Pod Save America - “Essential Bribery, LLC.”

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Michael Cohen’s shell company is a revealed to be a massive corruption scheme that involves Donald Trump’s mistresses, Russian oligarchs, and big corporations looking for presidential access. Then CNN’s Harry Enten talks with Jon and Dan about the midterms, Democrats’ chances, and the state of polling. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today on the pod, we're talking midterms and polling with the whiz kid himself, friend of the pod, Harry Enten of CNN. Also on Pod Save the World this week, Tommy talked with Crooked contributor Ben Rhodes about Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran deal and about recent reports that Iran deal opponents hired Israeli spies to stalk Ben and his family.

How about that one, Dan? I mean, what a world we live in. We are not dealing with good people. Still haven't seen Congress take any action on figuring out why Iran deal opponents hired foreign spies to stalk Americans who are in government. I think that would be an interesting topic for them to look into. Don't know why no one's doing anything. I think it's probably because Paul Ryan's flying around the country taking $30 million checks right in the middle of the gray areas of our campaign finance law from Sheldon Adelson. So he's pretty busy.

Yeah, he's also spending a lot of time aiding and abetting Devin Nunes' cover-up of Trump's crimes. So, you know, there's only so many hours in a day for Paul Ryan. Before we get into everything else, there's obviously some news today. Kim Jong-un released three American hostages. Trump went to greet them in the middle of the night when they came back at Andrews. And then he gave this very bizarre quote. We want to thank Kim Jong-un, who was really excellent to these three incredible people. Was he excellent to these people that he kidnapped and then put into forced labor camps for a couple of years?

For a year? A couple months? Sure. Sure. If you ignore the kidnapping, then he was great. I mean, look, let's first say it is great that these people are home. Whatever efforts that Donald Trump or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did to do that. Kudos to them. Kudos to them. Thank God they're home. Thank God for their families. Yeah. Unambiguously a good thing. That is a good thing. I'm not sure Donald Trump needed to give Kim Jong-un a five-star rating on Airbnb at the end of this, but so be it.

I like that, Dan. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, also, like, acting like this is, I mean, you know, the Obama administration secured the release of two hostages from North Korea in 2014. You know, Bill Clinton did before him. Like, this is something that happens. Kim Jong-un has done this before. The North Korean regime has done this before, has released hostages to Americans. I think that so far, you know, we've said this before,

it's good that Donald Trump is going to talk with Kim Jong-un. Diplomacy is good. We believe in diplomacy. We did when we were in the Obama administration, we do today. But I think it's important to recognize that so far, North Korea has not done anything or taken any steps that it has not taken before in prior administrations in prior years. So I believe that, you know, today they announced that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un would be meeting in Singapore on June 12th. That is the big summit. So, you know, hopefully there's a good outcome there. But the big question at the heart of all of this is still, you know, will Kim Jong-un give up his nuclear program, his nuclear weapons, stop trying to make nuclear,

and that we don't have any evidence that he'll do that yet. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. The fact that this meeting is happening, or is planned at least, is very good news. I am for diplomacy as the best path to solving this challenge that has bedeviled presidents of both parties for many years. Like you said, there's a lot of work to do, so we should maybe keep the Nobel on ice. As someone who supports diplomacy, I would probably prefer that we sent someone to the meeting who could answer the question, how to get to North Korea from South Korea. But we don't go to diplomacy with the president we choose. We go with the president we have,

I guess, or something. Yeah, again, I mean, 300 plus million people in this country. If you tried to pick one to go to a summit with Kim Jong Un to try to achieve world peace and get rid of nuclear weapons, I think Donald Trump would be at the very bottom of the list. After Dennis Rodman. We have taken a step back from when we sent Dennis Rodman. It's like Martin Shkreli, Donald Trump. There's not Devin Nunes, maybe. Would you send Kanye West or Donald Trump?

Probably Kanye West. Probably Kanye West. Probably Kanye West. Yeah, I think I would too. It's a close call. Yeah. But anyway, like you said, but we have Donald Trump. So let's roll the dice and see what we get. Okay.

Let's talk about Michael Cohen. It seems as though the president's lawyer has run afoul of the law, Dan. What? Yeah. It's amazing. This week we learned that the slush fund he created so that donald trump could pay off stormy daniels had more than one purpose essential consultants llc which i believe is the first time the word essential has been used in connection with

michael cohen was also used to accept massive payments from giant telecom companies drug companies and russian oligarchs who wanted access to the President of the United States. Just your standard stuff. This information appeared in a detailed seven-page document that was posted on Twitter by Stormy Daniels camera-shy lawyer Michael Avenatti. The information was later confirmed by multiple news outlets, and we know it's true because the Treasury Department has launched an investigation into how Avenatti got Cohen's financial records. Dan, obviously lots to unpack here, but what was your first reaction to all of this news? My first reaction was I had to go home Wednesday night or Tuesday night and like read for two hours to figure out what the fuck happened. Because I didn't pay much attention to the news that day.

And it's a lot to pick through. I mean, really, there is so much happening. The web is so tangled with bad players, just stupid activity, crimes, corruption. I mean, you really have to step back and sort of figure it out. I'd say a couple of things about this. One, it is pretty clear once again, that we are dealing with criminals, but we are not dealing with criminal masterminds because the whole point of a shell company that you create is to create some distance for yourself. So then you probably shouldn't use the same shell company you use as your porn star payoff slush fund to run your sketchy pay-for-play access selling consulting business. So this is the same-

Rule number one of slush funds, no double dipping. Yes, exactly. I mean, this is the same level of lazy stupidity, lazy stupid criminality that led Michael Cohen to have many burner phones he could use to make secret calls and then forget to throw them away so that the Southern District of New York could seize them at the end of the day. I mean, it is, it's pretty mind-boggling. Why they're called burner phones, Michael Cohen. Yes. This content you're getting right here is from the emergency bonus edition segment of last week's pod that we had to ditch because NBC got the story wrong. So if I only get to do our burner jokes. I think the other thing here is it does,

like Michael Cohen is sort of the Rosetta Stone to Trump's crimes. Because as you sort of dig into this, you're dealing with, it sort of brings together potential money laundering, just rank corruption and pay for play, Russian oligarchs providing money. And this is why Trump has been such a lunatic ever since the office was raided because he knows that all the bodies are buried here. Yeah. So let's unpack all this and let's start with the Russian angle. There's an investment firm called Columbus Nova, which is the American subsidiary of Renova Group, which is a Russian conglomerate founded by a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin named Viktor Vekselberg. He was also, so Columbus Nova also paid Cohen eight installments totaling $500,000 between January and August of 2017.

Avenatti suggested that the money may have helped cover the $130,000 Stormy Daniels payment. We don't know that for sure. Dan, Victor Vekselberg was stopped at Dulles Airport months ago and questioned by Robert Mueller's investigators. Last month, the Treasury Department placed him on a list of Russians who've been sanctioned for interfering in our election. Quite a coincidence that he's involved, no? for interfering in our election.

Quite a coincidence that he's involved, no? Yes, I mean, maybe it's yet another coincidence of Russians who interfered in the election having deep personal and financial ties to Trump. Maybe it's just a coincidence that it happened to be that this Russian oligarch was looking for the best, most essential consulting services available in America, and he scoured the waterfront looking, talking to all the big players.

And what he came down to at the end after this rigorous, unbiased search was that Michael Cohen was the man to do this nebulous work for him. I mean, it's pretty wild. And at some point, I recognize that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, that we should be skeptical. But at some point, the mountain of coincidences gets so tall that you just have to acknowledge that there is an incredible amount of questionable conduct, illegality, criminality that's at the root of all of this. There are just too many coincidences for this to be a coincidence. Yeah. And there's a couple other interesting points here. You know that they're a little worried about this because Columbus Nova

said through an attorney that it was never owned by a foreign entity. And yet, Renova Group, the Russian conglomerate, listed on their website as one of their companies, Columbus Nova, as late as November of 2017. And when you go there now, it says, oh, the website's under construction. We also know that Columbus Nova, the American subsidiary, which is an investment firm, for some reason, spent 2016 and 2017 registering websites for white supremacists and alt-right groups. Why was an investment firm doing that? Why were they controlled by a Russian oligarch?

Why did they spend $500,000 on Michael Cohen's essential consulting services? And why was this all done in a time period right before the election and ended in the summer of 2017 um right when the sanctions debate stopped what what's going on here i mean john you're so cynical about the behavior of affiliated oligarchs i just i don't know i don't know yeah it's fucking crazy that's what it is it is so obvious what is going on here and it is can't say it. And we have to dance around it. It's like the stories in the paper over the weekend that were the incredible investigative reporting about the fact that Trump, at a time of incredibly low interest rates, who instead of borrowing money, decided to break with all real estate practice and just pour massive amounts of cash of unknown origin into real estate properties.

While his son was saying that in an interview that all the money came from Russia and we don't say it's money laundering. Like no one could say that because that would somehow violate some norm of journalism. It is pretty clear what is going on here. The only question is, will Bob Mueller or this U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York be able to find sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed? But let's not be naive about what is happening here. I mean, it's all happening before our eyes, and it's amazing. It's alarming. And it's also important to note that we always know a fraction of what Mueller knows, and we usually know it much later than when Mueller found out. So we know from all these reports that Mueller was questioning this Russian oligarch months ago.

We know that he has been looking into Essential LLC and looking at these payments months ago. We only know now because of Avenatti, but Mueller's known all of this for a long, long time. So in addition to taking half a million from Russian oligarchs and buying the silence of the president's mistresses, Essential Consulting was also a massive pay-to-play slush fund. Cohen would basically go around to big corporations with business before the government and promise them access to Donald Trump and his advisors in exchange for large sums of money. AT&T was trying to push a merger through and fight net neutrality rules, so they paid off Cohen. A big drug company called Novartis

heard that Trump promised to lower drug prices, so they paid off Cohen. I guess, first of all, how common is this? Because, you know, there is this relationship in D.C. where a lot of companies pay people they believe to be close to a president to sort of get advice, and it falls short of the legal definition of lobbying, but it's clearly trying to purchase some sort of influence and access. which is some sort of influence and access. You're hearing from a lot of seasoned Washington hands and reporters who've been around the block and dined at the Capitol Grill multiple times saying, this is just how things are done. And that's kind of true. How things are done is terrible.

Yes, that's kind of true, but it's also not really true. Because yes, there are a lot of people who go around and oversell their access to pretty naive corporations and foreign entities about what they're going to be able to deliver. And so that does happen. But what is different here is a couple of things. One, the amounts of money we're talking about are pretty extreme, right? So I think to say that Novartis, who ended up paying $1.2 million, I believe, over time, that is an amount of money for one individual that is pretty unheard of in how quote-unquote lobbying is done in

Washington. Apparently, it's way, way more than Novartis paid any of their lobbyists. So you look through all their lobbying records, and even the most expensive lobbying firm that they hire, it's nothing compared to what they paid Michael fucking Cohen for one minute. So that's alarming, or at least it suggests something untoward. Second, let's not just overlook the fact that there is this gray area between on the outskirts of lobbying that is unregulated that should be really regulated, which is basically strategic consulting, where people with large networks and great connections get quote-unquote political

intelligence and share it with companies, but don't technically advocate for a specific policy or advocate on behalf of the client. Therefore, they don't have to register as lobbyists, which means they don't have to disclose things. They sort of live in the shadows of the DC influence game. If some of these reports are true, that what Cohen was promising was specific meetings, specific access to deliver a specific request of these clients, then he was almost certainly lobbying and in violation of the law. Now, on the list of crimes Michael Cohen is alleged to have committed, violating the lobbying registration, failing to register as a lobbyist is probably pretty small, but it is a crime. And we should not overlook moderately significant crimes from

close associates of the President of the United States. In a normal world, that would be a gigantic deal, and it should be here too. And we can't just sort of poo-poo it because that means he's not guilty of treason or conspiracy against the United States or the other crimes that people allege he may have committed. Yeah. I mean, so there's a legal question, which is how much legal trouble is coming in, which we just talked about. And also, is Trump liable as well? Those questions are, did Trump know about what Cohen was doing? Was Trump getting any money himself, knowing that trump doesn't like when aids you know or people close to him profit off of him and usually likes to take a cut on his own um there's a lot of questions about you know whether trump a knew about this and b was getting money himself so that

seems like that's you know that's the trump liability. There's also a larger political question here, which is how drained is this fucking swamp, right? This president, you know, up have in the trump administration the biggest companies and richest assholes can just pay off republicans to get tax cuts and special favors while most people's premiums are going up the cost of their prescription drugs are going up at&t's jacking up their phone bills their internet isn't free anymore and you know these people can't afford to pay a bribe to some dumb shit mobster lawyer who's friends with donald trump um and they can't afford to make huge donations to pay off politicians uh and that's the government right now and to me that seems like that's something that democrats

can go out there and run on what do you think yeah that's that's exactly right donald trump ran as a populist reformer and has governed as a corporatist crook. And Democrats have to make that case. And I was communicating with some reporters the other day about this question, like, do you think Democrats are doing the right message? And the answer is, we don't know yet. Because we're not at a point where Democrats are communicating in paid messaging, digital or television, to voters, right? That's how you know what the real message of the campaign is, not necessarily what they're saying on Twitter. I know that's come as a shock to people.

What is going to be the narrative of their campaign that they're going to spend money to communicate to voters? What are their volunteers and canvassers saying to people at the doors and the phones, right? What is that narrative going to be? saying to people at the doors and the phones, right? Like, what is that narrative going to be? I, and we're a little, I think, twisted around the axles of the party because one of the overly simplistic critiques

of the Democratic message in 2016 was you focus too much on Trump's personal foibles and not enough on policy. And to me, there is some merit to that point for sure, but it is not, it's a false choice. You have to weave a policy narrative with an argument around the characters and values of who you're running against. And that is not – it doesn't mean it has to all be about Trump, but what is happening in Washington is all tied together. We've been saying this for a long time.

The argument from Democrats should be you're running against the chaos and the corruption in Washington and Wall Street. And then you have like literally a phone book – if anyone remembers what a phone book was – of data points to point that back up. So I think that's what they should do. This Cohen thing is one more example of that and we should use it because it says something about what is happening in Washington and why we need change. And Democrats are the change this time, which we were not last time. So we can more enthusiastically grasp that change mantle than we were able to do in 2016. Yes, I think that's right. I think that the top line message for Democrats here is change, which we can run on now because we didn't, you know, we're not running with someone who's going to be the successor to an incumbent president who was there for two terms. So that's the top line message. To me, this is getting in the media narrative, too. We talked about this a little bit

on Tuesday's pod. You know, Democrats, if they had their druthers, maybe they'd spend all day talking about issues like health care and the tax cut. But that doesn't get picked up in the news. The media is going to be focused on these Trump scandals from now until November. And I don't think we can do anything about the fact that the media is going to be focused on these Trump scandals from now until November. And I don't think we can do anything about the fact that the media is going to be focused on these scandals. They just are. That's the way the media is. And so we have to figure out where there is an intersection between the policy issues that we want to talk about and the message that we want to talk about as Democrats and what the media is already covering. And to me, this Michael Cohen pay-to-play slush fund scheme is the biggest intersection we've seen yet.

It is a scandal that will be covered on television, that will be covered in the Washington media that people are going to be talking about on Twitter. And Democrats can get into that narrative by saying, yeah, big drug company pays off Michael Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars to get quote-un, insights about the administration. And is it a coincidence that Donald Trump, who ran promising to lower the cost of prescription drugs, hasn't done shit about lowering the cost of prescription drugs yet?

Meanwhile, people are out there and it's one of the biggest costs people face is their prescription drugs, especially senior citizens. I think you can't just talk about the corruption in a vacuum. And we've said this a million times, but the full message is, how does the corruption affect people's lives? And I think you can get the tax cut in there, you can get healthcare in there. And it seems to me, it's like all part of a piece. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I would say the media is going to focus on Russia, And I would say the media is going to focus on Russia, Stormy Daniels, those sorts of things. And they probably should. We are looking at potentially the greatest scandal in American political history happening right before our eyes, and it should be covered. The problem is there is just a delta between this very important news story and what voters may be most interested in. And because the information

that is being put forward about collusion, about Russia, about Trump's Russia connections, is two things. One, it's telling people information they've probably already made a decision on. You've either decided that's hashtag fake news and you don't care and you're going to do what you're going to do anyway, or you've already decided that Trump colluded with Russia and we got to do something about that. So you're supporting someone else. So, but what is the information that can take the people that is new information that can move people who are either undecided about who to vote for or were undecided about whether to vote. And that is where, like, as you think about where you should put your energy as a Democrat, that's the way to do it. I think you're exactly right that finding an entry point to tie it to some of these things that are being talked about is important.

But also just you as a candidate control what comes out of your mouth. You control what your ads say. You control what your door knockers say. know the media is going to be focused on something that is not consequential to deciding the election in your favor, then you have to be relentlessly fucking disciplined about making sure that every piece of communication that emanates from your campaign or your person is about what you know voters

care about. And that is what separates great candidates from bad candidates and winning candidates and losing candidates in political environments like these. Yeah, and I think another data point here that just came out today is that, you sent me this story, that Sheldon Adelson just dropped $30 million on the midterm elections to give to Republicans. This is the same Sheldon Adelson whose company recorded a $670 million income tax windfall from the Republican tax law in the first quarter. So I guess Republicans got their money's worth from the tax cut because now they have $30 million to help elect candidates.

I would make one point on this, which is this is how fucked up our campaign finance laws are, which is Paul Ryan went to the meeting, made the case for why Republicans needed to be elected, walked out of the room so his staffer from the super PAC could make the specific ask to Sheldon Adelson for the money. Because Paul Ryan is not legally allowed to raise money for this entity. He can just go to the meeting and do everything other than ask for the money. And that is somehow fucking legal in America. And this is the point. Tied in with a message against this level of corruption is also an agenda, a reform agenda to run on. And Ending Citizens United, campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, ethics reform need to be a part of it because this is fucking crazy.

It is a crime that it's not a crime. Yeah. And look, this is what we're up against in the midterms, and it's not going to be easy, and if you look at the, and we're going to talk to Harry about this, but if you look at the generic ballot, it's pretty close, and Democrats are still

about 50-50 to take back the House, and now we're facing all this money, we're facing all this money. We're facing, you know, a media that's going to be talking about, like you said, a scandal that maybe there's a delta between that scandal and what voters actually care about. And so Democrats are really going to need to get their message down. And they're also going to need resources. And if you're wondering what you can do, you know, we're putting up a video later today about the Cricket Eight.

Remember the Cricket Eight, Dan? Oh, yeah. The Cricket Eight is the seven districts in California where Hillary Clinton won, but there's still a Republican sitting in that seat, plus Devin Nunes' seat because he's a fucking asshole. And so you can go to cricket.com slash cricket eight, and you can donate to these races so that uh on june 6th the california primaries june 5th on june 6th whoever whichever democrats emerge from those primaries

as the candidates to challenge the republican in the general election they will have the resources they need to fight republicans and sheldon adelson's 30 million dollars so incredibly important go to cricket.com slash cricket eight and donate today. Let's talk about Gina Haspel. Donald Trump's nominee to be the next director of the CIA went before senators on Wednesday. She'd be the first woman to run the agency if she's confirmed by the Senate, but her nomination's being threatened by concerns about her involvement with the CIA's torture program. At one point last week, it was reported she wanted to withdraw her nomination,

but the White House convinced her not to. At her hearing, Haspel said she wouldn't allow the agency to restart the torture program. She told senators her moral compass was strong and that she wouldn't allow the CIA to participate in immoral activities, even if they were considered to be legal. And yet, when pressed by Kamala Harris and others on whether she believed that torture was immoral, she refused to answer. nomination where it seems like Republicans will need a few Democratic votes for Haspel to be confirmed because, among other things, Rand Paul and John McCain have now both said that they'd vote against her. Of course, yesterday, West Virginia's Joe Manchin became the first Democrat to say he'd vote to confirm her. Do you think that the other Senate Democrats who are up in 2018 are going to follow Manchin's lead?

I think some will. That's just a guess. I know we're not in the prediction business, but so maybe I shouldn't even guess that. But based on past practice, it seems likely that some of them will. And I said this about Pompeo, which is if you believe, if you truly in your heart believe as a Senate Democrat that Gina Haspel is the best person for the job that Donald Trump could possibly nominate, then vote for her. That is, you should vote your conscience, as Ted Cruz would say. But if you believe that voting for Gina Haspel is somehow going to help you in the election and then spare you from super PAC ads paid for by Sheldon Adelson and others calling you unpatriotic or risking America because you – because of your votes for Trump's nominees, then you are dangerously political calculation, you're making the wrong one if you think voting for a Trump nominee will help you for two reasons.

One, you will be spared nothing. These people on the right do not give a fuck what your actual voting record is. They will say or do anything they can to defeat you. And then two, also think people have a very good cynicism detector. And if they think you're doing it for political reasons, you will both depress enthusiasm on your side and not persuade any voters. So if you do make the vote, you should go out and make a very compelling case for why it was and not shy from it. But my personal view, if I was there, I would definitely vote no. I think it's a mistake to not turn the page on a very dark era in American history and the CIA.

Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, it's the morally right thing to do to stand against torture. Second, we know because I think Barack Obama's most, one of his most popular lines in 2008 was the United States doesn't torture and we should end torture. And it was an extremely popular stance. And so I don't know why Democrats would be afraid of saying that they took a hard stance against torture, against someone who doesn't know whether she believes that torture is immoral or not, or someone who ordered or was ordered to destroy tapes of enhanced interrogations and went along with that. You know, I have no doubt that she's has great qualifications and experience and all that other stuff, but she was part of this and she hasn't fully decided to

refute it. So that's a real problem. But like, I're right, though. I think if you were a Democrat in a red state and you're having a fight, you're engaging in a fight with your opponent over Gina Haspel's nomination or Mike Pompeo's nomination, instead of going after the Republican on the Republican tax cut or their attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, I don't know what the fuck you're doing anyway. Now, I expect that that's what most red state Democrats are going to do. I bet all Claire McCaskill's ads and Joe Donnelly's ads and Joe Manchin's ads are going to seem like very economically populist ads against their Republican opponents. Yeah, it's, I mean, it just, it's, it is frustrating because, and I don't want to be so cynical about this. It is very possible that Joe Manchin very sincerely believes. relevant experience of the job she's been asked for and not just some some drag from the fox news green room which is also always a real possibility for a position of national security in this

country and maybe joe manchin's view is if not gina haspel is going to be brian kilmeade right so what do you so like that is seb gorka like yeah yeah exactly like that i mean that's not out of the realm of possibility with this president so it is possible that's the calculation they're making. It's not that that is not the choice I would make. Right. What I just worry about sometimes is that we is that there is a strain of political caution emanating from political consultants that is outdated from a different era of politics. Certainly an era that existed before Donald Trump was president, that I hope that's not what is driving this. And we'll see. It is one Democrat right now, right? We'll see what others do. I tweeted something last night after McCain came out against, and I said, see Democrats,

it's not this hard. And I actually ended up deleting the tweet because that's actually unfair to Democrats. On all these things, the overwhelming majority of Democrats have done the right thing. There are a handful who may do what we disagree with, but it's not an indictment of the party. It is the party has overwhelmingly stood very, very strong against Trump's nominees. And I suspect that will happen here again. And we'll see if a small handful side with Manchin on this. I hope they don't, but past practice suggests it may happen. Look, and the reason this is important is there's a symbolic element to this too, which is that this, we want to send a message to the world that we stand against torture. And this is a time where

our reputation in the world has been severely damaged by Donald Trump as president and his decision to pull out of multiple global agreements that the United States has been part of, the Paris Agreement, the Iran deal, and just not care about our standing in the world, which matters. And it doesn't matter just because, you know, we like to feel good about how other countries think of us. There's a national security element to it. We need other countries to help us fight terrorism, fight disease, fight pandemics, fight all these threats all over the world. And we're not going to have a lot of allies if we're a country that breaks our promise when we enter into global agreements and then waffle on whether we stand against something

like torture. So it's actually, you know, there's a national security element to standing against torture. And so anyway, so that's important. Okay, when we come back, we will be talking to CNN's Harry Enten about polling and the midterms. On the pod today, we have

Harry Enten, the whiz kid himself, CNN analyst, pollster extraordinaire, polling analyst extraordinaire. You haven't been on the show since it was Keeping It 1600. And back then you were 538, we were Keeping It 1600. Now we're in different roles. So welcome back, Harry.

Well, thank you for having me back. Shalom to everybody. And to be back on a podcast and such an esteemed one as this, I feel like I'm walking home in for the first time since being off at college for a first semester. We love that flattery, Harry. We love it. All right. So here's my big question to you. There's a CBS poll out this week that showed Democrats with a nine point lead on the generic congressional ballot. CNN's poll showed a three point lead on the generic congressional ballot. CNN's poll showed a three point lead. The average is around seven points, which you said would be a 50 50

proposition to take back the House. So what I'm wondering is, and I saw you wrote about this last week, why are Republicans doing so much worse in special elections than you might expect from only being down by a seven point average in these polls? Well, it could be a number of things that's going on. Number one, obviously, these are open seats. So incumbents tend to get a little bit of a bounce. And so there are no Republican incumbents. And obviously, the national ballot is taking into account some districts where some incumbents will be running. That's number one. Number two, I should point out, if you go back to 2006, you saw a pretty similar shift in the special elections as has been occurring so far this year. And in that year, what ended up happening, despite Democrats

outperforming the partisan lean of those districts by 15, 16 points, you ended up having a national house vote in which Democrats only won by eight, which is fairly close to what you're seeing right now on the generic ballot. So I don't necessarily see the two of those in conflict. I think that there are two measures. We look at both of them. We take them both into account and recognize, hey, you know, we're still a number of months away from the election. So things are a little bit up in the air right now. Historically, how predictive is the generic ballot this far out from the midterms? It's actually pretty good. I mean, it's certainly better than the presidential ballot would be at this point ahead of a presidential election. But there's a wide margin of error around that estimate.

So, you know, if the Democrats only won the National House vote by, say, two or they won it by 14, both of those would be within the realms of possibilities. those would be within the realms of possibilities. But at this particular time, I think that particular estimate, you know, say seven, eight points, it's a pretty good idea of where we're probably going to end up. Plus two to plus 14. Big range. Big range. Big range. Bigly. Bigly. Big league. Which one is it? I don't know. But it's maybe both. That is the great debate of our times. Harry, what do you what do you if you, if you were a Democrat and you look at, and you sort of look at all the array of data out there, what would give you hope and what would give, what would be like a really strong blinking red light of worry? Yeah, I think the, to me, the thing that gives me the most hope is you're running a lot of

candidates and a lot of districts, right? You can't win games in which you're not partaking in. So you're running a lot of candidates. There are very few Republican incumbents who are running unopposed this particular year. These Democratic candidates are raising a ton of money. These are things that definitely matter and help, especially on the edges, because you're not sure if this does end up being a wave election. You don't know which seats might fall.

So you'd rather be in the position to take advantage of the wave. So I think that to me is something that's very, very good. I think, you know, we kind of already hit what perhaps is a little worrisome right now. We have seen the generic ballot perhaps not be reflective nearly as much of the special elections. And more than that, we have seen President Trump's approval rating inch up over the last few months. No, it's not even. No, it's not the Rasmussen poll that the president likes to tweet out so often. But it is creeping up. It's creeping up into the low to maybe mid 40s, you know, 42, 41, getting up there a little bit. And more than that, the president does seem to do a little bit better among registered voters, not just adults.

And of course, remember, not all adults are going to vote in a midterm election. It's going to be only voters. And so the fact that Trump is a little better among that group, to me, is at least a little worrisome. What are your thoughts on the endangered Senate Democratic incumbents? How much does incumbency help them in these deep red states? How much do you think they have to worry? Do you think they have to worry? Do you think Democrats are paying enough attention to those races? Well, I mean, certainly I think that they are, but that might not be enough, right? If we go back to, say, 1982, when you're in a midterm election year in which you're in the opposition party, incumbents of the opposition party rarely ever lose. I think

there's something like 112 out of 116 or something like that dating back to 1982. So that's a very, very good percentage of the time that they're winning. However, there have been very few examples where you say have a Joe Manchin running in West Virginia, where Donald Trump won that state by 41 points, and then he's going up against that sort of force going up against him. And we don't really have a lot of data points to really bounce off of in that particular situation. So yeah, I would say that they're in trouble. It wouldn't surprise me if the Democrats don't lose a single Senate seat, but it wouldn't surprise me if they lose in West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Montana, a little less.

So I think Tester's probably in a little better shape than the other folks are. But all of those seats are in danger. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if you end up with a situation where the Democrats take back the House with rather ease and then don't take back the Senate. In fact, end up with a little bit of a net loss. You know, Harry, you mentioned President Trump's creeping up approval rating into a decidedly mediocre mid-40s. Yeah, right. It's not good. Yeah, not good, but not – yeah. Not great.

Not great, Sean. Using presidential approval or using candidate approval as a measure, a measure that's predictive, it seems unlikely Trump would have won to begin with. I mean, Trump seems – is such a unique figure that maybe his approval is not tied good or bad to how the elections go in the same way it might have been true for Obama or Bush or Clinton? I mean, sure, there is obviously the question of whether or not Donald Trump breaks the rules of politics. And I asked that question myself in an article a few weeks ago. But I think that we should point out that in 2016, he was also going up against Hillary Clinton, who, for better or worse, was the second least popular presidential major party nominee of all time, at least dating back to since we had polling. And that sort of variable has been taken off the board. And so now it's all about President Trump. And if the past is, in fact, predictive of the future, then having an approval rating in the low 40s is not very good

and, in fact, would predict that Republicans would lose control of the House in 2018. There's a wide margin of error, again, around that estimate. And we're not exactly sure that the rules apply. But I'm a little skeptical of throwing out the entire playbook just because of what happened in 2016, because now that Hillary Clinton's not a candidate for the Democratic Party, no matter how hard Republicans try to make her a candidate for the Democratic Party, she's not on the ballot. So I think that the presidential approval rating,

understanding that, I think is a very key measure. What's your best guess for why Trump's approval rating has crept up in recent months? Do you think it has to do with certain things that have been in the news, certain things that he's done? Or do you think this is that it's sort of been within this small range and we shouldn't pay too much attention to it? Well, I mean, yeah, it has been in a small range. Although, as my former friend, Mr. Silver, pointed out on the website FiveThirtyEight, you might have heard of it, that in fact, there have been many presidents who have had a small range of approvals and then it kind of busts out and they go either high or low. But I will say that the

reason why I think his approval rating is creeping up a little bit is, number one, there is a general regression to the mean right. If your approval is really low a little bit, is number one, there is a general regression to the mean, right? If your approval is really low, if you hold everything else equal, you'll tend to rise. If your approval is really high, you hold everything else equal, you'll tend to fall. So I think that's part of it. I also think part of it is that, you know, the economy is doing fairly well by most traditional measures. Trump's approval rating on the economy has tended to be well out in front of

his regular approval rating. And as perhaps he's kept a little more quiet, although for anyone else it would be exceedingly loud, I think that's kind of shown through a little bit. And as people have gotten more used to the Trump presidency and he's not trying to get people with green cards out of this country necessarily. The economy's kind of shown through. And I think that people have been responding to that, at least a few people, although, as we pointed out, the approval rating is still rather low. Harry, taking a step back for a sec, you know, we hear people all the time because of, I think, probably somewhat ignorant views of how 2016 played out, say,

quote unquote, polling is broken, right? And you hear that a lot from Trump people whenever the polls are bad. And sometimes you hear it from Democrats when the polls are good for Trump. And so I wanted to ask you just your take on this current state of the accuracy and efficacy of political polling in general. Has it gotten worse? Does it need to be fixed? What would you do there? I don't think it's gotten worse. I mean, there was a great study that was done, I believe, by Will Jennings and Chris Vlezian, two academics, basically pointing out that polling has been about as accurate as it's always been. And then I looked at the 2017 and 2018 elections that have occurred so far, the special elections and the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. And basically what we saw was, yeah, the polls have been off a little bit, you know, say

four points in the House special elections. But that's within the normal range of error that we would expect given the past accuracy or predictiveness of the polling within the final three weeks of the election. So I'm not too concerned that the polls are broken. What I am concerned about, though, is that people who look to the polls and expect precision without realizing that polls are tools. And then if one candidate, say, is up two to three points, yeah, that there. My condolences to you. I, of course, as a nonpartisan analyst, have no feelings one way or another on that particular issue, but my condolences to you. Now, we've also talked about this before, but what are your thoughts on the ongoing problem of not enough good polling, quality polling?

I mean, I've been looking for individual House district polls in California for months now. Good luck, boys. Good luck. What the hell, man? I'm looking for some good district polls in California for months now. Good luck, boys. Good luck. What the hell, man? I'm looking for some good polls. I need my fix. Well, you know, look, house district polling is very, very difficult to come by. And the fact is, I've actually been compiling a data set.

People have seen me with my headphones in the office going, what is he doing? He's not writing. And I'm literally going back and building a data set, say, in, and just finding every poll that I possibly can on the House district level. It's going to almost all be partisan this time around. And what we're going to need to recognize is that at least on the House district level, we're going to have to say, you know what, that's a Democratic poll. We're going to probably have to subtract X number of points away from the Democratic candidate on average. Oh, it's a Republican poll. We're going to have to subtract X number of points away from the Democratic candidate on average. Oh, it's a Republican poll. We're going to have to subtract X number of points away from the Republican candidate on average. So I'm not expecting too much there. There will be some districts where

we'll get a lot of polling. You know, in New York, you have Siena College that does some House district polling, for example. So there are going to be some districts. But overall, on the House district level, I would keep expectations in check. On the Senate and gubernatorial level, maybe there we might be able to get some better high-quality polling going forward. At least I'm hopeful. That's why I've been heading to synagogue so much, and it's not just because I like the rabbi. I mean, look, I guess for our purposes, our partisan purposes, this is good because now people can go work their asses off and not be overconfident by any polls.

But, you know, as analysts and prognosticators, it's kind of annoying. It's definitely annoying, but I think that's the one thing we need to keep in mind. Keep our expectations in check and, you know, always remember the margin of error. And as long as we do that, then I think we'll keep ourselves out of trouble, although there are going to be some people on Twitter anyway who decide to go after you just because they have no lives and they're miserable people. But, you know, the world needs miserable people. That's not the Twitter I know.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's not the Twitter that you know. There are no nasty people on Twitter whatsoever. There are some very lovely people on Twitter. We share soda habits. We talk about dogs. We talk about Fuller House. But there are also the people who are a little darker who perhaps, you know, have some mommy and daddy issues. my mentions are filled with smiley faces and thumbs up emojis that's

about it it's great oh that that's that's very nice i feel very good for you harriet and cnn thank you so much for joining us uh come back again soon uh when we have some great polling to talk about it sounds great i I look forward to it, guys. Thanks to Harry Anton for joining us. That's all the time we have for today, and we'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. Thanks for watching!