Pod Save America - “Charm city offensive.”

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

The President trashes the city of Baltimore because Rep. Elijah Cummings criticized his immigration policies, Trump advisors are telling reporters that racism is a good political strategy, the House Judiciary Committee effectively begins an impeachment inquiry, and 20 Democratic candidates prepare for the second round of debates. Then Pod Save the People’s DeRay Mckesson talks to Tommy about Trump’s criticism of his hometown.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, Tommy talks to our friend DeRay McKesson about his hometown of Baltimore, which the president called disgusting over the weekend. Before that, we're going to talk about how the Trump campaign is now admitting to reporters that they're using racism as a political strategy. We'll also talk about how the Judiciary Committee is kind of moving forward on an impeachment inquiry. And we'll preview the Democratic debates this week. Speaking of debates, we are bringing back our group thread this Tuesday and Wednesday night.

For this one, we won't be live streaming the debate itself because CNN's legal department whined about it. So I thought it was a very nice email from their head of global comms. Yeah, it was fine. It was fine. Don't sue us. So it'll be more of a second screen experience. Whatever. You watch it on TV, you look on your phone, you see a funny group thread.

It's going to be great. It's going to be great. The three of us, Dan, Priyanka Arabindi, and Cricket Political Director Shaniqua McClendon will be discussing the debate in real time. And we'll take audience questions and comments, too. As you know, Shaniqua has an ongoing feud with Lovett, so look for some attacks coming within the group thread and on the debate stage. We brought Shaniqua onto the live stream last week

to hashtag. It got a little... It got heated. So come watch the debate with us and join the group thread when the debates begin at youtube.com slash crookedmedia. Shaniqua knows what she did. If you prefer to get the highlights from the debates, we'll be recapping everything you need to know in our What a Debate newsletter. You can sign up at votesaveamerica.com slash subscribe for that.

Lovett, tell us about Love It or Leave It. Great Love It or Leave It. We had Matt Walsh from Veep. We had Diallo Riddle. We had reporter Emily Jane Fox. It was incredibly funny. Also, I put Emily Jane Fox on the spot and I said, tell us something that we don't know. And she described life in prison for Michael Cohen, which was fascinating.

And we treat some federal prisoners too well. Jeffrey Epstein. There's actual tennis. What? Really? Yeah. Like with courts and rackets? They're not grass courts, are they?

This is Wimbledon. They better be fucking grass or clay. They put an upkeep into the grass and clay. You gotta sweep that thing. What an outrage. Also, don't miss my interview with Bernie Sanders that we released on Friday. He's the 18th candidate who sat down with us and we're in the process of scheduling the last few remaining candidates with the glaring exception of Joe Biden.

If your name rhymes with Smiden, what are you doing? Come on in. Hello, people on his campaign. We know you all. We have a lot of listeners. Please write back to our emails. Your boss is literally the only one who has not scheduled to sit down with us. Here would be the question I would have.

Why do you think millions of progressive listeners shouldn't hear from Joe Biden? We interviewed him before. To quote Donald Trump. It was fine. What the hell do you have to lose? Anyway, but the Bernie interview is great. Check it out. Bernie was fun in the office, too.

You know, just right to type. Great group picture. The whole thing was fun. He literally wandered off while I was trying to tell him about my deceased grandfather who loved him. But he did it in very charming ways. It was fine. Good for him. All right. Let's get to the news.

The president spent his weekend trashing an American city of more than half a million people because one of its representatives is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee who's investigating evidence of Donald Trump's corruption and criminality. In retaliation for Congressman Elijah Cummings criticizing the administration for its treatment of immigrant children being held at detention facilities so bad that the Department of Homeland Security own Inspector General called them a ticking time bomb. The president called the congressman's district,

which includes part of Baltimore, a, quote, disgusting, rat, and rodent-infested place where, quote, no human being would ever want to live. The president went on to call Cummings, who's the son of a South Carolina sharecropper, a racist, and demanded that he be investigated. Guys, I'll start with the first question that I asked when I saw these tweets.

Where did this all come from? Which of his friends from the television told him a story that made him mad? Two different questions. Where this came from is he grew up in a household in which racism was taken as a fact of life and an assumption that black people were less than white people. And the only acceptable black people were those that showed incredible amounts of deference to white people. Misogyny and racism are the only two consistent features of Donald Trump's worldview since the time he was a boy. Where it came from was a clip of Fox News idiots.

Yeah. Little Fox and friends. Yeah, Fox News did a segment on Baltimore in certain parts of Baltimore where they basically just found some garbage and decided to film it and say that that was Baltimore. I think what's getting lost in all this today, now

day three of this fucking thing on Monday is the reason that they're all criticizing Baltimore and Cummings is because he dared to speak out about the fucking detention facilities and the treatment of children on the border. Yeah, he was upset that children

were being forced to sit in their own filth for days on end, something that should outrage all of us. And so he brings that up, something that Donald Trump has direct control over, and Donald Trump's like, oh, yeah? Well, your city fucking sucks

and is poor. I saw it on TV. That's where this came from. All these conservatives now, once again, as you always say, Levitt, the intellectual Zambonis are coming by like, well, Baltimore has a lot of poverty and crime, and so do a lot of American inner cities, and Democrats have been in charge of them,

and this has been the case for years, and now we're not supposed to bring that up without being racist? It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how the whole fucking thing started. Yeah, and this has been the case for years, and now we're not supposed to bring that up without being racist? It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how the whole fucking thing started. Yeah, and you also go back and say, well, actually, you can do the well-actuallys. Well, actually, many of the Republicans that he's been praising this week come from districts with higher unemployment rate and higher crime rates,

and also, by the way, Kentucky has a higher unemployment rate than the district that Elijah represents, but nobody directs that at Mitch McConnell. But, of course, that's beside the point. You know, as many have noted when he wants to call a place infested it's because it is filled with people of color when he says no human being would live there it's because the place where black people live yeah there's an obvious racial element to this and it is so exhausting and so frustrating every time he does something like this that we're forced to examine the words alone in

abstraction, like it's the Rosetta Stone. It's the first time he's uttered a racist statement and like not like there's a clear pattern of him making these kinds of statements of targeting black communities. I mean, it's a fact that he's a racist, right? It's been established. He's 73. He lives in Washington. He's a racist.

That's Donald Trump. Let's stop debating that piece of it and just call it out every time we see it. I mean, does anyone also want to spend a few seconds on what's wrong with the president blaming a congressman for the crime and poverty in a city that he partly represents? Yeah, I mean, it's clearly like it's not the role that Congress plays at the mayor of this city. Yeah. Hopefully he understands how this government works. Also, this is I mean, this is important because it goes to a broader issue of Trump running for reelection. You know, someone found a clip today of Trump in 2015 saying, Baltimore is a mess. And if I'm president, I'll fix it. You know, which is what he said about literally the whole country. So now Donald Trump's been president for four years. Last week, two

weeks ago, I think we had a report that the Trump administration is cutting 3 million Americans off their food stamps. They've been trying to take people's health care away for four years. They've cut housing aid by double digits in their budget. They've cut transportation funding. There's no infrastructure bill. The federal government has enormous power to help American cities, to help poverty, to help crime. Donald Trump has done nothing. His economic agenda is passing tax cuts for rich people and hoping that, you know, everything else is great.

And more than that, by the way, hurting urban areas and other high tax areas across the country by tilting, you know, by making decisions that rewarded Republican areas of the country through this tax bill. So it's more than just it's more than just neglect. It's purposeful harm. Well, let's point out that Republican areas of this country used to be Republican areas of this country, wealthy people living in. There's plenty of rural white areas, Republican areas of this country that aren't doing so well under Trump. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm talking with the tax code. I think you guys are being unfair. He does employ Jared Kushner, who owns, I believe, 9000 rental units in Baltimore that have been singled out for having pretty awful conditions at times.

So he's employing someone who's directly part of the problem. But if you go back, remember during the inauguration when John Lewis dared to say he would not attend it, he attacked him and said he should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart, which was not true in any way, shape, or form. But clearly he called him out and targeted him with that language because of his race, because we talk about urban areas in African-American communities as if they're at fault for the conditions in those areas. And we talk about West Virginia and the opioid addiction, the people there are always white and victims of their circumstances. It's a clear pattern with Trump, and frankly, a lot of Republicans.

I also think, remember last week, or two weeks ago, when the squad, when AOC and when Trump was attacking them and telling them to leave America, he said, well, it wasn't racist. I told them to leave America because they criticized this country, because they dared to attack and trash America. Stephen Miller went on Chris Wallace and started talking to him about, you know, AOC once said that some other, some policy plan was garbage. And he used that to say that she said America was garbage.

Well, so now according to the Trump White House, you're not supposed to say America's garbage, but Donald Trump can say any part of the country is garbage and trash that he wants to say. Right. Donald Trump can trash the country, but other people can't trash the country. Well, right. It's a simple thing, too. You represent the people of Baltimore, too. But, of course, he doesn't see it that way.

And, you know, to Tommy's point and to your point, it is part of a larger cultural, political problem about how we describe different parts of the country. It is simply accepted that you are allowed to vilify cities, right? Scott Walker can make fun of cities. Republicans can make fun of cities. Sarah Palin can describe the real America. Or the state of California.

Or the state of California or Massachusetts or what have you. That is sort of an accepted part of a very old trope in American politics of the kind of dirty sophisticates and cosmopolitan elite with their trickery and their, and their, um, their ways of, of abusing the real country, which is, uh, rural areas and suburban areas to some extent. And so it's, it is Trump. It's always the same, same conversation. Is it, is it, he unique? Is it a culmination? It is both. It's always the same conversation. Is he unique? Is it a culmination? It is both. He is taking a longstanding trope and dialing it up to 11, showing you the full racist, purely divisive version that exposes the rhetoric Republicans have used all along.

You know, you saw Rand Paul basically going up to the cameras and providing an intellectualized, less vulgar version of go back to where you came from around Ilhan Omar because this is part of the instinct of Republican politics that has been around for decades. Yeah, I would also just want to point out that the governor of Maryland is a Republican named Larry Hogan who's very popular and relatively moderate and apparently considered voting against Trump in the primary. What a guy. His response has been pathetic. Has he finally said something yet? voting against Trump in the primary. What a guy. His response has been pathetic. Absolutely. Has he finally said something yet?

As of right now, in this recording, I haven't seen anything. It's been feckless and pathetic. And I just want to remind everybody about a time in 2010, in the depths of the financial crisis, when Barack Obama had the nerve to say, quote, you don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college. And Nevada officials had a meltdown like you've never seen before, including Harry Reid. You would have thought that he kicked their dogs or singled

them out personally. They had this performative, over-the-top, nimby response, which is frankly kind of how politics should be played, right? You should defend the area you represent, the people you serve, the folks who elected you. But like even Larry Hogan, a guy who was talking about primarying Trump, is just caving and scared to respond. And it is so sad to watch. So a few weeks ago when Trump told four congresswomen of color to leave America, his White House staffers went on background to tell reporters that they thought that the president's racism was a bit too far, or at the very least, some White House staffers and Republican senators said, was a politically dumb move. Now, according to The Washington Post, the president's advisers say his racist attacks are good for him because they're galvanizing support with, quote, the white working class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.

So I guess points to them for just finally admitting that getting white people to be angry and afraid of black and brown people is the president's central political strategy. Is that where we are now? They're just open about it? Yeah, it's interesting. It is the opposite side of, you know, we had this, remember we talked about the difficult challenge before Democrats of kind of like having to navigate through the laser beams like Catherine Sata-Jones. You know, Donald Trump does have his version of that, which is the opposite of our task, right? Because he does need to, you know, this is reductive, but there are people who are inclined to hate Trump, but feel good about the economy. He needs them. And there are people who are inclined to like Trump, but feel terrible

about the economy, and he needs them too. And so whenever he is bragging about the economy, it's, you know, in part about, look, am I a piece of shit? Sure. But how bad are things for you? Not so bad. But this is the other side of that. more change in the system, who were sympathetic to Trump on trade and immigration, especially to say, see, I'm still fighting for you by using these kind of racial tropes and these battles as a stand-in for the battle they're looking for him to wage, the kind of cultural battle they're looking for him to wage. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very clear what he's trying to do here. It's been clear for a long time. Republicans have tried to do this for a long time um the people who live in rural america and ex-urban america um are have been left behind in many ways by the global economy they're not doing that well and you know what trump is telling them is uh it's not my fault it's the democrats fault it's the democrats fault

because they care they spent all this money on these cities. These cities are getting all this money for what? It's corrupt. That's partly why Trump added, because this wasn't in the Fox News segment, Trump added, we should investigate, Elijah Cummings. We should investigate because somehow all of your tax dollars are going to help all these city people, and they're still trash. And you, the hardworking people of rural America, are getting nothing.

Because what's not going to be good for Trump is if the people, the hardworking people in rural America realize that his only two policies in his economic agenda are to cut taxes for rich people and have trade wars all over the world that are fucking them over. Yeah. Just quick update. I just Googled Larry Hogan, and he has called the comments outrageous and inappropriate, which is better, but I would argue still completely feckless, and there's absolutely no reason that should take this much time. So Larry, comment still stands. Like the political whitewashing of this racism is deeply frustrating to me. Like, obviously, like there is historical evidence that racist political ads and attacks work and purely nativist sentiment can be effective. We remember the Willie Horton ad. There's not a lot of difference between that and the caravan stuff we saw in 2018. But I do think right now Trump is in a situation that's completely the reverse. If he would stop being racist, if you'd stop

tweeting this racist nonsense, he could probably do better with like suburban women, which are the key to Democrats winning in 2020 and are key to why we took a bunch of House seats in 2018. So when it gets spun as some sort of political strategy or political brilliance, it's deeply frustrating because we also know that this nonsense usually arises because his dander gets up because of literally a Fox & Friends segment. It's every time it's the same exact thing.

Yeah, and I think this is interesting too. Trump's nativism and racism turning off college educated voters, we saw that in 2018 in a huge way. But Ron Brownstein had a piece in The Atlantic a couple days ago where he notes that polling throughout

Trump's presidency has indicated that his belligerent and divisive nature raises concerns among white working class women who've been drifting away from him since 2016. And a new set of focus groups from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg shows that this gender gap among the white working class is hardening in small town and rural communities. So Trump's support, again, among non-college educated white males, as strong as it's ever been, if not stronger. But non-college educated white women might be some of those voters who are cross-pressured, right? Who might think,

you know, the economy overall is doing okay. My life is not doing so great, or I'm not, you know, financially better off. But Trump starting all of these fights, picking all these battles, going on these, all these racist tirades isn't just offensive to some of these voters and some people. It's also like, dude, why aren't you working on fixing everything in this country? You're not governing. You're not making anyone's lives better. All you're doing is just getting into these fucking arguments. 63% of voters said the tweets attacking the squad crossed the line at 57%.

So they do not think he respects racial minorities. I mean, that's a pretty overwhelming number in the Trump era. racial minorities. I mean, that's a pretty overwhelming number in the Trump era. That would worry me if I were his advisor is trying to spill, spin some nonsensical strategy about this being a preplanned strategy to win over voters or get his base excited. Like we're, we are a little far out, uh, from the election to be having a, get my base excited strategy with pure racist tweets. That is absurd on its face. Yeah. Love it. Did you have something you wanted to say? No, I think that's right. It's also a little bit like, you know, the Republicans are going to go into this campaign with Trump, and they know that they

have this vice grip between the fact that a generic Republican would be performing much better because of the basic economic realities in the country right now. Trump loses a lot of those people, so they have to make it up somewhere. How are they going to make it up? Well, I think they're going to make it up by shoring up his base. But, of course, shoring up the base costs him amongst the voters who would otherwise vote for a generic Republican in an economic situation like we're in. So they have they have this kind of, you know, they're trying to get to lose three, get three, lose two. And it's, you know, Democrats have the

opposite challenge. I just think you can sure up the base without this sort of double edged sword type messaging. They're much more. They're much more palatable message, like on immigration policy or health care, whatever. There's a million different ways you could go at this, and they just choose not to for some reason. One thing I just want to point out that really pissed me off this weekend was the Washington Post had a long profile of Jared Kushner, and that's fine, whatever. It was about how he's now, on top of failing to accomplish anything policy-wise in the White House, is now basically running the campaign.

He was supposed to be this moderating force with Ivanka. We've all mocked that narrative for years and sort of long ago abandoned it. But he didn't get pressed on now being in charge of a White House and a campaign that is openly spinning that their approach is going to be over racism. And that's frustrating. And I think he should be. Remember when Jonathan Swan pushed him on this during their Axios interview, 10 times, is the president racist? That was right before

these two very, you know, direct racist tirades. It was like putting cotton candy in a bucket of water. Yeah, and I'm not criticizing the reporters or the piece, I thought it was interesting, but like, well, yeah, I guess I am. It should be front and center of what we're talking about here. That was great reporting by Swan. When Chris Wallace over the weekend

pushed Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff, on these racist tweets, he did a great job of trying to hold him accountable. That should be a piece of every story written on these goobers. Don't give them some whitewashed take on their role. Well, what Republicans want to do with this is say, if you disagree, if the president criticizes anyone, or if you disagree with anything that the Democrats say, you're called racist or sexist. That's what they want this campaign to be about, right? So we talked a lot about the need to condemn this president's racism, call it out as a strategy, and then sort of talk about Trump's failure on a whole host of issues. Well, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Friday, the economy only grew by 2.1% in the second quarter this year,

the weakest increase since the first quarter of Donald Trump's presidency. The new report also includes revised data for last year that found the economy never reached the administration's 3% growth target for 2018. This was a favorite talking point of theirs. So is it time or is it smart for Democrats to start talking about the Trump economy and not just the Trump economy, but specifically, I think, the Trump economic agenda, which so far has been tax cuts for the rich and trade wars and nothing else? Oh, God, yes. I mean, I think I think we should be calling him a failed president on basically every front. I mean, I don't think that means criticizing his inability to reach 3% GDP. I don't think those are the terms we want to talk about it. And I think it's like, you're a failed

president, the country is succeeding in spite of you. Americans are working harder to overcome your trade war to overcome your tax cut for billionaires, your corporate giveaways that have hurt them. Jason Furman, who used to work with at the White House, pointed out that business investment outside of oil and oil and mining is actually slow during the Trump administration. That was really interesting. Yeah. He Trump and Chris Wallace again over the weekend reminded us all that Trump promised that he was going to balance the budget in five years. He's utterly failed on that front. So everything he said he would do, he has failed to do. He's lucky that he inherited a strong economy with a lot of tailwinds from

Obama. Now his only economic policy is to browbeat the Fed into cutting rates, and we should call him out. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So meanwhile, the other potentially big piece of news from the weekend was announced by the House Judiciary Committee with almost no fanfare whatsoever on a Friday afternoon. Chairman Jerry Nadler announced that they're formally asking for access to secret grand jury information related to Robert Mueller's investigation, a step that Nadler says is basically, quote, in effect, the launch of an impeachment investigation. Here's what he said to George Stephanopoulos, quote, We have impeachment resolutions before the committee. We are conducting investigations to determine whether we should report those impeachment resolutions to the House or direct our own and report those to the House. Pushed again on whether that qualifies as an impeachment investigation, Nadler said, We're investigating whether to approve articles of impeachment before the committee.

Butler said, we're investigating whether to approve articles of impeachment before the committee. Since Mueller testified on Wednesday, more than a dozen Democrats, including a member of Pelosi's leadership team, have announced their support for impeachment, which now makes 107 of 235 House Democrats, only 11 short of a majority of the caucus. Not a majority of the House, but of the caucus. Guys, what's going on with this one? Is this progress? Is this semantics?

What do we think? Yes. So there was a bunch of really interesting arguments made after this or sort of around this, around what it means to say we are seeking information to see if we should have an impeachment inquiry. Because there is a kind of paradox at the heart of a lot of this conversation, which is in order to decide whether to launch an impeachment inquiry, in some sense, you have to have an impeachment inquiry, right? So when, you know, there's all this debate about, oh, you know, why should we do impeachment? It's not going to succeed. It's not going to succeed. Well, one of the reasons you do an impeachment inquiry is because it is widely recognized that

through the power of impeachment, Congress has a stronger hand than its usual regulatory oversight, because it's a power vested in Congress to investigate the executive, and they would have greater access to materials, and it might be easier to hold the administration accountable. But then the question becomes, well, when does Congress get those powers? When does Congress gain the powers that come with an impeachment inquiry? Well, there shouldn't really be a paradox. You shouldn't have to impeach the president to determine whether or not the president should be impeached just to gain the powers of impeachment. So, right?

No, that's right. Yeah. So I think that's why Nadler is doing this little dance about in effect. But I think the the reason I think it's ultimately a good thing is that it is signaling to the country, to the Congress itself, to the administration, to the courts, that this body is going to begin to use the inherent powers vested in Congress to investigate the president with regard to impeachment, whether or not the word is officially invoked in a committee vote. the president with regard to impeachment, whether or not the word is officially invoked in a committee vote. So, so there, there, I want to separate, because I think this might help people understand this, uh, sort of the, the legal argument for this versus the political argument for this. Um, I think legally there, there could be, we'll see what the courts decide, an argument for doing this because, um, what they're trying to do basically is get the versions of the Mueller

report that are currently redacted because they have to do with grand jury proceedings unredacted. So how do you do that? Well, during Watergate, the way that they were able to get grand jury information is argued to the court that they need it because not for investigative reasons, but because grand jury information is needed for a judicial proceeding. And in the past, courts have only given out grand jury information when it's connected to another judicial proceeding. So during Watergate, the House Judiciary voted to begin an impeachment inquiry. But basically, they argued, we're in a judicial proceeding. It's called impeachment. So give us the grand jury info. So Nadler is trying to do this now. So

Nadler wants to argue to the court, we are in a judicial proceeding right's called impeachment. So give us the grand jury info. So Nadler is trying to do this now. So Nadler wants to argue to the court, we are in a judicial proceeding right now called impeachment. He doesn't want to just say we're investigating. Now, he didn't formally vote for it, but he's hoping the court will side with them anyway on this. Yeah. I mean, look, I personally feel I've read a lot about the ways that starting an impeachment proceeding may or may not help our legal standing and our ability to get documents. I believe those who think we can, but I don't totally understand it all. This whole conversation does underpin for me how bizarre the narrative was coming out of the Mueller hearings themselves. I mean, like a dozen members of Congress came out in favor of impeachment after Mueller testified and you were reading stories

in Politico, they were like, Donald Trump had a great week. What planet do we live in? The need to like be able to give him a win every once in a while for some faux balance is so absurd. You know, so who knows where we'll end up here? I mean, the people I've talked to, some journalists, some people who work in government say Pelosi sincerely believes that impeachment would tear the party apart and is just terrified of it politically. I do not know what they're basing that on. I have not seen any polling or evidence. But if that's where they stand, it does feel like they're going to be a massive roadblock for a long time. But it's the fact that Jerry Nadler is like pretty publicly moving in the in the path of impeachment is interesting.

Well, and you touched on the political reasons for this. So you might ask, why not just vote within the Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment inquiry so that it strengthens your court case even more to say that it's part of a judicial proceeding? Well, clearly, there's still some anxiety about holding a vote in the Judiciary Committee. Nadler is clearly for this, but he has apparently worked out the language and everything he was going to say on Friday with Pelosi, with Pelosi's blessing. So she's on board with this whole thing where you get to start an impeachment inquiry and you get the legal power that comes with that, hopefully, without making anyone take the vote that could sort of, in her mind, at least hurt politically. Well, I actually think I also think it's there's a flip side to that, too, which is I think part of the reason they want to do it this way is they understand that once the once once there's an actual whether it's articles of impeachment or

whatever, a motion to proceed to impeachment, whatever process they land on. Very hard to vote no for a Democrat right now. Very, very hard. Democratic voters believe that Donald Trump should be impeached. Everyone recognizes, even those who aren't in favor of impeachment, that Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. From a moral point of view, I believe nobody wants to go on record being against this thing. So I think a little bit there's an understanding that there's a big snowball at the top of a very snowy hill. And this is what Schiff said to me last week. And once you push it, that's it. It's going to roll all the way to the bottom.

And so they have a few more bites at the apple this way before that process starts, because once that vote happens and it's signaled and they signal to the country that they're pursuing this, every Democrat will have to go on record. It will end up in the House floor, and then every Democrat will have to go on record again. And they may get there, and they may ultimately be okay with getting there, but they're not there yet. There was some polling out of the hearings that showed that it didn't really change people's minds one way or the other, and no surprise there. It was one day of testimony. But 54% of people who I guess watched or had understanding of the Mueller hearing said they don't have any confidence in the US's ability

to defend itself against another electoral attack. If you're looking for pretty firm ground to stand on when it comes to an indictment of Donald Trump, there's a path. Why don't we demagogue that? And demagogue is the wrong word. Why don't we lift up this critical issue about our ability to have a fair and free election from foreign interference and talk about that all day? I mean, that should be part of impeachment. I was just going to bring this up. At some point, we have to stop talking about the process of impeachment And all the legal processes and all this. I realize they have to go through that now. But the reason that all of us here are for impeachment is not the moral case, not purely the moral case, as we've said. And it's not because we believe he's going to get convicted in the Senate. It's because we believe that Democrats will have the attention of the

nation on them to tell a story about the president's corruption and criminality that will hopefully assist in removing him from power in the election of 2020. So you've got to start telling the story, you know? And, like, we've got to start talking about the issues where he has, you know, been very corrupt or when he's broken the law and all that kind of stuff. You've got to tell the story

and start talking about fucking process all the time. And given that out of the Mueller hearing, we had several more Democrats come out in favor of impeachment, a pundit narrative that says it lacked drama, but a recognition that a lot of the substance was quite bad for Trump. We're literally a Hans Zimmer score away underneath an impeachment inquiry. Sounds like a now this video. From being able to tell the story we have to tell. We just need that. We just need a kind of just a solid orchestral hum.

And I will say, you know, we have wondered aloud if Pelosi is just trying to drag this process out so that, you know, we can get to the 2020 elections. She said, well, now it's too late to do impeachment. She said over the weekend the decision will be made in a timely fashion. This is not endless. So she could, you know, we'll take her at her word, right? She said that it's not going to be a dragged-up pressing meeting, so, you know, maybe she's got something. It's just a tale of two parties, right?

Like Democrats in the House are having a good faith discussion, a debate about the process that would lead to impeachment. The 2020 candidates are talking about, like, Medicare for all or a public option. Trump's attacking major American cities, and today he said that, again, that he was down at ground zero on 9-11 are talking about Medicare for All or a public option. Trump's attacking major American cities. And today he said that, again, that he was down at ground zero on 9-11 helping out and basically compared himself to a first responder.

I mean, they are just full crazy and we are still having these same attacks. I was driving into the office today and I had NPR on. And I laughed because you catch yourself forgetting the timeline in which you live. And then the news starts and it's one of the anchors saying, Donald Trump continued his attacks on the city of Baltimore today. It's like we're living in a fucking bad Veep episode.

One more thing on the polling, because you mentioned that ABC poll that didn't really change people's minds. Fox News had a poll last week. 47% of the country favor either impeachment or impeachment and removal, and only 45% oppose impeachment. That's a Fox News poll. So, Nancy Pelosi, take a look at that one. All right, let's talk about the primary. 20 Democratic presidential candidates will meet in Detroit on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week for a second round of debates. The first night of the debates, which are being hosted by CNN, will include Bernie Sanders,

Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O'Rourke. The second night will put Joe Biden back on the stage with Kamala Harris and also include Cory Booker and Julian Castro. For all the other presidential candidates, their performance at this debate may determine whether we ever see them on this debate stage again. You guys want to talk about why? Because there's the next debate has much stricter rules. I believe as of right now, five to seven have qualified.

Six. I'm sorry, six have qualified. Six have now officially qualified. Booker just qualified, right? Not yet, but he's close. He's going to qualify because he's almost at the number of donors. He got the polling. Oh, that's all right. Just to let everyone know, it is 130,000 individual donors to qualify for the September debates.

130,000 individual donors and at least 2% in four national polls. So qualified are Bernie, Biden, Kamala, Warren, Pete, and Beto. Cory Booker's very close. He's got the polls. He's almost there on the donors. Yeah, he might have done it last night. I don't know. I think he qualifies for that.

So he's in. And so then the only other people who are close are Klobuchar. She has the polling but not the donors. Yang and Castro, who has the donors but not the polls. And I think Yang doesn't have the polls yet either, or maybe the donors either. But no one else is close. So that would be, even if all of those make it, that would be 10 but not the polls, and I think Yang doesn't have the polls yet either, or maybe the donors either. But no one else is close. So that would be, even if all of those make it, that would be ten people on the debate stage.

That would get us down to one stage and one night. I think it's a big deal that people are not focusing on. It's also a big deal for me because if it goes to two nights, the second night is during Radio City, Love It or Leave It, which is very frustrating. My God. So a lot of things are at stake here. These debate rules are interesting, and I'm glad we're about to hit a winnowing period. You are starting to see reports about the money Democratic candidates are now spending on acquiring donors. Which is such a funny thing.

It's like a tech company. Spending money to get people to give you money. It's multi-level marketing. No, it's more like you're an Uber or or Lyft and you're entering a new market and you have these massive acquisition costs to get a user. But it's just so stupid. So in this debate that we're about to have this week, what do you do to get noticed if you are one of these candidates who have not qualified for September yet and you've got a couple months to do this? Even you asking that question is making me feel nervous on their behalf. Yeah, me too.

Because, you know, this isn't... You know, launch a broadside against another candidate that is so sophisticated and sharp, it attacks them and makes you look like a president with a unique case for why you should be in that job. Well put. You know the scene in Airplane when there's a passenger sort of having, like, a mental breakdown, and then, like, one of them slaps her to try to, like, calm her down, and there's a whole line of people, including a professional boxer, and then there's a woman with a gun.

Like, that's everybody lining up to go after Joe Biden. That is how this one is going down right now. You're seeing, like, some amazing sort of mini opposition research about how Gillibrand staffers, they've been like, what was it like newspapers.com or something like that. They've been like flagging all these articles about Biden's record, preparing to go after him.

It's apparently there's this hit on Biden that the Gillibrand has been previewing or quietly previewing that he had voted against the expansion of the child tax credit, which on a policy level, of course, you should say that that's a contrast. But what Gillibrand said publicly was some Democratic candidates, quote, do not believe necessarily that it's a good idea that women work outside the home. There's a slight difference between that and opposing the child tax credit, which I am for. You should be for expanding the child care tax credit. But I don't know if that's a fair hit on that one.

I don't know if that's a fair hit. A number of other candidates have previewed contrasts with Biden over the last weeks. Booker on criminal justice reform. Castro on immigration, which is an interesting one. Castro may try to do to Biden what he did to Beto. It's interesting Castro saying some of us have learned the lessons of the Obama administration on immigration. Biden hasn't. Castro is saying that because he knows that other people are going to, if he's going to go after people on immigration,

other people are going to say, well, you not only were part of the Obama administration on immigration, you never had any problems with it while you were part of the administration, and you testified on their behalf at times about their immigration policies. So at least he can tell a story like, yeah, I did that, and I've come to see that some of them were bad. I mean, I was part of the administration. I think that, too. Sure.

And Biden would just sort of figure out some version of that answer to pivot away from some of these policies himself, so you would be in a much better place. Like, you're allowed to evolve. You're allowed to learn new things and improve your understanding of policy from the 80s until now. Embrace it. That would

be a good answer from him. I mean, what do you think Biden should do at this point? Like what would you be telling the vice president knowing that all of these hits are coming? Oh, I would say just take the hits and then ask for someone else to speak. He's got to be ready on the substance, right, to respond substantively and defend his own record or at least offer some explanation for how he's maybe evolved or learned more over time. But I think what a lot of voters are looking for is for him to punch back really hard. And given that half of these attacks have now been previewed, I would want to tee him

up to look like a fighter because I think everyone wants someone who will get at a debate with Donald Trump and be ready to punch him in the mouth rhetorically. Yeah. And he did say he was too polite in the last in the last debate. Yeah. Jokes aside, if I were looking at someone like Biden, what I'd be saying is you need to respond forcefully, but put it in a frame of I've been in the arena for 40 years. I've gotten a lot right. I've gotten some things wrong. I've evolved and I've changed like any person has, but here's what I would do. And here's the experience I bring to do these things that we need to do to fix this country. And we can spend all day going over our records, you know, and then attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. But we need to talk about what we'll do

to fix this country because this election is so important. If that would be the argument I would be making if I were Joe Biden. So, you know, I wonder what someone like Kamala Harris does to keep up the momentum that she gained from the last debate. I was wondering about that. And then today on Monday, she released her own Medicare for All plan, which I was surprised that she did. But she was one of the first co-sponsors of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill. She stood with him at the press conference when he announced it. She has been, I would say, unclear on various aspects of Medicare for All. Like eliminating private insurance.

Eliminating private insurance. So she's been going back and forth. At a time, clear then unclear, then clear again. Yeah, so today she decided, okay, I'm going to put my own spin on the plan. And her plan would basically say there's a 10-year transition to single payer in addition to the four-year transition that is envisioned in Bernie's plan. She also would maintain a role for private insurance companies who are tightly regulated by the government, like Medicare Advantage plans under Medicare. So basically, at the end of all this, hopefully everyone's on one Medicare plan. But if there are private insurance companies that want to do a version of the government's Medicare plan that are tightly regulated, the government still sets the pricing, the government still has all these restrictions, then you can play in our system.

But only if you play by our rules, is basically what it is. And the other key thing she does is on financing. Bernie Sanders basically says that anyone who makes over $29,000 a year will face a tax increase to pay for his plan. His argument is, well, you might have a tax increase, but you won't be paying premiums or co-pays or deductibles anymore, so it'll be a wash at the end. Kamala Harris says the only people who will pay higher taxes are those who make over $100,000, and then she makes up the difference by taxing stock trades a small amount as well. So that's what she, why do we think she did this? I think she could say she was full-throatedly behind Bernie's plan. She could say she was against Bernie's plan, but I think she could no longer do this sort of tight rope without telling people where she was

walking towards, because there was a lot of, is she going to raise her hand? Is she not going to raise her hand? Where is she on private insurance? She said she was for it. Now she said she was for getting rid of it. Then she said she wasn't. She raised her hand. Then she said she didn't understand the question. She was getting attacked for her positions. And so she needed to say, here's my view. Here's where I have landed so that she could actually articulate not just a kind of abstract position, but like lay out a policy. Yeah. I mean, also some recent polling suggests that eliminating private insurance is a very unpopular position. I've seen other anecdotal evidence that it's particularly unpopular with African-American voters. I think CNN reported that. So this new plan seems to account for a lot of the political deficiencies

that people see in Bernie's plan. OK, I mean, maybe that will help. But entire elections have been fought and lost over being for something before you're against it, from being perceived as flip-flopping on an issue. I mean, look at John Kerry. Look at every race before John Kerry, basically, when politics went crazy these last few years. I mean, so it will be interesting to see if Democrats or people on stage go after on these policy changes during the debates, because how she deals with that

will say a lot about how she would deal with that against Trump. Yeah, I mean, on the substance, I find myself more in line with Kamala's new plan, with Medicare for America, which is Beto's plan, some of the more robust public options. But I still think Medicare for America and Kamala Harris's plan are better just because not because I'm against single payer ultimately, but because I think the transition is so difficult, not just politically difficult, but substantively difficult, that it should be handled in a gradual way. Not gradual in saying, oh, we'll pretend to get there someday, but wink, wink, we won't. Like, really gradual. Like, making sure that if we're having everyone in the entire country on one government plan, that it is a good plan, that people like it, that it works, that it's proven to work, right, and so that we have some

time. I mean, you know, four years, which is what Bernie's plan envisioned, it seems like a long time, but, you know, we had a couple years to get the Affordable Care Act together, and that wasn't enough time, honestly. Like, we still, you know, healthcare.gov launched, and there was all these problems. So it takes a long time to transition to some of these plans. Now, Bernie's argument, and maybe Elizabeth Warren's because she's on his plan too, their argument would be, you know what, it's easier if we just do this at once, all hold hands and jump together. And also the more you have private insurer,

the longer you have private insurers involved in this shit, the more money government's going to spend and waste and it's not going to be as efficient. But I think the biggest point here on the politics is we are now headed into a phase where relatively small differences between these candidates' health care plans are going to get blown up into these huge fucking fights. And I do want everyone to make sure that like you're going to hear, I mean, we're already hearing like Sanders attacked Kamala Harris's plan. Biden attacked Kamala Harris's plan. Kamala Harris attacks both of their plans. I think the attacks are going to seem like a bigger deal than the actual details, the difference in the details of the plan right there. We are all headed towards universal coverage with heavy government regulation of prices and costs.

That's what they all want. How fast you get there, how generous it is, all these are details worth debating, but let's not lose sight of the fact that all of these candidates are in a very good place on health care. I'm also just interested in how the debate over the Kamala plan goes, because it is actually a genuinely kind of new offering into the Biden cap, public option, very robust public option, some with automatic enrollment for, say, children into a public plan versus...

She has that newborns and uninsured are automatically enrolled. Yes. And then you have the kind of the Bernie Medicare for all plan. And there's a variety of single player plans, but that's sort of the alternative. It's interesting how this does seem to sit between the two in a lot of ways. And I'm curious how it ultimately is perceived, right? Because, you know, one of the gaps, you know, the public option focused plans, they try to bridge this gap between the 40% or so Americans who say they want Medicare for all versus the 70% of Americans who support a Medicare for all who want it type plan. And this seems to kind of sit between both of those ideas while preserving private insurance, but in a much more restricted way. So it's I'm just curious how it ultimately is perceived by other Democrats on the stage, by Democratic voters, by political journalists covering it, because it is I don't know, it's it's an interesting plan.

That's all. Yeah. OK. When we come back, Tommy, we'll talk to DeRay McKesson. On the line is DeRay McKesson. He is an activist. He's the host of Pod Save the People. He's got a great book out that you should check out called The Other Side of Freedom, The Case for Hope. DeRay, good to talk to you, man. It's been a while, Tommy. It's good to be back.

It's been a while. We miss you. I wish it was under better circumstances based on my first question, which is, you know, based on the president's disgusting racist tweets. I mean, so, you know, you grew up in Baltimore. You worked for the Baltimore City Public Schools. You ran for mayor. You clearly love the city. How did it make you and the people you know in Baltimore feel seeing the president of the United States single out and attack your hometown in this unfair, bigoted way? You know, Tommy, when I think about it, I was disgusted but not surprised, right? Because we've heard this rhetoric before. We have seen the actions that support the rhetoric before.

We've seen him talk about immigrant communities. We've seen him trash the city of Chicago. We've seen him put kids in cages. We've actually seen this come from him. So continue to be disgusted, but just not surprised. I think what was really troubling was to see people participate in the logic of the racism that he espoused. So there were people who were like, yeah, Baltimore is a good place and still made these statements about poverty as if poverty is a result of personal

choices and not the result of systemic things that have happened in communities. Or you hear people talk about addiction and they talk about it as like moral failings and not as a public health crisis. And that's sort of what I kept hearing when I heard the Trump thing. It's like it was well-meaning people who were still sort of participating in this underlying logic. And I think part of our work is to push people so they understand that that logic is racist and they actively work against that logic. And Trump just continues to create space

for that logic to take hold. Yes. And there's no way to talk about the poverty of the city of Baltimore without talking about the policies that enabled it. There's no way to talk about the crime in the city of Baltimore without talking about the conditions of the city

that have not alleviated the crime. So what does it mean that the school system is still underfunded? What does it mean that the police department, our whole division got indicted for corruption? These are like structural things, and there's no way to talk about the city without talking about what they have done to the city and frankly, the lack of investment from the state and from the federal government. Yes, totally agree. And I want to get into some of those policies in one minute, but I saw you tweeting about this, and it frustrated me as well. The governor, Larry Hogan, he belatedly responded to Trump this morning

and called the tweets outrageous and inappropriate. But, like, he's a popular governor. He reportedly considered primarying Trump. The state itself leaned left. What do you think took him so long? Why is Larry Hogan, of all people, scared to call out Trump when he does things that demean a city he represents? You know, good question as to why Hogan is seemingly scared. You know, he didn't even

call Trump by name. What did he say? He said something like people in Washington. He wouldn't even name Trump. Right. And that is the the weakness and cowardice of the Republican Party. It took so long for any of them to say anything about that tweet, let alone condemn it, which we didn't even see in Hogan. One of the reasons why Hogan didn't condemn it is that Hogan actually participates in the same logic. He just knows if he was as overt about it, people would deem that unacceptable in the state of Maryland. But Hogan is the same governor who wanted to send the National Guard to the city of Baltimore, the same governor who refuses to fund the school system in Baltimore City in an adequate way, and the same person who makes similar disparaging comments about crime and drugs in the city of Baltimore, got rid of

the red line, which would have been an important public transportation addition in the city. So Hogan actually participates in the same logic as Trump. He just knows that to say it as clearly and overtly as Trump would be a political problem for him. Yeah, good point. So you mentioned some of the policy needs earlier. I mean, clearly there are some challenges in Baltimore like there are in every city or every town. Have any of the presidential candidates on the Democratic side talked about or proposed ideas at the federal level that you feel might significantly help people who live in cities like Baltimore or need better schools or need some extra help? You know, Tommy, that's a hard question because so many of the candidates still have not committed

to anything in writing, right? It is still a very lukewarm space. So I think that the policies around wealth redistribution or loans that have come from Warren, that have come from Bernie, I think that Kamala just put out something that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. I think that those sort of plans are actually really important. I think that Corey's plan around marijuana is an important plan. It would have a huge impact on places like Baltimore. I think any of the stuff around college would be important. So BCCC, the Baltimore City Community College, graduates around one, two, three percent of people every year. And part of

the problem with the graduation rate at BCCC is that people are saddled with loans. It's people who are poor who get these loans or just cannot pay off community college credit. And we should just make community college free or we should make college free for people. So I think that those plans would actually have a huge benefit. I think infrastructure is not very sexy, but the city of Baltimore would benefit immensely from an infrastructure project. And, you know, the reality is a lot of the candidates have given a lot of really cool speeches that when you go to the website to see what they've committed to, you are still struggling to see a commitment. So I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that it'll get better, you know? And I think there's some people still playing in the middle. I think that Kamala's playing in the middle with a lot of things.

She's given a lot of speeches and you are like, what does she believe? And it's a question mark. Pete, the same thing. You know, I still live in the city of Baltimore and I'm interested to see how these campaigns will continue to grow to like actually create something meaningful for people in cities, you know? Yeah. Well, so, OK, you lived in Baltimore, you worked there, you ran for mayor. When you were walking around like canvassing voters, talking to people, what what things did you hear from them? What were people looking for from the local or federal government that they felt like they weren't getting? You know, when I ran for mayor and when I was the chief human capital in the school system in Baltimore, it's like when you talk to parents, when you talk to people in communities, nothing

was particularly revelatory, right? It's like, I want to live in a safe city. I want to live in a city where my kids can learn how to read and write. And it is not an uphill battle. I want to live in a city where people get treatment and services when they're in need. And I want to live in a city that I'm generally healthy in, right? Like those were the buckets of things. I think the hard part about the city of Baltimore is that we have just seen leadership time and time again fail at the city level. We've seen some glimmers, but a lot of struggle. And we've also seen a continued lack of investment from the state of Maryland. Like you just haven't seen the follow through that you would need to actually like make a meaningful investment in the state of Baltimore.

So those are the things. But like talking to people in neighborhoods, it was actually really simple. Right. And that's what we say as organizers, that most of the things that will change people's lives are simple, but not small. It's a simple idea to say that we can have treatment for everybody who needs treatment around addiction in a city. That's not a small thing. That would be a huge thing. So how do we start to normalize a simple but not small? And that's what I heard when I heard people when I knocked on doors and when I worked in education in the city of Baltimore. Yeah.

Yes. So we talked a bit about this today. I mean, it's frustrating when Trump tweets something like he did over the weekend that's so nakedly racist. And, you know, the media kind of does this dance where we talk about whether it's called racially charged or whether they directly call him out. I mean, how do you want to see Democrats, the Democratic Party, Democrats running for president respond when Trump does these kinds of things?

Yeah, you know, when Michelle Obama said, when they go low, we go high, that was not about passivism. It was this idea that we actually returned to our convictions, right? That's what it means to go high. Like you go high into the things that called you into the work in the first place. And in moments like this, people should be like even more defiant, like people, there should be more AOCs. There should be more of the squad. There should be more people with structural power fighting back and saying like, no, we just won't do this. There should be people forcing the Republicans to actually use their structural power to hold him accountable. Like that's what should be happening in moments like this.

The good news is that most of the change that we want to see is local happens at the local and state level. So there still is a lot of good work that can happen there that people can fight for and press. There still is a lot of good work that can happen there that people can fight for and press. And what everybody can do is force people to not participate in the logic of racism that Trump has espoused. Yeah, agreed with that. All right. Happier question. The second round of Democratic debates are this week. How are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? Somewhere in between? Tommy, I honestly feel like there are some, there's still too many candidates.

So I went in person to Miami and it's just like, it's just so many people, you know, you're like, I don't really know what is going on. It's a lot of people. So I'm interested to see, you know, what was really interesting about Kamala and Biden going back and forth with each other is that Kamala has yet to have to account for her own record.

However you feel about it. She just hasn't been pressed about it yet in public. And I'll be interested to see if somebody goes after her record in this next one because she went so hard after Biden. And then you've seen that weird back and forth between Corey and Biden. Yes, that's very strange. Yeah. Like, I just don't know.

I don't know what to make of that. And like, honestly, I didn't even know the debates were happening until somebody told me. And I think I'm pretty plugged in. So yes, you will be interesting to see if people even like watch this because it's still a lot of people. And Marianne Williamson is I am interested to see what she says this go around. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that these debates are taking place in Detroit. I mean, it's interesting that these debates are taking place in Detroit. I wonder if they'll have at least a section where they talk about the fact that a city right down the road in Flint still doesn't have clean water.

And there was a public health crisis, the likes of which our country hasn't seen maybe ever. That would be a good thing for the moderator to ask about. Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that they'll pander to that question. I think that everybody's going to say it's a travesty. I think nobody's going to talk about accountability. I think Warren and Bernie actually might, they might say that somebody should be held responsible, but I can see a lot of the people, a lot of the people on the stage giving lip service to Flint and then just sidestepping the like, how do we avoid this in the future? And what do we do to do any sort of like redress for the harm that the citizens of Flint faced? You know?

Yeah, that's right. I totally agree. I guess I at least have been excited that there has been a really substantive conversation about policy, particularly on health care so far on the Democratic side. I do think it's a pretty stark contrast to what the Republicans are fighting about, which is Donald Trump being the worst person on the planet. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that I think that the health care debate is good. I think the college debate is good. I think that the wealth debate is interesting. I think what is what we can never forget, and you appreciate this because you also like know politics well, is that there are a lot of people who keep making these statements, but like have not really committed to anything in a policy stance, right? That like Pete is a really good example. Like he answers a question in the debate,

you go to the website, you're like, well, let me just understand what you say. And there's not, there's not, there's nothing there. Right. And I just don't know how long we'll let people get away with that. I think that's also Kamala. Kamala has, has committed to things in, in talks. And then you go and you're like, well, what do you stand for? And it's like, there's not really a plan yet. And I don't know how long, especially with Warren showing us that there can be plans, you know, how long that'll last. Yeah, I agree with you. We are now well into this primary process. Everyone has had an awful lot of time to formulate and roll out plans in substantive ways. And if I were them, I would advise them to get going on that front. Yes, I agree. Well, everybody listening should subscribe to Pod Save the People of ways and uh if i were them i would advise them to get going on that front yes i agree well

everybody listening should subscribe to pod save the people uh deray great to talk to you look forward to seeing you in person soon uh and uh that's all i got man hopefully donald trump will stop tweeting disgusting shit so we you know but we'll keep talking about it if he does and hopefully we will just remember this dark four years as a bygone era, and we'll get somebody in there to fix it pretty quick. Amen to that. All right, buddy. Great talking to you.

Boom. Thanks to DeRay for joining us today. Tomorrow night, Tuesday night, we will be on our group thread talking about that debate, watching it with you, and we'll be on our group thread talking about that debate, watching it with you. And we'll be doing the same on Wednesday night. And then on Thursday, all four of us will be in studio for a debate recap episode. So we'll talk to you then. Bye.