Pod Save America - “Both Sides-ing the Insurrection.” (with Mehdi Hasan)

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Mehdi Hasan joins Jon Favreau to discuss Joe Biden’s town hall in Cincinnati, the Republican intra-party battle over vaccines and the 1/6 commission, and Tom Brady’s devastating takedown of Donald Trump. Then, Equis Research co-founder Stephanie Valencia talks to Jon about immigration and other issues on the minds of Latino voters.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.

I will not stop tweeting. I will not stop posting. I will not stop asking questions. That was Marjorie Taylor Greene repeating my own personal mantra. I will not stop tweeting. I will not stop posting. I will not stop posting. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. Dan's on vacation this week, and I am lucky to be joined by Mehdi Hassan, the host of The Mehdi Hassan Show on Peacock and MSNBC. Mehdi, welcome back to the pod.

Thanks so much for having me, Jon. I think it was a year ago that you were guest hosting on the pod with Tommy because it was when my son was born, and he's about to turn one tomorrow. So this has been a year since you've been on the pod with Tommy because it was when my son was born and he's about to turn one tomorrow. So this has been a year since you've been on the pod. Thanks. We have a lot of news to cover today. Joe Biden's town hall in Cincinnati, where he spoke about the pandemic, the economy and the filibuster, the Republicans intra-party battle over vaccines and the one six commission. And later I talked to Equis Research co-founder Stephanie Valencia about how Latino voters are reacting to all the latest news about immigration. But first, it's Thursday, which means we've released a brand new episode of Edith with President Wilson back in charge in the League of Nations vote days away.

Edith is nervous. There are only two more episodes of Edith, but you can binge the first six episodes now. Check it out. Also, the Crooked store is having a massive summer sale through July 31st, up to 70% off your favorite Crooked gear. And as always, we donate a portion of every order to vote riders. So check it out at crooked.com slash store. All right, let's get to the news. President Biden was in my wife, Emily's hometown of Cincinnati last night for a CNN town hall with Don Lemon. The president answered 90 minutes worth of questions, but kicked it off with a topic on everyone's mind, the pandemic that just won't quit. Here's a clip. So you said last month that this, that the virus is in retreat. Do you still feel that way? Look, here's, it's real simple. We have a pandemic for those who haven't gotten a vaccination.

a pandemic for those who haven't gotten a vaccination. It's that basic, that simple. 10,000 people have recently died. 9,950 of them or about are people who hadn't been vaccinated. So Biden went on to say that the CDC will likely announce that every child under 12 should wear a mask at school and that he expects full FDA approval for the vaccine sometime between late August and October, which would provide firmer legal ground for vaccine mandates. Mehdi, clearly we're in a new phase of the pandemic where things aren't as great as they seemed a few months ago, but much better than they were a year ago. How do you think that Biden and the White House should handle that? I think they should take it seriously, which they kind of are.

I think we've got to stop playing catch up. For me, it's less about Biden. It's more about all of us as a society in a country who want to keep writing this virus off and saying it's time to move on. It's back to normality. The number of times I've opened my nightly show on Peacock over the last eight months, nine months saying, oh, good news. You know, we're nearly there. Light at the end of the tunnel. Cases are down. And then actually,

one step forward, two steps back. This is a very resilient virus. The Delta variant is a serious thing. And I think that the CDC decision in May on masks, I wasn't a fan of it at the time. In hindsight, it could be the biggest blunder that we've seen from this administration. I mean, it's not it wasn't a political decision. It's not on Joe Biden's abs. Came from the scientists and the CDC, Fauci and Walensky and co. I think it was a mistake. I know why they did it to try and incentivize vaccine uptake. But you're looking now at, you know, the American Association of Academy of Pediatrics saying yesterday kids in school, the rules, as you mentioned, are changing. LA County has brought back indoor mask mandates in public places. I think we're

going to regret that as the summer goes on, because we've seen the parts of the country that are unvaccinated. We don't know, even with us fully vaccinated people, there's a whole debate about breakthrough cases, how high or how easy it is to get it or not. And I just feel like at every juncture of this pandemic, John, we have been understandably wanting to get on with it, like get back to normal, get back to normal. And it's an understandable human reaction, but it just doesn't work in the face of something like COVID-19. I mean, I try to separate this out into sort of the science and the politics. And on the science, I can understand the CDC decision on masks because the science still says that the vaccinations are extraordinarily protective, even with the more transmission of the virus. And if you do the math that you're going to get a certain percentage of breakthrough cases, even with the vaccines as protective as they are, you're going to get more breakthrough cases. So I understand the science of the mask. I do think the challenge was saying, okay, you know, unvaccinated people are going to put their

masks on and that's going to be on the honor system, right? So you can't tell if you're in a store who's vaccinated, who not, if no one's wearing a mask, which makes me think that the next place we need to go is, you know, vaccine passports or vaccine requirements. So if you're a business or you're a crowded event or you're holding to doing something like that, you say, look, we're not going to force you to get vaccinated, but you just can't be part of this, this event if you're not vaccinated. But we're too late to this conversation, John. The right have already led the way on this conversation by A, demonizing vaccine passports as some sort of kind of anti-American, illiberal anathema,

even though mandatory vaccinations for kids in school have been part of our society for decades. Vaccine passports when traveling internationally have been around for a hundred years. And there's even Supreme Court precedent. People should just go Google Jacobson versus Massachusetts. At 1905, Supreme Court came out saying states have the right to insist on things. And then, of course, there's the argument that, you know, Republicans are doing at a state level, right? In Montana, they passed a law saying

businesses cannot prohibit people, you know, any business cannot stop from providing goods to people who are unvaccinated. They're basically treating unvaccinated people as a protected class, like religion, race, gender, sexual orientation. It's like it's the new civil rights movement for the right. It's like you say they're they're fine. They're finally coming out for civil rights, but it's for unvaccinated people. Privileged white ignoramuses in the South who could get a vaccine. Millions of people around the world would love some of these American vaccines. vaccine. Millions of people around the world would love some of these American vaccines.

The level of privilege and ungratefulness involved in not getting vaccinated in a country like America where it's readily available and free, and then saying, not only am I not going to get vaccinated, but I insist on being able to walk into a business without a mask on, without being vaccinated and be treated like everyone else. No, I'm sorry. If they want to turn it into the civil rights movement, go for it. Because I think eventually, the majority of Americans who do get vaccinated are going to say, how long should we have to sacrifice for these people making everything worse for all of us? I'm pretty hard lying on this. And there was a tweet that went viral yesterday, which I stupidly shared and then deleted. So I should verify of Macron apparently saying, you can't go to restaurants and cafes. Why should the rest of us?

And afterwards, everyone's like, it's a fake quote. And I'm like, okay, it's a fake quote, but someone should say it for real. Because whatever that fake quote was- I believe it. Yeah, no, I believe that. Yeah, I'm a liberal. On this issue, there have to be restrictions.

Like I said, go check the Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court said in 1905 that, you know what? Liberty is not absolute for the individual when society collectively is at risk of mass death. Yeah, no, look, I feel the same way. You know, I'm here in LA and they, you know, reinstated the mask mandate and I'm completely fine with wearing a mask, of course. But, you know, the county health folks said, but everything is on the table if this gets worse. And I'm like, okay, we're not going to start going back to lockdowns and restrictions and closing businesses down when

we haven't even, the city of LA hasn't even mandated that its own employees get vaccinated. And you're going to start closing things down? No, I don't think so. It's not going to happen. I mean, no one's ever going to agree to lockdowns, unvaccinated. So the only issue now is how do you, A, incentivize people to get vaccinated, and B, and the French have done, what's not fake is that France has brought in all sorts of better incentives in terms of access to public places and all of that stuff. But, you know, and here in America, we've seen the vaccine lotteries have had some uptake. When you offer people money, surprise, surprise, there's a chance of money,

they get vaccinated. And then separately, yeah, we're going gonna have to start saying you know what the republicans call discrimination and civil rights movement fine i'm all for it let's have that argument i suspect they'll lose and i think it's a topic i like talking about these and your colleague brian boitler at crooked is very good on this which is yeah let's have the culture war and let's win it i totally agree with that um So the president also got a question from Don Lemon about the latest developments in Congress about his economic agenda, which some of the lamest people in Washington have taken to calling the BIF, the bipartisan infrastructure framework. Let's take a listen to the clip. You're talking about Senator Ron

Portman of Ohio. I'm sorry. No, but since you mentioned that infrastructure, the bipartisan infrastructure deal fail, the procedural vote today, right? But no, but yeah, it did the Senate irrelevant go on. Okay, and this is it negotiators say that they need more time Yeah, okay, so then but they expect the vote again on Monday But how much time do you think that they need to get this done to Monday? Look, no, I'm not being facetious I'm not being facetious. You had up to 20 Republicans sign a letter saying, we think we need this deal. We think we need this deal.

So I think there'll be, by the way, the reason we're talking this way, we need 60 votes to get something moving. And what's going to happen is, I believe, because I take my Republican colleagues at their word when you shake. I come from a tradition in the Senate. You shake your hand. That's it. You keep your word. Most of the Democratic and Republican senators negotiating the deal seem to agree with Biden that they'll be ready by Monday. All the Republicans sent a letter to Schumer basically saying, yeah, we're ready to go on

Monday. There are a few Republican skeptics in the gang. What do you think, Mehdi? Will bipartisanship prevail the holy grail of Washington? There's literally no word that annoys me more than bipartisanship. Although biff is an annoying word, and I'm glad you highlighted how nerdy it is. I would also say that I have an instinctive irritation with biff because biff was, of course, the baddie from Back to the Future. And biff in Back to the Future, for those of you who don't know, was based on Donald Trump. A lot of people don't know that trivia. I did not know that, actually. They did model the character on Donald Trump at the time in the 80s or whenever it was. They did a good job.

They did a good job. Bipartisanship. It's the dumbest thing in the world. I'm with Senator Bernie Sanders, who says, when people got their checks from the American Rescue Plan, they did not say, did a Republican and a Democrat vote for me to get this check? How was this check produced? They just care that they got a check. They just care that they're getting child tax credit payments. They want their bridge not to fall down.

I don't think they give a shit if the bridge falls down with the assistance. The bridge was saved by only Democratic votes, not Republican votes. So I do have an issue with bipartisanship. There is no bipartisanship. I mean, sorry, all of this stuff, all of this stuff is, for me, is secondary to voting rights. I know we're going to talk about it. It was one of the big things on the CNN town hall as well yesterday. For me, I'm kind of like, OK, they got some Republicans on board.

Great. We've saved our bridges. Have we saved our democracy? Like, all of this is secondary to the only issue that matters to me right now, which is preserving our elections, our democracy, our voting. And for that, there is no bipartisanship. So great. If Joe Biden can get these people on board for 600 billion of new money, great.

There's 3.5 trillion on the table without the Republicans. That's there. They've said now that if they don't get Republicans by Monday, they're going to add the $600 billion to the $3.5 trillion, which will give us $4.1 trillion, which is a good amount of money. I would like to see more, but it's a good amount of money. If you take $4.1 trillion, you add it to the $2 trillion from the American Rescue Plan. That's $6 trillion in six months. John, I was not a fan of Joe Biden. That's a lot of money.

I mean, you're talking real money now. I was not a fan of Joe Biden, as you may know, during the primary season. If you'd come to me a year, year and a half ago and said, Joe Biden will deliver $6 trillion. Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer will deliver $6 trillion in the first six months. I would have laughed in your face. So I will take that $6 trillion and I will say that's a win. However, that $6 trillion is delivered. I wouldn't have believed you if you told me that a President Bernie Sanders or President Elizabeth Warren would have been able to deliver $6 trillion, even though they probably wanted to. Like, that's just, I never would have imagined. No, no, I agree. And if they can get this little bipartisan, hard infrastructure done,

for me, it's like, you know, if that's what makes you happy, go for it. If that's what's going to make Joe Biden happy, if that's what's going to make the authors of Politico playbook happy, fine. Get it done. I don't give a damn. I would rather see it done in a partisan way. As Bernie put it the other day, I prefer partisan bills to bipartisan because you get more money. Yeah, no, I think even more than Joe Biden, this whole fucking charade is to please joe manchin and kirsten cinema so they can say okay we got our bipartisan deal now we're ready for the 3.5 trillion i have some concern that if the bipartisan deal falls apart most democrats will try to add the money to the reconciliation bill but mansion and cinema might say hold on hold on 3.5 might be fine 4.1 might be too much so i'm like give them the win

and let's move on the issue will will be, who did they blame? The issue will be, whose fault will it be? And this has been the great debate amongst demographs since January, which is, and this was the Schumer plan, which hasn't quite worked, which is, we will show Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema that Republicans can't be trusted and will block us and won't work with us. And then they will see the light. They will have their kumbaya.

and will block us and won't work with us. And then they will see the light. They will have their kumbaya. They will have their Damascene conversion, and they will come over to fixing the filibuster and passing things in a partisan way, as was supposed to be. I've never bought that because I've never thought the argument, the problem with Cinnamon Manchin is that they don't get it. They get everything.

It's just they don't want to. I mean, I don't know if you guys have played the tape. We played the tape on our show that More Perfect Union found of Kirsten Sinema from what, 2011, 2010? When she's going on, she's on a brilliant tear about how Democrats should use reconciliation, ignore Joe Lieberman, forget about the filibuster. You don't need 60 votes. She knows all the arguments. She said them. The former Green Party member who has become the thorn in the side of progressives right now. You mentioned the filibuster. It's an issue near and dear to your heart and mine.

Let's listen to Biden's answer on that and voting rights last night. I would go back to that where you have to maintain the floor. You have to stand there and talk and hold the floor. You can't just say I understand that. But what difference is that if you hold the floor for, you know, a day or a year, what difference does it make? Here's the thing for me. You talked about people, and this is important for people who look like me. My grandmother would sit around when I was a kid, fifth grade, had a fifth grade education. I learned that she couldn't read when I was doing my homework. She would tell me stories about people asking her to count the number

of jelly beans in the jar or the soap. So why is protecting the filibuster, is that more important than protecting voting rights, especially for people who fought and died for that? No. It's not. I want to see the United States Congress, the United States Senate, pass S-1 and S-4, the John Lewis Act, get them to my desk so I can sign them. But here's the deal.

What I also want to do, I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats. We bring along Republicans who I know know better. They know better than this. Do they know better? So if I was looking at the glass half full here, I would say that Biden once again endorsed bringing back the talking filibuster, which is a reform. He did make passing reference later to an exception for voting rights. So I guess that's progress. If I was looking at the glass half empty, I'd say, come on, Joe, what the fuck are you waiting for? What do you think? What's going on there? I'm glass half empty. Look, I've been, as I mentioned a moment ago, I've been very praiseworthy, you know, full of praise for

this administration on things they've got right that I didn't think they would get right, especially on the economic front, antitrust front, monopolies front, spending money front, checks, good, tick, tick, tick. Voting rights is the kind of black mark that this administration gets. They've talked a good game. They have willed the ends but not the means. And I, for one, am deeply frustrated when I see Joe Biden say to Don Lemon, well, Don Lemon asked him straight up, you can't do it without getting rid of the filibuster. And Joe Biden disagreed. He said, no. And no one asked him, well, how do you plan to do it? He says, I want, you just played that clip. I want to sign S1 and the John Lewis bill. How does it get to your desk? He gave a great speech in Philly

saying this is the threat to voting rights. But again, no plan. It's all very well saying you support S1. Kyrsten Sinema says she supports S1. It's irrelevant what you say you support. The issue is how do you get it done, especially in a place like the Senate, filled with all its weird procedures? And as long as you have a 60-vote requirement, you will not get it done. Biden talks about Republicans who know better. If I was there last night, I'd have said, name them. Name them on this stage. Because right now, there is zero Republican votes for S1. Not even Mitt Romney will come on board for S1. Take the John Lewis voting rights act. There is one Republican vote for it.

Lisa Murkowski, she's probably going to run as an independent next time around anyways. So there are no Republicans supporting these bills, let alone 10. So I think it's an insult to our intelligence now at this point in July to be told again and again by Democratic members of Congress, Democratic senators, the White House that, oh, we'll get there. We'll pass it. We have a plan. No, there is no plan. Jen Psaki admitted the other day in the White House briefing, they don't have a specific strategy, a legislative strategy for getting this done, because there isn't one. The only way to get it done is to get rid of the

filibuster. The only way to get rid of the filibuster is to get Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to agree to that. The only way to get them to agree to that is to put pressure on them, either publicly or privately, to quote Jim Clyburn, do it in a microphone, do it on the phone, just do it. Carve out an exception on the filibuster for voting rights legislation. Right now, today, John, the Brennan Center put out a new report updating how many states have passed bills restricting the right to vote. Think about this. Think about how bizarre this situation is. State legislatures run by Republicans can pass any bill they like by a simple majority taking away voting rights. At a federal level, to pass a bill to stop that, you need 60 votes, including 10 Republicans.

That makes no sense. If a Martian landed on planet Earth and you explain that system, they would say, that's bonkers. What are you talking about? Who signed up for this? The President of the United States, the Senate Majority Leader. It just makes no sense to me how anyone can think at this point. And by the way, one last point on this. It's very dangerous to hear Joe Biden talking about people turning out to vote. Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic has been doing reporting

on this, that the White House seems to think privately, despite publicly saying it's an existential threat, it's Jim Crow and steroids. Privately, they're a bit more relaxed than they're letting on because they think that they can out-organize republican voter suppression that they can use turnout to get around it which is nonsense number one in midterms people don't turn out in record levels as you know better than me John and Joe Biden knows better than both of us I don't know why he said they'll still turn out in record numbers they won't not in 2022 and number two you can't out you can't use turnout as a way of getting around the gerrymander like you can't out organize a jury the whole purpose of a gerrymander is you

can have 100 turnout you'll still lose because they designed the district to have more people than your side so the idea that turnout and turnout doesn't work against the gerrymander turnout doesn't work against election subversion which he mentioned it weirdly in cnn oh, for the first time, legislatures are going to overturn the results. OK, well, if they're going to overturn the results, then turnout's irrelevant, right? Because you could turn out and win it by 10% margin, and they'll just overturn the result claiming fraud. So none of this makes any sense. It's killing me to see how superficial the debate is, even in DC, to see clever people

who know better on the Democratic side saying nonsensical, airy-fairy things. And time's running out. Beto O'Rourke's made the point. Mid-August, gerrymandering, all of that stuff kicks in, census data. You know, we do not have time on our side. No, look, I'm consistently infuriated by this. I try to put myself in the shoes of the folks in the Biden White House because I do believe that they genuinely want to protect voting rights. And, the folks in the Biden White House, because I do believe that they genuinely want to protect voting rights. And, you know, you sort of heard him last night be like, well, if I if I we talk, if I come out against the filibuster, then this whole debate is about the filibuster. And it's not about voting rights. And that's what Republican wants, which sounds like some kind of nonsense that a political advisor would tell you. But I don't understand why Joe Biden just doesn't say,

OK, here's what I want. I want Joe Manchin and the Democrats in the Senate and everyone to put together a bill that just does three things protects the right to vote, stops gerrymandering and prevents election subversion. Everything else you can you can put on the put on the cutting room floor. Those are the three most important things. Right. To get rid of voting restrictions to do those other things. And then I want you to either find me the 10 Republicans who are going to support that, or if not, it's time to get rid of the filibuster, right? Like, at that point, like, I actually do believe that it's really tough for public pressure or pressure from Joe Biden to change Joe Manchin's mind or Kyrsten Sinema's mind. At the end of the day, they're senators. They're going to do what they want. But my question is, or Kyrsten Sinema's mind. Like at the end of the day,

they're senators, they're going to do what they want. But my question is, why not try? Why not try? And then if you fail, you fail. You know, like what's the backlash at that point? They're going to be so mad.

I mean, we're failing right now. We're failing right now. And there's another line Biden said last night. He said, which kind of reveals that his heart's not in this. He's closer to Joe Manchin than he is to Elizabeth Warren on the filibuster. Let's be honest about that. He's never been a fan again. He's closer to Joe Manchin than he is to Elizabeth Warren on the filibuster. Let's be honest about that. He's never been a fan again. He's a preacher of the Senate for decades, whatever it is. And he said last night when Don Lemon pushed him in a very

personal way, saying, I'm black, my grandmother couldn't vote, et cetera, et cetera. What does Biden say? Why would you keep this? And he says, because if we get rid of it, there'll be chaos. What does that mean? The Senate is going to run around with no clothes on. What chaos is going to happen in D.C. that's worse than the death of democracy? He is worried about Mitch McConnell's threat to completely grind the Senate to a halt if this happens, to use all these procedures to like make sure, you know, deny people quorum and all this bullshit. Which, again, Mitch McConnell can try. But Chuck Schumer is the majority leader. And so it may delay business quite a bit, but Chuck Schumer could also change more rules to sort of stop them from grinding it to a halt. We have the power here.

Also, I think we're undervaluing the pressure argument. I would argue that the listeners of Pod Save America and the viewers of my show on MSNBC and Peacock, yeah, they follow this stuff and they get it. The average American, if I went and asked my, I don't know, one of my friends who's not political or a family member, what is the filibuster? They don't have a clue. What is budget reconciliation? They've never heard those two words put together in their life, right? This is a DC media political thing. If you go to an average American and say, do you think majority 51 people should be able to vote in favor of something and 49 people lose? I think they will accept that point. I think if you go to the American people and say, you know what, they just lost a bipartisan bill on the 1-6 commission. It was lost. What was the vote? 54 to 35. If you go to an American and say, should 54 people lose to 35 people? I think they'll say,

no, they shouldn't. And I think that is the argument that Joe Biden should be using for the bully pulpit if his heart was in this. If he understood how anti-democratic the filibuster is and how we need to get rid of it, I believe he could make that argument. They've made the argument on the economy, on COVID, on vaccinations. They've done a full court press on Capitol Hill to get the bipartisan infrastructure deal. We have not seen that public pressure. We've not seen the campaign. And I think Adam Jentleson, who I'm sure you've had on the show many times, former advisor to the Senate majority, he makes the point, you know, no one's asking him to go and win over Mitch McConnell. We're asking him to win

over a couple of people on his own side who are already kind of on the fence and claim they support voting rights. They are susceptible. I'm not saying it'll work, as you say. It might fail. But what is the alternative? We are in the midst of the greatest attack of democracy in my lifetime. What's the alternative? I mean, you mentioned voters. We talked about this last week. The largest pro-Biden super PAC just did a bunch of focus groups on a whole range of issues. They asked them about the filibuster. And the people who are conducting the focus group said they were even surprised that even some of the more moderate swing voters, even to some like somewhat conservative voters, were completely fine with getting rid of the filibuster once they were explained what it was. And once they told them that, like, shouldn't shouldn't a simple majority be able to pass legislation? They were like, of course.

I mean, it's the most basic American idea, like a simple majority be able to pass legislation? They were like, of course. I mean, it's the most basic American idea, like a simple majority. The idea that I don't think people understand that you need 10 Republicans to pass a popular agenda. It makes no sense. And to come full circle, it is deeply frustrating to see the president of the United States who spent four decades in the Senate, who claims this is a huge attack on democracy, saying on live TV that, no, we don't have to get rid of the filibuster to get this done. If Donald Trump said that, I would say it was gaslighting. It is gaslighting. He knows it has to be got rid of to get done. We all know it has to be. There's simply no other way S1 reaches his desk without some change to the filibuster. Let's just be honest about that, please. Okay, let's talk about the other big story in politics this week, the battle for the soul of

the Republican Party, which Republicans with a soul have been losing for some time now. But over the last few days, we've heard a surprising number of Republican politicians and pundits push back on the anti-vax conspiracies being peddled by people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Here's a clip. These shots need to get in everybody's arm as rapidly as possible or we're going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don't yearn for that we went through last year. Please take COVID seriously. I can't say it enough.

Enough people have died. We don't need any more deaths. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals you trust based on your unique medical history, your current medical condition, and you and your doctor make a very important decision

for your own safety. Take it seriously. You also have a right to medical privacy. Doctor-patient confidentiality is also important. And it absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. These vaccines are saving lives. They are reducing mortality. But if you really want to stop this nonsense at the CDC, just get vaccinated.

Why do you think that the Delta variant has caused so many Republicans to start singing the vaccine's praise after months of either pushing vaccine conspiracies or saying nothing while they spread? It's a good question. I don't know the answer, actually. I genuinely am finding these last couple of days amusing and intriguing did a memo go out like it's across the board it's republican senators it's very coordinated fox uh there's been a little bit of pushback on fox you saw tucker carlson and charlie kirk basically sub-tweeting sean hannity on the show like mocking people who are virtue signaling and trying to do this it's weird i don't know what's happened did they all just get like a poll that came out that they was shared did they get a lawsuit it's very very odd it's welcome it's clearly welcome but it's very odd i would just say one

thing john you mentioned kind of the struggle for the soul of the republican body i personally have tried to push back in my own in my own writing when i'm writing scripts for my show like we all thought we all immediately put into this battle for the Republican Party, Liz Cheney, et cetera. And it's like, there is no battle for the Republican Party. There is, it's done. It was won a long time ago. What battle?

I know people in DC and, you know, political playbook types and, you know, people in green rooms. We want to like believe this because we meet people from the Lincoln Project and it's wonderful. But the reality is, let's just do real world stuff. And, you know, people in green rooms, we want to believe this because we meet people from the Lincoln Project. And it's wonderful. But the reality is, let's just do real world stuff. Let's not lie to ourselves. There is no battle. I mean, the battle was lost when Donald Trump beat 17 or 16 top Republican candidates in 2016.

The battle was lost when he praised neo-Nazis and Republicans did nothing. The battle was lost when only Mitt Romney voted to convict last year. The battle was lost when the majority of Republicans voted to overturn the election in the House in January. When more Republicans voted for him in 2020 than in 2016. Stop telling me there is a civil war in the Republican Party. It's the weirdest civil war

I've ever seen when only one side wins all the time. All the time. I'm old enough to remember, John, when Liz Cheney survived her vote. Remember that a few months ago? And people would tell me, see? See? Republicans saved Liz Cheney.

And then she was then fired a few months later. It's like, come on. Let's stop this BS. And I think Kevin McCarthy taking his toys and going home is a reminder of that. I think Donald Trump having these pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago is a reminder of that. I think Ron DeSantis, who you just played, the fact that if Donald Trump doesn't run in 2024, the favorite is Ron DeSantis, a mini Trump, a man who came to prominence building a Lego wall with his kid

as part of his campaign. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the GOP. But look, if some of them are going to shift a bit on vaccines, great. Because we all know, John, no matter what you and I say on our platforms about vaccines, no matter what Joe Biden says on a CNN town hall about vaccines, they're not listening, right? They're only going to listen if people on their side tell them to do it.

So hopefully there will be some. Although, you know, it's a very low bar. Sean Hannity didn't say go out and get vaccinated. He just said, I believe in the science. And then he undermined other policies like going door to door and having mandatory vaccines. So it's a battle. You still have people like Madison Cawthorn saying, if somebody comes to your door, they're coming to steal your gun or your Bible. You still have Marjorie Taylor Greene being suspended from

Twitter this week for vaccine disinformation. She's not some fringe figure. She's one of the highest fundraisers in the Republican Party right now, sadly. So Donald Trump, the most important Republican in America today, he's heading more into the disinformation territory on vaccines. He put out a statement saying, well, they don't trust the results of the election. So they don't trust that. I mean, the man's I mean, you have to admire his message discipline. He even makes vaccines about his defeat in the election. He's like, they didn't trust the election results. They don't trust vaccines. It's bizarre how his deflection is to the election. So unless you get Trump shifting, unless you get Fox across the board,

I would argue, maybe again, this is me being pessimist glass half full. You can take your Sean Hannity's, you can take your Mitch McConnell's, Ron DeSantis's, put them up against Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, all the crazies on Facebook. I don't know. I'm not sure we're anywhere near where we should be in terms of right-wing tipping points no we're not at all and i mean look i think it's welcome that some of republicans are having a change of heart um i don't know why either i don't know if it's a poll or just the very simple fact that their voters are dying i

mean their voters have been dying all the time they didn't give it up before it right but it's like you know it's hitting it's hitting red states and unvaccinated populations particularly hard. And they are overwhelmingly Republican and overwhelmingly conservative. So I think that, you know, they need those voters at some point. But look, I also think that on the Democratic side, what we need to do is what you were just saying is do what Republicans would do in this situation, which is keep pushing them even further. OK, that's nice that you said you believe in vaccinations. That's nice that you say, oh, people should get vaccinated. The next step is to call out your fellow Republicans and Republican pundits for the misinformation that they're spreading. Make Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy call out Marjorie

Taylor Greene for her misinformation. Make them call out Tucker Carlson. Make Sean Hannity call out Tucker Carlson, right? Like, I think we need to kind do that this is sort of sadly right no no no they're not gonna do it but to do that that is the fundamental problem no they're not of our political issues who's gonna make them do that on vaccines who's gonna make them do it on insurrection who's gonna it's the question of our time it is it would it's it's back to sort of the point uh you were bringing up brian boitler's tweet on this which is you know he he saw mitch mcconnell saying this and, I think this shows the culture war is winnable and not just for partisan gain, but to make Republicans pay for and stop doing sociopathic sociopathic things. I think when we hear this, that the Democrats and progressives in the media and people need to push harder, not to say like, great job. You all get a gold star. thanks for coming over being pro vaccine great

like no no no this isn't enough at all you need to call out all the bullshit that's happening on your side or fuck off i mean i'll give you one example of the culture war stuff where the democrats always drop the ball as do people in the media uh where republicans pass a bill in texas basically saying you don't need to teach martin luther king saying you don't need to teach Martin Luther King anymore. You don't need to say the KKK is immoral. Did you see any congressional reporter running down to Holloway after a Republican member of Congress saying, do you agree with that? Running off to Kevin McCarthy asking for a comment. Can you imagine if the Democrats had done some version of that at a state level? I mean, it's amazing how, and that again, whether we like it or not, elite media takes its cues from elite politicians. And therefore, it is on members of the Democratic Party to say, this is a story, this is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the Texas bill. We're going to talk about the fact that, you know, why is every member of Congress this morning, every Democratic member of Congress not going out on TV and putting out a statement saying that every Republican should demand Tucker Carlson apologize to Officer Harry Dunn for calling him not a police officer, but an angry

left-wing political activist. Put aside the racial stereotype of the angry black man. The idea that Tucker Carlson, the highest rated host on the right, the man who all Republican politicians go on his show, why are they not all being asked to call out Tucker Carlson? If Rachel Maddow on my network had come out and said, you know, a certain police officer is not a police officer, whatever it is, in another context. Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing right now? They would say Democrats should not be able to go on that show anymore. They should call her out. We want a statement from Biden, a statement from Pelosi.

But whose fault is this, John? Where are the House Democrats? How many House Democrats are there? 200 plus House Democrats today. Where are they? What are they doing today? Whatever they're doing, I can tell you it's the most important

that's coming out and fighting and winning these culture wars because the culture wars aren't going anywhere. This democratic strategy of, we're going to talk about kitchen table issues. Sorry, that's not 2014. That's not happening. Well, it's not a public opinion issue either.

I guarantee if you polled, should schools be banned from teaching about Martin Luther King Jr.? Like, I don't need a poll for that. issue either i guarantee if you polled uh should schools be banned from teaching about martin luther king jr like i know i don't need a poll for that i know how that would come down should 20 republicans not give the gold star congressional gold medal to capital police officers i don't need a poll for that yeah again i think i don't need the poll for that 90 left and right i think it'll be north korean style results to that kind of poll so the other loony bullshit from republicans this week which you referenced uh came from house minority leader kevin mccarthy who requested to fill three of the five republican seats on the

select panel investigating the january 6th attacks with house members who voted to further the insurrectionist goal of overturning the election results. Jim Jordan, Jim Banks and Troy Nels. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded by rejecting Jordan and Banks, which she has the power to do. McCarthy then responded by pulling all five members from the committee, leaving the Pelosi appointed Liz Cheney as the sole Republican on the panel for now, though there's news reports this morning that Pelosi may also appoint Republican Adam Kinzinger. Cheney told reporters that she's supportive of Pelosi's decision and then said this. Any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law. And Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.

Why do you think Pelosi put her foot down on this? I'm amazed. I've been someone who's been very critical of Nancy Pelosi for not put her foot down on this? I'm amazed. I've been someone who's been very critical of Nancy Pelosi for not putting her foot down more when it comes to Republican extremism in particular. And I was disappointed a couple of days ago when she said, well, voting against the election, that's not going to be a deal breaker. And then within 24, 36 hours, she came out and chucked two of the three off. And she said in a press conference today that she didn't throw them off because they voted against it,

because she kept Troy Nails on, the freshman congressman who did vote against it. Yeah, which is confusing. Which is confusing. And Republicans have jumped on that as well to say, well, what is it then? But I think Liz Cheney said something very interesting, not in the clip you played,

but in the wider conversation. She said, you cannot have two people, one of whom is a material witness to what happened and the other of whom made comments material witness to what happened, and the other of whom made comments clearly wanting to sabotage the inquiry. And again, it's sad that it requires Liz Cheney to be doing the oppo stuff. Like, where are the 200 House Democrats making this point? Why did I have to hear it from Liz Cheney? But she's right. It's a point that's been under discussed, which is Jim Jordan was at a meeting in the White House on December 21st with Donald

Trump, with a lot of the other Republican crazies. And at that meeting, they discussed how to overturn the election and what the plan should be for January the 6th. So if you're at a meeting where you're discussing January the 6th, yeah, you should not be investigating that meeting. That's just basics. I'm not sure why Liz Cheney is making that point. And it's not an official statement from Pelosi or from House Democrats doing media rounds. I don't get it. Again, maybe Democrats just don't do politics very well. I mean, Banks suggested that it was the Biden administration's fault.

The attacks were actually the fault of the Biden administration. He also said, why are we not investigating the left? So that's the other point of Liz Cheney, which is one guy is a material witness, Jim Jordan, and the other guy, Banks, did come out yesterday and say, well, I don't agree with this committee because it needs to investigate the left. So yeah, you shouldn't be on the committee if you don't agree to the terms of the committee.

And in general, like this whole DC, and I know a lot of people are upset on social media today with Politico playbook email this morning saying, well, this is a great, this is really bad. It's not. Yeah, well, I'm one of them. I'm one of them. This idea that it should have been

by partners and Nancy Pelosi has given a win to the Republicans. This is not rocket science. This is not both sides. If you're investigating an insurrection, you don't put pro-insurrection people on the investigating committee. This is not rocket science.

You know, if you're investigating 9-11, you wouldn't put people who say 9-11 was an inside job or the towers never came down on the committee investigating 9-11. This is not hard. And I don't understand why more Democrats are not saying this stuff. Adam Smith, to be fair, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, did say it on my show yesterday. He made the 9-11 point. But just like more of them should be pointing out that Jim Jordan is a material witness.

A lot of these Republicans, we don't know what ties they had to the insurrection. We don't know about the supposed tours that were given to insurrections. That's an allegation that's been made. We don't know what conversations were had with the White House. We only found out that Mo Brooks spoke at the rally on the ellipse when he said, you know, kick ass, take names. We only found out that the White House told him to give that speech after he was sued and he came out and gave that as his defense, that he was on federal government business. So what conversations will have between the White House and members of Congress? What conversations will have between members of Congress and insurrectionists? Yeah, I would rather not have the accused members of Congress as part of the investigation. Yeah, crazy idea, right? I do want to ask you a media question

about this. So Playbook writes this morning that Republicans who voted to overturn the election have a, quote, legitimate grievance now and that Pelosi's move will, quote, make the investigation even easier to dismiss for people who aren't diehard members of Team Blue. My question is, how are these supposedly smart reporters so easily duped by some of the dumbest fucking politicians on the planet well what do you think's going on it's a combo of two things i think one is it is just being duped by you know their sources and the fact that they have you know they're friendly with republicans and that's just the reality they don't see the republicans in an objective way as many others as random members of the public do perhaps um and number two i think it is i think it is a sense of, this is how we do journalism. It is both sides.

And we thought, some people naively thought that an insurrection, an armed, violent insurrection in which members of Congress were almost attacked and killed, in which a New York Times journalist, photographer, was beaten to the ground, right? Fellow members of the press, there's always a joke, right? That journalists only take things seriously when they're at risk.

Well, these are your colleagues who at risk on january 6th were running also from the insurrectionists and yet that happens and six months later as you say the legitimate grievance is the pro-insurrection party complaining that they don't get to be on the insurrection investigation don't forget by the way there was an opportunity for a bipartisan commission. Nancy Pelosi offered that. Schumer offered it. They turned it down. And I'm so fed up of every development in Washington, D.C. being seen as, this is bad for the Democrats. It's never seen as bad for the Republicans. It's baked in that Republicans are bad. We have such a, you know, it's the Trump thing of grading on a curve. We as a media have got so used to Republican bad faith that,

you know, it's dog bites man. It's like, we just take it for granted. Oh, Mitch McConnell blocked something outrageous, but that's what Mitch McConnell does, right? No, that's not what we should expect from the Senate minority leader. It's not what we expected in the past. We have given these people a pass because we just assume, it's really weird. We go, we say to ourselves, these are really bad bad faith obstructionist people so it kind of makes sense that they're doing that and then because of that the bad bad faith people get away with it it just makes no sense it's so frustrating to see this and also we meet we journalists we are not bystanders we are part of the story so when we say oh the

perception is that this will be seen as one sided. Who's doing the perceiving? Well, it also shows you how useless it is to have, you know, and I'm glad she's on our side on this, but to have a Liz Cheney or an Adam Kinzinger, right? Because you think, okay, they're siding with the Democrats. So now it's bipartisan. So reporters will understand it's bipartisan now. But reporters have decided that it doesn't count that Liz Cheney is on the panel, that it doesn't count that Adam Kinzinger is going to be on the panel, that it doesn't count

that they're going to have a bunch of Republican staffers on there. She's no longer a member of Congress who voted 97% of the time by her own account with Donald Trump. She's no longer the daughter of the former vice president of the United States.

She's no longer a longstanding right-wing neoconservative hawk. Suddenly now she's a flaming liberal because kevin mccarthy and jim jordan say so and we must take their word and we and now we can't count her we can't count her as bipartisan anymore like we can't count her as part of it because that's the rule that then be the rules we didn't make him and it's just so ridiculous and just to put just one thing john nothing nothing with the greatest respect like you're saying we the democrats right you work for barack obama you're a you the Democrats. You work for Barack Obama.

You raise money for Democrats. I'm not a Democrat. I like a lot of Democratic policies. I would have preferred, I'm very open on this from a personal point of view, not speaking on behalf of any employer, I'd have preferred for Donald Trump not to have won the election. I was glad when he didn't. But the reality is, this isn't even about, we shouldn't even fall into the trap that this is about Democrat, Republican.

Because then both sides, journalists as well, would say, see, that's why we're taking a middle position. This is not about right and left. It's about right and wrong. It's about truth and falsehood. This is about an armed insurrection. The people who attacked the Congress were not going to check and see who was a Republican or a Democrat journalist, who was a conservative or a liberal journalist when they did the attacking. So for me, it's not even about party politics. It's about, you know, I said it.

I think I said it on this show. Let me say it again. I think I said it on this show to Tommy. I'm going to say it one more time. The job of a journalist, if somebody says it's raining outside and somebody says it's not raining outside, is not to say one person says it's raining,

the other person says it's not raining. The job of a journalist is to open the fricking window and put their head outside and check if it's raining, right? says it's not raining the job of a journalist is to open the freaking window and put their head outside and check if it's raining right so that same applies in the context of investigating in the short no it it certainly should and you're right it the the proper frame for this is a battle to sort of save and preserve democracy and the people who are on that side versus the people who are antithetical to the preservation of democracy and who are small. Yeah, exactly. It's all about small D Democrats.

We are all supposedly small D Democrats. And that is the better frame for it. So there's a new CBS poll out. 67% of Americans describe the attack on the Capitol as trying to overturn the election. 56% of Americans describe it as an insurrection. attack on the Capitol as trying to overturn the election. 56% of Americans describe it as an insurrection, but a little over half of all Trump voters describe it as defending freedom and patriotism. What's your reaction to those numbers? First of all, I talked about it on the show last night on Peacock. It's sickening. I mean, first of all, I've watched a lot of footage, as I'm sure

you have, of the actual insurrection. Some of the stuff that obviously the House impeachment managers played, some of the stuff that came out at the time. I've interviewed Capitol police officers on my show who were injured badly in the attack. I've interviewed Brian Sicknick's mother and partner on my MSNBC show and spoken to them about that tragedy in their family. It's disgusting to see so supposedly patriotic Americans who claim to be the party of law and order and blue lives matter, saying stuff like this was about defending freedom. And partly you could say, well, they're not to blame. They've imbibed all this propaganda from Fox News, from Donald Trump, saying it was a love fest, from Ron Johnson saying these were patriots, from Andrew Clyde saying these were just normal tourists. So that's the kind of propaganda they've imbibed. But I'm

sorry, these people have agency. It's disgusting. It's not hard to find video from the attack. There's so much of it now coming out. Scott McFarlane, NBC investigative reporter in DC, just showed his Twitter timeline. He has all these videos coming out of the court cases. They are horrifying to watch. Horrifying. You listen to Michael Fanone talking about what happened to him, the officer. So it's disgusting is my first response to that poll. And then my second response from a purely political angle is win the culture war. I mean, look at the polling. 67%.

I'm just going to read it out here again. I know you just said it. So again, 67% say it was trying to overturn the election. One in three Trump voters say it wasn't. More than half of Americans say it was an insurrection. One in five Trump voters say it was. In terms of investigating, three quarters say we need to know more about what happened. So the polling is very clear. This is a very straightforward culture wars issue. America was attacked. Capitol Hill was attacked. Police officers were attacked. And the majority of Americans think that was really bad and something should be done.

The minority of Americans who are represented by one of our two political parties think it wasn't that bad, think it was actually kind of good and think we don't need to know anything more. That's an easy battle to win. I mean, I don't understand why. And Joe Biden, to be fair, is good on this issue. But he was last night. But it just needs to be full court press. Like this is a party that is anti-police, anti-law enforcement. You know, I happen to be someone who supports the idea of defunding the police, right?

I have, that's my personal political position. But from a pure partisan perspective, if I wasn't a journalist with my own opinions, and I was someone saying to one side of a political divide, what should be done here? It's not rocket science. The party that does actually support police officers who are under attack should be attacking the other party who claims to support police officers. This is not hard. The definition of a wedge issue is an issue that unites your party and splits the other party. And this this issue of whether it was an insurrection of where they were trying to overturn the election,

the entire attack on democracy from Trump and his forces is an issue that unites our party, splits the other party, and probably we have a vast majority of independents on our side as well, which makes me think, again, as we head into 2022, 2024 and beyond, we should not forget this issue. This should be front and center. I'm someone who completely agrees with the idea that economic issues are important and kitchen table issues are important. I think Democrats should talk about them. And I think people really care about them. They care about their material well-being, improving their life, but it's not sufficient. And this is the issue of the day. This is the existential issue

that we face right now, right? Exactly. It's also, as you say, not just not sufficient. I was about to say existential. You beat me to it. It's the existential issue of our time because let's be honest you can't go into 2022 2024 this is part of the election right let's not forget this is not this is not a poll that came out about is barack obama born in kenya or not which was the first inkling that these people have lost their minds and deplorables is an understatement right that was already we already saw that they were conspiracy theorists they They were susceptible to mad racist lies. This is actually about democracy itself. So it's not just these people are bonkers. It's these people are bonkers and could destroy the whole damn thing. So let's be clear. If 55% of Trump voters say that the insurrectionists were

defending freedom, next time round, John, and there will be a next time, next time round, there's an attempt on the election. Next time round, there's an attack on the Capitol. Next time round, John, and there will be a next time. Next time round, there's an attempt on the election. Next time round, there's an attack on the Capitol. Next time round, there's an armed violent insurrection. There's not going to be even an impeachment trial. There's not even going to be a Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, or Lindsey Graham calling out Trump for 24 hours. Nothing. Because next time round, the base will not just be okay with it, they'll be demanding it. I mean, this is what Daniel Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky, the base will not just be okay with it, they'll be demanding it. I mean, this is what Daniel Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky, the political scientists who wrote How Democracies Die, they wrote this Atlantic essay a couple of weeks ago. I urge everyone to go read it. This is the

point they make, that next time round, Republican politicians won't be saying, well, what do I do to speak out against this? To be fair, a lot of them did speak out after Jan 6 and then went quiet. Next time around, they won't even do that because everything keeps moving. The Overton window keeps moving on the right. Next time around, they'll be like, oh, I need to get behind this insurrection. Next time around, you won't see Kevin McCarthy ringing Donald Trump saying, stop it. You'll see Kevin McCarthy jumping in front of the crowd saying, let's go, because that way is the future of the Republican Party. Pure authoritarianism and neo-fascism. Mehdi, before I let you go, I do want to turn your attention to one minor

but critical victory in the fight against fascism from someone I always knew would come through for us, just like he has in seven Super Bowls. Let's take a listen. Not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won. And in fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won.

I understand that. You understand that, Mr. President? I understand that. Yeah. And personally, you know, it's nice for me to be back here. We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing. And they started calling me Sleepy Tom.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for when Donald Trump saw that clip, which you know that he has by now? Oh, yes. So I'm not a big follower of American football, partly because I only became an American last year. And for me, football is still what you call soccer. And you actually kick it with your feet. So it's bizarre. I've never understood American football. But the Tom Brady thing was hilarious, just from the Trump perspective. He did it on purpose. It was very well delivered. Joe purpose. It was very well delivered. Joe Biden's response was very well delivered. And I feel like the thing about Donald Trump,

those of us who have followed him sadly for years, is this last week, the two most painful things to happen to Donald Trump is number one, Tom Brady dissing him at the White House. That must have killed him. That must have killed him more than anything else. Vaccinations, democracy, the election. That must have destroyed him. And, democracy, the election, that must have destroyed him. And number two, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration's policy on

shower restrictions and water pressure. That was very close to Donald Trump's heart. He was a big deal. He made a lot of his election rallies all about multiple rallies of talking about shower pressure and toilet flushes. So that's the reality we live in today, that the guy who might be the next Republican presidential candidate is probably crying himself to sleep at night because tom brady dissed him and his flush is not as powerful little victories we'll take him uh medhi thank you thank you so much for for joining as always everyone please go check out uh the medhi hasan show on peacock and msnbc peacock is very easy to sign up for i just did it myself a couple weeks ago great programming and a fantastic show from from Medi each night. So go check it out.

When we come back, my interview with Eckies Labs co-founder Stephanie Valencia about immigration and other issues on the minds of Latino voters. Welcome back. Last week, an ultra-conservative judge in Texas ruled that the Department of Homeland Security can no longer approve new DACA applicants, that the decision doesn't affect the 650,000 DREAMers already enrolled in the program. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are putting together an economic plan that includes a path to legalization in green cards for certain DREAMers and other undocumented immigrants, something that President Biden addressed last night during his town hall. Here's a clip. You're five years old. You're nine years old. Your mom or your dad says, I'm going to take you across the Rio Grande and we're legally going to go into the United States. What are you supposed to say? Not me. I said, against the law. I'm being deadly earnest.

What can a kid say? What could they do? They come here with really no choice, and they're here, and they're good, good people. They've done well. Ten thousand of them were first-line workers. These are kids who've done well. 10,000 of them were first-line workers. These are kids who've done well. And so what we're going to do is, first of all, appeal the case, number one. But number two, we're going to make sure that a number of my Republican colleagues say they support the right of DREAMers to come. Let's call the question.

They should be able to stay in the United States of America. Here to talk about how Latino voters are thinking about immigration and a host of other issues, the co-founder of the polling firm Equis Research and my former colleague from the Obama White House, Stephanie Valencia. Stephanie, welcome to the pod. Thanks so much for having me. So with the very important stipulation that Latino voters, like all groups of voters, have a diverse set of views that go well beyond prioritizing the issue of immigration, what have you heard from folks in your latest research about everything from the situation at the border to some of this DACA news we've been hearing lately?

Well, certainly, as you mentioned, I have always called immigration a gateway issue for Latinos. It's like that threshold issue for Latinos to really understand, does this politician see us as a threat to this country as Donald Trump did? Or does this politician see us as a net positive and a contributor to this country? So the issue of immigration, while it never polls, as like the number one issue that Latinos want to act on, because that usually is the economy, healthcare, education, or other things, it is always a gateway issue for which we view how politicians view us. And so we're at this really critical moment right now. John, you and I worked at the White House when we did DACA after many failed attempts of trying to actually

pass the DREAM Act in Congress. And, you know, DACA is 10 years old now. It has survived multiple attempts to take it down. We've survived a really important one last summer. And here we are again with DACA under attack and hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth who have lived their life as President Biden just laid out, came here under no fault of their own and who have lived their life here in their entirety. I think there's a huge conversation we're having about immigration in this country right now, particularly after the pandemic and the role that farm workers also played in our economic recovery as the role that essential workers play in keeping our economy alive. And the kind of, as we go into this next phase of,

as our population changes, as we get older as a country, we need more workers. And so there's actually a very big question right now about how we think about immigration. It's also intersecting right now with the conversation around what's happening in Haiti and in Cuba and how we receive refugees, whether they're coming and fleeing violence in Central America or whether they are coming and fleeing political challenges in their home countries, like in Haiti and in Cuba right now. So there's a big conversation about what we do about immigration

right now. DACA is a really important part of that. And the president has actually been really clear that, you know, what is happening in Congress, we want Congress to act and to actually deliver once and for all some finality to these people's lives. And there's a really interesting opportunity and moment in Congress right now with the budget reconciliation package to actually include a legalization provision for DACA recipients, certain TPS holders, potentially farm workers, and other categories of workers, maybe even essential workers. People like Joe Manchin, who are very moderate, have actually come out and said that they support its inclusion in the reconciliation bill. So that's a lot of like forward progress on actually getting this issue done once and for all. So

coming back to how Latino voters think about the issue, you know, again, it is one of those things that is never going to be one of the top issues for them, but want to see it resolved once and for all. It's been 10 years since we did DACA. There's like a high level of appetite to see Democrats deliver. Latino voters in this country know that Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they are ready to see Democrats deliver. They've waited 10 years for action on this issue, and this is an opportunity for Democrats to show that with power they can deliver. So again, this like what's happening in Congress right now with the reconciliation package offers a pathway to certainty for DACA recipients and potential other immigrants that could help to move this issue forward and kind of take it off the table for a while. My message to congressional Democrats is like, deal with this now, because then we can have a conversation with Latino voters on issues that are really, really important, like education and

what we're doing on the economic recovery and health care and free community college, those bread and butter issues that we often don't get to talk about with them because the issue of immigration always sucks the oxygen out of the room. So Biden was asked about this, including immigration reform and the reconciliation bill. And he said, you know, he supports it. But he also said that's for the parliamentarian to decide, not for Joe Biden to decide. Knowing what you know about the Latino electorate, how would you be advising the president to handle this upcoming fight over immigration if you were back in the White House right now? to handle this upcoming fight over immigration if you were back in the white house right now yeah i mean i think there has you know the the parliamentarian is the most outside of joe manchin is probably the second most powerful person in washington right now yeah um because

she will decide ultimately what ends up in this budget reconciliation package and what's interesting about her background you know she's technically a non-partisan she's a appointee she's not really um supposed to have like a partisan, and she's supposed to kind of call balls and strikes as they are based on law and constitutionality of and how the Senate works. She is interestingly, formerly an immigration lawyer. So it can either potentially play in her early in her career, she was an immigration lawyer in New Jersey. So on the one hand, she could be potentially more sympathetic to immigration being included. On the other hand, she knows the law better than most or immigration law better than most. And so that could also play

against us. Who knows? But I think the case that needs to be made is like Democrats need to act. And if for whatever reason, you know, President Biden doesn't control her, Senator Schumer doesn't control her. So a lot about whether this gets included in the immigration reconciliation is in her hands. Should it not make it in because she rules that way, we have to, we as Democrats have to make a strong case on action legislatively as soon as possible, especially for DACA, given this new kind of legal turmoil that it is now in, and the kind of, you know, uncertainty that so many people's lives have been tossed in. There needs to be a backup plan to move quickly on legislation, at least including DACA, TPS holders, potentially farm workers and essential workers, which really addresses a lot of kind of the undocumented population in this country today. And I'll bring it back to my

first point, which is like, there's a huge economic case to be made for this in this country, given the future of our workforce and the need for kind of younger, less skilled labor and keeping our economy running. And so there's an economic case to be made for it. For, you know, many of these categories of workers, there's a lot of support in the business community, their support. So they have a certainty around the workforce, their support among evangelicals and the Catholic Church. So there's a huge faith based component to it. And there's always been a huge law enforcement kind of support for this because, you know, they want to be able to prioritize criminals and real crime in communities and create a safe space so immigrants feel like they can report crimes in their communities. So

this diverse coalition that has been built over the last, you know, 10, 15 years around support for immigration reform needs to continue to make that really important case for it. And Democrats need to show that they can deliver legislatively for this and take credit because Republicans, again, this is a huge differentiating issue with Republicans and where they stand in the party of Donald Trump, who wants to treat immigrants like animals, separate families, lock kids in cages, and a contrast of seeing immigrants as a net positive for our community or for our country and for the economy, which is how Democrats view the issue. Right. I was rereading your excellent 2020 postmortem, which people can find at equisresearch.us. And at the time it was published in April,

you guys said that there still wasn't enough data to fully explain Trump's gains with Latino voters. What has the data you've looked at since then told you about that? And do you all have a working theory yet? Well, let me just recap what happened with the Latino vote in three kind of quick bullet points to just show the challenge and the opportunity that exists. The first is that Latinos swung more than any other group from 2016 to 2020. We swung eight points from 2016 to 2020, whereas the AAPI community only swung one point, the African American community three points, white voters actually swung in the positive direction by three points. In addition,

direction by three points. In addition, our share of the electorate is growing and is the, along with AAPI voters, are the two groups driving the composition and the growth in the electorate. And then third is we are still performing under our potential. Only half of Latino voters decided to show up this election cycle. So when we look at the movement toward Trump, part of what we have to try to understand was what were Latinos experiencing in that moment in time when they cast their ballots? And we were all experiencing COVID in the economy and the economic shutdown in a really unique way. And as small business owners, Latinos are driving entrepreneurship and small business creation in this country right now and have been for a very long time. So they experienced the pandemic and the economic shutdown in a very distinct way. In addition to that, as essential workers, as I talked about earlier, many Latinos were helping

to keep the economy running as essential workers during COVID and the pandemic, and they were putting themselves at risk and on the front lines, whether it's healthcare workers or restaurant workers or other essential workers. And so Latinos, I believe, were experiencing this economic shutdown around COVID in a very different way than what we were talking about, say, in 2018 or 2016, which we were talking about immigration in a very real way in 2016 and 2018, that immigration became a defining issue and a differentiating issue between Democrats and Republicans. And quite frankly, in 2018, we were at the height and during the midterms of the family separation crisis. And so that created a real definition point between Trump and where Democrats were and gave Latinos a very clear

choice. Whereas when the economy and the economic shutdown and COVID was driving what was the narrative and what they were experiencing in their everyday lives, it gave a permission structure for many Latinos to vote for Trump because of the economic shutdown and the economy, because we weren't talking about issues like immigration. We have a great graph in our postmortem that shows what we were talking about even just via Google search, what people were looking for via Google search. And you look and the line is, you know,

spikes around 2018, around 2016 on immigration. And then if you look to 2020, it's almost flatlined. So again, we weren't talking about that one issue that could have really differentiated. So that's one theory of the case that we have really kind of look into and dug into. There's still far more for us to study and to think about. One is also like how Latinos are getting their news and information. 70% of Latinos are getting their news and information from social media and more specifically YouTube about politics and elections right now. So that is something that we as Democrats and progressives need to think about as Republicans have really invested

so much money in thinking about how to reach all people and kind of dominate the YouTube ecosystem with quote unquote news. A lot of AstroTurf news type organizations who claim to be real news, but are fundamentally persuading and shifting the way people look at politics and elections. So that's like a whole other thing we have to contend with is like the changing nature of the media landscape and how Latinos are consuming that information.

OANN just said that they were going to launch a Spanish language vertical. I saw that. I was just going to ask you about that. Latinos need, they need it. And meanwhile, on the other side, you know, this is something we're going to be thinking a lot at Equis Research and at Equis Labs, our kind of incubator company, is how do we go and challenge that? How do we go and create new voices and new platforms for us to think about how we persuade and reach Latinos where they are? Because if they're getting their political news and information about what's happening in Cuba, what's happening on January 6th, what's happening with impeachment or any other things through YouTube, we have to be present as well. So I have sort of two follow-up

questions to that very excellent answer that I've been thinking about. One, it does seem like at least one of the working theories is that by increasing the salience of the issue of immigration, you actually, it actually could drive a Latino vote towards the Democrats by reminding voters just how extreme the Republicans are on this issue, which is counter to, I think, what some Democrats and some Democratic strategists do, which is to say, OK, immigration is a very divisive issue that the Republicans love to run on. So we should ignore it and talk about the economy. And this makes me think that as we head towards 2022, Democrats in the Biden administration should embrace talking about immigration as one way to potentially drive

vote. Is that right? It has to be a both and, right? Like we don't want Democrats just to talk to Latinos about immigration, but immigration can be a differentiating issue for Latino voters. So I think that's how Democrats have to think about it. I think you're totally right. Like I have even just seen the kind of fundamental shifts among like pollsters and the Democratic Party and progressive ecosystem shift their views on immigration and start to advise candidates and the committees very differently about how to talk about this. And I think if you think about like the future of what I just kind of talked about with like the challenges and opportunities with Latino voters and where we are performing, underperforming, and the challenges around persuasion and who we lost in 2020, like we have to find those issues that are

going to really motivate the base and create those moments of distinction while also kind of creating a forward-looking vision for the country on the economy, on issues like small business, on education. And what I will say is one of the things the Biden administration has done very well is, you know, we have a very strong cabinet that reflects the future of this country and four Latino cabinet secretaries who are, quite frankly, in charge of four of the most important departments for this country in this moment in time. So you have Isabel Guzman, who is an entrepreneur, who's the head of the Small Business Administration. Miguel Cardona, who's a Puerto Rican,

who's the head of the Education Department. Javier Becerra, who's overseeing much of the COVID response and healthcare implementation as head of HHS. And Ali Mayorkas, you know, a Cuban-American refugee who is overseeing what we're going to do with Cuban refugees and refugees coming from Central America and also the broader immigration system. There's a huge story to go out and tell. The Biden administration has so much ammunition to go and have a conversation beyond immigration with Latino voters, so they should absolutely be leaning into that while at the same time showing how they are trying to move forward on this issue, showing how Democrats are trying to like kind of find a pathway forward that is permanent and is addressing both kind of the legalization challenges,

but also border security concerns that many people have that we do have to continue to to have a strong kind of policy response to. And so there's a lot to be done. And again, I think people see the value in one, kind of taking this issue off the table too, as I mentioned earlier, if we can solve immigration kind of once and for all or make some very steady headway in taking on this issue, which we have literally been dealing with for 20 years.

I started working in politics in 2004, and I started working on this issue in 2004, and have been a part of many kind of efforts in the Senate, in the House, in the administration, and now outside of the administration. It's like, we've got to take this off the table, because once we move past this, we can again have that kind of more square conversation on those issues that are the bread and butter issues that really, really matter to Latino voters. And sort of on the OAN sort of communication misinformation issue, have you seen any strategies or initiatives either on the media side or on the campaign side that could help communicate better to the electorate and sort of break through

some of that misinformation? Well, quick preview. It's something that I think we at ECIS are going to be taking on and helping to understand the landscape better. I'm going to give you a really kind of jaw-dropping example, which is just kind of the difference between how Democrats and progressives have been thinking about this issue and where we need to really shift the way we think about the scope of the problem. In South Florida, Republicans have built a media echo chamber that has long been driven by a very conservative network of Spanish-language radio stations, Spanish language television, influencers on the ground. There's a guy named Alex Oteola, who was previously a Clinton supporter in 2016 and became

a Trump supporter, is probably one of the most well-known now YouTube personalities, Cuban American, kind of my generation, Gen X, millennial generation. I'm right on the cusp. Same, same. And so that's a giveaway of my age. But they have invested in him as a conservative influencer, and he's come up in focus groups. So they've built this like echo chamber there. Republicans just bought this conservative-backed media entity,

just bought one of the last more neutral radio stations in South Florida in April, in April, Radio Caracol for $350,000, $350,000. Like, oh my God, some Democratic donors can find that as pocket change in their couch. Democrats spent $14 million in the last 30 days in the South Florida media market alone, literally setting money on fire with paid media that probably nobody remembers, right? But now Republicans are going to have yet another tool and weapon in their arsenal to reach and engage and persuade Latino voters. So we have to shift our thinking among progressives in the Democratic Party from just like buying radio ads, which are

highly efficient. Spanish language radio is very efficient. Don't want to stop doing that. But we have to think about buying radio stations. We have to think about shifting and again, creating a network of, you know, YouTube channels and things like that, that reach Latino voters in a culturally competent way with good news and facts, because the best counter to disinformation, as we know, are good news and facts and flooding the zone with good news and facts. The last thing I will just say, Fabs, is that, you know, we are up against an entire continent of disinformation coming from Latin America. There are no borders to check the kind of disinformation coming through YouTube, WhatsApp, or other

platforms. And that is fundamentally shaping the way Latino voters, especially who are closer to the immigrant experience and who are still following news back home and are still well connected into information networks back in their home countries, is shaping the way they are experiencing politics today. There's a woman in Columbia who literally is a news caster, and I put that in quotation marks because she is by no means affiliated with a verified news source. She basically kind of reads the news and opines on it, and on election day had 700,000 people watching her. And so that's the kind of level and scale of information people are getting. And again, that's influencing how Latinos here in the United States are experiencing

politics, their trust in government, trust in institutions, trust in the process. So that is something we fundamentally have to kind of deconstruct and understand. There's a whole piece to kind of the social media platform landscape as well, which we believe the internet platforms are not treating Spanish language disinformation with the same level of urgency or kind of with parity as they are English language disinformation. So we track a lot of these disinformation narratives and oftentimes are kind of taken in English and the platforms are addressing it in English, but not necessarily in Spanish. And so that is kind of, again, a whole wave of information that we are up against. And as the kind of world is made more connected by the internet, which in so many ways is a very,

very good thing, especially when we're seeing what's happening in Cuba and the opportunity to get internet to protesters so they can tell their story and we can get the truth of what's like happening on the ground there. At the same time, it's also very complicated because we in the United States, and I believe the Biden administration needs to understand how interconnected what is happening in Latin America and that geopolitical connection back to how Latinos in the U.S. are experiencing politics and elections. We can't see them as two different things. They are very much connected because we are so connected by the Internet and now all of

these kind of news and information distribution channels that are influencing the way that people think and experience the world. information distribution channels that are influencing the way that people think and experience the world. We say all the time that liberal donors have to start taking building a progressive media ecosystem seriously. It sounds self-interested coming from us, but I always say I want we want more competition out there. And so I'm glad to hear it coming from from you as well. Who knows this electorate? Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. you as well who knows this electorate well uh stephanie thank you so much for joining us uh ecky's research is your firm go check it out there's always fantastic information on there and we really appreciate uh you coming on the pod thanks so much

thanks to medhi hassan and stephanie valencia for joining us today everyone have a good weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers

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