Pod Save America - “A Very Lit Joint (Address) with Jen Psaki.”

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki joins Jon and Dan to break down President Biden’s first address to a Joint Session of Congress. Then, new 2020 Census data jeopardizes Democratic control of Congress, and Republicans spend the week spreading a slew of wild conspiracies about the Biden Administration with the help of their propaganda outlets.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki joins to talk about President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress. We'll also talk about how the 2020 census could affect control of Congress and dive into the latest round of right-wing conspiracies about Biden's burger bans, plant-based beer, and so much more. But first, this week marks the end of Biden's first 100 days in office, so don't forget to join host Brian Boitler as he reviews the administration's biggest wins and fails in the season finale of Rubicon out this Friday. Check it out. Joining us to talk about what the White House was hoping to accomplish last night. One of the biggest and brightest stars of the Biden administration.

We get to say we knew her way back when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. What's up, friend? Welcome back to the pod. Hi, hi how are you guys it's so good to talk to you it's good to have you here um so i want to start by getting your reaction to uh a superb piece of journalistic analysis about the speech from our favorite publication politico playbook uh quote that we were hiding we were hiding the proposal you know it you know what i was gonna say see you know me too well uh were you guys trying to hide last night's speech playbook says well in my in my many years of tutelage on communications under dan pfeiffer he always told me when you want the american people to know something hide it don't tell

them about it and that's exactly what we were trying to do yeah that is uh that is ludicrous um i will tell you that um just which we all know uh what the president wanted to do last night is of course talk about how far we've come and give pro give a progress update on that that's always a part of these big speeches as you guys know better than almost anyone but also set out a bold agenda for moving forward. And we think we did that. And that's what this these type of speeches are an opportunity to do to kind of tell the American people what government is there to help them with. Or that's what we think it should be for. Did you guys when you were planning for the rollout of the speech have a headline in mind that you wanted this morning? Like what was the one thing you were hoping people would take

away from the speech? The big thing was that this president is going to fight for you. We wanted people to take away that we've made some progress, that we got, we're working to get the pandemic under control. Here's what we've done to date. We don't expect everybody to watch every moment of cable news, God forbid, that wouldn't be healthy for anyone. So we knew that we had to do about a third of the speech or maybe 25% of the speech on an update on where we've come from. Even though I feel like I know that people who are watching every moment of what's happening in politics know that, but the millions of people watching at home don't know that. So that's why we spent about 25% on that, which is pretty standard. But we wanted people to have an understanding of what

the agenda looks like moving forward. You know, we're moving through this emergency, the pandemic, millions of people out of work, and now we want to lay out for people what we want to do next. And that's why a big chunk of it was focused on both the jobs plan, the jobs plan, millions of jobs. And also, yeah, there you go. And also the family's plan, because, you know, people always ask us questions when, you know, here in the briefing room. Well, how are you going to get this one Republican? And what are they thinking about the taxes piece? And that's just not how people sitting at home think about things, right? I mean, it's not people sitting at home are thinking, what, you know, can I get my kid into preschool?

Can I get can I pay for community college? And so our focus was trying to lay out in very specific detail what the next chunk of his agenda look for, lay out the blueprint. And that's, you know, what his next several months is going to be focused on. Are you trying to say that people at home aren't thinking to themselves, is this bill going to be split into two parts? Right. They're not thinking, why hasn't he met with Kevin McCarthy yet? What I'm wondering is whether reconciliation will at some point come up in the process. No, I mean, I barely knew what reconciliation was until several months ago. So no, I don't think most people sitting at home are thinking through that prism, but they are thinking about, you know, whether government can work for them and, you know, what it will do for them. And that's what

he was really trying to say. Jen, President Biden's been in that chamber for dozens of addresses to Congress. He sat behind Obama for, I think, 10 of them. But this one was obviously very different. It was a sparse crowd, people wearing masks. It lacked, it was just, it was, he was going to stand up there and give this giant speech speaking to essentially almost an empty room. Is there anything that you guys did differently in how the speech was written, how he prepared for it, how you thought about the messaging to account for that very strange dynamic? We didn't really know how to predict, right? Because as you said, Dan, I mean, typically you have 1,600 people in the room, right, when a president's delivering a speech. And there's a certain energy or ebb and flow that goes with that, right? There's a certain energy of who's in the first lady's box. And that's always such a big part of the speech, calling out these, you know,

Americans who are inspiring, who have overcome great odds or whatever it may be. So we didn't really know how that would entirely play. But what we did know is that what's going to work for President Biden was not going to be, I mean, he is not a flowery, you know, speech maker. He's somebody who wants things to be very accessible and straightforward. It was never going to be a big rhetorical speech. accessible and straightforward. It was never going to be a big rhetorical speech. And actually, it turns out that worked in our view in the room, right? He was having, he feels so comfortable, as you guys know, in Congress. You know, he served 36 years. He sat through more speeches than I think anyone living today, it's probably safe to say. And it was like he was having a

conversation, right? We didn't know that's how it would exactly play. And watching it here from the White House, because none of us went with him, was really an interesting perspective, because it almost felt like at times he was whispering a little bit, right? He wasn't, he was never going to be screaming to them. That was never going to be his style. And we knew that it wouldn't have the same extended applause lines. So it was written in a way where it was going to go through and try to take people on a story of where we've come from, what we're doing now, and where we're going from here. but it wasn't meant to be kind of a big rhetorical flourish. It was meant to speak in very direct, simple, straight language about what we're facing and what we're doing moving forward.

So in other words, he was going to give a speech that didn't have any of Favreau's highfalutin elitist rhetoric. Oh, I knew that's what you were thinking dan when she was saying that i can see i can see the look on your face i mean i know you love acronyms john i love an acronym who among us doesn't really and like we tried to keep putting acronyms in there to just you know quote many past presidents yeah you know what i mean i mean it was he was always going to speak in a way that was very kind of straightforward, direct, simplistic language. That was always going to be the way he talked.

But, you know, the conversational notion as we were watching it, it was like he was at a town hall in some ways. Right. I mean, I think that worked. I don't know that we anticipated that. Yeah. Were there cheers in the legislature's office when he shouted out three separate congressional committees? We all cheered. I mean, Deere and Kevlar Vest. Yeah, that was an ad-lib. There you go. There were some ad-libs, a little ad-libbing on China. You know, why not? Why not? You can take

the man out of the Senate. You can't take the Senate out of the man, you know? In all the things that he did mention, how did you guys come to the decision to leave out his one burger a month plan from the speech you mean our banning of meat yeah yeah banning of meat yes yeah i know um in all seriousness i mean it speaks to the part of the broader challenges you deal with every day in getting his message out is you have this totally messed up information ecosystem. You have Republicans who are actively engaging in disinformation. After the speech, Kevin McCarthy went on Fox, on Hannity, and once again brought up the disproved burger lie. How are you thinking about how you sort of navigate that on a day-to-day basis,

trying to get his message out? It's a challenge. I mean, as you said, because there is like, you know, last week there was a whole day, which again, the reporter then resigned over about whether or not the vice president's books were being distributed through, you know, packages that were going at the shelters. I mean, it's crazy.

Of course not, right? But we'll have to see if this works. It's a test, right? We're a hundred days in. Our focus so far has been on trying not to get distracted by sideshows that are an attempt by Republicans in Congress at many times to distract us. controversy, you know, or, you know, even for a while, it was school reopening as if we were against school reopening. I mean, that was even in Senator Scott's speech last night. So, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, like we just try not to get, we kind of try to keep our blinders on. Now, that doesn't mean that those, that information isn't traveling on the internet.

We're not naive about that. But I think the fundamental question is like, is it our role entirely from here speaking on behalf of the president and the White House and the government to be the ones that are swatting down and refuting every little conspiracy theory? Or is it our role to be focused on communicating with the American people about what we're doing, refuting conspiracies firmly when they come up, but not spending every day batting that down, because that would be all we would do. So you mentioned Senator Scott's speech. He started the speech by saying, I won't waste your time tonight with finger pointing or partisan bickering. And then he went on to accuse the president of trying to tear us apart with a liberal wish list of big government waste. It did seem like most of the Republican response to the speech focused on sort of the size and cost of Biden's agenda. What's what's your reaction to that? What was your reaction to sort of Scott's speech? I mean, in part, it's they don't want to refute the fact that we need to modernize our infrastructure, that kids should have access to clean drinking water, that we should have universal pre-K.

Right. I mean, there's no disagreement about all of that. That's what's so important for people to understand. Everybody thinks we should do that. There's just a disagreement about how to pay for it. And, you know, they don't want to talk about it. And it also turns out, as you all know, that things like raising taxes on corporations and the highest income is also really popular. Very popular. So we don't need to shy away from that. It's hugely popular. We don't need to shy away from that. It's hugely popular. We don't need to shy away from that. So, you know, it's I think I my bet is we'll see what, you know, the magical pollsters say. But is that people watching that didn't to the degree they're really digesting it and thinking about it? And that's infrequent, as we know, from response

speeches. They didn't really take his word at the notion that Biden is trying to divide the country. I mean, based on what? You know, I mean, it's a little bit of a baseless suggestion. He did. He did spend a lot of time attacking H.R.1, the For the People Act, which just about every Senate Republican has now said they oppose. President Biden asked Congress to send him the bill towards the end of the speech last night. But I noticed I'm sure you noticed this, that Joe Manchin told Vox this week that he's, quote, not going to be part of any voting rights bill that's passed with only Democratic votes. So what are you guys thinking about the path to getting H.R. 1 or even something like it passed at this point?

It's hard. I mean, you know, just to state the obvious, because what people don't, the Democrats, as Senator Manchin is an example, obviously, are not all united and moving forward with even if the president was right, which he's not for charging forward with eliminating the filibuster. I know. But, you know, even if he was, Democrats are not all for that in Congress either. And you'd need enough Democrats to want to do that. Look, I think his view is that we have to keep pushing forward on H.R. 1. Of course, it's a hugely important piece of legislation. We also need to refute any of these arguments that the Georgia legislation doesn't make it harder to vote. Of course it does. That's like an absurd argument for a range of reasons. And also refute this notion that Republicans are

trying to make it easier to vote. They're not. But that in this case, there may be, as we're pushing for H.R. 1, action that needs to happen at the state level. You know, there may be continued, he's taken, done some executive actions. Those are not going to be long lasting, as you know, so you have to do more than that. And part of it is, in his view, kind of building up support among the American people and awareness that voting rights, 47 states, I think you guys may have a more updated number, have legislation that's trying to make it more difficult right now. People need to be aware of that, need to know what people are trying to do in their states, and that moving the American public's understanding around this is going to help make change here. And sometimes D.C. is the last to know. Right. Even as as actions happening in states.

Has there been any conversations with Manchin or among the Democrats in Congress about like a different H.R. one or a smaller bill that like Manchin could support so you get some of the provisions passed? You know, I think there are there there are conversations about all sorts of things, as you all know, and what could be what could be possible between Democrats and Republicans. But they have to agree on that, too. Right. The battle is not always the president. Right. The battle is can they this is like on the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Right. Can they get to a place and their negotiations are starting today. Right. Where they can come to an agreement on something that, you know, people from both parties can wrap their heads around and someone like Congresswoman Karen Bass can sell to her caucus as a step forward. And it's the same on issues

like voting rights, right? It's not just about getting a few Republicans. It's also convincing for understandable reasons, members of the Democratic Party who have been fighting for voting rights, who know how ludicrous it is, the argument that we should make it harder, not easier to vote, that they're going to do something lesser than or than what is proposed as a part of H.R.1. That's part of the battle and the discussion, too. The president talked a lot about vaccines last night, all the success you've had. He very explicitly encouraged people to get vaccinated.

last night, all the success you've had. He very explicitly encouraged people to get vaccinated. You know, everything that he has done and wants to do depends on keeping the pandemic, getting it more under control and keeping it under control. And that depends on more people getting vaccinated. And we're at the point, thanks to the very good efforts of your team, that it's not about access and supply and logistics. It's about hesitancy. We're getting very close to that point. And the largest group of people that seem to be the most hesitant are ones who are not supporters of the president. They are Trump supporters or Republicans. These are the traditionally, when you and I work together, we're the hardest voters to possibly reach. What are you guys thinking about how you can, not necessarily with the president or

administration officials, but what's sort of the strategy for trying to convince these people to get the vaccine in a way that works for people who may not trust this administration or support this administration? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the questions that there's a lot of, not misinformation is not the right word, but like a lot of confusion or expectation about or preconceived notions about is the right way to say it in that, you know, there's this view that like if we just had former President Trump and like some conservative celebrities, Brooks and Dunn, I don't even know who go out and like, I don't know if that's right, but like, you know, go out and say, you'll find out very soon after this comes out, go out and say, get the vaccine that everybody who is skeptical would say, oh, former president Trump and Brooks and Dunn said, get the vaccine. We're going to do it. That's just not in our data, how it works, right. Or how

people are going to be moved. So what our focus has been on is a lot more labor intensive, but more effective, which is trying to get into, it it's like it's like building for a campaign or building from a political sense. Right. So you're trying to go into communities, do very targeted outreach. Sometimes it's a member of clergy. Sometimes it's a civic leader. Sometimes it's a mayor. Sometimes it's a local doctor and empower and help fund these local operations and apparatus so that people can meet people in their communities. It's just like politics in the sense that if you tell your neighbor, I love Joe Biden, Joe Biden's going to do something for the climate.

And your neighbor says, I don't believe that. Joe Biden's not going to do something for the climate. And the neighbor then convinces you, then you're going to be more convinced by that than you are by an ad on your television set. Right. It's the same kind of strategy. And so we fully expect that the daily numbers about how many people are vaccinated may go down. Because as you said, that's kind of the stage we're in. Right. We were in this stage where it was like, how do I get my shot? People are counting down. Like, when am I eligible? Where do I find you know, where do I find it? There's are counting down. Like, when am I eligible? Where do I find, you know, where do I find it? There's not enough supply.

Now we have plenty of supply and, or we will, but we're going to, we have it now, we're going to. And now it's like, how do we get to people who are like, I can't take a day off of work. Understandable. I don't know where to go. So really doing it in a way that's very locally organized. Jen Psaki, thank you so much for joining us as always.

Thank you guys. Give the rest of the- Congratulations on the babies. Yes. All the babies. All the babies. Jack, Charlie, all the babies. Give the rest of the team our best.

Say hello to Peter Doocy for us when you see him. He just got married. I know he's your favorite. Oh, wow. Congratulations to Peter Doocy. Look at that yeah yeah your audience your audience is excited does that mean you won't have him in the briefing room for questions now for a couple weeks is that is that upsetting he he is back from his honeymoon

um but no matter no matter no matter your um your background or your views picking who you marry is pretty important so we can all agree on that. It's bipartisan. Look at that. On message as always. Jen, come back anytime. Unity. The Biden message. Come back anytime. Marriage is good.

We love having you. Thank you, guys. Great talking to you. All right. So I do want to talk a little bit more about the speech itself before we move on. Here is a clip from last night. Tonight, I come to talk about crisis and opportunity, about rebuilding the nation, revitalizing our democracy and winning the future for America. winning the future for America. I stand here tonight, one day shy of the 100th day

of my administration. 100 days since I took the oath of office and lifted my hand off our family Bible and inherited a nation we all did that was in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the great depression the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war now after just 100 days i can report to the nation america is on the move again america is on the move uh So we heard Jen talk about what the White House wanted

to get out of that speech. How well do you think they executed on that? And what did you think of the speech in general? I mean, the headlines today suggest they did exactly what they wanted to do. The headlines covered the progress, the proposals, the boldness of it. And it was, you know, we saw the, the always interesting, if somewhat slanted post speech polls, which showed nearly nine in 10 viewers approved of it. So that seems not a polling expert, but that seems quite good. No, that's good. That's, that's a, that's a good rating. And so I think, look, I think they should feel very good about it. I don't think we should understate the difficulty of giving a big speech in a big room with

a small crowd. It's just very awkward and very hard to do. And if you're watching it on TV, if you just watch the head-on shot of Biden, I don't think you could have possibly known other than Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Harris sitting behind him in masks that this was different than any other state of the union. It had that sort of that sort of. Magistry and seriousness and big moment to it. So I think that they pulled off something very impressive with a very good speech delivered quite well by President Biden in a very challenging environment. I was terrified of that before the speech because, look, I do not love writing speeches with a ton of applause lines and writing for the audience because I think it doesn't lead to a great speech. The one exception to that rule is during a speech to Congress because you are judged on how many times all those yahoos stand up and clap often.

And so when I heard that there's only gonna be 200 people, I was a little worried about how it would go. They did a great job with it, I thought. And part of it was, I think Biden's delivery was great. I think he, you know, Jen mentioned the whispering, and that got some attention afterwards. I do think his, that was a style of delivery and a choice that worked well in a room that was nearly empty, big room like that, with only 200 people. And so I think they did a great job. It was an interesting choice that they, you know, the bulk of the speech was focused on the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. And the sections on issues like immigration and voting

rights and race were shorter, and they were towards the end. They actually came after the foreign policy section. Traditionally, at least when we always used to write these, it was all the domestic stuff, then all the foreign policy stuff, then a conclusion. Why do you think they made that choice to devote so much of the speech to American jobs plan and American families plan and didn't do as much on issues like immigration, voting rights, guns. There was a little more on guns, but basically a lot of other issues. I would say almost 50% of the speech was, here's what we've done, and then here's our two plans. I mean, it's a pretty clear indication that the next two items on the legislative agenda, the things that they are most urgently trying to pass and probably have most optimism about passing are those two

pieces of legislation. Because there's always this dual audience with the State of the Union. You are speaking to the public primarily, but there's also, you're speaking to Congress. Usually that means people in the room. In this case, it means people in the room and people at home, members of Congress. And you're signaling to them, to members of your own party, what you want them to work on. You're giving them the best arguments for why they should do those things to take back to their constituents. And you're sending a message to the other party that says, get on board, or I'm going to use my very large platform to make this argument to the public for why you're against it, which is where you really saw that in the tax section, where he made it pretty clear the very real political challenges Republicans

will have if they oppose these very popular initiatives because they are opposed to these even more popular tax increases of corporations and the wealthy. Yeah, I also think, you know, there was I thought the close of the speech was was wonderful. And, you know, he said at some point during the close, you know, the big test of our time is whether democracy can deliver for people. And it does seem like their overarching strategy in the Biden administration is to figure out how they can pass as much legislation as possible with the narrow majorities they have and actually deliver on their promises to improve people's lives and where they can do that, which is the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. They want to emphasize those issues as much as possible because they are popular and because they know they can get them done. from Jen on HR1, they seem to know that the path to getting anything else done that is outside the reconciliation process and requires getting rid of the filibuster is very, very

tricky. It is a very steep hill. And so it seems as though to me that they thought we're not going to spend a lot of time on things that if we talk about them a lot in public, they're still not going to change Joe Manchin's mind or Kyrsten Sinema's mind. So we might as well focus on the trillions of dollars in spending that might actually pass because Joe Manchin said that he is willing to consider it and you only have to pass them through reconciliation. Did you sort of get that, too, or what did you think? Yeah, there's always a relationship between where a policy falls in the speech and how many words are dedicated to it that correlates to the White House's agenda, their to-do list.

And I think for people who care passionately about H.R. 1, as we do, as many of our listeners do, I think that's a pretty alarming sign. I don't know that I would have made a different decision if I was sitting in their seats, given what you need to do, what is possible, and what is probably... Everything's a risk-benefit analysis, right? If you think your odds of getting H.R. 1 are quite low, you wouldn't use your biggest platform you're going to have probably all presidency outside of your inauguration to carry a message on something that depends on the views of one or two senators. You don't necessarily have to convince the public about HR. One of them is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. There are more efficient ways to do that

than using the speech. Having said that, though, beyond the speech, I think that's probably the right decision for the speech. They're going to have to make some decisions as we make progress on jobs plan, the family plan, maybe those get done, is there are some times where it's better to fight and lose than not fight at all. My belief is HR1 is one of those things. I think if we fail to get that done, that is going to be a black mark on everyone involved in this Congress, from Joe Manchin to Kyrsten Sinema to Chuck Schumer to Vice President Biden, because it will be a missed opportunity at a very critical moment for our democracy. It may be that it cannot get done or is nearly impossible to get done.

But I think there is an upside in fighting for it. And that decision doesn't have to be made now, doesn't have to be in the speech. But at some point down the line, they're going to have to decide how much of their political capital they will put behind pushing for something that may not succeed. Yeah, I will say it's also not just a black mark on them in terms of, oh, you know, we campaigned on this. We talked about this and we couldn't get it done. It is the future of our democracy is at stake. And so is their majorities, the Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. And we are facing, as we're about to talk about with the census, a structural disadvantage, as we have for some time, going into 2022, where, you know, a majority of the American people could vote for Democrats, and yet the balance in Congress could tip towards

the Republicans, because of the anti-majoritarian system we have. And this is sort of our one chance to fix it. And so I do think it's existential. But I also agree with you that if I'm sitting in the White House, again, the problem is Joe Manchin. It has been for a while. And does spending 20 or 30 minutes on voting rights in a public speech change Joe Manchin's mind? I don't know. Or are they trying to do something behind the scenes, which is what I was trying to get at with Jen, where maybe they're starting to talk to Manchin about, okay, what version of HR1 would you really fight for? And then try to go from there. But I think it is, you know,

the reality is this fucking sucks. Or are they doing what you said, which is call his bluff. Joe Manchin said in his op-ed in the Washington Post, I believe it was, a few weeks ago, that he thought there was bipartisan support for a plan. So maybe they said, Joe Manchin, go find your 10 mysterious Republicans who do not exist. Try. And if he tries and fails, then maybe that's a different conversation. And beating everyone over the head in this speech doesn't change that dynamic and maybe even make it worse. So this is I mean, this is really hard. It's very hard. And I am very sympathetic to how the Biden White House weighs this. What did you make of the Republican responses to the speech last night? Most of them focused on the cost and size of Biden's agenda, which was a real throwback to the Republicans Obama era complaints. I thought the Scott speech in particular was just a giant mess.

It had no message, no strategy, sort of a microcosm of the overall Republican Party's larger challenge with defining Joe Biden is they start by saying, you know, as you said in your review to Jen, I'm not going to point fingers, Joe Biden's a good guy. But here are all these terrible things about him. So that's problem one. It's just you need a coherent narrative, and they do not have a coherent narrative, and they certainly do not have a coherent narrative that is alarming enough about Joe Biden that it will fire up their base yet. Second, I think there's a massive strategic error that Tim Scott and the rest of the Republicans made by saying, we support infrastructure. We

want to build roads and bridges, but we don't support raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. And that allows Biden to make a very strong and very politically powerful case that they would rather keep corporate tax rates at a historic low, then put people to work, then to build roads and bridges to create jobs. And that is a miserable political position to be in. And they walked right into that trap. And I think a very well-organized, well-funded Democratic Party messaging campaign can just hammer that vulnerability home between now the passage of that bill and between the passage of that bill at the election in 2022. Well, I thought that was another huge political advantage to talking so much about the American jobs plan and the American families plan, which is, you know, the Biden folks

really like to hammer issues where it's not just that public opinions on their side in terms of like, you know, 55% of voters agree or 60% of voters agree. They're going on like issues where they have 70%, 75% of the American people behind them. And they're just hammering Republicans with those issues. And like, like, you know, Republicans are on the losing side of the argument over voting rights. They are on the losing side of the broad argument over immigration that at least the Biden administration is making. side of the broad argument over immigration that at least the Biden administration is making. But they're on the big time losing side of the tax issue, of the infrastructure issue,

of the jobs issue, right? Like you're getting 70%, 75% of the American people who are supporting these plans. And I do think what we saw from Tim Scott and what we saw from all the Republican responses last night is that their party is on the defensive right now. They are playing on our turf. And so every time Joe Biden goes out there and starts talking about taxing the rich in order to pay for investments that are going to create jobs, investments that are going to help families raise their kids, investments that are going to help clean up the climate and clean water, like Republicans are left with saying, yeah, yeah, we support all that popular stuff, too. But and whenever you're in a position where you're saying and but and you have to say, oh, us, too. But this it's just not a strong political position to be in. And that that's what I mean, Tim Scott last night having to say, like, yeah,

we support infrastructure, too, but we just don't support tax increases or we're actually the party of racial progress, too. But we don't like what they're doing. You know, like everything was you could tell from Tim Scott's speech what it looks like for the Republican Party to try to at least appear to be a more reasonable party, but completely fail at doing so so because the truth is they're like a gang of insurrectionists who love Donald Trump. And without H.R.1, that may just be enough to take Congress in 2022. Well, but that well, that's that was the other interesting thing is they've almost we'll talk about this with the conspiracy stuff, too. They've almost stopped trying to make an argument because their hope for regaining power is basically just to keep the structure

of democracy tilted and rigged for them and to continue to rely on the fact that they that we have counter majoritarian institutions in this country and they don't really need to persuade a bunch of people. They just need to keep it like that so they can sort of take power in 2022 and beyond, which is alarming. All right. So speaking of that, there was other news this week that will have much bigger and longer lasting political consequences than the speech we heard last night. On Monday, the Census Bureau released its 2020 population data, which, among other things, determines how many House seats each state gets for the next 10 years. Big winner is Texas, which will get two more congressional seats.

Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will also gain one seat each. California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York will all lose a congressional seat. In fact, if New York had counted just 89 more people, Minnesota would have lost a seat instead of New York. So that is rough. So this is basically the first step in the redistricting process. The full census data will be released at the end of September, at which point each state will begin redrawing their congressional districts based on the new population figures. But what do we know so far about the political impact of this data on control of the House in 2022? In other words, how screwed are Democrats?

What's the thing you like to say? Not great. It is not great. Not great. The census data. I would think about it this way. Between Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, Republicans could redistrict themselves into the majority if everything else stayed the same. And Kelly Ward Burton, who helps run the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said that Republicans could steal up to 12 seats through partisan gerrymandering. So in an incredibly narrow majority, in a normal non-districting world, this would be a very tough majority to hold on to. With a presidential first, midterm of a president, usually it bounces back.

And you're going to do that pushing against very partisan gerrymandering in a series of states that benefit Republicans. So Democrats have their work cut out for them, both in the state legislatures in those states, in the state legislatures in the handful of that where Democrats have complete control and can draw the maps and just broadly in fighting for H.R. 1, as we just talked about. Yeah, I mean, just to underscore this, Democrats in the House currently have a five seat majority. They are up five seats. And so if through the census data, through the population changes, and then through redistricting and just redrawing the maps where Republicans are allowed to redraw the maps, if they can get pick up 12 seats, as Kelly Ward Borton, who knows more about this than most people, if they can get 12 seats just through that, then suddenly Democrats go into the 2022

elections down seven seats, even though they currently hold the House majority. And so the party in power, which usually loses seats, now has to gain seven seats just to keep their majority. Well, I don't want to be super Debbie Downer here, although that's kind of got to be me. But it could be worse, is I guess what I would say. So 2011 was the last time there was redistricting. It locked Democrats out of power for nearly a decade. It was devastating in a whole host of ways. We are in a better position now than we were then. In 2011, Republicans had complete control over drawing 219 districts. It's only 187 this time around. Democrats only controlled 44 districts, 75 this time. And we

went from only 88 seats that were going to be drawn through independent or bipartisan commissions like we have here in California. That number is now up to 121. So this is not good. There's a lot of work to do. It is very concerning, but it could be worse, people. It could be 2011. Yeah. And, you know, Dave Wasserman, who studies this extremely closely. His name is at redistrict. Yeah, exactly. His Twitter handle is at redistrict. His estimates are actually a little more hopeful for Democrats than Kelly Ward Burton's. He thinks that Republicans will gain three and a half seats and then Democrats will lose three and a half seats, which would be a swing of seven seats. Still not fucking great. But he also says that a lot of it depends on some of these. So the unknowns here are the

states that have nonpartisan redistricting commissions. What will happen with those commissions? We don't know yet. And there are a few other states where there's split control between Democrats and Republicans. So the states that have, you know, full Republican control, you can pretty much guess what's going to happen in those states. But there's a bunch of other states where there is a question mark on how the redistricting process will play out. And we will know that in the fall. So there have been some questions about whether Latinos were undercounted in the census. According to the American Community Survey, Latinos have accounted for about half the population growth in Texas, Florida and Arizona over the last 10 years. And yet those states

only gained a combined three house seats, which was a lot fewer than most people expected. This is another thing we should bring up in terms of, you know, as we're talking about could have been worse, which is they actually thought that Texas and Florida, North Carolina would gain even more seats than they did. But on the other hand, you know, that could be because the census systematically undercounted Latinos. Why do you think this happened? And is there anything that can be done about it now? I'm not sure that there's anything that can be specifically done about it now, but it seems pretty clear that Latinos were undercounted because it's not just Texas that gained fewer seats. Everyone assumed that Arizona was going to gain one seat. It did not. That's right. Arizona

was the other one. And of course, this is a census administered by Donald Trump's administration, Of course, this is a census administered by Donald Trump's administration, which tried to put a citizenship question on the census, which may have, even though it was struck down by a very disappointed John Roberts that he had to strike it down, in the opinion, literally angry at Trump's attorneys for being so terrible at making their arguments that he couldn't give them what they wanted. But a massive amount of coverage amounted, Trump's immigration message may have made it less likely that Latinos replied to the census or participated in the census, which may have undercounted them, which has dramatic impacts on political power, as we just talked about, but also federal funding going forward. These are the populations of which federal funding that is allocated by state and city is done by population. And if your population is undercounted, you're going to get less funding on critical programs. And so this is a gigantic problem. Yeah. And I saw Ruben Gallego, who's a congressman from Arizona, was saying that, you know, it's not just the fact that Trump tried to ask that citizenship question, but also just, you know, systematically underfunding

the census because he said it wasn't just Latinos in his state that he believes are undercounted, but Native Americans that live in Arizona as well. And so these sort of harder to reach, underserved populations, when you don't put a bunch of resources into the Senate or adequately fund the census, this is the kind of thing that's going to happen. So it's not great. Let's talk about what Democrats can do here overall about this. You know, obviously, if H.R. 1 is passed, there would be nonpartisan redistricting commissions in every state, which would prevent Republicans from drawing so many maps and picking up so many seats. Short of that, is there anything else Democrats can do about the fact that we may lose the House because of redistricting? I mean, local activism in the states where there is legislatures make

the decision. I can't promise you that all of this activity is going to put pressure on Republicans, but shining a light through protests, through calling and emailing your members and all of those things can make it more challenging. And if you can't adjust the – get them to change how they draw the districts because they're just so committed to sort of mendacious power grabs, you can shine a light on it and then make them pay – potentially make them pay a political price within the newer, less ideal districts. And so, you know, we mentioned the National Redistricting Council, all on the line is a program that works with them, where you can go there and sign up to help volunteer and help do activism to help fight back against gerrymandering. And it's going to be different in every state where they're, you know, in cases where they're split, legislation, legislators, sort of bucking up and supporting the Democrats who are fighting a very uphill battle is helpful. Pushing Democrats in the states who have authority like Illinois,

Maryland, and Oregon to do this the correct way and to not sort of, you know, surrender in the sake of bipartisanship when in those states is part of that effort as well. And there are lawsuits also, right? I know Mark Elias, Democratic super lawyer is back in court trying to sue some of these, sue some of these states or the Republicans in the states who are going to try to gerrymander these maps. And of course, the courts are not the greatest avenue because a lot of them, particularly the Supreme Court, are packed with right wing Republicans. But that is one other option that I think Democrats will probably use. It actually goes to the urgency of H.R. 1, which is in a Supreme Court decision in 2019. I think it's Rucho versus Common Cause. The Supreme

Court actually said partisan gerrymandering was a issue for the voters, not the courts, which is insane, which says it is up to the voters to unrig the elections the politicians have rigged for themselves, which is a crazy position. But racial gerrymandering is still something that is contestable in courts. If you pass H.R. 1, you can solve, hopefully, the partisan gerrymandering question. All right. So if you happen to consume just about any kind of right wing media over the last week, Fox, The New York Post, random Republican Twitter accounts, whatever, you learn the following. John Kerry has been accused of committing treason by leaking information about Israeli military options to the Iranians. Kamala Harris has been accused

of profiting off of the border crisis by charging taxpayers to hand out copies of her book to migrant children. It's like funny when you just read it. And Joe Biden has been accused of releasing a climate plan that will force Americans to stop eating red meat. Here's a clip of world-class dipshit Jesse Waters freaking out about this. Americans would have to cut red meat consumption by a whopping 90%. That means only one burger a month. You'll be shocked to learn that none of this is true. John Kerry didn't divulge any sensitive information.

Our government isn't handing out Kamala Harris's book to migrant children. Absolutely nothing in Joe Biden's climate plan will force Americans to stop eating red meat. Dan, where did all these conspiracies come from and why do you think they all took off so fast? Well, we have two things that are happening simultaneously, but are interrelated. One is our media environment is progressively getting more fucked up. That's happening for a whole host of reasons. Polarization, Facebook's ravenous profiteering, declining trust in institutions. While that's happening, the Republicans are taking advantage of and catalyzing that process with a political strategy based on disinformation. And there's one that has been going on for a very

long time. It dates back decades, but is because of how fucked up our media environment is and because of the incentives of Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets, it is incentivized to happen. And so let's take the burger one as a perfect example of how this works, which is Joe Biden gave a speech on Earth Day about his new carbon reduction targets. The Daily Mail, which is a right-wing clickbait factory, British tabloid, writes a story that takes a 2020 study from the University of Michigan about how you would reach 50% emission reductions on a whole host of things. What sort of behavioral changes would Americans need to do? One of the ones they mentioned, not because Joe Biden proposed or anything else, just doing random academic studies, is a 90% reduction in red meat consumption.

That was then factored out to be about one burger a month. The entire right-wing establishment ran with it. It went everywhere. Members of Congress tweeted it. Fox News did it. And not just the opinion. It was all over the quote-unquote news side of Fox, amplified by Republicans, fact-checked by everyone as complete and total bullshit. And just last night, as I mentioned to Saki, Kevin McCarthy raised it again. And this is how this works. Republicans are working aggressively to build an alternative disinformation ecosystem, right? This is classic authoritarian effort to hold on to political power by lying to people and sort of insulating them from facts and truth and the even idea of that there is some, that there is objective truth out there.

And this is, this is a gigantic problem is probably the greatest threat to democracy in the planet. That's how Donald Trump was elected. It's why people stormed the Capitol. It's why we can't get 40% of Republicans to save their own lives from COVID. It is a gigantic problem that overhangs every part of American life. Yeah, they, I mean, look, they have, they've never had much shame in the Republican Party, but they are now sort of just impervious to it. They are impervious to fact checks. On the Kamala Harris conspiracy, right?

So what really happened there is at one place in Long Beach where migrant children are staying when they come here, there were donations for the children when they go to this sort of community center. And one of the donations included a single copy of Kamala Harris's book that they left on the bed for the child who was going to be at that center. left on the bed for the child who was going to be at that center. And the New York Post decided to write that every child, every migrant child is getting a copy of this book and the government itself is handing this book out. Now, after the whole uproar, after this was fact-checked a million times, the New York Post reporter who wrote the original story tweeted that she just resigned from the New York Post

because she was forced to write a story that she knew to be false. And even after that, all of the tweets from the chairwoman of the Republican Party, Ronna Romney McDaniels, Tom Cotton, Lauren, all the idiots, all our favorite idiots, all their tweets are still up. And like you said, with the and with like with the Biden thing, Kevin McCarthy last night after being fact checked that fact checked on that is still spouting the same lie. So it's it really is a dangerous new territory. And of course, they learned this from Donald Trump because Donald Trump did this all the time. You could tell Donald Trump he was wrong to his face. You could show him the fact that he didn't care.

He just kept lying because he learned that you should never apologize. You should never admit you're wrong. And that's the way to deal with being fact checked or called out on your lies in this information environment. And so now they all do that. And I don't know how. First of all, do you think it's effective? Like, do you think it's effective when the Republicans do this? Obviously, it continues to keep their base riled up. Obviously, their base, who doesn't get any other information from sources beyond Fox, New York Post, etc., doesn't probably see many of these fact checks, doesn't really care. So it keeps the base riled up. Do you think it has any effect beyond the Republican base or does it need to? has any effect beyond the Republican base or does it need to? Yes, it does have an effect beyond the Republican base because that's how Facebook works, right? Is it doesn't does it really matter if a bunch of Republicans believe a bunch of like hardcore MAGA Watersworld fans believe Joe Biden is going to limit their burgers?

No, it doesn't mean that. Just like it didn't matter necessarily politically. They believe that Joe Biden, they believe that Joe Biden is like a dementia patient pedophile, right? It's like the burger thing is secondary to them. They don't realize that. Who cares about that? But I think sometimes we get too, as Democrats, get too focused on the absurdity of this specific charge and don't think about the broader impression that it gives when people are exposed to it over and over and over again. Which is, I don't think any real voter, and probably even any Watersworlds fans, think Biden is really going to limit their burgers.

Like that's not, it's motivated reasoning, right, is what causes them to tell pollsters that or to say that. But down deep, they don't really believe that. But what they're trying to do is give the impression that Biden's policies are going to affect their lives in a negative way. And they're sort of reverse engineering these attacks to what goes viral on social. So think about your, you know, apolitical aunts and uncles or neighbors who they're not listening to us. They're not watching Water's World, but they're not watching CNN or MSNBC. They're just scrolling through Facebook. And they're seeing a bunch of headlines about Biden limiting burgers. And all that,

what that doesn't say to them is like, oh shit, I better hoard hamburger meat right now. What it says is Biden's got some policies that seem out of touch to me. And over time, that oppression sinks in and it's problematic. The second problem for it is that it blocks the sun out on other things, right? This is sometimes a zero-sum game for messaging. So if you're talking about their absurd thing, you're not talking about your positive thing. And that's what was always problematic for us in the White House. If we have to deal with Donald Trump's birth certificate bullshit, then we're not talking about Barack Obama's jobs. Jobs. Right. And so it serves as a message blocker. And like you mentioned the thing about Republicans having shame. They definitely have less shame now. But what really has changed is not that

they are worse people all of a sudden because they've always been pretty shitty people, Republican politicians. What has changed is the power of, quote unquote, independent sources to be persuasive to voters about it. Right now, if you share- The gatekeepers are gone. Yeah. There are no guardrails on democracy anymore. If your MAGA uncle says to you, Joe Biden's going to limit my burgers, and you send him the New York Times fact check of it, he will now, he's more likely to think- Fake New York Times, fake news, fake news.

That's going to make him believe more in the burger thing than the opposite. And so the question is, what do you do about it? And the main thing is, is that no one, not the White House, not us, not campaigns, can rely on the media to be the fact checkers here. We have to go beyond that. We can't rely on them to get the information in front of people who need to see it. Well, you pointed out and you wrote about this in Messagebox this week. It was great. Everyone should go read it. That the White House stepped in to push back on the burger ban story. And just the fact that Ron Klain tweeted or

retweeted the fact check on that says something about how the White House views this. I thought it was interesting because there's two different ways the White House handled it. One was retweeting the fact check. The other was retweeting a picture of Biden flipping burgers, showing how much Biden actually loves burgers. And I started to wonder which was more effective. You probably need both because I think you do need to give people the actual facts, because if you just tell people, oh, Republicans are lying about something, they'll say, OK, well, what are the real facts behind this story? It's just human nature. People want to know what the real story is. But I do think like showing someone, oh,

here's what the fact checker said versus, see, there's Joe Biden eating a burger. He fucking loves burgers. He's not going to ban your burgers is almost more powerful and persuasive. Not that you can do that with every issue, but I do wonder sort of what the strategies are to sort of fight this kind of disinformation. In the long run, the only solution to this, in my view, is progressives building up a robust progressive media ecosystem that can push back at scale against these things. Because right now, it is asymmetric warfare to the nth degree. We are spitting in the ocean compared to what Fox et al bring to the table. In the short term, what has to happen is Democrats need to take our army of volunteers,

organizers, or adopted state people and turn them into a distributed grassroots messaging army. And this is what was, I think, at the core of both of the things the White House put out, which is you have to give them the tools to carry the message on their own, to engage in hand-to-hand combat with their networks on what it is. I think in this case, both the fact check and the picture served a purpose. They probably served a purpose for two different audiences. The fact check helps you just explain it to your Biden, maybe Biden supporting, but somewhat skeptical neighbor or cousin, right? Someone who doesn't really believe it, but just wants to know what the truth is. And they're not going to go look for it or believe it from sort of traditional

media sources. So now you can just say what I said to you, which is that's not true. The fact that whole thing comes from a study that was done a year before Biden released his plan, whatever, how are you going to do that? The picture is probably the most effective thing to post on social because it's just a picture. It doesn't come with all of the baggage that the New York Times or CNN comes with. The most effective thing to probably share is John Roberts, a Fox News host who just vomited this conspiracy theory on Friday, fact-checking nothing, doing no due diligence, just reading the words that whatever Stephen Miller Jr., who writes his teleprompter script, wrote for him, got embarrassed and corrected himself on Monday and said that the story was actually wrong. Like that clip would be the clip you would share with a lot of people who are more conservative, more Trump leaning,

more skeptical of sort of the quote unquote liberal media, which is so fucking ironic, it's hard to even stand. But I think that's ultimately what you have to do is we have to build strategies and tools and actually ask people to take these things on. It's sort of like what Pots of America is about. It's why I started MessageBox was to sort of try to build out that model and test out that model. But I think it is the only way we have any chance in 2022 and 2024 to compete with the right wing media machine. I also think to talk about the other two conspiracies as well in on the Kamala Harris story, I think sharing the tweets from the New York Post reporter that said I was forced to write an article that I didn't divulge secret information to the Iranians is because the Israelis bragged about it publicly in 2018. So it was and there's all kinds of headlines

of the information he supposedly shared years ago that it was public. Right. So just things that you got to I think you got to think about like common sense. Right. Like what's going to be common sense to people like, oh, OK, well, I see this headline, blah, blah, blah. And I think sometimes, and this is why, you know, you talking about why progressive media is so important on this is sometimes mainstream media will just run a very bland fact check. And aside from the fact that there's lower trust in mainstream media institutions,

you kind of have to do something a little more to grab people's attention, whether it's through humor, whether it's through like the picture of Biden flipping burgers, right? Like there's got to be ways that you sort of break through the clutter to fight these conspiracies that aren't just saying, here you go, there's like, you know, three fucking Pinocchios in the Washington Post, right? Like you need to find creative ways to break through the clutter on this kind of shit, or else the fact check is just going to get lost, as wonderful as fact checkers are. Just one last thing on this is during the election,

I talked to Jory Craig, who's an expert in fighting disinformation. And one of the things she pointed out that is so important is that in pursuit of being helpful, most people end up further spreading disinformation, right? Like though, here's the thing we do not need to do, which is reply to the tweet with telling it why it's wrong. Don't quote tweet it. Just get the information that counters the disinformation out there to your network. If you give additional engagement to Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jesse Waters or Donald Trump Jr., you're going to ensure that more people see that tweet or that Facebook post. And this is a classic part of Republican messaging and

right-wing messaging is leveraging liberal outrage into greater engagement and just tricking us into spreading their message for them. And so, you know, there's a saying that Neil Dash, who's sort of a very thoughtful person in tech, has said, which is quote, tweet your friends, screenshot your enemies. Or I'm butchering his thing. But that is a way of thinking about is don't give additional engagement to liars. Yeah, that's why I got to start learning that. Yeah, I got to learn that. OK, great.

Well, that is our show for today. Thank you so much to jen saki for joining us i also want to give a special shout out and thank you to uh one of our fantastic pod save america producers jordan waller uh this is her last psa um she will continue to work on pod save the world with with tommy and ben with friends like these with anna marie cox but she has been with pod save america producing this show for a couple of years now. She started as an intern at Crooked and now works with us as a producer. One of the smartest people I've met and keeps us sounding much smarter than we actually are with all the research and prep

work she does for the show. So thank you, Jordan, for everything. Every once in a while, you work with people who you know you're going to work for one day, and Jordan Waller is one of those people. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, everyone have a good weekend, and we'll talk to you all next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.