Breaking News from Pod Save America - BREAKING: DNC Chair Ken Martin FINALLY Releases 2024 Autopsy Report

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

DNC Chair Ken Martin finally releases the long-awaited 2024 election autopsy report after mounting public pressure. Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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He's already been surpassed by AI. Yes, he turned in this incomplete analysis. It's riddled with errors. It's not backed by source materials. It seemingly is written by AI in a lot of places. Ken Martin released a statement about the autopsyllable. in conjunction with the report. I'll just read a bit of it. When I received the report late last year, it wasn't ready for prime time, not even close. Because no source material was provided,

fixing it would have been starting over from the beginning, every conversation, every interview, every data set, dot, dot, dot. I'm not proud of this product. It does not meet my standards, and it won't meet your standards. I don't endorse what's in this report or what's left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC stamp of approval on it, but transparency is paramount. So today I'm releasing the report as I received it in its entirety unedited and abridged, with annotations for claims that couldn't be verified. Just to give you guys a sense of the kind of errors we're talking about, on page 18, the report talks about the 2022 Georgia Senate election

and refers to it as an attempt to, quote, push through an unqualified candidate whose job would have been a little more than rubber stamping the president's agenda. The DNC affixed a footnote to that passage saying, quote, in 2022, Joe Biden was president. So small detail there. So, John, we're all still coming through this report. it's like 200 pages long.

What's your reaction to all this so far? So my first reaction is like, I wanted to be careful here because I've always thought that people who sort of admit mistakes and then say, okay, I'm sorry, full transparency. Like we want to incentivize that behavior because we don't want people to think, why would I tell the truth now and release what I promised I'd release

because then I'm just gonna get even more shit and it's gonna be worse because we've had these conversations being in politics. And so, like, Ken Martin gets credit, I think, for doing that. Like, it is belated, but he put it out. He apologized, so that is good. On the other hand, the more I, like, read his statement and read his substack and then looked at the report, like, you know, he lied.

Like, he's just, he was, they, he promised a report. He put his incompetent friend in charge of it. The incompetent friend created an incoherent product. Then Ken announced that they weren't. going to release the report for reasons that had nothing to do with the truth about why they weren't releasing it. Then when anyone asked about it, including me, he decided to not just lie, but gaslight people into being like, you're the problem. You know, it's a, why don't you want to win? Why are you looking at the, look in the past? And then there's like an internal revolt at the

DNC and among donors and DNC members. And so then they release this. Like, it's just not, He says in his substack, this is one of the lessons that he has learned that he puts in the substack piece about this, about the autopsy today. The Democratic brand is in trouble and needs repair. We have to restore confidence in our party and show we can really deliver on our campaign promises to the American people. People need to be able to trust the Democratic Party again. Trust is critical. Yeah. So I think, do you think we've resolved that? No, I mean, so look, I'm with you.

Like, I'm glad they put it out. I appreciate that they did this. It took way too long, but whatever, we're here. I just, big picture, I don't think Ken Martin is the right person to be leading the DNC right now. I feel bad saying that. There's a lot of people in the DNC building working really hard who feel demoralized and their job sucks right now. They deserve better leadership.

And to your point, this is a totally self-inflicted wound. Like, Ken, if you just said from the beginning, hey, I screwed up, put the wrong guy in charge. Yep. Before it didn't get done, we're starting over. That would have been really bad, right? A lot of shots at him, questions of his leadership. This is exponentially worse. And you're right, he did lie about it.

Like, he just did. And because of that lie, everyone else filled the void with their own theories, right? Like, she lost, Kamala lost because of Gaza. He lost because, right? So that created exacerbated problems within the party. It didn't fix them. So he has a huge candor and credibility problem right now. There's also the fundraising problem that you guys discussed in that interview.

There's some numbers out this week. The DNC has 14. has 14.4 million on hand. The RNC has 123.9 million on hand. And really the DNC has negative 3 million because that's the cash they have on hand. If you then take away the debt, then it's negative 3. Yeah. And also the DNC is getting massively outraised by the DSCC and the D-Triple-C. And I guess like this whole process just made me feel like this guy's not good at politics. Like this interview came about because Ben Rhodes or maybe me tweeted something about fundraising. So Ken reached out to you to criticize you and say, well, I'm always happy to come on.

And then like kind of I guess it was kind of like harsh to you guys at that party and like I actually walked up to me like shook my hand just kind of like silently mean mugged me and walked away. I remember being like I'm drunk but like not that drunk. And so like in the interview though like he just like it wasn't just that he was gaslighting you. He was like taking shots at you and kind of like look we've been friends for 20 years. You're one of the least confrontational people I know. But every two or three years, every friend, you have a blowout fight. And there was a look on your face that has. happened about three minutes into that thing. And I was like, I've seen that face before. We know each other's looks very well when one of us is about to, very well. No. This is going to go south. Because that's, and that like, I'm not, like you know me. I'm never looking to attack someone or embarrass someone.

In fact, I probably err too much in the opposite direction. But when someone lies to you and you know they're lying and then not just lies, but accuses you of being the problem when you know that they're actually current something, it's just, it pisses you off. It's condescending. But I will say this because I'm sure. Some people might say, and I've seen some of this online too, which is like, too much on this autopsy, who the fuck cares? If this was just a one-off mistake by Ken Martin and that was it, and it's a pretty big mistake, that would be one thing.

From everyone we've talked to inside the DNC, outside the DNC, members, fundraisers, donors, all these people, this is indicative of a larger problem with how Ken has operated, which is that he is defensive, insular, is not transparent about a lot of things, does not have good communication. with other people in the party. There is, he's got his crew of people that he brought in there and he talks to them and doesn't talk to a lot of other people. And I think that the credibility problem, yes, the autopsy is the most glaring example of it, but it goes beyond that.

You mentioned the fundraising thing. And look, it's not, this is not a Democratic Party writ large problem. If you look at the April fundraising reports, and this has been true for the whole last year, NRCC barely outraises the D-T-T-R-SC, NRSC barely outraises the D-R-S-C, DSCC and then the difference between the RNC and the DNC is just massive massive

so it's not it's not the other party committees that are the problem because if it was a wider Democratic Party problem we'd see that in the DS and the D-Triples and I think you've I don't know the numbers in front of you but I think the DS did like 2x what the DNC did three or four X right so they're raising a lot of money over there yeah and look again I'm not I'm not being critical because this person was kind of like prickly and rude to my friend like who gives a shit fuck whatever Root to us. It made it a more interesting interview.

But I think it's indicative of just like a political problem, which is like the fundraising is bad in part because Ken Martin took a bunch of shots at some of our biggest donors in the campaign against Ben Wickler and then seemingly just refused to make amends for months and still hasn't. And so like, look, we can muddle through these problems now. But the trust deficit, the political challenge here, the rubber meets the road when he has to set up a presidential primary process and balance a bunch of interests and keep people in line. and we just cannot end up in a place as a party where there's like a half dozen splinter groups

setting up their own unsanctioned debates and no one is raining them in. It's just a disaster. And like, by the way, another option could have been saying in part what he said to you in the interview, which is like, hey, guys, we lost because Joe Biden is old and then inflation made people mad. We're not doing an autopsy.

There's no silver bullet here. We all know what we fucked up. Okay. That could have avoided the political problem. I think it's valuable. Like there have been other people sort of you know have released their thoughts on what went wrong and things we screwed up and there's like kind of useful tactical points in there and things you learn but

again it's just like the mishandling is like not confidence inspiring it's also there is there's a pattern among the establishment of the Democratic Party for the last several years where when the online grassroots noise gets really loud the response is these people don't know what they're talking about they're just you know, crazy lefties or lives or whiny people online. And we know best because we have the right information and we do this for a living. And so fuck you people, right?

In no uncertain terms. And like I understand the frustration being on the inside when people are chirping at you from the outside. We've been there, right? But when you're on the outside, you realize like, yeah, some of the carping on the online is really fucking annoying and not correct. But your job, if you're in the party

and you're in leadership and you're part of the establishment is to at least like listen to those voices, welcome them in, be transparent, be honest about what you know. I mean, I'm just thinking about this. Obviously, we've criticized the Biden administration and Joe Biden quite a bit. But I remember when Ron Clayne became chief of staff and the way that the Bernie folks

and the Biden folks after that primary worked together and Ron made sure he was listening to all parts of the party and wanted ideas from all of them. And I think it was like a good way of handling it. Like obviously, you know, things got worse later on. But I just think that the model of a successful party has to be, like, yes, keeping people who are like, you know, pushing back on people who are criticizing you unfairly,

but at least listening to voices and trusting people with the information that you have. Yeah, one thing. So much like the DNC, we are trying to build an independent, progressive grassroots media company. So please subscribe to POTS of America here on YouTube. It really helps us push back on the right wing crap out of the R&C and Republicans and Fox News and everybody else.

So subscribe to Potsay of America, we'd appreciate it. Just to go at the report. I mean CNN broke the story and they reported in their big piece that there was a DNC retreat for top donors and at that retreat Paul Rivera who created the autopsy did an hour-long presentation that was according to the story in part drawn directly from the report so let me read from this article another part of his presentation tracked the candidates areas of focus by content themed to argue that Trump advanced focus many times more on immigration than Harris did Rivera used an unclear methodology for the breakdown assigning percentages to 10 categories of content or theme for Trump, Harris, and their running mates, the percentages in every column, one for each candidate, added up to well over 100%. Right? So it just speaks to how sloppy this is. And again, it's like, okay, if this report was so bad that you just released the statement

saying you could, quote, not in good faith, put the DNC stamp of approval on it, why did you let this individual present some of the findings to your biggest donors when you have this huge fundraising problem, right? Not only that, Tommy, in the CNN report, it says that Paul Rivera has been seen recently still hanging around the DNC, which has demoralized the staffers because they know that he was the guy who fucked up the whole autopsy. So not only did you put this friend in charge of this, he's still there. And he hadn't worked on a presidential campaign since John Kerry in 2004. It's like, look, I'm washed. I haven't worked on a presidential campaign since 2008.

Don't put me in charge of the autopsy. And what really says at all is the conclusion. If you go through all the 152 pages, the report, which I have not, but you go to the end and it says conclusion and then it's blank and then the DNC annotation is this section was not provided by the author. TK. TK. Yeah, it's not great. And there's like, I don't want to go belabor this too much, but the list of people they didn't talk to is just crazy. It's like top Biden administration officials. Prem Thacker at Zateo News pointed out that the DNC autopsy is 192 pages. There's zero mentions of the word Israel, Palestine or Gaza. Not even examining the impact of that issue on the result is crazy. So anyway, let's just watch a clip from your conversation with Ken Martin about this a few

weeks ago, and case folks didn't watch it, and just to sort of understand where we're coming through on some of this frustration. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize? Yeah, there's no smoking gun in the report. And I know that's what everyone's so eager to learn. The smoking gun. Guess what, John? But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it? Because we want to keep the focus on. on the lessons. There's no smoking gun here. People are obsessed about this in a way that continues to turn them away from wanting to focus on the lessons and instead thinking that there's some sort of smoking gun in here that's going to give them the one single reason that Kamala Harris

lost the election or the one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to actually help us win in the future. I don't know about you, John, but I don't have a time machine. I don't think you do. No one does. So we can't change what. happened in 24. When you were on the campaign trail and you talked about definitely releasing an autopsy and criticized the DNC for not releasing an autopsy in 2016, in your mind, you thought I'm going to do one but only release certain lessons and not the full report? No, what I said at the time is exactly what I've been saying now, which is we have to focus on the things that help us win the future elections. Let's focus on the elections coming up, John. You know what? Yeah, well, I mean,

I want to focus on winning them. I feel like an autopsy on what went wrong and when we lost the popular vote in all those states in 2024 and figuring out what went wrong based on a big report is pretty important for everyone to know. This conversation doesn't help us actually win elections. All it does is continue to turn people inward. So that's a frustrating watch. Again, like, he pitched the conversation.

He did pitch the conversation. He did just pitch the conversation. You mentioned when he reached out to me, he said, like, if you're gonna criticize me, let me have a chance to respond, which of course I said, please come on the pod. We'd love to have you respond. And I'm like 100% sure.

This would have just gone away if he hadn't done this interview. For sure. I'm almost positive of it. Yeah, which is just a nut, yeah. So he did tell the truth there and saying that there was no smoking gun. There was not much of anything. No gun. No gun.

There was no smoke. No ammo. There was barely anything in that report. It was just chat GPT. Okay, so the question is what now? I think Ken's term goes through February of 2029. He's elected to a four-year term. I was talking to someone today about what would be required to make a change.

basically it's he has to resign yeah the person thought the way that could happen is you know the money gets so bad that can can't make the payments to the state parties that are important part of his political support and his support just erodes to it's you know members could you know read about what just happened here watch back that interview and go public with calls on him to resign or push him out the party's elected leaders Chuck Schumer Hakeemreys in particular could decide that this is too big of a distraction and there needs to be a change and then there's a a separate question that we should talk about in a minute about who comes next. But I don't know, it's just like I fear that the status quo ante could hold here because you have all these state

party chairs who are getting checks. And it's like, is that money worth it, guys? Like, money is so tight right now for the party. Can't we think about the greater good for the party if you're like not in a swing state, but still want your 20 grand a month or whatever? Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. the price is right fortune pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEMG operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Yeah, I think you're right that the story now moves to the money. because I think that I don't I don't imagine him resigning over this autopsy kerfuffle. I think it could be an inciting incident.

But if, you know, after that interview, what most people in the know told me and I know told you is that the real problem has been the money and not just the raising the money, but the management of the money at the DNC. And you know, again, they always have a talking point response to everything. It's like, well, then you don't care about state parties and you don't want to invest like, Like, yes, we won't invest in state parties. 50 state strategy. Love it. Important.

State parties have been underfunded. It's great that you're going to fund them again. Fine. You can't fund state parties if you don't have the money to fund the state parties. Right. Like, I am sympathetic to the argument that like, hey, guys, the point of the DNC is not to raise money for the sake of raising money. No. It's to invest it and win elections.

Absolutely right. But it's like, but you can't spend recklessly when you're in debt. What's going to happen? What happens when we can't, like, buy, pay for stuff in Pennsylvania in the next cycle? Yeah. They asked Brian, CNN asked Brian shots about what he thought about this in the DNC, how it was handled. He said poorly, keeping it private gave the implication that they were hiding something. Yeah, it sure did.

So I think there's kind of two, if he does resign, I think there are two options for the kind of person that could step in. Basically, it would be a six-month job, right? Like, you are a placeholder. You're trying to get the thing back on track, get the fundraising back until there is a presidential nominee who will install their own person. I think the first bucket is kind of like a big name. Names that have been floated to me this morning include Terry McAuliffe, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, John Tester. And then there's like a separate bucket that's like more of an operative type.

Yeah. Behind the scenes, some names like Roger Lau, our buddy at D.Su D.Su Demisi, Fas Shakir. I'm sure all of them will hate me for floating their names here. Pluff. David Pluff. You do need in it. It's tough because you need... Rahm Emanuel?

Ram Emanuel. Yeah, right. You need someone who... knows donors can raise money, understands DC, without looking like too much of an insider. Yeah. So it's hard to have an outsider insider. Like, you don't want someone who's gonna walk in there

just because everyone's like, well, we needed this fresh voice outsider and then have no idea, don't have the relationships with the donors and everything. So you kind of need someone who can straddle. You are literally a party boss. Like we're a party boss. You need to do it.

Like, FAS is a great, I mean, FAS would be a great solution. are D-SU as well. And you still like also one thing you don't want to do is just kick up the intra-party left versus, you know, moderate fights in the- Which is the problem that ROM gets you. Yeah, exactly. Okay, well, anything else on this? I mean, it's just, it is a, it's kind of shocking.

It's not, it's not much like what Trump does every day. It is not surprising, but it is a shocking level of incompetence. Yeah, it was really quite, poorly handled um it really sucks for all the people who work at the dnc who are just doing their best and trying to like help us build a grassroots movement help us win elections and and we say this about politics all the time that um everyone who thinks it's a there's a conspiracy behind a certain mystery no it's it's almost always incompetence and not a conspiracy and sure enough that is the case this time around that is right um so that conversation was admittedly a bit depressing uh

i wanted to end just quickly with something inspiring and something that reminds us the things that really matter in life. You know what I mean? Not ephemeral political fights or reports or debates about bullshit, just like the big things. So let's watch. Are you like me to go?

You'd like me to go. It's going to be just a small little private affair and I'm going to try and make it. I'm in the midst. I said, you know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. That's one I can't win on. went on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about now. But he's got a very personal I've known for a long time. And hopefully they're going to have a great marriage.

It's just playing that clip. We're going to play this in the pod today too. I just had a thought, which is John Lovett is getting married this weekend. And I did want to RSVP. late, just with a clip of that. Take this as my RSVP. I do want to make it, but I do have a lot of other things to do. I know you for a long time. He's TBD on his own son's wedding. And his response publicly, is this as bad timing for me? This is a man who leaves the White House every weekend

to go to his golf club in Mar-a-Lago and, like, shows up at random weddings there. He made time to call into the dedication of a gold statue of himself at his golf club. Like, this is not someone who is not someone who is. This is fucking son. He golfs all the time. All he does.

He launches wars from Mar-a-Lago exclusively. There is literally nothing that keeps him from anything he wants to do. I guess we don't know where the wedding is. Maybe it's in, like, Italy or something. That might explain it. But like, so this is Don Jr. second marriage. Is it in Tehran? Yes.

So someone named Bettina Anderson, who USA to do. they described as a socialite and model based in Palm Beach. Don Jr.'s ex is dating Tiger Woods. Upgrade. I did not know that. Yeah. Man. Like, there's been decades of just really mean jokes about how we only like Zavanka.

I don't know if I want to, I don't think I can make those jokes anymore. That is so mean. Not that I feel bad for, I guess, what am I feeling bad for Don Jr.? It's like, like, also, look, again, we're all human beings. We're all flawed. I know. You're not going to show up at your own son's wedding? What does that say about your character?

It's genuinely shocking. Like, what are the only this man shocking? It's such a weird, like, does he really think he'd get killed by the press for going to the wedding? I would, if someone raised that in one of our meetings like, oh, do you guys want to talk about the fact that Trump was skip town for his kid's wedding? I'd be like, no, he should. It's literally the opposite. It's him not going. I wouldn't dream of attacking him for that.

And we attack him for everything. It is bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. Okay, well, that was fun. Please subscribe to Podsa of America here on YouTube, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Podsave America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher,

Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffcoat, Jordan Cancer, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelleiv, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

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