Pod Save America - “Donald Trump’s halftime show.”

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

The President prepares to deliver a not-very-anticipated State of the Union, Governor Ralph Northam refuses to resign after a racist photo of him surfaces, and Senator Cory Booker announces his campaign for president. Then Adam Serwer of The Atlantic talks to Jon Favreau about the Northam fallout, as well as race and politics in the Trump Era. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. And I'm Jon Lovett, and I've moved myself to the opposite side of the studio because both Jon and Tommy have the sniffles, and I'm trying to get out of here without them. Lovett reached down into his bottomless well of empathy and moved several feet away from us. Moments ago, I did open the door with a post-it. That's true. I saw you do that, and I didn't comment on it because I just laughed. Look, I want you both to feel better. I don't see why wanting you two to feel better means I got to go give you guys hugs. That's true. I saw you do that, and I didn't comment on it because I just laughed. Look, I want you both to feel better.

I don't see why wanting you two to feel better means I got to go give you guys hugs. It's a little cold. It's almost over. Unimpeachable logic. Love it. If you can hear me from all the way over there at the end of the table, I do want to say how sorry I am that your Rams lost the Super Bowl. I know you are a longtime fan as of last week.

First of all, from the very moment I found out that Los Angeles had a football team called the Rams, I have been a diehard supporter. I would also point out that unfortunately this year, there was no Super Bowl. There was a scrimmage in which it looked like a Super Bowl, but of course, due to the failure of the refs. Is there something about the Saints? What happened? Who did the Saints play? The Rams. The Rams.

And that call was good? It was a good call. It was a bad call. Hey, hey, people in and out from LA get away with stuff. All right? Watch the news. Next up on SportsCenter. Yesterday as I'm sitting there, I hear Emily on the phone with Lovett.

And Emily's like, well, it turns out that Lovett didn't know the Super Bowl was today and made plans to play video games instead. No, no, no, no, no. We had a pre-scheduled game night. Game night was converted into a Super Bowl game night. So later in the pod, you'll hear my conversation with The Atlantic's Adam Serwer about the racist photo that prompted calls for the governor of Virginia to resign. Adam Serwer about the racist photo that prompted calls for the governor of Virginia to resign. We're also going to talk today about President Trump's upcoming State of the Union address and the newest Democrat joining the field to challenge him, Cory Booker. How was Love It or Leave It on Friday?

We had a great Love It or Leave It. Chairman Adam Schiff stopped by. He talked about Mueller. He talked about impeachment. He talked about vegan hamburgers, one of my favorite episodes. Also, Tawny Newsome and Naomi Ekperigin were on, two of the funniest guests we ever have on Love It or Leave It. So it was a great show. Check it out. Tommy, I hear you have a pretty great Pod Save the World dropping this week.

Dropping. Had to take my sweatshirt off, John. It's hot as hell in here. It's very hot in the studio. It's room temperature. You both have fucking fevers. Ooh, okay. Fevers.

Wow. It was fucking hot last week. now we're hot last now we're illness shaming uh there's a very special pot save the world coming for you this week uh ben rhodes and i sat down with jason rozayan who is the former tehran bureau chief of the washington post who was taken captive by the iranian regime for 544 days this horrific imprisonment is totally unjustified and unfair but it's such a great conversation because jason wrote a book about his experience and then Ben Rhodes was there

and Ben was on the other side of those negotiations. So you can understand it both from like the Washington angle and how Jason felt while he was in prison enduring this fucking hell. So a really cool special episode coming out on Wednesday. Check it out.

He's an incredible guy. He's such a good guy. So definitely listen to this. Great book. Read The Prisoner. Yes. We're heading out on tour this week. There will be no Thursday pod.

Our show in Charleston will be a Friday pod. Our show in New Orleans will be a bonus pod on Sunday. Our show in Durham will be the Monday pod. There are still a few tickets left for those shows. Just a few. So go get them. And there are plenty of tickets left for shows in cities like Boston, D.C., New York, L.A. Go to cricket.com slash events.

Get those tickets. Get those tickets. Tickets. All right, let's get to the news. On Tuesday night, President Trump will deliver his second State of the Union address from the Capitol. The White House has teased that Trump's speech will include calls for unity and bipartisanship and will be built around the theme, choosing greatness. Here's an excerpt, guys.

Choosing greatness. We have an excerpt, guys. Choosing greatness. We have an excerpt straight from the White House. Quote, together we can break decades of political stalemates, bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, come up with new cliches, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America's future. The decision is ours to make. Are you guys convinced yet?

Stephen Miller is such a bad writer. Bad writer. Does he offend you guys as former White House speechwriters? As someone that can't even put together a sentence, is writing these things? I mean, it's hard to get past the racism with Stephen Miller. Well, yeah, he sucks on a lot of levels. That's up front.

So you don't usually get to the fact that even if he weren't so racist, his writing would be really bad for a speechwriter. Just a bad writer. Right. Like if this was a normal Republican president, Stephen Miller would have applied to be speechwriter and his would not have made it out of the first pile because there would have been a pile of better speeches. And then there would have been like, oh, who is that racist guy? Yeah, yeah.

Well, we didn't even get to that when we were declining his speeches. George Bush's policies, horrendrendous. Horrendous policies. Michael Gerson, pretty good speechwriter. Yeah. Great speechwriter. Choosing greatness is like a bad motivational speaker you might hear at halftime of a high school football game. That is the theme. What does it tell us, guys, about Trump's political circumstances that he's trying to rediscover unity and bipartisanship in this speech.

You know, it's. And more importantly, will this be the night he becomes president? We had this very similar conversation last year. I did not actually go to the trouble of pulling last year's articles because let's all just live our lives. Trump stole my brain last year. I don't need to go back and give him some more. Still in it every day. You know, a State of the Union

is supposed to both sort of, is supposed to organize the administration's thinking and present a clear-eyed version of what the goals are for that administration for the coming year, reflecting their behaviors and policies and actions of the past. But there has never been a president whose state of the unions and presidencies are more

distinct. We see that example right now. So he's going to go out and give this speech about unity, yet what's hanging over the speech? Him telling CBS that he thinks Nancy Pelosi loves human trafficking and him threatening to declare a national emergency right even in the run-up to this speech his actual actions and behaviors do not align with the version of himself he's planning to present what do you think Tom it just feels like the least anticipated state of the union since they were delivered in envelopes and handed to congress I couldn't even find a lot of stories about it.

You know, right? Like, I guess for a minute I was like, wait, is it really Tuesday or is it next Tuesday? Because no one's talking about it. Yeah. That's because of Ralph Northam. But anyway. Yeah. Right.

I mean, the theme is choosing greatness. Apparently he's going to call on Congress to pass his new version of NAFTA, the USMCA. He's going to talk about Venezuela. They won't say if he'll declare a state of emergency. He'll ask for Congress to work with him on initiatives like infrastructure and health care. And he'll talk about immigration and confront it. It's like all pablum and none of the stuff that they're trying to sell as bipartisan is going to get done. All anyone's going to remember is if he declares a state of emergency or not.

Yeah, I mean, he is one of the most unpopular presidents in history, according to polling. He recently suffered one of the biggest midterm losses in history, and he's fresh off the losing end of the longest government shutdown in history. Any other president, any normal president in such a political circumstance, would probably try to move beyond rhetorical bipartisanship and unity and actually say, okay, I'm ready to compromise on X, Y, and Z. Now, let's get to the immigration thing. I'm sure in the speech he will say,

the senators and congressmen meeting right now on immigration, there's a bipartisan deal to be had. Democrats have told me they want border security in the wall. Let's just lie about that you know republicans want that too i've said it can be steel slats and not the wall abe lincoln called me last night and said he wants a wall right all his life right yeah and like you

know there there is a deal to be had there but if there's not if you can't compromise which i i know you can if you can't compromise i'll be forced to act it seems like he's going to end up with something like that but what's ridiculous about that is seems like he's going to end up with something like that. But what's ridiculous about that is, you know, he's going to make this emergency declaration. And not only is that declaration opposed by the Democratic Party, but it's opposed by a growing number of Republican senators. Mitch McConnell. Right. And the public. Not to say nothing of the public.

I also think the reason nobody's paying attention to this goes deeper. It's nice to see that there is a cost to the president being someone no one takes at face value. No one listens to his words, really takes them seriously. They change from day to day. You read into those words, his motivations. The State of the Union has another purpose, which is it actually forces previous administrations to organizing themselves around an idea. And actually the saying of it makes it true, right? We are going to pursue this next year. You set a marker for yourself, not just for the country, for yourself. But there's just been a story that's come out that shows that over most of the president's

past whatever months, most of his days are just wide open, right? No one actually believes that over, say, the last few weeks, Donald Trump has been feverishly meeting with his policy team, going through drafts and drafts of the State of the Union, trying to really center what he's going to say around what he really plans to fight for next year. Also, there's absolutely no evidence that any of these agencies in his government are staffed with enough people, and certainly enough competent people, to move forward with any of this agenda, even if they wanted to. He's talking about infrastructure. He's talking about prescription drugs. He's got a whole bunch of acting secretaries. He's got people.

He's got agencies on staff. He's got a bunch of buffoons in these jobs. It's like, you know. From a political calculus perspective, I mean, most presidents, when they try to run hard on an issue like he has on immigration and watch public opinion move against them so overwhelmingly, they would give up and move on to the next thing. Part of me is kind of fine with him continuing to talk about immigration almost exclusively because we know it's a losing issue. Oh, and also at least he's not doing other bad things. Yeah, right.

I mean, at least he's not making another huge run at repealing Obamacare or God knows what or invading Venezuela, you know, whatever else he could be talking about. I mean, look, none of these are great options here, but it shows how stupid he is politically. So I want to talk about the national emergency. Reporters asked him if he was going to declare this in the speech. And he said, I don't want to say it, but you'll hear the State of the Union, and then you'll see what happens right after the State of the Union.

I'm saying listen closely to the State of the Union. I think you'll find it very exciting. Guy keeps a great secret. So if he does declare a national emergency, how should Democrats react? I mean, this whole national emergency issue is weird. I mean, in the mid-70s, Congress passed the National Emergency Act, which gives the White House the authority to declare these national emergencies. They're weird and they don't make sense. Like the first one declared was in 1979 around the Iran hostage crisis, and it's been renewed every 90 days since. So there doesn't feel like there's a big emergency element to a lot of these emergencies that are stated. feel like there's a big emergency element to a lot of these emergencies that are stated.

What should have happened is like Congress should jump in and codify whatever powers the president needed to deal with these issues, but whatever. I mean, Republicans and Democrats have all declared states of emergency. So it's not a totally crazy, abnormal thing. I think that we should oppose it because there is no state of emergency on the merits on the southern border. There's no need to do this. There's no need to reprogram Department of Defense money to build a wall that no one thinks we need. But it will likely be met with a legal challenge. The courts historically have been pretty deferential to presidents about their authority to declare national emergencies, but that doesn't mean the wall will get built. It will likely still get bogged down in the same litigation. So I don't know. I don't want him to do it because I think it's terrible precedent and terrible policy. But if it moves on from shutting down the government or messing with the debt ceiling, then maybe that's the best

bad outcome we can hope for. Yeah. And look, there is a legislative option here under the National Emergencies Act that you just spoke about a presidential declaration of an emergency can be terminated if lawmakers pass a joint resolution to do so so house democrat the way this would work is trump declares the national emergency pelosi passes this immediately through the house because it would and then the law says that it has to be taken up by the senate mitch mcconnell cannot sit on it and it would require a simple majority in the senate to pass already the washington post reported today they have anywhere from four to six to ten republican senators who don't want this to happen now if they passed if the senate passed it also then it would go to trump's desk trump could veto this and then

probably they don't have the two-thirds in either house to override his veto and so it goes forward but i say yeah go through with that because now trump has just his first veto as president was to override a bipartisan condemnation of him declaring a national emergency for a wall that no one in the country wants or that i'm sorry a minority of people in the country 66 percent of posts there you go right and you know again like to tommy's point like it's both it's it's actually you know it captures something essential about the Trump administration. It is both a, you know, a feint towards authoritarianism and dangerous abuse of power built on decades of abuses of power by presidents. And yet, on the other hand, may be just the way out of may give Donald Trump the face saving thing he needs to get out of holding the government hostage again, holding the debt ceiling hostage again.

So, you know, it's ugly and we should just stand against it. And again, the actual upshot of this will be years of litigation. Yeah. The Democrats have chosen former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams to deliver the response to Trump. Guys, how tough is this job? What do you think of the decision? And what do you want to hear from Stacey Abrams? I think it's an inspired choice. Same. She is one of the most

exciting candidates who ran last cycle. Unfortunately, she did not win, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have a bright future in the party. I think she's also someone that has been, I don't know, just been able to deliver a clear, inspiring message. I mean, look, this is a very tough assignment. You follow the pageantry of the State of the Union. You get 10 minutes. It always just looks inherently small. But I think that what I've been struck by in starting to read 2020 coverage again

is how nice it has felt for me to watch normal politics and see normal speeches and sort of unifying messages that are designed to bring people together. So I assume she will attempt some sort of shot at that while still critiquing the Trump administration. Yeah. I mean, it is traditionally a very difficult assignment. I would say though, it is worth noting that it was, it has gone from being one of the hardest presidents to follow to one of the easiest. It's true. You know, Donald Trump does not make the most of the pageantry and ceremony. He cannot wear it.

He cannot carry it. It's just not in his emotional intelligence arsenal to stand up in front of people and use that. I mean, never has it looked so diminished to be in the hands of someone so small. And Stacey Abrams is someone who just, even now as I think about it, very few people could follow the State of the Union

and then sit in a wingback chair and just talk to the camera, but Stacey Abrams can do it. Yeah, maybe she'll run for Senate in Georgia against Sonny Perdue. Well, apparently one of the reasons, you know, Schumer, he's always scheming. One of the reasons that Schumer picked her

is because he's trying to convince her to run. That's great. Which is great. Love it. Good. Great choice. And she's brilliant. We love Stacey Abrams.

You know, I would say it is a very, very tough job to do this. And Abrams herself was questioned about this last week when she was out here in L.A. And she said, you know, it's tough because you want to give voice to all of the feelings people have about the Trump administration over the last couple of years. You also want to put out forward a positive agenda. I would just say like there's not a ton of business that you have to do in the speech. Like it's not up to Stacey Abrams to lay out the Democratic agenda for the year like Trump just laid out his agenda for the year. So if she wants to focus on one powerful story or one anecdote or wants to talk about the America she sees in big broad strokes and not get into policy, like she should do that. I mean, I've said this before, but her, the speech that she gave on election night and

then the follow-up speech she gave when she refused to concede, when she accepted the results, but refused to concede were two of the best speeches I've heard from a democratic politician in years. She is brilliant. She also just wrote this really fantastic piece in Foreign Policy Magazine, of all places. It is brilliant. And I defy someone to find a politician who writes in that kind of academic style so brilliantly in either party in politics today. It actually, you know, what I appreciate about it is actually it reminds me of,

you know, she's not writing it to make a case for herself as a candidate. She's saying, here's what I believe. Here's a kind of politics I ascribe to that will guide me in the future. And it reminds me also of

a lot of the early writing of Elizabeth Warren that was not geared around helping her win, but just sort of laying out an ideological case for a kind of economic politics. And this was laying out an ideological case for a kind of economic politics. And this was laying out an ideological case for a kind of identity politics that she just defended

in a really thoughtful and smart way. Yeah. Okay. After that dose of optimism, let's talk about Ralph Northam. Virtually every elected Democrat in Virginia and in Washington have now called on the governor to resign after a website surfaced a photo from Northam's medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface standing next to another man dressed as a member of the KKK. After the photo first surfaced on Friday, Northam issued an apology quote for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo. Then on Saturday, in one of the most bizarre press conferences I've ever seen in my entire life, Northam changed his story and claimed that he wasn't in the

photo at all and that a mix-up might have resulted in someone else's photo ending up on his page in the yearbook. He also admitted at that press conference that he once put shoe polish on his face to do a Michael Jackson impersonation at a San Antonio dance contest in 1984. I can't even believe these words are coming out of my mouth right now.

Northam would be... Did he win? Yes, he told us he won. He told us he won. 1984 i like i can't even believe these words are coming out of my mouth right now like northam would do you win yes he told us he won he told us he won he said he won because he knew how to moonwalk and then some fucking reporter asked him does he still know how to moonwalk and he looked like he was about to do it and then his wife stopped him and said inappropriate circumstances what the fuck was going on here's what I'll say about that. Every person in this world needs someone who will stand up and stop you from moonwalking during your racism

apology press conference. That is true. So, by the time you listen to this podcast, Northam may have resigned. If he hasn't by the time you're listening to it, I don't know what the hell's going on. He would be replaced by Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, a Democrat who's just the second African-American in Virginia history to hold a statewide office. Okay, let's start with this.

What the fuck were Ralph Northam and his team thinking with that statement, that press conference? I feel like this will be a textbook example for people being trained in crisis communications for years to come. Yeah. I mean, it really is the worst case scenario. It's not just an offensive photo of a white man in blackface. It's someone standing with a member of the KKK, dressed as a member of the KKK, which is an evil domestic terrorist organization. I mean, it's like, it's the lapse of judgment is so fundamental on every level that I get, I can't actually understand it. If, I guess if he could prove that it's not him in the photo, that the photo somehow got put on his page by someone else and he did not choose that to put it there and somehow didn't learn of it

and explain also why he was called Coon man in med school, which is his nickname. Then maybe people will listen to that explanation. But I mean, I can't under, I can't fathom how he is so badly confused this response by, uh, confirming and then denying this allegation.

And then, yeah, that's the thing about the Michael Jackson impersonation, which say, Oh, and by the way, I actually did do this a different time. I mean, Simone Sanders tweeted like no one is saying Governor Northam can't be met with grace and forgiveness, but almost the entirety of the left believe he's lost the ability to effectively govern.

I think that is as concise and perfect a summary as you can get. And he should he should have resigned on Friday. Yeah. Yeah. He should have resigned on Friday. Yeah. Lava, what do you think? Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's, you say, all right, well, let's separate the mismanagement of it from the thing itself for a moment. But the problem is you actually can't. Yeah, no. Because part of the mismanagement was admitting it was him in the photo. So now I don't know what it looks like if he denied it was him in the photo from the beginning, but we can't go back there. So he took away any ability to defend himself by at first admitting it was him, thinking that would help him get over this, realizing it was

far worse than he anticipated, and then calling this press conference to try to get out of it. The other piece of this too is, you know, there's a problem in our politics in that when you have a, when you have a scandal like this, it is a scandal not based on something that's happening right now, some actual political event, policy choice problem in the world as it exists right now, but a symbol and an old one. And the problem we have is that the incentives for Democrats and the incentives for Ralph Northam are not aligned, right? That, you know, he's thinking, I can get through this. If I just hunker down, figure out a way to hold on, then the media will turn away. Eventually, people will look the other way. People will forget, I'll get through this scandal. And for

Democrats, obviously, it's our incentive to say, no, we're drawing a hard line here. We want him gone. He can't get through this because he had first admitted it was him and then tried to take it back. But the problem will be, well, what happens next, right? What keeps this story in the public's attention? Republicans will try. Democrats may try. But, you know, there's no actual manifestation of it. It is a historical, it is a photo and so i i don't know how you get out of a situation like this i also will say like watching him at that press conference which is so bizarre he didn't he didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation and the mistake like like joking joking about the moonwalk and stuff like that like i realized

whatever it's a tense situation and you're trying to let but like no you know like it would i mean i i you know clint smith who uh was on pod save the people saw him tweet about this on friday he's like you know he was saying his grandfather can still remember hiding in the back of the house when the ku klux klan was riding by like these memories are really fresh and like that is like i don't think northam quite understands how painful and hurtful that is to people in this country who've dealt with that not that long ago and he also i mean and part of what made me realize that is he during the press conference he talks about this trip he went on with his african-american assistant and he and they talked about the history of blackface and Northam

apparently told his assistant about the Michael Jackson incident he told them during this trip and apologized for it and having done that you would think that he would then understand the gravity of the situation now and it just has not seemed like he has yeah and that in that yearbook, it's not high school, it's med school. You know, he's significantly older than, not that it's an excuse, but like these are old adults

and there's all the tons of instances of people in blackface in this yearbook. And I'm very sick of the whataboutism from Democrats tweeting at Republicans, okay, now condemn Trump

or now condemn Steve King. Like, I'm sick of that shit. It misses the point. It's not just that we're all bad. We have to be better than the Republicans on these issues. And I just imagine if you're an African American kid living in Charlottesville and you went

through the horrific both sides lack of condonation from Donald Trump when the fucking Klan and neo-Nazis are walking through your city. And then your governor dressed like this potentially or worse in a KKK outfit. And that's your alternative. That's an untenable situation to put anyone in. And it's a humiliating thing as a party to have someone who did that

represent the values we say we agree. I mean, like the 2020 field is the most diverse field in history. This new class of members of Congress, the most diverse, exciting, young field in history. Like we can't let shit like this cloud the fact that we actually care about these issues and we want a more inclusive society.

Yeah, and I saw some people tweeting, know like why are democrats why are we always so hard on our own side and republicans you know they make excuses for them and like when they do sexist and racist shit on the republican side you know their members stay on but we force ours out it's like well that's because this is what we believe yeah this believe. It's because we're not actually playing team sports all the time and our team is going to beat their team. We believe in a society that's inclusive where we don't allow racism and sexism to flourish. We're trying to build that society.

If a Republican politician was caught in a yearbook photo advocating for higher marginal tax rates or saying that climate change was real, maybe they'd be kicked out of the party. Maybe they would push them out pretty fast because that's what they believe. They don't, you know, we are a diverse party. We are the party that looks like the United States of America. They're not. And so with our party, we have to, you know, we have to hold ourselves to a different standard, whether that means that we win or not, political considerations aside. Yeah. And it's also, I think, worth remembering that it's like, there's, there's value to setting that standard above and beyond simply being able to denounce things that

we don't think are right. You know, we're in this period of re-evaluation. It's on gender, it's on race, it's on a host of other issues. It's why we're talking about Confederate monuments now. It's why in some cases we're talking about sexual harassment and sexual assault now. We have realized that even in recent years, our thinking of ourselves as having gotten over certain problems, our thinking of ourselves as modern, our thinking of ourselves as having whatever, being post are thinking of ourselves as modern or think of themselves as having whatever being post history in some sense is, is wrong. It was just completely false. And one of the hardest parts about that is there are these two things sitting side by side. One, our standards are going up and then that's a really

positive thing. And then we are taking those standards and saying, and saying who is living up to them and who has always lived up to them. And some people are just failing. And then we are taking those standards and saying, who is living up to them and who has always lived up to them? And some people are just failing. And to me, you look back at that yearbook photo and it's not just about Ralph Northam. It's the fact that there was a culture of that school, a glibness and an acceptable, a glibness around race and a racism baked into the culture of that school that made it a place where people felt safe to dress that way, a place that was not safe for people of color at all. And right now we're looking back and saying, no, this is not acceptable. That the idea that you could go along with that is a completely

morally reprehensible way to have gotten where you are. And your explanations are not acceptable. Your denial is not acceptable. And the only way we'll get better is by rejecting, by rejecting the kinds of acceptable racisms that came before, including blackface. You know, there's this, this, the people say like, well, you know, blackface has just gotten less acceptable. Well, actually just racism has gotten less acceptable. That's all. We're talking about the fact that racism has gotten less acceptable. I mean, even apparently in that school, in that yearbook in 2013, there were people dressed up in racist garb. So, yeah. And the context is, I mean, the last lynching in America was in Alabama in 1981.

That wasn't a very long time ago. And that was the context for people wearing those outfits to wherever event they were at. And I will say, too, there's another reason that we have an obligation to call on him to resign and to call out this behavior. I mean, you know, black voters took a chance on Ralph Northam because he said he was going to fight bigotry and he was going to fight racism. And he did during that campaign. And, you know, by all accounts of people who know him and people in the state talk about this, he has passed the right legislation to show that he is standing on the right side of this issue. He has made the right political moves. And for black voters to realize that this man was not who they thought he was because of this past sort of breeds, rightly so, suspicion and distrust between black voters and white politicians who claim to be fighting for them. And as white people, we have an obligation to say, no, that's not okay.

Because now it's our job to help repair that breach of trust that Ralph Northam, his actions broke. All right, let's talk 2020 uh new jersey senator cory booker announced his candidacy for president on friday with a very compelling video i thought a series of interviews including one on the view and a press conference outside his house the former mayor of newark built a large following on social media and a reputation for promotion, sorry, and a reputation for promoting optimism and what he describes as radical love.

According to one article in the Washington Post this weekend, he'll campaign on a suite of criminal justice reforms, baby bonds, Medicare for all, and a Green New Deal.

In the past, he's been criticized by some progressives for being too close to Wall Street and pharmaceutical companies, as well as his support for charter schools. Guys, what do we think of Cory Booker's announcement?

What do we think are his strengths as a candidate, his challenges as a candidate? I mean, with respect to the rollout itself, I thought it was smart. The video was extremely well done. I mean, candidly, if you put that drumline to like almost anything, it will get me fired up. But it really worked in the video he released and it worked for him and his personality, which is like incredibly energetic and optimistic and positive. He also called into the Tom Joyner morning show for a radio interview. And then he called into Univision to do an interview almost entirely in Spanish. So he is setting a signal that he's going to speak directly to African American voters, Latino voters.

He also did The View and then he did a press conference outside of his house. So he's wisely going around the DC filter to the greatest extent possible. You know, I think people who know Booker know that he works incredibly hard. There's like videos of him doing pushups in between interviews, right? I mean, he's like a super hyper energetic guy. He has a great record on criminal justice reform. He's, you know, been an outspoken participant in some of the most important hearings of the last couple of years. So I think he will be, he will be noticed. I mean, he'll get, he'll, people will take a look at him. We could talk downsides in a minute, but. Love it. I'll tell you one thing I've learned. I am a sucker for a rollout

video me too i just i mean one after another i'm just in on these videos the videos are working on me and you know what i'm an engaged primary voter and i'm loving them uh yeah i mean look pierce your cynicism every like i approach these things i i click play i like play like i'm deciding whether to buy it at sundance you know know, like, well, people want this. I'm like a very angry producer. And by the end, I'm just like, I love the fonts. You know, I'm in. But, you know, look, I said this also about some of the previous videos. You know, we have seen a lot of the top tier candidates.

They are aligning around a certain set of policies. Green New Deal, Medicare for all, baby bonds as a proposal that's been around for a while. It's a smart and interesting progressive idea. And now I think it's like, what's next? I'm excited to see what happens when all these candidates are getting out there and get pushed off their message, get pushed out of their comfort zones a little, because I think, to me, that's going to be the test to prove who's really up for this. Yeah, my thought after watching that video was that Cory Booker did what Elizabeth Warren did in her video. These are now two candidates, and I actually think you can make a case that Pete Buttigieg did this as well. Three candidates who have done the best job of saying, here's my story. Here's why I'm running. Here's my record that

backs that up. Here's my life story that backs that up. And now you know. And you might not agree with my message or my story, but this is the story. Elizabeth Warren, she thinks the system is rigged. She's the one who can fix it. She's been trying to do that her whole life. Cory Booker, you know, he talked about we have a common pain. We have to turn it into a common purpose. I'm an organizer. I brought people together my whole life. I want to bring people together now.

Pete Buttigieg is saying, I'm 37 years old. I'm young. We have too many baby boomers in there. And I want, I think it's time for our generation to lead. Like, you know what these three candidates stand for. And they have the stories that match up. I have the exact same reaction, too. He also has a good staff.

Our friend Adisu is running his campaign. Yes. Adisu is on 04-08-16 presidentials, ran Gavin Newsom's governor's bid recently. Yeah. Adisu was a field organizer in Iowa when I was the Kerry campaign press assistant way back when. I'll say one more thing to you about Booker. Like, I think that I am constitutionally not the most receptive to the, like, language of love that he speaks in. Not a judgment of it. Just, like, literally me as a cynical kind of person.

And I have always wondered, like, how does that translate to national politics? How does the poetry and the conversation about love translate? And what I actually saw in that video, and again, this is what campaigns are all about. I was like, oh, I see it. I see it. I actually saw in his announcement, I saw in his announcement the way it makes sense in a way that I actually hadn't before. And it made me think like, you know what, that's why these campaigns are important. And that's why we should all go into this with an open mind. You know what it is, isory booker believes this yeah so you can disagree with it you can say um this is not the message for this moment whatever but cory booker believes

this and he has lived it i mean i watched um street fight over the weekend i had not seen street fight before the documentary about his first run for mayor in in newark and you know he moves into this affordable housing unit in newark and lives there he still by the way lives in an affordable housing unit to this day in newark he's the only one running it does so like cory booker has lived this story his whole life now you know the new york times says quote it remains to be seen whether mr booker's aspirational tones will fall flat with the democratic electorate energized by seething anger towards Mr. Trump. He was also asked if Donald Trump is racist and said that while Trump says bigoted things and uses language that white supremacists use, I quote, I don't know the heart of anybody.

I'll leave that to the Lord. What do you guys think about this message, this aspirational message and sort of the possible difficulties in a Democratic party? Here's where I think reporters sometimes confuse what they see on Twitter with what Democrats writ large actually want I mean I've seen polling that suggests that Democrats actually do want a largely positive Optimistic hopeful message that isn't all about Trump Yeah, and so I think that that's why Elizabeth Warren is doing a very similar has a very similar tone She didn't barely mention Trump in her first visit to Iowa. But, you know, with respect to Booker, like he can be a little, a little extra at times.

Like when you and I interviewed him in Washington, it was like the three of us sitting in a room having a conversation. And, you know, like one very long answer. I think he quoted like three different people. King quoting Gandhi. It's like sometimes you're like, we he does the whole thing Gandhi it's like sometimes you're like we're just talking here you know so you know it's a question of whether that will always work in rooms in Iowa or whatnot um I think he's also going to get shit for being seen as too pro-Wall Street or having too many big donors versus the small dollar donors uh that were

particularly attracted to Bernie and probably Kamala Harris again. I think that defending Bain Capital in the middle of the 2012 election was an odd choice. Obama was hammering Mitt Romney for his ties to Bain and he jumped out and defended Bain. And it sort of, you know, to me had that tone that you hear

from a lot of Wall Street people where they feel aggrieved and attacked. And it's like, I couldn't fucking care less that you billionaire feel aggrieved and attacked. I'm not accusing Booker of that. I'm just saying it like it sounded like those voices you sometimes hear when you try to raise taxes on Wall Street people. So these are things that he's going to get questioned on. You know, I think he will inspire a lot of people in the process, though. Yeah, I will say that when he refused to call Donald Trump a racist,

my eyes rolled so far back into my head. It's like, all right, man, like, come on. I just don't think like, I just don't think it's, yeah. But I would say like, I don't, I actually don't think it's that important. I understand what he's trying to say. I don't believe that Cory Booker lacks an understanding of the context of Donald Trump's racist behavior at all. The point I was actually going to make is I think his bigger problem is around issues related to Wall Street and corporate interests because, you know, and it actually comes down to like this idea of a positive message.

I think there's a shibboleth now for- Define that word. A proof that you're on the team. Cool. Find that word. Proof that you're on the team. Cool. That people need to understand that they've heard a lot of Democrats say the right things around reigning in corporate power, reigning in insurance companies, reigning in Wall Street. But then when push comes to shove, there's the question as to do they have the stomach for it?

Are they really in for this fight? And it's a fight that actually requires a little bit of negativity. It does require a little bit of spleen. And so I think Cory Booker's biggest challenge as a candidate, it actually is connecting that positive vision, that conversation around love with actually attacking some of the sources of problems in this country and being clear-eyed and honest and passionate about why you need to take those interests on. Yeah, look, and I think there's two possibilities here, right? His detractors would say one possibility is he has lived in New Jersey. There's a lot of people in New Jersey who work in the financial industry. There's a big pharmaceutical industry presence in

New Jersey. And that he is too close with these interests because he has been a senator from New Jersey. And that's why. He specifically opposed a drug reimportation from Canada bill that he's gotten a lot of. Right. And then the other possibility is he is one of those Democrats who believes, and he says this sometimes, there are bad corporate actors and we have to take on bad corporate actors, but I don't want to paint all business with the same brush. And he could be one of those Democrats. Now, I think the proof is in the record. He's got to talk about his record.

He took a bad vote on pharmaceuticals, and then, of course, this year he decided to support Bernie Sanders' bill to rein in prescription drug costs. And so he's taken some good votes against financial companies, but maybe he's spent too much time fundraising on Wall Street. So his challenge is going to be sort of talking about his record and proving that he can take on powerful interests when need be. Two things I really liked that he has done or did do in this rollout was, one, he did something unprecedented when Jeff Sessions was nominated for attorney general, which is a sitting U.S. senator offered testimony against him. I think that was a prescient decision. Sessions was as bad, if not worse, than we thought he would be. So that was a good thing. He's also one of the only people I think I've

heard talk about environmental justice in his rollout. He was talking specifically about elevated lead levels and how that can harm kids like permanently. And it really, really bad. It's really, you know, lead paint poisoning is a horrible thing. It can impair you for life. And he was talking about that and super fun sites, et cetera. And I think that's not talked about enough. And it was cool to hear him say that. And it was really authentic to hear him say that from basically, you know,

his front porch in Newark. Yeah, that's right. My biggest issue with him is that he said in that press conference he wouldn't get rid of the filibuster and, in fact, would actually try to defend it. John is a one-issue voter. Well, here's my problem. I'm going to keep harping on this, right? So now Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand was sort of waffling on it in my interview with her.

Kamala Harris's people said she is not calling to get rid of the filibuster at this time. Elizabeth Warren is so far the only one who said, yeah, everything's on the table. So if you believe in the filibuster, if you want to keep it like Cory Booker does, that's fine. We can disagree on it. That's fine. But it's going to be very difficult to tell voters, I believe in, and maybe voters won't care about this, but it's the honest thing to say.

It's hard to say, I believe in the filibuster. I want to keep it. And by the way, I want to pass Medicare for All. I want to pass a Green New Deal. We just had every single Republican, except for Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain, vote to destroy the Affordable Care Act. You are not then finding vote, Republican votes.

Barack Obama in 2009 gets to Congress and Mitch McConnell says, I'm going to block every single thing he does. You are not going to find Republican votes for your agenda. And you are not going to have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate any time within the next decade. It's just not going to happen. Look at the map, count up the races. So you have a choice. You can either decide you're going to get rid of the filibuster, or you can tone down your agenda and tell people, well, I'm just going to try to either work with the other party on smaller stuff, and I'm going to take executive action. But other than that, I can't do anything big. That's your choice. Basically, an agenda, a Democratic agenda that you can achieve through reconciliation, right?

Basically, like an agenda that you will pass with 51 votes. That's what you're talking about. Which are all budgetary for reconciliation. You can talk about higher taxes. You can talk about a lot of things. But what you can't talk about is... You can talk about executive actions. And you can talk about, like, your criminal justice reform that you got done by working with some Republicans.

Yeah, sorry. I mean, what you're talking about is also sort of... Is it often a criticism you hear of Obama from the left, including of the campaign, including by Hillary Clinton at the time that like, oh, hope and change. We're going to bring everybody together and solve problems. And in reality, that did not happen at all. Mitch McConnell laid down on the railroad tracks to block everything that ever happened. I guess for me, when it comes to the filibuster, like just i i you're right they'll have to get rid of it i just don't really care if they answer that in the context of this primary i'm happy to let

them message it any way they want and just deal with it when they deal with it yeah but i just i think i i agree with that to an extent but um i think we have a problem not just democrats but everyone in politics with promising one thing to voters and then disappointing them a lot later. And I think that if it was as easy as, okay, I'm not going to get into this in the, into the primary right now, but when I'm president, I'm just going to do away with it. That would be one thing. But these people, when they become president, they don't have the power to do away with the filibuster. They actually are going to need 51 votes in the Senate to do away with it. And it's not like like we are don't just yell at the presidential candidates by the way like go talk to all the senators because there are nowhere near

enough votes in the democratic among democratic senators to get rid of the filibuster either so i guess booker says he'll actively work to preserve it so i guess what i'm worried about and this is non-ideological because on this side on this case i'm worried about people not being honest about not getting rid of the filibuster. On other things like Medicare for all, I'm worried about people not being honest about the transition it will require. But I do think forget about Republican attacks. Forget about lobbyists, donors, all this bullshit. Like just think about you're trying to get voters to believe your agenda and what you're going to do. And you don't want to disappoint them once you're president because when people get disappointed, they get more cynical and they don't participate in politics.

I also – it's – I see the – I see why they want to talk about policy and they want to talk about broadly popular proposals as opposed to Senate logistics, Senate process. Totally. People care about – yeah, exactly. I get that. But I think the Elizabeth Warren answer, all officers on the table is a much smarter one. Give yourself the option. The other piece of this is it's, having campaigned on the possibility of removing the filibuster

will actually have a substantive change in how you can govern even if the filibuster is in place a substantive change in how you can govern, even if the filibuster is in place for a time. That's a very good point. The threat that you will remove the filibuster at any time will mean that there will be a set of Republicans who understand that at any moment, the leverage and power they have in Washington will disappear. And it could facilitate more compromise. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that's really important. And I also do think it is about setting the table in the same way that Republicans set the table for a long time, in part because of some decisions Democrats made to say, if Democrats employ the

filibuster on a Supreme Court nominee, we will get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, right? They built that case, they built that case. And then when it happened, they were ready to go. It wasn't a surprise. Nobody was caught off guard. It happened. And they got recriminations for it, but Mitch McConnell sleeps fine at night. Yeah. Susan Collins was like, oh, I hate this vote. This is just one of the worst things that ever, yes. All right. When we come back, I will talk to Adam Serwer from The Atlantic. On the pod today, we have Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic and one of my favorite writers about race and politics in the Trump era. Adam, welcome to the pod.

Thank you for having me and thank you for that kind introduction. So you have a piece out this morning about why Ralph Northam should resign, where you say that more is at stake than the governor's career or ambitions. What did you mean by that? I think that, you know, this is something that's obvious to pretty much everyone, but the social barriers against overt expressions of prejudice have been eroded by the president. They began eroding the second he came down that golden staircase calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. And the only way to repair or ensure that that standard is not further eroded is to hold public officials accountable for that kind of behavior. And I think that's even more important for a party that wants

to hold the mantle of anti-racism in the way that the Democratic Party does and in the way that Northam in particular did when he was running for governor. So, you know, it's not enough to say, well, it's not like Trump's going to resign. If you want to be a leader of a party which holds itself to a higher standard of behavior than the person that they consider racist who is in the White House, then you really have to hold yourself to that. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you also write about the difference between interpersonal racism, as you define it, individual acts of cruelty or prejudice, and systemic racism, the embrace of policies that harm people of color. Why do you think that incidents of interpersonal racism like Northam's picture or Trump's language tend to get so much more attention and sort of swift condemnation than systemic racism?

And what can we do about that? I'm not sure what we can do about it, sort of having everyone look more closely at the big picture. But when we're talking about that distinction, I mean, it's just easier to say you used a naughty word and you shouldn't have done that, or you did something individually that was racist and condemn that. Because it's a lot less scary than really considering the extent to which racism has shaped the American political system and continues to shape it.

And once you get into that, it starts implicating people who may not necessarily have malicious intentions, but are participating in a system and upholding a system that treats people differently according to race. And in the case of Donald Trump, you have someone who, and I wrote about this a couple years ago, who, you know, a lot of people consider themselves anti-racist, nevertheless, pulled the lever for Trump because they convinced themselves that he wasn't actually racist, that he cared about everyone, despite policies that he was proposing that, you know, as I list in the piece, have been incredibly discriminatory and have hurt hundreds of thousands of people when you really start looking at the numbers. Yeah. No, I mean, I thought about this too during the whole Covington Catholic incident,

and I was like, you know, we're spending like four or five days talking about what really happened here. And in the meantime, it did not facilitate a larger discussion about how we treat Native people in this country, which would be a good discussion to have. But it seems like every time there's an incident like this, we can't seem to sort of like broaden the discussion into the larger systemic issues at play here. I think people, I think these sort of large symbolic events draw people's attention in part because they feel like the lines are clear. Whereas when you start talking about systemic discrimination, things, particularly for people who benefit from the system, start getting grayish pretty fast. Uncomfortable, yeah. that starts happening, people tend to get less strident, which I think is in a way why it's so important for Democrats to draw a really bright line here. What did you make of how quickly nearly the entire Democratic Party, both in Virginia and nationally, called on Northam to resign?

Well, I think that's a reflection of the fact that the Democratic Party is reliant. It is not viable without black voters. And I think the image of a physician in 1984 possibly wearing blackface and Northam admitted that he wore blackface in another context is just evocative of a centuries-long history of black people either being mistreated or being exploited for medical research or being misdiagnosed or not properly treated for medical problems based on beliefs about intrinsic racial differences that don't actually exist. And so I think it was a combination of the sort of the evocation of this form of entertainment that was created in effect to say that black people are happier when they are subservient to rights, subservient to white people, in combination with this history of medical racism in the United States, but I think it just really hit a strong chord with people without whom the Democratic Party simply is not viable. And the distinction between that and the fact that Steve King is still in office and wasn't censured until now, and the fact that Donald Trump is president is reflective of the fact that there are no, there's no constituency of voters within the Republican Party that are

willing to punish their elected officials in the same way. Well, yeah. And you've written about this before too, right? Because it's, you know, the fault line in American politics right now is not, it's not tribalism. It's, it's racism as racism, as you've written, right? And this is why there's actually a substantive difference between the two parties and how they deal with these incidents. And I think you can actually see that on the local level. You can actually see where Republicans are beholden to voters of color. They actually behave kind of differently. And you look at in Florida where that elections official resigned when he was revealed to have dressed up in a blackface costume, in part because Ron DeSantis is reliant on a

substantial constituency of non-white voters for whom, you know, without whom he wouldn't have actually beaten Gillum. So I think that, you know, again, it's about who politicians are beholden to and who their constituencies are. And I think that has a lot more to do with whether people actually get punished for racism or elected officials get held accountable for racism than, you know, whether or not the individual politician is themselves particularly virtuous. So I wonder how you see this dynamic playing out in the Democratic primary, because I thought it was interesting that on the same day,

the yearbook photo surfaced, you've got Cory Booker kicking off his presidential campaign. And when a reporter asked whether Trump is racist, he says, well, he says bigoted things, and he uses the language of white supremacists, but I don't know the heart of anybody. And then also, interestingly, Sherrod Brown has asked the heart of anybody. And then also, interestingly, Sherrod Brown has asked the same question and says, yes, he's a racist. What did you sort of make of those different responses? I think that Booker's response is reflective of a recognition that you see, you know, throughout the mainstream press and throughout and among a lot of politicians, honestly, Democratic and Republican, that white people are more likely to be accused of racism

than suffer from racial discrimination. And as a result, they're extremely sensitive, or not everybody, but a lot of people are very sensitive to the idea that they're going to be accused of being racist when actually they think they're a good person. And I think Booker's remarks are reflective of that concern. He thinks that in order to appeal to white voters, he has to avoid a situation in which he appears to be labeling a large chunk of the electorate as racist. And for whatever reason, Sherrod Brown is less concerned about that. And I don't know if that's because he feels that he is accountable to a set of voters who are going to forgive him for that, or his presidential ambitions aren't fully fleshed out.

I'm not sure. But I do think that the reality is that white people are the demographic majority and their concerns are going to have an outsized influence on the way that we talk about racism. Yeah. I just wonder if there are white voters out there who, if you say that Trump says racist things and does racist things, that will give them a different impression or somehow influence their vote differently than if you say Trump is racist. I just don't know how much that distinction matters, but maybe it does to some people.

I don't know. Well, something that I thought about when Booker said that was to what extent he feels like, was to what extent he feels like, you know, as a black candidate who's trying to appeal to those Trump-Obama voters, whether he can, you know, he can, in a sense, reassure those voters that he's not judging them by talking about racism, honestly, in a way that reminds me of the way that Obama talked about it. Totally. That was my first thought. I mean, Obama was very careful. I don't think Obama would have called Trump a racist, to be perfectly honest. And I think that Brown may feel more comfortable doing that because he's a white guy.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that those actions are predetermined based on race. I mean, I don't recall what Kamala Harris has said about it, but, you know, I don't think it's necessarily the case that a black candidate has to be like, well, I don't know what's in their heart, but I do think that the political calculation may be a bit different because of that. So last question. Stacey Abrams is going to be delivering the Democratic rebuttal on Tuesday. She recently wrote a pretty forceful essay for Foreign Affairs about how identity politics actually strengthens our democracy. She makes the argument that her diverse coalition in the 2018 Senate race was built by understanding each group's unique concerns instead of trying to create what she calls a false image of universality.

What did you think of that piece? I thought it was was extraordinarily perceptive about what conservatives call identity politics actually is, which is marginalized people who formerly did not have a voice demanding the same rights as everyone else. And that's generally what people mean when they say identity politics, and it's a kind of denigration of those people's vital interests. And I think Abrams is fundamentally right that it's about expanding democracy, not constricting it. Yeah. No, I thought you made a very persuasive case, too, that part of the problems with calls for more universality and sort of a message that appeals to everyone at once is that it sort of ignores the historical discrimination that's not too far in the past at all, legally, that all kinds of different minority groups have faced in the country. legally, that all kinds of different minority groups have faced in the country. I also think that you can find the universality in the specific. You know, talking about, I mean, I think Obama was pretty good at this.

You know, he cast his unusual heritage as a uniquely American thing, and I'm not necessarily sure that's the case, but what he did was he made that story universal in part by being so specific and talking about the values that he inherited in his unusual family that were reflective of, you know, the way that people raise their kids everywhere. So I think there's a way to be both universal and specific at the same time, and I think that to the extent that there's a barrier in seeing those certain stories as universal because they're specific, it has a lot to do with not being able to relate to people who are unlike you. Yeah, but you're right.

I mean, Obama tried to root his unique story and his differences in the American story. You know, this is fundamentally American and no other country on Earth is my story even possible, right, would be the line. Adam, thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate you chatting with us. Yeah, and come back again soon, take care

take care thanks to Adam Serwer for joining us today and thanks to patient 1 and patient 2 for being here and by the way guys, I just want to say congrats to your patriots thank you so much, I had a wonderful time watching the game.

I consumed a whole pig cooked on a spit that had just eaten rat feces. Name the movie. What? Contagion. We talked about this last week. Oh, sorry. I get Contagion and Outbreak confused. Me too.

I only saw Contagion one time. Well, spoiler. Well, that's part of the movie. That's what a spoiler is, yeah. Look, I'm an outbreak guy living in a contagion world, you know? The Mutaba virus, anybody? These were all jokes. Anyway.

Mutaba. If you made it this far. I hope there's music. What a little Easter egg for you. Bye, guys. Bye. Go Rams!