Pod Save America - “Everyone was in the loop."

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

The impeachment inquiry moves to a new phase, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes may be implicated in the scandal he’s supposed to be investigating, and Michael Bloomberg officially enters the Democratic primary. Then Democratic digital strategist Tara McGowan talks to Dan about why Democrats need to focus more on digital advertising.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later on the pod, Dan's interview with Democratic digital strategist and the co-founder of Acronym, Tara McGowan. Before that, we'll talk about the escalating impeachment probe and Michael Bloomberg's entry into the presidential race. A few other pods you'll want to check out this week from us. The second episode of Tommy's special Pod Save America on the Ground in Iowa series drops tomorrow. On Tuesday, Tommy takes us inside a caucus and lets us know exactly how it works. It's a great episode.

There's also a very funny episode of Love It or Leave It from over the weekend you should check out. On Wednesday, you'll hear a Thanksgiving mailbag episode that Tommy Lovett and I have already recorded, as well as an interview I'm doing with our good friend Adi Barkin. And in case you missed it, check out last Thursday's epic episode of Hysteria, featuring Gloria Steinem, who was here at Crooked Media headquarters. Highly, highly recommend the conversation. Check it out. Finally, Stacey Abrams needs our help. We're trying to raise another million for Fair Fight 2020 to help protect the vote,

which Fair Fight has already done in Louisiana and Kentucky, where Democrats just won. It is incredibly important to help them be on the ground now in advance of 2020. So please go to votesaveamerica.com slash Fair Fight to help us crush our new goal. And of course, if you preorder Dan's new book on trumping America, you will be able to help fair fight through, uh, through buying the book as well. John,

I didn't even put book promo in the outline. You did it for me. Fucking. I really appreciate that. Happy Thanksgiving. I just did it off the cuff. I just did it off the cuff. It just came to me.

It was, you, you, you just made it into the, uh, Pfeiffer family Thanksgiving dinner. What I'm thankful for. So congratulations.

Fantastic. All right, Dan, the impeachment hearings are over for now. But new evidence and new co-conspirators just keep coming out of the woodwork, potentially including the top Republican on the committee that's been running the impeachment inquiry. That's right. Devin Nunes might have been part of the same election rigging scheme that he's supposed to be investigating as part of the Intel committee. Over the last two years, reports say that Nunes has been conspiring

with corrupt Ukrainian officials to take down Joe Biden. He met with them in Vienna in 2018, and his staffers scrapped a 2019 trip when they found out that they'd have to notify Adam Schiff and instead met via Skype. And how do we know all this, Dan? Where are these reports coming from? The internet.

More than the internet, Dan. It's coming from Lev Parnas the indicted soviet-born mobster who says that trump pulled him aside at the white house hanukkah party and gave him a james bond style mission to get dirt on biden in ukraine and now his lawyer is telling reporters this is what he wants to testify that and and and by the way he doesn't just want to testify he has records about all of this so um what was your what was your reaction to this story about devin nunes's involvement and and how big of a deal do you think this is i mean even by the standard of devin nunes's incredible corrupt stupidity this is pretty mind-blowing is he sat there for

incredible corrupt stupidity, this is pretty mind-blowing, is he sat there for days pretending as if this was all some sort of hoax, and he was in on the crime to begin with, reportedly in on the crime. We can talk about whether we believe this or not, but it is certainly very credible given how Nunes and his staff have handled, have behaved since the day Trump was elected. We remember him heading over the White House to tip people off about the Russia investigation, hiding in bushes. When that was discovered, his staffer, Kash Patel, who came up in the Fiona Hill hearings as someone who was involved in Ukraine policy in ways in which they probably shouldn't have been. So it is certainly credible, I guess, given what we've seen from Nunes and his staff thus far. Yeah. And look, it explains a few things. One, why Devin Nunes looked so bad of shape earlier

in the week when Eric Swalwell asked for a previously reported Daily Beast story about how Parnas helped arrange calls in Europe for Nunes to be read into the record. So explains that, you know, and then Devin Nunes, of course, is asked about this by Maria Bartiromo, another big Trump supporter posing as a journalist over the weekend. And Devin Nunes doesn't deny it. He doesn't deny it. He basically just says he is planning to sue CNN and the Daily Beast, which is how he rolls now when someone talks about him or reports things that Lev Parnas' lawyer said. But he said he could discuss it because it involved criminal activity, which seems to be a little bit of a tell, if you will. which seems to be a little bit of a tell, if you will. Well, in his mind, the criminal activity is on behalf of the news organizations who, again, reported what this guy's lawyer is saying.

Now, I mean, the question you raised is, should we trust Lev Parnas? And what do you think? Yeah, look, I think we have to take it with a grain of salt. But it is credible. It fits with the pattern and helps explain Nunes' very specific reaction when Eric Swalwell brought this up. It does honestly speak to the immense stupidity of Nunes that if this were true, that he would sit on the committee this whole time and just leave himself open to this. He could have easily recused himself, which is probably what everyone in the Republican Party

would have wished since he was kind of sort of layered by Jim Jordan to begin with. So I don't think we should assume this is 100% true, but I think it at least fits with the pattern of behavior. true, but I think it at least fits with the pattern of behavior. Yeah. And look, the other thing we know is ABC News reported on Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee is already in possession of videos, photos, and audio recordings handed over by Parnas that include Giuliani and Trump. We, of course, don't know if Devin Nunes is part of that as well. But it certainly seems at this stage that the whole Parnas affair is much more of a Michael Cohen style thing than something else. Cuthonati's a liar. And then, of course, Michael Cohen had all the receipts. You know, it does seem like if Parnas is turning over evidence anyway, it wouldn't it wouldn't really make sense for him to lie about this stuff. And here's the other thing you need to know. Like, of course, from Devin Nunes's perspective, right, like the source of all of these conspiracy theories is the same, right? And so like John Solomon, you know,

pretend reporter that used to write for the Hill and a bunch of right wing conspiracy theorists, right? Like how long have they been pushing this bullshit narrative that somehow Joe Biden did something corrupt in Ukraine? And so it would totally make sense for not only Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, but the other crazy-wing trumpist assholes in congress like devon nunes to completely buy into this and devon is thinking to himself like yeah well in 2018 joe biden's uh we're gonna run for president and i'm gonna get to the bottom of this conspiracy theory that i've heard from john solomon that uh you know he had some corrupt activity in ukraine so i might as well send some of my fucking staffers over there and go meet with the fired corrupt prosecutor myself in hopes that I can get some dirt. I mean, the odds that Devin Nunes took a selfie with a fired prosecutor under a welcome to Vienna sign with the hashtag Biden

time is like at least 50%. The other thing we know is, you know, Adam Smith, who is the House Chair, top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was interviewed over the weekend and he said Devin Nunes will likely face an ethics investigation over this news. That would be Devin Nunes' second ethics investigation in just a couple of years. The first he was ultimately cleared of leaking classified information during the Mueller hearing. So that's great. We should also mention that documents released late on Friday by the State Department show that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got on the phone with Rudy Giuliani at least twice in March to talk about the smear campaign against former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. And Pompeo asked rudy to send over

a packet of his nutty conspiracy theories which rudy did uh in an envelope that uh with with the trump markings on it um dan how significant is pompeo's role here well it's not surprising i mean of course of course mike pompeo who is the ultimate political hack trump ask ass kisser, of course he would be involved. There's no way he would like, he would have too much FOMO to not be involved in the criminal conspiracy. So he's definitely there. I mean, so let's just like, yes, it like, it says so much that it's not a surprise, right? Like it's not a surprise that he's involved and not a surprise that he has lied about it. Remember when he went on the Sunday show right after the reports about the whistleblower came out and he basically pretended to have no knowledge of any sort of

conversation with the Ukrainians only to then find out days later that he was on the call? I mean, it just like it sort of speaks to our lowered expectations. But like if you just sort of do the roll call of criminality here, So involved in this criminal conspiracy in some way, shape, or form, either the crime itself or the cover-up, you have the Attorney General, the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, the White House Chief of Staff, and the President's personal attorney all have somehow been involved in this, and now possibly also the top ranking republic on the house intelligence committee it is the the easier question to answer is who wasn't involved in

washington yeah when uh trump mega donor turned ambassador gordon sonlin testified that quote everyone was in the loop uh he wasn't kidding i mean we're not you know again we're not making this shit up gordon sonlin testified that all of these people, minus Nunes, although who knows what he knows, but certainly Pompeo, were in the loop. And, you know, and Fiona Hill basically the next day sort of backs up Sondland. And she's like, well, I hadn't realized it at the time. But, yes, there were some of us who were doing foreign policy and national security or thought we were doing that. But then there was another group of people who include apparently most people in the upper echelons of the government who were doing a domestic political errand, as she said, for Donald Trump. And it seems like Mike Pompeo was part of that. Meanwhile, we got Rudy Giuliani,

who's been out there on television saying that he has some kind of insurance policy, in his words, that will stop Trump from throwing him under the bus. On Saturday, he sought to clarify this on Twitter. Here's his tweet. All caps. Truth alert. That's how you know something good's coming. you know something good's coming uh the statement i've made several times of having an insurance policy if thrown under the bus is sarcastic and relates to the files in my safe about the biden family's four decade monetizing of his office if i disappear it will appear immediately along with Rico chart. What the fuck is he talking about?

Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, ran for president. This is what he has been reduced to. If I disappear, magical files will be released. But they're the files that Trump and Barr want to come out where they two actually exist. I know, I know.

He's going to end up in a black site on a barge off of Poland where people are demanding the RICO chart. Like it makes, I mean, it's so stupid and sad. And his, like, he, I mean, I don't know. It's sad. Sad's not the right word. It is, I mean, It is sort of infuriating that this person has apparently a large amount of influence in American politics.

A huge amount, and not apparently, based on the testimony of every Trump administration official who has gone before Congress. Rudy Giuliani was directing our fucking Ukraine policy. And here he is not making, making less sense than even Donald Trump in a tweet. I mean, this man is seriously unwell. Did you read, did you read Olivia Nuzzi's story this morning about what it's like to text with Giuliani? It is so, it is so funny. It apparently he,

in addition to butt dialing reporters and leaving crimes on voicemails, he also, he's very big into using the, you know, like the, the reactions on the iPhone, like the like, and the thumbs up, like the thumbs up and the exclamation point. And he will often like go back like 37 texts and like some of his own statements and he he sometimes will send to reporters just things that aren't for them at all like he sent one reporter a picture of him on a boat smoking a cigar or something like that and then he quoted some white house reporters saying the best time to get rudy is like eight or nine when he's quote a little loosened up but not yet unhinged oh my god

that's the sweet spot huh yeah just like a couple a couple of drinks in i mean we should note the the import of this is that rudy giuliani is currently under federal investigation um and there could be a situation where he is uh indicted or charged with something and then the question is what will he say about donald trump um you know do you think rudy goes down for trump i don't know why do you think why do you think trump and the republicans haven't thrown rudy under the bus i think i mean other than the insurance no i think i mean obviously the insurance policy he's talking about is fucking nonsense but i do think that um the reason that trump hasn't i mean trump is doing something very unusual which is he's not throwing rudy under the bus but he's also not talking about him anymore

or defending him and in that middle ground that what that tells me is trump knows full well that rudy knows everything um and and could be very damaging to him and doesn't want to piss him off, but also doesn't want to have a ton of association with him anymore because he is under federal investigation and could very well be in big trouble. That's my thought. What do you think? I think that is certainly part of it. Trump has been crime adjacent most of his adult life and has managed to stay out of prison. So he's more thoughtful about how not to go to jail than he is on almost any other issue. But I also think this is a little bit of the trap of the perfect call defense,

which is because Trump can never admit doing anything wrong, even slightly wrong, he's forced to stick by Rudy and Mulvaney, right? Two people who could easily throw under the bus and blame for this. And the most tip in any other normal, normal seems so fucking quaint, but any normal political situation, there would be a fall person, right? It would be, we would decide Republicans would go to Trump and they would say, the best way to protect you is to get rid of Rudy. Like someone has to take the fall because we need to be able to blame someone other than you. So we're going to blame Rudy for being overly enthusiastic in his service of you and crossing some lines. And we're going to blame Mulvaney for allowing the security to be held up in creating this problem.

And Mulvaney is going to go and we're going to shit on Rudy and he's going to be persona non grata for a while. But Trump can't allow that to happen because he can't admit that anything went wrong. And so he has put himself in this very strange position. Yeah, strange is one word for it. Let's talk about the evolving Republican response to impeachment, beginning with the target of the investigation, Donald Trump. On Friday, he wanted us all to know just how little he cares about impeachment by calling his spokespeople at Fox and Friends and ranting for 53 minutes straight, no commercials. Here is a clip. They have the server right from the DNC, Democratic National Committee.

Who has the server? The FBI went in and they told them, get out of here. You're not getting it. We're not giving it to you. They gave the server to CrowdStrike or whatever it's called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server. You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That's a big part of this whole thing.

Why did they give it to a Ukrainian part of this whole thing why did they give it to a ukrainian company are you sure they did that are you sure they gave it to ukraine well that's what the word is that's what i asked actually in my phone call if you know i mean i asked it very point blank because we're looking for corruption that's that's what the word is that's what the word is fucking nonsense nonsense what the word is. Fucking nonsense. Nonsense. Every word of that was complete nonsense. And you can tell because even Fox and Friends was he has stumped Steve Doocy. He has made Steve Doocy question him. I'm sure Trump's going to call on the Fox and Friends a thousand more times before the election, and I hope he does. But the next time I'm positive the producers of Fox and Friends will not just spend the whole time on a reaction shot as Doocy and Kilmeade and the other person. keep a straight face, but they can't because they know they're facilitating just absolute stupidity. I mean, it's like,

it's a truly mind boggling thing. It is worth noting that a server is not a thing. It is 2019 meet the cloud to, I mean, that is the craziest part of all of this. The man thinks we talked about this before, but it is not said nearly enough. It is not printed nearly enough in the stories about this before but it is not said nearly enough it is not printed nearly enough in

the stories about this the man thinks that a physical server is lost somewhere in ukraine and he doesn't realize that when the fbi checked this out they were checking fucking cloud compute the emails are in the cloud there is no physical server the president may be impeached over asking forcing extorting the ukrainian government to look into a conspiracy about a server that does not exist he is the president of the united states um also another important point crowd strike not a ukrainian company an american company based in sunnyville california uh guy that owns it, Russian born. Just nothing to do.

Nothing to do with the Ukrainians at all. No server, not in Ukraine, not owned by Ukrainians. FBI already checked it out. Check, check, check, check. Donald Trump still believes this. Republican members of Congress still believe this. Like fucking Devin Nunes, Senator John Kennedy, who started spouting this bullshit on TV. I mean, it's fun to mock this, but why is this CrowdStrike conspiracy like really problematic?

Well, I mean, other than the complete blithering idiocy of the president as a political party, as The New York Times reported over the weekend, this conspiracy theory is part of a Russian intelligence operation to try to avoid blame for the 2016 election interference. That's exactly what they're doing. And they just must wake up every day and be like, I cannot believe these people believe it. Like when they started this, like a lot of things, it's about just creating doubt on the fringes of the internet. And here you have the president of the United States calling into a national television program, just echoing it.

You have all of the Republicans in a nationally televised congressional hearing echoing it, even though all of the intelligence agencies of the government, of said president, run by appointees of said party, have said that it is not true, and they still do it. It is, I mean, it is mind, it is just mind-bogglingly stupid and dangerously so. Yeah, I mean, there's also an interesting line from the New York Times story, said, the Russian intelligence officers conveyed the information about this conspiracy to prominent Russians and Ukrainians who then used a range of intermediaries like oligarchs, businessmen and their associates to pass the material to American political figures and even some journalists who are likely unaware of its origin, the official said. journalists who are likely unaware of its origin, the official said. Interesting that the New York Times wrote about this since one of the journalists who did write about this conspiracy theory now works for the New York Times, Ken Vogel. At the time, he was at Politico and wrote the famous

Politico story about the Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, which has since been debunked, but has been read by just about every Republican defender of Donald Trump during this impeachment process. So I thought that was interesting. Well, John, as you know, Ken Vogel can do no wrong because Ken Vogel told us that. I mean, props to the New York Times for even in a very oblique way, admitting that one of the people who currently works for their news organization got snowed by a Russian intelligence operation. I mean, this is what the sad part here and the scary part is, this is what the Russians, as you said, this is what the Russians could only dream about,

right? That this Ukrainian conspiracy theory, all they want, they don't expect that everyone in the United States will suddenly believe this. They want to just sow just enough doubt and make this a partisan divisive issue so that eventually Democrats and, you know, the intelligence community and the media and everyone else believe the truth, which is the Russians were involved in the election. But one major political party and an entire conservative media infrastructure and the president of the United States all believe now something different, or at the very least, they think that the Ukrainians were involved in addition to the Russians. You have some Republicans saying that, well, I believe that the Russians were part of this, but maybe the Ukrainians were part of this too. Who knows?

All a Russian intelligence operation. That's what they're all falling for right now. I mean, there's a term to describe this, which is called useful idiots, which is how you describe people who become part of an intelligence operation without knowing they are a part of it. And that is the entire Republican Party right now. They are, I mean, like this is not to delve into like, you know, sort of Russia conspiracy things. This is a very simple fact that this is,

that the Republicans are saying something that is known not to be true and it is the thing the Russians want them to be saying. That's right. That's exactly right. So in addition to just defending Donald Trump, Republicans have also started to launch a counterattack over the last several days. On that Fox and Friends call, Trump got very excited about an FBI inspector general report he said will be historic when it's released in early December. The inspector general at the FBI, who is independent, was looking into whether law enforcement officials abused their power when they asked courts to allow

surveillance of Trump campaign official Carter Page. According to the Washington Post, the report will say that the FBI did not abuse its power, that the surveillance was warranted, but that a low-level FBI employee who no longer works there may have altered an email that was part of the surveillance application. Now, the Post story says even without that altered email, the surveillance should have been approved anyway. And so it didn't, it shouldn't have substantively changed the decision by the courts. But, you know, how big of a deal will the Republicans make of this? They will make a huge deal. And I suspect that not all, but a decent portion of the media will

follow along because this just now automatically lends itself to a he said he said story right every like both sides quote unquote like you want to do both sides journalism it's very easy here because it's like the fundamental fact is everything the republicans have been saying is wrong there was no quote-unquote coup There was no attempt to overthrow a presidency. There was no criminality involved. There was no conspiracy. There was nothing. There was a counterintelligence operation that was signed off on by federal judges because of a there was probable cause to do that. and then there was a low-level bureaucrat who altered an email and those two things we treated as of equal import and that is unfortunate and alarming when they shouldn't because if if the reports about the report are true um the report will actually blow a hole through multiple conspiracy theories that republicans have been pushing for quite a while now. They keep saying that like, oh, you know, the Democrats funded this dirty dossier from Christopher Steele. And that's why there was an investigation into the into Donald Trump and his

campaign. And, you know, The Washington Post says this report will say, no, absolutely not. This investigation was not started because of the dossier. These application for surveillance did not get approved because of any information in the dossier. And that while the dossier. These application for surveillance did not get approved because of any information in the dossier. And that while the dossier existed and maybe some of the information in the dossier wasn't correct, none of the investigation

into Donald Trump's campaign happened because of Christopher Steele or this fucking dossier. And that is basically the foundation of the Republican conspiracy that the Russia investigation was a hoax. That was the foundation of the Republican conspiracy that the Russia investigation was a hoax. That was the foundation of that. And this report could completely blow a hole in that. Well, it's like the original, I think the Post broke this story, I believe, on Friday, or time has basically been a flat circle since we started group threading at the crack ass of dawn but i think it was friday um the uh and the story led with the

fbi attorney if i remember this correctly uh with the fbi attorney altering the document and i get like i sort of understand from a journalistic perspective why that's the case because that like a fbi employee doing something wrong and getting fired for it is quote unquote news. But the context of this is so important because the actual news is the primary talking point of the president of the Republican party over three years has been undermined by the inspector general appointed by his attorney general. Right? Like that should be the end of that.

But because like, like new, like context is often more important than what is quote unquote new. But because what was new here is going to sort of muddy up the very important context that this report provides. Yeah, I mean, that's and which is what they do for everything. I mean, there's like I think there's Trump is on record saying this. This inspector general is everyone should respect his work. He does amazing work. Well, if he blows a hole in the conspiracy theory, I don't know if he'll be saying that. Although, like you said, he'll cherry pick whatever he wants and just lie about it because that's what they do now. Well, I mean, it's like Kevin McCarthy, who on the day after Sondland testified in front of the nation that there was a quid pro quo,

Kevin McCarthy went out and said, I enjoyed the testimony. There was no quid pro quo. It's like, if you can, like, I hate the term gaslighting, but that's what's happening here. Yeah. I mean, they're not even, they're not even trying anymore to come up with lies that are believable in any way. That's, that's, that's where we're at. Can I, can I ask you another question here? Just as we talk about Nunes and Pompeo? Have you noticed that the people... There was an element of being in public life where if someone had allegations about you or your office or your boss, you had to respond to questions about it in some way, shape, or form. And the Republicans now just don't respond. Like there is no comment from Nunes' staff about this.

Like a reporter would call and say, is this true, yes or no? And you would have to say something, right? And in that answer, you could define, the reader and the reporter could sort of divine where it's going, right? Did they confirm or deny it? Did they outright deny it? Did they try to provide could sort of divine where it's going right did they confirm or deny it did they outright deny it did they try to provide some sort of context or like but now and this has been

i think really something that's changed since trump's come on the scene is the republicans just don't respond to the reporters they don't want to respond to and so because they have they have decided to delegitimize the non-partisan media and the only legitimate media is Fox and other right wing outlets. And so because they've delegitimized the rest of the media and said that it's biased and fake and out to get them, just like Trump has said for the last couple of years, they don't believe they have any kind of obligation to answer reporters questions and in the rare moments that they are on television answering questions from nonpartisan media like you know i don't usually watch the sunday shows but i have for the last couple weeks just to keep up with an impeachment and mostly they can just run circles around the hosts you know even when the hosts are trying their best like i on face the Nation this Sunday, Kellyanne Conway gets on there with Margaret Brennan and just lies for 10 minutes

straight. Nothing that she says resembles the truth at all. And because Brennan's trying to get through all of her questions, you know, she doesn't stop and correct everything. And so these people figure, well, I got five minutes on television. They're going to have to cut away after that so I can just keep lying and lying and lying and lying. And then that's it. And then I'm done. And then there's no consequence for that. Yeah, that's right. I mean, obviously, some like Jake Tapper do pretty well in those scenarios, but it is also the hosts are in an impossible position because what do you do, right? I mean, you have to be willing to get into a very uncomfortable exchange that Republicans will then use to point out that you're some kind of a partisan hack, right? Or you have to decide, I'm going to ask this person about one thing, and when they lie, I'm going to just keep going and going and going on that one topic and that one lie and try to call them out for that and get rid of the rest of the questions that I was going to ask.

I mean, so you have to make that decision and I almost think that would be more useful, but I think maybe the most useful thing would be to not book congenital liars on your shows anymore. Yeah. I just think the opting out of mainstream media as a political strategy is not something that's being talked about enough. And I know it doesn't feel like,

I mean, maybe these are conversations are happening among reporters, but it's not showing up. Like it's just treated as if they weren't there to take the call as opposed to a deliberate strategy not to answer any of the questions over a three year period. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty bad. Well, they know. Look, they know that the public believes that the media is incredibly biased, that distrust of the media is at an all time high. So they don't think that there is any downside to doing this. It's just like the White House deciding to cancel the briefing.

We have a press secretary who's never done a White House briefing right now because there's no punishment for it. It's bad. It's not great, Dan. I know. It's bad. It's not great, Dan. I know it's not. The second part of the Republican counterattack on impeachment is being led by Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, who announced on Thursday that he'd be launching an investigation of his own into the Biden family. And to give you more context around Lindsey Graham's history with Joe Biden, here's a clip from an interview he did with Scott Conroy during his presidential campaign in 2016.

If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, then it's probably you got a problem. You need to do some self-evaluation. Because what's not to like? I called him after Bo died. And he basically said, well, Bo was my soul. We've talked for a long time. He came to my ceremony and said some of the most incredibly heartfelt things that anybody could ever say to me. And he's the nicest person I think I've ever met in politics.

He is as good a man as God ever created. I mean, what does this say about Lindsey Graham? I mean, that he's just a horrendous human being yeah it's like how can one person be part say those things with what was seemingly true emotion a few years ago and be acting this way in this moment i and yeah i just want everyone to understand it is not as if Lindsey Graham had this relationship with Joe Biden and suddenly Joe Biden. There's a possibility that he was engaged in some kind of wrongdoing and his family as well. And you think, well, I have a good personal relationship with him, but this thing came up and I have to do my job as a public official. And this sucks, but that's the way

it is that's not what we're dealing with here what Joe Biden is being accused of which is pressuring for the firing of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor and this is part of the problems with how the press has handled this because they keep saying there's no evidence for this there's no evidence it's not that there's no evidence for this it's that like from barack obama down through his entire administration through the global community everyone's through every trump administration official who has testified before congress to a person every single one of them has said that not only did joe biden do nothing wrong joe biden did the right thing the right thing by pressuring for the firing of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor. He was correct. The guy was corrupt. That's why the Obama

administration wanted him fired. That's why three Republican senators in 2016 signed a letter in favor of what Joe Biden was doing in Ukraine, Republicans. And when he did it, it was public. Everyone knew at the time, every Republican in Congress knew that Joe Biden had put pressure to fire that prosecutor, Shokin. Everyone knew it was happening. And at the time, everyone knew that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. It was public information. And no one said a fucking word until Rudy and Trump tried to go dig up this dirt in Ukraine and force an investigation into Biden. Everyone knew he did the right thing. And Lindsey Graham knew it too. And with that

knowledge that this is all bullshit, Lindsey Graham is now opening investigation into the Biden family, his good family friends to tarnish him. That's what's happening. I mean, like the entire Biden conspiracy theory reminds me a lot of the Obama birther conspiracy because it is something that starts on the far ridges of the internet, gets picked up by Trump and the Republican Party. And sort of the strictures of journalism may allow it to fester a bit because you're right. It is good for the reporters for saying there is no evidence to support it every time it comes up. And they've, and you know, the nonpartisan media has done a very good job of that, but you're right. It is not only is there no evidence supported, all of the evidence proves it false. It's sort of the same thing with, you know,

Donald Trump or Rush Limbaugh or Jerome Corsi or some other Yahoo says Barack Obama was born in Kenya. And you say, well, there's no evidence to support that. Well, no, actually, there's a giant piece of evidence, including his fucking birth certificate, that says he was born in Hawaii. And so you actually like it. And they do think it's important to go one step further because no evidence suggests. Well, they haven't proven it yet. Right. As opposed to the fact that all of the evidence to we accumulated, which is quite substantial, proves the opposite.

Well, and part of this is conflated with a bunch of people in the media and on the left saying, well, you know, it certainly was shady for Hunter Biden to get this position on a board for doing nothing and getting paid all this money. And it's like that fine. That has absolutely nothing to do with the allegations here, which is that, yes, Hunter Biden was on the board, but then Joe Biden took an action that somehow decreased the chances that the company that his son sat on would be investigated. When in fact, all of the evidence suggests that when that prosecutor was fired, it increased the chances that Burisma would be investigated, increased the chances. And I don't you know, I don't I don't know if if everyone has made this point enough. I don't know if the Biden campaign has made it enough, though. I see they're on Twitter all the time talking about it. I've seen Joe Biden say we did nothing wrong. I don't think it can. I don't think it's possible for it to be made too many times because it continues to get lost in all of this. access that he was theoretically being paid for gave him anything. And the evidence is very strongly it did not, since his father made a very public push that put the company on whose board

his son sat in greater legal jeopardy. And in case you didn't get that this was all a big game that Lindsey Graham is playing, here's his response today when he was confronted with, well, you've said all these wonderful things about Joe Biden in the past. What are you doing? And he said, quote, I like Joe Biden. All I can say is that Joe didn't pull any punches when he ran against McCain. That's the way the system works. We're not going to live in a country where just one party gets investigated. Well, I just thought was a stunning statement that has not gotten enough attention today that Lindsey Graham basically just admitted, oh, yeah, this is this is politics. We're just doing this to try to smear Joe Biden as he tries to run for president because, look,

it was a tough campaign in 08 to against John McCain. And so, you know, if you use the power of the federal government to smear a political opponent, that's just the way things work. That's basically what Lindsey Graham has admitted. And yes, there were arguments, disputes, negative ads on both sides in the Obama-Biden-McCain-Palin campaign. Yes. There was no criminal conspiracy. There was no use of taxpayer dollars to smear anyone. In fact, when a question was raised by some about whether John McCain was eligible for the presidency because he was born in Panama, not on the actual U.S. soil, the President Obama and Joe Biden supported the notion that he was eligible for the presidency and helped pass a bill to ensure that to be the case.

Yeah. Right. So let's not pretend. Let's not have, like, it wasn't all hope and change in 2008. There were fights, but let's not pretend these are two of the same things because they are fucking not. Well, again, and this is what the Republicans are counting on, is that voters believe and people believe that politics is rough and tumble. And unfortunately, a lot of people believe politics is corrupt anyway, and they think it's all a game where everyone tries to smear each other. And they're hoping that they conflate traditional rules of engagement where you run negative ads and say all kinds of bad things, which happens in campaigns all the time. And people can complain about whether it's bad or not. They're trying to conflate that with using the power of the federal government, using the powers of your official office to get personal favors and to do political bidding as opposed to

the public interest, which is what's at core of this entire impeachment inquiry right now. And what's scary about what Lindsey Graham is doing is it's not just donald trump anymore it's not just donald trump anymore now it's lindsey graham it's devin nunes i mean we are having this whole fucking discussion in the media about well can democrats convince any republicans to vote with them on impeaching donald trump how do we convince the republicans we can't convince the fucking Republicans because some of them are in on the conspiracy. What are you talking about? Oh, we're going to convince them to vote.

They're fucking accomplices right now. They're co-conspirators. We're not going to convince them of anything. Well, it's very important. We did convince one of them and they kicked him out of the party. It's an unanswerable question of anytime time anyone agrees with the Democrats on impeachment, they have to leave the Republican Party.

Impeachment is bipartisan. There is bipartisan support for impeachment. There is bipartisanship in Congress because of Justin Amash. There is bipartisanship in the country between a whole host of former Republican elected officials and never Trumper types. There is bipartisan support for impeachment in Kellyanne Conway's own household. I was just reading a great piece in the New Yorker right before we started recording this. Bill Weld, former Republican governor of Massachusetts, also former Watergate lawyer

running against Trump now for the Republican nomination. And he's like, I literally couldn't conceive of a case that is more impeachable than this one. Having gone through Watergate and having been a Republican most of his life, he thinks I cannot conceive of one. There are plenty of conservatives, plenty of Republicans who believe that what Donald Trump did is impeachable. You don't have that on the other side. Just to be very clear, in the 2020 Republican presidential primary, half the candidates believe Trump should be impeached. The other half is Trump. I mean, now we should ask, you know, is there risk for Biden in all of this? Because now we're talking not just about what Graham's going to do in the Senate, but what's going to happen in the Senate during a potential impeachment trial itself.

And you can tell that one of the strategies that Trump and his Republican defenders are going to use is we're going to put Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on trial as opposed to Donald Trump. So, you know, is there a risk and what can Biden do about it? I, you know, when this whole process started, I thought I was pretty worried. If I had been on the Biden campaign, I would have been quite worried about how this, you know, whether this would damage Biden's candidacy, whether it would affect, you know, the perception of electability, of Biden's electability among Democratic primary voters. We've been talking about this nonstop for two months now, and there's no suggestion that that has had any impact on the Democratic primary. So as the nominee, worry about everything. There

is risk when you get out of bed in the morning, but it seems like Democratic primary voters, at least, they may choose not to vote for Biden for other reasons, but there's nothing that I've seen yet that suggests that Biden's being dragged into this impeachment issue has affected him or will affect him going forward in the primary. There was an open question about what impact it'll have among some number of general election voters, independents, Republican, you know, Republicans who could potentially vote for a Democratic nominee, you know, what impact it'll have with them.

And I think, you know, time will tell on that, but I think there should be real concern there because this is basically rerunning the 2016 play of trying to make everyone seem at least almost as bad as Trump. Yeah, I worry about it a lot for that reason. I mean, and the other reason I worry about it is I think that these things end up being cumulative over time, and you might not know right away. But over time, you start seeing your favorability ratings decline gradually and suddenly... Now, seeing your favorability ratings decline gradually and suddenly, you know, now look, Hillary Clinton at this stage in the race was more unpopular and had lower favorability ratings than any of our,

any of the Democratic candidates do right now. So they had already done a number on her at this point. But that doesn't mean that the more, I mean, anyone who watches Fox News, anyone who gets their information from the conservative ecosystem is going to hear that Biden is not just a bad Democratic candidate, but this, you know, corrupt politician who probably did some crimes, right? Like that, they're going to hear that over and over and over again. And that so that's the whole Republican base, not like Biden was going to get a bunch of Republican votes anyway. But, you know, in a close election, everything matters. And I think if I was the Biden campaign I would sort of mount an aggressive paid media campaign at some point that at least defends him against

some of this stuff but I don't know they also don't have that much money and they're running in a primary so it's kind of hard to do now yeah they're definitely going to need to be some paid media pushback on this. And also it like, there is an opera, like there is both risk and opportunity here for his candidacy because he, he has bet on electability and the great, like one of the great pieces of evidence that he could theoretically be the most elected was the fact that the entire Trump administration was so scared

of running against them that they engaged in a worldwide criminal conspiracy to stop him from being the nominee. Yeah. Yeah, that's rare. So this brings us to what the Democrats in Congress should do next. While Schiff has not ruled out the possibility of more hearings, his intelligence committee is currently writing up a report that it will send to the House Judiciary Committee, which will then decide whether or not to draft articles of impeachment against the president. So that's what's happening right now. How concerned are you about the fact that we still have not gotten testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney, maybe even Parnas, if federal prosecutors are holding on to some of his evidence for trial? Obviously, the House Committee has some video,

photographic, audio evidence, whatever it may be. But even with Parnas, there might be a little delay here. What do you think about all this? I have been an advocate for a while now of the most fulsome impeachment hearings possible with as many witnesses as possible, touching on as many different elements of Trump's corruption and criminality as possible. But I'm starting to change my opinion on that given how open and shut this case is and how everything has gone the right

way for Democrats. Every witness was, even the ones the Republicans called were devastating to Trump's case. The crime is proven a hundred ways from Sunday. Yeah. And I just start to wonder whether there are diminishing returns. If you told me you could get Mulvaney and Bolton in here the weekend after Thanksgiving, yes, definitely do that. If you could get Giuliani in here the weekend after Thanksgiving, even for a deposition, if not actual testimony in public, definitely do that. If you're going to be involved in a Supreme Court case for six months to get you an answer to that question, I just don't know that you'll be able to hold the nation's attention long enough to receive the sort of political communications

payoff of the actual impeachment vote itself. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, and we've all had this debate with Brian Boitler, who believes something different and believes that they should. And look, what Brian would say is, I don't think you should wait six months for a court case, but I think you should at least try

and set a deadline for yourself that if the courts don't decide by a certain date, then you just say, OK, we're going to go with what we have. And I get that. And I don't think there's harm in, you know, trying to subpoena Bolton. They already have a subpoena out to Mulvaney, who just, you know, basically has defied it. I don't think there's harm. But I also think if the Democrats set up the idea that they need these witnesses to complete their case, then if they don't get them, which is very possible, suddenly it seems like, oh, well, Democrats don't have it. And like you said, this is an open and shut case. We have it. We have the evidence. And I don't have it. And like you said, this is an open and shut case. We have it. We have the evidence.

And I don't know. Now, I do think it's important because a lot of Republicans are saying, you know, it's like the Will Hurd defense. Well, he did something I disagree with on foreign policy, but it's certainly not impeachable. And the way you counter that part, one way you counter that is say, well, this is part of a pattern. And look at all the other things he's done, right? I mean, and this goes to a question of not just more witnesses, but do you bring in other impeachable offenses? It's part of a pattern. The guy consistently is corrupt. He consistently tries to get personal favors using the powers of the presidency instead of using them for the public good over and over and over again. And you can list a whole bunch of episodes of this.

So I do think the pattern of behavior is important, but this also assumes that we're trying to prove this. Like you'd prove it in court to a jury of Donald Trump's peers. And instead you have a fucking jury of loyalists, Trump loyalists, you know? And so like, if Republicans aren't going to believe the evidence that, you know, Democrats have already laid out, if they're not going to believe the testimony of Trump administration officials themselves, they're not going to believe anything.

They're not going to believe a audio recording where Donald Trump says, hey, I'm going to go bribe the Ukrainians to make sure we smear Joe Biden. They'd make up excuses for that. So what are we doing? What would a jury of Donald Trump's peers peers be like who would those people be hulk hogan i just don't know it's like his fucking cabinet i guess yeah um and look like there are you know we are in the situation where he is committing he is abusing his power more and more all the time we haven't even talked about. And I know Tommy's going to talk about it more on Posse of the World this week. The fact that, you know, Trump has basically basically ordered the defense secretary to allow a Navy SEAL who was accused and then convicted of at least one war crime to keep his status interfered in military justice.

crime to keep his status, interfered in military justice. And basically the Secretary of the Navy has been fired now because he wanted to run his own military justice to instill discipline in the ranks and make sure that someone who was guilty of taking a photo posing next to a dead body, of taking a photo posing next to a dead body. A SEAL wanted to make sure that this guy faced zero punishment whatsoever, even though his fellow SEALs turned him in. His fellow SEALs turned him in. And now we have the president deciding, you know what? If you are in the military and you commit a war crime, you can get off scot-free as long as you're loyal to me,

as long as you go on right-wing radio and start saying that Donald Trump is great and the Democrats are criminals and all this kind of stuff. If you're a Trump guy, if you're loyal to me, you in the military can do anything and get away with it. That's where we are right now. It's actually even worse than that because this isn't some, it's not even like a perverted principle of Trump's. He is responding to the pleas and requests of Pete Hegseth

who is a Fox personality who is essentially Steve Doocy's understudy. This is his cause celeb is the host of Trump is doing a favor for the host of Fox and Friends weekend. It's it is horrible. It is horrible. Last question on all this. So we are heading towards the Judiciary Committee will receive a report from Schiff. They'll drop articles of impeachment. You know, this vote will

go to the whole House. The House will vote on impeachment. If the House, in fact, impeaches Donald Trump, it will go to the Senate. There will be a trial. John Roberts will preside over the trial. Various House members, Democratic House members will present the case. They will be the prosecutors. And then Trump will have his defense. How are you feeling about the prospective trial? Like what should Democrats be doing differently, if anything differently? What kind of how should their messaging evolve in this? You know, I have this sense just sort of reading the coverage this weekend and seeing where the Republicans are going, that they're headed towards. sort of reading the coverage this weekend and seeing where the Republicans are going,

that they're headed towards, look, not only is Donald Trump innocent, but look at all these polls. You know, Democrats, public opinion really hasn't moved that much. No one really cares. The Democrats have failed. No Republicans have decided in Congress to join them. And so what are we really doing? This is actually going to be a big victory for Donald Trump because the Democrats have failed at moving public opinion. How should Democrats handle this? Well, I mean, that's been the concern from the beginning. It's one of the things that gave, I think, both of us pause about pursuing impeachment in the immediate aftermath of the Mueller report is that the overwhelmingly most likely scenario is that the Senate on a party line basis will acquit Trump. And there's an open question about how the media will handle that. How will that be? You know, is that a victory for Trump? I mean, yes, in the sense that he's not

being dragged out of office. It's a victory, but is it really? And so there is real concern there. I think the thing for Democrats is to continue to frame throughout the whole process the larger, more important question. Is it okay for a president to use the power of their office and taxpayer-funded security assistance to try to rig an American election? If you think that is okay,

vote to acquit. If you do not, then Donald Trump should be removed from office. You have to frame the question. And much like Schiff and all the Democrats in the House did a great job is don't get pulled down into the bullshit. The Republican senators, they're not going to be as absurd on a whole as Jim Jordan and Nunes and a bunch of these other yahoos who are on the Intelligence Committee. But there are going to be people who are going to be performative assholes like Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley or a whole bunch of other people are looking to shine their star in Trump's Republican Party. And you can't get dragged into that. you can't get dragged into that. The second thing is use this as an opportunity to put tremendous pressure on Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Martha McSally, and the rest of the Republicans who are running in blue and purple states in 2020. If they are going to end

up doing what is best, if they're going to put their party over the country, make them pay a political price for it in the moment and every day between now until the election yeah look i public opinion polls already show that about half the country believes the president should be impeached and removed from office that is extraordinarily significant on its own that is a higher public approval for impeachment than in any president in the past, except Nixon right before he resigned. That's where we are already. And now we are in an extremely polarized environment where I would be shocked if any Republican who gets their information from the conservative ecosystem, media ecosystem, believes that Donald Trump should be impeached. I would be shocked by that because that's not the information they're getting all the time. So I don't think we should expect public opinion to move all that much. It's the most polarized in history. But I do think this has always been about some of these Republican

senators who are vulnerable in some of these swing states. And we need to make very clear that a vote to acquit Donald Trump is a vote to greenlight foreign interference in the 2020 election and is a vote to greenlight the idea that the president can use the power of his office to destroy anyone who challenges his power. That's what this is about. And I do think that the Democrats should make those points over and over again. It's about rigging an election and it's about the president using the power of his office to destroy anyone who challenges him. That's what he's doing right now.

And if he gets away with this, if they think that's okay, then what we're saying in this country is when you get into office and you have some power and you have some control and influence over federal dollars, federal agencies, people who are working for the government, law enforcement, the CIA, anything, you can use that to destroy the career of anyone who challenges you, even if it's a conspiracy. And we're saying that's okay in America now. And you know what? If the Republicans say that's okay, then I'm not going to regret conducting this impeachment trial for a second. I will not regret it for a second. I don't even care if it's that unpopular right now. This is about the sanctity of our elections and our

democracy, and there is nothing more important than that. That was great. You should be a senator. It's just, you know, over the weekend, I was just like reading all this stuff, and it's like, it is pretty depressing and a little bit scary that we are sort of careening towards election, as if it wasn't already the most important election ever, even more critical. Because if this man who we know committed these crimes is exonerated and then wins, and David Plouffe has been saying this, imagine what he will do when he never has to face voters again in a second term he has four years never having to face accountability or voters again it's pretty scary and it should scare everyone into you know getting off their asses and working their their hearts out for whoever

we nominate as the democratic nominee um all right let's talk about 2020 speaking of that over the weekend new york city mayor michael bloomberg officially announced his candidacy for president with a video and a very expensive ad campaign just this week he's spending over 30 million dollars in 100 media markets across two dozen mostly super tuesday states to put this in context uh the current biggest spender in the democratic primary billionaire tom Tom Steyer, is spending $1.2 million on television ads, and every other candidate is spending half a million or less. That's half a million versus $30 million in a week. In his announcement, Bloomberg argues he's the right person to take on Trump, and I believe we have a quick clip from his announcement ad. There's an America waiting to be rebuilt, where everyone without health insurance is guaranteed to get it, and everyone who likes

theirs can go ahead and keep it. Where the wealthy will pay more in taxes, and the struggling middle class will get their fair share. And jobs that just allow you to get by will become jobs that let you get ahead. Mike Bloomberg for president, jobs creator, leader, problem solver. It's going to take all three to build back a country. Dan, what do you think about the video? I thought the video was good in the sense that it takes his biography and distills it in a pretty authentic way to a set of issues that would be of most interest to a Democratic primary electorate, which is not an easy feat considering he was a Republican like three years ago. He was the Republican. I guess it was actually longer than that. I think he switched in his last term

from Republican to independent at some point. But he was the Republican mayor of New York City, Republican independent at some point, but he was the Republican mayor of New York City, billionaire owner of a media company, and is now running the Democratic primary. And so that's a marketing challenge, to say the least. Yeah. And look, you can tell who their audience is for this ad. It is not Democratic primary activists. It is not progressives it is people who are moderate and progressive leaning who think yeah i you know i've heard of bloomberg i think he was i heard he was a successful mayor rich guy owns a business and uh oh look i guess he did stuff on climate which he did on gun control which he did um and i like that and you know he's rich but he says in this ad he's going to raise taxes and uh you know, he's going to give an option.

You know, he took an indirect swipe at Medicare for all, but said, you know, he's for a public option in the video. And so that's the kind of audience and these people are probably less engaged in politics. The question is, how many of them are there, right? Like, and the other big bet he's making here as part of a strategy is, again, these ads are running in Super Tuesday states. He's skipping the first four primary states. He's skipping the debates because he's not taking contributions.

And to get into the debates, you have to have a certain number of donors. So because he's not doing that, he's going to skip the debates. And he's betting, will these very sleek, well-produced ads be enough for all these people in Super Tuesday states to suddenly say, yeah, I like this guy and I'm going to take a chance on them, even if I don't really know him that much and I haven't seen him in the debates?

I think it is a long shot for Bloomberg for the reasons we suggested. He's getting in it late. shot for Bloomberg for the reasons we suggested. He's getting in it late. He is a former Republican who has some real challenges with the African-American community based on the law enforcement policies that were in place when he was the mayor of New York, like real challenges. But if there were a path, this is the path. It is don't get sucked in in the early states. Wait it out. Let it sort itself out. And if for some reason Biden were to falter in those early states and maybe only Sanders and Warren make it out and you've set yourself up for the potential to be the moderate alternative. I don't want to not electable, the moderate alternative to this other group and to sort of bring in what remained of the Biden coalition or what remained of the Buttigieg coalition. And the, and the thing is,

this is a path only available to a billionaire. I guess his advertising campaign is what, like 30, $34 million, which I think is like someone told, I saw something that was like the equivalent of writing a $300 check for the average American. And to give you a sense of – this is a sense of scale. This is from Shane Goldmacher, a New York Times reporter, that if you watched the 5 p.m. newscast all week on NBC in your hometown of Los Angeles, you would see 20, 60 second Bloomberg ad. That is an ungodly sum of money. He is running more ads in each of these markets all around

the country than I think almost any Democrat is running in the Des Moines market in the most important state in the, or at least the first state in the Democratic primary process. It is an ungodly sum of money. Will it work? Open question. I mean, it's a long road. That's the big question is, does this work? I mean, we have seen that Tom Steyer's significant ad spend did get him onto the debate stage. It did get him past the threshold in polling. And suddenly you saw him pop up in a couple of polls in early states at like three, four, five, six percent higher when he started than he is now. And the thing that Michael Bloomberg has going for him over Tom Steyer is he's much richer. He's a much richer billionaire than Tom Steyer. And he's got higher

name ID than Tom Steyer. But the thing I'd say about all of this though is Bloomberg does not, he is surrounded by some really smart, very data-oriented political operatives. Like, they definitely see a path. I think they are probably clear-eyed about the narrowness of that path, but they see one, and they wouldn't have done this without believing that there was an investment, that investment here could pay off like that. Like this is not a, like I'm not saying Bloomberg does not have a large ego. Everyone in politics, particularly billionaires in politics have a large ego,

but he, he has walked away from the possibility of running many times before because he didn't think he could win. And he made a different decision this time. And that suggests that something in their data shows a path, and we should at least think about that. I think the New York-based media complex tends to overrate his chances,

but we shouldn't underrate them either. Yeah, and look, you can buy ads, but you can't buy enthusiasm, and that's basically their bet right now that that you don't really need a lot of enthusiasm or grassroots support to win the nomination in the presidency. And that you can just sort of message to the moderate part of the electorate and then maybe the more disengaged part of the electorate. And that's going to be enough. And, you know, I don't it's quite a bet to make because I don't think clearly enthusiasm alone is not enough to make you president United States. But if you look at the people who have won the nomination, the presidency, all of them have some sort of fan base. And we have yet to see the Bloomberg fan base materialize. But perhaps we will.

How do you think his candidacy could change the race for any other candidate? I mean, I think that's really, I've been trying to think about this in the context of, you know, just all the, you know, all the candidates fighting for, you know, some lane to get to 15% enough for delegates or whatever. And I think the real thing is, is we do not know the answer to that until after probably South Carolina. It's just, it's a wholly different thing based on which candidates are out there. I think the most likely scenario is it affects no one, right? He spends all this money, stays in the low single digits. that support is dispersed among two or three candidates.

But if it's, let's say it's a two-person race coming out of the early states between Biden and Warren or Biden and Sanders, whatever else, and then Bloomberg's getting 4%, that 4% could be decisive because that's probably mostly coming from Biden. If it's three candidates less so, it's really, we really need to know who makes it out of the early states with any chance of accumulating delegates going forward to know whether Bloomberg gets there. But it's like the path you have to see to really be specific on this.

Bloomberg's got to go from where he is now to above 15% almost everywhere. And that's hard. That's a hard thing to do, even with all those millions and billions. I think right now he's serving as a arguably effective punching bag for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, because he's making their case for them that billionaires shouldn't buy democracy. And so they're out there whacking him. And I'm sure that's helping them. I'm sure he may be making a Mayor Pete I'm sure, you know, he may be making

a Mayor Pete and Joe Biden a little bit nervous since he's, you know, trying to get into their lane or an Amy Klobuchar. But like you said, I think I think you're right. Like, let's let's give the ad campaign a couple of weeks and let's see what happens in these early primaries, because it's really just hard to predict this stuff now, which is why we don't do it. OK, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Acronym's Tara McGowan. I'm now joined by the founder and CEO of Acronym, a leading progressive digital strategy nonprofit, Tara McGowan. Tara, welcome back to Pod Save America. Hi, Dan. Thanks for having me back.

Of course. Since you were last on the show in the spring, Acronym has announced a $75 million digital campaign on behalf of the Democrats. What can you tell us about why you launched that and give us an update on your progress? Yeah, absolutely. So the program that we launched out of Acronym and our affiliated PAC called Pacronym is called Four is Enough. And David Plouffe, who I know you know very, very well, joined me in enrolling this campaign out and co-chairing it with me. And, you know, you and everybody else at Pod Save America have been, you know, sounding this alarm, as have we at Acronym for a while, about really the unprecedented spending the Trump campaign has been doing online. As of right now, the Trump campaign has spent over $28 million on Facebook and Google alone. And they really are running a general election campaign. And we've never seen spending like this this early or in the ways that they're doing it. So after sounding the alarm for a really

long time, we really felt that it wasn't enough to just kind of be raising the alarm bells and talking about Trump spending, but to really make sure that we also on the left were driving information, facts and narratives to voters in the battleground states every single day where they're getting their information online. So, you know, one thing that I think can get easily misconstrued is that I really don't think that it's about matching Trump dollar for dollar the way that traditional political consultants think about kind of television spending or points in a competitive way. We really believe that even if Trump wasn't spending any money online, because of the way the information ecosystem exists today,

and where people get their information online, we should be doing this anyway. We should be reminding voters of the stakes of the election and getting them the information about the corruption in this administration every single day. And so, you know, our alarm is heightened by what Trump's campaign is doing and able to do while we're in a competitive primary. But honestly, this is something we should be doing anyway. Can you expand on that a little more when you talk about the way the information ecosystem is today? What do you mean? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for decades and decades, there were very few trusted channels where people went to get their news and information, mainly television, radio

and newspapers. And now we live in a digital age where media and news and information is distributed across so many more channels. And increasingly, people of all ages and backgrounds are getting their information online and on their mobile phones and on social media. And it's become a lot more of a passive experience where you're, you know, you're scrolling through your news feeds or your Instagram feeds or Twitter. And you're really taking in what's given to you on these platforms from your friends and people you trust or influencers. And you're not kind of going to specific websites or newspapers to get that information. And so the way that platforms like Google and Facebook have changed the media environment in a lot of really disruptive ways, right?

We're seeing a lot of traditional media companies and publications not be able to keep up or make the revenue they need to stay in business. These platforms have monetized our attention, right? so much time on them that you actually really have to spend money to get your message across, even to people who like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter. And so Trump and his campaign really understand that. And so they not only have the bully pulpit and drive a narrative that gets picked up by the press, but they also pour gas on the flames of their lies and misinformation by putting money behind those ads and behind that content on social media platforms. And for a really long time, we haven't been doing the same thing on our side. We've kind of continued to rely on the traditional media and earned media to drive information and make sure that folks are getting

reached with that information. And that's just not the case. We have to be a lot more deliberate because of the way social media has changed the way we consume information. Let's say hypothetically, the Trump campaign was spending no money. And you guys or other Democratic or progressive entities were not spending money on the sort of digital campaign you're talking about, would the information ecosystem as it exists benefit one side or the other? Absolutely. So if we weren't spending any money at all, if neither side were spending any money, frankly, at all on social media platforms, people would still be getting their news and information there. And so the information that they would be getting would be coming from publishers and incumbent politicians and candidates who have large bases of support

or followers on those platforms. So Trump has obviously invested heavily in Facebook since 2015, his campaign, and of course, being in the White House and having the bully pulpit, he has an enormous audience and reach, as do publishers like Fox News and Breitbart that amplify his message. So even if we weren't spending any money at all, and they weren't spending any money at all, they would still be able to reach a lot of people. And they wouldn't be able to target people who don't like their pages, but because they have these built up audiences, when they post something and their audience sees it

and engages with it or shares it, then it expands that reach. And so putting money behind content on social media platforms allows you to target it and ensures you break through because that's how the platforms work right now. But if you didn't do that, you have to rely on your existing audience. And Trump just has a huge competitive advantage over the left because we don't have a candidate right now. I mean, we don't have a nominee. And so we don't have a center of gravity

or leadership that's able to kind of drive a consistent narrative to a large audience the way that Trump does. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that your effort with acronym and acronym is being helped by James Barnes, who was the Facebook employee who was embedded in the Trump campaign and someone the Trump campaign referred to as their quote unquote MVP. Can you tell us about the decision to bring James on board? And what if anything you could share with us that you've learned from him and his experience? Yeah, of course. So James was not an obvious candidate to work at acronym, obviously. So he was a Republican. He is now a registered Democrat. He also was the Facebook employee that was embedded in the Trump campaign, as you mentioned, which, you know, was not his choice per se. Even at the time he was doing his job, there were he had Democratic counterparts, one of which is also full time at Acronym and has been for a while to tend to Musa Patika.

And she worked on the Democratic side and worked closely with me when I was running Digital at Priorities in 2016. So the way that it sort of came about is that James had a real personal motivation and reason after the election results to want to think about how he could do whatever he could in his power and in his control and with the expertise he has about Facebook and political messaging and advertising online to get Trump out of office. And I think, you know, people's motivations are something I think about a lot, whether people are motivated by money or power or different things. James really spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of the work he did and not that, you know, it was the reason that Trump won. You know, I think there's so many factors involved with that win, but he felt a responsibility. He personally

voted for Hillary Clinton. He was personally really, really shocked, as many of us were after the election, but of course, had this more personal experience being a part of the other side. And while that meant that when I first heard about James, I had no interest in meeting him, for my own personal reasons of how hard I and so many of my colleagues and friends poured our time and our hearts and our lives into making sure Hillary Clinton would be the president. It took some time, but I was really interested and intrigued in his background and in knowing if he was being honest, honestly. I was curious. And so I decided that it was worth a conversation. And

James and I had many, many, many conversations before I brought him on board and built a lot of trust with him and realized that his motivations were pure. He very much wants to do whatever he can in his control to get Trump out. And that is how I feel. And that is how everyone at Acronym feels. And he brings a lot of really interesting experience and knowledge and expertise to our team. And we feel really grateful to have him on board. How would you describe to a layperson the difference between how Trump used Facebook in 2016 and how Democrats did? Well, so it's, I would say that it comes down to kind of the culture of the campaigns. And something I talk about a lot is the similarities between President Obama, President Trump, and even Bernie Sanders, each of their first campaigns for

president. There's a common approach that they all took that I think is really interesting. And none of them were the obvious candidates. None of them had an obvious path. They all were disruptive to the status quo in a number of different ways. And they all really empowered risk-taking and I think investment and innovation in digital outreach and organizing and communication to build movements, frankly. And I think that when you are the underdog and you do not have a clear path, especially as a candidate running for national political office, you've got to try everything. You've got to throw everything at the wall. And that is where innovation is usually born. And so I think that what happened on the Trump campaign is that they did not have a clear

path and they used every tool and channel available to them and learned very quickly that they could raise a lot of money and identify supporters when they had no idea where to start on Facebook. And so that meant that they invested even more in Facebook. And I think because so many of us in the Democratic Party, including myself, who worked on President Obama's reelection campaign on the digital team in 2012, because we were really known as the ones who drove a lot of innovation in the digital space when it came to campaigning, I think that we rested a little bit on our laurels. I think that we took for granted that these platforms were changing so quickly and that the other side, especially Trump's campaign, was experimenting more and taking more risks and frankly, just pouring more money into these platforms. And so in large part, I don't think that we evolved our playbook as much as we could

or should have. And I say that feeling a great deal of responsibility for my own role and my own position in 2016. And so I do think that when you suffer a great loss or you're an underdog, you're compelled out of necessity to try things differently. And so I don't think that they had any, you know, dark magic, or, or some, you know, rocket science strategy, I just think that they they needed to take risks, and then they put money behind the things that they found that were working. And that that ended up giving them somewhat of a competitive advantage. Over the last few months, I guess, there's been this larger conversation among Democrats and

progressives about Facebook advertising sort of sparked by Facebook's decision to not fact check the ads from politicians. So you, you know, if you, you believe that Trump is more likely to lie and Facebook's gonna let him to do it. And then And then you and I sit here and talk about A, Trump's spending advantage on Facebook and B, the innovations that they made in 2016. and ban political advertising. You have been a very outspoken opponent of that idea. Can you explain to why Facebook banning political ads would be bad, would help Trump and hurt Democrats? Yeah, absolutely. And I want to start and be really, really clear that I think one of the biggest dangers and threats to our democracy and certainly to Democrats' prospect of taking back power and getting Trump out of office next November is the spread of misinformation and lies.

And the way that misinformation is spreading is incredibly complicated. It is a complicated problem. And so it's going to require complicated, nuanced solutions. And so I think while everybody is quick to find a silver bullet to make sure that we are regulating and eliminating the spread of misinformation online, it's unfortunately not going to be as simple as any one policy change. lot of misinformation spreads organically in ways that I just described with channels and brands and candidates who have really large followings on these social media platforms. They don't even need to put money behind lies to really get those to spread because oftentimes it starts with a meme or it starts being seeded out by a network of organizers online and then it spreads like wildfire because it drives so

much engagement. So one thing that's really important to note is that even if all of the social media platforms and technology platforms like Google and Facebook banned political advertising on their platforms, it would not stop the spread of misinformation on their platforms. I think that's really important to note. So when Twitter came out in a very, you know, righteous public way about banning political ads, number one, most political advertisers and campaigns do not spend money or significant sums of money on Twitter because it's really an influencer space. You can influence a narrative,

you can drive a narrative there, but you're not really reaching most of the American people. That's not where they're spending their time. And so it didn't hit their bottom line. And yet it made them, you know, it was it was pretty much, I think, a very positive move from them from a PR perspective. But it applied pressure on platforms that that are much more powerful than Twitter at reaching voters and reaching people across this country. So, you know, what Google has done now in essentially limiting targeting capabilities and different tools for political advertisers, one, it again won't eliminate misinformation or the spread of misinformation across Google channels and properties and ad networks. channels and properties and ad networks. And two, it will also have a really negative and potentially dangerous impact on the ability for grassroots organizations and campaigns

to build and communicate with their supporters, to raise money online. Every ad on Facebook that is an online fundraising appeal from a small or insurgent candidate or campaign, those are tagged as political ads. So it's really important that people understand the broad, still shape-shifting definition of political ads as defined by these platforms that are not regulated. And also, you know, how political ads are being used to really drive grassroots support and fundraising, which essentially is democratizing our campaigns more than we'd seen before those existed. So I think that it is a complicated problem that requires complicated solutions. And I think it makes sense

that people are very, very quick to try to lobby or demand what sounds like a silver bullet solution, but it's just not. And so more than anything else, what we wanted to do was try to provide some context and nuance to that conversation

that, yes, we need to get rid of misinformation online. That's going to take a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of thoughtful discussion. One thing that Facebook could do immediately is close their loophole that allows politicians to lie in advertisements. So no other political advertiser, including Acronym and Pacronym, our organizations are able to lie. We are beholden to being fact checked for every advertisement we place on those platforms. We believe that candidates and political elected officials should be held to that very same standard. And that is a very simple loophole that Facebook could close that they're unwilling to do.

And I think that's also adding to this debate. The way I've tried to explain this to people in a way that I think is less eloquent than yours was, but is that Facebook or Google or whoever else banning political ads would limit the ability of the Democratic nominee to respond to the information that's already spreading like wildfire on these platforms. Yeah, and it would limit their ability to raise grassroots dollars to be able to compete with Trump's war chest and infrastructure. That's really equally important to me as getting information and facts to voters at the same clip as they are spreading lies and misinformation is the fact that we are the party of an incredibly diverse and extraordinary

electorate. We have power in numbers on our side if we can communicate to them and turn them out in the election next year. And that also means getting our candidate the resources that they need to compete. And so I think that's just an important piece of the conversation that's been missing as well. I'm going to tee you up to pitch our listeners who to support your efforts. But in doing so, can you tell us the scariest thing that you've seen the Trump campaign doing on digital advertising? Sure. So our team spends way too much time focused on what Trump's campaign is doing online and who they're reaching and how. And two things give me a great deal of anxiety. The first is for how long the Trump campaign has been at this work, spending money and collecting data about their supporters and finding other likely supporters in the battleground states.

It's not just for fundraising and having a big email list to fundraise off of. The Trump campaign has really essentially mined an enormous amount of data already that is going to make them more effective at targeting both their supporters and turning them out, but also potentially spreading lies and misinformation to our potential supporters online. That's really hard to measure. And finding new supporters, right? Yeah. And finding new supporters. Absolutely. We believe, you know, I don't have proof to back this up, although Brad Parscale's been

pretty transparent about it in his Fox News interviews. But, you know, we believe that they are actually identifying likely supporters and registering them. Brand new people who've never voted before, have never been part of the process, who are there registering to vote and will turn out as Trump supporters in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota and Michigan that we know could really come down to a very small number of votes in the election. So that's really scary to me. The other thing that we're seeing that I think is only going to get worse over the next coming months is that they are targeting smaller audiences of voters with persuasive messages in the battleground states to build support for Trump among these audiences. So the examples that I've been giving is reaching Venezuela and expats in Florida with Spanish

language ads about their bold position on what's happening in Venezuela right now, the administration's position, targeting different voters with messages about bills they've passed and how, you know, this is what it takes, like no more Mr. Nice Guy, right? This is how we change Washington. Because I think one of Trump's strongest messages is actually the most disingenuous one he has, which is that he's there to drain the swamp and he is not emblematic of the corruption that he talks about being seen on both sides in D.C. when he is literally the most corrupt president we've ever had in this country. But that is a message that resonates with people. And it is something that they drive a consistent narrative around and then, and then really kind of get surgical with how they communicate that

to people who they know it will resonate with. Tara, thank you so much. How can our listeners support your efforts? In so many ways. So one, when we launched Four is Enough, we did, we launched it through our pack. It's really important to us that while, of course, I fundraise to make sure we have the resources we need, that this is a space where people can get involved and contribute their time, their small dollar donations and their voices while we while we are in the midst of a primary. So for everybody who has anxiety over what Trump is able to do and build and the voters he's able to talk to right now while we're still focused on a primary, this is a space where you can lend your support. You can lend your small dollar donations. You can buy merchandise that we have. But also just using your voice and making sure that we are all in unison, communicating as loudly and every single day we can about the stakes of this election and how corrupt this administration is and how he has broken

promises to people that took a chance on him. And so For Is Enough has a simple site at pacronym.org. And you can go there to find out more and you can buy swag. We have impeachment pins and t-shirts and we're going to be rolling more content out. But also, to your listeners in particular, because these folks are paying attention and they care deeply about the stakes of this election is to not think that because maybe you don't live in a battleground state or you don't have the ability to write really big checks to organizations doing this work, is that just being out there on your own social media channels every day is really important. And I think that we have to remind people that the other side, they are a smaller group of voters than our base, but they can be louder.

And that can influence the narrative and that can really influence the election. And so we've got to get really loud and we've got to be consistent. And we've got to focus on the shared mission that we all have, which is getting Donald Trump out of office. So would love to encourage folks to help donate, be a part of our campaign, but also just, and you can use the hashtag four is enough, make sure that you're talking about the stakes of this election every day in your own voice because that really will matter.

Tara, thank you so much. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you again soon as this campaign plays out. Thank you, Dan. And thank you so much for everything you guys did to keep folks informed. I really appreciate it. Thanks to Tara for joining us today. And happy Thanksgiving, Dan.

Yeah, you have a great Thanksgiving too. And happy Thanksgiving to everyone. All right, guys. We'll see you after the break. Bye, everyone. everyone. All right, guys,

we will, we'll see you after the break. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week. Thank you.