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I enjoyed that one.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was good, right? And believe it or not,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America's 500th episode is coming up, and we
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: want to hear from you. Out of all the blabbing
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: we've done on this show for the last four years,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: what questions do you have that we still haven't answered?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: You can ask us anything. Send it to PSA at Crooked.com
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and we will try to answer as many as we
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: can on our Monday, May 31st episode. All right, let's
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: get to the news. Here's a headline in Sunday's Washington
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Post that I'm sure the White House was psyched to read.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Biden's big agenda is imperiled as his priorities stall in
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Congress and a debt fight looms. There were similar stories
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: from CNN, New York Times, Politico, a bunch of other outlets.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: So I thought we could give people a sense of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: where we are and how likely we are to see
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: progress on the president's most important priorities, his jobs plans,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: voting rights, police reform, immigration, and guns. On jobs and infrastructure,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the White House proposed a $ 2. 25 trillion plan. Republican Senator
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Shelley Moore Capito sent back a counteroffer of $ 500 billion.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And then on Friday... The White House countered the counteroffer
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: with $ 1. 7 trillion. They lowered spending on broadband, construction of
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: roads and bridges, and took out investments in manufacturing and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: research and development entirely. In response, Senator Capito said the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: offer was, quote, well above the range of what can
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: pass Congress with bipartisan support. And Susan Collins said the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: two sides are, quote, still pretty far apart. Tommy, do
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: you see any path to a deal here? How long
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: do you think the White House should keep up the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: performative bipartisanship?
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those developments aren't that helpful.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, I am, as a general matter, in favor
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: of doing as much as you can as quickly as
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: you can, because we have a very thin majority and
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: a very old bunch of senators. But, you know, you'd
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: think if there was room for a compromise, it would
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: be on infrastructure, because it's an issue where both sides
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: say they want to get something done. But, you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: as you mentioned, John, the Republican bill is $ 568 billion.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: And Last week, Biden said he was willing to cut
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: nearly that amount out of his bill to bring it down,
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: to bring the cost down to attract Republicans, and that
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: didn't seem to fly. The other, I think, probably much
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: bigger problem looming here is that President Biden wants to
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: pay for his bill by raising taxes on corporations. Republicans
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: want to pay for the bill by repurposing money or
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: creating fees that are going to get paid for by
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: working people. They want to tax all of us instead
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: of corporations. And it doesn't seem like there's much hope
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: of compromise there. So it does seem likely that we're
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: going to get back to a conversation about reconciliation and
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: using that process where you only need 50 plus one
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: votes sooner than later.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Well, what do you think? You think it's time for
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden to call up Joe Manchin and say, hey,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: this enough for you? Did you get what you were
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: looking for? A couple of meetings, Republicans, we all smiled.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: We said we're working together. We good?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Had a few laughs. Uh, Yeah, I don't think we're
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: at that point yet. I think we're working to get
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: to that point, right? That's what a lot of this
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: is about. By the way, one thing I would point
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: out is this is a good example of the headline
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: was worse than the story. The story was actually, I think,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: much more measured about what's working and what's not, some
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: ongoing negotiations that have been happening behind the scenes. You know,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: like negotiations over how big an infrastructure package should be
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: between Republicans who want it to be smaller and Democrats
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: who want to be bigger is normal politics. And the
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: question is, can normal politics continue all the way to passage?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Or is this normal politics that will stop once it
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: reaches the actual key moment of decision where the normal
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: politics that have been playing out amongst the more moderate
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: members of the Republican caucus meets the abnormal politics of
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: a revanchist, right-wing, anti-democratic party? movement that believes Joe Biden
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: is not a legitimate president. I don't know. I don't
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: think anybody knows. $ 500 billion plus $ 2. 2 trillion divided by
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: two is $ 1. 4 trillion. Is that the middle? I mean,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: if $ 500 is too little and $ 1. 8 trillion is now
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: too much, are they going to meet in the middle
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: and actually do a deal? I don't know. But it
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: seems like what's happening is they're going to try and pretend,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: or at least Pretend it's possible in the hopes that
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: it could be possible. And if it falls apart, then
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I do think Joe Biden calls Joe Manchin and says,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: we tried with these fuckos. It didn't happen. We got
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: to do something. And then, you know, it is up
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: to the mercurial, imperious mind of West Virginia senior senator.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And nobody knows.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: What he'll do.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I think that all the debate about the exact levels
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: of spending is sort of obscuring the real problems here,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: which is one, what Tommy just pointed out, which is
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that Republicans have drawn a red line on tax increases.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: They want user fees, a gas tax that's going to
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: fall on working class people, and they don't want to,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: they want to keep tax cuts for rich people. Like
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: there's no getting past that in the negotiations. And also
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: their definition of infrastructure. It's like Republicans don't want any
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: investments in clean energy or home health care for the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: elderly and disabled as part of this package. They just
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: want spending on roads, bridges, and broadband. So they're very
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: far apart on actually what the definition of infrastructure is,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: how to pay for it. It doesn't seem like there's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: any real common ground here. And also, remember Joe Manchin
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: long ago said he could see up to $ 4 trillion
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: in spending on infrastructure paid for with some corporate tax increases.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So if Joe Manchin was ready to go for that,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: then I think you wait.
• 6:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Like apparently the Republicans are going to come back with
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: another counteroffer, at least deciding whether they should come back
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: with another counteroffer this week. And then after that, I
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: think your time, you know, speed kills here. They don't
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: have a lot of they don't have a lot of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: time left to actually do something with all the other
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: priorities that we're about to talk about as well.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: The only thing I'd add to that, though, is you're
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: absolutely right about the like the places where there's just
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: no alignment. But the one place where there has been alignment,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: at least in the past couple of years, is if
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: you want to pay for it one way and we
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: want to pay for it another way, maybe we just
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: don't pay for it, is always an option that's sitting there.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I will tell you something that really annoyed me is
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: that this is something to do with Biden's budget. Jeff
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Stein in The Washington Post reported that. Biden's going to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: release his budget soon and it won't include the public option.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: It won't include prescription drug reform. It won't include student
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: debt relief. And I just don't really understand that play,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: partly because those were his campaign promises. But also prescription
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: drug reform is always the most popular. After tax increases
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: on the rich, prescription drug reform is like the most
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: popular policy that you could ever pull. It was like,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: you know, he mentioned it in his address to joint session.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. Now, I think the good news
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: is that Congress can just include it in a budget
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that passes anyway. So who cares if it's not in
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Biden's budget? But it is a little troubling that those
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: are not big priorities of his. So just about everything
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: else Biden wants to pass requires either eliminating the filibuster
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: or getting 10 Republican votes in the Senate. So on
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: police reform, the president promised to pass the George Floyd
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Justice in Policing Act by May 25th, which is the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: anniversary of Floyd's death. Biden's meeting that day with Floyd's family,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: but he won't be signing any legislation just yet. The
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: main sticking point in the negotiations is that Republicans are
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: opposed to eliminating or even loosening qualified immunity, which protects
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: police officers and departments from being sued over police misconduct.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Republican Senator Tim Scott floated a compromise where you can
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: sue the police department, but not the police officers themselves.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, meanwhile, said he'd support a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: final bill that excluded qualified immunity altogether. Tommy, what do
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, the interesting thing about these negotiations is there
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: was a political piece about.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: What was happening.
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: And I opened it expecting to see people attacking each
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: other and being critical.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: And it was the exact opposite.
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: You had members of Congress, the White House, even activists saying, look,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: missing Biden's deadline is fine. We feel like we're making
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: real progress. We want a good bill. We want a
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: fast bill. So that did make me actually hopeful for once.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: Qualified immunity is a big deal. It's a big sticking point.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: As you said, it shields police from civil suits, alleging
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: violations of federal law. And it's gotten twisted to the
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: point of making it, it's just being completely absurd. It's
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: almost impossible to get any kind of accountability for police misconduct.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: Tim Scott's plan, which would allow individuals who are harmed
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: to sue police departments rather than individuals, it's hard to
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: tell if that might be a compromise.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the question is.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: Does that threat, does the risk of a department being sued,
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: is that enough of a stick to get departments to
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: crack down on bad actors and really force systemic change?
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: I don't know the answers to that. I know progressives
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: on the House side really want any bill to include
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: language on qualified immunity. And so, you know, it's good
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: news that the negotiations are ongoing and that people feel
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: good about progress being made. The broader context, though, Sam
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: Sinhaway posted a link to a database that shows that
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: the police have killed 229 black people this year alone
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: in 2021. So this is an urgent problem for all
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: those people who are being hurt by police. There's also
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: a broader challenge of violent crime being significantly up in 2020.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: And obviously we need to stop violent crime for obvious reasons,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: but also because when people get scared. you see lots
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: of media coverage of it, right? That's when the worst
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: policies end up getting passed. Think Nixon running on law
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: and order, think post 9-11 policy. So I do think
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: this is something I need to deal with relatively quickly,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: but I don't know. I'm hopeful about what I've heard
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: out of Congress so far.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I think that holding departments liable and not police officers
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: is probably not enough of a stick to really change behavior.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: But Lovett, do you think that Democrats should be willing
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to move forward with the bill anyway if they end
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: up landing on a compromise? Because it seems like Republicans
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: don't want to go for full repeal or real or
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: significant reform to the doctrine of qualified immunity.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I would also just, I would say like one
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: of the most important pieces of this debate One of
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the biggest points that activists have made that I think
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: has been, I think, accepted due to the success of
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: protest and activism is that we need to not talk
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: just about bad apples. We need to talk about broken
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: systems inside of departments. I'm not an expert in this,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: but we're talking about lawsuits. We want to hold departments accountable.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: We want to hold individual officers who commit terrible crimes accountable.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: But we also want departments to change and feel the
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: threat of change. And I imagine in practice being able to,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: you know, lawsuits name multiple.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Defendants.
• 11:20
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And it's like if you can go after the department,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: obviously it would be better to be able to go
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: after officers who have committed terrible crimes and have been
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: extremely reckless, who have histories of racism in their conduct.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But I do think it would be a big and
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: important step.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I think on this one, because this is not ever
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: going to be passed, the reconciliation has to go through
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: regular order because it's not budgetary. The only way anything's
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: passing is if you get 10 Republicans on board.
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So qualified immunity is critical. But I can see what
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Jim Clyburn is saying, because, you know, some of the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: other provisions in this bill. Banning chokeholds, banning no-knock warrants
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: in federal cases, making easier to prosecute police officers by
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: lowering the legal standard from willfulness to recklessness, beefing up
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: pattern and practice investigations of police departments, a national database
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: of suspect officers. Like, if you can get all of
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: those with this Republican Congress and somehow get 10 Republicans
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: on board... you take it. And I think the key
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: is you don't then celebrate that you passed some perfect reform.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: You still blame the Republicans for blocking any kind of
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: real reform on qualified immunity. Karen Bass said this to
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Dan when he interviewed her in the pod a couple
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: months ago. You know, if you're a doctor and you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: screw up, you could get hit with a medical malpractice lawsuit.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But if you're a police officer and you screw up
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and kill someone, you can't. I mean, it's ridiculous. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: so I think if somehow you end up With a compromise,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you celebrate what you get in the compromise, but then,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you know, hit Republicans pretty hard for deciding to not
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: hold individual police officers accountable at all.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say it's a little bit, you know,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: some of this is what's public and what's private because
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: these are real negotiations. But like Tim Scott saying, here's
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: a potential compromise on qualified immunity. And then Clyburn saying
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: we don't need qualified immunity. kind of gives away the
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: game a little bit, right?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like Tim Scott's proposing a compromise there. Don't say
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you're going to ditch the qualified immunity just yet.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I was a bit confused about that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Clyburn tends to do that. So we've talked a lot
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: about the For the People Act, which isn't going anywhere
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: so long as Joe Manchin opposes it. But Manchin did
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: throw his support behind an expanded version of the John
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Lewis Voting Rights Act. What's that? Well, the original Voting
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Rights Act included a provision that required states and local
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: governments with a history of racist voting practices to to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: pre-clear any new election rules with the Department of Justice.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Then in 2013, the Supreme Court basically got rid of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: pre-clearance because John Roberts essentially said racism is over and
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: you don't need pre-clearance anymore in these states. The John
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Lewis Voting Rights Act would restore pre-clearance, but then Manchin
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: went even further and said that pre-clearance should apply to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: all 50 states, not just places with a history of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: racist voting practices. He's also got Lisa Murkowski on board
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: with this. So that's one Republican down and nine to go.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Love it. What do you think of the John Lewis
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act as a potential alternative to the For
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the People Act?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It's not an alternative. So first on this question of
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: applying it to all 50 states. So yeah, John Roberts
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: also invented a new constitutional rule about how rules can
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: apply to certain states and not others. He just kind
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: of invented it. And so this sort of does also
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: answer for that. One thing that happened after the Voting
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Rights Act ruling by the Roberts court was that you
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: saw an explosion of anti-voter, anti-voting laws, racist voter suppression
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: laws passing throughout the states that were governed by the
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Voting Rights Act, by this specific Voting Rights Act provision.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: But you also saw them everywhere. You saw them in Wisconsin.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: You saw them across the country. So I do think
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: actually it's a good thing to have preclearance apply everywhere
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: when you're seeing some of the same things that you
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: needed preclearance for that are happening in Texas happening in
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: states Republicans control that are outside of the Confederacy. On
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the For the People Act versus the John Lewis Voting
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Rights Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would do
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: a lot to protect against changes that take place in
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: the future. It does nothing to protect against the voter
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: suppression that has already taken place. It does nothing about gerrymandering.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is a really
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: important piece of what we need to do to protect
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: people's votes, but it's just not remotely enough. It wouldn't
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: answer a huge number of problems that Republicans have created
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: to try to suppress the vote. So yeah, it needs
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: to happen. It's just so clearly not enough.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think it's quite that clear cut. Look,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: I think HR1 is us going on offense. We're taking
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: on a whole bunch of anti-democratic problems. It expands early voting.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: It gets rid of partisan gerrymandering. It goes after the
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: broken campaign finance system.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: That is.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: gold standard of all the things we want to do.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: To me, I view the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: bill as defense. It provides a way to block voter
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: suppression bills and then potentially to weaken some that have
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: already been passed. So I do think that can help
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: fix some of the damage, but not all of it
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: and not in a systematic way like H.R.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: 1 would.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: So obviously, that's what I prefer. It just seems like
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Manchin holds the keys of the kingdom here. And I
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: thought it was pretty hopeful that he was not only
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: talking about John Lewis, but also trying to apply it
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: to all 50 states because, yeah, I mean, it's great
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: to restore preclearance to the nine states that were subjected
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: to it until 2013 when it was struck down. But
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: I do think, like Lovett said, it's important to add
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: to that.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It's also important to realize that the 50 states would
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: fix John Roberts' problem with the original Voting Rights Act
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: preclearance thing. And basically what John Roberts said is it's
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: unfair to apply the standard to some states and not
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: other states.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: So that's the new rule. That's the new constitutional rule
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: he invented.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fucked up. It's ridiculous. But if you do
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: all 50 states, you at least solve that problem. I
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: actually think you should do all 50 states and then
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: make the law retroactive to the beginning of this year
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: so that preclearance would also involve the Georgia law, what's
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: going on in Texas, what's going on in Arizona, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: then you can do that. The real downside, I think,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to the preclearance stuff is you know, it kicks these laws,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: these voting changes and voting in election laws to the
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: federal government, to the DOJ to make a determination. That's
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: great when Joe Biden's in power, but what happens next
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: time there's a Republican administration? And next time, you know,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: there's another Trump in there, that's not really going to work.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So it's definitely not as strong as some of the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: provisions for the People Act, but like if it's all
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: we can get and somehow we can get fucking 10
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Republicans on board, then great. So we haven't talked much
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: about immigration reform, but apparently- Chuck Schumer is exploring whether
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: he can use a 50-vote budget reconciliation bill to pass
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. Democrats
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: are hopeful because a 2005 reconciliation bill apparently included a
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: provision to issue high-skilled visas to immigrants. Republicans think that
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the parliamentarian will never allow this. And some Republicans are
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: saying they'd be willing to do a bipartisan bill that
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: offers a pathway to citizenship just for dreamers in exchange
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: for beefing up border security. We've heard that one before.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: The same fucking deal. The same deal.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: That's the deal Trump said no to.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Trump said no to that deal.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: On guns, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told the Washington Post
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that the conversations he's had with John Cornyn on expanding
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: background checks have been the most substantive negotiations he's ever
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: had on the issue of guns, but also said he
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: was frustrated that it's been six weeks of no progress
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and that there's got to be an end of the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: road at some point. My question is, Broader question on
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. Like, what's the political incentive for Republicans
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to cut a bipartisan deal on immigration or guns or
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: really any of these issues at this point? Tommy?
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I don't I don't think there is any.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: But I mean, that's why the Schumer news that he
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: was looking to do this reconciliation was was actually hopeful.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, it is it speaks to how stupid the
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: congressional law process has gotten and how ridiculous it is
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: to to cling to the filibuster as some sort of
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: valuable institution. You know, you now have activist groups and
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: senators hiring former parliamentarians to try to figure out the
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: best way to convince some unelected official who works in
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: the Senate to get a bill through their process.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: But that's where we are.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: But I think if Schumer can figure out how to
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: get a pathway to citizenship. And to expedite citizenship for
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: DACA recipients through reconciliation, they should absolutely do that. They
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: should jam it through and get it done. It's something
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: the Democratic Party has been promising to do for decades.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: It's been blocked at every pass by cowards like Marco
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Rubio and others, but they should just do it.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Well, but I just keep thinking that on all of
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: these issues where you hear, oh, there have been good production.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: conversations with the Republican side, I just think to myself,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: it's in the Republican Party's interest and the leadership's interest
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to completely oppose everything Joe Biden does. Mitch McConnell has
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: admitted as much. So I kind of think that we're
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: back to on issues where you can pass something through reconciliation,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: there's a possibility on issues where You need 10 Republican
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: senators in the Senate. We're not going to get anything done. Now,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the evidence to the contrary is that Joe Biden just
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: signed the COVID-19 hate crimes bill, which was bipartisan, which
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: almost all Republicans voted for, except I think like 35
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: in the House and Josh Hawley in the fucking Senate
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: were the only ones who voted against the hate crimes bill.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: This is a bill that would address the rise in
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic by making it easier
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to identify, report, track and review hate crimes. What do
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: you think? Like, do you think there's hope in some
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: of these bipartisan bills, considering the Republicans just joined together
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to pass the hate crimes bill?
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: There's always hope.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Look, the hate crimes bill was in the interest of
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Republicans and who now can say they're not racist and
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: can point to this very kind of this bipartisan step,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: which is ultimately, I think is important. I think it's
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: an importance. It's important symbolically. I think it does create some,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: some useful tools, both in terms of tracking hate crimes
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: and responding to hate crimes, monitoring hate crimes. Like I
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: think that those are, those are valuable stools.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: It's a small bill.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: It's a small step.
• 21:18
  Speaker 8: It is.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: And, and, and it was a symbolic effort. And of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: course they all wanted to be a part of it,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: except for Josh Hawley in the Senate and, you know, a,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: you know, a couple dozen. uh, sickos in the house. But, uh, um,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: we got, we got a bunch of sickos over there, but, uh,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: on guns, like we've done this before. We did mansion
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: to me, right? Like, like negotiating. We've had these negotiations
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: again and again and again on, on DACA, uh, and, uh, uh,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: border security. We've had these negotiations again and again. And again,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: at a certain point, it's like, let's stop pretending these
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Venn diagrams have an overlap. They don't, you know, we
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: talk a lot about personalities, but there are these structural
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: reasons why we have, this level of dysfunction. It's not
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: just the filibuster. Filibuster is important. Filibuster makes it worse.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: But we have a system where it is no longer
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: in the interest of Republicans to work with Democrats. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: in the interest of Republicans to make Democrats as big
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: of failures as humanly possible as we head into the midterms.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: That will not change. If there's an opportunity to do
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: something for dreamers, if there's an opportunity to do certain
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: things in advance of that, I do think it is
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: perhaps Republicans viewing it as in their own local interest
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: to have something to talk about at the expense of
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: the national party, at the expense of the national campaign,
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: or genuine moments of conscience. But I think the idea
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: of waiting for genuine moments of conscience, you'll be waiting
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: for a long time. So no, I'm not super optimistic,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: but it's nice to be hopeful, John. It's nice to
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: have hope.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Tommy, the only one that I'm sort of hopeful about
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: is police reform legislation potentially because They've put Tim Scott
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: in charge. Tim Scott's looking for a compromise. And if
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Tim Scott seems happy with the compromise, it feels like
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it's going to be difficult for McConnell and the rest
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of the leadership to then sort of oppose Tim Scott's compromise.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: But again, one of their favorite attacks on Democrats is
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: defunding the police. And if they join hands with Democrats
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: to pass a bipartisan police reform thing, they sort of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: lose that attack.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: There's a political incentive, a very cynical incentive. disgusting one,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: but a political incentive for Republicans to not get anything
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: done on this and just to call us soft on crime.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: And that makes me very worried. I mean, I agree
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: with Lovett. The hate crimes bill, definitely important, far more
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: limited in scope, right? It makes it easier to report
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: hate crimes. It authorizes some grants to state and local governments.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: I just don't know that there was a big, loud
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: constituency that was lobbying against that legislation. Whereas when you're
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: talking about police reform, you have police unions loudly shockingly
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: loudly and attacking any proposal that's put forward. And so
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: on immigration, you have Fox News and a whole right-wing
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: ecosystem that has spent years, if not decades, demagoguing immigrants
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: and people of color in this country. And now you're
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: seeing Republicans say, well, we can't do anything on immigration
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: until you get the border problem solved. So they're always
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: going to create a new hurdle that makes it impossible
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: for them to be bipartisan in some way. And unfortunately,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: like people report those made up hurdles in good faith.
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: Remember Marco Rubio just said he could no longer trust Obama.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: So we had to walk away from immigration reforms when
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: obviously he walked away because he was scared of the politics.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: So that's we've all seen this play before.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I also say to like you look at like, again,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: it is this thing of what happens when like normal
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: politics meets abnormal politics. Like you had this negotiation over
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: a commission to look at the insurrection.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Republicans, Democrats in committee working together. They come up with
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: a bipartisan proposal. It passes in the House and it
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: heads over to the Senate. And then you have Marco
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Rubio saying, I can't support this bipartisan commission. It's a
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: partisan commission. You have Republicans turn against it. It's like
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: there are these fundamental problems that inform every single one
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: of these debates that's always there. It doesn't go away.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't go away.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Again, we're operating in two different realities here. On one hand,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Republicans are like, no, we're not going to support the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: bipartisan commission that's set to investigate our own attempted murder.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: But like, yeah, they're going to give Joe Biden a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: win on immigration or guns.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: But that's why I'm just not as cynical about the
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: immigration one. If Schumer can find a way to do
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: it through reconciliation, that's awesome, right? I mean, we're happy
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: about that. No one's credibly arguing there's going to be
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: a bipartisan bill. So like, yeah, of course not.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: But it's like also like, it's so fucking stupid. Like, okay,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: we figured out a way to get it through reconciliation. Okay, great.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: You've like, you can call that preserve, like mansion and
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: cinema can tell themselves whatever they want. If you're like,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: that's not preserving the filibuster. That's eliminating the filibuster in
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: another way.
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: That's just eliminating the filibuster for immigration because you found
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: a way to word something to meet the demands of
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: one bureaucrat in the government. Like all of this is
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: sort of circling around the central problem. of a Republican
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: party that has lost to reality and a Senate beholden
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: to a 60-vote threshold that doesn't make sense.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Republicans realize what their goal is. Senate Democrats, 98%
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: of them realize what their goal is. It's only Joe
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who seem confused about the real
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: incentives in politics today. All right, we've talked before about
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: how the political media's obsession with bipartisanship comes from their
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: obsession with balance. This was taken to the extreme last
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: week when the Associated Press fired a news associate in
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Arizona named Emily Wilder for what they say are violations
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of the company's social media policy that occurred after she
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: took the job on May 3rd. The AP has yet
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: to specify which post they're referring to, but the dismissal
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: came after right-wing media and assholes like Tom Cotton attacked
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Wilder's Pro-Palestinian activism in college, as well as a tweet
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: from the other week where she said that when it
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: comes to reporting, quote, using Israel but never Palestine or
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: war but not siege and occupation are political choices that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: reveal bias. Wilder, who's Jewish, wrote in a statement after
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: she was fired, quote, I am one victim. to the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: asymmetrical enforcement of rules around objectivity and social media that
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: has censored so many journalists, particularly Palestinian journalists and other
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: journalists of color before me, what does it mean for
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: this industry that even sharing the painful experiences of Palestinians
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: or interrogating the language we use to describe them can
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: be seen as irredeemably biased? This morning, over 100 AP
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: staff signed an open letter to management saying they strongly
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: disapprove of Wilder's firing and demand updated social media policies.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: So this has become a big media controversy. A lot
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: of reporters are weighing in in support of Wilder. Lovett,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: what do you think about the AP's decision here and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: how they handled it?
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Look, I think they wanted to avoid controversy and it worked.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Mission accomplished. No controversy here.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think cancel cultures exist. I
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: think you can't, it's like sand that falls through your
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: fingers if you try to figure out what it is.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: But if it means anything, it means when, it's not
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: a mob online, it's nothing to do with that. It's
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: when corporations or other organizations view it in their interest
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: to dispense with someone rather than deal with some kind
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: of public backlash or reaction. Cancel culture is not the
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: decision of Twitter. It's the decision of managers, leaders of
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: companies and organizations. And time and time again, when these
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: controversies happen, the mistake that news organizations make, that corporations make,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: it is they get so concerned about a 24-hour, 48-hour, unfair,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: bad faith, or even at times good faith response to
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: something to see the longer term interest on their employees,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: on their organization, on their reputation. And that's what happened here.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: They overreacted in the moment out of fear for the
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: appearance of bias, not bias, the appearance of bias, the
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: perception of bias, and they are paying for it and
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: they deserve to pay for it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they just could not have screwed this up worse.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: I think one clear lesson out of this is that
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: I think media organizations campaigns, governments, they need to do
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: a better job of recognizing and dealing with coordinated right-wing
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: disinformation campaigns. This started as a Twitter thread by the
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: Stanford College Republicans, half of which were them pretending to
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: be upset about jokes about Ben Shapiro and Sheldon Adelson, right?
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: And then it led to this panicked, rushed decision that
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: seems to have pissed off half of the journalists at
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: the Associated Press. And I think the bad faith nature
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: of the attacks was best summed up by the Washington
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: Free Beacon, which is a right-wing DC outlet, where they
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: said this woman, Emily Wilder, who worked in Arizona, her
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: views in college could, quote, fuel concerns about the AP's
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: objectivity amid revelations that the news outlet shared an office
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: building with Hamas military intelligence in Gaza. If you can't
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: see that for just the absurd nonsense that it is,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: there's something wrong with you.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: And, you know, like it's not easy in the moment.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: I often think about back in 2009 when we just
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: got to the White House, when Glenn Beck would go
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: on Fox News and do these crazy whiteboard conspiracy theory rants,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: but he would do it to like some relatively obscure staffer.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: accuse them of being a Soros plant or just like whatever,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: and just go off on these people day after day
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: after day. I don't know that we did enough to
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: defend them at the time. I don't really fully know
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: the toll it took on individuals who had to live
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: through this. There was a case of Shirley Sherrod, who
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: was a staffer at the Department of Agriculture, who was
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: forced to resign after Breitbart released a selectively edited video
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: of a speech she gave. They later watched the whole
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: video and tried to fix that and rehire her. But
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: The focus in these situations should be on these staffers
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: who are under assault, who are getting threats often, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: helping them support them through it. And Olivia Nuzzi, who
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: writes for New York Magazine, had a long, smart thread
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: about this, where she said that every time a media
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: outlet deals with a situation like this as a wound
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: to cauterize, as a PR problem to be solved, they
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: invite it to happen again and again. And they also
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: perpetuate the absurd myth That reporters aren't human beings, that
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: they haven't lived through experiences, that they don't have opinions
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: when all of us know that is bullshit. Reporting, podcasting,
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: everyone's job is like you're all doing the best you
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: can with the experience you've lived and the views you
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: have and you're trying to learn from different experiences and
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: suggesting otherwise, it's nonsensical.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And it's not just that it's suggesting that reporters aren't
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: human and don't have natural biases that come from their
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: experiences and their identity and what they believe. What's wrong
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: with letting the audience know that your beliefs and experiences
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and identity can inform your reporting without rendering it inaccurate?
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: What's wrong with having a diverse set of experiences that
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: somehow inform the work that you do? You know, the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: whole timeline of this is completely fucking ridiculous. the AP
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: told her, told Emily Wilder that her college activism and
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: tweets weren't a problem and that they would protect her
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: after the right-wing campaign first started. And then soon after
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: they fired her for what they say are the recent tweets.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: And if you look at the recent tweets, it's exactly
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the one that I read from her. And then she
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: like retweeted a few other tweets that showed sort of
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: some of the destruction in Palestine. And then that was it. Now,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: you know, news outlets will say like, It will further
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: erode faith in journalism to have bias because, you know,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: readers won't trust them if they perceive bias. It's all
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: about the perception of bias. But what they don't understand
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: is a major goal of the right wing media and
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Republicans is to erode faith in journalism.
• 33:18
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Like they've openly admitted this. Trump calls on the other people.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Steve Bannon said it was the press is the opposition party.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: If you're a media outlet, you can't base all your
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: reporting or hiring or firing decisions on. on the mere
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: perception of bias, because it's never going to stop the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: right from attacking you as being biased. You have to
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: just have faith that your reporting is accurate. That's the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: only thing you can do.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: I do think these sort of old school organizations have
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: struggled for years with the reality that sometimes they are
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: reporting on Republicans and Democrats all together inside of a democracy, right?
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Republicans and Democrats debating each other. And there are, I think,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: legitimate questions about bias that have been raised from time
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: to time about mainstream outlets that like they should consider,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: they should process. But what they really struggle to recognize
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: is when actually, sorry, you don't have to like it,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: but you're actually in here with Democrats while a anti-democratic,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: anti-free press movement is attacking you from without. And I'm
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but That's the reality
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: of what's going on. You are being undermined for the
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: purposes of a right-wing project. That is an anti-democratic project.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and no one's asking you to defend Democrats. You shouldn't.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: That's not your job. At least defend your own institution.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: From the assault on the free press that the right
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: is generating every single day. Like, be honest to what's
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: going on here and defend yourself.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And also just like, hey, Twitter time isn't real. No
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: one lives on Twitter time You don't need to live
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: on Twitter time. We all have from time to time
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: have felt the like, oh, things are happening right now.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Every like Twitter has this ability. Social media has this
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: ability to like stretch out the present and make the
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: present bigger and bigger and bigger. And like that, like
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: everyone's living in this huge gaping chasm of a present.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Chill the fuck out. This could you don't need to
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: react like see if the Stanford Republicans are still on
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: your shit on Wednesday. You know, like nothing. You don't release.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Everyone must release a statement explaining themselves immediately. Anytime there
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: is a controversy on Twitter. Why haven't you released a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: statement for yourself yet? Who the fuck cares?
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this would have been an issue that would have
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: been relegated to Fox News, the Free Beacon, Tom Cotton's
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: fever dreams. I do not think that all of us
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: would be talking about the tweets of a new reporter
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: covering the local Arizona beat. This is a textbook case
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: of manufacturing a problem for yourself.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Wasn't even actually covering, her job wasn't even to cover
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She's covering news in Arizona and they still,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's crazy.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Tom Cotton has her sending rockets from Ashkelon.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: And by the way, if you talk to journalists that
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: actually do cover Israel and Palestine and Gaza, like Slate
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: had a long piece on this where they talked to
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: a bunch of folks who had covered that beat or
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: still covering that beat, and most of them wouldn't go
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: on the record, but a lot of them expressed their
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: frustration with decisions by their editors to create balance in
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: reporting about, say, civilian casualties, even when the death toll
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: in Gaza was exponentially higher than elsewhere. And Peter Beinart,
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: who writes on these issues often, has talked about how
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: reporters feel pressure to use sort of pre-vetted language to
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: talk about what's happening to avoid controversy. There's entire entities
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: set up to police language used by reporters. And like
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: some of the loudest opponents of cancel culture, like Barry
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: Weiss is like an OG cancel culture fan because when
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: she was at Columbia, she was part of efforts to
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: force out faculty members who were perceived as anti-Israel. So,
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: you know, there's just hypocrisy swirling throughout this. There's so
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: many bad faith attacks. We all just need to like
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: be better prepared, inoculate ourselves. And then what you do
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: in this instance is you support this person who just
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: started working for you to get through it. You don't
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: freak out and fire her and then refuse to tell
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: her why she's even fired.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: It's almost like a minor point, but like asking the question, like,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: do we call it a war or do we call
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: it a siege, right? Do we say Palestine? Do we
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: say Israel? Those are important questions.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Big time.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Fair question.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: And it is a bias. It may be a bias
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you think should be in there. Like bias... Bias is taken.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: We all have biases. We all have biases in every
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: different direction all the time. We all have many facets
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: of our identities that we bring to everything that we do,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: including all of these reporters.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Stephen Rich of The Washington Post tweeted that the punishment
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: disparities between Chris Cuomo and Emily Wilder is a good
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: example of how this industry often works. For those of
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you who don't know, Cuomo was criticized after reports that
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: he was advising his brother, Governor Andrew Cuomo, not to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: resign after allegations of sexual harassment. CNN said this was inappropriate.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: but didn't discipline Cuomo, though they did just dump Rick
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Santorum finally as a contributor after he said there isn't
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: much Native American culture in American culture. Tommy, what does
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: this say about who gets to define objectivity in journalism?
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, well, just on the Santorum piece, I mean,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: they talk about the flip side of the AP story.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: They waited like a month to get rid of the
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: guy when I think it was clear to everyone that
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: he has added no value to the network for a
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: very long time. It was time for him to go
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: for a lot of reasons. I mean, on the Cuomo piece,
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: like I've never been a Chris Cuomo watcher or like
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: a huge fan. Like I didn't mind actually the Cuomo
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: and Cuomo interviews during the pandemic.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: It was a scary time. It was kind of fun.
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: Like the shtick was mildly entertaining, but obviously it wasn't objective.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Obviously it was a conflict of interest to interview your
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: governor brother on your TV show and get a boost
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: in your ratings. But, Joining a conference call with your
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: brother's political advisors to discuss the PR response to sexual
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: assault allegations is just so far over what the ethical
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: line should be here. I'm not really sure that CNN
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: can come back from this in terms of how they
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: will be viewed by other reporters. Because it just shows
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: that the response is not about ethics. They're about money
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: and ratings and power and public relations considerations and none
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: of the high mindsets. stuff that they would like to
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: tell us these decisions are made based on. I mean,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: this was, this is pretty shocking to me that Cuomo
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: is not even, he's not getting fired.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: He's not getting punished in any way, shape or form. Right.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And he hit it. That's the thing too. It's like
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the one, At least be I think what we can
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: ask of journalists is to be transparent about their beliefs
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and biases and then say, OK, well, this is what
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: I think. But also, you know, you can trust me
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: that this actual reporting is is true and accurate and fair.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And for Chris for Chris Cuomo to just do that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and hide it and just secretly be on calls with
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: his brother advising him about that while he's a journalist
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: on the network, even if he's not covering Andrew Cuomo's
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: sexual harassment scandal. it's still crazy to just hide that
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: from your network and the viewers at the very least.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: In the wake of, I think, getting special treatment in
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: terms of COVID testing and a whole bunch of other
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: things that have come out in the last few months.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a lot of lines crossed there.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: I think you're being, I think you're, you're, you're, you know,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: you have to weigh that against Chris's contribution to journalism.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: One last thing on the Rick Santorum piece of this.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Rick Santorum is no longer on CNN. That's nice. He
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: wasn't very good to watch and didn't have very smart.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Things to say.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: You think that that spot is getting filled by some,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, like smart, sophisticated person? No,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: like there's a spot now available on CNN for a
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: right wing defender of some kind. Like it's a role
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: and they're going to cast somebody for that role. And
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: it will be somebody who says new and exciting, despicable
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: things because that's the person, that's the slot they need
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: to fill.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: Jeffrey Lord 2.0 is what it'll be.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Do you guys have thoughts on like what kind of
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: standards and social media policies would be appropriate for news
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: outlets to set for journalists? Obviously, this is a sort
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: of a tough conversation and debate to have.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: I do not.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: And I really don't just because like I've never managed
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: a newsroom or edited somebody. But I do think that
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: like our entire society needs to have a reckoning about journalists.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: The fact that a whole bunch of people are aging
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: into the workforce, having put all kinds of stupid shit
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: on social media. And that's in no way like excusing
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: things that are completely out of bounds. But I do
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: think we all need to reflect on the fact that
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: there's a permanent record that we've all now created.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: That didn't exist for job.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: Seekers 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: So that's one piece of it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I thought Jose del Real of the Washington Post had
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: a good tweet. He said, you know, we need to
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: create space for honest, tough conversations within our newsrooms about
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: how to make sure our personal biases aren't blinding us
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: instead of pretending those don't exist. I think that's true.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: And I also think that there's been a reckoning, especially
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: over the last couple of years, where I think it
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: would be wise for newsrooms and outlets to to understand
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: that the experiences and identities of a lot of their
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: reporters can add value to the reporting rather than detract
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: from it. You know, one of the reasons we are
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: all aware of how bad police brutality has become is
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: that a lot of reporters, especially black reporters, volunteered to
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: go to Ferguson and report on the violence that they
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: saw and in many cases personally experienced. And they realized
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: and Wesley Lowry talks about this a lot. They realized
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that outlets had been publishing the police side of the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: story without questioning whether it was accurate. And it turns
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: out that it wasn't. And the reason we know it
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't is because all of these young reporters, a lot
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: of black reporters, went down, volunteered to go to Ferguson
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: and covered it themselves. And Wes Lowry tells the story,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: he was just tweeting it in response to this Emily
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Wilder thing, that while he was being tear gassed in Ferguson,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: a senior editor called to complain that he had referred
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: to police as, quote, cops, which could appear biased or dismissive.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: But when when there's a reporter in Ferguson getting tear
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: gassed and trying to say, hey, what the cops have
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: been telling us this whole time might not be accurate.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And the editor is like, yeah, the real problem is
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: police versus cops as a language. Think we've got a problem.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, I'd say it's interesting that you
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: say that because I agree with everything that you and
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Tommy just said. And I just add two things. One,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know how you make standards. We live online increasingly.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: But I do think one place to begin is to
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: stop worrying what things seem like and worry about what
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: they are. When you say, I am worried that you
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: will appear biased, what you are saying is, I don't
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: trust the audience. You're saying, I'm a pundit, and I'm
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: smarter than them, and I know they can't handle the truth.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: So I think that's bullshit. And then two, if anybody
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: tweets that gif of that real housewife doing a spit take,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: they're unhirable. That's it. They're done. Their careers are over.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: They have nothing to contribute to society. It's sad, but
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: it's true. And some things you can't come back from.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: We need a broader reckoning with reaction gifts in this
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: country generally. I think this conversation about social media standards
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: and norms for journalists does dovetail with a broader conversation
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: about what issues are objective or not and what things
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: can be both sides. For example, democracy feels like an
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: objectively good thing that we all support here in the U.S.,
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: From a self-interested standpoint, if I'm in the media, I
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: would think to myself, huh, if you go from democracy
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: to autocracy, the first thing that's going to go is
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: a free press. So maybe we should stand up for
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: that and fight for that. But you don't necessarily see
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: that in the coverage when you see voter suppression laws
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: getting passed, people's right to vote being restricted, et cetera,
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: et cetera. So I do think this is part of
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: a broader rethinking of coverage, what is true, what is false,
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: what is right, what is wrong, and how to bring
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: different perspectives into conversations that historically have not included the
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: entire country, have been, you know, sort of a group
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: of people, mostly white, mostly male, who have been driving
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: the conversation.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: And by the way, and like it's had real consequence
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: when one of the, you know, you're not allowed to
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: be partisan for Democrats. You're barely allowed to be partisan
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: for democracy, but you're allowed to be partisan for bipartisanship.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And that's at real cost. And that's at real cost
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: to the way we have debates in this country.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: And I will say one last thing. As we were
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: prepping for this, I was scrolling through Twitter and I
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: happened to see news that Rachel Campos Duffy, formerly of
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: The Real World, was just promoted to Fox & Friends
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: weekend co-host, even though she receives a paycheck from Fox
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: News and the RNC at the same time. So that's
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: what's going on over there in journalism.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a merger. That's a merger a long
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: time in the making.
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: Sean Hannity, right, was loaning his plane to Trump or
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: Pence or somebody during the campaign. He was speaking at events.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, That's the challenge with all of this. As
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: much as they complain about liberal bias, they know they're
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: full of shit. They know they're totally biased and they
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: just don't care. The way they deal with incidents like
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: this is to ignore them and say you're a liberal
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: and I don't care what you think and they move on.
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying we should adopt that, but we should
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: just know how asymmetric this whole conversation is.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Not on the level.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Lovett talks to New York political
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: reporter Jeff Colton about the New York mayoral race.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: As New York City emerges after a year of loss
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: and hardship, 15 candidates are vying for the chance to
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: replace Bill de Blasio as New York City's next mayor.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: And those are some tall, weird shoes to fill. It
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: is a crowded primary. Technically speaking, it is a ranked
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: choice clusterfuck. It also is a lens at some of
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: the big intralift debates that extend well beyond New York.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Here to help is city and state political reporter and
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: author of Campaign Confidential, Jeff Colt. And Jeff, welcome to
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America.
• 46:58
  Speaker 7: Thanks so much for having me on. Excited to bring
• 47:01
  Speaker 7: you into the local world of New York City politics.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: I'll just be honest. This raised me. I don't vote
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: in New York. I vote in L.A., but I'm a
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: New Yorker by birth and mentality. But it's been so
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: hard to figure out what the hell is going on.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: And so for listeners in New York who are just
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: tuning in to the primary themselves and for people outside
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: of the city, can you just give us the highest
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: of high level overviews of where the race stands right now? Sure, sure.
• 47:33
  Speaker 7: So yeah, we're looking to replace Bill de Blasio, who's
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: been in office now for seven and a half years.
• 47:36
  Speaker 7: He's term limited out. So there will be a new mayor,
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: no more de Blasio. We've got basically eight serious Democrats
• 47:45
  Speaker 7: that are competing here eight, which is a pretty big field.
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: And honestly, I think all eight of them have a
• 47:51
  Speaker 7: path to victory. But of course, the real story here
• 47:55
  Speaker 7: is Andrew Yang, this national figure who got a lot
• 48:00
  Speaker 7: of attention coming out of nowhere to run for president,
• 48:03
  Speaker 7: decided to run for mayor of his hometown, New York.
• 48:05
  Speaker 7: He's lived here for 25 years. maybe 26 and he
• 48:09
  Speaker 7: has dominated the race. You know, even though he has
• 48:12
  Speaker 7: no experience in local politics and in city hall, that
• 48:16
  Speaker 7: sort of thing. In fact, he himself has never even
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: voted for mayor before. He decided to come in and
• 48:22
  Speaker 7: you know what? He has really shaken up the race.
• 48:23
  Speaker 7: He's the center of attention center of energy here. However,
• 48:28
  Speaker 7: we have another candidate really gaining ground on him and
• 48:30
  Speaker 7: all the most recent polling. We see Eric Adams, the
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer either gaining
• 48:38
  Speaker 7: ground on Yang or coming close or ahead of him,
• 48:43
  Speaker 7: in fact. And those are just the top two candidates.
• 48:46
  Speaker 7: Like I said, there's six others. Some of them are
• 48:49
  Speaker 7: more progressive. Some of them are running on a more
• 48:52
  Speaker 7: business-friendly platform. Everybody is running as a reaction to Bill
• 48:56
  Speaker 7: de Blasio in many different ways. And the election is
• 49:01
  Speaker 7: on June 22nd. So we've got about a month from
• 49:04
  Speaker 7: when we're recording this.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: So- Uh, there've been a few candidates who have tried
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: to like climb up to get into the anti-Yang spot
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: and what a, what a world that that's what we're
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: talking about. One of them is Scott Stringer, uh, uh, comptroller. Uh,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: but his campaign has been rocked by sexual harassment allegations.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Catherine Garcia, uh, who, uh, was, uh, is in a,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: an administrator. She ran the sanitation department. She was the first,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: I believe, she called on Stringer to drop out, but
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: a number of others have. He didn't. He's pushed back.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: It's kind of in limbo. What's the status of his candidacy?
• 49:43
  Speaker 7: So Scott Stringer is still a contender. However, I mean,
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: he's had quite a rollercoaster ride. If you asked me
• 49:52
  Speaker 7: a year ago who I thought the next mayor of
• 49:53
  Speaker 7: New York City would be, I would say Scott Stringer.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: He's the New York City Comptroller.
• 49:57
  Speaker 7: It's a citywide elected position, kind of the CFO of
• 50:01
  Speaker 7: the city, and has been working towards a mayoral run
• 50:04
  Speaker 7: for literally 10 or 20 years. I mean, just doing
• 50:07
  Speaker 7: everything he can to position himself for this race. And
• 50:11
  Speaker 7: he was in a pretty solid position, had a ton
• 50:14
  Speaker 7: of labor union endorsements, a ton of endorsements from young, uh,
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: progressive elected officials that were kind of, even though he
• 50:23
  Speaker 7: himself is a, you know, 60 something white man really
• 50:26
  Speaker 7: building up, uh, this, this, uh, multicultural, multiracial base of support. Um,
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: not unlike a Bernie Sanders campaign, uh, you know, different politics,
• 50:36
  Speaker 7: Scott Stringer is not a socialist, but he's, he was
• 50:38
  Speaker 7: kind of following that election playbook, uh, that we've, that
• 50:41
  Speaker 7: we've seen from, from Bernie, uh, And then, yes, last
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: month was rocked by this allegation. A former volunteer of
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: his from a 2001 campaign, so this is 20 years ago,
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: accused Scott Stringer of sexually harassing her and even sexually
• 50:56
  Speaker 7: assaulting her. He said, yeah, I knew her.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: She was a friend.
• 51:01
  Speaker 7: We had a brief relationship and this was totally consensual and.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Really muddied the.
• 51:08
  Speaker 7: Waters by basically saying that she's doing this for political reasons.
• 51:11
  Speaker 7: And Jean Kim, the woman who alleged this, said, no,
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: this was totally unwanted. You know, he was a higher
• 51:19
  Speaker 7: up in the campaign. He was he was preying on me.
• 51:24
  Speaker 7: So that's the background. And the political situation now is
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: that Stringer had a very narrow path to victory before
• 51:29
  Speaker 7: the allegation. And right now he has a much narrower
• 51:32
  Speaker 7: path to victory.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Into that void, you pointed out that Eric Adams has
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: been rising. He is a former police officer, as you said,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: former Brooklyn Borough President. It was actually, I think, I
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: thought striking how much of the debate seemed to revolve
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: around him a bit in a way that you would
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: think would have been around Yang, given the fact that
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: he has been in the poll position for so long.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: One of the biggest points of contention in the debate,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: in the race, has been policing. It's obviously been a
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: huge topic in the national debate. There was this moment
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: between former counselor to the mayor, Maya Wiley, And Eric Adams,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: let's roll this clip.
• 52:07
  Speaker 8: But my question is to Eric Adams. Eric, 685,000 people,
• 52:11
  Speaker 8: 85% Black, 88% innocent. That's what Stop and Frisk was
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: at its height. that my former organization, the ACLU, proclaimed
• 52:27
  Speaker 8: a racist practice and won a court case on. And
• 52:31
  Speaker 8: just a year ago, you called it a great tool
• 52:37
  Speaker 8: and have said that you used it And I just
• 52:40
  Speaker 8: want to know, because as a civil rights lawyer, all
• 52:42
  Speaker 8: I can say is there was nothing okay about it.
• 52:47
  Speaker 8: And it certainly was nothing more than lazy policing, certainly
• 52:50
  Speaker 8: kept people's constitutional rights violated. How can New Yorkers trust
• 52:55
  Speaker 8: you to protect us and to keep us safe from
• 52:59
  Speaker 8: police misconduct?
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: You know, thank you so much, Maya.
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: And every time you raise that question, it really just
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: shows your failure of understanding law enforcement.
• 53:11
  Speaker 9: So let me give you.
• 53:12
  Speaker 8: Well, having chaired the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board,
• 53:15
  Speaker 8: I certainly understand misconduct.
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: And yes, yes, you chaired it. And we both know
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: that how much it was a failure under you.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about what Eric Adams
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: has been saying around policing and how the national debate
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: over police misconduct and injustice has influenced this sort of
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: hyperlocal New York debate?
• 53:37
  Speaker 7: So Eric Adams is such an interesting character when it
• 53:42
  Speaker 7: comes to policing and to criminal justice reform. And he
• 53:46
  Speaker 7: himself is positioning himself as the policing candidate. That's because
• 53:50
  Speaker 7: he spent more than 20 years in uniform. He was
• 53:53
  Speaker 7: an NYPD officer. He rose through the ranks to be
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: a NYPD captain before entering politics. However, that entire time,
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: he was a critic of the NYPD on the inside.
• 54:05
  Speaker 7: I mean, the NYPD leadership hated him. You can read
• 54:08
  Speaker 7: old clips in all the newspapers from the 90s of Adams,
• 54:12
  Speaker 7: this rabble rouser calling the NYPD racist from the inside.
• 54:17
  Speaker 7: More recently, as he's running for mayor, he's kind of
• 54:21
  Speaker 7: talking about both things. He's saying, yes, I am the
• 54:24
  Speaker 7: policing candidate. I'm going to keep you safe. I know
• 54:26
  Speaker 7: what it's like to be a police officer. But he's
• 54:28
  Speaker 7: also saying, I have a long record of criticism and
• 54:33
  Speaker 7: of calling for reform. So Maya Wiley there, one of
• 54:37
  Speaker 7: the more progressive candidates in the race, yes, worked for
• 54:40
  Speaker 7: Bill de Blasio. She is accurately calling out the fact
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: that Adams has said good things about stop and frisk,
• 54:47
  Speaker 7: this very controversial policing practice. Adams has said, yes, I
• 54:50
  Speaker 7: used stop and frisk.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 54:52
  Speaker 7: It's a good tactic, which sounds crazy. But Adams is
• 54:55
  Speaker 7: trying for some real nuance here. I don't know if
• 54:57
  Speaker 7: it's going to get across to all the voters, but
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: Adams is trying for some real nuance, saying that stop
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: and frisk is a useful tool in moderation. And the
• 55:06
  Speaker 7: problem with the massive controversy from the Bloomberg years is
• 55:11
  Speaker 7: just the overuse of it and the racial inequity of it.
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: Back in 2011, There was an insane number of stops
• 55:23
  Speaker 7: and frisks of mostly young men of color on the
• 55:26
  Speaker 7: streets of New York. There are still stop and frisks
• 55:29
  Speaker 7: by the NYPD today. It's just the number is like
• 55:33
  Speaker 7: one-tenth of 1% of what it used to be. It
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: is a very rare tactic that they now use. And
• 55:39
  Speaker 7: Adams is basically pointing to that tiny little percentage and saying,
• 55:43
  Speaker 7: that's good. Let's keep that up. It does sound like
• 55:46
  Speaker 7: a crazy, crazy thing to do to even acknowledge that
• 55:51
  Speaker 7: you'd like stop and frisk because that that term itself
• 55:54
  Speaker 7: has become so loaded. You know, even Bloomberg himself, when
• 55:56
  Speaker 7: he was running for president, basically had to appear at
• 55:59
  Speaker 7: a black church and say, I disown stop and frisk.
• 56:01
  Speaker 7: You know, that was that was a huge mistake. So
• 56:03
  Speaker 7: it's it's very interesting that this is once again becoming
• 56:06
  Speaker 7: a major issue in the mayor's race.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, like Andrew Yang in that debate
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: and has consistently said he is against defunding the police.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Then you have candidates like Maya Wiley who've taken a
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: more left position, candidates like Diane Morales who've taken a
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: more left position. This is probably one of the biggest
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: places where you will have a Democratic primary debating police
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: reform in the country until a presidential primary. I mean,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: this is a huge pool, a big pool of Democratic
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: voters hashing this out in the biggest city in the country.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: How has the police reform, police defund, debate played out?
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: What have you, what have you noticed? What have you
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: learned from, from the primary so far about it?
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 56:46
  Speaker 7: A year ago, there was such a movement in New
• 56:48
  Speaker 7: York city to defund the police. I mean, you know,
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: massive marches, uh, an upswelling of, of support that went
• 56:55
  Speaker 7: beyond just the democratic socialists in New York city. It was,
• 57:00
  Speaker 7: it was accepted by, uh, this call for defunding was
• 57:03
  Speaker 7: accepted by, by even, uh, I don't know, run of
• 57:06
  Speaker 7: the mill progressives, I guess you could say. And of course,
• 57:08
  Speaker 7: you know, largely New York City politics are well to
• 57:10
  Speaker 7: the left of the country at large. But anyway, there
• 57:14
  Speaker 7: was this big movement towards defund the police. And now
• 57:18
  Speaker 7: in the mayor's race, very, I mean, basically only one
• 57:21
  Speaker 7: of the candidates, Diane Morales, is openly saying defund the police.
• 57:25
  Speaker 7: She's running the most left-leaning campaign. Other candidates like Scott
• 57:29
  Speaker 7: Stringer and Maya Wiley are are saying, yes, we need
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: to reallocate funds to a lesser extent, maybe not the
• 57:35
  Speaker 7: $ 1 billion or more that some activists are calling for.
• 57:39
  Speaker 7: And this has become a huge issue, especially because we
• 57:43
  Speaker 7: have seen a random shooting in Times Square a couple
• 57:48
  Speaker 7: weeks ago. We recently have seen a huge increase in
• 57:52
  Speaker 7: reported hate crimes, particularly against Asian Americans, against Jews, and
• 57:59
  Speaker 7: Policing is once again on the top of people's minds
• 58:03
  Speaker 7: and not necessarily reforming the police, but I think among
• 58:06
  Speaker 7: a lot of New Yorkers, there is a real growing
• 58:09
  Speaker 7: fear of being the victim of crime or the fear
• 58:12
  Speaker 7: of New York City, quote unquote, slipping into the bad
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: old days, which is always an issue here in New York,
• 58:19
  Speaker 7: thinking back to the days of high crime in the
• 58:23
  Speaker 7: 80s and 90s. Look, let's put this in context here. Overall,
• 58:29
  Speaker 7: Crime is at its lowest point this year in New
• 58:32
  Speaker 7: York City than it's been in recorded history. Crime is
• 58:35
  Speaker 7: incredibly low historically in New York City. However, there is
• 58:39
  Speaker 7: an increase in shootings. There is an increase in murders.
• 58:43
  Speaker 7: So there is a real concern here that New York
• 58:46
  Speaker 7: City is slipping on these key metrics. And every single
• 58:49
  Speaker 7: mayoral candidate is responding to this. And it's become possibly
• 58:54
  Speaker 7: the number one issue in the race, even more so
• 58:57
  Speaker 7: than coronavirus recovery.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you heard Scott Stringer and you hear Maya Wiley
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: talking about trying to kind of hit the notes on
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: not having police respond to, you know, people having a
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: mental illness crisis, some of the kind of, for lack
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: of a better term, like touch points of what defund
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: the police wants to achieve, while then going back, you know,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Scott Stringer repeatedly talks about, he was a kid in
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: New York in the 70s, we don't want to go
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: back there, right? So like, those candidates are trying to
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: strike a balance. Then you have people like Andrew Yang
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: and Eric Adams being, I think, a bit more in
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: their rhetoric. I'm not sure how much different it would
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: be in their policies, but in their rhetoric, striking a
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: more pro-police tone. I think that's exactly right.
• 59:42
  Speaker 7: And of course, yes, there is a difference between the
• 59:45
  Speaker 7: rhetoric and the policies. Eric Adams is, of course, also
• 59:48
  Speaker 7: proposing some real changes to the NYPD. He wants to
• 59:50
  Speaker 7: change up how things are done. However, his rhetoric is
• 59:53
  Speaker 7: definitely appealing towards those New Yorkers who do really support
• 59:58
  Speaker 7: the NYPD and maybe want a larger police presence. So
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 7: I have no doubt that this is going to be
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 7: a national referendum on how people see policing and funding
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: the NYPD. And, you know, funny enough, the primaries on
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 7: June 22nd, on June 30th, the next New York City
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 7: budget is due, which means that Next month, I mean,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 7: we're going to see once again a huge debate in
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 7: the city council among Mayor de Blasio about how much
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 7: money should be going towards the NYPD, which is by
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 7: far the largest police department in the country. So I
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: think that this issue is going to become all the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 7: hotter as we get closer to election day.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: It seems though most of the top candidates, regardless of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: the rhetoric, have embraced the idea of shifting some funding
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: towards NYPD. having trained counselors respond to mental health issues,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: to homelessness, to some other issues that have traditionally brought police.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: So it does seem that like that that debate at
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: the national level has sort of filtered down and had
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: a big impact at how the policing is debated in
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: New York.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Is that right? Yeah, definitely.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 7: There's been a large discussion about which calls the NYPD
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 7: should respond to versus maybe more trained mental health professionals,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 7: that sort of thing. And that is a totally acceptable position,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 7: even among the more pro-police candidates. Everybody is calling for
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 7: some level of change. However, this has also been one
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: of the areas where Andrew Yang has been criticized the most,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 7: especially by more progressive voters or more voters that are
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 7: more critical of the police, because Yang has really been
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 7: talking about NYPD having a role in cracking down on
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 7: maybe the street homeless or those having real mental health episodes,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 7: whereas a lot of more progressives don't want the NYPD
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 7: to have any role in that.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. One thing that came up in the debate
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: that I thought was– so Catherine Garcia– former sanitation commissioner,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: kind of viewed as a really competent administrator. de Blasio
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: put her in charge of other pieces of the government
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: at times. She's sort of widely respected, but was seen
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: as a second tier candidate, gets this big New York
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Times endorsement. There was one moment that I thought was
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: just strange. And like, can we roll this clip is
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: when they were asked about regulations, they would change. And
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about this.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 9: I want you each to get specific and name briefly
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 9: one specific regulation that you would undo or ease and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 9: why the public would still be protected.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 10: Ms.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 9: Garcia, signage or something else?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to go with signage.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 10: I agree with signage, but I actually think a more
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 10: fundamental challenge, particularly for restaurants, is the surprise inspections of
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 10: the health inspector.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: We do need to make sure we are inspecting restaurants,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: but they can schedule the appointment so they are staffed
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: to be able to manage it moving forward rather than
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: losing a whole night's worth of receipts.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 9: They wouldn't hide stuff and clean up for the inspector
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 9: with the appointments?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 10: They would not be hiding stuff from the appointments. You're
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 10: talking about how many people have ever gotten sick in
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 10: a restaurant in New York City.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: It really doesn't happen. I really like Catherine Garcia. Is
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: she out of her mind?
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: What?
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: They need to have surprise inspections at the restaurants. Yeah, they'll... Like,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: have you met people? Am I being too cynical? That was... Like,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: she has this great reputation, and I know that this
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: is a small thing and not a fair place to...
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: It's not the only thing. It's not the most important thing.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: But I can't stop thinking about that.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: What?
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: We need a surprise. What am I what am I implanting? Oh,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: is there a.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: Rare misstep by by the Garcia campaign? I would say,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 7: you know, as somebody who has before gotten what I
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 7: believe to be an New York City restaurant. However, look,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 7: I do think that Garcia is probably making a calculated
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: decision to appeal to small business owners, which is a very,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 7: very powerful constituency in the Democratic primary. And I think
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 7: that she was looking out for them.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Of course. And I do think like the larger point
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: she was making about how hard it is to start restaurants,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: run restaurants, run small businesses, completely true. I'm glad that
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: they were really, they talked about that a lot. They
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: all talk about that a lot. But man, yeah, I
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: do think you got to have surprise inspections. All right.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: They can't just make appointments. You can't just make appointments.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: I'm a one issue voter, Catherine Garcia.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: I don't vote in your city anymore. So you don't
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: have to worry about it. But if I did, Jeff Golden,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for letting you go. Why the
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: fuck would anybody want this job?
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 7: You have to deal with things ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: conflict to surprise visits for clean restaurants.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: It's such a job. I love it.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 7: I love covering it. I wouldn't want to do it,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 7: but I like playing the role that I do. Oh, man.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: Jeff Colton, thank you so much.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Jeff Colton for joining us today. Have a
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: great week. We'll talk to you on Thursday. Pod Save
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: film and upload these episodes as videos every week.