Pod Save America - “Don’t tweet, vote.”

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

Tuesday’s primaries point to the importance of Democratic turnout in November, Trump escalates his trade war, and Paul Ryan is briefly reunited with his spine. Then former White House senior advisor Ron Klain joins Jon and Dan to talk about Mitch McConnell’s success in packing the courts with Trumpy judges. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, we'll talk to former White House Senior A ron klain about what donald trump is doing to our judiciary uh which could affect the rule of law in the united states for the next half century and beyond dan good news it's great uh we're also going to talk about uh tuesday's primaries and how donald trump's trying his hardest to mess up the obama economy with the war. How's that branding? You like that? It's great. Other pods. Tommy's new episode of Pod Save the World is up.

It's a conversation with our pal Ben Rhodes about his new memoir, The World As It Is. It's fantastic. It's up now. Everyone go buy the book. You will enjoy it very much. I have book stuff too. But first I wanted to say, as someone who has recently written a book, Ben's book is so good. And I cannot imagine the fact, not only that he wrote it, and it's a beautiful book, which you can only expect from Ben, because Ben is a beautiful

writer. But the fact that he wrote it in this period of time after working in the White House harder than just about anyone for eight years is a feat of physical and mental endurance that I truly appreciate. Yeah. So buy Ben's book. It's superb. It's probably the best – this was in I think the New York Review. This will be the best view of the Obama presidency from anyone other than Barack Obama, in my view. Ben was there for all the big moments, and he writes about it beautifully. So as mentioned, I also wrote a book.

That book is coming out a week from Tuesday. And last week on this podcast, I challenged folks to try to get us to 10,000 combined books and e-books, and we made good progress to that. And we are now at just about 8,200. And so people were really awesome. A lot of people bought the book, bought the book as a gift for Father's Day for people. People tweeted those out and were super excited. And I think we can prove my publisher wrong, who told me that I should expect to pre-sell 1,500 to 3,000 books. And when I told him 10,000 books, he thought I was insane. And so in addition to being able to prove him wrong, which would be enjoyable for me when I get to see all of them in New York the week my book comes out, it's also a chance to get a nice check to our friends at Swing Left. check to our friends at Swing Left because, as we've talked about before, a portion of the proceeds of every book in the pre-sale period go to Swing Left.

And then also we have two events there are still tickets available for. One is at the 92nd Street Y. It's Wednesday the 20th. the Wednesday. It's Wednesday the 20th. And then we also have an event the next week in LA. All four of us together at Writer's Block.

I will tweet out the link. I forgot about that. That's right. Yeah, there are still tickets available. So it'll be, it's a little bonus Pod Save America live show in LA about the book.

That should be fun. I'm looking forward to that. Everyone go buy the book. Let's get to 10,000. Come on. But also, great job for getting to 8,000. All right, Stan. So Tuesday was the biggest primary day of 2018 yet. We had elections in New Jersey, Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, and right here in California, where we have the chance to flip nearly one third of all the seats we need to take back the House right here in California. But first, but first, we had to deal with the clusterfuck that is known as California's top two primary system, which left open the possibility

that Democrats could be shut out from the general election. And that was one reason why Lovett and Elijah and myself traveled to Huntington Beach, which is part of the 48th district, to knock on some doors and get out the vote. That was one reason. I'll tell you the other reason. Lovett and Tommy and I were at an event with Swing Left last week, a couple days earlier, and we were trying to help raise money for Swing Left and get out the vote. And we took some questions, and there was one question in the back from a person you know, Clay Dumas. Oh! And Clay shouted out, hey, I have something.

Will John and John and Tommy lead a canvas on election day? Just put us on the spot right there at the crowd. And so, of course we did. Of course we did. That's amazing. Good for Clay. Do you think... And Clay led one too, so it's fine.

I am very curious, although I've seen all the Instagram stories. Great job, Elijah. How was having Lovett interact with voters? You know, he was pretty good. He was pretty good. He would he would show up, do a little knock on the door. He'd be like, hey, hey, we're just checking to see if you're voting.

And then, of course, there's me. And I've got like the script from the California Democratic Party. And I was like, you're supposed to ask this and that and the other thing. And but it worked out well. We hit like 40 houses in two hours. It was a pretty good clip. Pretty good clip. That's great.

It's really fun to canvas, I have to say. Like, in your mind, you might think, okay, it's a slog. I got to drive somewhere. I got to knock on a bunch of doors. I got to talk to people. Like, are they going to be mean to me? And we had the best time.

I will say that voters out here in California are like a lot nicer than some of the voters on the East Coast. I will say that voters out here in California are like a lot nicer than some of the voters on the East Coast where I've canvassed in the past. Very California vibe, especially like Orange County people. But it was a great experience. And it also kept me away from Twitter on election day, which is always one of the worst times to be on Twitter because you're looking for information the entire time. And all you get is very scattered turnout reports. Yeah, and it's never right.

It is. It's basically like turnout reports are the first hot takes from political analysts after the polls come in or like the first pancake. You just discard it and wait for the next one. It's always it's never right. It's like turnout is low here. There's a fallen tree tree in precinct 32. What is this going to mean? And then the classic, it's raining somewhere. What will that mean? Historically, rain is better for Republicans. And there's no logic for that. It's not like they have better raincoats or something.

It's just like we go searching for reasons to panic. I was very nervous, as I always am on election day, as you know. But I was seeing reports of very low turnout. It turns out that it wasn't a very high turnout election in general. Democrats, well, we don't know the final results in California, but outside California, Democrats improved their turnout something like 40 percent, I think. It might even be more. And Republicans only improved their turnout by Something like 40%, I think. It might even be more. And Republicans only improved their turnout by like 3% or 4%. We don't have the California numbers yet. But you would look at the reports from the registrar, from like the Orange County registrar and the LA County registrar about turnout reports. And it was like, as of 11am, turnout is 1.92%. As of 4pm, it it's like four percent and i'm just like what has happened

but it turns out those are around the numbers you usually get in a primary around here in california and that is fucking piss poor even if it's not poor in comparison to past years like jesus imagine what we could do even if we got turnout up to like 10, 15 percent, 20 percent with a lot of our voters. You could change the entire electorate. Anyway. Does that factor in the mail ballots? No, that doesn't. But, you know, it's still unclear how many were mail ballots.

Like obviously turnout will go up quite a bit because they say anywhere from like one-third or more of the vote can be mail-in. So that will definitely increase it, but it's still pretty low. And then, of course, you saw I freaked out later in the day because somehow 118,000 voters were left off the official lists in L.A. County because of a, quote unquote, printing error was their excuse. A printing error that like almost disenfranchised 118 000 people um affected more than two percent of registered voters now of course if you go to the polls if this ever happens to you if you go to the polls and you show up and they say that you're not registered you're not on the rolls but you know you are you can always fill out a provisional ballot um and then they will you know look it over and make sure that you were a correct voter.

But that still takes time and a lot of people – it turns some people away and some people don't want to wait to fill out a provisional ballot. It's not great. It's not great. Hallie and I filled out provisional ballots because we're on the automatic mail ballot distribution list and so we get our ballots mailed to us. But because we have a daughter now, we wanted to take her to vote because she is two weeks old. And we were like, what a cool thing to do.

She was like, start the citizens young. That's nice. And we went. But because we have not slept more than two hours for any period of time for two weeks, we forgot to bring our mail ballots. And we filled out provisional ballots, but they counted. And the voting, like I, it's been a long time since I voted, like actually went to the polling place. It's been a couple of years because I voted by mail in 2016 because I was traveling on election day. And it was, I mean, it is just

awesome. There were people there, the election workers were so nice. In San Francisco, people rent out their garages and people vote. It was a polling station in just my neighbor's garage. What a great idea. It is like vote by mail if that's the easiest thing for you. But if you get to actually vote and sit in a little booth and fill out the thing and get the sticker, it makes you feel good. It gives you some hope that democracy will endure beyond this dark period we are currently in. Yes. I had that hope, too.

And I had that hope when I went down to Huntington Beach to Canvas and saw all the people that showed up for the Canvas. And a lot of them are friends of the pod. Some of them weren't. But a lot of them talked to me about why they're out there. And I was like, one woman said, she's like, we heard you guys in the pod talk about, you know, how healthcare and taxes are the big issues. And she's like, I couldn't agree more. She said, like, for me, when I'm going door to door, and when I'm thinking about like, how many shifts I want to sign up for, the image that's always in my head is those people who came

to the Capitol and sat outside those offices during ACA repeal. And some of them were in wheelchairs and they sat there for days and they wouldn't leave. And I kept thinking to myself, if those people could go to Capitol Hill and sit there for days to try to get answers and to try to fight the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, then I can knock on a few doors. And she's like, when I talk to my friends and neighbors, she's like, that's the image that's in their heads too. Like when I talk to my friends and neighbors, she's like, that's the image that's in their heads, too. So I do think this this health care fight is going to, you know, keep people going over these next couple of months. So let's talk about the results. No Democrats were locked out in the California House races. Thank God. Dan, do you think the threat was overhyped? I saw that a little bit on Twitter on Tuesday night, on election night.

No. I mean, it was a... Just because something doesn't happen doesn't mean it couldn't have happened. And it's... It was close. Right. And so it was... I mean, it almost did happen. And I think it's in part because a lot of people turned out, thought strategically about their ballot. Some candidates in some of these districts who knew they couldn't win dropped out. And even though they were still on the ballot, they spent their time and energy telling their supporters they weren't on the ballot. They were still on the ballot but weren't in the election to vote for others. And so it's a credit to everyone involved that this didn't happen. And so it's the voters. the, it's the voters. It's some of the candidates, it's the local and national groups. And we're able to this,

we could have lost the house on Tuesday and we didn't. And I think people give credit for it. And I mean, this was a existential threat and we avoided it. And I think that's not because it couldn't have happened. It's because people did really good hard work to make sure it didn't. Yeah, that's the other thing I want to say is, we've criticized the DCCC on this show before. We've criticized other people. The DCCC, the California State Democratic Party,

swing left, indivisible, canvassers, volunteers. There was so much cooperation. Everyone was helping out. And I think it really did make a difference, especially because I'll tell you, I went to, we went to a lot of doors where people said, you know, one of the questions you ask at the door is, have you decided who to vote for on the 48th? And a lot of people were like, oh, well, I definitely, definitely voted Democrat, but I can't remember, I can't remember exactly the name of who I ended up going with. I just know I didn't want Dana Rohrabacher. And that was after they'd already voted. So you realize it really

takes coordinated effort to make sure that news that is breaking through to people and information that's breaking through to people is not just the five minutes of will Trump sit down with Mueller that they play on CNN 24 hours a day. You really got to figure out how to communicate with people about the choices that they have in these elections. And that was a hard thing to do. And look, there were some candidates that really helped out too because they were polling in single digits.

They tried to drop out or they decided to drop out before the election. And that was helpful. And that's a very, you know, team sport, patriotic thing to do. So it was, and it was close. It was very close in the 48th. There was a while there where we almost had two Republicans in the 48th. It was very close in the 10th for a little bit. So it's good that everyone got together and made sure that didn't happen. So let's talk about what the results mean in California. Usually, it is not wise to use primary results to make guesses about general election results, the data journalists tell us. But because California's top two primary basically mirrors the general, there is and there has been a strong correlation between the total Democratic vote versus the total Republican vote in the primary and the final results in the general election with two caveats. One, as we said earlier, there might be about a third of the vote still not counted because of mail-in ballots in certain counties, particularly L.A. County, which is very populous.

And two, the primary electorate tends to be a bit older and whiter. So we can expect the general electorate to be a bit more Democratic. With all that said, it looks like now the Democrats are the favorites to flip Daryl Ice's 49th district. the favorites to flip Daryl Ice's 49th district. It looks like the 10th, the 24th, the 48th, the 45th, and the 39th districts are true toss-ups. Maybe some of them lean slightly Democrat. And then the 21st district does look like, David Valadao's district does look like it leans Republican. He had like something like a 65, 67 percent vote there. And the Democrats didn't have much of the Democrat is pretty unknown. So point is, we're certainly in the hunt. But I thought the Tuesday results in California, you know, they didn't swing as heavily Democratic as some of the special elections have.

So it's going to be a fight. Dan, what did you make of the results in California? Good news, bad news, status quo? I think – I mean it's all good – it's all gravy after the fact we didn't get locked out. So we're in the game and that's the most important thing and we got a few months here to flip these districts. And I think back to something Jason Kander said when he was talking to us a few weeks ago, where he said, the blue wave is not a weather event. It's not something that's just going to happen. We have to make it happen. And so the point is, we can win all of these districts. And I think we can also win the 21st, because it is one of the most Clinton districts out of all of them. And so if we put in the work and turn out those 2016 voters, plus new people who are energized because of Trump,

then that is a flippable district. There is work to do there. And there's a lot later of a start because in these other districts, these Democrats have been running for almost a year in some cases. They got in right after Trump came in office. And in the 21st, I believe, I think TJ Cox is the name of the Democratic nominee, got in the race right before the deadline. And so no name ID, less organization.

And so we'll see if with some support and some work, you can flip that one too. But so we're in the game. We got a shot in all of them, but it's going to take real work. Like we cannot think of this as inevitable. It is something we have to work our tails off and work our tails off like we've never worked before. And all the tools to win are there. We just have to do it. Yeah.

And one of the reasons that they say the general electorate is a bit more democratic than the primary electorate is because more young people show up in the general election than they do in the primary. So this only happens. than they do in the primary. So this only happens. It only gets more, the electorate only gets more Democratic in November if we get young people to the polls, young people who voted before, young people who've sat out previous midterms,

which is why the Democrats did so horribly in 2010 and 2014. There was a huge drop off in young voters. So, you know, we get asked, Lovett said this before, but we get asked all the time and when we do our live shows, there's always a question like, how can I talk to my unbelievably conservative mother who loves Trump about, you know, why she's wrong? And I think

finally one of these shows Lovett gave the answer, don't talk to her about it. Don't waste your time and energy on your super conservative mom who loves Trump. Go find two friends who might want to vote against Trump but don't really pay attention to politics and haven't voted before. That's a better use of your time. And I think if everyone listening, especially we know our audience tends to be younger, though there's a huge baby boomer contingent. Lovett hasn't scared them all away yet. Go talk to a friend who has rolled their eyes about Trump, who doesn't like what's going on, but doesn't usually vote, doesn't usually get involved in politics, and get them registered and get them ready to vote in November. And if we

do that, if everyone grabs a few people, then we'll win. I always love the line Obama used in his farewell speech, and I'm sure it's one he's used many times before, but where he said that it's up to the young and the young at heart. And so that's who you should go talk to, young people and the young at heart. And find people who may not vote otherwise and get them to vote. And also, I guess, Lovett's message is don't talk to your mom. Strong message. Strong message. Strong message. So there was evidence of a bigger Democratic wave elsewhere in Missouri.

Democrats flipped their 42nd state legislative seat since Trump took office. Democrat Lauren Arthur won a seat by 19 points that Trump won by four, Romney won by four, and the retiring Republican state senator won by over 20 points in 2016. One note, of course, it was extremely low turnout in that election, which is one of the reasons. But doesn't that still say something, that in a low turnout election, the Democrats were able to organize around this candidate and turn out enough people that they had a 40-point swing since the last state senate election. Absolutely. I mean, as we see in these elections, the more – except in the ones with some extenuating

circumstances like Roy Moore, as it becomes more nationalized, the Democratic enthusiasm advantage narrows some because you just get more Republicans turning out, particularly in a Republican area. But there's nothing more important than taking the Congress back, Congress, Senate, anybody that can check Trump. We want Democrats to be in charge of. But I think it's very encouraging. We have so much work to do to undo the down ballot damage that's been done over the last 10 years. And so if we're flipping state legislature, if people are enthusiastic enough and organized enough to flip some of these so if we're flipping state legislature, if people are enthusiastic enough and organized enough to flip some of these seats, we're going to be flipping school board seats,

state assembly seats, city council seats, and having real policy impact on the lives of people. And so that's a very good sign. I don't know that it tells us everything about 2018 and 2020, but these are strong data points that show Democratic enthusiasm in these races exceeds what you would believe from looking at the generic ballot. And it gives me hope for some of these marginal districts that the political prognosticators think are very hard for Democrats to win. And so they may not be the places where Republicans focus their money and energy, but just like the good, solid, hard work of organizing and registering people to vote and voting could flip these districts if we have a good enough day on election day. Compete everywhere for every seat.

smartly many years ago as they dumped a huge amount of money into state races, into local races because they realized they could get more bang for their buck and flip these seats where people weren't paying attention and there was low turnout. And these seats, whether it's attorney general, whether it's state legislature, whether it's up to governor, like they end up having a huge impact. A, they build the Democratic bench for people who are going to be, you know, in Congress and president and governors later in life. But B, like you said,

it also makes a difference with policy right now. Like we get a Democratic Senate and Democratic House, we're going to be able to stop the Trump agenda. We're going to be able to stop the judges. We're going to be able to stop

a lot of bad stuff. But Democrats aren't going to be able to, they're not going to be able to do a lot of positive things. They're not going to be able to pass legislation as long as Trump's president. But in the states, when we have Democratic governors and Democratic legislatures, they are going to be able to pass a lot of really progressive policies. And we're seeing that right now in New Jersey, where they have unified Democratic control. We're seeing it in Washington state. So that's a big deal in this election. Yeah, it's sort of the whole ballgame.

The whole ballgame. We have to win every seat we possibly can. I don't care. Dog catcher, the President of the United States, and everything in between. It was also another big night for female candidates, and especially female Democratic candidates. In Iowa, Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne could be the first women to represent Iowa in the House of Representatives. I had the chance to meet Abby when she was out here for a fundraiser,

and she's brilliant and passionate and the real deal, so that would be awesome if she can flip that seat. Representative Lujan Grisham could be the first female Democratic governor of New Mexico and the first Democratic Latina governor nationwide. And Deb Haaland of New Mexico is on track to become the first Native American woman elected to Congress. Dan, is this going to be Donald Trump's legacy? He's causing more women to run for office than at any time in history? Pretty good.

I look forward to the day that Mike Pence has to stand in the House and swear in all of these new progressive female Democratic members of Congress and Democratic senators. Like what – just what a great moment that is. And it is – I mean you have to dig deep to find silver linings in the dark cloud of this era. But the fact that so many – and we've had a lot of guests on this podcast talk about this. Alyssa talks about it all the time about how there were choices you could make given the – what it said that someone who used such offensive misogynistic language and had been credibly accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault, had beat Hillary Clinton for president. There are two ways to think about that. Give up on politics or decide to fight back. And people have fought back. And women from all walks of life have run for office and the voters are rewarding them from it. I think it's just an absolutely great thing for the Democratic Party and America in general. It's really wonderful to see.

And we're seeing a real wave here, and particularly here in California. One other thing to note from the California results. So Gavin Newsom advances to the general election as our gubernatorial candidate. He faces Republican John Cox, who's running with a strong endorsement of Donald Trump in California. So that should go well for him.

But Republicans did get shut out of the Senate race in California, where Dianne Feinstein and her challenger, State Senate President Kevin de Leon, will compete against each other in the general. But in the primary, he only picked up 11 percent of the vote. So it ended up not being much of a challenge for Feinstein. He only picked up 11 percent of the vote. So it ended up not being much of a challenge for Feinstein. What, if anything, does that race say about the divisions within the Democratic Party to you, Dan? I think California is somewhat unique and the Democratic Democrats control every office here. And the Democratic – while there is a very strong Bernie contingent that has manifested itself in some pretty rough and tumble California Democratic conventions since the 2016 election and a pretty controversial Democratic Party chair race, the Democratic establishment as embodied particularly by Governor Jerry Brown is incredibly popular. Jerry Brown is incredibly popular in the state and incredibly popular with Democrats. And so it's a little different than I think as it plays out in other parts of the country. And what I thought is, but I do think

that if this does not say Kevin DeLeon's performance – I mean, look, he's still in the race. There's a – even though he did not get – come very close to Dianne Feinstein in the primary, he has another few months to run this race and we'll see how this plays out. But progressive primary challenges aren't just always – like they have impact and the impact is not just replacing one member with a new member. It's also helping send a message to politicians in office not to forget the base of the party. And you've seen Dianne Feinstein get more aggressive on Donald Trump and on some key issues since Kevin DeLeon got in the race. Maybe that's a coincidence. Maybe it's not, but it's probably not a coincidence. You see this in New York where Cynthia Nixon is running a very sort of creative, aggressive primary campaign against Andrew Cuomo. And we've seen some progressive moves that had been on the shelf for a long time from Andrew Cuomo perhaps in response to that.

And so I think – Perhaps. Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. I always leave a benefit of the doubt here. Andrew Cuomo has just been sitting around New York for years as governor and then suddenly Cynthia Nixon runs against him and he's like, sure. Yeah, no, I'll do this.

That sounds great. I've been meaning to get around to doing that. It was on the message calendar, just having it on the message calendar from mid-2018. Unbelievable. Where I think, and I think this is to Kevin DeLeon's credit, at least based on sort of the media and advertising and news I've seen out here, is he ran a progressive primary challenge. He didn't try to run down Dianne Feinstein. He made a case for why he would be a better vehicle for the progressive values of Democratic voters in California. And this is why this is different. There's been all these stories about how Democrats have their Tea Party now,

and it's embodied by the Bernie people, and we're going to tear each other apart. And that didn't happen in any of these primaries. Even where there were progressive challenges, they fought over progressive issues instead of trying to burn the village in order to save it, which is what we saw with the Tea Party in 2010 when they were taking down people like Mike Castle from Delaware and Bob Bennett from Utah and others. So I think this is – I think it is – I think my takeaways from this is progressive primary challenges can be very good if they're done in a healthy, issue-oriented way.

And B, the party is not as divided as Twitter, cable news, and punditry would have you believe. Even though we have some real policy issues to work out, we are pretty united around beating these Republicans and beating Donald Trump. like Bernie Sanders have, and many other candidates that we've seen since 16 and before 16, have pulled the party in a more progressive direction on policy. I mean, even like, you can talk about Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton had a more progressive platform in 2016 than Obama did in the 08 race, at least, because that's just where the party has moved, and especially on economic issues. I thought one interesting data point was Harley Ruda, who is now most likely to challenge Dana Rohrabacher in the 48th, was a Republican donor years ago. He is now running on a platform of Medicare for all and free college. So in many ways, a lot of the candidates, if you look at the candidates running in 2018,

there's some like Conor Lamb who are running in red states. There's some like Dianne Feinstein and Kevin DeLeon running in very, very blue states in California. But a lot of their platforms, a lot of their policy platforms are very similar. You might have a difference between what kind of Medicare for all plan you have or what kind of public option you have. You might have a difference between like, is it free college or is it, do you have to serve two years to get free college? Is it free community college? But they're all sort of coalescing around these big, bold, progressive economic ideas no matter where they're running. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And I think there are policy differences, and those are going to play themselves out much more in a 2020 primary where basically everyone is running and everyone's going to have different views about big issues, Medicare for all, federal jobs guarantee, universal basic income, things like that. A lot of the differences is less ideological and more attitudinal. Yeah. Right? Like how aggressive are you against Trump?

What language are you using? Are you going to fight him on every single thing or just 95% of things? Will you vote against nine of ten nominees or seven of ten nominees? And that is a totally, it's a strategic discussion we're having about how you beat Trump. And we need to have that because we have not yet beaten Trump. And hopefully good ideas and good message

and good tactics and strategies will flow from that discussion over the next few months of this election and then the very long run up to 2020. run up to 2020. All right, let's talk about an issue that could end up playing a role in the midterms or in 2020. Donald Trump is pissing off America's closest allies and jeopardizing the economy by launching an all-out trade war. Last week, Trump decided he'd be charging Americans more for any steel and aluminum we purchase from the European Union, Mexico, and Canada. All of this is happening as talks broke

down in the past few days to cool off trade standoffs with China. So Canada's none too happy about this, as you might imagine. And apparently Donald Trump told Justin Trudeau in a recent telephone call that there are national security reasons for why the U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports are necessary. And when Trudeau asked what those national security reasons might be, Trump said, didn't you guys burn down the White House, which is an apparent reference to the War of 1812. Wrong country, but that's great. Dan, he's got the nuclear codes. When asked if the comment was received as a joke, one source on the call said, to the degree one can ever take what it is said as a joke, the impact on Canada and ultimately on workers in the US won't be a laughing matter. Good response? What do you think? I think the great irony of Trump's immigration policy is that Donald Trump would almost certainly fail the

citizenship test to become a citizen of the United States, like without a doubt. I mean, his knowledge of American history is, as evidenced by this, second grade level. And it is so embarrassing that our president calls up to yell at one of our closest allies and in doing so makes an absolute fool of himself, confusing Canada and Britain. I mean it's just – it's not good. As you would say, it's not great. It's not great. It's not great. Some of the reaction to these trade moves, stock market tumbled. Economists are warning that Americans will soon face higher prices on a wide variety of products.

It's already happening for people who buy steel and aluminum in this country. Here's a reaction from one senator. Europe, Canada, and Mexico aren't China. You don't treat allies the same way you treat opponents. Blanket protectionism is a big part of why we had a Great Depression. Make America great again shouldn't mean make America 1929 again. Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. So it seems like, Dan, more than any other issue,

more than corruption or all the crimes that the Trump people have committed or anything else, Republicans are breaking with Trump on trade. Bob Corker introduced legislation on Wednesday with the backing of both parties that would basically give Congress more authority to act as a check on the president's trade moves. Don't know if that's going anywhere because fucking Mitch McConnell said he wouldn't move the legislation. But what do you think about this, that this was finally – this is finally what broke them away from Trump, the trade war? That this was finally – this is finally what broke them away from Trump, the trade war. Well, let's not be – let's not overstate the case here. That they have taken – they have looked at the – the Republican members of the Congress have looked at the Constitution.

They have analyzed the powers bestowed on them by the founders and decided that the appropriate response to this policy travesty from the president of the United States is to issue strongly worded statements on Twitter. So it's like the extractive legislation. Yeah, that's it. We've done it. This is how the founders intended checks and balances. Two co-equal branches with one endowed with the power to say mean things and do nothing. I mean, look, I think what is – this is something that angers – this is where the populist base of the Republican Party runs headlong into their corporatist policies. And so I'm sure Ben Sasse and Bob Corker and others are having their phones blown up by businesses who are affected by this, investors, donors, people in their districts and states who are mad. The question is, they are right on the policy, the Republican senators. This is stupid

and serves very, almost no purpose. But there is an open question as to whether Trump is right on the politics. Yeah, I know. We've been talking about this. I mean, well, let's talk about the impact, what impact it would have on the U.S. economy. The steel and aluminum tariffs alone won't tank the economy. But the question is, who knows what happens if there's a broader trade war? Because once you put tariffs on other countries' goods, then they retaliate with tariffs. And other countries right now are retaliating with very specific tariffs to try to hurt specific political constituencies. They're trying to hit U.S. farmers.

It's already, they've said that the stock market has lost about a trillion dollars in market value. Chamber of Commerce is saying it could cost 2.6 million jobs. saying it could cost 2.6 million jobs. Economist Mark Zandi estimates the tariffs will result in a $210 increase in yearly costs for the average family. So the question is... Is that former McCain economic advisor, Mark Zandi? Who we cited almost every week on the 2008 Obama campaign? I believe so.

I believe that's Mark Zandi. I haven't heard from him in a long time. So yeah, the question is, can Democrats make this an issue? And if so, how? You and I have talked about this before. Obviously, there's many Democrats, particularly Democrats from the Midwest, Democrats like Sherrod Brown, people like Bernie Sanders, who have really spoken out against a lot of these trade agreements, because this country has still not figured out how to help American workers succeed in a global economy where businesses can send jobs anywhere in the world, especially to countries that don't have our labor standards, that don't have our

environmental standards, that don't pay well, that don't offer benefits. And so if it's cheaper for these companies, they can send the jobs there. And we have not figured out and we have not implemented policies to protect workers from that reality. And therefore, these trade agreements and trade wars and tariffs become this argument that both parties have. And it has a lot of currency

making an anti-trade argument among a lot of working class voters. I mean, if you were to look at why this is good for Trump on its face, like if you pull aside, let's just take out, even if it seems impossible, the sort of the racist undertones of almost everything he does. But the core of his purely economic non-immigration message is that he will fight for people who are mainly white working class people, will fight for people who have been forgotten by the government, by Wall Street, by big corporations, by elites. And if you're in a world where

bipartisan members of Congress are crapping on Trump's plan. Big corporations are crapping on Trump's plan. Wall Street financiers are crapping on Trump's plan. Those are all signals of virtue to a big part of his electorate. And it's like he's fighting for people. He's the one person fighting for them. And so that is good. So the question is, what do Democrats do about that? How do we take this and leverage it to our advantage? And I think part of it is

taking these statements from Republicans and showing them to independent voters through digital or television or other paid ads or media so that they can see. So Bob Corker or Ben Sasse are credible voices to Republican-leaning independents, people who may not have voted for Trump or may have held their nose and voted for Trump after the Comey letter. And let's show that to them and get them to see what he's doing. But I also think we need – and that in the specific districts or specific states where there is this very specific obvious impact, whether it is Harley-Davidson's in

Wisconsin or bourbon in Kentucky. Let's use that aggressively. Let's localize that issue to that district and state. And then I think the third part is you have to tie this to a narrative, right? Like I think in political messaging, motivation is key. People want to understand why people do certain things. And sometimes messages don't work because it's not credible that that person would do it. There are certain things Republicans would say about Obama

that just weren't, people did not, even Republicans, other than the far right, didn't really believe that he would do that or be that dishonest or try to hurt people intentionally. And so it has to be credible. So what is the credible narrative around why Trump did this and why we are having negative consequences? I think it's tying it to his erratic and chaotic behavior. Yeah. Right? We have this president who, as was once said,

could be baited by a tweet, who has now taken these rash, poorly planned out, poorly thought out actions, and now it's going to have real consequences, either in this specific way or this broader way citing these economic statistics from these estimates and just hammer that into people's heads. So I think there's also a corruption angle here too. I mean, we saw with these Chinese negotiations that China gave a $500 million loan to a Trump development project right before, you know, President Trump and his administration decided to let some Chinese company, despite huge national security concerns, operate in the United States, right?

So you can also draw, like, as with everything else, when Trump makes deals, they benefit Donald Trump and they don't benefit you. else, when Trump makes deals, they benefit Donald Trump and they don't benefit you. And I think you can start quantifying the impact of these tariffs on people's pocketbooks in these different regions where it's hurting people. I think that's right. I mean, you point out, there's also the case that just somehow a number of trademark approvals for Ivanka Trump's fashion line just happened to make their way through the Chinese patent office just at the moment at which Trump was potentially granting an alarming amount of freedom to Chinese technology companies in the United States. Just, I mean, what are the odds that the Chinese patent process just happened to work that way?

that the Chinese patent process just happened to work that way. It's bad. So we have one final section on random Russia stuff, but I don't even know that we really need to get into it other than I thought you would have some comment on the fact that on Wednesday, Paul Ryan said that he agreed with fellow Republican Trey Gowdy that the FBI acted completely appropriately by using an informant to make contact with Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and its investigation. And, you know, promptly

after he said that, Matt Gaetz, whatever, that awful Republican congressman from Florida, went on Lou Dobbs and they both said that Paul Ryan should quit and lose his job. Lou Dobbs, and they both said that Paul Ryan should quit and lose his job. So Frankenstein's monster finally woke up now. Now Ryan's getting it from the caucus. Yeah, but then today he was like, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. I see no evidence of collusion. Ignore what I previously said. I mean, it was – there are a couple things about this.

One, Paul Ryan – it was a torrid but brief love affair that Paul Ryan had with his integrity yesterday that ended quickly. And then I do think it's worth just thinking hypothetically. These are all choices Paul Ryan made. He decided to let Trump do the things he's doing. He decided to let Trump engage in corruption. He decided to let Trump try to block this investigation every way possible. He decided to enable Devin Nunes to try to politicize these investigations and spread lies and conspiracy theories about America's law enforcement agencies. Take the statement that Paul Ryan said yesterday. Imagine if he had said this six months or a year ago, and he had sent a signal as the third person in line to the presidency, as the most powerful Republican not named Donald Trump, if he had sent a signal that some conduct, some statements, some corruption would be out of bounds

and there would be consequences for it, we'd be living in a very different country. But he decided not to do that. He decided that his job was not to be Speaker of the House or to be someone who was in public service to help the country, but was to do the best he can to enable Trump because he thought that was the best way for Republicans to maintain office, to keep the Trump base fired up for Republicans in 2018. And that is a choice that will forever define his legacy. I know he'd like to think the first line of his Wikipedia page will be the tax cut, but it won't be. It will be the shame that comes from his conduct with Trump in office. And that is just a fact. And it is unchangeable at this point no matter how many times he puts out lukewarm statements so he can sleep at least five minutes a night. I knew we'd get a Paul Ryan rant out of you.

Yeah, I know. It's like he retires. People think the rants are going to go away. But Paul Ryan, there will always be a Paul Ryan rant. i'm already transitioning to my kevin mccarthy rants in preparation but now of course paul ryan staff would say probably that if he had come out a year ago and said and said this then um paul ryan wouldn't be speaker right now that they probably would have kicked him out like they want to do now i mean the truth is you know paul ryan has made awful choices um since he has become speaker of the house and and before then too but um they are all terrified of the republican base and the republican base really is the republican media and the pundits on fox i mean like the fucking

they're getting they're they're seeming a little desperate these days as the investigation continues and gets closer to Trump. I mean, fucking Sean Hannity was on TV last night saying everyone who's a witness in the Mueller investigation should smash their phones into small pieces, use bleach bit, smash the phone into pieces, and bring the pieces to Robert Mueller when he interviews you. You've got a top advisor to the president, is what sean hannity is on television telling people that he wants the to tamper with evidence just to obstruct justice he's just advocating obstruction of justice on the television which trump has surely watched we um you've got like Lou Dobbs spouting conspiracy theories that came from Gateway Pundit that came from

a fucking Reddit thread that Donald Trump was then tweeting out when he said oh I just saw the story that the FBI originally started planting spies

in my campaign as early as 2015 that came from a Reddit thread Dan and it went to the Twitter feed of the President of the United States.

That's where we are. I mean, we, because we are living in this every single day. I mean, Trump tweeted 17 crazy things this morning in between when I woke up. I know. We started this podcast and, but we're so numb to the insanity that we don't fully grasp the precariousness of the situation we're currently in with a unstable, deeply insecure person in the Oval Office. And when you look at all those things, like you made the exact right point.

Sean Hannity talks to Trump, as far as I can tell, more often than John Kelly, and he is telling witnesses to smash their phones. And it is so ridiculous that we are living a series of plot lines that would have been discarded from house of cards because they would simply not be believable for house of cards it is wild and we i really do feel like we like we there is a dangerous numbness that all of us us the media politicians are getting to just how fucking crazy things are these days. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad.

Well, back to where we started. Got to win the election. 15 minutes late, Dan. Love it here. Late on what? On my time to shine, you know? It's always your time to shine. Make sure you leave that in.

It says a lot. Okay, when we come back, we will be talking to former White House Senior Advisor Ron Klain. On the pod today, we're very happy to have our good friend, friend of the pod, former White House senior aide, Ron Klain. Ron, welcome to the pod, finally. Yes, thanks. Thanks for having me. So we could talk to you about a million things since you had a million very important jobs since the times we've known you. But we wanted to talk about judges, especially since you spearheaded quite a few Supreme Court nomination processes when you were in the White House. So Mitch McConnell recently canceled the Senate's August recess.

And one of the reasons he said is it was necessary because of the historic obstruction by Senate Democrats of the president's nominees. You have said that even though Trump's been really bad at countless aspects of his job, he's been really successful at nominating young conservative judges who could be a part of the judiciary for decades to come. What's at stake in both the president's mission to reshape the judiciary and how do you think Democrats should respond to it? Yeah, well, look, I think this is one of the most underappreciated and significant things that have happened in the past two years. You know, we've got a president who acts like an autocrat, a Congress that's rolling over

in the face of that. And so the only thing that protects the rule of law and our rights are the courts, the federal judiciary. And, you know, Trump has been horrible at being president and competent in so many things, but has had record levels of success in finding young, non-diverse, super conservative lawyers and putting them on the federal bench. He's doing it at a record pace. He's put more appellate court judges on the courts in 500 days than Obama did in 1,000 days. So it gives you some sense of how quickly he is turning over the federal courts and

remaking them in his image. And the only other thing I'll say to start is that there's so many things that Trump does and we have to hold our breath. But we know that if we can take back the Congress, we can undo them next year. Or eventually when Trump's gone, they'll be gone, too, as long as that takes. But this is something that's going to be with us virtually forever. Judges serve for life. Many of the people he is putting on the bench will still be there in 2050 or 2060.

This is going to be just a long-term consequence of Trump's presidency. Aaron Ross Powell Ron, what is driving Trump's ability to do this so much faster than Obama was able to do in his first few years when the Democrats were in charge of the Senate? White House side of it, prior presidents picked judges in consultation with senators. They tried to balance different factors like diversity. They looked for people who were kind of outstanding in the bar. They often used merit selection panels to pick judges. Trump has simply truncated that process by handing the whole thing over to a group, a very conservative legal group called the Federalist Society. They are picking their allies. They pick them very quickly. They know who they want. They're not've just made a priority of shoving these judges through as quickly as possible. They've gotten rid of rules that slow down the process, that give the senators an input, something called the blue slip rule, which used to say that home state senators had to sign off on judges.

They've ignored that. The committee yesterday approved a very conservative judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over the objection of both of that judge's home state senators. So they are basically stripping the gears out of the process on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump's naming them faster than ever. The Senate's confirming them faster than ever. And the result already, Trump's just been president 500 days. One out of every nine federal appellate court judges is a Trump judge. And by the end of the August recess, which McConnell has canceled, Trump will put as many judges on the federal appeals courts as Obama did his entire first term.

So they're remaking the courts with people who are loyal to Trump, who have Trump's views. And as I said, they're going to be there for the rest of their lives. Oof, that is brutal. How many of these judges are sort of traditional conservatives who, you know, would just issue rulings that we hate because we're on the left side of the political spectrum? And how many are the same kind of, you know, unqualified goons that he stacks his cabinet with and his staff? Well, there are a few who are completely unqualified and some of them have indeed been weeded out. Two or three have been withdrawn in the face of really embarrassing performances in their confirmation hearings, including a judge who was kind of unmasked, is not really knowing the law, by a Republican senator in the Judiciary Committee. But most of them certainly are lawyers. They certainly are qualified in that sense. But they

are super conservative. I think that's really what makes them different than the kind of judges that even George W. Bush or other Republican presidents have named. There are two judges right now pending before the Senate for confirmation who in their hearings refused to say if even Brown versus the board was rightly decided. I've never seen a judge by any president in recent years who wouldn't at least agree to that. So I don't think we should underestimate how incredibly conservative they are and also young. I mean that's the other thing about Trump's picks. The average Obama nominee for the Court of Appeals was in their mid-50s. These judges, on average, are nine or 10 years younger. So not only are they going to serve for life,

but life tenure for them is going to be 10 years more than life tenure was for the Obama judges. This is getting darker by the minute. It is. It's just a very, very sad picture. No question. Let's say the Democrats take the Senate back in 2018. What would your advice be to Senator Schumer and Senator Leahy, presuming he is the chair of the Judiciary Committee, about how to handle this influx going forward? Should they take a McConnell-like approach? Should they reinstate the blue slip rule? What recourse would a Democratic Senate have to do better here? Well, I think they have a lot of recourse. And first, I think it's important,

even before we get to next year, to focus on two things this year. The first is it's still possible that at the end of the month, at the end of the Supreme Court's term, Justice Kennedy will step down and we could have a Supreme Court confirmation fight this summer. And that will be the most important battle for our civil rights, our voting rights, our constitutional rights in a generation since the Bork nomination in 1987. So that's still on the docket for this year. So that's still on the docket for this year. Secondly, I do think we have to do a better job of turning up the heat on Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who are ostensibly pro-choice Republicans but who have voted for every single one of these Trump nominees who are going on the bench and are carving away, chipping away at a woman's right to choose, chipping away at other vital civil and constitutional rights. The Supreme Court is obviously the big headline in the federal judicial system. But 95 percent of all cases in federal court get solved by the courts of appeals. They are essentially the final deciders for 95 percent of the cases.

And Collins and Murkowski are helping stack those courts with judges who are against a woman's right to choose and are issuing all kinds of rulings that will curtail that right. And so I think even before we get to next year, we've got to turn up the heat a bit on these moderate Republicans this year. Now, I think if we do take back the Senate next year, it is really important to reinstate some of these rules that have always been there, like the blue slip rule, that make sure that we have kind of more mainstream judges that really put pressure on senators to use merit selection panels. The White House used merit selection panels to pick people who are a little more from the middle of the road, who are more in the legal mainstream. That's a very important thing on the docket for next year if we get control of the Senate. So we've been asking a lot of Democrats this on this podcast. If Senate Democrats are in control and there's a retirement, clearly, we have the ability to block any kind of justice that seems like another Gorsuch or a Scalia or someone like that. The question is, will we do what McConnell did with Merrick Garland? And, you know, we've sort of got varying answers. We asked your former boss, Joe Biden, this question. And, you know,

he talked a lot about we can't, we can't do to institutions what the Republicans have done to institutions. And he sort of had a more institutional perspective. We asked Elizabeth Warren, and she said, Well, look, we don't want to start off by saying, absolutely not, no matter who you put up, we're not going to see. But we're going to say send us someone like Merrick Garland. And then if he doesn't, then we can say no. What do you think the strategy should be for Democrats if we if there's an opening and they end up controlling the Senate? Well, look, I think that, I guess I'm third place still, a different place still. I think that we should always give nominees a hearing. I think that the most inexcusable thing in the Garland

case was the refusal to allow Judge Garland to come before the Senate and make his case. And so I think no matter who Trump nominates, we should give that person an opportunity to come before the Senate and testify. If, however, the person Trump nominates is someone that we would expect, you know, a very conservative judge, then I hope all the Democrats would vote against confirming that person. I mean, I am not against having a vote on Trump nominee. I don't think we should be shy about going down to the Senate floor and casting our votes just as Democrats did in the Bork nomination in 1987. Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Bork. Judge Bork had extensive hearings and the Senate overwhelmingly rejected him because his view of our Constitution was not the view that the majority of American people shared. And I would like to hope that's where we'll be in 2019, that if Trump nominates another Gorsuch, that person will get a hearing, that person would get a vote, and that vote would be no. And we would continue to vote no until he sent a more moderate mainstream person to be on

the bench. I think that's kind of the fair way to do this and the right way to do this. And I also think it's going to be important because even if we control the Senate, that margin of control is going to include people like Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Joe Donnelly. And so I think that to have really functional control on this process, you're going to have to show that we're willing to treat a nominee fairly, give them a hearing, and then vote up or down on that person. And my vote – my hope would be that that would be a down vote on someone as conservative as Gorsuch. Ron, how do we get people to care about this? It does seem like Republicans have always had success in getting their base and their activists to care a lot about judges, about the Supreme Court, about the judiciary when they go to vote. And it seems like we don't quite have that same passion among democratic activists all the time.

How do you think we put this to people in a way that makes them say, OK, this matters. I got to go to the polls for this. Yeah, John, I think that's probably the most important thing. I mean there's an asymmetry here in our politics. Exit poll showed that last year that for every two people who voted for Clinton because they were worried about the courts, there were three who voted for Trump because they were worried about the courts. And so this is an issue that their base has always been more active on. And I'd say it's one of the reasons Donald Trump won. Every time Republicans would say, I just can't possibly vote for this man.

He's so horrible. He's so bad. They would run up the prospect of judicial nominations that would keep their conservatives in line. And I think whenever you hear a Trump person talk about trying to defend Trump after everything is peeled away, their final answer is, oh, yes, but the judges. And that's really what keeps their forces in line. And so this asymmetry where this matters so much more to their base than ours is really important. I think we have to do a better job. Part of that's because even as the courts have gotten more conservative, and they have, the big headline issues seem to continue to go our way. The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. The Supreme Court upheld marriage equality. The Supreme Court continues to have at least some version of a woman's right to choose. And I think, you know, our voters kind of look at that and go, well, it's fine. It's okay. People kept saying something bad would

happen. But I guess the Supreme Court is still okay. You know, so, you know, I guess I don't need to worry about this. And I think we just need to do a better job of explaining to people that, in fact, a lot of our voting rights, our civil rights, our democratic rights with things like Citizens United have been undone already by the courts that continues to be worse as Trump staffs up the lower courts. We just need to educate our voters about the significance of this and how they're going to see it in their lives. And a lot of them will this year. So in all likelihood, two of the big federal courts of appeals, the Second Circuit, which takes care of all the cases from New York, for example, the third that does Pennsylvania and New Jersey,

those circuits right now have a majority of Democratic judges. This year, they're going to switch to a majority of Republican judges. Forty-five million Americans will now live in courts of appeals where Republicans are in the majority on the bench. That's really going to affect their rights. And we need to call that out. We need to get people aware of it and motivated around that because right now the Republicans have the upper hand on this issue. Well, we will keep calling it out here and we know you will too. Ron, thanks for joining uh, joining us and, uh,

and come back again soon. Anytime. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to pod. Save America. This is the outro, which I'm taking over because it's time for me to have a quick conversation with Dan Pfeiffer. All right.

Are you excited for that, Dan? I'm so excited for this. Um, all right. Well, love it. And Dan are going to have a crookeduger Conversation about Dan's new book.

So everyone tune in for that probably in a couple weeks. Got a lot of Kruger Conversations out there. Very exciting. And we'll see you next week, guys. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye.