No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump’s vote-by-mail suppression is working. On Republicans.

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Trump might have just inadvertently sunk his own re-election with his attacks on mail-in voting, there were some can't-miss developments in the US Senate races, and I sit down with Joe Biden���s chief of staff, who was also responsible for overseeing the US response to the Ebola pandemic during the Obama administration, Ron Klain, who pinpoints Trump's COVID-19 failures with surgical precision.Welcome to the premiere episode of No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Subscribe for more!Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberMusic by WellsyRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It is our first episode. We're going to be talking about how Trump might have just sunk his own re-election with his attacks on mail-in voting, some major developments in the U.S. Senate races, and my interview with Joe Biden's chief of staff and the man responsible for overseeing the U.S. response to the last outbreak during the Obama administration, Ron Klein. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Now, with the election getting closer and closer and with Trump's attacks on, Obama, on Biden, on China, on Mexico, on immigrants, all falling on deaf ears, Trump seems to have set his sights on the very institution of voting itself. His target now is mail-in voting. Here's why.

Trump believes that the more people who vote, the lower his chances of getting re-elected. That's what he thinks. And so instead of, oh, I don't know, earning your vote, he's like, what if you just don't get to vote? His thinking goes like this. By enacting obstacles to mail-in voting, it forces people to vote in person. In rural areas that tend to vote Republican, that doesn't make much of a difference because there just aren't that many people. But in urban areas, which tend to vote more democratic, forcing people to vote in person means long lines. So the goal here is to make it so that those lines, which we've already seen can last three, four, five hours, prevent people from voting.

And then it had the pandemic on top of that. What population centers are more at risk? Urban areas. How did they vote? Democratic. So, in effect, Trump is forcing people to have to choose between waiting not only in a long line, but putting their lives at risk by doing it. His actions are basically asking you if you're willing to die for your vote, and he's banking on the fact that the answer is no. Only, here's where Trump's refusal to operate within the confines of reality hurts him.

First, there is actually no indication that mail-in voting swings elections, in favor of Democrats. That's not to say that suppressing the vote doesn't hurt Democrats because it does. Just as Governor Stacey Abrams of Georgia. I'm just kidding, you can't because the vote there was suppressed so much that she had the election stolen from her.

But in general, voter suppression aside, vote by mail isn't some magic bullet for the left. In Utah, 90% of voters vote by mail, the liberal bastion of Utah. Turns out even conservatives like convenience, who would have guessed? So the truth is that states aren't suddenly going to overhaul their vote-by-mail system five months before the election. It's not going to happen.

Plus, they wouldn't want it to happen anyway because it's a convenient and secure and popular system. And I get that this has become the latest boogeyman for the right overnight because some errant synapse fired in Trump's brain telling him that mail-in voting was bad, but it's not going anywhere. He's spending his energy trying to attack a system that simply isn't going to change overnight, or at least not before the election in November. The only thing this is changing here are the minds of his own supporters. So get this. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, while many local and state GOP officials are obviously trying to encourage Republican voters to vote by mail during the pandemic, those voters aren't because they're listening to Trump.

In Pennsylvania, as of May 28th, about 1.3 million registered Democrats had requested mail ballots for the June 2nd primary compared with 524,000 Republicans. 1.3 million compared to 524,000. Republicans made just 29% of the requests, even though they represent 38% of registered voters in the state, and they make up 45% of those registered with one of the two major parties. Granted, the Pennsylvania GOP has been trying to get Republicans to request mail ballots. Their website has a step-by-step guide to do so,

and the motto on that site is literally vote-by-mail safe from home. And yet, because of Trump's presidential decrees that were likely meant to block Democrats from voting, what's happening is that Republicans are refusing to vote by mail. So in a state like Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that Trump won by less than one percentage point in 2016, Trump has, in effect, eliminated a major avenue that his own voters used to vote. So he has to hope that every single person who would have voted by mail, from the convenience of their own home, taking a few minutes to fill out, out of ballot and stick it in the mailbox, he has to hope that every single one of them

get in their cars, drive to the polls, wait online if there is one, and cast their ballots that way. That's what he's banking on. I'm pretty bad at gambling, so don't bring me to Vegas with you, but if I had to bet here, those aren't odds I'd be willing to take. And in a state that Trump can't afford to lose any voters in, this is a move that seems to have completely backfired on him. And I know some people might be thinking, well, Of course, less Republicans requested mail-in ballots for the primary. They already know that Trump's going to be their nominee. Right.

But by that same token, so do the Democrats. The nominee is Biden. So that doesn't explain the fact that more than double the number of Democrats requested ballots than Republicans. Clearly, the guy isn't going to stop mail-in voting. He doesn't have the support. And thanks to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, he also doesn't have that power.

All he's done is undermined years of Republican efforts to give their own voters the ability to vote by. mail, basically forcing them instead to take a trip to the polls. Not only that, but risking lives in the process because of the virus. It is so self-defeating that I can't even wrap my head around it. By the way, you know he's getting desperate when this is his justification. No, you have to go and you have to vote. Voting is a great thing.

Voting, we would be the laughing stock of the world. That you have to vote because voting is a great thing. His rationale here is just that it's great. It's patriotic. Be a real American and go stand in line to vote. Even if that line is four hours long and once you get inside, half the machines are all broken. That's how you know you're a real American. Come on. Voting is voting.

Your vote doesn't count more because you stood in line all night. You're not more of a patriot because you were the victim of purposeful voter suppression. Sorry, but you don't get to qualify people's Americanness by forcing them to endure obstacles to what should be our most fundamental right as Americans. It doesn't work that way. And I'll just say one more thing on this, on the topic of voting by mail being so awful. And that is that Trump himself voted by mail in Florida's primary literally last month. His press secretary, Kaylee McEnany, who's been outspoken parroting Trump's talking points about how dreadful voting by mail is, has herself voted by mail 11 times in the last 10 years.

RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Romney voted by mail in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020. could you not find worse spokespeople for this initiative? This is like selecting Roy Moore to advocate for making malls safer for kids. But if that wasn't bad enough, on the subject of Trump voting in the Florida primary this month, he did so after changing his legal address from New York to Mar-a-Lago. But back in 1993, Trump signed a legal document, a use agreement that governs to this day how Mar-a-Lago is designated, and that is that it is a private club and not a single family residence. The title went to a corporate entity and the deal made clear that no one could live permanently at the property.

And even members could only use the guest suites for a maximum of three times a year for no longer than seven days at a time. And they couldn't even be consecutive. And so because legally it's not a residence, it's a business, it would make sense that Trump can't register to vote from that address. And yet that's exactly what he did. So what I'm trying to say is that by voting in the primary from an invalid address, Trump may have just committed voter fraud because, of course. Next up is my interview with Ron Claim. He was the chief of staff to two vice presidents, Al Gore and Joe Biden,

meaning that he's been a fundamental figure in running the last two Democratic administrations and could very well become the chief of staff to the next president of the United States. And beyond that, he was the coordinator for the U.S. response to Ebola and the Obama administration. And likely the reason that Ebola never quite made it to the United States, a role the importance of which has become clear as we find ourselves in the situation where 100,000 Americans are dead in the middle of a pandemic that wasn't appropriately dealt with by the government. So this is my interview with Ron Clayne. Thank you so much to Ron Clayton for joining us.

In the last few days, we've seen Trump launch attacks on Twitter, on Obama and Biden, on China, on protesters in Minnesota and around the country. Is this whole scorched earth policy, basically, him giving up on undecided voters and going all in on his base? I mean, what is the political upside here? You know, I learned it's very hard to try to understand Donald Trump and understand his motivation. I think oftentimes because he won this surprising victory in 2016, we see him as some

kind of genius who has a master plan and all these things. You know, I think he's just a very erratic, chaotic, incompetent leader. You know, I don't know necessarily there's some big political strategy behind the kind of things we've seen from him in the past few days. I think a lot of it's just an air of desperation as he continues to fall behind in the race. His events continue to spiral out of control. He's not running in the kind of circumstance he thought he was going to be running in. We have obviously incredible disruption in our country, economic losses, issues of races,

coming back to the surface. And so I think, you know, I think his reaction to it may be strategic. Maybe there's some secret plan here, Brian, but maybe it's just an incompetent, chaotic, erratic president being incompetent, chaotic, and erratic as he's been all three years. So with that said, I do want to switch gears here and talk a little bit about the pandemic. How did you manage to leave Trump broken tests for a virus that wouldn't even come into existence for three more years? Because that is just, I mean, it's impressive to say the least. You know, it's so interesting. Most presidents, when they face a crisis, they step up to it.

I mean, put aside ideology and politics and your approach. But most presidents, they get a crisis thrown in their lap. They say, I'm going to step up to this. I'm going to try to tackle it. I'm going to, you know, really show leadership. And what Trump has done, as you alluded to, is just really wake up every day and figure out who other than him he can blame for his mistakes. And that includes blaming us for leaving him broken tests for a disaster.

that didn't yet exist when we left office, blaming China, which does deserve some blame here, no question about it, WHO, which isn't perfect. But it's just an endless effort by Trump to tweet away a virus that needs an active, aggressive government response. And instead, what happened here? Look, what really happened here was the warning signs were clear in late December and January that there was a problem in China. The president was busy chasing his trade deal with the Chinese and silenced people in his administration who wanted to raise alarms. about this so he could get his trade deal with the Chinese government. And once he got it, he wanted to celebrate it.

And so he was busy slathering praise on President Xi at a time when he should have been asking hard questions to President Xi about what was going on in China. President was busy tweeting out late January that China had it under control. And all Americans owed a debt of thanks to President Xi. That was his position. We really could have done something about it. We could have gotten eyes on the ground in China to find out what was really going on there. We did have eyes on the ground in China, by the way, which I think.

you know it's it's easy to get for that information to get lost amid all the you know the barrage of our new cycle but but we had pandemic response offices and that that were closed in 39 out of 49 countries including china which in retrospect not the best move not the best move right not the best move to shut down the predict program which what you're talking about a program we started in the Obama administration not the best move we we negotiated and got as part of that predict program the right to put an official inside the Chinese disease control agency. The U.S. government had that right. President Trump left that position vacant. Not the best move to shut down the pandemic preparedness office that we created inside the National Security Council in the Obama administration and that President

Trump and John Bolton shut down in 2018. So a lot of not the best moves that would have made as much better position to deal with us when it came. I know that Trump is blaming China because he needs a scapegoat. And I don't want to validate those attacks. But with that said, there clearly were suppression efforts in China. And that doesn't absolve Trump of responsibility, but it does exist as a separate issue. So what do we do with regard to China from here? Is there punishment, retribution? Is this a just chalk it up to a learning experience? I think, Brian, you're exactly right on this. We need to separate two issues. One, did China mislead and did China cover up what was going on here? Yes. And that's China's fault.

I'm going to come back to that in a second. How come there are just hundreds of people dead in Korea, which is much closer to China, and over 100,000 people dead in the United States on the other side of the planet? How come there? The disease is over in New Zealand, which again is much closer to China, and yet we're still in the midst of a raging pandemic here in the United States. So China did wrong things, and then President Trump blew the response. We should never let him use the first of those to,

absolve himself of blame for the second of those. I think he's under the impression that we live in a vacuum and we're the only country that experienced this. You know, he keeps on bragging about how many other countries in the world because he's trying to, you know, diffuse responsibility off of himself. He's saying, look, 184 other countries around the world have dealt with this same virus. If you look at those other countries, you'll realize that they've all responded, or most of them ever, maybe with the exception of Brazil and a few other countries that also have, you know,

far-right hardline nationalist leaders, they've all responded well to this. So we don't live in a vacuum. And we have the luxury, relatively speaking, of being able to point to countries like Germany and New Zealand and Australia and Canada right next door. You know, countries all around the world and show how they've responded properly to this virus. No, I think that's right, Brian. And look, to go back to your China question, I do think we need to take strong measures against China. You know, we need to really demand clear answers and we need to figure out what the right responses. I think part of it also is increasing pressure on China to finally and completely give up these wet markets where these diseases can spread. It's not just

COVID where it's still not exactly clear where it came from. We know the SARS virus started in a wet market in China. So I think that's one other area where we need to increase pressure on the Chinese to change their practices. And there needs to be a tough reckoning on this. I'm absolutely for a tough wrecking on this. But that tough reckoning against China, which the whole world should be involved in imposing, doesn't change the fact that our government,

led by President Trump, badly bungled their response here, and there are a lot of Americans who are dead as a result. So the virus will still be here in January of 2021. So what would a President Biden do on day one of taking office with regard to this pandemic? What is the top priority? Yeah. So look, obviously, part of it depends a little bit on exactly where we are in January of 2021. But I think there are two things that are really, three things I should say, that are really clear that would be top priorities from the start. The first is we still don't have a national testing strategy. You know, Brian, sometimes, you know, I talk about this. People say, oh, you're criticizing testing. That's horrible. Should have been fixed. But, you know, why are you talking about January and February? You and I are having this conversation, you know, at the end of May, right on the brink of June.

We still don't have a national testing strategy in the United States. We still don't have an assurance that every American who needs a test can get one. We still don't have a process for doing that. Vice President Biden's laid out his views on this and a long explanation of how we do it. That's a very, very important thing. We also don't have a national contact tracing strategy. It's a little more obscure to people, but it's just as important. What we need to do is test to see who has the virus and then isolate chains.

transmission. That's how public health people, epidemiologists, fight and beat epidemics. It's how we beat Ebola in 2014 and 2015. It's how we've beaten other epidemics before. Testing and tracing. And so I think those really are at the top of the list of things that if they aren't fixed by January of 2021, President Biden would have to fix. We're going to also need to really accelerate the development and distribution of possible drugs to treat the disease. hopefully a vaccine sooner rather than later, that's also at the top. And then I think we're also, sadly, going to have a giant economic problem still lingering around in January of 2021.

As we reopen the economy, some jobs will come back. No question about it. Trump will brag about that. But a lot of Americans have lost their jobs and they're not coming back just like putting an open-for-business sign-up on the front door. And so Vice President Biden will be announcing soon a comprehensive economic plan to create jobs. So I'm assuming he'll... he'll bring in Jared Kushner for the actual thing out.

There's just no plan. It's the same chaos that we've seen through this whole thing. And so one thing Joe Biden would do is he would have a plan. He would have his occupational safety and health administration issue standards for how workers can be safe. Who needs gloves? Who needs masks of masks? Who needs plexiglass shields?

How far apart should people be? How should stores run? So on, so on. He'd issue those standards. I think this is the craziest thing about Trump's approach. which is if you really want the economy to come back, you should be emphasizing safety more than anything else. People aren't going to go to restaurants and stores

unless they feel like they're going to be safe there. And by Trump saying, I don't care about safety, he's putting Americans at risk and he's also hurting the economy. We're in a situation where we have an election coming up in November. Trump needs the economy to be restarted more than anyone. The way to do that is to instill confidence is to make sure that people feel safe going outside,

And they're not going to do that if our entire approach to the global pandemic sweeping across the country that's killed more than 100,000 Americans is to pretend that it doesn't exist while friends and family and neighbors and doctors and nurses are dying. You know, I mean, you can pretend that it's not happening, but that doesn't change the fact that it's happening. And so he really stands to benefit the most from taking an aggressive approach. And that's not what he's taking. And it just goes to show that his entire strategy all along. from the very beginning of his presidency is just to tackle these PR crises one day at a time without any regard to what's happening, you know, more than 24 hours in the future. Well, I think that's in a short period of time, probably the best summary of the Trump

presidency I've ever heard, Brian. I mean, I think you've got it exactly right. I'll take it. You should take it to spot on. And look, I mean, what's really ironic here is when I took over as the Ebola response coordinator, one of the first people I sat down with, of course, was Dr. Tony Fauci, who was at that time had the same job he has now, head of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease. And Dr. Fauci's been in that job so long, he was really one of the key people in launching the fight against AIDS in this country and really doing some of the critical work and taking on HIV AIDS. And what he told me he learned in fighting HIV AIDS that was true with Ebola, that's true now is that when you try to tell people, there's nothing

to be worried about. There's just no risk. No one needs to be scared. if you try to deny it, what you're really doing is you're making people more scared because you're denying something that's obviously true to them. And that's been Trump's problem all throughout this. We were very careful in the Ebola response to have President Obama say very clearly, look, there are risks here. This is what we're doing to deal with them. But there are risks and they're real. This is what we have to do to try to minimize those risks. I mean, I'm sure this is true for everyone who works on this. I get calls every day all the time from people to all walks of life. We're just confused because they know the president is lying to them

and they don't know what they should believe. They don't know what they should do. And in that way, his blink at it, tweet at it, lie about it strategy is not helping even his own objectives. It's certainly not helping our country. It certainly costs us a lot of lives. Yeah, people from around the country are reporting a surge in calls because, you know, from poison control centers

because Trump's had injecting disinfectant and all of a sudden people go searching for Lysol in their house. You know, he mentions chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine and we're not all doctors. So we don't know that when, you know, something has the word chloroquine, chloroquine phosphate in it, that we can't ingest it because not everybody went to Johns Hopkins. You know what I mean? So, I mean, these are these are risks you run and he even sees, you know, the consequences of this in real time and does it again and does it again and does it again. And, you know, the worst part is that it kind of does undermine the integrity of the office and the ability for people in the future to be able to even trust a government's response to something that the government needs to be able to respond to. Because if not the government, then who? Exactly, Brian. And one other, I agree with all that, and I'd add one other thing to it, which is that sooner or later, we will have a vaccine or perhaps multiple vaccines. And people are going to have to have confidence that they should take them. And the president's erratic leadership, his recommendation, you said, of hydroxy and of other bizarre things like UV lights in the body and disinfectus, all these things, are going to make people skeptical about that vaccine. You know, like is it any better? than anything else he's recommended. And here's the problem with that. I mean, aside,

you've been through all the problems with people doing the wrong things, but here's the other special problem with that. For a vaccine to work, it's not enough that you and I take it. We need almost everyone to take it. Your protection comes not just from you being vaccinated. It comes from your fellow citizens being vaccinated and having broad population immunity to the disease. And if we're in a situation where because of the existing anti-vaccine movement already, plus this crazy skepticism Trump's created in the world about all these things. that 25 or 30% of Americans refuse to take this vaccine when it's available, then we won't have the kind of population-wide immunity we need to really be protected.

So there's going to be a lasting legacy of skepticism and confusion from Trump's failures here. Whether Trump is president when the vaccine comes or Joe Biden's president when the vaccine comes, people will lack confidence in that because of all the misinformation that Trump has put out. And that's going to be a real challenge for getting vaccine compliance. Does having, you know, a sizable portion of the population, like let's say 30% of the population, 40% of the population Trump's base, so to speak, if they refuse to get a vaccine or if a large swath of the population doesn't get the vaccine, is there a possibility that the virus could mutate enough that even those who have been vaccinated are then again put at risk? vaccines don't fully protect you. Vaccines are always partial and imperfect, but when we say we're protected for being vaccinated,

what that really means is we're protected because everyone's vaccinated, and that really snuffs out transmission of the disease. Even without any mutation, without any changes, if we still have 25 or 30 percent of the population unvaccinated in a vaccinated environment, all of us, even those of us with vaccine, will be at risk of the potential of exposure because the virus will still be spreading around in our society, and the incomplete protection the vaccine provides won't fully protect us. And so vaccines are part of a public health response. Vaccines aren't some kind of

individual health response. They're part of a public health response. They help snuff out a disease because they block transmission of the disease, not just in you, but between you and other people essentially. And the virus is spreading wildly. Then it's going to spread. We saw this with measles, particularly in 2017, 2018, when he had these incidents in local populations, people stopped getting immunized for measles because of these local vaccine resistances. It wasn't just the un-immunized that got measles. There were people who had taken the precautions and still got measles. During Ebola, you actually expressly opposed a travel ban, whereas that's the only move

that Trump took. And in fact, it's May, we've been hearing about this same move. since January. I mean, you can't, you know, you can't go more than 12 minutes listening to Trump without him talking about the China ban. So can you speak a little bit on that? Because these were, I mean, these approaches couldn't be more different in kind of, you know, if, if, if you tried, which doesn't surprise me from a Trump to an Obama administration. Yeah, there are a different situations. So with Ebola, we had a different circumstance, which was first, there were very few travelers who came from West Africa to the United States, just a couple hundred a day.

What we did, what we were able to do, we put in place the system, to track every single one of those people. So if you came to this country from West Africa, we identified you when you arrived in customs. We gave you a cell phone. We called you twice a day. We got your temperature twice a day. And we were able to identify every single one of those people. I got a report on my desk every day for every single traveler from West Africa who was in this country for the 21 days of possible exposure and their condition validating. We had validated that they did not have a bowl of that day twice a day.

every day. That was the kind of complete control we had on this, right? Now, that worked for Ebola because with Ebola, until you have a fever, you aren't infectious. So we're able to have that system. Now, why did we do that? We did that because it was important to keep travel going because we had to send people to West Africa to fight the disease. We had to send doctors and nurses and all kinds of people of West Africa to fight the disease because the way we were going to be safe in the U.S. by beating the disease over there. And so to have the planes go, they had to go both ways. We had to have travelers both ways.

That's what we did. That was our approach. It was the right approach. It largely, it ultimately led to us helping with the people of West Africa themselves, helping to end the Ebola epidemic there, and protected the American people. We had a solid tracking program. What does Trump done instead?

He acted, he likes to boast that he acted quickly on China travel restrictions. 45 other countries imposed Chinese travel restrictions before we did. He always had a lot of exemptions to the travel restrictions. So even when he put on these travel restrictions, thousands of people still came from China after the restrictions were put in place. American citizens could come back and forth, as they should, of course. But also, Chinese crews on planes and boats bringing commercial products

were allowed to come back and forth. He didn't want to cut off. He just got in this trade deal with China. He didn't want to cut it off. He wanted all the technology flowing back and forth, so on and so forth. So thousands of people continue to come here. That's why I said in early February, this wasn't really a travel ban. It was a travel band aid.

Trump's position was, I put on these travel restrictions. We're safe. I don't need to do anything else. Instead, what I was saying in early February was you've slowed the introduction of the disease by restricting some travelers, not all some, good, step in the right direction, but you need to use this time in January and February to get testing ramped up, to get protective gear to hospitals, to do the things you need to do. And I also said you need to start to monitor and track those travelers.

They did none of those things. They just boasted about this travel restriction and then assumed they had solved the problem. That was Trump's position. I put on this travel ban that's going to go away. You know, I mean, this is a branding. This is a marketing presidency, right? Trump does, he'll take whatever the easiest move that he could possibly come up with, does that, and then sells it for, in this case,

days when when what you need is not a salesman pitching you a you know a garbage product for for 70 days that didn't do the trick you need somebody to actually do the work and I think that's what he you know doesn't want to do and that kind of shows itself in all we're getting is is hail marries for miracle cures you know that's why we have that's why he's pushing so hard for hydroxychloroquine because it's easy because it already exists and that's and that's evidence in the way that he talks about it but it's just a testament to the fact that it's easy it's already done he won he doesn't even want the FDA to have to test any drugs. This one already exists. Granted, it's not for a coronavirus. It's for malaria, you know, but that's of little, you know, that's of little importance to him.

Yeah, you know, it's such a great observation, Brian, that this is a hard problem. I mean, let me start there, right? Fighting this disease is a hard problem. There's no question about it. And it would have been a hard problem for any president. But what I learned with Ebola is that, you know, these hard problems require a lot of hard work. I mean, we work. worked hard. President Obama worked hard on Ebola. We got some things right. We got some things wrong. We learned. We adapted along the way. But, you know, we had 13 agencies working around the clock. We, you know, did everything from sending troops to West Africa to building test kits to the U.S. to ramping apostles, all these things. There are hundreds and hundreds of measures

we took. And the problem with Trump and this, as you say, is that his whole thing is, is I want to do one thing, and it's a magic bullet, and it's going to solve it. Well, as you know, we all packed the churches in the Easter and everything's fine. And as you say, I think this is such a critical point about Trump's leadership. He doesn't have the real determination and the vision and the frankly willingness to work hard to do the job of president. So let's switch gears here. I want to talk about kind of your time in the White House and your time with Vice President Biden.

Do you have a most memorable day from the Obama-Biden administration? Well, from the entire administration, certainly the most memorable day for me came when I was the Ebola response coordinator. We had gotten the disease very substantially under control in West Africa. It wasn't totally wiped out, but we were down to literally five cases a week in the entire, all three countries in Africa. And President Obama made a decision that we would bring home our troops that we'd sent over there to help with response, Operation United Assistance.

And we had an event at the White House where he made that announcement, was going to bring our troops home. And we had with us almost all the Americans who had contracted Ebola while fighting the disease in West Africa. They came to the White House that day. And after the president gave his speech and thanked each of them, we had a private meeting with them, the team that was leading the Ebola response to the White House and all these people who had contracted the disease in the U.S. or contracted in Africa, mostly in Americans who contracted Africa fighting the disease. We sat around a table. We spent just hours talking with them and it was just so emotional. What was really struck me about it, Brian, was

on one side of me when we had this meeting was Kent Brantley, who was a evangelical doctor. He worked for Franklin Graham, the right-wing evangelical. Dr. Brantley went to West Africa with a group called Samaritan's Purse, led by Franklin Graham, to fight Ebola. Another side of him was Craig Spencer, who was a very progressive doctor from New York with Doctors Without Borders who had gone to West Africa to fight the disease and had gotten the disease. And the opposite of me was Nina Pham, an Asian American nurse in Dallas, a young woman who had gotten the disease while treating a patient. That moment where you had people of such different views, such different parts of the country, such different perspectives, such different backgrounds, all together.

all having done to me to fight the disease. It was one of those moments we say, well, you know, this is what really does make this country great. This is what really does make this country exceptional. You know, thank you for all the work that you did. And I think, you know, it's evident in the outcome of that crisis how successful it was and how, and not only that, how bad it could have been. And you don't have to answer this, but was there a most embarrassing thing that happened to you during the Obama-Biden administration? What's their most embarrassing thing that happened to me? I don't know if this is exactly fits, but I have three kids, and they're pretty grown up.

And time with them is really special and hard to get. It's hard to get everyone together. And so in March of 2010, we'd had a long planned family vacation. And we wanted to take it. I mean, you know, it's hard to find time to get three adult kids, and they each had a significant other person in their lives, and getting everyone together. It's just impossible. So we went and took the family vacation. And it's just so happened.

It was exactly when the Affordable Care Act finally passed after having worked on it for a year and a half. And I'm missing that. And I'm feeling a little bad about that. And then the president holds this ceremony to sign the bill. And I'm missing that. And we're at the beach. And I come back and literally my cell phone has blown up because at the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act, Vice President Biden has leaned in and told the president that getting health care coverage for all Americans is a big effing deal.

And this has become like the big headline out of this whole thing. And everyone's emailing me, but what are you going to do about this? And what is he going to say? And I've missed this entire thing. I've been completely AWOL during the entire BFDA thing because I'm at the beach with my children. And it was great. I'm so glad the vice president was candid about it and laid it out. out there, but I miss the whole thing. That's, that's the truth of it. I missed the, I missed it when

he said it. I missed it when he responded to it. I missed the entire thing. And, uh, yeah, I still get teased a little bit about that, I suppose. Yeah. Despite, you know, Republicans best efforts, it's still a BFD. So, uh, and, and hopefully, uh, hopefully we have a president of Biden to expand it, uh, well beyond where it is right now. And so, you know, we look around. We have the country on fire, literally, uh, more than 100,000 Americans dead. We have, we have the most polarized population in my lifetime, maybe in your lifetime. How do we heal from this? You know, I'm like, just from my point of view, if I'm on Twitter and I see everything that's going on, I mean, maybe we've had, you know, scenarios in the past where it's been, it's been

polarized like this, but not in my lifetime. So how do we come back from this? Polarization's always been a factor in our country. And there are times when it's more obvious time when it's less obvious. And I agree with you. This is one of those times when it seems most extreme. And what particularly seems extreme about it is that we're polarized around some things that just seem crazy to be polarized around. The fact that we're having a political debate about whether or not people should be wearing masks when that's clearly what the public health people advocate, what Trump's own surgeon general advocates, what is head of infectious diseases. Dr. Dr. Tari Fauci advocates.

In fact, this has now become some political debate in our country is craziness. It just is. Now, so I don't think we should overpromise an end to polarization because polarization's been a long time factor in our country. What I do think that a president Biden could deliver is strong leadership based on decency, based on doing the job, based on bringing people together. You know, he's done this before. I mean, when I worked for him in the Senate, he was the leader in getting the ban on assault weapons passed. And think about what a polarized issue that is.

You know, common sense restrictions on guns has been one of those polarizing issues in our country. And yet he overcame that polarization and got the United States Senate. And then, of course, the House, President Clinton to sign into law a ban on assault weapons. And so he's shown his ability to use his rhetorical skills, his legislative skills, his leadership skills. his leadership skills, his persuasion skills, to bring people together to get things done. But I think good leadership, based on finding ways to bring common allies together, based on a way to advance an agenda with a plan and experience, I think that's what has been made Joe Biden so successful as a senator, as vice president,

and we'll make him successful as president. And when people ask me to point to things, I mean, in addition to his record, I think just look at what's happened over the course of this presidential campaign, Brian. It was a hard-fought primary campaign. We had more than two dozen people run in it. We had 12, 15 really strong candidates run in it from all wings of the party, men, women, people of color, incredible race. And people fought hard. I mean, they fought hard as they should.

The presidency of the United States was at stake. But as Joe Biden won in late February and March, you saw this coming together around him. of candidates like ultimately Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Amy Globuchar and people in Egypt, all uniting around Joe Biden. I think that's the kind of leadership that we need. It's obviously not going to bring every American together. We are a divided country. We can't fix all that. But his ability to unify the Democratic Party rapidly and broadly, I think, speaks volumes to the kind of leadership he'd give us his president. Oh, of course. All right. That was Ron Clayne. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you again to Ron Clean. You can find him on Twitter. Twitter at Ronald Clayne, and he's also the co-host of an excellent podcast about the pandemic called Epidemic. So check it out. Now, switching gears, I want to talk a bit about the U.S. Senate races because I think it's easy to get lost in the presidential race, but the truth is that the Senate is just as important. We don't get anything passed without the Senate. And so all of the blood and sweat and tears that it takes to get a Democrat elected president can be effectively neutered if we don't control Congress, too. And I don't mean that to be foreboding here because because the truth is that there's a lot to be hopeful about with the Senate.

And I just want to highlight some of that. So let's talk about a few races here. The newest polling out of Maine in nearly three months shows Democrat Sarah Gideon leading Susan Collins, 51 to 42, a nine-point lead over the Senate's most disappointed Republican. In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly is leading Martha McSally by 10 points, 51 to 41. In Colorado, Democrat and former presidential candidate John Hickenlooper is leading Corey Gardner, 504.

36, a massive 12-point lead. And here's where it gets fun. In North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham is leading Republican Tom Tillis 46 to 44. In South Carolina, the latest poll shows Democrat Jamie Harrison and Lindsay Graham tied at 42 apiece. In Montana, a late entrance by current Democratic governor Steve Bullock has been hugely successful, with polling showing him beating Republican Steve Danes, 46 to 39, a seven-point lead. We have both Senate seats up in Georgia, including one seat with Kelly Loughler, fresh off accusations of insider trading, where she dumped stock after attending a privilege briefing about the impending coronavirus outbreak. There's also an open seat in Kansas, where in 2018, Democrat Laura Kelly won the governor's race against Chris Kobach, the same guy who's now running for the Senate.

And we'll find out if Kobach becomes the Republican nominee in the Kansas primary in August, but the point being that we're still fresh off a statewide win by a Democrat there. In Iowa, we don't have a Democratic nominee as of this recording, but the latest polling shows a theoretical race between Republican Senator Joni Ernst and Democrat Eddie Morrow tied at 42 apiece. Plus, Ernst's approval rating is underwater, and the latest Des Moines Register poll found that only 41% said they would definitely back her re-election. So as it stands right now, the Senate is 53 to 47 in Republicans' favor. Assuming we lose Alabama, we'll need to flip four seats to tie if we have Democratic president,

and five to control the chamber outright, which, according to polling, is something we can do. And look, the point here isn't that we've got anything in the bag so we can just sit back and relax. And, of course, everything can change between now and November. The point is simply this. We're in these races. And I think it's important to get some positive reinforcement from time to time

because we're Democrats and we get used to the fact that good things don't happen, but they can happen here. The takeaway here is to stay activated, stay engaged and energized and fighting because we can win in Arizona. We can win in Maine. We can win in Colorado and North Carolina. We can win in Montana. We're in the race in South Carolina and Iowa and Georgia. So if you have a parent or niece or nephew or child or friend who lives in one of those places and doesn't vote, call them up.

Get one person registered. The fact is that anyone listening to this is like. already voting, but we can't just leave the organizing to everyone else. So find one person, just one, and help them get registered to vote. Do you remember back in January of 2018, there was a House of Delegate's seat in Virginia that was tied, literally tied, and the winner was decided by picking a name out of a hat, and of course the Republican won. And then two years later, that same Democrat actually went on to beat the Republican

by thousands of votes, but the point here is that while encouraging a single person to register may not seem like the Herculean task that the moment calls for, sometimes one more vote is all that it takes. That's all for this week. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. And if you did, help me out and share this link on your social media channels. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please leave me a five-star rating and feel free to write a review.

And as always, you can message me on social media with any feedback. Thank you and stay safe. You've been listening to No Lie. with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.