Pod Save America - “50 Days to Joe.”

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Trump finishes his weekend of superspreader rallies with a trip to California amid a climate disaster he thinks is a hoax, Mike Bloomberg says he’ll spend at least $100 million in Florida to help Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders urges Biden to talk more about his economic agenda with young and Latino voters. Then Reverend Greg Lewis talks to Tommy about Wisconsin’s Souls to the Polls initiative, which is aimed at making sure everyone in the state can vote.

This is a life-changing election. This will determine what America is going to look like for a long, long time. This is the most important election in the history of our country. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Tommy talks to Reverend Greg Lewis, the leader of Wisconsin's Souls to the Polls initiative that's working to make sure everyone in the state can vote. Before that, we'll talk about the state of the race with 50 days to go. Donald Trump's trip to California during the climate disaster he believes is a hoax.

Mike Bloomberg's $100 million effort to help Joe Biden win Florida. And the Biden campaign's effort to reach out to young voters and Latinos. Love it. How was the show this weekend? I know the monologue was great because I was there for it. Yeah, you were on the show and, you know, participatory. We had Dr. Ali Mattu, who came back to give people a kind of talk about how to stay motivated during a dark time.

He's a psychologist and a sleep doctor expert on daylight saving time, who I quizzed about a study that said we should abandon daylight saving time. And honestly, I gave him a few directions to consider for his research going forward. And he was pretty receptive. We talked to parents of listeners to make sure they were registered to vote. It was a great episode. And Tommy, I learned that Lovett does this show where he does a monologue and someone judges it. Okay.

It's fantastic. Good for you. Congrats on your learnings. Also, a quick thank you to everyone who helped Vote Save America raise over $850,000 for PowerPack, which is mobilizing black and brown communities to vote. Our next fundraising goal is for Register to Vote, a very cool organization that's identifying people in battleground areas who aren't yet registered to vote and mailing them registration forms. Trump's going to love this organization. In 2018, they registered 150,000 Texas voters in just six weeks. We're looking to help them raise $250,000 in the next few weeks.

So please go to votesaveamerica.com slash everylastvote to pitch in. And thank you again. $850,000 is a lot of money, and that was a short amount of time. So that's going to help PowerPack a lot. Finally, we got some new Vote Save America merch in the Crooked store. All kinds of cool stuff, including a Dan Pfeiffer-inspired worry about everything, panic about nothing stress ball.

This is something I learned from the copy. Tanya squeezed it into a diamond. Just Dan Pfeiffer-inspired merch really takes off at Crooked Media, doesn't it? It sure does. He's our YouTube star. A portion of every order in the Crooked store is donated to vote riders. So go to Crooked.com slash store to shop now. All right.

Let's get to the news. We are 50 days out from the election. All right, let's get to the news. We are 50 days out from the election, and Joe Biden is ahead of Donald Trump by an average of 7.1 percent, 50.6 to 43.4, which means the race is almost exactly where it was last week and almost exactly where it was at the beginning of June, right before the murder of George Floyd, the summer spike in COVID cases, the shooting of Jacob Blake, and both parties nominating conventions. We got a slew of high quality polling this weekend, including a Fox News poll that has the national race slightly tighter at five points and a bunch of state polls from both the New York Times and CBS that show Biden with three to four point leads in New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona, five point lead in Wisconsin and a nine point lead in Minnesota. Love it. What if anything has

changed about this race since the spring and and why do you think it has remained relatively stable uh well one thing that's changed is in the spring there were uh 200 days until the election uh and now there's only 50 uh that's that that's a big that's a big change it's a 50. That's a big change. It's a big difference. It's a big difference because with each passing day, look, seven points feels like a lot, but we obviously shouldn't be at all confident that that number won't get smaller. And if you take a look at that number and you shave off some points for voter suppression, you shave off some points for some people coming home to Trump, you shave off some points for the electoral college and you end up with, you know, a close race.

And, you know, that's like we shouldn't be we should be happy that he's leading. We shouldn't be confident in it. And the fact that it's stable just tells us that a lot of what's going on is about the fundamentals in our politics that go deeper than the news cycle or what any of the candidates do on any on a daily basis. I mean, the one thing it does tell us is that a lot of what Trump has tried to do to change the dynamics of the race, shake the dynamics of the race, haven't really done that. Right. Like we've went through, we already pulled down his ads and he was coming back up with a new message. Right. It was gone are the days of Joe Biden is an Antifa warrior.

Now he's actually just a tool of the radical left or what have you. Like all of these sort of machinations haven't actually manifest in in the polls that we see day to day. Tell me, what do you think? I do. I do find it fascinating that the country can go through so much upheaval and we still end up at around the same lead we had in late spring. Yeah, it's completely exhausting and I feel like a broken record. You know, Harry Enten at CNN had a good piece about like the sort of the average of these national polls and these national polls, right, they're not the best way to evaluate a presidential campaign because of the electoral college, because key states matter so much more than, you know, huge numbers out of California, for example. But they're also pretty good quality polls that let you monitor changes over time.

And basically, you know, Harry thinks Biden is down three points from his peak lead, but still in that sort of 7% category, which should translate to a strong electoral college victory. What's changed in the interim, obviously, is these issues in the news, like COVID is the constant, but we've gone through conventions, protests about racial justice, and then these mini controversies like the Woodward book. We're starting to get these state-specific polls. The Times had this round over the weekend. They're generally quite good for Biden. I think there is some some room to be concerned about some of these numbers. I mean, leads within the margin of error or leads that are not as big as you would like to see. But, you know, it's just it's pretty static. out there's it's 50 days now instead of 100 days or whatever it was it that's actually quite meaningful in terms of the polling um because the one real thing that's changed since the same lead in the spring is that there's fewer undecideds fewer third party voters so trump's number has bumped up a little bit so his biden's it's now hovering around 50 or over 50 even in some of

these battlegrounds that he needs and then as you said said, Tommy, Biden's a little off of his peak in June and July. And that's mainly because you see some soft Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents coming home to Trump. And the New York Times polls do show that that's partly a result of Trump scaring the shit out of people about the violence and destruction that's popped up around the overwhelmingly peaceful protests. But I do think that the Minnesota and Wisconsin polls were interesting in the New York Times. It's what we've been talking about. You know, they prefer Biden by wide margins on race relations, unifying America, managing the pandemic, handling the protests. And Biden and Trump are basically tied on the issues of violent crime and law and order. And Biden's still beating Trump in the suburbs among seniors and among white voters. So even as Trump has been able to scare some people with his whole Antifa shtick, Biden is still maintaining these leads.

And again, they're small leads, but they're stable leads. And again, they're small leads, but they're stable leads. And then I thought the other thing that was sort of hopeful is by a huge margin, the people who didn't vote in 2016 and people who voted third party in 2016 in these polls say that managing the pandemic is more important than the law and order issues. So that is a hopeful sign. Love it. Did you this and you start to like, I don't know, I allow myself to say, OK, well, what are some of the less hopeful signs? Because why not? of his performing poorly among Cuban voters in places like Florida. And then you see part of what has been helping Biden maintain this lead is Trump underperforming with seniors. And you have to worry, right, that whether it's a White House vaccine announcement that's basically, you know, Dan Scavino putting some Gatorade in a syringe and running it out to make it look like it's real, whatever it may be like, you have to worry like, well, what happens if those Hispanic numbers don't move that Biden continues have a weakness there, but the seniors come home, you start to see this thing narrow and all of a sudden,

you know, a 2016 outcome is not outside of the realm of possibility. Yeah, no, and every state poll shows that that's possible. So, Tommy, Trump has been dealing with two pretty big controversies over the last few weeks. The report that he called U.S. troops suckers and losers and the tape of him telling Bob Woodward that he intentionally downplayed the danger of COVID-19. What have we learned from the polling about the effects of these controversies? And let's start with the Atlantic story. The Atlantic story, which Trump still seems pretty worked up about. We actually, let's play a quick clip of his rally in Nevada.

They put an ad like that where I'm standing over graves. And then they said, he said this with no sources, no nothing. They got nothing. And I have 25 real witnesses with the names, with everything, saying it never happened. And they put an ad like that up. They're a disgrace. But you know the good part? Now I can be really vicious. I can be really vicious. And we'll start by saying, we're going to start by saying that the Democrats are trying to rig this election because it's the only way they're going to win.

The only way they're going to win is to rig it. The gloves are off. The gloves are off. No more Mr. Nice Guy, huh? Yeah. What's funny is the gloves come off and then he says the same shit he always says, which is, you know, whatever that they're stealing from me. I mean, in terms of this story in The Atlantic where Trump allegedly called troops losers and suckers and said he didn't want to see disabled veterans in military parades and just this unbelievable litany of terrible things, there is some evidence that suggests it might have had an impact, but I don't think we know for sure. There was a Yahoo Yuga poll that found 50% of registered voters think Biden has more respect for the military versus 39% for Trump. That could reflect low general approval for Trump, right? If you

think the guy sucks generally, you probably think he sucks when it comes to the military. Maybe these voters heard about the comments he made in The Atlantic. Maybe they heard about the Russia bounty story. Maybe they heard about reports in the Woodward book that Trump called his generals pussies. That's a quote. Who knows? It does seem clear that Trump is worried about this narrative. They're concerned about this storyline. The Biden campaign put out an ad about these comments from Trump. Vote Vets put up an ad. Biden's been pushing it at events. Trump actually filed a cease and desist letter to try to get Biden's ad pulled off the air. So there does seem to be some real concern there. Yeah. And in that Yahoo YouGov poll, it said, you know, 23 percent of independents and 6 percent of

Trump voters say troop comments increase their support for Biden. Those are very small numbers. It's one poll. But, you know, it goes back to the point we've made before, which is in a close election with over 150 million people voting, like we don't know what matters. We don't know what's going to change people's minds. And even little small little shifts have have big consequences. And also, like every day that Trump is on the defensive about something is another day he is not catching up to Joe Biden, which he does need to do. Lovett, what about the effects of the Woodward takes? Yeah, just on the Atlantic story, Trump's tried to muddy the waters around whether or not it's true. Maybe that's going to have some impact. But I think the key thing is Trump needs to do better amongst members of the military. He needs to close that gap. He still may. This was not going to make

that happen sooner, right? That just made that job a He still may. This was not going to make that happen sooner, right? Like that just made that job a little bit tougher. Even if we don't see any advantage, it certainly didn't help him. On Woodward, you know, Ronna McDaniel, nay, Ronna Romney McDaniel, had a heck of a time over the weekend trying to figure out how to talk her way out of this one. Really fucked it up. It was a delight to see. But in one of the interviews, she said something so revealing, which is like, what would you have the president do? Go on television and say he doesn't have a plan and that it's a crisis and it's hopeless? And like, wait, hold on a second. You're overstating your case here. You weren't supposed to admit to us that the reason he lied is because he doesn't

have a plan. All that's a way of saying these scandals are different in the sense that the Atlantic story is, holy shit, this guy is a huge asshole. The Woodward story is, holy shit, this guy is a huge asshole, and it's killing people. It's having real manifest impacts on our lives day to day. It is the impact of having somebody without empathy. Decency in a president is a matter of life and death. So to me, this is something that can have a more lasting power. And the fact that it's recorded means it's very hard to deny. You have to simply defend. And I think you see in some of the early polls anyway, that at very least it has an impact on the perception of his handling of coronavirus. Will that manifest in overall approval or polling? I don't know.

coronavirus. Will that manifest in overall approval or polling? I don't know. It's also not just something that Trump said and did in the past. It has to do with what he's still doing right now. The guy held a rally indoors last night in Henderson, Nevada, in violation of the law, which said you can't have gatherings of more than 50 people so violated state law has this indoor gathering um only has the people behind him put masks on once the rally starts so that the tv cameras see that people have masks on behind him which i don't know if that doesn't really work that's not really the point of the mask and then afterwards a reporter asked him aren't you worried about this being a super spreader event about people getting COVID? And Trump says, quote, well,

no, I'm on stage and it's very far away. And so I'm not at all concerned, which gives away the whole game. They put out a statement from Herman Cain refuting the allegation. I mean, the thing that people need to understand about Bob Woodward is like Bob Woodward has a megaphone. Love him. Hate him. Think he should have released this information back several months ago and it might have made a difference. I don't know. I'm not coming down on that.

But Bob Woodward got a massive 60-minute segment last night about this book. That comes at the end of a week where it's like all anyone is talking about in Washington. So a lot of people are hearing these allegations that he basically covered up the severity of COVID-19 early on. And like the ABC poll that came out over the weekend has Trump's handling of COVID at 35% approved, 65% disapproved. Still the biggest issue we're all facing on a day-to-day basis. And his numbers are like a disaster. That's like George Bush, Iraq war, Katrina level, you know, approval rating. And I will say like we did, we just did a series of polls in battleground states with change research that we'll be talking about more on Thursday. But we just got the results,

just a quick preview here. You know what, John? I read the poll too, and I showed discipline. I didn't bring got the results. Just a quick preview here. Oh, you know what, John? I read the poll, too. And I showed discipline. I didn't bring up the numbers. I'm not going to talk the numbers at all. OK. The reason I was going to say is we did an open ended question. What have you heard most about Biden or Trump? And it's open ended. So you don't have to choose. And the Woodward tape came up more than anything else about Trump. I was actually pleasantly surprised about that. It was really interesting, actually, that like when something becomes the one story, it gets everywhere and it gets to people that maybe don't pay attention to much.

It's a good reminder that like the nothing matters crowd does not have a lot of evidence to support their supposition. Things matter not as much as they should and not as often as they should and not but but they matter. I feel quite confident that over the last two months, three months, six months, like the majority of news stories that people have consumed about Donald Trump, especially when it comes to the coronavirus, have been pretty negative and terrible for him as a candidate. What I often worry about is the sort of Fox News only or non-news consumers who are

just seeing crazy, crazy nonsense on their Facebook pages. Charlotte Alter at Time Magazine had a piece about this where she just interviewed dozens of people in various places in Wisconsin. And they were just like a fifth of them were like, you know, or 20% of them were like QAnon, basically light kind of conspiracy theory, repeating folks who are just talking about a reality that is so divorced from like Bob Woodward or COVID or any of the things we're talking about or consumed about or things that, you know, are fact based. Some people like QAnon light. I'm more of a QAnon zero person. It just tastes more like

the original QAnon. I will say, though, like that, that problem that you identified, Tommy, that Charlotte wrote about in that piece. I mean, whether Biden wins or loses, that is a crisis that is going to be, that this country is going to be dealing with well into the future if we don't figure out a way to, I don't know, to fight conspiracies. Because it is very, very scary. The basket of post-election challenges we have to deal with is, you know, Everest-like at this point. So Trump's finishing up his weekend of super spreader rallies with a trip to California, where he's meeting with Governor Newsom about the devastating West Coast wildfires that have burned millions of acres, forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate,

devastating West Coast wildfires that have burned millions of acres, forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate and killed at least 24 people. The president had said nothing about the deadly fires until this weekend in a speech where he also bragged about pulling out of the Paris climate accords. And he didn't answer Oregon Governor Kate Brown's request for federal aid until Friday in a state where 10 percent of the population has had to evacuate. Here's the last time that Trump spoke at length about the California wildfires at a rally in August, the last time there was a set of fires. Let's play a clip. And I see again, the forest fires are starting. They're starting again in California.

I said, you gotta clean your floors. You gotta clean your forests. They have many, many years of leaves and broken trees. And they're like, like so flammable. You touch them and it goes up. I've been telling them this now for three years, but they don't want to listen. The environment, the environment.

But they have massive fires again in California. Maybe we're just going to have to make them pay for it because they don't listen to us. Tommy, why is Trump wrong that the failure to rake the floor of the forest is not the primary reason for these wildfires? I mean, he is just such a fucking idiot and an asshole. live on the West Coast, it's hard to really adequately state how depressing, demoralizing, like physically uncomfortable it is to on top of COVID, to on top of all the protests and all the concern around racial justice, on top of like the economic challenges, to walk out of your house and have it look like dusk at noon, because smoke is blanketing the entire state of California. And like, you can't really exercise

outside. Like, I went for a jog stupidly a week or two ago, and I was coughing for days. Like, it is, it's really all consuming and brutal. And, you know, we have been dealing with record heat waves, record droughts. A couple weeks ago, there were record high temperatures, including like 118 degrees in LA. So what you're talking about is global climate change, leading all these temperatures to be hotter, which is drying out, you know, more parts of the state. And so you can't sweep the floors of the forest across, I think 4.5 million acres that have burned. That's an area that's bigger than the state of Connecticut. He'd just rake up the brush and we're good. It's these super dry conditions, there's high winds, and then you have people living in more rural areas. So they're both at

risk. And there's also the potential that they could start fires themselves accidentally. Some of the fires are lightning strikes, others like down power lines, cigarettes. There were these gender reveal party idiots who, you know, that's a whole other thing. But nine of the 10 largest fires in California history have occurred since 2000. This is about global climate change and it's only going to get worse. And, you know, him being like a truther or like an anti-vaxxer when it comes to climate and fire, it just makes everything so much worse. Yeah, I mean, I would tell everyone to listen to What A Day this morning. Akilah and Gideon did a good job of talking about, you know, the fact that there there are, of course, mitigation efforts where you can clear out some of the drier brush and forests. where you can clear out some of the drier brush in forests.

The challenge is most of these fires are not starting in forests, so it doesn't have to do with forest management. The other challenge, of course, is that most of the forests in the West are controlled by the federal government. So it's the federal government's job to manage these forests. And like you said, Tommy, you know it is the the consequences of climate change can't be ignored here i mean you're getting so much drier brush that has become like a tinderbox for these fires and you're getting um a few less rain uh which is also why there's more fires too so less rain and drier conditions are a perfect recipe for really bad fires love it why aren't

these fires a priority for Trump? I mean, just from like a pure political perspective, one would think President of the United States running for election. I mean, he is coming to California today, but you'd think he'd say like, I want to be here and I want to take care of this and show my strong leadership

by taking care of these fires. Yeah, I mean, the Washington Post ran a news story that said this. You'd think it was an opinion piece, but of course it is genuinely objective fact that it it sort of it touches on three of the areas he's least interested in being president. One is climate change, as we talked about. The second is places that need help that didn't vote for him. He just doesn't care if we live or die. And then the third is that it requires empathy, it requires genuine leadership, you know, yeah, like 57% of California's forests are managed federally. Trump wants to, you know, obviously, you know, when Trump talks about raking the leaves, it is, you know, what happens when, you know, some sort of real information at some point in a briefing was passed through his sort of Google Translate into moron, right Like it just, he heard some information and it got mangled and it's, they aren't raking the leaves.

But it's like, okay, you don't want to talk about climate change. All right, well, why don't we do a massive New Deal style program as part of the Green New Deal to bring in the resources we need to tend this 57% of forest land that the federal government controls. Okay, we're in. But of course, he doesn't want to do that, right? He doesn't want to do anything required of a president. And like, the only reason he's coming today, the only reason he's finally tweeting is that he seems to have faced some kind of blowback that he's aware he needs to deal with. I imagine he would be facing more if people like Newsom, or Kate Brown or others didn't feel as leaders felt during the early days of the pandemic, that if they were honest about Donald Trump's failures,

he would punish them, seek retribution in how he manages federal resources. So, you know, the other, the, the, I don't want to call this a silver lining. It's not a silver lining. It's a political reality, which is he is foregoing an opportunity to use the power of the presidency to help his reelection by demonstrating leadership, grace, humility, empathy, support for his fellow human beings. He doesn't have those tools in his toolbox, and it doesn't just hurt us, it hurts him. What do you think, Tommy? I mean, it did remind me of the early days of the pandemic where he does, like, if it doesn't matter matter if something doesn't matter to him electorally um then he doesn't really care about it yeah like look his he only cares about states that he think support him uh

on top of that he only likes problems where he is an obvious person to demonize and blame and so the reality is when you're talking about a climate change disaster, he literally doesn't have a plan. It's not part of his platform. On top of that, he makes it works by saying it's a hoax and they have actively undone Obama era rules to deal with climate change that ranges from pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords to revoking California's authority to set stricter auto emission standards, even when the car companies

wanted to keep those standards. And so look, here in California, we're having fires, but in the Gulf of Mexico, they're having stronger hurricanes. In the Midwest, it was the derecho that decimated Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So he can pretend that climate change is not a part of the problem here, right? And the Republican Party is so diseased that people are blaming Antifa for the fires. You have little militias in Oregon checking people. Tucker Carlson called climate change systemic racism in the sky because for him, it's a made up talking point that we Democrats go to to sort of demonize the white middle class who watches his show. So the only solution to this problem is defeating as many Republicans as we possibly can, because it's not going to be enough if Joe Biden wins. We also need the Senate and we need the House of Representatives to pass any kind of meaningful legislation to deal with climate change. And like time is literally running out.

Taylor was a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security under Trump, who since resigned and is now speaking out about Trump. And one of the things he has said is Trump told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn't support him and that politically it wasn't a base for him. And this isn't just about Trump taking care of his supporters and not taking care of his opponents. isn't just about Trump taking care of his supporters and not taking care of his opponents. He doesn't give a shit about all the Trump voters in California and Oregon and Washington. And there are a lot. And he didn't give a shit about the Trump supporters at his rally in Henderson last night who could get COVID-19. He doesn't care about these people that he pretends to be the fucking hero of. Like, he only cares about himself. He only gives a shit about Trump in his own reelection. And that, you know,

this just shows that more than anything else. I was going to ask you guys, would it be smart for Biden and Democratic candidates to make this more of an issue? Then Biden is currently in the middle of a big speech

on this today, which is great. He said, wildfires don't skip towns that voted a certain way. The impacts of climate change don't pick and choose. That's because it's not a partisan phenomenon. It's science. And our response should be the same grounded in science acting together. All of us. Uh, it did. It is interesting what Biden's doing. I think he's connecting it to COVID and Trump's pandemic response to right, which is yet this is another issue where Trump has ignored science in favor of his own reelection and people have paid the consequences. Yeah. And it's Joe Biden acting as president and Donald Trump asking his challenger up to and including the GOP chairwoman again, tweeting like, oh, Joe Biden's record on the coronavirus is terrible. And it's like, he's not the president. Your guy's the president.

Yeah. This is a chance, I think, for Biden to educate the country about climate change because like, yes, the entire West Coast is draped in smoke. That smoke is drifting across the country. I saw maps where there are giant clouds lingering over like Dallas, Texas and in Oklahoma. And so for decades, Republicans and fossil fuel industry groups want to they've tried to make the climate debate sound remote and sound stupid, right? Like, oh, you liberals, you're crying about polar bears. We had Jim Inhofe, the Republican senator on the floor of the Senate, holding a snowball saying, oh, you libs are saying that the planet is getting warmer, but here's some snow. to protect our water. They want to protect our air. They want to protect animals. They want to protect open lands and they want to reduce the impact of climate change. They also think the government is doing too little. You know, even younger Republicans like care more about developing alternative energy sources. So I think it's smart of Biden to jump on this now because he needs to

make an argument today that will prepare us to do big things quickly when all the fossil fuel companies and all the industry groups gear up to try to kill all climate change, right? And we need to have the Senate to begin with to even have a chance of doing something. He's got a big, ambitious climate plan that also doubles as his economic plan. And every opportunity he has to break through the Trump show and talk about that plan is one that he should seize because it's very popular with a lot of voters. You know, Dan and I talked about on the Thursday pod, including like voters in Pennsylvania. Right. Or you think are more conservative on some of these issues. It's it's popular across a lot of demographic groups.

It's also just a place where the media failed. Right. It's also just a place where the media has failed, right? Because like you'll see the entire West Coast of the country draped in fire and the coverage of those fires won't draw the connection to the fact that there are policy choices being made in Washington and the Democrats are for stopping these fires and the Republicans have opposed them. And this is the result, right? We all need to like close that loop a little better. Yeah, it's the it's like the politicization of

cause and effect. Like, no, like just because it's become polarized to tell the truth. We can't pretend that climate change isn't causing these fires. It's the only way we can friend the same on gun control, a host of other issues. Right. Exactly. You know, we can't politicize. It's cause and effect. You can't politicize it. Yeah. All right. Let's talk more about Joe Biden's campaign, which is about to get a little help from former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The one time presidential candidate will spend at least $100 million in Florida, mostly on television and digital ads in English and Spanish. Bloomberg, who is worth more than $50 billion, had previously pledged to spend, quote, whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump. Though this is his first major 2020 donation on behalf of Biden, he already donated $18 million to the DNC from

his own campaign and pledged $60 million to help Democrats keep the House. Tommy, why Florida and why now? So I'll just start by saying I'm very grateful to Mike Bloomberg for cutting this big check. We should just note that is well short of what he promised, right? Like during the primary, Bloomberg's team said he would keep all of his campaign organizers on staff through November. They would run this massive super pack. There was a suggestion that it would be like a billion dollars. And then he shut it all down and transferred 18 million to the DNC. He also funded a lot of great groups like Stacey Abrams and others. But again, thank you, Mike. I'm glad you're in the game. I also do wish that like this hundred million had been spent starting six months ago because it just

gives you so many more options. The reason Florida, the reason now I assume is because there's a lot of people sounding the alarm about Florida. There's been some polling that is a little too close for comfort coming out of Florida. There is considerable concern about Biden's polling among Latino voters. That's particularly complicated in Florida, where you have Cuban communities, Venezuelan communities, communities that frankly, the Trump administration has done a really, really good job targeting over several years by being super hardline on Cuba, by, you know, dancing up to the point of almost supporting coups in Venezuela. Some would argue they did support them. So others say that there hasn't been enough organizing in Florida. There haven't been enough Spanish language or English language ads. There was a really worrisome piece in Politico today that talked about the fact that

all these Latino voters in Florida are just getting wild conspiracy theories directly targeted at them on WhatsApp and through the radio. So on top of that, there was some hope after 2018 that Andrew Gillum, who ran for governor, his organization would register all kinds of new voters because it did seem like there was a shortfall in the Miami area. He had some personal challenges. I don't think anyone really picked up this slack. So now here comes Bloomberg. You know, the challenge, right, is like we have 50 days. You have 100 million dollars. Basically, the only thing you're going to be able to really do with that is buy a shitload of ads. And hopefully that moves the needle. But we just don't know. It's pretty crowded. Love it. What do you think? There was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign on Latino outreach, Chuck Rocha.

And Chuck Rocha was saying that basically he was less worried about what the Biden campaign was doing and what their work was doing and more in the big gap that existed between an outside money that basically tons and tons of outside money has been pouring in, but only a tiny, tiny fraction of it was devoted towards Latino outreach and that his organization's 4 million might've been the most. And that tells you that more was needed. So I think on that front specifically, I'm very, very hopeful that blanketing the airways with a huge amount of advertisement directed at this key constituency is really good. And I also have a feeling that just based on my understanding of like how the Bloomberg world operates is that they're very focused on getting the most for their money. And they saw this as $100 million dumped into Florida final 50 days as something that could make the difference that could really take a state from down by 0.5 to up by 0.5. And so I am very hopeful, hopeful that that is true. Yeah, I think this is like a bang for your buck

move here. Like, if you're the Bloomberg people, you're looking at the map. Biden wins Florida, he pretty much wins, right? If Biden wins Florida, he needs one other battleground state of all the battleground states. If Biden loses Florida, he still has a chance. But I think Trump needs Florida more than Biden does. And so if Biden wins Florida, that can deliver a knockout blow. And it can also do so early in the night on election night. So then we avoid sort of the election week scenario because Florida does count their ballots fairly quickly. It is a extremely expensive state to play in. So by Bloomberg playing there, then maybe Biden can spend money elsewhere. They sort of hinted publicly they were trying to communicate to Biden, like in Pennsylvania, specifically, they said, Howard Wilson said. So I think Florida and Pennsylvania are the two states where both campaigns have spent the most money. So you can tell that they think those are the two most important states right now. And it was also, of course, on the heels of Trump saying he might dump 100 million dollars of his own money into his campaign because they are clearly short on cash as well.

And, of course, voting starts in Florida. Ballots start getting mailed out September 24th, which is 10 days from now. Tip for any vendor. Tip for any vendor getting money from Donald Trump directly. Make sure that check clears and the money is in your account. Yeah, no checks. Yeah, I mean, look, the other thing about Florida is there's no half in when it comes to Florida. I mean, just to rip off some stats from Steve Shale,

there's 22 million residents. It's the world's 17th largest economy. There's 10 media markets, including three of the top 18 in America. So it is a very, very expensive place to move in all your chips and really play. I mean, the Washington Post had a report where they kind of announced they broke the news of this Bloomberg buy. There was some Florida advisor in there who said it takes 15 to 20 million dollars to really move Biden's numbers among Latinos. It's an estimate in 60 to 70 million to get on TV across the state over the next 50 some odd days and have an impact. So it's just a ton of money to even get in the game. And I just want to say, I always liked Mike Bloomberg.

Have been a huge fan for a while. I remember you standing up for him when Elizabeth Warren savagely attacked him during that debate. And I was like, I think that's unfair, Liz. That's what I said at the time. One more point on Latino voters. You know, I talked to Carlos Odio, who runs Equis Research on the last pod. And, you know, he did make the point that Latinos are famously undecided until towards the end of a race. And that especially Latinos in Florida, it's not necessarily that Trump has captured that vote. It's that they have not quite made up their mind. They don't know who Joe Biden

is or what he stands for. And so maybe they don't like Donald Trump, but they also have no idea who Joe Biden is. So a lot of this is just, he said, reaching out to them with some pro Biden message. And that is a great opportunity for Bloomberg and ads to do some of that work and to fill in those blanks with a bunch of ads just like saying who Joe Biden is and what he stands for and what he would do. The other thing is, if if they're looking for ways to spend one hundred million dollars, that's not just on ads. I know a million people have told them this in different ways. But like, you know, we saw last week that a judge upheld a Florida law mandating that people previously convicted of felonies must pay off all fines and fees before they can register to vote, which is basically a poll tax. It would be great if Bloomberg could help pay off those fines and register some voters last minute. I realize, like you said, Tommy,

it's a huge effort to undertake with like 10 days to go. But it would be nice if if he gave that a give that a whirl. Yeah, I mean, look, it may be part of announcing this early was OK, so the Biden campaign now knows that there's a lot of air cover going. Maybe they can repurpose some of the money they would have put towards advertising to things like this, to sort of paying off some of these fines or direct organizing, or maybe they start up some more door knocking in certain communities in Florida. Because yeah, I mean, it does seem like, look, there's always a little bit of panic at the end of an election, but there is more than normal coming out of Florida. And I think we should listen to these folks who are experts there. Yes. Biden's also getting some help in the form of free advice from one of his other primary opponents, Bernie Sanders. On Sunday,

Bernie denied reports that he's getting worried about Biden's campaign, but did say on MSNBC that he thinks Biden needs to talk more about his economic agenda and do more to reach out to young voters and Latino voters. Here's a clip of Bernie. I mean, look, what I have said privately is what I have said publicly. And that is, I think Biden is in an excellent position to win this election. But I think we have got to do more as a campaign than just go after Trump. Trump is a disaster. I think most people know it. But we also have to give people a reason to vote for Joe Biden. And Joe has some pretty strong

positions on the economy. And I think we should be talking about that more than we have. Lovett, what do you think of Bernie's advice? And why do you think Biden's economic agenda hasn't been more central to his message? I think the advice fits with what we've talked about for a while, right? That there's just, it was what we talked about in the run-up to the convention, that it was more about telling a story about Joe Biden than it was about telling a story about Donald Trump, because everybody's heard that story. It bears out in polling that shows that there's undecided voters who don't like Trump but want to know more about Joe Biden. I think it's probably something that Biden camp agrees with. But, you know, they have like they have a new health care ad. That's

great. That not only hits Trump on, you know, on health care cuts and going after Obamacare, but talks about building on the legacy of Obamacare. It's a very kind of top level on health care, but it's a health care policy contrast ad, which I think is really strong. And I think it is the challenge of politics in this era. It's the same set of challenges that was presented to the Hillary Clinton campaign that over and over again, there was, you know, why won't Hillary Clinton talk about her economic agenda in the aftermath of the election that was sort of held up as like a signal example of the campaign's failure. But of course, one of the challenges,

you give a 20 minute speech about the economy, it's the hit on Trump that gets covered. That's just the nature of the beast. So making sure that those hits are tied into an economic message, I think is really important. I think Biden is doing that. That said, if what we are seeing in polls, if what Bernie Sanders is pointing out is we need to do more, you know what, you're trying. You have to do more to reach these young people. Yeah, sure. Let's do it. Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, look, I mean, Bernie is saying this out of love, right? I mean, I think a great regret many of us feel from 2016 is not being a little more full-throated about

concerns when we had them in real time about how the campaign was going. So, you know, Bernie's also coming from a place where he did extremely well with young Latino voters in the primary. He does have a sense probably from that campaigning, probably from talking to some of the advisors who are later quoted in these stories about their concerns about the Biden campaign in Florida, about where there's some slack that could be picked up. Look at the things we're talking about, right? We're talking about the state of California burning to the ground. We're talking about polling. It's hard to get

your plan to protect Social Security to break through. I think that will happen with a lot of paid advertising in distinct communities in Florida. And so there's always room to do a better job telling your economic story, especially knowing that it's the one place where Trump seems to have this lingering strength because he inherited a strong Obama economy. strength because he inherited a strong Obama economy. Incredibly difficult to break through the media environment with a proactive economic agenda or any sort of proactive policy agenda. It always has been. It is even harder in the Trump era because everything is the Trump show. We know that. So I think, like you said, Tommy, it's it's paid that takes care of that. And I think this is like got to be Biden's number one or two or third most important priority for these debates. If I was prepping him for these debates and you always want the candidates like this is what you must do in this debate. You know, if people leave the debate and take away one thing, what's it going to be?

I would say it's got to be his proactive economic agenda, right? His policy plans, right? And not talking about like details. He doesn't need to like recite a list of policy details or a laundry list. I don't think that does a lot of good. But giving the, you know, maybe 90, however many people watch, 90 million people watch a good sense of what you stand for and what you're going to do is going to be key to Latino voters, young voters, undecided voters, infrequent voters. It cuts across a lot of demographic groups. We're deciding between candidates and deciding whether to vote or not to vote. Yeah, I'd also do it. By the way, it's always hard, hard during a pandemic, hard to when like Trump. I was thinking about this over the weekend, right? That like, you know, Trump spent all weekend tweeting about there's this, you know, there's this shooting in California. It's a terrible shooting. consumer in the country, like challenges at the scale of reality, like massive, huge problems.

He doesn't have an interest in what he has an interest in is zooming in on TV sized problems. Right. And we don't have TV sized problems. Right. We have much bigger problems. And Trump has this, you know, savant like ability to understand what plays on this tiny box. And it has been a problem for four years and it will continue to be one. Well, and we're going to fix it. Yeah. Great. These next 50 days, we're going to fix it. When we come back, Tommy will talk to Reverend Greg Lewis, the leader of Wisconsin's Souls to the Polls initiative. And just one thing to add before we go to the break. Reverend Lewis was so fired up that he forgot to mention the Souls to the Polls website. So I just want to do that for him. Souls to the Polls MKE, like Milwaukee.org. Souls to the Polls MKE.org.

Stick around for this interview because you will leave feeling fired up and inspired. And you will want to get back to work because, you know, Pastor Lewis is working his tail off to get people to the polls on Election Day in Wisconsin. And he's just an amazing guy. Hey, I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. We're the hosts of What A Day, Crooked Media's daily news podcast. Look, we understand keeping up with the flood of news every day is hard. There are updates on coronavirus, Disney reopenings, animal news. What else? So much else.

But we're here to help you cut through all that. We break down the biggest news stories each day and help you understand what's important and what you can do about it all in 20 minutes or less. Episodes of What A Day come out every morning, Monday through Friday at 4 a.m. Eastern, wherever you listen to podcasts. But you actually don't have to listen that early. Don't get up that early, please. Pastor Greg Lewis is the executive director of Souls to the Polls, an organization that unites ministers and their congregations to strengthen the voting power of the Black community in Milwaukee. Pastor Lewis, thank you so much for doing the show today.

Oh, no, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It is truly an honor to have you have you here. First question for you. You know, I know earlier this year you you caught covid. You actually went to the hospital to deal with some of the complications. Just how are you doing? Well, you know, I'm doing great now, but I almost died. And that is certainly the truth. You know, if I had not gotten to the hospital the day I went that day, I probably would not be here now.

And, you know, God is an amazing guy. He saved my life. And now I'm almost back to where I was before, but my respiratory system is not fully developed back to where it will be. And I don't know if it will be because that's how devastating that COVID-19 is. Some people don't recover. some people don't recover. Yeah. Yeah. So take it very, very seriously, everyone listening. I mean, the even more amazing thing that, you know, the more I read about you, I mean, despite having COVID, despite being in the hospital, you kept working and you kept organizing from the intensive care unit. Can you tell listeners about Souls to the Polls and why that work is so meaningful and so urgent that you are doing it from the ICU? Well, see, our community is in a critical condition, man. We are life support. You know, we are in intensive care as a community. You know, it's cold blue, cold red. And I think as long as you have your breath,

you ought to give what you have. And I wasn't dead. All I was was sick. And I knew that being a leader of our organization, that people had to be certainly encouraged at that time because it was such a down time for everybody with the COVID and, you know, with all the things we had to deal with. You know, we even sued the state election commission. And my name was on that lawsuit. So, you know, as I was laying down, I could still use my phone and I could still talk to people and I could still get reports about how things were going. And we still had that lawsuit going. And I want to tell you, people have to see what's going on in my community. They just can't hear about it. You just can't talk about it. You got to be about it around here. And they knew the seriousness of this situation

when I was laying in that bed and I was still organizing and hoping that other people would realize that we have to do this stuff together. And because we stood up, we didn't win the court case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But I'll tell you one thing we did. We made sure that votes were counted even after April 7th. 119,800 votes were counted. And that means that that Supreme Court justice that we were trying to get in office, that means that she made it to office because we fought to bring those votes to account. And that tells our people, listen, man, we don't have to take this stuff. We don't have to do what has been done in the past by just giving up and letting things go. We can stand up and we do have power

and we need to express that in a way that people see that, man, you're just not going to run us over. I mean, you may have all the things that you need to impress upon us your power, but we have power too. And we certainly had it with that vote. And that's what happened on that occasion. And that's why I felt like, you know, I couldn't lay there and just let things happen to me. You know, I was not dead. And I believe that that's how our community has to look at things. Don't lay there and let things happen to you. You know, you can't lay in the baseball field and expect to catch fly balls. Man, you got to get up and you got to run after the ball. And I think that that's what we were showing when I was doing that. And besides that, man, it's too much in me to quit, man. I

don't have that in me. And I'm getting all excited. You know, people know I start crying and everything. But I just felt like if I'm going to live, you know, I'm not going to ever give up. You know, I always say, man, I'll be scratching and biting and pulling and reaching for everything I have until I die. To continue to watch our community live like they're living is not an option for me. And I knew one thing. As long as I had breath, we could still fight. And I wanted people to know that and I wanted them to see it. And certainly I had to strength to pull all my being together just to make sure that folks who were working with me understood that this work

still must get done. That's right. I mean, you know, you didn't just get those votes counted. You didn't just help win that Supreme Court seat. You inspired everybody who saw what was happening in Wisconsin. And, you know, I feel like you guys have provided a roadmap for the rest of us for how to how to organize in this pandemic. But I mean, one thing I've noticed recently is like thanks to Trump's lies, his demagoguery, more and more voters are saying, gosh, I don't know if voting by mail is the right way to go. I'm worried those ballots won't get counted. What are you telling folks who have those concerns as they try to navigate how to participate in this election? For me, it's always a difficult task because I always say, you know, I fight Ali and I fight Frazier every day

because I have to fight inside with hopelessness and I have to fight outside with supremacy. And that's going to always be there, man. And you can't not just let things, you know, just because they're difficult, you just don't work on them. We have to keep driving the fact that there's a pandemic. We may not be able to go to the polls on November 3rd because the weather might be so cold and so bad and people might be so sick that they might have an opportunity to call off the election or tell people they can't go outside.

And we're not taking that opportunity. That's why we need to vote early. You know, we need to take the risk of your vote getting counted. We need to take that risk of you mailing in that absentee ballot. We need to take that risk because we don't have any other choice, if you really look at it, because a lot of people don't even want to go out in this pandemic. And if they understood what happened to me, you would understand that you don't want to catch that virus. And we can't have people standing in line for three hours, waiting to vote around other people who may be sick, and they may have an occasion to obtain a one droplet in your nose or in your mouth, and that could cause death, and you just shouldn't have to take that chance.

We shouldn't have to be subjected to that. So we have to talk about that mail-in voting, and we have to try to perfect it as much as we can right now, because if we don't, we may not have an opportunity to vote on November 3rd. So we just have to keep pushing it. And I know with our leadership talking about it the way he does, it's putting a lot of skepticism in that situation. And that's why we need to vote. I mean, if there's nothing else, we need to vote because we have leadership that has not been leading in a very, very moral and righteous

way. So we have to continue to build ourselves and to make sure that the environment that we live in is covered with the faith of our faith community and with the blessings from God, as far as I'm concerned. And we have to do that in a way that would make sure that other people, even though it's hard, they still try. We have to do that. So we can't give up the mail-in ballots. We can't give those up. We have to keep pushing them.

We've got to drag people to success. Yes, sir. Yes. Vote early. Vote as soon as you can. Tell a friend to vote. I think sir. Yes. Vote, vote early, vote as soon as you can tell a friend to vote. Um, I think that's all great advice. I mean, on top of COVID Wisconsin in particular has been part of, of a conversation about police brutality and police violence and black lives matter. I mean, Joe Biden, uh, and Kamala Harris were just in Wisconsin recently after the shooting of Jacob

Blake, uh, and some of the protests in Kenosha. What do you how do you feel about the Biden campaign's message on racial justice issues on defunding the police? Are they speaking to the concerns that you're hearing from from folks in your congregation or voters in Wisconsin? Yes, certainly. But but you know what? I just don't think they fight hard enough. Man, if you ask me, I just don't think they fight hard enough. Man, if you ask me, I just don't think they fight hard enough. You know, we have Trump offices right in the middle of our community, and they are certainly doing everything they can to get votes in their camp. I just don't think we fight hard enough. So this isn't just about, you know, voting on November 3rd. This is about building power in our community for local power and our local politics. This is about being able to maintain a structure that is falling apart rapidly and building it up to something that we can deal with.

But we have to deal with it with leverage. So we're asking people to come out and vote because we want to build a voting block. We want to say, okay, we voted. Now we need to stay together and have that block so we can have leverage for an agenda that we can take to people in power and the politicians, because I don't think in our neighborhood, people really care about who's running, you know, and that's a problem. So we have to do something more. We got to talk about building power. Even though I met Camilla the other day, and I thought she was wonderful, I really did. And I think Biden will do some things that will probably help our community.

I just don't think people are really geeked up and energized for that. I don't see the energy I need to see in this situation. So we want to bring some new energy here and say, why don't we just make sure we vote? Because when we vote, it gives us the leverage we need to talk to folks who are coming into our community with the resources, with the funds, so that we can make sure that they have to listen to us. And if they don't, we want to, you know, throw them, you know, throw the clown out. And if he does, we want to support him like crazy. But we need that kind of energy in our community right now. We need it right now so that we can rebuild what has been broken all over our community. So I'm willing to, you know, listen and support, you know, those candidates, but I

think we need a little bit more in our community because we need people to understand that it's more than just a vote because November 3rd is where we have to really struggle to get people there. But November 4th is when the have to really struggle to get people there. But November 4th is when the real work starts. I can't leave my kitchen table on November 4th because that's when we really have to organize and build up this voting block I'm talking about. I don't care if it's 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. What we're looking for 100,000. Our slogan is we're an army of faith, the power of 100,000 souls to the polls. I'm doing counting right now. And yeah, I know I talk too much,

but I'm doing counting right now. And I see 50,000 votes coming out of the church. And I'm asking the church, go get somebody for our 100,000. We wanna be responsible for 100,000 and encourage community to join us in doing that. So it's more than just the candidates for us. It's building a voting bloc. It's building power in our community to control our local politics.

Yes. Look, you're here because we love listening to you talk. So don't ever be worried about that. I mean, obviously, the challenge in Wisconsin in building that voting bloc and building that power is that Wisconsin has experienced years of these brazen Republican voter suppression efforts, the voter ID laws. Obviously, the pandemic complicates things even further. Are there voter suppression tactics that you're worried about for November? Are there ways you're working to fight back?

Are there ways we can help you, the listeners to the show? And you know what? That is so important because we need people to understand how important their vote counts. See, because, you know, I always say if your vote, he said, the Democrats are rigging the machines. I was like, man, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Why would you rig a machine and lose? That's just stupid. You know, I'm believing that if we could get the word out, because we're trying to light up Milwaukee right now. We want people to know when, where, why, how, what. We want them to know everything because there's people still running around here not knowing that there's a vote November 3rd, let alone there's early voting.

So we need, you know, we need money. We need to be on TV. We need to be on the radio. We need to be on print. We need to be all over this place right now. And I think we can turn this thing into something that people will really get excited about. Because I don't think, I hate to say this, I don't want to wait for the love to have you in my camp to show me how to do these things and do it, you know, efficiently. So that, you know, we can get people engaged, get people energized and make sure they understand that the ability that they have to change the world is at their feet right now. Listen, Milwaukee is key. If we come out to vote, we will change the

nation and the world, and we will change the politics in this city, because if we're successful at this, we could talk about a win, and then we could really talk about that voting block. I could tell them, I said, look what we've done, man, we could build this block right now. Who's with me? And I guarantee you that if we have some positive, positive motion in the right direction, that we can continue to grow. Is it going to happen all in one day? No, but we can continue to help our community understand that you do have power. So we need folks to come in. We need folks to canvas. We

can't knock on doors, but we could drop off literature. We could do that all over the place. And I think that needs to be a groundswell that, you know, can catapult our candidates into another direction here in the city, a new energy. And that's what needs to happen. It shouldn't be just about because you know uh trump is not a good guy it should be because we have some good people who are going to take his place and and besides that man we're going to build this uh voting block so we can make sure that we take some other places too or else they coordinate with us to build up our community that's that's what this should be about. I agree. And look, I feel like

I'm learning from you right now. I mean, I also, you know, we've had Reverend Barber on this show, and I felt, you know, inspired by what he did in North Carolina with Moral Mondays, you know, in North Carolina, you know, on both sides of the aisle, the faith community has just had incredible success bringing people together, organizing them and turning them out around issues, around elections. What can the Democratic Party learn from faith leaders like you? Like, what should we be emulating that we're not doing? See, they need to learn how to fight. You know, in the Bible, we talk about, you know, there's a parable, you know, in the Bible that talks about a guy who God is telling him, man, you better bring in those receipts that I told you to collect, and you better learn how to do it from the world. We need to learn how to do it from these guys who are on the other side,

you know, and I hate to repeat myself, but we just, we just don't know how to fight. Listen, there's a scorched earth politics here in Wisconsin that Scott Walker perfected. You know, they will burn up anything. They'll burn up anybody. They will sacrifice anything and anybody to keep power and to keep the wind on their side. We need to learn how to work like that. Why are we so nice about everything, man? I mean, I'm a pastor, and sometimes you just have to give some tough love. Man, we are too nice about our politics, and we just let them run over us, man. I believe in turning to other cheeks, but sometimes you need to duck and swing yourself. We have to make sure that we get into a position where we get just as vicious about our politics. I'm not saying be mean or immoral. I'm just saying, man,

we need to strengthen our community to understand that, man, I'm behind you. Let's go fight. You know, and people in the church, you know, the church is not soft, man. See, people think that the church is soft, man, but the Bible was built on armies, and that's what we are. And that's what I'm trying to tell folks. Man, don't take us for granted. Man, don't think just because I believe in Jesus that I'm just going to let you push me around. No, that's not going to happen. We're going to make sure that we activate the power of God that's in us to build a power in our community. And that's where we are right now, man. We have to do that in a way that

doesn't, you know, discourage folks from working with us. But you got to understand, man, the way they fight is dirty, man. They don't, you know, they got brass knuckles hitting us in the eye. Man, we can at least win with an open hand or something, man. We shouldn't just let them. And we should at least duck sometimes. No, but I'm really serious about that. We really need to learn how to fight, man. And that's what needs to happen.

We need to learn how to fight and not be ashamed of fighting, man. Because listen, man, I'm tired of living like this, man. I'm tired of living like this. And we need to be able to make a sheer choice. And it needs to be an extremely energized choice. I ought to be hearing people saying, let's go, let's go. But I'm not hearing that. And we need to build that. And that's what we need folks to come in. But I'm not going to wait

for anybody else to come in. Man, we're going to do that right here, right now. Some people are worried about this election. I'm saying, man, we're going to get this vote out. And we're going to get the church to do it. And they're going to go in their communities and do it. And we're going to get some votes. And we're going to make sure that we win and November 3rd is going to be a win. We're going to make sure of that. And I'm positive that we can. So I just want to say to everybody listening, if that didn't get you fired up, if you're not ready to fight, there's something wrong with you. So rewind the interview like a minute and a half, listen again. And then we at Crooked Media, we created this program.

It's called our Adopt-A-State program. So listeners can go to votesaveamerica.com slash states, and you can pick one of one swing states to adopt. You become a digital organizer. I'm on Team Wisconsin for obvious reasons. The greatest people on the planet live in Wisconsin. But if you have a pitch for folks who haven't adopted a state yet, why is Wisconsin the choice they should make? Well, I tell you this, what's happening in Milwaukee,

and I'm going to repeat this because I don't know if everybody heard me. If we make sure that we get these votes out here, and if we make sure that we talk to our brothers in Racine and Kenosha and Beloit and Madison, because the state is split. We'll make the difference. Man, we can change the whole country because that's what I'm seeing right now. And that's what I've seen in the past. Man, we had a governor's race. They said that this guy couldn't be beat, but the state was split. And I told everybody what's going to happen here is going to depend on us, man. We went to bed that night and this governor thought he had won,

but after they counted the votes that came out of our community, it was a devastating loss for him. And we did that with souls to the Pose. Those votes came out of Midtown Shopping Center, where we went to vote on Sundays for about two Sundays. And we did that during the week. And I'm telling you that that makes a difference. And it's going to make a difference this time. People are seriously worried about this. And I don't blame them. But I'm saying, listen, if we get a little bit saying, listen, if we get a little bit of help here, if we get a little bit of money here, we get some other resources, man, we need

enough money to go on TV, I need to go on TV and say, Hey, man, get up out your seats and get yourself together and make sure you go vote. Stop sitting there letting things happen to you. Let's make things happen for us. You ought to be tired of people just running you over. I know I am, and I'm not going to keep living like this. If I had to go out here and fight by myself, I will. But if I get people with me, that means I'm running a revolution, man. And now we have to make sure that people understand that that's our attitude. And they seem to come along. And they, man, on my Facebook page, and man, these people are excited about what we're doing. And we need to continue to do that for the good of our community

and for the good of everybody, even those who probably don't like us. It'll be for their good too. So I bet everybody listening is now even more hyped about Souls of the Polls than they are our Adopt-a-State program. What can they do to help out Souls of the Polls, the best named organization in politics, by the way, if they want to support you directly?

Look, man, I want to thank every last vote fund and Vote Save America. I want to do that. And all the people who support you, I want to make sure that they understand that the help that they've already given us is so much appreciated. And I want to make sure that they understand we still need help. We still need help here. We still need people coming in this community. We still need people bringing money and resources and bringing people from other places to drop off literature and all those kind of things.

We need to light up Milwaukee. We need to do that in a way that nobody could miss the opportunity to want to vote on November 3rd. We want to make it like, man, it ain't even cool if you don't vote. That's what we want to do here. And if you could, you know, get that message out to your folks and they are willing to help us, man, we really do need the help. I told you this city will be the difference between what we have now and the change we can make. If we don't get out to vote, things will probably stay the same. But if we do get out to vote, things are going to change in a powerful and rapid way.

If we do get out to vote, things are going to change in a powerful and rapid way. I love it. Pastor Greg Lewis, thank you for taking our audience to church for a couple minutes today. I really appreciate your time. All the work you're doing, I feel more inspired. I feel like I could run through a brick wall right now. So thank you for all the work you're doing, truly. No, thank you for all the work you're doing. Truly. No, thank you, man. All the thanks right now go right to you because you've given us this opportunity to talk to folks and

the work you've already done, man. That's incredible work. I just believe that I have a lot of work to do to catch up with what you've already done, man. So let's get, I got to get busy, man. Is this thing over? I got to get back to work. Yeah, it's over. It's over. Thank you again. I still got about three hours to make calls, man. Let me get out of here. Yes. All right. I'll go, I'll go do some digital organizing myself. Pastor, thank you again. It was amazing to talk with you and, you know, we'll check in with you again soon, I hope. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you. we'll check in with you again soon. I hope.

Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you. Thanks to Reverend Greg Lewis. That was fantastic. Um, and thanks to, uh, thanks to everyone else for listening.

Uh, we'll catch up with you in a few days. Uh, go adopt a state, make some phone calls, share some pro Biden content. Let's get this done. Listen,

listen, you know, after lunch, before dinner, sometime in there, share some pro Biden content. Let's get this done. Listen, listen, you know, after lunch, before dinner, sometime in there, share some pro-Biden content. All right. You know, go tweet about his plan for the minimum wage. His climate plan. You know, his plan to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60.

The climate plan, maybe. Plan to save the planet. That's a good one. That's a good one. Go share it. All right. Bye, guys. Save the planet.

That's a good one. Good one. Go share it. All right. Bye guys. Pod Save America is a cricket media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.

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