Pod Save America - “Between Barack and A Hard Place.”

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

President Obama shows Dems how it’s done as candidates hone their closing arguments. Republicans deflect blame following a brutal attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband by a man who was radicalized by rightwing conspiracy theories. Chief Twit Elon Musk is off to a rocky start. And Mandela Barnes joins the pod to talk about his race to defeat Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. 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 Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. God, you did it to me. There's always just a little something off there. I'm sorry. I was not trying to laugh. On today's show, President Obama shows Democrats how it's done as candidates hone their closing arguments. Republicans deflect blame following a brutal attack on Speaker Pelosi's husband by a man who was radicalized by right-wing conspiracy theories. Chief Twit Elon Musk is off to a rocky start. conspiracy theories chief twit elon musk is off to a rocky start and later i talked to wisconsin lieutenant governor mandela barnes about his race to defeat senator ron johnson plus white lotus is

back baby what does it mean for the midterms i'm so happy it's back what do you think it means first episode is fantastic not a lot i want all white lotus yeah more white lotus please all right uh but first before you watch White Lotus. Before that. Go to votesaveamerica.com while you're listening to this pod, or if you're driving shortly after. And sign up to help in these last seven days. This is the most important time to help your friends and neighbors know when and where they can vote and help them make plans to do it. We need to make every day count, and there are opportunities all this week and weekend.

You can hop on a bus with our friends at Swing Left to head to a swing district near you. You can text voters in key states with NextGen and many more ways to channel that anxiety into action. Just go to votesaveamerica.com. Let me tell you, you can sit on Twitter all day and complain about where the New York Times placed the Paul Pelosi coverage in the hard copy of the paper that no one gets, which I've done many times. Or you can get out of your house and knock on some doors. You'll feel a lot better if you hit some doors. Or you can do both.

Just get off of Elon. You can knock on doors. And when someone opens up, be like, are you voting for Republican because it wasn't above the fold? I wouldn't do that. Maggie didn't call it a lie. Vote Republican. I wouldn't do those messages. On the way to your canvassing shift you should

call us listen to world corrupt a brand new podcast about the world cup look at that look at this look at this huh that's how it's done all right let's get to the news we are a week out from election day more than 20 million votes have already been cast and we've reached that stage of the campaign where everyone spends all day arguing with various Nates about polls. Republicans at this moment are still favored to take the House. Democrats are ever so slightly favored to keep the Senate and plenty of down ballot races are up for grabs. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump stayed off the campaign trail over the weekend, but Barack Obama, who is the Democrats most requested surrogate, carried the party's closing message at huge rallies in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Here's a quick recap of how that went. The other day, a video came out of Governor Whitmer's opponent claiming that Democrats have been working for decades to topple the United States because they're still upset about losing the Civil War. And that COVID restrictions were part of some master plan to do this. Now, first of all, what? Let's say you're at the airport and you see Mr. Walker and you say, hey, there's Herschel Walker, Heisman winner. Let's have him fly the plane. You probably wouldn't say that.

You'd want to know, does he know how to fly an airplane? They had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security. And if Ron Johnson does not understand that, if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who've worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect, he's not the person who's thinking about you and knows you and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin. All right, let's start with our completely unbiased take on our old boss uh what you guys think tommy so we obviously were biased but i look i we i have also seen you guys

have seen obama give brutal wonky room clearing 45 minute long speeches tommy can tell me can say this on the road and now he does this to come into it tommy can say this now that we're past the obama well of course and all you but also you know even say this now that we're past the Obama. Well, of course. But also, even Republicans, I think we're sharing the clips of Obama's speeches for over the weekend saying like, this guy is a generational talent, which he clearly is. Here's the thing I would just think about. All of us, again, are politically obsessed people. The voters that Democrats need to reach in the final days are not us. It's not the weirdos who pay attention all year long. It's late deciders, undecideds, people who are deciding whether or not to vote at all. And the question you have to ask yourself is, does this

speech keep and hold your attention? Does it hold your attention when you could scroll to something else on Instagram? Does it hold your attention on the nightly news when you could flip to a playoff baseball game? Obama in this speech, I think, sucked people in. He got that crowd excited. It looked energized, looked fun. The attacks on Walker and Ron Johnson were brutal, withering, politically damaging, but delivered in a way that was genuinely fun and funny and memorable. And I think sometimes strategists like us spend so much time over exact framing and wording, and you forget the more basic question of, will this message reach the intended audience? And on that metric, he knocked it out of the park. Love it. Why do you think it resonated with so many people? I noticed that it's like,

you know, you had progressive lefty pundits on Twitter saying it was great. Yeah. You had never Trumpers saying it was great. That's the whole coalition right there. So I think there's two reasons. For one, it was just a great speech. It was just a well-told story that just made sense to a lot of people. But I think from never Trumpers to independents to journalists when they're being honest to neoliberal shills to lefties, we all agree that Republicans are extreme. But how do you talk about that? What's the best way to talk about it without turning people off? And I think sometimes there's a lot of people in those

camps that view Democrats as being extreme too, that there's a problem on both sides, in part because you sound a little radical when you say vote for the Democrats or a fascistic menace that doesn't believe in democracy and is spreading lies and misinformation will take the reins of power. But it's true. I don't it's true it doesn't we know it's true we know it's true and so he manages to tell this story you need to be do you need to be reminded that it's true all the time even though you know it's true and so he managed to make republicans seem indefensible embarrassing extreme without himself seeming without nasty without nasty without without high dudgeon people don't like that stuff uh uh with a light touch and it makes him someone you want to be on

a team with there's it's not pious there's no grand guignol it's just whoa whoa wait what was that word i'm sorry excuse grand guignol is that excuse me excuse me you can tell you told me about it didn't write that speech for him you know yeah you can oh okay what was that uh it's um it's a term for a kind of bloody storytelling named after i believe a french theater that was famous for that kind of uh violent uh rhetoric and imagery got it um Cool word. Said me to Tommy, a person before we started recording, told us about... Are we telling off-air stories?

Telled us about his favorite kind of wine region. No, it was a funny one to say. I can't even tell the context. It'll get me in trouble. Move on. Move on, John. Anyway, I do think there's something to be said for... And you both mentioned this,

the humor involved. And like we did this all the time when we were with him in the White House and he loved to do this kind of stuff, which is like, and I think it's particularly appropriate today. Like he does not want to make people fear demagogues and conspiracy theorists. He wants to make people laugh at them. Right. And that's because they want to be feared. They don't want to be laughed at. Right. Like this is the whole thing with the strong man right like they they want to seem strong by mocking them all the time you make them seem weak and like i get that we are at a very precarious

moment we talk about that all the time and these threats are real but again most people aren't paying as close attention to politics as we are and the way to reach them is to just point out the obvious, which is how fucking absurd so many of these conspiracy theories are. I also I just I'm trying to think of the last time I saw a Democratic political rally that looked big and energized and exciting and fun. And it's been a long time. And part of that is a pandemic. You know what I mean? And then that's not, I'm not saying this to mock Joe Biden in any way. Like he had to campaign from home because there was a global pandemic. But Trump rallies obviously can end up seeming very dark and angry and scary at times, especially when they're doing the QAnon thing with the fingers up, whatever. But most of the time, the people there are there because they feel entertained. They're having a good time for whatever reason. And Donald Trump's

an awful person, but he can be funny and he tells stories and he entertains people. And he has created a movement, the one that I don't understand, that people want to be a part of. And I think people witnessed that again from the Democratic side at some of those rallies. I also think he focused a lot this weekend on economic issues because that's what people are most concerned about. But he didn't just like list off poll tested policies like the way and I don't think we heard the whole thing in the clip, but the way he talked about Social Security it was more of a value statement about the economy than it was a list of policy positions and it wasn't the kind of value statements that you hear in every single fucking speech that have now become cliche like working hard and playing by the rules which was fresh when bill clinton said in 1992 it's not fresh anymore yeah um so you know i think and i also think that he tries to meet people where they are by saying you know at one

point in that speech he's like maybe you don't think democracy as is important an issue as gas prices right now. That's OK. I understand. Here's why it's important. Instead of chiding people for not thinking that it is important. Right. Which I think is one of the Twitter vibe. Right. So the White House has said that Biden's decision to avoid a lot of big rallies was intentional. They argued that having Obama and Trump on the trail in 2010 and 2018 didn't work out too well for them. What do you guys think about that? Lovett, what do you think about that?

Yeah, man, totally. You know, he's a Democratic president. He was at home this weekend before the midterm elections. Whatever the explanation, it's not good. And I would say also Trump in 2018, Obama in 2010, a lot of buckler seatbelts, post hoc agri-proctor hoc. Oh my God. Because it's like, yeah, Obama went out before

an absolutely devastating midterm. Do we know that Obama going out didn't help stem some losses which were going to be devastating no matter what? We don't. Trump going out in 2018, he was a profoundly divisive and unpopular figure even in running up into those midterms. So it's a sort of like, you know, whatever explanation you look for, it's not a good sign that either Joe Biden isn't being sought after in a lot of these campaigns or they've decided he's not valuable. Whatever the reason, it's not good. I mean, a rally is a type of event. You know, the idea that doing a lot of rallies

is why we lost in 2010 or any other year, it's nonsense. It's complete nonsense. Obama is now a former president, which means his approval rating has gone way up because he's out of the political fray. That's what happens with every president. So Obama can go anywhere he wants to campaign.

Everyone wants him to come because he's popular and that's how it works. Joe Biden has been in the political barrel for nearly two years now. He inherited a pandemic. He had a screwed up economy because of it. He had to deal with the war in Ukraine, spike in gas prices, right? Joe Manchin made us look like idiots for a year. That limits what campaigns want you to come campaign for them. It probably limits Joe Biden's ability to draw a crowd. It doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. His popularity will go back up. But like, let's not pretend that big rallies are bad politically or the reason you win or lose. I mean, there were previous years when Obama's approval had taken a beating when Joe Biden was sent to the more swingy contested areas

because he was more popular. You know, it's like it's just it's silly spin. Sure, Joe Biden's wishing for those days. It's just it's silly. I mean, I think the broad context of this midterm, it has similarities to the midterm in 2010, right, which is there. We were still dealing with the aftermath of a horrible recession. And now we're dealing with inflation.

And those will be the driving factors in this midterm more than Joe Biden's talent on the stump or Barack Obama's talent on the stump. And I don't think that Barack Obama being out there this weekend is going to save the Democratic Party in this midterm. I do think it is something for other Democratic candidates and politicians to learn from in terms of the way he delivers a message and talks about it. But, and then to the Biden thing, you know, Biden will be out this next weekend with Obama, I think in Pennsylvania and a couple other places, Maryland, stuff like that. But, you know, he's going to be in Pennsylvania, which is good state of Maryland. Well, unfortunately, New York is, looks like a swing state all of a sudden. And that says more about the state of

the country than anything the White House is doing. But I do think being out there to make the case as often as you can, especially in this media environment, is important for any leader. Right. I mean, look, Joe Biden can go anywhere in the country and it will get covered to some extent. But what you lose when you don't do the giant rally in, let's say, Atlanta is you lose the local market coverage. You lose the ability to capture data for everyone in that room. You lose the chance to fire up a ton of people and convert them from voters to volunteers. That's why big rallies are a big deal. When we did a rally with Oprah in Des Moines, it was a gift from heaven for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary because a lot of people who didn't care about the campaign necessarily showed up for the first time

and became a part of it because they wanted to see Oprah. Also, audiences are human. The same speech delivered in the Rose Garden to like five people, delivered in a rally to 5,000 screaming people. Like if you're watching it, you're going to feel like more energy. You're going to feel like, oh, that's the winning side.

You know, like it's just, it's energy. It's important. You know president biden going into the dip room with janet yellen and we hated those people we did the bomb had to do those all the time because you're stuck at the white house it's like brutal it's hard no one wanted to do that so that clip of obama talking about social security and medicare has now been viewed nearly 15 million times more than any of his other riffs from the weekend. 14 million of them by his former staff. And him too.

And the Washington Post reported over the weekend that Democratic candidates are starting to shift their ads towards a similar message, while the share of ads mentioning abortion has ticked down by 10%. Tommy, good strategy? Too late? What do you think? Ask me in a week, John. I don't know. I think what you're seeing, all the polling, all this sort of anecdotal information you hear, like, look, I was down in Norwich County knocking on doors over the weekend. What people are hearing about on the doors there is about economic issues.

They're mad about gas prices specifically. We can't convince those voters not to be mad. We can't convince them that gas prices are lower than they were a few weeks ago or point to an old list of accomplishments. I think we can convince those voters that Republicans will make things worse. They'll voters that Republicans, if they're in charge, will cut social security. And then you can kind of get your foot in the door and talk about what Democrats can do if you send us back. Yeah. I support it. I think it's a good idea.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think in part out of genuine outrage and fear and because the entire country was focused on it and in part because we viewed it as politically valuable, Democrats did a very, very good job defining the stakes on abortion. And as much as that is one of several issues a lot of Democrats are talking about, I don't think in the kind of national debate we as cleanly define the stakes on Social Security, on Medicare, even on inflation and crime, which again is something President Obama touched on, I think, really well, which is, all right, inflation and crime are really big issues. Who's going to make it better and who's going to make it worse? Right? They're just saying crime, crime, crime, crime, crime. But, you know, Republicans are the ones who voted against the funding through the bills we already passed, for example.

And I think this is less to me about I think what Obama did in that speech and what Democrats are now starting to do is try to really drive just a simple contrast on this issue in the way they've successfully done on abortion. in the way they've successfully done on abortion. Yeah, I mean, we've talked quite a bit about how Joe Biden can't do too much about gas prices, though today he floated a windfall profits tax on oil companies, which I think is great. And part of me was like, I'm glad he did that. And he's going to campaign on that in the final week. I sort of wish all the Democrats sort of coalesced around that as a message a couple of months ago. Yeah. I remember it got talked about at the time, but then kind of discarded. I'm not sure why. I'm sure the fucking nerdy economists were like, maybe do at the end here when there's maximum attention. But like put the Republicans on record

as being opposed to a windfall profits tax. And then you're like, they think that oil companies should profit. We don't, we don't like the higher gas prices. They're complaining about them, but they don't want to do anything about it. I just think, you know, the other part of this is it seems like every single voter in every state is frustrated about the state of the economy and gas prices. Yeah. But where you live, the stakes for you in terms of abortion access are very different. Yeah. So if you're in California, you can vote for Prop 1, which enshrines a constitutional right to an abortion. So therefore, you are probably less concerned about sending Democrats back to Congress to preserve abortion access because you're thinking, this is your sophisticated voter, you're thinking like, we've got it covered here. Now, there's some holes in

that argument. But I do think that that's why you're seeing different strategies in different places. Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if in the states where it matters most what happens in the election on abortion, you actually do see more of that surge in voters that had been expected, like a state like Pennsylvania, where like Josh Shapiro wins, abortion is legal. Doug Mastrano wins. It's illegal. Yeah.

States with like really draconian laws that will snap back into place. Right. And you saw that Tudor Dixon was actually trying to make this argument in Michigan and saying like, oh, you could vote for the constitutional amendment and then vote against Gretchen Whitmer to protect, you could vote for the amendment

to protect abortion and then vote against Gretchen Whitmer. Okay, Tudor. Which I don't think, that's a little too cute by half. But only something you say if you're seeing internal polls that are like, oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

The other big issue hanging over the campaign in the final days is the threat to democracy posed by extremists. threat to democracy posed by extremists. We all get a horrifying reminder of how real that is after Paul Pelosi was brutally assaulted with a hammer in his own San Francisco home by a man carrying zip ties and duct tape who was shouting, where is Nancy? The attacker had posted all kinds of crazy right-wing theories on Facebook, as one does. Here's a Fox News report on the attack that has been brilliantly annotated with Tucker Carlson segments by Kat Abu from Media Matters. Social media posts included transphobic images. All these nations preparing for World War Trans. Linked to websites claiming COVID vaccines were deadly. Is it possible the vaccine actually can hurt you, especially if you keep getting boosted? Can it weaken your immune system?

The death rates being promoted are whatever they want to be promoted, as the Death Rate One post said. So is it possible that the CDC has been classifying those deaths, deaths from old age or other factors, as coronavirus deaths? Also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like Democrat Farce Commission to Investigate January 6th. It's a farce. It's a complete farce.

Global elites plan to take control of your money. They're hiring another 87,000 armed IRS agents just to make sure that you obey. Got it? Got it? Is it clear? So it looks like we've potentially have somebody here who embraces conspiracy theories. Yeah, potentially. So, Lovett, most Republican leaders, with the notable exception of Donald Trump, condemned the attack, but just about all of them said it had nothing to do with politics, everything to do with rising crime rates. How, if at all, do you think Democratic candidates, officials should be talking about this, should respond to this? Yeah. So, first of all, they all rushed to get those kinds of statements out there because now today we get the kind of information from the police where he says he was looking for Nancy

Pelosi. Yeah. The FBI report. Yeah. Walking through basically, you know, that this is tracks with the conspiracy theories he posted online. It was a targeted attack against Nancy Pelosi to send a message to other members of Congress. That's very clear. Obviously, you know, flows from right wing misinformation and conspiracy theories that this person had been following. So that is now clear. So a lot of them obviously will apologize and express their profound regret for having said these things. So that'll be that. They'll all take down the tweets. They'll all take down the tweets. I think the like Republicans are extreme. They are embracing extreme and fringe politics and rhetoric.

They're embracing extreme and fringe policies. And this is all of a piece. They are trying to scare people. They are trying to incite people. They're doing it for votes. They're doing it for power. And they don't care who's hurt. They don't care about your access to abortion.

They don't care about what happens to trans people or gay teachers or any of the rest. your access to abortion. They don't care about what happens to trans people or gay teachers or any of the rest. They will stir the most virulent and vile and terrible conspiracies and hates and bigotries in our society to accrue power no matter what happens. They will do that as candidates. They will do that as elected leaders. I think that is to me, that is what I take away from this. Yeah. Tommy? Yeah. I mean, the radicalization is coming from inside the house. Fox News, you know, look within. Also, Tucker Carlson really sounds very shrill. You know, you might want to think about, you know, modulating his voice because he's really a shrill person.

I saw, obviously, yes, the response. It was a weird couple days of people just spreading disinformation all over the Internet, especially Republicans, including like Ted Cruz and other elected officials. Ted Cruz, yeah. The response, the facts were clarified today. The response got a little easier when the lunatic attacker confessed to everything. There's an eyewitness account, right? So none of this is a question anymore.

It's useful to call people out for being cynical. Kerry Lake decided to make life-threatening violence against Paul Pelosi a laugh line at an event today when he is still in the ICU. I think that will probably offend voters. That said, I saw a bunch of Twitter Karl Rove's furious at Democrats, absolutely outraged that the Democratic Party wasn't shifting all of its messaging in the last weeks to be about political violence. And I just would encourage people to talk to any campaign in a competitive district and see if they think that a closing argument like that is helpful. They will tell you that it is probably more likely to kick up a debate about crime and how crime has gotten so bad in San Francisco that the Speaker of the House isn't safe in her own home more than it will be a fight about political violence. Because I think a lot of people will end up thinking, sure, that's radicalizing language from Fox News or whomever.

But crazy people do crazy things. And so, look, I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not a pollster. I could be wrong. But, you know, we had January 6th happen. Everyone saw it. And I think voters are still today seemingly a lot more angry about economic conditions. So I wouldn't change the entire focus of my message, even if the Twitter brain trust is telling you otherwise. of my message, even if the Twitter brain trust is telling you otherwise? I think it's a very difficult challenge, right? We have one party that is celebrating and or encouraging political violence with a lot of the things they say and do. And the question is, how do you communicate that to the American people so that they don't let those people

hold power anymore. And that is difficult to do in this media environment when a lot of people aren't paying attention all the time to the news or politics and are mostly interested in what's happening in their lives and how things affect their lives. And so I do think if you want to talk about the sort of climate of political violence that is leading to what happened to Paul Pelosi. You have to sort of draw the connection to how that climate affects people's lives. And, you know, you heard Obama talk about this over the weekend,

and he talked about, like, intimidation at the polls, right? What we've seen in Arizona, where, like, guys with guns are standing outside drop boxes. Or, you know, people who get death threats because they voiced a political opinion online. Or, you know, violence at town halls

and school committee meetings that we've seen over the last couple of years. Like, you know, violence at town halls and school committee meetings that we've seen over the last couple of years. Like, you know, you can talk about that because people can say, oh yeah, that's, I can feel that in my own life that I can't even talk about politics with people, that people are getting angry. But like, you're right, like as a, you know, in the final weeks of the campaign, it's not going to be a big. What will happen is Republicans will say, well, what about Maxine Waters telling supporters to get in the face of Trump people? What about the violence against Supreme Court justices or threats outside of their homes? And it is obviously like a cynical deflection. But again, it will just, I think, kick up a conversation about crime, which is not the

footing we really need to be on right now. I do think one thing you see in poll after poll, like there's no message that tends to draw more approval than one that says we need to bring down the temperature. We need to deal with the divisive rhetoric. And I think you see a lot of, you know, if you go back and look at the statements after Steve Scalise was shot, or you go back and look at other Democratic statements in the event of threats that have come towards Republicans, they're unequivocal unlike the republican politicians who all say but but

what happened here and oh crime and all the rest like democrats uh you know always doing the right thing come hell or high water i suppose uh say uh we have to all do better we have to turn down the rhetoric and make things and i think that that is probably another piece of this that's a valuable thing to say in the closing days of the campaign. People want to hear that. It annoys people on Twitter. They say, you know, point out who it is, name names. But I think most voters just want to hear that kind of message, which is everyone needs to tone it down. One other one other note about this, you know, Tommy pointed to the the moment where Carrie Lake made a joke about it. We should just play the clip.

Let's play the clip now. It is not impossible to protect our kids at school. They act like it is. Nancy Pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in D.C. Apparently her house

doesn't have a lot of protection. So, to me, the thing that's most, that's important about that is not just that she made that heinous joke. It was the way the crowd didn't just laugh,

but wanted to laugh. They wanted to be part of this laugh. And, you know, we are watching this experiment unfold in real time over the last several years. There is a kind of vicious circle that runs from media figures like Tucker Carlson and political figures like Carrie Lake to the base and from the base back up to see how far they can go, how low they can go, like how little compassion and humanity they need to show to one another. And if you want to understand, I think in a deeper way, the cultural rot that has led to this sort of fascistic tone long before we had people with guns outside of drop boxes, you know, long before we felt as though so many Republican politicians had turned against democracy, it is that tenor and that belief that

any kind of compassion or humanity is a sign of weakness. That to me is the threat. That is what right wing radio did under the radar for decades. That is what Fox News does every single day. That is what the messages on Facebook are pumping out every single day. And if we don't look to that cause, that undergirding sort of inhumanity that's being pumped out every single day, this will just keep getting worse. But to Tommy's point about most people wanting to tone things down, I think the only way to defeat that is not by being that. And this is where I think there becomes like a fight within our own party because like,

well, we should be like that at rallies and mocking them. No, we shouldn't actually. Not because that's the moral high ground, but because if you are, just from a pure political perspective, if you want to sort of bring people into this movement, then you can't do it with stirring up fear and anger and bullshit. That works on them. That doesn't work on our side.

And ironically, I think sometimes people view what you just said as a kind of weakness or capitulation. It's like the, oh, Michelle Obama thing. When they go low, we go high, but it's like, it's not that. But it's actually, I think, a recognition of what we're actually seeing on their side because they won't be chastened. They won't be convinced. They won't be, they won't be made to feel shamed into not being this way. They have to be defeated. Yes. And the way you defeat them is not by saying the things that always feel the best in the moment to the people paying attention

all the time. It is finding the best argument to reach the most people to build the broadest coalition wherever we have to, to beat them. That may not happen in these midterms,

but that's what we have to do every single day. So one of the people that was spreading a complete lunatic conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi was a new Twitter owner, Elon Musk, shared it on his platform spreading a complete lunatic conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi, was new Twitter owner Elon Musk shared it on his platform and then later deleted the tweet,

but not before it was seen and shared hundreds of thousands of times. Doesn't bode well for the future of Twitter, does it? How bad do you guys think Twitter will get under Elon's reign? I mean, the guy, he's just a troll. You know, I don't subscribe to the belief like, oh, he's so the guy he's just a troll you know like i don't i don't subscribe to the belief like oh he's so stupid he's actually a moron he's bad at business no he's like a brilliant engineer and spacex tesla are incredible companies but the problem with twitter is has to do with human nature it's politics and like let's elon doesn't have the highest EQ. It doesn't seem. And he's surrounded by this coterie of little suck ups who kisses ass and think they are

victims and that cancel culture is the worst thing in the world. Cause those are the things you cry about when you're only a hundred millionaire and not a billionaire, right? Like that's who these people are. And so what I like, Elon is the guy he's showing up a decade late to an impossibly difficult technology and social engineering experiment that we call social media. And he is offering ideas that are the equivalent of, have you tried turning it on and turning it back on? You know, and it's like, he's in trouble. This is a huge risk.

He's massively overpaid for this company. He paid $44 billion. He probably could have got it for half that. They took on $13 billion worth of debt. The yearly interest payment will be about a billion dollars to service that debt. And last year, the company's operations generated $630 million in cashflow. So I'm no math major, but that doesn't check out. When the service on the debt is more than your revenue. It's going to be tough. So they're going to have to make a lot of cuts or make a lot more money that's why we're hearing about cutting half the workforce there's no chance that makes moderation better or a more fun place to be but

like you know at the end of the day twitter's value is the people that use it it's not some groundbreaking technology it's like micro blogging and uh he could easily destroy this very very lame chat room that he now owns. Fingers crossed. Yeah. If you think building a rocket that can take people to Mars is hard, try content moderation across the people who like to post in all of humanity. Because Earth is not sending their best. No. Well, and part of the problem is, though, he's not some outside objective observer trying to fix it.

Like, a lot of brains have been broken by twitter including his yeah especially his he like he's a troll he likes the clout he tweets something and he sees a bunch of bots and he thinks there's a bots problem right like the guy is not he's responding to a guy named cat turd he's responding to a guy named cat he's searching his own name in the in the twitter slack he's posting memes he's thinking something from the fucking santa monica observer is a real story. Like he's not. It's also the even just like the cars and spaceships, man.

Yeah. You know what you're good at? No, it's honestly like he bought this thing to have a platform to make increasingly lame jokes. The $44 billion to do prop comedy like Carrot Top and bring in a sink so you can tweet, let that sink in. That's tough. Yeah. That's sad it's that or like you know on the off chance that he actually believes his bullshit about like how he is going to save twitter and because he thinks it's the most important town square ever but it's like the typical fucking tech billionaire i can save the world government is a failure

politics is a failure only only by, only through technology can we truly save humanity. That's, that's what he fucking does. Yeah, I mean, this is somebody who, who was told Tesla wouldn't work

and he proved them wrong. He was told SpaceX wouldn't work and he proved them wrong. Because they're engineering issues. Well, you know. They're not human engineering issues. And also like,

building a, an electric car is a project that requires like, great commitment and fortitude and you kind of buckle down and do it over many years and then prove all the haters wrong. Like Twitter exists.

It is in the world. It's there every single day. You're managing it every single day. There's no moment when everyone's going to be like, ah, it's fixed. Yeah. What a peaceful existence.

Right. You're not building the rocket. We're on the rocket. We're all on the rocket, Elon. And it's not working. It's not been a great ride. And it's bumpy,

man. Well, now we're going to have to start paying for the ride. Oh, Elon. And it's not working. It's not been a great ride. And it's bumpy, man. Well, now we're going to have to start paying for the ride. Oh, please. So The Verge reported that Elon's planning to start charging $20 a month for a blue checkmark. You guys thinking about buying some for Christmas presents this year? I want every listener of this podcast to hear me, all right? If you find out that I'm paying $20 a month to post to this hell site, you find me and you throw soup at me

like I'm a Van Gogh that causes climate change. You cover me in bisque. I shouldn't deserve to walk bisque free after that. That is so funny. No fucking way. The question I have is paying for, what do you get for this? Do you literally just get a little blue check?

I know, I should have looked at this beforehand but twitter you're signing up for twitter blue which is a current service now it's like a it's like after dark it's a special vip service i think you can like edit tweets with it now because i've seen some really that's the value prop anyway you can champagne room well no you know like i think in in the early days of verification you could you know sort by only verified responses or you got a little more like sort of filtering of garbage responses. If that doesn't go away, like I'm not paying 20 bucks a month for a little blue check. Who cares? The original point of verification is to verify people so that you could know who you were really talking to and that the account really belongs to that person.

people so that you could know who you were really talking to and that the account really belongs to that person where twitter fucked up is everyone should have had the opportunity to be verified because that would have helped make sure that everyone on the platform is real it should never have turned into some stupid fucking status symbol and it certainly shouldn't be only available to people who can pay 240 a year for it that's fucking nuts yeah but even putting like all this is like it's all confusing a couple different things. One is how do you build a platform like this that people actually want to participate in and

that makes money and that has a business model, whatever. That's Elon's problem to fix, I suppose. But it actually reminds me, the other problem is this sort of is that he sort of combined buying Twitter because he thinks it can be a valuable platform and he's made it all about these free speech issues.

But like, it actually reminds me a little bit of the kind of the fear about deep fakes in that everyone's like deep fakes, deep fakes, deep fakes are coming. They're going to make everybody make their, everyone's going to get so confused. And it's like, we don't need deep fakes. We confuse ourselves with absolute fucking horse shit

every goddamn day. It doesn't require, it actually, people will uh make up something and share it and people will believe it the guy who uh claimed that uh hillary clinton died sometime in 2016 and her body double debated trump uh he he got elon on the uh paul pelosi conspiracy he took but in the same way it's in the same way it's like what what would make twitter a nice place to be again it's not just removing the most obvious and heinous misinformation and falsehood it's also that it's a fucking fetid swamp even if every single thing on the platform passes some kind of a truce that's it's a mean spirit and vicious and negative and and scolding and harsh place and you know content moderation

can change that there's a like a deeper problem with the way we communicate one another that Elon Musk is not going to crack. Also, I mean, look, if we're being honest, the original verification, sure, it was to say that person's really that person, but really it was a status thing. It just seemed cool. That's what it became.

And if now you're paying 20 bucks for it, you just kind of look like a thirsty tool. No, it shouldn't have been a status thing. I'm prepared to eat those words. It should have been... Look, every company has to make money. If Twitter wanted to say, okay, everyone gets verified on the platform and you all have to pay, you know, to use it, to just use Twitter, you have to pay. A dollar a year.

There's a subscription or you get some ad-supported version. If you don't want to do the subscription, that's all fine, right? But to just be the, like, you get the blue checkmark for this much money and you don't is just ridiculous. blue checkmark for this much money and you don't is just ridiculous it's i mean it's just it's someone who doesn't understand the site sort of going for the first monetization idea that one of his lame little coterie of right-wing buddies told him to go well anyway i heard this rumor might bring vine back and you know what mine yes yeah he yeah he did a twitter poll on that why would you like but like vine's a decade old now six years old it's been dead they're finding the old vine code.

Deep within the bowels of the Twitter building. Anyway, we've exhausted this topic. It's all just so fucking stupid. That's it. Just one last point about this. Hey, man. Hey, no, I'm going to make one last point. You want to come on offline this week?

None of us gives a fuck. You're an expert. Do you understand how quickly everybody could just delete the fucking thing and be gone? Yeah, well, you could have said that for the last decade but you're an addict still too no i deleted it from my phone i deleted it log in on a web browser yeah you'll hear how old us before you'll hear his takes change after twitter goes away unbelievable unbelievable when we come back i will talk to lieutenant governor mandela barnes who's running for senate against america's dumbest senator, Ron Johnson.

Truly, truly. With just a week until the midterms, Wisconsin is once again one of the most important battleground states and one of the best chances for Democrats to pick up a Senate seat. Here to talk about his campaign to defeat Ron Johnson, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. Welcome back to the pod. Oh man, always happy to be back. Thanks for having me here in the homestretch when it matters the most. We appreciate you. Seven more days, seven more days. I bet it feels like, what, three years, four years? I mean, it feels like it's been three years. Seriously. I mean, it's seven days until election day, eight days until it's all said and

done. That's right. That's right. That's right. So we were just talking about our old boss stumping for you over the weekend. He said a lot of good stuff in that speech. But I'm curious which part you found to be most helpful in terms of making a closing argument to Wisconsin voters. Like, what's the 30 second ad you guys would cut from that Obama speech? Well, it'll be a couple parts spliced, right? You have the vote for people who are going to fight for you. And then the case that he made on Social Security, you know, that was very strong. That's why it went wildly viral online, because this is where Ron Johnson is just deeply out of touch with the majority of people in Wisconsin. It's a working class state. A lot of folks in the audience and a lot of people outside of those rooms,

regardless of their political affiliation, rely on Social Security benefits, the benefits they work their entire lives for, the system that they paid into, and they deserve to see some benefit from it. And Ron Johnson has no right to take that away from people. deserve to see some benefit from it. And Ron Johnson has no right to take that away from people. And I mean, that was that one really, really hit the mark, especially with the economic argument that we always try to make. And, you know, sometimes Democrats is not as effective as it could be. But nobody does it like Barack Obama. He did it in a way that, you know, I couldn't have even sat in a room for five hours myself and crafted it better than that. So really excited about that. It was a it was a good riff.

So one other thing Obama did was to sort of implicitly connect your story with his story and then make the case that there's nothing more American, nothing more Wisconsin than your story, which to me also felt like an attempt to push back on sort of the Republican attempt to convince Wisconsin voters that you're somehow different or not one of them. What have you made of those attacks over the campaign? Well, when we closed out our very first debate, the question was, if you could talk about one thing, if you can clarify one thing and one of the negative attack ads, what would it be? And I leaned into that one. I said, well, I would actually embrace something. And that's the different label because one of the commercials does end by saying Mandela Barnes different. And I said, I lean into that.

I embrace it because there aren't enough working class voices in the United States Senate. So many perspectives are missing from the United States Senate and so many people get left behind because of it. are missing from the United States and so many people get left behind because of it. And the fact that, you know, President Obama, you know, he made that connection between my story and his and look, that's the reason I got involved in the first place. Hearing that DNC speech in 2004, you know, I was back home from college, had to be like 18 years old. At that point, I was inspired, man. I was encouraged. I felt like things around me could change. I actually might've been 17. I don't remember, but I felt like the things around me

could change. And it was because of that speech that I ended up on this path. 2008, I rushed to become an organizer. Right after college was over, was done, I was a field organizer on a house race and I just wanted a taste for it. And to be in this moment now, or this past weekend, having a chance to share the stage with a person who was quite literally the inspiration for me to get involved. I can't even tell you how that felt. And for him to expand on the fact that my story is a Wisconsin story. My story is a very uniquely American story. Then he went into the whole funny name part, which I cannot tell you how much I appreciated that moment, but it set the stage. And I hope that it inspired people across the state to realize that better is possible. We can do so much better than we've done before, but it's about us coming together. We have so much

more in common with each other than we'll ever have with self-serving politicians like Ron Johnson. Ron Johnson's obviously given you a lot to work with in this campaign. When you're talking to voters, you mentioned Social Security. Is there another piece of information or a couple pieces of information that's most likely to cause someone who's undecided to say, you know what? Good point. That Ron Johnson guy, not for me anymore. Well, as you said, there is so much. We, you know, he talked about law enforcement during debates. You know, you left 140 officers hanging when they were facing the most difficult moments of most of their careers, when they were getting hit in the head with fire extinguishers crushed and revolving door stab with metal stakes you know ron johnson was not there for the police officers he was he wasn't there for law enforcement he was there uh saying that like

his words were you know they taught us how to use black poles as weapons right so callous so careless and even with his extreme out of touch position on abortion, it's what he said that went along with it is the fact that he said women who don't like the laws of their state, like our 1849 criminal abortion ban can just move. Or the fact that when Oshkosh Defense got the contract, built the next generation postal vehicles, you know, they decide they're going to move those jobs. South Carolina, you know, nothing against South Carolina, just everything for Wisconsin. Ron Johnson defended that move when he could have said nothing. He defended that move and said that we have enough jobs in Wisconsin. It is just out of touch. This is a person who truly just has no clue what's going on in this state, what people are looking for. And it feels as if he has no desire to. He feels like he's giving up on us. And so it's not always the position that he takes. It's

his response that makes things even worse, that shows how little he truly cares. It shows his contempt for working people. So much of this campaign has been about, you know, you defending your record or talking about Johnson's record or Johnson's plan. So I'm sure there's a lot of voters out there who haven't heard enough about what you want to do if you're elected. What's the first policy or bill you would introduce as senator? Well, I'll tell you, it's about rebuilding the middle class. Wisconsin's a working class state. The industrial Midwest has lost so much over the generations. Now, my granddad moved to Milwaukee after serving in World War II. He got a job as a union steelworker in a factory that he walked in one day and walked out 35 years later. grandfather after World War II to get into the middle class. And it is for people in my generation as a millennial, the first generation that's slated to be worse off than our parents' generation. That has never happened before. And it will only get worse as long as we have people in office who

say things like, we have enough jobs in a state, or even go so far as to say, why build things here in America when we can build them in China for dirt cheap? Another Ron Johnson classic quote. We are a generation of people who have been left behind, will continue to be left behind until that perspective is at the table in Washington, D.C. There's one millennial in the U.S. Senate right now. We have an opportunity to double our ranks, right, with this race. But it's more than just being a part of this generation. It's about having experienced some of the best of what this generation has offered, technology, you know, the good parts of social media, and some of the worst, right? Like I got out of college in 2008, one of the worst possible times for a person to come out of

college. I haven't dealt with the, you know the pandemic in the current role that I'm in as Lieutenant Governor, and having to come up with a response. We had people like Ron Johnson who worked against us every step of the way. We need people who actually get our experiences, who know what we've been going through, who share our fears and struggles, but also our hopes and dreams because we are an optimistic generation. And so rebuilding the middle class and then those bad trade deals that send our jobs overseas, then protecting our democracy, because none of this happens unless we protect our democracy. And Wisconsin is subject or home to some of the worst gerrymandering in the entire country. We got to pass H.R.1. We got to pass

the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, For the People Act, because they're coming after voting rights left and right. And we will be left with nothing if they have their way. If we continue down this path of partisan gerrymandering and the impact that it's having on Wisconsin, the will of the people will never be respected. So the FBI interview with Paul Pelosi's assailant was released today, and the suspect confessed that he intended to kneecap Nancy Pelosi because she's a Democratic official. You've unfortunately seen politically fueled threats and violence in Wisconsin over the last few years, certainly all over the country. Do you think Republican politicians bear any responsibility for this violence? And just a broader question, what do we do about it as a

country? Well, if you look at a lot of the ads they run, or if you listen to their rhetoric, rarely do they take on people's positions on an issue. Or if they do, they'll do it in a way that they seem to be just out to make people hate other folks or hate each other or hate their opponents right and you got to condemn political violence every step of the way uh and it's not like a you know it's not when we talk about political violence and what leads up to it it is tough for somebody to act surprised that these things are happening based on what they're saying you, it is always an us versus them thing, and it shouldn't be that way, you know, especially here in a state like Wisconsin.

But the folks who tried to kidnap Governor Whitmer in Michigan, where they tried to take her was about 30 minutes outside of Madison, right? This stuff is right here at our doorsteps, and we have to condemn political violence, and we have to tear down the rhetoric every step of the way. And it calling out the violence is a step too late because the violence has happened. That means the rhetoric has won the day. We got to call out the rhetoric, you know, as soon as it comes out of these folks mouths like they use it to get votes. And it is damaging and is destabilizing to our institutions, right? And whether I can just sit here and say, yeah, Republicans, it is their fault for this,

or this Republican candidate, it is his fault for this. The reality is there are just some people who are just completely out of control with the things that they are saying. And the only way they're successful politically is by driving division further and further into the discourse. Mandela Barnes, thank you so much as always for joining Pod Save America and good luck in this final week. Hey, I appreciate you.

Thank you. And for those listening, please go to mandelabarnes.com so I don't have to send any more desperate text messages to you. I don't like doing as much as you don't like receiving them. I listen to the shows. I listen to the episodes, man.

I hear what you're saying about me. I hear it. I hear it. I walked out of the A block before I came here to 10 text messages from Kim Baines. I was like, man, I'm trying to donate as much as i can

donate your all right all right thank you so much good luck out there and uh and go uh go beat ron johnson hey i appreciate you thanks for having me thanks to mandela barn Barnes for joining us today. And we'll talk to you on Thursday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,

Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,

and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash pod save America.