Pod Save America - “A global laughingstock.”

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

House Democrats prepare to draft articles of impeachment, Trump embarrasses himself and America at NATO, and Kamala Harris ends her presidential campaign. Then Senator Cory Booker talks to Jon about his strategy to make the December debate and build momentum ahead of Iowa.

Good news, gift givers. The holidays just got a little less chaotic. Crooked Coffee curated three specialized gift boxes, and there's something for everyone from the constantly online to the aspiring star baker and even the crafty one in the friend group. Who's the crafty one in our friend group? It's me. If you have to ask, it's not you. Yeah, well, that I know.

Okay. It's love. It's not you, Tommy. Each box contains Crooked Coffee's delicious medium and dark roast. Crafty like sneaky or like you do crafts and arts? Well, now you made me think. I don't know. It could be you.

I saw what John did to a pumpkin the other day and I don't know. I don't think I can see Tommy making one of those snowflakes he cut out. You know what I mean? Just don't seem

as the artistic type. Yeah, I can barely draw. Anyway, coffee. Yes. We're selling coffee. Each box contains delicious medium and dark roast along with a fun activity to keep everyone on your list caffeinated and entertained all winter long. Plus, they're beautifully packaged and ready to go.

No need to cover your whole living room with wrapping paper. And if you want to keep it super simple, a bag of beans or a Crooked Coffee gift card makes an ideal gift. Grab some for the person on your list who's hard to shop for like your boss, that one friend who has everything, or your dad. Dads are mysterious. Plus, through this holiday season, every order from Crooked Coffee will support Vote Save America's Every Last Vote Fund to make sure every voice can be heard in the face of unprecedented voter suppression. Head over to crooked.com slash coffee to shop. Limited quantity available, so order yours today before they sell out. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we got an impeachment report, we got an impeachment hearing, and Kamala Harris ending her presidential campaign. Then I'm going to talk to one Democratic candidate who's still in the race and looking to get on that December debate stage, Senator Cory Booker. Before we get into all that, a few quick housekeeping notes. Tommy's latest episode of his iowa series is out episode three you'll learn in this episode how important and humbling the hunt for big endorsements can be along with all the arguments against iowa going first and caucuses generally there's also a great

anecdote in there about catching chickens and how to catch a chicken. So it is, it's a great episode. Check it out. how many, how many are in the series? Uh, there's, I want to say five, five. If there were six,

I would probably end up quitting this podcast and joining a campaign. I know everyone, like he gets the nostalgia media going even more. It's so great. And I'm positive the world, Tommy and Ben cover Trump's trip to NATO, which we're going to talk a little bit about too. They also talk about Ben's recent

trip to Hong Kong and the upcoming UK elections with The Intercept's Mehdi Hassan. Also a newer episode of Rubicon Out Friday, where Crooked's own Brian Boitler will do a deeper dive on all the latest impeachment news of the week. So subscribe to that now, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And finally, the crooked store is running a surprise new sale every day for 12 days. And we're calling it the 12 days of crooked. How about that? I was about, I was about to applaud you for like what a great name Rubicon was for an impeachment podcast, but I'm not going

to do that now because of the 12 days of cricket uh yeah I don't know who came up with that uh shop the sales stock up on gifts and check out our holiday merch on cricket.com store of course I love a good pun so a lot of people are asking when the it's not great Dan merch is going to be restocked and by a lot of people I mean my wife and many members of my family I'm asking the same thing because I want a lot of people, I mean my wife and many members of my family. I'm asking the same thing because I want a few things from the store for my family. And I've been told that they're sold out, too. So I thought I had more connections.

I do not. But I think we're working on restocking that pretty fast. Emily was looking online at the store the other day and she goes, it is fucking bizarre to see it's not great dan merchandise sold out why why emily i know i think it was bizarre i think it was sort of a hit on both of us too but not that that makes it any better it's also weird that my that my members of my family want to wear a shirt that says it's not great it's weird man okay let's get to the news on tuesday the house intelligence committee approved their impeachment report on a party line It's not great, Dan. It's weird, man. Okay, let's get to the news. On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee approved their impeachment report on a party-line vote and then sent it off to the Judiciary Committee, which is charged with drafting articles of impeachment that they will soon be doing. They'll soon be drafting articles of impeachment according to an announcement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning.

It is happening. Most of the 300-page report is a summary of what we all learned during the public hearings, with the exception of one very notable bit of pizzazz, a series of call logs obtained from AT&T and Verizon that show extensive contact between Rudy Giuliani in the White House, Rudy Giuliani in the Office of Management and Budget, Rudy Giuliani and right-wing conspiracy theorist John Solomon, Giuliani and Devin Nunes,

and between Devin Nunes and the indicted founder of Fraud Guarantee, Lev Parnas. Dan, let's start with Rudy, who, as a reminder, is also under federal investigation. What's the significance of these calls to the White House, to OMB, and to an unknown number that's identified in the report only as dash one? Well, I think on one level, it's not bizarre that there are a lot of calls between Rudy and Trump because they are men of a certain age who are unfamiliar with the efficient wonders of texting. Yeah. Although Rudy does text a lot of reporters. He does.

They like to screenshot his text messages, tweet them. Yes. I mean, one of the more bizarre, if not endearing exchanges was between Ryan Riley of the Huffington Post and Rudy Giuliani about the birth of Ryan's son. I saw that. Very clever tricks. In a baby picture, you can get away with almost anything as a lesson I learned about 18 months ago. So on one level, it's not weird that they're talking, but the timing is incredibly conspicuous because this is all happening around the Zelensky meeting, the decision to fire the US ambassador to the Ukraine. And it bespeaks what Gordon Sondland told us, which is everyone was in the loop, that this is a conspiracy that

involved people throughout the administration. And when we say, well, Giuliani is the president's attorney of course they should be talking it is not the job of an attorney to fly to Ukraine and try to strong-arm a government into interfering election that is not part of the duties of the attorney so that this would be happening outside of what I would call the normal course of business yeah and I also think the real flag here is Rudy talking to the Office of Management and Budget. Like you said, it's almost the easier to explain call is all the calls with, you know, Dash One, which seems to be Donald Trump because in the Roger Stone hearing, a number was also listed as Dash One that was assumed to be Donald Trump there as well. But that's almost not as, like you said, it's not as surprising because, you know, Rudy was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. But Donald Trump's personal lawyer shouldn't necessarily be calling the Office of Management and Budget unless he was talking about, I don't know,

freezing $400 million worth of aid to Ukraine which happened uh right around the time he was calling omb right after you know he called omb a couple weeks after the aid was frozen so uh you know that seems pretty suspicious huh did you uh read the breakdown in vox provided by our wonderful producer jordan waller about how they like the circumstantial evidence that dash one is Trump. I did. Yeah. Yeah. So what it said was, Rudy received three calls on his various phones, all within a very short distance that he did not answer. And immediately after he texts the White House, and then he tries to call back those three numbers. And as you and I know from having worked in the White House, when the president calls you, it is like a five alarm fucking fire. Because your work, like we used to have a BlackBerry, we're so old, for work,

a personal phone, and then even back then a home phone. And so they all ring basically at the same, like within seconds of each other. And like, it could be the president just calling with speech edits or to ask a question or get to a bunker and you don't know which. And so this was a very, and then trying to call back is always challenging because you have to call back several numbers. And so this was a very, this very clearly was dash one, like dash one is Trump, obviously. Dash one is Trump, obviously. Can I tell you a very embarrassing story?

Once I was working on speech edits in the White House and I had sent them to Obama and I fell asleep. And apparently my phone rang a bunch of times. I did not hear it ring. And I woke up to an email from the president of the United States that said, are you up? Looking for me because he wanted to give me more speech edits. And I just missed it. And the way you know that we worked for the kindest, most generous man that I'll ever work for is that he had no problem in the morning. I was like, I'm so sorry. I slept. I didn't see.

He's like, that's fine. It's okay. We'll deal with it. Yeah. I always had this passing in the night situation with the president, which is I would go to bed pretty early because I'd get up quite early and he was a night owl. So I would constantly wake up to a series of emails with various questions and sometimes complaints. And then there'd be this several hour gap between when I saw it and then when he would be done, like getting the girls off to school, working out and then like checking into his email. And so always like no worse feeling in the world than waking up to discover that you left the president of the United States, who needed your assistance, hanging. Yeah, but for some reason I feel like Rudy Giuliani doesn't necessarily feel that way. Because he's got a lot going on. He's wheeling and dealing.

Rudy sleeps between 1 and 3 in the afternoon, so he'll be fine. Let's talk about notoriously stupid Congressman Devin Nunes. Tommy's trying to get that title to stick. So I'm just gonna you know use that who is uh so Nunes is currently suing CNN for running a story that quotes Lev Parnas's attorney as saying that Parnas helped Nunes set up meetings in Europe to get dirt on Joe Biden uh Nunes denies this but now after denying this after filing this lawsuit i i don't know what this talking about i've never visited europe this is all bullshit um now he has to explain why these

call records show him making a nine minute phone call to lev parnas um what do you think dan did the world's dumbest congressman strike again here what's what's on? I think we owe Lev Parnas an apology because the last time you and I recorded a podcast together, which feels like 10 years and 17 turkey meals ago, we were very cautious to put our faith in the recently indicted Mr. Parnas. We didn't want to jump to any conclusions. We wanted to be more fair to Mr. Nunes than he has been to anyone else in history. And we were wrong. We should have trusted Lev Parnas. He was right. Devin Nunes, the notoriously stupid congressman, is waist deep in this criminal conspiracy. Yeah. I mean, so he goes on Hannity, you know, he goes to a safe space and Hannity is like, you don't know this guy.

Les Parnase, do you? Like, you know, intentionally fucking up the guy's name as if like Sean Hannity's never heard of him before. And, you know, Nunes is like, you know, it's possible. I haven't gone through my phone records. I don't recall that name. You don't recall talking to that guy for nine minutes on the phone dude come on come on nine minutes might be my longest phone conversation in six months right that who's he talking to for nine minutes so it does seem like newness is involved what do you

think happens from there i mean i guess you know they could they could launch an ethics investigation the democrats in the house into newness shift seems like he you know didn't he wanted to be careful about accusing him of anything based only on these phone records which i think is smart but where do you think the democrats go from here on nunes like i i mean an ethics investigation seems like the right thing to do we just can't just for the same reason that impeachment is being undertaken that if you involve yourself in a massive conflict of interest, don't tell people and then preside over hearings into that conflict of interest. Good rule of thumb. Yeah.

I mean, there should be accountability for that. And there should be an investigation to get to the bottom of it. Will anything happen? Of course not because our democracy is fundamentally broken and it was broken by a morally bankrupt republican party that's what we're trying to fix in 2020 dan any other highlights from the intel committee impeachment report i will admit i did not read all 300 pages but i read many articles about it many summaries it does seem i'm just gonna be honest with you folks you know 300 pages, but I read many articles about it, many summaries. It does seem, I'm just going to be honest with you folks, you know,

300 pages is a lot of pages. People out there, when John says articles, he means tweets. No, you know what? I take a break from the tweets when it's time to prep for the pod. I go full article. Not even just the summaries that Jordan and Michael helpfully prepare. I click on those links. I read the whole thing. Yeah. Give that ad money to Jeff Bezos.

It does seem to be a pretty good summary, especially in the executive report of sort of laying out the impeachable offenses. It's abuse of power. It's undermining national security. It's interfering and it's getting a foreign government to interfere in our elections. You know, it's what Pelosi laid out in her press conference today when she basically announced that they're going to write articles of impeachment. Did you find anything else noteworthy? Well, I, much as has been pointed out by the pizzazz police out there, much of what was in that report was known already. The new nuggets are the ones that we just discussed. But what I thought was particularly compelling in the context of that report was the degree to which the President of the United States and his administration has obstructed the investigation. Preventing everyone from

testifying, not being unwilling to turn over a single piece of paper in response to it. And that Yeah. the American people elected by a historic margin, this Congress. This is a constitutionally appropriate, politically viable impeachment investigation. It has been signed off on by the founders and the voters. And the president doesn't get to just ignore it because it's inconvenient that he fell ass backwards into a crime pit. Like it is, he has, like that, it is a real thing. And he should be held accountable for that. And this is not the typical like back and forth over executive privilege that happens for good reason in most administrations and Congresses.

This is a specific effort that goes well beyond what Nixon did to prevent Congress from doing its constitutionally mandated job. And I think that's important. And the report does a very good job of laying that out. Yeah. I mean, I get that obstruction process crimes are not as, they don't register as high on the pizzazz meter with a lot of the press too, but it is unbelievably fucked up and dangerous for the president of the United States to just say, you cannot investigate me. You cannot indict me. I do not have to cooperate with anything. I do not have to cooperate with any investigations. I can do basically whatever I want. And I'm immune because legal indictments

aren't a remedy. And now impeachment is a remedy. And in congressional investigations aren't a remedy either. So fuck you all. Can't have that. Can't have that. That is what a king does. That is what a dictator does. Or at least a president with a complicit party and a rigged court. Yes, exactly. All right, let's talk about yesterday's hearing. It was the Judiciary Committee's first, and the goal was to prove that Trump's Ukraine scheme constitutes an impeachable offense. The hearing lasted all day with testimony from four constitutional law scholars, three called by Democrats and one called by Republicans. A similar hearing was held during the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998.

Dan, what do you think this hearing accomplished? And more importantly, was there enough pizzazz? We're going to make pizzazz jokes until the author of the original pizzazz piece apologizes to America. That's what I'm waiting for. You know who you are. I'm actually very sure the hearing did not shift the political tides in any major way. But for all of the people dismissing it on Twitter as either boring or just telling us what we already know, I would note that the three broadcast networks carried the hearing for several

hours yesterday. And so in the larger democratic effort to try to find the small pockets of persuadable Americans out there, this was a very useful exercise. And the arguments, like the report, are overwhelmingly compelling. It is like in any normal functioning democracy with a normal functioning opposition party, this would be an open and shut case and Trump would be flying Marine One out of here in a week. And the fact that that's not happening says a lot about where we are as a country. Yeah, I completely agree. Like I think we've said many, many times here, public opinion on this is pretty set. I don't expect it to move dramatically. But this is like a game of news cycles here. And when people turn on the television

or go online to read the news, you know, the soundbites they're going to see from three constitutional law professors are, you know, President O. Feldman said, President Trump has committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency. Michael Gerhardt, if what we are talking about is not impeachable, nothing is impeachable. And Professor Pamela Carland, drawing a foreign government into our election process is an especially serious abuse of power because it undermines democracy itself. So look, like you said, all the networks covered it. Everyone else covered it. And when you see a bunch of constitutional law professors say that,

I don't think it's going to change a ton of minds, but it's certainly not unhelpful. It was almost amusing watching these constitutional law professors because there was an inherent absurdity to the exercise, which is what the president did, which is beyond factual dispute. It is 100% clear. There are call records. There is firsthand testimony. There is the admission of the White House chief of staff on national television. There are presidential tweets and press conferences where he cops to the crime. The facts are beyond dispute. It is the textbook definition of an impeachable offense. If you were trying to provide an example

to help law students understand what is impeachable, this would be it. And so they're up there sort of like, like, wondering, like, almost what, like, how did they end up in this theater of the absurd where the obvious is treated as extraordinary? And, I mean, the patience at which those three professors showed was quite impressive, I thought. I thought so too. I thought the witness who seemed especially just floored that this is even taking place is Pamela Carlin, who I thought was quite good. And she gave a really great analogy, I thought, where she said, imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that's prone to hurricanes and flooding. What would you think of when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has already provided?

The president responded, I would like you to do us a favor. I'll meet with you and send the disaster relief once you brand my political opponent a criminal. And I thought that was just a great way to sort of make it even more accessible for people of just how fucked up what the president did is. Yeah, it's beyond dispute and abuse of power. Yeah. What did you think about the Republican witness, Professor Jonathan Turley, who, you know, made an interesting argument in that he didn't say that the call was perfect. In fact, he said the call was very much not perfect. He said that the use of military aid for a quid pro

quo to investigate one's political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense, but he thinks it hasn't been proven. What did you sort of make of that argument? I feel like if the worst parts of Washington, D.C. had a mascot, it would be Jonathan Turley. There needs to be some context here that he is a television talking head attorney who basically came to fame in the late 90s supporting the impeachment of Bill Clinton, essentially making the opposite argument on every issue that he made today. He is a shameless merchant in the marketplace of political attention. And it says a lot about how weak the Republican cases that they were left with. Apparently, either Jonathan Turley or Alan Dershowitz were the two people available to them to make their very weak case. Yeah, I mean, you know, Jonathan Turley, he said during his testimony, you know, I'm not a Trump supporter. I didn't vote for Trump. I

support Obama and Clinton. So he clearly is trying to credential himself as this like nonpartisan legal observer here. So he defends Bill Clinton's impeachment still to this day. At the same time, his main argument about the Trump impeachment is not that it's completely wrong, it's that it's been being rushed. Though the Clinton impeachment and the Trump impeachment are both on track to be around the same exact number of days. They're about 75 days from the beginning of the investigations to the vote on impeachment. So that argument kind of falls apart.

He also argued that he doesn't believe that Nixon should have been impeached for the obstruction charges that Nixon was going to be impeached for. And he thinks that notorious racist Andrew Johnson was railroaded during his impeachment as well. that notorious racist Andrew Johnson was railroaded during his impeachment as well. So I don't really know how well his argument holds up, even though I get that someone who says, well, I didn't vote for Trump and I'm not a supporter of Trump, but I don't believe in impeachment. I can see how Republicans would think that might be effective. I think his legal positions are reverse engineered from what gets him booked on television. You think so? You think it's it? positions are reverse engineered from what gets them booked on television. You think so? You think it's it? I mean, we should note that he has already embraced some pretty far-fetched conspiracy

theories about Ukraine in the past, right? Earlier this year, he wrote an op-ed in The Hill that downplayed Manafort's connections to Russia, which we know are plenty. And he also unhighlighted his connections to the Ukrainian government. So he sort of bought into a few of these ukrainian conspiracy theories too yeah not great not great so i mean you know turley's main argument also seemed to be the republicans on the judiciary committee's main argument yesterday which is it's a new one now democrats are rushing the impeachment that seems to be the problem why do you think they're going with this new argument about a rushed impeachment and do you think it's more effective this new argument about a rushed impeachment? And do you think it's more effective than just saying what they were saying the last couple of weeks, which is just that Trump didn't do anything wrong at all? I think on the most basic,

least thought out surface level, it seems like a better argument, which is like, look, we are for accountability and justice, but we want a fair process. We want the president due process. We want to get to the bottom of this. So in that sense, if someone who's been paying zero attention to anything the Republicans have done to date, zero attention to anything that Trump has said or the effort ways in which they've gone about obstructing the investigation. Well, that makes sense. Like, don't. This is very serious. Why would we rush?

Except it's so such patently obvious bullshit. I mean, their argument basically is you're going too fast. You don't have all the information. But we're going to give you none of the information. And the other argument is, which is just as bullshit, is, look, impeachment is very serious. But it must be bipartisan. But if anyone in our party supports impeachment, we're going to kick them out so you can't call it bipartisan. I know. It is. and they say it and people often hear that or they read the headlines and don't don't click on the

link um or whatever else and get to the full bottom of it so for people who are paying a little bit of attention if any at all that you can skate by with this bullshit yeah because i mean it is a it's a smarter media strategy uh because they know that the media tends to ding them when they throw out all kinds of wild conspiracy theories which which good for the media and they should. But they also know that there's a debate within the Democratic Party about are we rushing into this too fast or should we take time? And so they know that if they jump in and say, well, they're rushing it, then the media will see that as a legitimate debate because it's already one that's happening in the Democratic Party. And then you'll get headlines like we have in the New York Times today that say, are Democrats rushing impeachment? So, you know, they once again pin a strategy on the credulousness of reporters and sort of knowing that reporters are looking to

do both sides at all times. And, you know, that's more effective. But like you said, once you examine the argument for just fucking 10 seconds, it falls right apart. Like, what are we going to do? I mean, and I get like, we should talk about whether we think it's rushed or not. Like, again, you could wait forever for a court to decide whether John Bolton testifies or not, I guess. But the White House is obstructing, has decided that they're going to obstruct no matter what. And how much more evidence do we need?

You know, like even there's this whole thing like well the democrats don't have the smoking gun on the aid because we don't actually have a tape or an email of uh the president saying withhold the aid until i get the favor but like it's not just about the aid for the biden investigation we have mick mulvaney on tv admitting that they withheld the aid until the Ukrainians agreed to launch the fucking crazy conspiracy investigation into the CrowdStrike bullshit. So like the chief of staff has admitted on TV that there was a quid pro quo involving aid. Like, I don't know why we need more evidence on this.

And not just the White House chief of staff. He is also the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, the office that withheld the aid. So we have the person responsible for aid withholding saying on national television that, yes, it was a quid pro quo. Yes, they withheld the aid and then told the American people to get over it. That is the smokiest of guns humanly possible. smokiest of guns humanly possible i also i also think if nancy pelosi went to the microphone today and said we're gonna wait on the courts to decide and hopefully they'll decide quickly um to see if they compel john bolton and mcmulvaney and others to testify we're going to keep investigating she said that what would happen is everyone would forget about impeachment for a little while. We'd move on to the next thing. The holidays would arrive. And then in like,

even if it was only three weeks from now, right? Let's even if it's four weeks from now, right? And suddenly the courts decide in the best case, the courts decide they testify. And we've lost all that momentum because now no one in the country is talking about impeachment. And we've moved on. The reporters have moved on to the next media thing which you know they have a whole 2020 primary to cover that's probably pretty interesting or perhaps even a government shutdown we don't know what's happening um so that's in the best case scenario in the worst case scenario they lose the court case and then it's like democrats lose big court case on impeachment or all the headlines i don't i mean i get it i've seen you know there's a lot of people on the on side and the left, you know, including our own Brian Boitler, who have argued for a longer impeachment, longer investigation.

I just having now been through a couple of weeks of it, I don't see how you continue to capture the public's attention if you drag this out longer. the public's attention if you drag this out longer. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it is a tough call because if you were just doing this from the pure question of what is the constitutional obligation to – and it's not just about – like I don't think we need Bolton and Mulvaney to testify for any reason other than public attention because the evidence of said crimes is without is overwhelming so it's not like they will they can provide nuance to it they would provide very high profile tv moments but you don't need it for that like has trump committed a gazillion impeachable offenses like we just found out the other day that he gave a contract to a very small North Dakota firm for wall construction that's owned

by a donor. Like, like there's, there are like, we, there is impeachment everywhere, but this is where we are right now. And the U S Congress could be investigating impeachable offenses by Trump until the end of time, but we got to do what we got to do. Yeah. And it's, and I, yeah, I get it. It's, it's, it's very, it's hard. And I think that like, we've seen how hard it is to keep the public's attention on this. Like I think Adam Schiff in the, in the Intel committee conducted near flawless hearings, you know, and they were incredibly compelling. And even that doesn't move the needle all that much.

And so to think that, and that's as high drama as you're going to get, all those witnesses testifying, new revelations every day of that, of those hearings. So, you know, I think, I think it's hard because a lot of the new revelations that would come with continued investigations are, like you said, stories that have already popped up in the news, like what you just said about the, the contract, right? So investigating stories that are already there and then finding out, yeah, well, there is a connection between Trump and this scandal. I don't know how much more it gets you. I don't know that it convinces Republicans more. So you might as well move forward with what you have. I do want to make one point, though, on the public

opinion piece, which is America is polarized, right? I think we have to stop trying to analyze the political success and failure of various efforts based on this macro number of how far away we move from 50-50 because we're pretty locked in to that and start looking at different pockets of people, right? That's non-voters. That can be the Obama-Trump-Democrat-in-18 voters. It could be Romney-Clinton voters. There's different pockets of people who could be deciding these elections in these various states. This is the difference, I think, between media polling and campaign polling is media polling is often about a top line that is attached to a narrative. Like, do you support impeachment, yes or no? Is the impeachment hearing too long or too short? And campaign polling is also is very often both in quantitative research, like polls and qualitative research, like focus groups, trying to get at how what happens in the news, what happens in

advertising affects the how the public views the character and values of the candidate, right? Yeah. Like, is Trump losing ground on, with these voters on being a agent of change in Washington? Is he losing ground on draining the swamp? Are voters getting more exhausted by his presence? There are a lot of different measures that I think, I'm sure a number of the Democratic super PACs and party organizations are looking at, and then our nominee eventually will. And when we trap ourselves in this, you know, either or a binary discussion about the overall electorate, I don't think we're fully understanding the potential impact of these things.

Yeah. Okay, end of rant. so before we move on to 2020 we should talk about uh trump himself what he's been up to uh he spent the early part of the week at the nato summit in london where he once again embarrassed his country on the world stage with a series of rambling statements and shots at other world leaders who were later caught on video mocking trump during a reception at buckingham palace justin trudeau emmanuel macron boris johnson princess anne and the netherlands prime minister mark rutt can be seen standing in a circle lightly roasting trump uh in the video which went viral justin trudeau can be heard saying

he was late because he takes a 40 minute news conference at the top and quote you just watch his team's jaws drop to the floor so dan trudeau later said you know yeah we were talking about trump but it was mostly about how astonished his team looked when he randomly announced that the g7 would be held at camp david um and trump when he hears what trudeau said calls him him two-faced, cancels his last press conference and leaves the summit early in a huff. Is that the behavior of a stable human being? No, but it is pretty typical behavior of Donald J. Trump, president of the United States. is so like so i thought this was interesting in response to trump's uh meltdown joe biden uh put together a new ad that uh he released on on twitter at least last night uh let's let's play a clip

world leaders caught on camera laughing about president trump several world leaders mocking president trump they're laughing at him my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. Didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay. World leaders mocking and ridiculing him for being completely off balance. Allies are deeply worried about him. They say he's becoming increasingly isolated. Something is very wrong. He's becoming increasingly isolated. Something is very wrong.

The world sees Trump for what he is, insincere, ill-informed, corrupt, dangerously incompetent, and incapable, in my view, of world leadership. So I've always thought that Trump, as someone who's embarrassing America, who's making our country a laughingstock, is an effective political attack in 2020. I don't think it should be the only message, obviously. But I think as we think about messages that work against Trump, I do think that has some power. What do you think? I thought it was an excellent ad, as we all said on Twitter last night, both in the sense that at least in 2008 in the Obama campaign, the idea of Obama improving America's standing in the world after being shunned because of the absolute catastrophe that was Bush's foreign policy was a very powerful message for Obama

in the Democratic primary and very powerful with the dependents and Republicans in the general election. I have not yet, I've not seen evidence that, like I just haven't seen polling that guarantees that that's true this time, but I think it has real power. It also was a very good ad because it, I think what a lot of people took from it was this was a very quick, rapid response from Biden. It was nimble, something that his campaigns has been criticized for not being previously. And so even people who were ambivalent about the message of the ad viewed this as a proof point about his potential abilities as a general election opponent of Trump. I do think it will be important if this is an argument that Biden or whoever our nominee is carries forward that you connect Trump's embarrassing behavior, his lack of standing in the world with actual impacts on American families.

So, you know, like like everything on fucking Twitter there, you tweet something about this. And then, you know, there's there's a bunch of Biden haters on the left and some folks on the left who are like, no, that's a bad message. Hillary tried the message that Trump was bad. It didn't work for her. The more important message is about, you know, economic inequality and all that. And I agree that, you know, messages about jobs, the economy, health care are extremely effective. So I completely agree with that. And then there were some people on the right who were saying, you know, like, you know, I tweeted that it was a good ad and then I got this from Ben Shapiro. I'm sure Michigan voters will resonate to the message. I don't really know if that's how you say it. I'm sure Michigan voters will resonate to the message that we must have a president respected by Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau.

So it's like, you know, that message is, oh, I guess he thinks that like the rubes in the middle of the country don't really care about America's standing in the world, you know, which I think is pretty condescending. But like, I will say when I did these focus groups for the wilderness, right, I did I did four groups, all four groups, were people saying, I am embarrassed by Donald Trump. He is embarrassing America in front of the world. I have a quote from an Obama Trump voter, middle-aged white guy in Milwaukee. And I said, you know, what do you think of Donald Trump? You voted for Donald Trump. And this is how he responded.

I'll be honest. I think he's done some good things, but I'm really concerned about where we're headed in the next couple of years if he's still around. I think he's a laughingstock in around the world. And I think he's burning bridges around the world. And you never know when you're going to need your allies. educated white Trump voter from Milwaukee, from outside Milwaukee, from one of the suburbs. So like, I think, like you said, you know, we haven't seen polling. This is qualitative research and focus groups. It's not the same as polling a thousand people. So you have to wait and see. But I think it is dangerous, just as it's dangerous to like predict a bunch of shit. It's dangerous to do a bunch of punditry about what voters in the Midwest think or anywhere in the country without actually talking to them because people are complicated and nuanced and subtle and they might surprise you with what they care about, right? There's a lot

of voters. It surprised me. I did not think so many people would care about America's standing in the world with Trump as president. I thought there'd be a long list of other grievances with Trump, but it came up in a lot of groups that I did. So there you go. The other thing that is important to think about is that the impact of messages differ based on who the messenger is, right? Right. This is a message that is particularly conducive to Biden's argument for himself, right? He is someone who has been on the world stage. He knows these leaders. He is promising a return to normalcy. We can dispute whether that is possible or not, but it is an argument that works for Biden. It may not work for others, but it has the potential to work for him because of his bio, his message, and how people understand who he is.

Yeah. I think there's one last point to make about this. Trump is running an ad. I think this was the ad he ran during the World Series, perhaps, where the ad basically ends with, yeah, maybe Trump's not the nicest guy, but sometimes you can't have a nice guy. It takes someone who's not that nice to fix Washington or something like that. I think if we made an argument that foreign leaders believe that Donald Trump is too mean, or they just think he's too nasty, then I get people saying like, well, we want our president to be tough with foreign leaders. Fuck those people. You know, like he should push them around a little bit. There could be a little of that. I could see that from voters. But I think when the message is that we're being laughed at, that Donald Trump, our president, is being laughed at around the world, that everyone's looking at America as like, what the fuck happened there? Who is this buffoon in charge? When he's mocked and laughed at as opposed to feared, which what he wants to be i do think that's powerful you know yeah all right let's talk about 2020 on tuesday kamala harris announced that she was

suspending her campaign for president citing a lack of financial resources in a post where she said quote i'm not a billionaire i can't fund my own campaign and as the campaign has gone on it's become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete in good faith i can't fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it's become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete. In good faith, I can't tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don't believe I do. So, Dan, this announcement came on the same day that a super PAC supporting her prepared to make a huge ad buy in Iowa. Gavin Newsom, governor of California, who had endorsed her earlier, talked about how how he was so excited to go campaign with her how surprised were you by this news i was shocked me too i i had been thinking uh and even considering either offering this take on this podcast or in a piece of written content on a website known as crooked.com, that there was this parade of

articles sort of culminating in the New York Times that were about all of the problems with the Harris campaign, all which were incredibly well-sourced and all delineated the same problem. So I imagine accurate. And I sort of had this view that it was possible that Kamala Harris was poised for a comeback because media narratives in campaigns tend, particularly negative ones, end in a crescendo. And it's usually when with a bunch of stories just like the one that happened here, which then forces the campaign to make a bunch of changes. Someone will generally get fired. They will offer a blood sacrifice to the Washington media. And then they get a chance to have a comeback narrative. And this was sort of a perfect – this is how, as you know better than most, what happened to John Kerry's campaign in 2004. It's what happened to John McCain in 2008. And so I sort of thought what would happen here is that after all of this talk about these problems at the top of their campaign, a change would be made. Kamala Harris would have an opportunity now to get a second look to build, you know, she had the clearest chances of being the nominee. And I still believe that were she the nominee, she probably would have had the best chance to reconstitute the Obama coalition in an updated post-2016 form. So I was shocked by this.

do you think happened uh why do you think her campaign didn't succeed because you know it's it's not the case with her like some of these other candidates that she just had struggles from the start and never took off um campaign kickoff 20 000 people in oakland it was probably the biggest kickoff of any candidate in terms of crowd size uh 12 million dollars raised in the first quarter she was second place in the fundraising race with that haul. And then she had another big fundraising haul in the next quarter. She peaked at about second place in the polls in early July after that debate where she sort of tangled with Biden. in the polls. That was second place. She was ahead of Sanders and Warren. And she was second in the endorsement primary. So she had, aside from Joe Biden, she had more establishment institutional support within the party than almost any other candidate. So it's not like, you know, there were all these things that sort of prevented her from even getting off the ground. I think what she achieved is very commendable, you know, that she got as far as she

did, and she got so much support, and she really got a look from voters. So what do you think happened? I just want to say one thing before we sort of dive into the autopsy element of this, which is there are hundreds of people around the country, mostly young people, who have spent much of the last year of their life working their tails off to make Kamala Harris president of the United States. They believe passionately in her, even if the campaign itself was not successful, they are exhausted, heartbroken today. And campaigns only end two ways, right? You either become president or you lose. And the losing is really hard and it's you know really hard for the young people involved and so i hope they get a catch a break get some sleep and

then like get back in the fight because we've all been there before and it's hard yeah no i i totally agree and i also think you know i've we've said this a million times but i I love Kamala Harris. I think she is incredibly charismatic. She is tough. She is brilliant. She's just, she's, I really had sort of high hopes for her candidacy at the outset, partly because I think she is so talented. And so, you know, I don't think, I mean, like, as we dive into this, into this autopsy, as you said, I don't, I don't think there is any easy explanation for this. Like, I think it is a number of different factors. I think some of them are structural and some of them are, you know, mistakes that the candidate in her campaign made. But, you know, what do you think? Yeah, I think, I think that's right. This is one of those conversations that's impossible to have on Twitter

because it's not an either or, right? It is true that her campaign made a series of very serious mistakes, right? And I think that's probably the prototypical example of that is that she launched this incredibly well-executed, brilliantly delivered, perfectly planned debate moment against Biden on busing. Like one of the best debate moments anyone's ever had, rocketed her to the top of the polls. But her campaign did all of that without having an answer to the question of her position on busing.

Yeah. So within the day of that great moment, she stumbled and was caught in a media mess. And that seems like a really... If you're going to launch an attack on Biden on busing, you better be ready for the next day question, and they were not. Yeah.

But I think a thing, and I've been thinking about this really a lot, both in the context of what's happened to Kamala Harris' campaign, but also what the debate stage was going to look like in December, even with Kamala Harris, who had qualified for that debate, because it was going to be quite white. As of right now, no candidate of color has qualified for the debate stage, other than Kamala Harris, who is now dropped out. And I think there've been a lot of discussion about making Iowa and New Hampshire first and the problems of having these very white states at the front. And then people will come back and say, well, Obama won Iowa and almost won New Hampshire. So that's proof that that's not a problem. And I think that that is not the right way of looking at it. I think we are operating in an electoral environment where the most important characteristic that voters want in

their Democratic nominee is the ability to beat Trump. Yeah. And they are getting their information about who is best to beat Trump from a political conversation that treats white male candidates as inherently more electable. And what that means is that it doesn't mean that Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or Julian Castro or any other candidates of color

who are fully qualified to be on the stage who have not made it to the top tier. It does not mean they haven't made mistakes or run perfect campaigns. It means they have exponentially less margin for error than the white candidates, particularly the white male candidates. And it's just that the prism of viewing the electability of a candidate through their ability to persuade white male voters in Wisconsin, basically puts a tax on non-white male candidates. And that is something we have to think really hard about. And there's not an obvious or easy solution of changing the debate criteria or, you know, it's a multifaceted thing, but I think it had a huge impact on her campaign.

It's having one on Cory Booker's and a bunch of other people. Yeah. And when you say that, you know, we have to really think about it and there's not an easy solution. I mean, it's very true because it's not like, so when we've talked about this before, but when Obama was running, if Obama was running in 04, right, against George Bush and it was, we have to beat George W. Bush no matter what. And everyone was really worried about who's the most electable person to go against George W. Bush like they were in the 04 race. I don't know that Obama could have won that primary because I think concerns about electability in 2008 when it was assured that George Bush would not be on the ticket when it was an open race. We didn't know who the Republican nominee was going to be. Concerns about electability were not as high as they are now. And, you know, we said this a lot, but the emotion that sort of pervades this entire race is fear in voters. And it's not just white voters.

It's, you know, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, you know, have had trouble earning any black support in any of these polls. Cory Booker, you know, have had trouble earning any black support in any of these polls. And aside from the very white states of Iowa, New Hampshire, poll after poll in South Carolina shows that, too. I mean, Joe Biden has his biggest lead in South Carolina, and that lead is because of his huge lead among black voters. Joe Biden, to the extent that he's lost some support since his announcement, which he has, he's lost it among white voters. And he hasn't lost really any support among the black community. And so why is that? And look, I think there's a couple explanations. There is that, you know, this fear about electability is not just a fear among white voters.

It's a fear among black voters and Latino voters and other voters, right? People want to beat Donald Trump. And so there's that electability thing. And I also think it's a challenge of trying to get attention in a primary that's that's crowded when people are not tuning in as closely. And so the demographic that is tuning in very closely right now are, you know, college educated voters, and they tend to be very progressive and liberal and that means that's a whole there's a whole swath of voters that aren't paying as close attention to the primary right now and so for them you know name id matters more and um so that's you know that's

part of the reason that i think joe biden and bernie it's not the whole reason but it's part of the reason that joe biden and bernie Bernie Sanders are still doing well. I mean, another thing, you know, I asked everyone about all the candidates and all these focus groups. And aside from the Arizona voters who are Romney Clinton voters, who are people who tend to pay more attention to the news, the other three groups, no one had heard of Kamala Harris. So all this, all this stuff about like, what did she do wrong? Was there no message? Was there this, like they just, just hadn't heard of her and they hadn't heard of Pete Buttigieg. They hadn't heard of any other candidates but Biden, Bernie. And then some had heard of Ward. That's it. Which was really surprising to me because I'm like, oh, I live in this world where I know every twist and turn of this race.

And I know a lot of people who are going to vote. All these people said we're going to vote in 2020 in the primary still haven't really tuned in yet. to vote. All these people said we're going to vote in 2020 in the primary still haven't really tuned in yet. And I think when you're trying to capture attention, which you must in order to raise money and to get make the polling threshold for these debates, it's really hard in a field this crowded with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders at the top of the field who are almost universally known within the Democratic Party. Yeah. And Elizabeth Warren, who is in second or third place, depending on how you look at the polling average, also had incredibly high name ID when she came into this race. Right. Much higher than a bunch of the other candidates. That's true. What do you think that

Kamala Harris's departure from the race means for some of the other candidates? Like the typical way of looking at that question is she had 5%, 3%, whatever it is. And how is it you think about it? It's like, how is that percentage allocated among other voters? Like who's going to get 3%? Who's going to get one of those 3%? And when you have 3% or 5%, I don't think it is determinative, right? Like it'd be one thing if for whatever reason, Bernie Sanders dropped out or Joe Biden dropped out, Elizabeth Warren dropped out, whether or they're holding on to 15 to 20 percent of the electorate. And then like those are meaningful numbers that can give someone a real cannabis. What I think it's going to affect is the conversation.

I think it's going to affect the conversation in a negative way, which is in that last debate where both Harris and Booker were on stage, they both began trying to expand the electability conversation beyond persuading these Obama, Trump, white voters to being about the most electable candidate has to be someone who can excite communities of color to turn out. And that conversation was not finished on that stage. And now I think it's very problematic that if things stay the way they are, and Cory Booker does not have a sort of miraculous run of four polls coming up here in the next whatever it is, 10 days, then there will be no candidate of color on that stage to have that conversation. And that is critically important, because it is a huge element

of how we're going to win this election is being able to speak to in authentic ways and mobilize those voters. And that's just going to be missing. And I think that's a huge negative. So I guess the question there is, you know, I can understand being upset about that, which I am, I'd love to see a more diverse field on stage right up until the end of the primary, you know, obviously. But I've, and I've seen a lot of people, you know, register sort of how upset they are about this. But I wonder what you do. I wonder what the alternative is from either the DNC debate rules perspective or any other perspective? Like, you know, is there an alternative for picking who gets to be on the debate stage that would ensure a more diverse

field? I guess it's my question because I've been trying to think of one and so far I haven't come up with anything except that, you know, Tom Perez and the DNC could have said, you know what, there's going to be no polling threshold and no fundraising threshold. And from now until the end of the primary, we're just going to have every time there's a debate, two nights, 10 candidates on stage each night, and we're going to let everyone participate right up until the end. Yeah, I don't, this is sort of an impossible situation because it's very important to note that Kamala Harris dropped out because her campaign ran out of money, not because she did not reach

the DNC thresholds. She reached both the polling threshold and the online donor requirement threshold. And so in that sense, she was not excluded by the DNC processes. And it is still possible that Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard could get some polls to get in there. Almost every candidate is going to reach the online donor threshold. I think I saw today Julian Castro is 1,000 donors away, 1,000 donations away. I think Booker has crossed that threshold already, and it's the polling threshold. I don't have a great answer. has crossed that threshold already, and it's the polling threshold. I don't have a great answer. The DNC made a decision, which I agreed with at the time, which was have some pretty easy donor qualifications, because you've got 20 candidates making the first couple of debates,

and they did not want to do a kids' table debate, where you take the lowest polling 10 and do it at like four in the afternoon and no one cares to give these candidates a chance to rise. And so I think that was the right decision. I honestly don't know how you fix it here. I think that there has to be an incredibly serious conversation within the party about changing the order of the primary after this election. Because the Des Moines Register poll in Iowa, which is historically accurate and incredibly impactful, is driving huge parts of the conversation, right? It is the proof point that Pete Buttigieg should be a frontrunner, which has a self-perpetuating nature to it. And so when the most influence in the media narrative about who's rising, who's falling,

who deserves donations, who does not, who deserves support, who does not, is driven by Iowa first, New Hampshire second, is I think inherently problematic. And that has never been more true than it is in this cycle, where electability is such a flawed concept, is so preeminent in the minds of voters. So I don't know how you fix it this time. I wish I did. But I think the fact that at a period of time where we had the most diverse field ever, and by the field has winnowed, at least on the debate stage, to a debate stage of all white candidates, like six weeks before the first vote is cast, there is an inherent problem there that has to be addressed somehow. I think what's really difficult here is the argument that was being made during the last

debate by both Booker and Kamala about, you know, viewing electability much more broadly as we do right now. And that was... Inaccurately. Inaccurately. Right. And what had matched turnout in those states with the Obama levels in 2012 that she would be president of the United States right now. Barely, but she would get it. It would be close. Now, it is hard, perhaps, to reach Obama levels of black turnout. But so I agree with all of that, that like, as much as we talk about how do we get the Obama Trump voters, how do we get sort of the white moderates that everyone always talks about, and like, everyone's tired of that conversation, I get it. And we do need some of those voters. But just as important, and I would argue more important, is that we have turnout among the base

of the Democratic Party, and the core of the base of the Democratic Party is black voters. So I completely agree with that 100 percent. The challenge is and what I can't figure out is the two candidates of color, the two black candidates who made that argument themselves had single digit support among black voters nationally and in South Carolina. And the person who could probably who has the most black support is Joe Biden. And so it's a real tricky thing to sort of figure that out, to make an argument. And, you know, I'm going to ask Cory Booker about this, but to make the argument like we need a candidate who can inspire voters of color to turn out in record numbers, it's harder to make that argument when you're currently not receiving much support from that community. Yeah. I guess to end this topic, I am incredibly disappointed that Kamala Harris is not in this race anymore. I am, I'm sorry it ended this way. I think she was tremendously talented and really, I think you were describing all the great characteristics about her with her sort of political talent. I think the one that was most notable and the one

i liked the most about her was how joyful she was yeah i mean just she like she emanated joy and i thought that was sort of captured in some of the videos we've seen of her dancing with her staff as she's traveling the country visiting her campaign staff at their headquarters only primary state i think that's going to be missed and i would say to you know to people who who really liked kamala and supported her she is at the very very top of the vp list i to, you know, to people who really liked Kamala and supported her, she is at the very, very top of the VP list, I think, you know, one or two right now. And so I think that and even if she's not chosen as vice president, you know, she's a senator from California and has a has a great perch on the Judiciary Committee. And I think she will I think we'll be hearing from her a lot in the in the months and years ahead. So so that is a very good thing. And I hope we do. I really do.

OK, when we come back, I will interview Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker. I'm now joined by New Jersey Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker. Senator, thanks for coming back on the pod. I really love being on with you. Appreciate what you guys are doing with your podcast. It really is what we need, which is informing, engaging, and frankly, energizing folks in the fight we got coming up. That is very, very kind of you. So you just gave a big speech in Iowa today, where in part of your remarks, you talked about how it is a real problem for our party that Kamala Harris couldn't continue for financial reasons. And I've been wondering about this, because it's not that she always had a problem raising money. She

raised the second most of any candidate in the first quarter. She had a huge haul in the second quarter. What do you attribute sort of her more recent struggles to? Why do you think her campaign couldn't take off? Well, before we go into one campaign, and I'm not sure I'm the best person to give criticism or critique in that way. What I'm talking about is a much larger picture in the United States of America right now. And first of all, I just want to preface it all by saying I have gotten an avalanche of calls and conversations about people who were not even supporting her, but how hurt they were that she's no longer on the stage, but other people are by benefit of their, of their wealth. And, and, and so you have

to understand we are in a nation where conversations are had, uh, every single day. I've had them in from barbershops to the table where most of the African-Americans sat at Stanford in my lunchroom about the obvious things we all know. Uh, and this goes with gender, it goes with sexual identity, it goes with so many issues in our life about the real reality of different treatment for different people. And by the way, this is measurable. We know that black women have maternal mortality rates four times higher than white women. We know factually that African Americans have different experiences in the criminal justice system just based on race. We know factually that black women are paid the least relative to white men of any other gender and race combination. So what the message I heard and felt in my own heart

was, why do we have a system right now in a party that is trying to do and really talk about the concentrations of wealth and the perversions of our political system uh how billionaires and large corporate olgarks have so much influence over our system we as democrats now have a system where clearly uh a black woman dropped out of this race because she didn't have the resources she needed to continue. And then frankly, I'm just going to add to that, that we have treatment of female candidates, women candidates that are very different than men. And so the point I'm trying to make is if you know, if we can agree, and by the way, I'm sure there are some that wouldn't agree with us, but that we have racism, sexism, or bigotry in general in our society, whether it's overt or implicit, but statistically provable.

The question isn't does racism exist? The question is then what are you doing about it? Because I think Angela Davis said it's not enough to say I'm not a racist. You need to be anti-racist. And our party, our party should be actively grappling with this. And there are people within our party that rightfully are doing things about the fact that we don't have as many women elected leaders as men. That doesn't, that problem won't solve itself. We need to do something about it. And now our presidential debate stages seem to be shaped by those forces that we as a party can collectively decry. But the question is, what are we doing about it?

Well, that was my next question. I mean, what do you think a better process would be for determining who gets on that debate stage? Would you eliminate the polling and fundraising thresholds altogether? that debate stage, would you eliminate the polling and fundraising thresholds altogether? Would you allow every candidate on stage throughout the entire primary and just have two nights of debates and 10 candidates each night? What do you think is a system that seems fair to you? Well, to be blunt, it's not something I've thought through and I'm ready to roll out a proposal on.

This is what I do know, is that there are people who had to leave this race. They burned through resources they had trying to meet an artificial barrier. We had to do that. We had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars that we should as a party want people to be doing, connecting with voters to suddenly try to meet some of these unofficial debate thresholds. We're doing it right now. Sitting here in Iowa, I was watching late night TV and I thought it was a small handful of candidates TV because I saw the same commercials over and over again by people with a lot of wealth. And we're now trying to raise as much money as we can to get on the debate stage and do ads when my state director here is like, let's we need to continue growing what is our advantage here, which is our grassroots organization. So we've done things to, that has drawn behavior out that is not in any way, uh, a reflection of a campaign's viability. And what I was told from

the very beginning is focus on the things that win in Des Moines and win in Ankeny, win in Iowa. And none of them have to do with the qualifications for a debate stage, especially polling. I mean, God, how many times do we have to see that polling is not predictive to still be so poll obsessed as a party and as a nation? Yeah. And that's tough, right? Because polls can go all over the place. I mean, I do think that the idea that a Bloomberg or a Steyer can, you know, basically buy their way onto a debate stage is infuriating, you know, regardless of what you think of them as candidates. To me, though, that does seem like a larger problem of money in politics that sort of pervades the entire political system in the country more than it does a problem that the Democratic Party itself can solve. It feels like

we just need to overturn Citizens United. But I don't know, what do you think? Am I wrong? You're wrong and right. Look, we demonstrate we need to overturn Citizens United. I wish every candidate in this race would take the Citizens United pledge on their own campaigns. I'm proud to do that and not take corporate lobbyist money or pharma executive money or oil company exec money, all that. So let's put that aside that we all agree that the bigger issue. But I think sometimes we allow our inability to do everything to undermine our determination

to do something. And the best example I'll give this is I'm in the Democratic Party that can't win that many elections without diverse people. But when I got to be a United States senator a few years back, and I walk into the Senate, and I was like, wait a minute, this is the least diverse place I've ever worked. On the Senate staffers, committee staffers, we're the Democratic Party. And Brian Schatz, who was my partner in this, we went to Chuck Schumer, and to his credit, he jumped up and said, basically, yeah, tell me what we can do. Let's talk about it. And so we instituted the Rooney rule for hires in key Senate positions. And

most importantly, we, Chuck Schumer, thank you, agreed to make every senator have to publish the diversity statistics of the people of color and the women they have on their staffs. Now, guess what's happened since that? Man, is the number of women authorities in positions of authority have gone up and we are a better party for it. So just because I can't solve racism in America, it doesn't mean that we all can't be doing things constructively to do it better,

to make a difference, to move this ahead. And so, yeah, the Democratic Party is not gonna solve the corruption of money in politics overnight. I hope my presidency will. But what we can do is to design a party processes, primary processes that don't, that actually grapple with these issues, that talk about them and not just hope they're going to solve it. This is the most diverse debate stage in our history of our party because of individual ambition,

not because of a collective commitment we had. A lot of incredible diverse individuals decided to run who we haven't seen this kind of diversity before. But we have a collective responsibility to deal with the underrepresentation of women, of Asian Americans, of minorities. I can go through the folks that we should be talking about. Why do we have a process for the democratic nomination that benefits a billionaire more than a, I talked to a lot of qualified African American women this week, including members of my family who were just venting that they don't see themselves up there because there's no pathway for them because of the discrimination that exists in this society. So look, man, we have a problem. I sounded that note today, a small part of my speech. It's a problem when you have more billionaires running for president right now than black people. Yeah. Are you surprised that Joe Biden's support

among black voters has remained this high, even as he's lost some support among white voters since he announced? Not the least, because in the Democratic Party, one of the most loyal voting bases you have is African Americans. And the reason why it doesn't concern our campaign, number one, is I know that when I've been on the ballot in New Jersey, black turnout goes up. It's not just about, by the way, percentage of black support. It's about the turnout. That's what helps us win elections. And I know that Barack Obama was well behind Hillary Clinton amongst black voters until he won in Iowa. So I think Joe swore me in. And so I can represent at least 33% of the black senators in America and tell you that we like them.

Yeah, I didn't realize this because I always, you know, obviously I was on the Obama campaign and I remember the story of how Hillary was beating us among black voters until we won Iowa and then suddenly the numbers almost changed overnight. I hadn't realized that at this stage in the primary, Obama had about 45 percent of the black vote in South Carolina. Clinton had 46. Edwards was down in single digits. So obviously you don't need 45 percent to be competitive in a field that's crowded. But what's your strategy from here through Iowa and then on through South Carolina to sort of at least, you know, get out of single digits and, and, and gain more support among, uh, among, among black voters? Well, you know, the answer to that, cause the pathway is a well-worn pathway.

There were many of our nominees, uh, that were exactly where I am. So many of the people that actually went on to win the presidency were exactly where I am. People polling in the low single digits, Carter around 1%, uh, Bill Clinton around 4%. Barack Obama, who was in the double digits, but he was still about 20 points behind Hillary Clinton, all of them did in Iowa what Iowa does, which is it doesn't listen to national polls. It evaluates candidates the old-fashioned way, in're in the top gaggle of most liked people in Iowa, where our net favorabilities are pretty darn high in the state, which in a state where most people haven't made up their mind yet is a good thing. We're also have, according to the Des Moines Register, have one of the best organizing teams on the ground here. And then we lead in Iowa, New Hampshire in local leaders endorsing us, which is a big help when you have a mayor of a town coming to caucus for you in a small

caucus room, so When we when I studied this before I jumped in From the Kerry campaign to the Obama campaign. Everybody gave us the metrics that they thought were really important Going in and everybody cautioned us. It was amazing. How many people cautioned us don't get distracted by national polls Don't get distracted focus on the quarter of a million people that are caucusing in Iowa. And I'm telling you, we're doing really well here. We win here, and our goal is to win, but we've come in the top two or three. Folks like you and others are going to be saying that we probably overperformed here. I think coming around to South Carolina, just like Obama, we're going to have a good head of steam and have proven to

a lot of voters down there that we can win in this nation and we can beat Donald Trump. And frankly, that's something we should be talking a lot more about, which is who can energize the fullness of our coalition. Because remember, if Hillary Clinton had gotten the same amount of votes from black people that Obama had gotten four years earlier, she would be President Hillary Clinton. In fact, in just three states, the ones we lost by 77,000 votes combined, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, we lost the diminution of African-American voters. Heck, in Milwaukee alone, there were 70,000 less black voters, it turned out. Heck, in Milwaukee alone, there were 70,000 less black voters, it turned out. So I know that I am best positioned in this race to reignite not just the Obama coalition,

but frankly, the Democratic coalition, that rainbow coalition that enables us to beat this bully, to beat this demigod, and go into the White House, not just with the White House. Because remember, I'm in this to beat Mitch McConnell. But to do that, let's talk about the diversity we need in Arizona, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, in the two Senate seats up in Georgia. We better have a candidate that can get record minority turnouts, because that's how we get Mitch McConnell to be a backbencher. I know I'm the best person to do it in this race, and we're going to prove it here in Iowa. It's funny, we were just talking about that on the pod today, how the candidate, the Democratic nominee absolutely needs, you know, higher turnout and, you know, maybe not

reach the Obama levels of turnout, but much higher than we have seen in the last couple elections, especially among black voters. Do you think it would be harder for a nominee who's white to do that? Again, Bill Clinton proved that he had incredible support amongst African-Americans. People used to joke that he was the first black president. But again, when I was mayor, I used to have this saying because I got really good at managing after my first year of making a lot of mistakes. And I used to always say, in God we trust, but everybody else bring us data. So if you're looking at your field and you're worried about winning, who's got the data to show that they can really amortize America?

Now, you know this, that when I ran for Senate, Chris Christie had a choice of where to put my election, my special election. The obvious thing I thought would have been just to put it on his day, the day he was up for reelection. But he moved it three weeks earlier on a Wednesday. And so I was the only name on the ballot on a non-traditional day where we had to educate people that it's not a Tuesday vote, it's a Wednesday vote. The black vote in New Jersey spiked higher than the population to about between 13 and 14%. Three weeks later on a normal, on a normal election with competitive races up and down the ballot, it dropped down between nine and 10%. So, so I'm confident that African American voters,

I've been one all my life. We want somebody who is authentically connected that we know we can trust that has a proven record of standing up and fighting for our communities. It's the same thing, frankly, when we talk about LGBTQ issues. You know, when I became mayor of the city of Newark, majority black city, I raised the American flag. The second flag I did first time ever in our city hall was the pride flag because I wanted to make a statement that my kids who faced homelessness, higher rates, suicide rates, bullying, that we were going to be a city that protected everybody. That was before some of our national leaders had even evolved on these issues. And so folks want to know what your history is in standing up and fighting for the issues that matter in an inclusive way. And if your first time talking about some of these issues

is when you put a tab on your website and you're running for president, I'm a little suspect of what you're going to do when I'm a little suspect of what you're going to do when you get into the White House. Are you going to be a senator that goes out of the United States Senate and remarks, hey, this place is not diverse and we need to do something structurally about to change it? Or is diversity issues going to be a second and third thought as well? So again, I'm in this because I'm running because I believe I'm the best person to unite the Democratic Party and to ignite the totality of the coalition we need to win, and not just

to win beating Donald Trump. Again, I want that North Carolina seat. I want us to win Jamie Harrison in running in South Carolina. These are seats that can only be won if we have record black turnouts. And I believe I'm the best person not just to get the White House back, but to put Mitch McConnell back into the back benches. So Pete Buttigieg has this line that's clearly meant as a contrast with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. We fight when we need to fight, but we're never going to say fighting is the point. The point is what lies on the other side of the fight. To me, it sounded a lot like your message when you say that people

desperately want to heal and move forward in this country do you agree with pete's view of warren and bernie there god first of all uh i i and this is some it may sound like semantics to you but you always got to fight i mean so so this idea i mean there's there's an Oscar-nominated documentary about me. You can watch it for free now on YouTube called Street Fight. It's great. And so it was great until it lost to March of the Penguins in the Oscars. Tough.

That's a tough one. Rough, rough, rough. Keep my ego in check. But look, I've always been called for fighting America. I mean, if you, if you, slavery, uh, uh, uh, suffrage, uh, from Stonewall to, uh, the Edmund Pettus bridge, I mean, we are people that have fought, but my point isn't, is how do you, how do you fight? And, and, and yeah, I criticized the, the, the, the gratuit criticize the gratuitous tribalism that's coming up between our parties or the demeaning, degrading, tearing of people down. I'm talking about the kind of

fighting that we did to beat Bull Connor, that unified coalitions that didn't exist before. After those kids, it was called, I think in Taylor Branch's book, it's called the children's miracle. When kids were marching in front of Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses, it so ignited the moral conscience of this country that others joined the fight. Black folks, white folks, people from all backgrounds got on buses, got on planes, came down to Birmingham. And in 12 days, I think it was, if I have an exact, segregation fell in that town. I'm talking about the kind of fighting that unifies us all in a larger purpose than ourselves, common cause, where we're fighting for not just for ourselves, but we're fighting for our neighbors. We're fighting for those people left out.

So I don't know about the semantic fight that Pete might be having with somebody right now. But for me, my whole philosophy of this campaign is about this idea of the greatest fighting force there is, which made people storm beaches in Normandy or made Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner, black, white, Christian, Jewish, die together. And that's love, fighting with love. Patriotism is love of country. You can't love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women. And so for me, I just come from a space that if you live where I live, man, you want to fight. I mean, I live for those of your listeners don't know.

I made a decision when I came out of law school, having benefited from civil rights activists who fought for my housing rights to move into inner city Newark. It's a neighbor I still live in and fight as a tenants rights lawyer. And you I hope if you if I walked you around my neighborhood, which we're making tremendous change, tremendous strides. God bless my current mayor, Baraka. But there's there's if you don't get pissed off seeing the inequalities and are ready to take on a fight, then then, yeah, I'm I'm worried about you. I always say if America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough. I always say if America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough because we need to be more motivated to get into the fight and start winning battles for justice right now and take down those forces that are that are betraying us. So that doesn't mean we don't forgive those forces.

I mean, John Lewis told me about this moving story about the guy who beat him on the Edmund Pettus Bridge decades later, coming back to his office with his child or grandchild. I can't remember exactly and asking for his forgiveness. I'm all for this idea of redemptive love, but that's not going to stop me from defending the folks who are being evicted in my community now from slumlords over $100 that the guy, the landlord should be paying them. It's not going to stop me from fighting against the corporate gun lobby that is making it so easy for weapons to pour into my community and kill so many young black boys. this. One of our great fighters said that the problem today is not simply the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people. It's the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. So I'm running for president to get folk woke. I tell people very simply, if you elect me, first of all, I'm your nominee. It's true for this as well. But if I'm your president, I'm going to ask more from you than any president has ever asked in your lifetime. Because Lord knows we don't need a savior in the White House.

We need people that are going to recognize where the power is and how change has always been made. It wasn't a bunch of dudes getting together in 1920 on the Senate floor that suddenly got us women's rights. It wasn't, but they didn't say like, hey, fellas, let's give women the right to vote. No, it was 4-4. The health care battle, I was in the Senate battling it out. But you know why they didn't tear down Obamacare? It was because the grassroots of this country responded. Yeah. So, I mean, one dynamic that always happens in these

campaigns is, you know, the scene in Iowa or New Hampshire or wherever you're campaigning, person to person doing town halls is a lot different than sort of the national narrative. So, you know, I know that you and your campaign have been saying, you know, when you're on the ground in Iowa, when you're in these town halls, you're getting this really great response. What specifically is working in your town halls? And what are you hearing from voters that all the pundits and, you know, annoying podcasters out there are, uh, are missing. I do worry about what the media gets fascinated with, the takedown, the one liner, um, you know,

and who gets media coverage and who doesn't, who gets treated like a darling, uh, uh, lifted up, uh, and who, and who's ignored. Um, and again, Kamala's, I,ala's, I know there will be lots written about analyzing that. But for me, I got warned by really funny quotes. And I won't tell you the campaign leaders and stuff like that. But I had people tell me how horrible it is to run for president, how brutal it is. I mean, it's a real raw stuff.

Actually, I was sobering. But I am loving this because I get to go out every single day and I'll do it multiple times today and stand before Americans who, who are hurting, who are yearning, who are aspiring. And I get to connect to that, which is the best of who we are, which is not mean and cruel. Um, it is folks that want that, the hope right now, want a message that, that shows that we can win and then actually not just win an election because, God, we've won lots of elections as Democrats, but actually then be able to make the change that needs to be made. And so I have this weird process that I walk people through sometimes, which sometimes people don't get me. And I see people writing articles saying, oh, he's the love candidate.

And I feel like I should play some barry white or something in music but you know i still remember when i first trips out here to iowa running for a debate stage big guy sees me i'm a big guy former tight end at stanford older i get the better i was and he he put his arm around me and he goes dude i want you to punch donald trump in the face. And my response to him was, dude, that's a felony. And he laughed. And I had to walk him through this process that what we don't need in America right now is a doubling down on hate and Trumpiness and that kind of stuff. But walk people through the point that I've already made with you, which is we have always won

when we create bigger coalitions of activism. That's when we accomplish things. And so that message is really resonating. And I could literally, I wish you could embed yourself with me so you can see what, and stand in the line of folks that afterwards where i take selfies answer questions and have how many people say you weren't on my radar stream my

friend convinced me to come here i get it i get it now this is what we need this is what we want and so look if this again we got if we can figure out some way to figure campaign finance i i believe we should just have public financing and and and and you know these other if we just had straight out who can go into communities rooms talk to people connect with people engage with people because that's how i beat the machine in newark it was just old-fashioned we weren't running commercials we weren't doing any of that kind of stuff i know our message is working and i know we just need time and and the scoreboard the the clock is ticking down. And I'm really happy, though, that we're starting to see movement. And we'll see what happens on February 3rd. But I am really hopeful,

really optimistic. And by the way, if it doesn't happen, I'm going to go right behind whoever ends up being the nominee. I'm going to go right back to work as a guy in this nation calling out issues that, frankly, have never been called out from the debate stage before. I was taught when I was a kid, life is about purpose, not position. And I just feel blessed right now to be in this, to be one of the top in Iowa, pick your person, top five or six campaigns on the ground here. And I just think that my message will win out over, uh, because it's a message of values and virtues in order to get to the policy. Because this is the funny thing about some of the debates we're having over policy is, you know, Obama won with a slogan, yes, we can.

And the operative word is we. This is, none of us can do it alone on that stage. We're going to have to build a coalition in Washington, around this country, activate activists in order to win this. And so the person that best can do that, that's how I started my career. That's how we beat slumlords in Newark when I first started. It was organizing tenants.

That's how I won the mayorality in Newark, by organizing black and brown coalitions, particularly in the city. That's how I got criminal justice reform done, for months and months ahead of that, going out to dinner and sitting down and meeting with people on the other side of the aisle and finding common ground. And that's how we're going to change America. Well, Senator, you are undoubtedly the joyful warrior in the field, and I've always found your message quite appealing. So best of luck to you in the homestretch here before the first caucus and talk to us again soon. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thanks to Cory Booker for joining us today. And everyone, have a great weekend. We'll talk to you later. Bye, everyone. Bye. you later bye everyone bye pod save america is a product of cricket media the senior 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 carolyn reston tanya sominator and katie long for production support and to our digital team elijah cone nar melconian yale freed and milo kim who film and as our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney,

and Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.