Pod Save America - “1600 Covid Ave.”

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

The White House’s robust testing and contact tracing program finds two cases inside the West Wing, Attorney General Bill Barr drops the charges against one of the President's convicted criminal friends, Barack Obama speaks out, and Trump falsely accuses California Democrats of rigging an election by allowing more people to vote. Then New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe talks to Tommy about his new Crooked podcast Wind of Change, and CNN’s Harry Enten weighs in on the latest polling and the 2020 Senate map.Follow Wind of Change on Spotify to binge all 8 episodes now: https://spoti.fi/WindOfChange

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Tommy talks to CNN polling guru Harry Enten about the 2020 map and the path to flip the Senate in November. Before that, we'll talk about how the coronavirus may now be spreading through the White House, Attorney General Bill Barr's decision to drop charges against one of the president's convicted criminal friends, what Barack Obama thinks about all this, and why Trump has accused Governor Newsom of

rigging this week's special congressional election in the California 25th. Just another day in paradise here, guys. You will also hear a sneak preview of Tommy's Pod Save the World interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, the host of Wind of Change, a brand new podcast from Crooked Media, Pineapple Street Studios and Spotify, which is finally out today. Tommy, you want to say a few words about one of the best podcasts our fine listeners will ever hear? Yeah. So listen, I sincerely think that this is one of the best podcasts I've ever heard. One of the best stories I've ever heard. So Patrick Radden Keith is like a heavy hitter, New Yorker writer.

He's written about El Chapo, terrorism, like all these big pieces. This story is about a power ballad from the 90s called Wind of Change that was the anthem to the fall of communism in the USSR and a tip that he got a decade ago that it might have been written by the CIA. And so you'll hear more about the show itself in my interview with Patrick. The cutdown version will go on Pod Save America. A longer one will go on Pod Save the World. But my pitch to you guys is if you're looking for eight episodes of like mystery spy stories, metal bands, music, fun, just like a total escape from the nightmare that is the COVID reality we are living in,

from the nightmare that is the COVID reality we are all living in. This is the show. It is so fun. You can binge it all right now for free on Spotify. So check it out there. You don't have to have a paid subscription. You can binge it right now, Monday for free. Check it out.

It's such a fun show. You will love it. I'm so excited that this thing is finally in the world. We've been working on it for a year. So trust me on this one. I can't improve upon that. I'll just been working on it for a year. So trust me on this one. I can't improve upon that. I'll just add, do it for us too. Like we really want this thing and need it to be a hit. So head on over there.

Do it for yourself. Do it for us, Patrick, the team at Pineapple Street Studios did just an unbelievable job. This is like a big budget, went to four continents, like amazing show. Check it out. I always test these things on nonpolitical news junkies like Emily loved it. My brother loved it. My sister-in-law loved it. They all started listening to it yesterday. It's just it's really, really, really so fun. Love it. Love it.

I believe you also had an excellent show this weekend. Tell us all about it. Huge love it or leave it. We talked to Michael Lewis, the author, about the fifth risk and Trump as a bad coach of a good team. Brittany Packnett Cunningham shared her thoughts about this gruesome murder in Georgia and the public outcry about the lack of charges. Emily Heller joined for a gardening segment against my will.

And Whitney Cummings was hilarious judging the monologue. Check it out. It is, I think, one of my favorite episodes with a lot of great conversations and really funny segments. Excellent. All right, let's get to the news. Last week, Donald Trump said, quote, we did everything right. Now it's time to get back to work. On Sunday, one employee said, quote, it is scary to go to work. I think that I'd be a lot safer if I was sitting at home. That employee was White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett, and he was talking about the West Wing, where two staff members have now tested positive for COVID-19. One of President Trump's personal valets and Katie Miller, Mike Pence's press secretary.

have forced a number of senior White House health officials to self-quarantine to some degree after possible exposure, including FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, CDC Director Robert Redfield, and Anthony Fauci. Tommy, I want to get your reaction to Trump's response to the news about Miller. He said, quote, she's a wonderful young woman, Katie. She tested very good for a long period of time. And then all of a sudden today she tested positive. And this is why testing isn't necessary. We have the best testing in the world, but testing is not necessarily the answer because they were testing them. Look, I mean, thank God President Trump is willing to tell the hard truth about health care in general, which is that one day you can go to the doctor and be healthy and then later you can get sick. So what's why bother to go in the first place? Right. I mean, it doesn't like this is so ludicrous on its face. He's he's trying to

downplay the need for testing because the federal government has completely failed to ramp up the availability and frequency of testing. And so now he wants to push all that responsibility, all of that work to the states and then try to say, well, my focus here at the White House is about reopening the economy. But this example perfectly demonstrates why this strategy is doomed to fail, because the president's valet had COVID. So that job means you're in the Oval Office dozens of times a day. You bring the president food, drinks, you hand him his Diet Coke. There's no one really with more direct contact. And the VP's press secretary, Katie Miller, now has coronavirus. She's sitting in all the task force meetings. So now Fauci, the CDC director, the FDA commissioner, they're all

self-quarantining. She's also married to professional racist Stephen Miller. So he is susceptible and he has direct access to the president. So like, first of all, I feel badly for anyone who has to work in the West Wing right now because it is tiny. And before you all yell at me that these people chose to work for Trump, like know that the cleaning crews, the military aides, the press, they did not choose to work for Donald Trump. But like my first office in the West Wing was called Lower Press. You guys remember this. It's literally directly behind the briefing room podium when you watch Trump and the coronavirus tax force. And like I haven't been in there in a while. But back in the day, we used to seat eight people in a space that would be considered too small for a studio apartment.

Right. So like social distancing is impossible. But, you know, like the White House is still. Remember me and Rhodes in the basement, our office that was then your office, too. No windows, no ventilation, just like a tiny cramped office in the basement of the West Wing. It's a petri dish. It's terrifying. And look, in the White House, they're blessed with having the fastest, most modern equipment. They're testing every day and they can't keep the virus out of the building. So how are the rest of us supposed to do so and head out in the world and back to work and stay safe?

And so like the initial phase of social distancing and the bending the curve that we were talking about, that was not an end in and of itself. It was supposed to give us time to ramp up hospital capacity and testing so we could try to keep a lid on this thing in a regional way and regional outbreaks by testing and contact tracing. And we are just nowhere near ready. And you're seeing it with these videos of packed restaurants and TJ Maxx's and everything else. But the White House, despite the fact that the virus is in the heart of the West Wing, they still want to push us to reopen. So I just think it's a very ominous side for how things are going to go. Love it. Trump's decided to label this period where he pretends the pandemic is already behind us. The transition to greatness. This is what he's been tweeting in all caps. It seems like

maybe a COVID outbreak at the White House might complicate that message. What do you think? Yeah, definitely. COVID definitely throws a wrench in the COVID hasn't really gotten the gotten the talking points. COVID has consistently refused to go along with the Trump messaging campaign. You know, there's all this outside of the, I feel like one thing that's happened over the past, say, 48 hours, 72 hours is a combination of two things. One is, as Tommy points out, that the White House, the West Wing specifically, is small, it is cramped. And so you see all these advisors saying, yeah, it's bad,

but we're doing it for our country. And they are combining two things, the risk that might be necessary in this emergency to serve the country and the refusal, even inside the White House, for people to take this seriously enough. I mean, we watched for weeks as the coronavirus task force and Trump would hold briefings where nobody was socially distant. We have now seen footage of Trump wandering around places without masks, Pence wandering around places without masks, Pence's team trying to get people to take masks off. You have a concern in Iowa amongst local officials that Mike Pence, far from coming to reassure the country and assuage people's fears, is a fucking vector for disease.

So we should really make sure we're separating out both sort of how we look at what Trump and these people, these dummies are doing, and Trump's larger policy goals, which is they are desperately trying to ally the difference between a careful reopening in which people take all necessary precautions and it takes place gradually and just opening the country back up and returning to greatness, whatever that means. It is also an example of so the White House staff is not including and starting with Donald Trump and Mike Pence is not taking their own guidelines seriously, right? There's not enough masks in the White House. They're not social distancing. But in some ways, it's also

like test for me, not for you, right? Like what happened with Katie Miller and the valet is almost exactly what should happen in a workplace going forward, right? They test everyone daily or they test some White House staffers weekly. And then as soon as you find that someone is positive, you then contact trace all of their contacts. You ask those people to quarantine and self-isolate. And that is what the White House has done. That's why all these senior health officials are quarantining right now. And Trump being like, yeah, well, one day you can test negative and the next day you can test positive. Like imagine if there were no tests in the White House like there aren't in thousands of places, millions of places all across the country. And Katie Miller ends up being asymptomatic and so does the valet. How many more people would

they have infected if they didn't get tested, if people weren't quarantining and isolating? It is proving the entire point of why we need to ramp up testing. We're averaging 250,000 tests per day. Last week, it was like a little over 300,000 some days. So it's getting better. But Harvard University epidemiologists there say that we need 900,000 a day by May 15th. So we're still not at the level we need to be safe. So when outbreaks happen at workplaces, which they may, you'll be able to do exactly what the White House did in this situation. It's also just, it's crystal clear that Trump won't wear a mask because he thinks it makes him look stupid. And it is so irresponsible. It is

demonstrating bad behavior. But I just, I nearly lost it when I saw Trump doing an event with World War II veterans without a mask on. Like, it is so disrespectful. You call these people there, these heroes from World War II who are absolutely going to die if they get COVID. And you can't show the respect to wear a fucking mask in front of these guys who are like there for D-Day. Did you hear what Kayleigh McEnany said when asked about this?

She said, well, they chose to come. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the 95-year-old World War II heroes chose to come. So it's on them. And once again, I think it's time we call out the Harvard Law School admissions process that takes a look at potential transfers. Obviously, we've seen problems at the undergraduate level with people like Jared Kushner, but we should also look at the decision making that's leading Harvard Law to admit people who transfer to Harvard Law because it's really doing a damage, I think, to that brand. Yeah, Kayleigh's having a rough run in her first week as White House press secretary. I bet a lot of people are wondering why they went back to this old system when not having her to not lie was probably even easier. All right.

So you guys might remember that long before Donald Trump let a plague loose on America, a number of his top advisors were convicted of various crimes that were uncovered during the investigation of the Russian operation to help Trump win the presidency. On Thursday, the Department of Justice took unprecedented steps to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's first national security advisor, who pled guilty twice to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the 2016 election. Flynn later withdrew his guilty plea, and Trump was reportedly ready to pardon him until Attorney General Bill Barr dropped the charges in a 20-page memo

in which they argued that the FBI had no justification for interviewing Flynn in the first place and that his lies had nothing to do with any relevant FBI investigations. Tommy, why is this such a big deal? So it's a big deal because Attorney General Bill Barr is taking a series of steps to systematically undercut and undo the Mueller probe for purely political reasons. So remember going back in time a little bit, the bar basically applied for the job of attorney general by writing this unsolicited memo attacking the Mueller investigation. He got the gig. He then wrote a four-page letter spinning Mueller's report in a wildly dishonest

way before the whole thing was released. More recently, Barr's handpicked staffer asked for a more lenient sentencing for Roger Stone, which led to four career prosecutors withdrawing from the case and one resigning. So that brings us forward to Barr asking another prosecutor to review Flynn's case. So last week, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, this guy Timothy Shea, who is Barr's handpicked guy, filed a motion to dismiss the false statement charge against Flynn, which he had pleaded guilty to, as you just said, John, twice. And so it's worth noting that this interim U.S. attorney, Michael Shea, he wasn't vetted. He wasn't confirmed by the Senate. He was appointed. So he's just Barr's guy in there doing his bidding. So this new DOJ argument is just absurd

on its face. They say that Flynn's lies to the FBI were immaterial to the underlying case, lest they should throw the thing out. So remember that that lie, that lie that Flynn told the FBI, the vice president, Sean Spicer, and thus the public, was that he didn't discuss sanctions when he made a phone call during the presidential transition with Sergeiislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US. But he did. And now, arguing that lie is somehow immaterial to a counterintelligence investigation about Russian interference in the 2016 election is just ludicrous, especially when you consider that there was already concern about Flynn himself, specifically that he had been paid $40,000 by RT to deliver a speech, which is the Russian language propaganda network. And he went to this gala in Moscow and he sat next to Putin. I think it was Moscow. So I'm not saying that that makes Flynn guilty or a Russian asset or any of the darker charges you hear, but it's nonsensical that you could argue that a phone call so clearly relevant to the underlying context and concern is irrelevant. And, you know, they're also pointing to some procedural issues

that maybe the DOJ and FBI made some mistakes with respect to reopening the case or was trying to set them up. So look, I'm not an expert on any of that, but to play devil's advocate for a second, I am very open to criticisms of Comey or how the case was handled. I'm open to arguments that prosecuting someone under the Logan Act is just dumb or that FARA, the Foreign Agent Registrations Act, is confusing or, you know, inconsistently enforced law at best. But just stepping back, like it would have been a dereliction of duty for the FBI to have all these concerns about Flynn, to know about Russian interference, and not pursue this matter.

Once they knew Flynn lied, they knew the Russians knew Flynn lied. And Flynn is about to get briefed in the most sensitive information, literally in the entire US government as national security advisor. And we haven't even touched on the lobbying Flynn did for the Turkish government or reports that he was part of this insane scheme to literally kidnap a Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen from his home in Pennsylvania and take him back to Turkey where he would have been tortured or imprisoned or worse. So, you know, that I think is the bigger picture of like this effort by Barr that is purely political. I mean, you know who thought that Flynn's lies mattered? Donald Trump and Mike Pence because they fired him over them. And also like part of the problem here was

they were running a counterintelligence investigation about Russian influence in the election. And the Russians knew that Flynn lied about the call. So Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail. The incoming national security advisor was vulnerable to blackmail because he told the public a lie that the Russians could prove was a lie because they knew that he had talked to Kislyak on the phone and what he had said. That is precisely why you do an investigation. And he pled guilty to it twice. I mean, there's going to be a ton of every right-wing media character in the universe is on this thing. And Donald Trump is going to be talking about it forever. And they're going to try to confuse everyone in this fog of the left says this and the right says this. Just look at all of the career

prosecutors who've served in Democratic and Republican administrations who aren't partisan. Look at what the judges are saying. Look at what all of these nonpartisan people are saying. Some of them are resigning. All of them think it's fucking outrageous. People who've worked for the Bush administrations, for the Obama administrations, like what Bill Barr has done and his cronies is fucking a travesty of justice. And everyone who is not a Trump acolyte believes that to be true. I mean, love it. What are the potential implications of this going forward? Because Trump has basically spent all day on Sunday tweeting threats of revenge, accusing the Obama administration of conspiring against Flynn, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama himself. He tweeted Obamagate many times now,

and he actually retweeted a meme that said, hope you had fun investigating me. Now it's my turn. Well, sort of really gives away the game a little bit there. I mean, look, this is a rollout of a conspiracy theory. And step one of the rollout of the conspiracy theory is getting everybody confused about what is ultimately a very simple thing. It's actually similar. Like, I feel like we're doing this twice today, right? Like the White House is now having an outbreak of COVID proving that a necessity of testing that Trump is denying, like all of this is pretty trivial. But, you know, Mike Flynn is asked about his contacts with Russia in a Russia counterintelligence investigation. He lies. He is caught for that lie. He pleads guilty. He admits to the crime. His very accomplished

defense attorney signed their name saying that this is all legitimate and that he is confessing and admitting to what he does. He is fired for his conduct. It is sort of sanctified up and down the chain of command. And then because Trump heading into reelection realizes he needs to drum up some kind of a story and some kind of a kind of assault on his own administration, gets Bill Barr to do all this all for the specific purpose of being able to say the Russia investigation was actually a hoax and the real enemy here is Barack Obama. What they're doing now is first they muddy the water and get everybody confused about

what happened. And then the next step is to say, actually, what really went wrong, the real scandal is the Obama administration investigation of Donald Trump and Donald Trump's associates so that they can try to make this about Obama and Biden and some kind of abuse of power that took place during the transition and before because they view it as a way to help them win the election. It's just it's just a and they're going to have a bunch of allies in the media help them do that. They're already doing this right. The only people defending Flynn are the kind of serial liars and manipulators of the right wing.

It forces you to ignore not just Flynn, not just Trump, not just Mike Pence, not just Flynn's own lawyers, but hundreds now, I think, what, 1,900, almost 2,000 career officials who are saying that this is an abuse of power. And, you know, the media will likely go along with this argument that this is some kind of a right-left dispute when really it's a tiny cabal of right-wing Trump goons against tradition, nonpartisan experts, and everybody else. One of the things that's most galling about the MAGA people and Trump in general is that they always claim to be victims of a government that they are in charge of and have been in charge of for a long time. That is true with like the right wing protesters who are complaining about the lockdowns and

saying this is government tyranny. Like you're a bunch of make America great again, QAnon loving Trump fans. Don't you realize that he is in charge? And the other thing we should all be concerned about is this isn't the end of the revisionist history on the Russia probe, right? There's this Durham investigation that Barr has started that is reviewing the entire Russia probe. And it seems like the goal is to find something they can point to which shows that former

Obama administration officials politicized the investigation or did something improper or were trying to rig the election for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, which is, you know, things that Donald Trump has been asserting for literally years, right? But he's finally found his guy. He installed Barr at the Department of Justice, and Barr is more than happy to set up a process that he can point to as a fig leaf or, you know, sort of a sliver of justice to make it seem reasonable. But I think we should all be very worried about it. Trump's also starting to bristle at FBI Director Christopher Wray,

right? He's starting to go around to anyone, forget holdovers from Obama, just anyone who is not just a knee-jerk Trump defender, a true loyalist in positions of power inside of the Justice Department and inside of law enforcement. I mean, Trump sort of like gave away the game over the weekend. You know, he spent all day Sunday. He's still doing it today. Tweeting, you know, threats of revenge, accusing the Obama administration of conspiring against Flynn. He's pointing out Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Obama himself. He's tweeting Obamagate. He retweeted a meme that said, hope you had fun investigating me. Now it's my turn. I mean, that's what this is about. Right.

Like, you know, if Donald Trump had pardoned Michael Flynn like he was planning to do. That would have been bad enough. But the purpose of having Barr dismiss the charges is not just letting Flynn off. It's saying the real villains here are the FBI and the DOJ and the Obama administration and law enforcement. They want to go after the Obama administration. I mean, I think there's two tracks here. here. The legal track, which involves, you know, John Durham, this prosecutor that Barr has reviewing the whole case, is actually quite terrifying because I think, you know, Trump is not going to be happy and Bill Barr is not going to be happy until they get someone or multiple people from the Obama administration and have some kind of a fucking show trial here. I think the political track, I don't know if it's going to be as effective for them because like watching donald

trump start tweeting about something called obamagate in the middle of a pandemic where over 80 000 americans are dead i do not think it's going to find a lot of traction outside the fucking right wing fever dream but that's of like his but that's the goal that's the point right i mean that is the goal if you like dave weigel did this interesting experiment where he downloaded like the Trump app and he downloaded the Biden app and he lived in the two different worlds they create for you in terms of media. And the Flynn story was the biggest thing that has ever happened in the world on the sort of MAGA app, right? If you turn into Fox News, this is what's going to pepper you. If you watch OANN, it's going to be all conspiracies. He's clearly looking for something that makes him the victim again, that gets his people angry and motivated, that might distract them from his utterly terrible response to the pandemic. I don't know if that'll work, but it has certainly kicked up a shitload of media attention, and it's very, very purposeful. Otherwise, why do you send 52 retweets or tweets in an hour on Mother's Day morning, right? It's also just, I think, worth looking at how conspiracy theories have changed because of Donald Trump, right? You look at like 9-11 conspiracy theories, and it begins with a bunch of people in the fringe of the internet making sort of spurious connections. And it

ends up as, you know, it's a joke on Twitter. Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. But you have sort of people building cases and building information so that they can develop up this conspiracy theory from the ground up to try to get it to catch on, to explain things in a way that's sort of, you know, false. Trump tweets Obamagate. There is no underlying fact pattern. There's no justification for it. There's no information to support that there is any kind of conspiracy going on. But he starts with the conspiracy at the highest possible level. And it's a signal to everyone from the legitimate slowly down to the nether regions of the kind of right wing Internet to begin building this argument so that it can bubble up into the

mainstream press. And that's why this will be back again and again and again. Yeah, I just think I think there is diminishing marginal returns to the strategy of firing up your base, because I think from the beginning of the selection has been very, very clear that his base is going to turn out and they're going to turn out numbers like we've never seen. And they're going to be with him no matter what. And he can you know, he's going to do all these things to juice turnout and to get his base excited. And exactly what you were talking about, Tommy, and what Weigel wrote about by keeping them in this, you know, information bubble the entire time. I just I

wonder, you know, what Donald Trump needs right now is what worries me most about what he does in this election is one, anything to get back sort of the suburban voters that he's lost in 2018. And two, whatever he can do to depress democratic turnout which that's their specialty they did that in 2016 too and i don't know if this fits with either those strategies i do have incredible concern about the sort of legal fallout the fucking show trials that you know the fact that he's just making a mockery of our justice system and all and the rule of law like that scares the shit out of me. Yeah. But but I do wonder how this political move plays out in a world that's in, you know, a deep, deep, deep recession and a pandemic. My other just sort of fear, too, is one of the reasons he's starting to drum this up is because we may see more

interference in this election. And we're going to see more. That worries me a lot. We're going to see more interference potentially from Russia. Perhaps it's already ongoing and we're going to find out fucking later. And as that unfolds, he's going to try to do this to muddy the water and make this about Obama and make this about anything other than the kind of illegitimacy of his previous victory and the illegitimate victory he's trying to eke out in 2020. It came from someone inside the CIA. And the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify,

a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media, and Spotify. So one person who had something to say about all this was our old boss, Barack Obama. On Friday, Yahoo News obtained the recording of a call the former president did with around 3,000 former staffers, which somehow the three of us all missed. And towards the end of that call, didn't know what was happening. And towards the end of that call, 3,000 former staffers. We were not on there. And towards the end of the call,

Obama said that Barr's dismissal of the Flynn case demonstrated that, quote, our basic understanding of the rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly, as we've seen in other places. He also called Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, quote, an absolute chaotic disaster. Lovett, what do you think? Were you at all surprised by how pointed Obama was? I mean, OK, let's call that pointed. It's, you know, it's it's pointed from an absolute chaotic disaster. No, no, I'm only I'm pulling punches. I'm only saying that it's it's it's accurate. I'm only saying that it's it's it's accurate. It's a completely accurate sentence. And it's news because Barack Obama is saying something obvious and accurate. It is a chaotic disaster. It's only pointed because the reality demands it. And yeah, that's like. We're in this. I feel like, you know, here we are week 12. We're in our fucking week 30. I don't know. We're in our homes. It is an absolute chaotic disaster. It is good that Barack Obama is pointing it out. You know, the New York Times could only muster saying that Barr's decision heightens fears of politicization at the Department of Justice. It's good that Barack Obama is willing to to to come out here and just point out how true this is because it is still his megaphone.

He still can reach people with it. Well, I guess I just, you know, there's a lot of chatter after this was released. Like, finally, Obama is saying something. Why isn't he saying this in public? Why don't we hear him speak more? And, you know, there's always various rounds of this every so often. It feels like people forgot 2018. A lot of times it feels like people forgot what happened

in 2018 midterms, but like Barack Obama went out there and campaigned for democratic candidates and talked about like how, you know, democracy was at stake. The rule of law was at stake. Like he said all this shit before that. I do think that people, some, some people believe that Barack Obama has these magical powers that when he comes out and speaks against Trump, suddenly like the Trump presidency will just crumble before our eyes, you know, which is not really the case. I mean, I'm glad he said it. I'm always an advocate of Barack Obama speaking his mind more. Tommy, what do you think this tells us about like the role he intends to play in this campaign? Well, I mean, look, I hope it's similar to the one he played in 2018 when he was

out a lot to the extent one can be out on the campaign trail these days. I mean, it does signal that he's not pulling punches. And I do think no one should be surprised by that. And the timing does seem appropriate by Obama's standards of sort of wanting to give Trump some leeway as an ex-president. But once you have a presumptive nominee, the campaign season has really started and he put out that endorsement video. So I think you'll probably hear from him more regularly. I mean, look, I'm sympathetic to the people who want to hear him out there more. He has a big megaphone, like he's able to get press attention and drive a message in ways that most other Democrats can't. This does seem to be, I think, a signal to them that

you're going to hear a lot from Barack Obama going forward, especially in the fall. He's going to be campaigning for Joe Biden a lot, maybe from his living room, maybe on Zoom, but you're going to hear from him. And he will continue to be one of the people in the party that can really prosecute a case against the Republican Party better than almost anyone else. So it's a good thing. I completely agree with that last point, too, because I think in his comments, there was what I think could be a really effective message for Democrats in November. He said, this election that's coming up on every level is so important because what we're going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we're fighting against is these long term trends. We're being selfish, being tribal,

being divided and seeing others as an enemy. That has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well. He said that the reason the response to the pandemic has been an absolute chaotic disaster is because that mindset of what's in it for me and to heck with everybody else has been operationalized in our government. And I do think in those comments is sort of the seeds of a message that Democrats and Joe Biden and the rest of us can run on in November. So in the middle of his latest weekend Twitter meltdown, the president also falsely accused California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democrats of rigging Tuesday's special congressional election in California's 25th district.

He tweeted, quote, Governor Gavin Newsom of California won't let restaurants, beaches and stores open, but he installs a voting booth system in a highly Democrat area. In parentheses, supposed to be mail in ballots only. Now suddenly Donald Trump, he loves mail-in ballots because our great candidate, Mike Garcia, is winning by a lot. CA25, rigged election. Tommy, you want to unpack this crazy for us? So, okay. So there's a special election. Democratic State Assemblywoman Christy Smith is running against this guy, Mike Garcia. They're trying to fill out the seat left vacant by Congresswoman Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress. So this would be a special election that would allow that person to fill the seat until the November 2020 elections. The weird thing about this tweet,

so the request to open this polling location in the area came from a Republican mayor, this polling location in the area came from a Republican mayor, among others. The other option is vote by mail, which Trump also says is rigged. And so apparently he doesn't want anyone to be allowed to vote. That's sort of his position here. The other thing that's weird is that Republicans are winning that race or so everyone seems to think. So he's drawing a whole bunch of attention to it and he's calling it rigged when it seems likely that Mike Garcia is ahead. So this doesn't make any sense factually. It doesn't make any sense politically. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, but it was just like, I want to know what Fox segment he was watching that led him to pull this idiocy out of his ass, because normally that's the little breadcrumb trail we follow to figure these things out. Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think it's two things I think we're seeing.

He found a great way to combine two birds, one tweet. So there is evidence that Republicans are returning more of their mail in ballots than Democrats. But there's a chance that Democrats could catch up in returning their ballots or in some of these in-person locations. And by the way, it's not just one location. There are multiple locations. And this was opening one more location. And so this is about, in a small way, previewing what could happen in November, which is a slow count over time, a Democrat slowly coming back and Trump delegitimizing the election. So that's just something to watch for. That's what he's testing a little bit. So scary. So scary. So that's one. And then two, and then two, he just wants to take a shot at Gavin Newsom, you know,

in a week where they're having to send everybody home from the White House because of COVID. He has one. He wants to outsource the pain of protecting people from this virus. And so he's trying to blame Gavin Newsom for economic fallout in any way that they can. That's what Fox News is doing constantly. That's what, you know, Kevin McCarthy is doing on. That's what all of these Republicans are doing. Why won't you open the house? I got a tea near the White House. They're trying to put anyone being responsible and listening to health experts as responsible

for the economic cost. Yeah. I mean, there would normally be a thousand in-person polling places in this district. There's only going to be 13 because of COVID. And this polling place that Trump is talking about in Lancaster is one of them. It's heavily African-American community and didn't have a polling place like some other communities in the district but like as you pointed out tommy republican mayor uh it's represented in the california state legislature by two republicans so it's not like the most

democrat area of california as you said or even in that district um but i do think you know i part of me was like oh i'm glad uh don Donald Trump is calling attention to this race because Democrats need to get their fucking ballot in. We have a registration advantage in this district. Katie Hill won it by about seven points in 2018, even though it was competitive. And there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. And everyone has been mailed a ballot. There's a ballot in your house. There's a ballot in your house.

Because if we lose this race tomorrow, the only thing we can blame is ourselves because Democrats did not turn the ballots in. They're at your fucking house. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, Dave Wasserman pointed out that Lancaster, which is the most heavily non-white area in CA25, was in fact the only population center without an in-person voting center until this weekend. So if anything, this was writing an injustice. God help voters in states where you don't have a governor like Gavin Newsom, who cares about democracy and doing the right things. This just speaks to the quiet voter suppression that happens in elections all the time, especially against people of color. And it's infuriating. Yeah. And what everyone should know is, you know, so we're behind right now.

Obviously, Chrissy Smith, who was on the pod the other week, hopefully she can catch up as more ballots get returned and maybe some in-person voting on Election Day. But there's basically going to be a rematch in November because this is filling out the remainder of Katie Hill's term. And then they both have to no matter who wins tomorrow, they both have to run against each other again in November. And so, you know, Democrats believe that with a presidential election turnout, maybe Chrissy Smith could do even better in the November election. But still, a lot of people are going to be watching this race. It's going to be a lot of takes about what happens tomorrow. So go to votesaveamerica.com slash CA25 to find out how you can donate or volunteer in these final two days. No matter where you live, you can help out. So call attention to that.

There's also, by the way, going to be a special election. I think we talked about this before in Wisconsin's 7th congressional district. Democrat Tricia Sunker is on the ballot. And so you can find out more about that at votesaveamerica.com slash Wisconsin. That's a little bit of a tougher race. But we just saw the Wisconsin Democrats pull out something big in that in that court race a couple of weeks ago. So hopefully they can do the same. All right. When we come back, we'll have Tommy's interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, the host of our new podcast, Wind of Change.

I am so excited to talk to my guest today. It's Patrick Radden Keefe. Patrick is a New Yorker staff writer. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Say Nothing, which has been called the best nonfiction book of 2019 and one of the best nonfiction books of the decade. No big deal. Patrick, it's great to have you back and see your face from this COVID nightmare. Great to be back with you. So I just want to say, so we're here today to talk about this amazing new show, Wind of Change.

And before we get to questions, I just want to sort of tell listeners that I literally remember where I was in my office. The first time we talked about this show and the tip you got about the song wind of change, there was something about it, the distinctive song, like the mystery, that period of time, the nostalgia. And it just put this like big shit eating grin on my face. And that smile was still there when I listened to the, the last episode, uh, a couple of weeks ago. So here's my pitch to listeners. If you want to immerse yourself into eight episodes of mystery, of fascinating history and music and rock stars, and just like pure joy that will escape this pandemic nightmare, this is your show. So check

it out on Spotify. You can binge the whole show there. And this is important. You don't have to pay for Spotify to binge it. You can get it for free on Spotify and binge the whole show there. And this is important. You don't have to pay for Spotify to binge it. You can get it for free on Spotify and binge the whole series. So it's 2020. Get with the program. Download Spotify. Subscribe to Wind of Change. And you will feel joy for the first time in months.

End of speech from me. So first question for you, Patrick. So like at the New Yorker, you've written about the Sackler family who are these monsters that pushed Oxycontin like it was Tylenol and helped create the nation's opioid crisis. You've covered terrorists. You covered the hunt for El Chapo. You wrote a book about the IRA and the troubles in Northern Ireland and immersed yourself in that history. history. But your white whale, your Moby Dick was a 90s power ballad called Wind of Change. Can you talk about like the genesis of this story that led you on a decade long journey that got us to today? Yeah, absolutely. So I have this friend and he's a character in the podcast, this guy, Michael Schender Auerbach, who I've known for years. We first met, I think, in 2006. And he's one of these people, I'm sure you know people like this too. He's just, it feels like he's kind of a, almost a sort of where's Waldo. Like he pops up in all kinds of different places. He knows all

sorts of different people. So he now works for Madeleine Albright at Albright Stonebridge, people. So he now works for Madeleine Albright at Albright Stonebridge, her company. But he's been in business intelligence and he's had startups and he's been in the think tank world and he's involved in Middle East peace stuff. And he has been a dear friend of mine for years, but also a source. And so over the years at The New Yorker, he would tip me off to things, crazy stories, and just became one of those people who always had wild ideas that nobody else was talking about and seemed to be able to kind of sort of see around the corner a little bit and sometimes just tip me off to something that maybe was going to be a big thing in a few months' time. And so, you know, anytime he comes to me with a tip, I take it seriously. And the way this whole thing started is in 2011, he sent me an email. And he said, I had dinner

last night with this guy who's a friend of mine who used to work at the CIA. And he told me that there's this song by the 1980s German hair metal band, The Scorpions, called Wind of Change, which is this big song. More in Europe. It's one of the biggest rock songs ever. Less so in the U.S., but in Europe, it's just huge, ubiquitous. Nearly a billion views on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's something like in terms of singles in the pre-digital era, it's like the 13th biggest selling single of all time. I got it. And it's this metal ballad all about the end of the Cold War. It came out right around the time the Berlin Wall fell. And it's all about reconciliation and the end of communism and tyranny. And it was kind of the soundtrack to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the tip that I got from Michael in 2011 was he said, so this guy last night told me that that song was written by the CIA. And that set me off down this rabbit hole. My shit-eating grin is back. I'm telling you. And I didn't even, it's funny because I wasn't really all that familiar with the song. You know, I was not a metal kid growing up. I was, certainly that was my era. You know, I was not a metal kid growing up. I was certainly that was my era. You know, I was a kid and very into music in those years, but not metal. But there's just something about

this story. And that kind of set me off on on this path, which all these literally almost a decade later has turned into this this podcast. So let's let's, I guess, start by going back in time. And I think the reason I imagine that you heard that tip and didn't think it was ridiculous on its face is because this kind of thing has happened in the past. So the CIA has sponsored concerts, arts festivals, books, films as part of this cultural Cold War against communism, against the Soviet Union. And one of my favorite episodes in this series is when you dig into that history. Can you talk a little bit about Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone and their relationship with the CIA? Yeah. So this to me was all new. I mean, I vaguely knew

that the CIA had kind of dabbled in the world of culture, particularly early in the Cold War, that there were certain books and films and like literary journals that they'd promoted, that they literally promoted abstract expressionism. You know, you had this period of time. I think some of this is the kind of agency of CIA guys, it's all guys, who are these white guys who come out of Yale.

And so there's this period of time where they're like, Jackson Pollock is the answer. You know, they have this notion that kind of promoting certain kinds of high art will win the ideological battle with the Soviets. But one of the things that we delved into in the podcast is that you get this amazing moment in the 50s and 60s when Eisenhower comes into office and Eisenhower says explicitly, we quote him, the CIA should be dabbling in the world of culture. That, you know, it's one thing to have a propaganda leaflet dropped out of an airplane, but nobody's going to trust something if it looks like propaganda. So what he says is we should be kind of messing around in the sphere of culture. And Eisenhower's quote was the hand of government must be carefully concealed.

And so you have this point where the, you know, America's holding itself out there against the Soviets as this like bastion of freedom and liberty. But at the same time, it's Jim Crow America in the 1950s. And the Soviets, actually a big part of their propaganda about the U.S. is about race relations in this country. And so you then get this moment where initially it's the State Department starts approaching Black jazz musicians and saying, we want you to go on a goodwill tour abroad. We want you to go to the Middle East. We want you to go to Africa. In some instances, we want you to go to the Soviet Union and tour around and play. And we tell the story of Louis Armstrong in particular because he ends up incredibly conflicted where

the State Department is coming and asking him to be this like roving ambassador. And at the same time, he, you know, he's deeply uncomfortable being kind of put out there as this black American prop effectively, who's sort of vouching for the American way at the same time as domestically, uh, he has obviously deep misgivings, um, about the nature of the political system and segregation. congregation. And we found out this other amazing story that I hadn't known. And this one kind of hit me particularly hard because it's about an artist that I just grew up loving. I've listened to her since I was a kid. So Louis Armstrong actually goes to Africa on tour and he knows what he's doing. The State Department sends him and he's uncomfortable about it, but he goes. In 1961, we tell this story about how Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Seoul, goes to Africa, goes to Nigeria on a tour. And Nina Simone was actually politically pretty radical, not the kind of person who would ever have gone anywhere if the State Department asked her to. So she goes. There's a foundation in D.C., the American Society of African Culture, which sends her there on this tour. And one of

the stories we tell in this podcast is we found out through talking to a historian who'd been through the archives of this organization, that the American Society of African Culture was a front for the CIA. The CIA was secretly funding this group. They send Nina Simone to Nigeria, she performs, it's this like important experience for her. And she died not knowing that she'd been used. Man. It's like, it's just, it's a heartbreaking story in so many ways, especially given her eventual split with the country. Well, she leaves the country. Yeah. She moved abroad. Didn't want anything to do with the United States. But it just opened my eyes to this idea. You know, when I first got started on this and heard the Scorpion story, I was like, that's ridiculous that, you know,

what would the CIA have to do with music? And then you push into it and the podcast explores this at great length with a bunch of different genres and in different periods during the Cold War. But the answer is a lot. Yeah. I mean, look, the minute after we we talked about this, this story for the first time, this show for the first time, I ran home and I bought a book about exactly this subject. And since we're both Boston guys, I'm obligated to read this quote, which is that in 1952, the CIA sponsored an arts festival in Paris that included a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And Thomas Braddon, a senior member of the CIA, said of that concert, the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. and Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have brought with 100 speeches. So certainly that speaks to their belief in the efficacy of this kind of cultural effort. Yeah. And you talk and, you know,

you talk to two former CIA people and we interviewed a bunch of them for the podcast. And, you know, this would be a kind of a covert operation, but it sort of it would be described as an influence operation, right? It's essentially propaganda, but you're out there trying to win hearts and minds. And it's connected in interesting ways. So like one thing that some CIA people would tell you is, our bread and butter is being in a foreign country and trying to persuade people to betray their country and secretly share information with us. And the way you lay the foundation for that is to, you know, have messages and ideas out there that reflect well on the United States, you know, so the kind of hearts and minds thing is like a broad, popular approach, but it's also a very kind of specific, targeted, how do we persuade key individuals to back our horse in this thing?

And they did it. They did it for years. Okay, that was a portion of my interview with Patrick Radden Keefe about the show Wind of Change, our brand new show that you can find right now and binge on Spotify. that you can find right now and binge on Spotify. The full interview with Patrick about how he figured this story out, how it all came together, what it was like talking to all these spies is gonna run on Pod Save the World on Wednesday.

And then when we come back, we'll have my conversation with CNN's Harry Enten about why the Senate map is looking better and better for Democrats and some really interesting tidbits about both Trump and Biden's polling. So stick around for that. I am thrilled now to be joined by a senior writer and analyst for CNN Politics, Harry Enten. Harry, thank you for joining the show. I also feel like I'm obligated to say that you're a diehard Buffalo Bills fan.

So that just tells everyone out there it could be worse. It could be. You know, it could be far worse. Imagine, you know, you're in a one bedroom during the quarantine. I'm healthy, but I'm also a Bills fan. It doesn't quite equal out. But the fact of the matter is, look, maybe we'll make the playoffs this year. We did last year, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You got some good players. Although your first draft pick was at like, what, 53 in the second round? I don't know. Yeah, we traded that first round draft pick away. But the fact is, you know, we're on the upswing. My old stat was the Bills didn't make the playoffs from before my bar mitzvah to the current moment in time. I can no longer claim that. So we're on the upswing. Things are looking up. Things are looking up. Okay. So Harry, I'm so excited to talk with you because you wrote a piece the other day that I had to pause and stop reading because it created this feeling in me they call hope. And I didn't like it. It was very unfamiliar.

And Dan Pfeiffer actually had the exact same reaction. And so the headline was Democrats are slight favorites for Senate control. That's how desperate Democrats like myself are for good news these days. So with the caveat that polls can wildly change this far out, I just wanted to chat with you about why prospects seem to be looking better for Democrats and hopefully, you know, inspire listeners who care about this stuff to donate to these election to these candidates, volunteer, you know, rip that gavel from Mitch McConnell's hands. And by the way, they can go to votesaveamerica.com slash donate if they want to donate to our Get Mitch Fund. So

the overview right now is Republicans have 53 seats, Democrats have 47, 35 Senate seats are up for grabs this fall. Republicans are defending 23 of them. So they're in a tougher position. Democrats need a net gain of three seats if Biden wins, four seats if Trump wins. You looked at all the overall data and you gave some odds of Democrats taking back the Senate. Can you share those before we get into specifics like state by state and maybe give an overview of why you think Democratic prospects are looking a touch better? Sure. So, you know, essentially what my math, you know, I looked back at all the Senate elections that I possibly could since 2006. And I basically said, okay, how do different variables help

predict or help forecast what's actually going to occur? And, you know, stuff like the generic congressional ballot stuff, like in the individual states, the individual state polling stuff, you know, like is the incumbent running? You can go on, so on, so forth. And what essentially I found through all of that data was that the chance that Democrats pick up three seats, the net gain of three is around 60 percent. Right. Which is a little better than even. But of course, we don't know whether or not, we don't know who's going to win the presidency. In terms of the picking up the four seats, that clocked in right around 50%. But if you even if you, if you average those out, even if you just assume that there's a 5050 shot in the presidential race,

Democrats would still have a slightly better than even shot of going. And I think what's so important in all the statistics that I looked at that, you know, sort of give us this understanding of why Democrats are in the position that they are, is it's two key factors. Number one is the generic congressional ballot is really good for Democrats right now. It's averaging around an eight point Democratic lead. That's actually slightly better than Democrats were on the at this point in the 2018 cycle. And it's significantly better than where they were at this point in the 2016 cycle, and it's significantly better than where they were at this point in the 2016 cycle. And the other thing is that, as you mentioned at the top,

Democrats are on offense here. They're not really protecting that many seats. You know, if you go back to 2018, when Democrats were protecting all of those seats, right, there were multiple cases where there were Democratic incumbents defending seats in states that Trump won by 10 points or more. In this particular election, there's just one. That's Doug Jones down in Alabama. So they're on considerably more offense and the national environment is considerably better for them than it was four years ago at this point. That is a great overview. I'd also note that, you know, fundraising and candidate recruitment has done pretty well this year. So some of the top pickup opportunities are Colorado, Arizona, and Maine.

So I was hoping we could start there with Colorado. Former Governor John Hickenlooper leads Senator Cory Gardner, the Republican incumbent, by 18% in a recent poll by a Democratic firm in the state. So you should know it's a Democratic firm. But Hick is 54-36, Hickenlooper over Gardner. That's a pretty big advantage. That poll of likely voters increased from plus 11 in October. The Washington Post had a piece over the weekend on this, the Senate map that included a line that said, quote, many GOP strategists have already written off Cory Gardner, the Republican incumbent.

Harry, do you think that that poll is too rosy? Or like, how do you think things are looking in Colorado for Cory Gardner? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that poll probably is a little bit rosy. And there was another poll that was taken by a nonpartisan, I believe in Montana State Billings, I believe it was, that actually showed a similar margin. But neither of those polls were phone polls, right? They were online polls and state online polls. While certainly they can give a signal, I'm not necessarily sure I'd drill down and say it's exactly 17 or exactly 18. But the fact of the matter is, you know, when I wrote my piece, I didn't have any state polling.

I was basically, you know, relying upon the state fundamentals, you know, how it voted in 2016, the different expert ratings, whether or not the income was running. And I still projected out that Gardner was going to lose by six. So, you know, this is not a good state for Republicans to be defending in a good Democratic year. Remember, this is a state that Hillary Clinton won rather easily, won it by five points. So this is the type of state, especially with Hickenlooper, who's a well-known candidate, likely going to be the Democratic nominee. It's certainly, in my mind, probably the top pickup opportunity for Democrats. Yeah, I apologize for presupposing the outcome of that primary. It is worth noting that the

Q1 fundraising numbers came out. Hickenlooper raised about $4 million. Gardner raised about $2.4 million. So that's a pretty good advantage. But Gardner is about double the money in the bank. But the trend for a lot of these candidates is they're having monster quarters, even if they don't have as much money in legacy accounts. Yeah, I think that's right. And of course, keep in mind that Hickenlooper hasn't been running for nearly as long as Cory Gardner has been running. Cory Gardner has been running hard for over five years now since he was first elected. Right. And, you know, just on the fundraising, generally speaking.

Yeah, that's certainly one of the things, especially later on in the year that I'll certainly be looking looking towards. So let's talk about Arizona. So fundraising is another big factor here. Former astronaut Mark Kelly raised $11 million in the first quarter of 2020. Some presidential campaigns would have been pleased with that number. Senator Martha McSally, the Republican incumbent, raised $6.2 million, which is still an impressive haul. But pre-pandemic polling showed Kelly up about 7%. He has double the cash on hand. Do you think this is lower in the rankings in terms of pickup opportunities because the state is more of a toss up or how do you view Arizona? Yeah, I mean, if Arizona is one of those states that I believe since 1948 has only gone in the

Democratic column in a presidential election year once, and that was in 1996 with Bill Clinton. So, you know, that is a state that certainly has been trending more favorably towards the Democratic Party. Obviously, Martha McSally ran just, you know, a little under two years ago and lost to Kyrsten Sinema. And she's, of course, running again. She was appointed to the seat that obviously was John McCain won in 2016. So that you do have those state fundamentals that perhaps pull you back a little bit. But if you look at the presidential polls in that state, Joe Biden has been leading in those. And there's no history, perhaps unlike in the Midwest, where the state polling in Arizona tends to overpromise for Democrats. But, you know, more than that, if you look at the state Senate polling, we have a ton of it in Arizona,

a ton of it. And I tell you, you can set your clock to it. Mark Kelly is going to lead in pretty much every single poll. I think the only polls he's been trailing in are the ones in which that were conducted for Republican organizations or conservative organizations. So that to me, plus the fundraising. And I mean, my goodness gracious, Mark Kelly could raise money if he didn't have a telephone or anything like that. It would just almost just come to him. It's like a magnet. I would say that it's pretty much very, very close to Colorado in terms of the pickup opportunities. The only thing I would note was that some of the earlier polling was friendlier to Sinema.

And then it sort of closed as you got sort of closer into the general election. That's about the only thing I'm looking out for there. But certainly that's another race in which the Democrat is favored at this point. Yeah, yeah. Mouths are watering about that potential pickup in Washington. The next state is Maine. So Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, is facing a strong challenge from, well, likely opponent, the Maine speaker, Sarah Gideon. She still has to win their primary. But Sarah Gideon raised $7.1 million in the first quarter compared to $2.4 million for Susan Collins. So another financial advantage. Collins still has about a million more

on hand, but that won't be the case, obviously, if they repeat that sort of performance the next quarter. A poll in early March that I saw showed Sarah Gideon up 4% on Susan Collins. So, you know, Harry, I'm a little torn with one, with this one, because, you know, look, I think Collins has like raised the ire of a lot of Democrats who feel like, you know, she always caves and sides with Trump. But she's also a political survivor. I mean, what do you think the smart money and pollsters are thinking about this main Senate race? Yeah, I mean, you're right about that. I can I love watching all the election night tapes. And I remember when Susan Collins first one was back in nineteen hundred and ninety six. I believe she beat the former Democratic governor

in that state whose name is escaping me at the time, but she's been around for a very long period of time, right? A very long period of time. But the key factor that I think is so important to keep in mind in any of these states that lean at least a little bit blue is that it used to be that you could be a Democratic senator in a red state and survive. You could be a Republican senator in a blue state and survive. That is the relationship, the correlation between the presidential lean and the Senate voting patterns was not anywhere near as strong as it is today. And the fact is, you know, if you look at those past presidential results in Maine, even though Trump only lost it by three, but if you take that into account, you look at the national environment and you look at those individual state polls,

Susan Collins is in the most trouble she's ever been in since she was first elected back in 1996. That's the fact of the matter. And more than that, look at the results from 2018, right? The Democrats elected a governor there. They hold both House seats. Jared Golden won in a very tough district in rural Maine up in the second district. This is the type of state which I would say, knowing nothing else, just knowing the fundamentals, that this is the type of state that the Republican incumbent would be in trouble in. And while perhaps she's not nearly as in much trouble as Cory Gardner, once again, if I were a betting man, I would say that the more likely

possibility is that she loses rather than wins. Yeah. Fingers crossed here. Okay. So I just, I just, you know, filled these listeners with hope. So before we move on to pick up opportunities, I want to dash some of it. So let's talk about Doug Jones. We all remember Doug Jones is incredible 2017 special election in Alabama. The challenge for Doug Jones, right? Is he's not running against Roy Moore again, Roy Moore, who is accused of some pretty depraved, deplorable things that I don't need to get into. What do you think the prospects are for Doug Jones right now in Alabama? I know that he doesn't have an opponent yet, but it seems like he will face either Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, or Tommy Tuberville, former Auburn coach. I believe that is correct. Yes.

Yeah. So how's Doug looking, you think? Yeah. I mean, look, the fact is, if there was if I was just going to pick one seat on either side of the aisle that I was going to pick to flip, it would be the state. It would be the seat in Alabama. I mean, look, this is a state that leans about 30 points more Republican than the nation as a whole. If you're just looking at presidential races. That is just a really, really, really tough seat to hold on to if you're Doug Jones. If you look at the individual state polling so far, he's down by about 10 points. I understand that the national environment is good for Democrats, but Joe Biden, simply put,

unless something happens that we don't see at this point, it's not going to be competitive in Alabama. I would expect that this seat would be going to whomever the Republican nominee eventually is. And while Jones will put up a good fight and he is a good candidate for the state, I just don't really see, I don't really see how he holds on at this point. Yeah. So, you know, look, I tell listeners, Doug Jones has been a good Senator. He's been a good candidate. It doesn't mean you shouldn't support him. It definitely is. It's a it's a tough road to hoe down in Alabama. But a little more fertile territory for us here is North Carolina. So North Carolina, we have incumbent Republican Tom Tillis running against Cal Cunningham. So Cal Cunningham has been on Posse of America before. He's an army vet. He's a business leader. He raised four point four million in the first quarter. Tillis has a little more than double the cash on hand that he does. So Obama won North Carolina in 08. I believe it flipped back to Romney in 12. Trump won it in 16. But Cal Cunningham has been up in a bunch of recent polls. How do you think Democrats are feeling about North Carolina generally? Yeah, I think that they feel about as good as they possibly could, given they're going up against a

Republican incumbent in a state that Trump won by, I believe, 3.66. We can look it up and see if I got that exactly right. I'm not sure. I went down to the 100th place there. But look, the polling is close. Tillis is an incumbent, not a particularly well-known incumbent, even in a state like North Carolina. The undecideds for both him and Richard Burr tend to be sky high. This is going to be probably the state that I'm looking towards on election night to understand whether or not Democrats win control of the United States Senate. United States Senate. It's the type of state that, you know, when I put everything into my calculator, I think that we found that Cunningham was about a 55% chance of winning, you know, very right there on the border. And so look, Cunningham is who the Democrats wanted to run. The polling at this point is him up probably by a little bit, although really split in that state. There's some polling that shows Tillis up ahead. But this sort of seat is the next grade down from, say, Colorado, Arizona, and Maine. This is the seat that is really the one on either side that I would describe as a toss-up.

Yeah. So I think you wrote sort of the next tier down from that is Republicans have, I think you gave it a 70% or 75% chance of winning Senate races in Kansas, Iowa, and Montana. And so out of those three, I mean, the one that really intrigues me is Montana because Steve Bullock decided to run after a long courtship process. He was a popular governor. A recent poll had him up seven points in the first quarter, I think in only a few weeks. Bullock raised 3.3 million, while the incumbent Steve Daines raised 1.3 million. Daines has a little less than double the amount of cash on hand that Bullock does. So Harry, the challenge here is that Montana

will likely go to Trump by what? I mean, 20 points? Do you think you can find enough ticket splitters, is I guess my question? Yeah, I think if the ultimate margin is 20 points, then you probably won't. I think that if you believe that this seat is ultimately going to be competitive, then you're probably going to need to shrink that margin by, you know, anywhere from essentially be 10 to 15 points right that the ultimate presidential margin would have to be. You know, I like to use the Missouri race in 2016 as sort of the baseline. If you recall there, Jason Kander lost by only about three while Trump was winning the state by around 19 points. So there was about that 16 point split. That's probably where you need to be to have a realistic shot of winning around 15 point margin on the presidential level. Look, it's a tough seat for

Democrats. There's no doubt about that. But of course, Montana has that history, unlike perhaps a lot of other states and a relatively recent history as well. I mean, John Tester won re-election in 2018 by, you know, about three points, three, four points. And that, of course, is a state that did move to the right considerably between, say, 2008, when Obama only lost it by about three, to 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost it by about 20. So Montana has that ability. Bullock is the right candidate for that state. I think ultimately, the question is, can you really get that ticket splitting down to that point? There's going to be a lot of money spent against Bullock to try and tie him to Biden. But the fact is, he has that history of winning.

So it's an intriguing possibility, as I think you put it, for Democrats. Yeah. By the way, if people find this stuff as fascinating as I do, you should follow Harry on Twitter because he is constantly breaking down these races. You want to give me your handle real quick? Yes, it's at Forecaster Enten, F-O-R-E-C-A-S-T-E-R-E-N-T-E-N. That's my last name. And it means ducks in German. He's a great follow. So look, just concluding this sort of Senate roundup before we get to some Trump Biden stuff, we've got potentially tight races in Iowa, Kansas, two of them in Georgia.

Anything that, you know, you think is worth a special mention or, you know, did I miss a state that we should talk about that people should be watching? No, I think that, you know, what you just hit upon and what I hit upon in my piece is there are a load of states where if you run it through the model, where essentially you'll find that Democrats have a greater than 5% chance of winning, but a less than 25% chance of winning. You know, you mentioned the two Georgia seats, Kentucky is another one, even the Mississippi race. And so what's so important for Democrats is they look to pick up those three to four seats. They are, they have a wide map and that's key,

a wide map. So if one of those races starts moving, you'll be able to see it of those states. I honestly think Georgia perhaps is the most interesting in so far as there's been a few Republican polls from that state that suggest that Biden is quite competitive. Uh, and in fact, one that suggested, uh, that the incumbent, uh, running, not, not Loeffler, uh, but, uh, Purdue, Dave Purdue, uh, it was only up by single digits to John Ossoff, who may or may not be the nominee for the Democrats in the long seat, uh, there. Uh, and so I think that perhaps is the one state of all those that you mentioned, I'd be keeping the closest eye on now. Yeah. Okay. Great advice. Um, let's do a little bit of a Bidenump stuff before we wrap. So you have this great piece about how Biden's lead has been incredibly steady. It's about six points over Trump. I think you called it historically steady. What did you make of that, the solidness of that lead? And what kind of lead is sufficient in a national poll to overcome the electoral college disadvantage

that Democrats face? Yeah. So, you know, first off, I mean, my goodness gracious, you know, I used this earlier, but you could set your clock to it. Biden up by somewhere between five and 10 points in a national poll. I mean, it's it's crazy. And you go all the way back. If you average the polls, as I think I put it since 2019, it's a six point lead. If you average all the polls since the beginning of 2020, it's a six point lead. If you average all the polls since the beginning of April, it's a six point lead. And what's so key there is number one, you know, Biden's gone through a lot of a lot of stuff and not necessarily a lot of good press. And yet that lead is holding. So that's one important thing. The second important thing

that I think is important is that it does seem to me, based upon all the elections I looked at, all the elections in which the incumbent was running since 44, that when you have steadiness early on, it tends to correlate with steadiness later on. And so Biden's lead perhaps has a better chance of holding. You know, look, we still got a long way to go, about six months. We're not necessarily sure, but more times than not, it may hold. The other nugget that I think you pointed out that I think is rather key is these are national polls, right? This is not the Electoral College. If you were to try and project it out, I would say that to be safe and secure, if you're a Democrat, you'd want a lead of at least five points.

But more realistically, you probably need a lead of around two to three points, especially that three point margin to be safe and secure. Although I will say there's no guarantee we'll have the split, although I probably would bet on at least the fact that Trump doing better in the median state in the Electoral College with the electoral votes than he is going to do with the popular vote. Yeah. So I saw another data guru out there who pointed out that a lot of the national polls have Biden up six. Then if you look at state polls, it suggests he's up closer to eight points. I wasn't quite sure what that meant. Is he projecting the numbers onto the national stage? Did you see that data? Do you agree? I did read the tweet. I myself, you know, you'd have to ask George Elliott exactly what he was going for. But I will say that the Democrats have had a number of good state polls since the beginning of April that

do suggest perhaps a wider margin. Right. There were the Fox News polls in Pennsylvania where Biden was up eight in Michigan, where they had Biden up eight in Florida, where they had Biden up, I believe, three. And that doesn't tend to sort of if you were to project the 2016 map on a 2020 and you were expecting a uniform swing that those state polls would suggest that Biden was up a little bit more than, say, six percentage points. But I'm going to be interested. You know, we have a Marquette poll coming on Wednesday. I'm going to be interested in that.

There had the one sort of note of caution I would note with all of this is those higher quality live interview call to cell phone polls. Have there been fewer of them this cycle? And so I want to wait for a little bit more of those to really get a keen understanding as we head into the final six months, where exactly the race stands. Is it six? Is it five? Is it seven? We'll have to wait and see on that one. But before I ask you a couple more just specific Biden-Trump questions, do you think that the pandemic changes polling? I mean, we're all stuck at home. Are we more likely to answer landlines or just phones generally? Could that skew results? Like, how are people thinking about

that? Yeah, they actually, we do know that the response rates are up and that's not too much of a surprise because all of a sudden they're friends that I used to not want to talk to who they email me and I go, oh my God, I haven't heard from you from so long. Meanwhile, of course, I had ignored like 95% of their emails. I know I'm not alone here. We're all, how many extroverts really are there? Most of us are introverts. So there's no doubt that the, that we're getting a better response rate and that should actually help, at least on the margins, to help improve the poll quality, at least a little bit. But, you know, it's perhaps we'll throw,

you know, a few people off in terms of their weighting mechanisms. But I don't think that's a reason to think that the polls will be more off. I think in terms of the turnout models for the fall and mail voting perhaps being a bigger thing, that to me is a more interesting question. But we're still a long ways away from that. Yeah. So when you look at this Biden support, despite its steadiness, do you think there are obvious strengths and weaknesses that his campaign should be worried about? I think, you know, there are a few weaknesses that I would be worried about if I were he. Number one, obviously, you know, if you look at the polling, people feel very strongly

about Donald Trump one way or another, about seven tenths than voters do. That's a record for any major party nominee. If you look at Biden, less than half feel very strongly about him. So obviously, the minds about Biden are less made up. They can be more contorted by any negative advertisements that come his way from the Trump campaign. So that'd be one thing I'd be worried about. And the fact is, even at this point, you know, he's getting out searched on Google versus Trump by four to one. And the press mentions are considerably lower, even versus, you know, say 2016, where Clinton

was at about a two to one deficit, Biden's at about a nine to one deficit. And so I think that that's important. But more than that, you know, if you look, his favorability ratings among liberals is less than Clinton's was on the eve of the election. So obviously there is that point on the left, certainly among younger voters. His favorability rating is lower than perhaps you'd want it to be if you're Biden. And in fact, he might be doing worse with younger voters than Clinton did in 2016, despite the fact that, of course, he's doing better nationally overall. In terms of strengths, he's much more popular among moderates and conservatives than Clinton was. He is considerably more popular among older folks, those 65 and older than Clinton was. And so those are things that perhaps pretend well, especially in some of those swing states,

right, especially among some of those swing states, right, especially among some of those older voters, perhaps in a state like Pennsylvania or Florida or Arizona. But overall, I mean, look, the fact is, is that Biden is running an analog campaign in the digital age. And the question is whether or not voters are looking for that. And so far, by the looks of the polls, they might actually be looking for it. And so it's working for them. Right. Yeah, certainly. Certainly that they would point you to the fact that they are winning. You know, you you offered a perfect segue for me because there has been a lot of reporting about anxiety on Trump's team, especially among, you know,

Kellyanne Conway and some others about Trump's numbers slipping with seniors. Are you seeing that in the data? Do you think there's a real cause for concern? Oh, I'm absolutely seeing it in the data. I mean, it's one of the most obvious points in the data. And you see it in the fact that, you know, Trump's not perhaps doing as well in Florida as he wishes he were doing. But you also see in the national polls, if you take an average, I took it, you know, a few weeks ago among those 65 and older in the live the national polls, if you take an average, I took it, you know, a few weeks ago, among those 65 and older in the live interview national polls, Biden was up by nine. That was a group that Hillary Clinton lost by five, six or seven, depending on how exactly you average it. That's a 12, that's a double digit swing. That's a huge swing. And, you know, the fact is,

you know, you go back to what I just point out feelings aren't you know towards Biden aren't nearly as strong and perhaps that's because there's not that much to really hate about Joe Biden he is sort of this alternative this generic Democrat in some ways that Hillary Clinton wasn't and that might work very well for seniors who you know perhaps

given some of the coronavirus stuff that's going on you know have a right to be worried more so than younger voters do in terms of their own life. And so to me, it's not necessarily so surprising that perhaps there's been some of that leakage of Trump support among those 65 years and older. Yeah, it really does make sense. Final question for you. If you had to fight one data analyst named Nate, which would it be and why? Fisticuffs. You know, it's a great question.

And the reason it's a great question is because I used to work with one named Nate. And funny enough, I'm in a text chain with another one named Nate right now. And, you know, actually, I texted both Nates this weekend. I don't really know. I personally think I could take either one of them on. I'm taller than both of them. I'm better looking than both of them. I've got more of a New York attitude than either one of them.

And the fact of the matter is my father was a former supervising judge of the Bronx Criminal Court. So I have ends with law enforcement. So I can take either one of them down. Neither one of them really scare me if I'm being frank with you. So smart money is on Harry. And Harry, thank you so much for joining. I literally could do this all day. It's so much fun to talk about this stuff. Everyone should follow you on Twitter. Check out your stuff on CNN. What else should they do? I mean, how else can they find you? I mean, those are the, I do have an Instagram account, but the fact is that there's only a

picture of a pug there and it's not even my pug. So, I mean, you know, you get me on Twitter, you get me on CNN website, you'll get me on CNN television again eventually. Right now, obviously, we're all coronavirus. But I have a good feeling that we'll be seeing each other along the way. And I look forward to chatting with everybody and anybody. And Shalom, my friend. Listen, right back at you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and, and see on the TV.

Shalom. Be well. Thanks to Patrick. And thanks to Harry for joining us today. And we'll talk to you guys later. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kemp, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.