Pod Save America - “Give me GDP, or give me death.”

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

The Senate passes the largest economic relief bill in history, Trump spreads the deadly lie that letting the virus run wild will boost the economy, and the daily White House briefings get record cable ratings. Then Governor Gretchen Whitmer talks to Dan about Michigan’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.Crooked has started a Coronavirus Relief Fund for organizations supporting food banks, health care workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others in need. Donate: crooked.com/coronavirus

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to Governor Gretchen Whitmer about how Michigan is responding to this pandemic. But first, we're going to talk about the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill that just passed the Senate, why Donald Trump seems ready and willing to let the virus kill more Americans, and why his approval rating is inching up anyway. What a hellish summary of what we are going to be talking about today, Dan. It was nice of you to say inching up instead of skyrocketing. Yeah, no, I thought I would give us a win there.

Few quick housekeeping notes. On this week's Pod Save the World, former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice unloads on what she calls Trump's criminally negligent coronavirus response. On this week's Keep It, you can catch something different, an interview with the one and only Jane Fonda about her activism in the fight to combat climate change. And if you're not listening to America Dissected, you are really missing out. Epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Saeed answers all

your questions about the coronavirus. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Finally, if you are looking for a way to help those in need, Crooked's Coronavirus Relief Fund spreads your donation equally to groups providing critical support to food banks, healthcare workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others. So if you can, please donate at crooked.com slash coronavirus. All right, Dan, here's where we are. Today we learned that last week a record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, breaking the previous weekly record of 695,000 set in 1982. And last

night, by a vote of 96 to zero, the Senate passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, the largest emergency economic package in United States history. So what's in it? Here's a few highlights the Democrats fought for over the last week and got included in the package 13 weeks of unemployment insurance that equates to 100 of wages for the average american including part-time self-employed freelance gig workers direct cash payments of $1,200 per individual and $500 per child if your household makes under $150,000. $150 billion for hospitals and healthcare workers. $150 billion for state and local governments. $350 billion in loans for small businesses that don't have to be paid back if the small businesses keep all their employees throughout the crisis and more oversight over a 500 billion dollar loan

program for bigger businesses that restrict ceo pay stock buybacks and assistance to companies controlled by trump or his family because that's something that we have to do with this administration his blood relatives not his his right his blood relatives yeah no kushner still could be uh making some money here um so dan those were some of the highlights. Did I miss any others? And what were some of the lowlights, in your opinion? Well, I think we'll talk about this a little bit later, but one of the other highlights is money to help states switch to mail ballots and other electoral changes they'll have to make to deal with conducting election when potentially when much of the country is quarantined. The low light is this is the biggest piece of stimulus in American history. And it is probably, and this is not the fault of the Democrats, woefully insufficient to the problem that we have. Like even Governor Cuomo said that this was not enough money for New York. Cuomo said that this was not enough money for New York. And we should expect that other states and other municipalities are going to be in a situation that while maybe not as intense as New York,

we hope, but much worse than they're currently in. And so this is only the beginning of the process. Steve Mnookin said at the wonderful White House briefing yesterday that this was enough for three months. And it's probably not enough for three months. And it's not going to be enough for a lot of people who have lost their jobs. But it is something and it's a start. The question would be what if anything comes next? Yeah, I think the big question is, like, if Congress can do this on a regular basis, which we're going to talk about,'s um there's certainly no guarantee that they will be able to do this you could see a package like this every couple months um maybe helping us through this but uh waking up to those unemployment numbers those unemployment claims i

mean you know you and i were there at the beginning of the obama administration when we'd see these claims jump every single week and be sickened by it. And 3 million in one week? It's so far beyond anything anyone ever experienced in this country. We're talking Great Depression. We're talking the economic crisis of 2009. It's insane. It's insane. I mean, it is, and I think we should expect that the actual number is much bigger than 3 million. Because just anecdotally, you were hearing that the UI, the unemployment insurance claim systems, which are state-based, are not set up to handle this level of surge. And you see a lot of anecdotal reporting about people who have been trying to file online, trying to make calls who can't get through. And so there's at least some number of people

who were laid off in this period who have not yet had the ability to access, have either not filed or not yet who have tried and failed to file. And there are a lot of businesses who can hold on for a few weeks and are trying to do the best thing they possibly can for their employees. But if something doesn't change quickly or they don't get additional help, they're going to eventually have to lay off more employees. You're seeing months of the Great Recession of 2009 compressed into a period of just a few days. And it is stunning. And we should be very eyes wide open about the level of economic pain, not just the country, but individual families are going to face. So last Saturday, I believe, after one round of bipartisan negotiations,

Mitch McConnell basically kicked out all the Democrats and wrote a bill on his own with a bunch of lobbyists. And this is basically what Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats were pushing back on and trying to change all week. And of course, I read sort of all of the things they got into the final version of the bill. That being said, do you think this was the best that Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrats in Congress could have done? I mean, there's a lot of argument going around from a lot of folks on Twitter and on the left that Democrats made a fundamental mistake by the House not passing a bill first so that we would be operating off of

a Democratic bill as opposed to operating off of a bill drafted primarily by McConnell, but with the inclusion of Democratic priorities like checks to people, like that was in the original bill. I think that there can be a good faith discussion about that, but I'm just not sure how that was possible given the House was out that Trump has not spoken to Pelosi in months now since impeachment. McConnell was always going to write his bill. And rightly or wrongly, members in both parties generally don't want to vote for a trillion-dollar bill that's not going to become law, let alone a $2 trillion bill. And so of course this bill could be better, but I think we should give credit where credit's due. And Schumer and the Senate Democrats hung together, and they forced major changes in the bill to make it much more favorable

to working people and put real restrictions on literally a half a trillion dollar corporate slush fund controlled by Donald Trump's finance chair and the producer of Suicide Squad. So that seemed like a good thing to change. So they made it much better. And Nancy Pelosi helped them make it much better by putting forward her own bill, which gave Schumer additional leverage in the negotiation. So they did it like, this is not the bill we would write. This is not a bill that would happen with a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, and a Democratic president. But it is better than it could have been. And for all the shit that people give our congressional leaders, they should get credit for making this bill much better. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of focus on the direct cash payments,

partly because no one expected Republicans to embrace direct cash payments. But to me, I've heard some Democrats like Brian Schott say this, the real win in the bill is what they did for unemployment insurance. So by, first of all, extending it to 13 weeks, which is good, but also by making the unemployment insurance and the benefits you get from unemployment insurance cover for at least the average American all of your salary, it means that people who get laid off at least for the next 13 weeks and again this all depends on whether we can extend this that a good amount of people will be making the same amount they made on their job um because they both extended unemployment insurance added to it and added basically six hundred $600 per week on top of everyone's

unemployment insurance that they get. Now, we know that this is a win because the bill almost didn't pass last night because Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott, Ben Sasse, and I think there was a fourth, I can't remember, republican senators said that the bill was too generous uh to people who were unemployed and that um because some people um would be making what they made on their jobs or even a little bit more because they just added six hundred dollars on top of everyone's uh unemployment benefits so a few you know people on the lower ends of the spectrum lower income people are actually going to make even a little bit more, a tiny bit more than they made at work,

that somehow this is going to incentivize employers to lay people off and that it's too generous. That's what Republicans were upset about last night. Well, that wasn't even their actual argument because they would never care about incentives to companies to lay people off because they passed a tax bill that helped encourage them to not lay people off and ship those jobs overseas. What they were worried about is lazy nurses. This was Lindsey Graham's example. Lazy nurses who would quit their jobs in order to get access to slightly more generous unemployment insurance. slightly more generous unemployment insurance. Now, we didn't need this example to prove that Lindsey Graham was an absolute moron, but you can't get unemployment insurance if you quit your

job, or in most cases, if you're fired for cause, you get unemployment insurance if you are laid off. And so, and the other, and I think one other thing I would say that Democrats did that was very important here is that they included, they also expanded UI to include freelancers, gig workers, the self-employed to help people like that who make up a larger and larger part of our economy than they did back in 2008, 2009. Yeah, that was very important. So now that we've passed this one, what was missing from this bill? And we'll talk about vote by mail sort of at the end here, but aside from vote by mail, what else was missing in this bill? And we'll talk about vote by mail sort of at the end here. But aside from vote by mail, what else was missing in this bill that you could see in the next bill? And do you think there

will be a next bill? What do you think the chances of that are? Well, I mean, we're going to need more money. We're gonna need more money for people. We're going to need more money for small businesses. We're going to need more money for hospitals. We're going to need more money to help homeowners and renters and people with student loans. Because like in California, Governor Newsom has gotten all the banks, as of yesterday at least, except Bank of America, to agree to a 90-day moratorium on mortgage payments. And that is very helpful in the moment, but those debts accrue over time. We need to have some measures in this bill, like some student loan forgiveness, or some other loan forgiveness that will help people get

out of the hole. Because when the economy turns back on, to use Trump's phrase, you need people to be able to have money to spend in the economy and not just like you need them to be able to buy goods and services as opposed to just paying off debts, they accrued during the crisis. And so we need that in there. And so the question is, will there be another bill? And I mean, God, I hope so, because people are going to need it. And the expectations are like, I don't think this was enough. I think this was the most the Democrats possibly could have gotten in a situation where Donald Trump is president, and Mitch McConnell was leader of the Senate. But we need much, much more. And we know from 2009 that the political will and enthusiasm for bills that spend a lot of money that add to the deficit

diminishes with every passing bill. And we barely got this one through. So we will have to see what it looks like. But I remain very nervous about what comes next. And a lot, just like in 2009, a lot of people can be left holding the bag because Congress does one thing and then can't come together on future things. And we don't even know when Congress is going to be able to come back safely and legislate. Mitch McConnell said they wouldn't be back until April 20th, at least. I do wonder if there's more hope for another bill for the very annoying political reason that Donald Trump is president and not Barack Obama. And so Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in Congress have

more of an incentive to try to help the economy, thinking that it will help Donald Trump win re-election, and so they'll come back and do another bill. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And from a pure, raw politics point of view, Trump and McConnell, who's trying to hold the Senate, need the economy to improve much more than anyone else. And so that gives them some incentive to act. I mean, the fact that Republicans who have been screaming about the deficit, who hate stimulus, who screamed about stimulus when Obama was president, who refused, refused every single member of the House voted against helping Americans get out of the financial crisis once Barack Obama became president, The fact that they passed a $2 trillion stimulus is unbelievable. And they would have

never, ever passed a similar bill if Democrats were president. And that is the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans are saving themselves and Democrats are saving the economy. So the other big thing that many Democrats, including us, tried to get into the bill was funding and provisions that would give every American access to a mail-in ballot for November's election so that people don't have to choose between voting and living. So unfortunately, the bill only has $400 million for voter protections, which is more than the $140 million Republicans wanted, but less than the couple of billion dollars that we actually need to make this happen.

And there are no provisions in the bill that mandate states offer mail-in ballots to everyone. So that kind of sucks. What do we do about this now? How do we get this done? Well, I think there are a couple of things that can happen. I think there are a couple of things that can happen. The big issue here is Republicans' opposition to people voting, right? Even though it runs against their political interests because if we are in the middle of a situation where the coronavirus is still present in the fall, which Anthony Fauci predicted on TV last night was a very likely scenario. The people who will most likely stay home are the people in the vulnerable group who are disproportionately Republican voters. But to give some perspective here, what Democrats in the House wanted was $4 billion plus mandating the idea that every state would put vote by mail in place as a standard practice. Republicans

objected to that because of their reflexive hatred of democracy. So I think what we have to do is push for the House to pass that bill as a standalone bill, send it to the Senate, have the Senate Democrats at least make the case for it and push for it. We should look for additional funding in a phase four bill if one were to come. And then at the state level, voters should be pushing for their state legislatures and their governors to do this because they do not need the federal government to do it. We don't need federal legislation. It helps to have money from the federal government. And the language in this bill about how you use that money was very favorable to vote by mail. But we have to get started on

this right now because it's an incredibly complicated endeavor for states who don't normally do it. You know, for example, California sends out its ballot in like dozens of languages. Right? Like that is something you need to build. It's not just stuffing envelopes, right? There's a there's a lot of logistics and complications to do it. And obviously, we're not operating under ideal scenarios where people can't go to work. But we need to get going now. And there are some key states in there where we can make some real progress, including Pennsylvania, where we have a Democratic governor. So if you are in a state that does not have vote by mail, reaching out to your governor

and your state legislators to push for them to either adopt vote by mail or switch from excuse absentee balloting, where you need a specific reason why you can't go to the polls to no excuse vote by mail, like a lot of states have, that would be a huge step in the right direction. So there's a federal approach and a state approach. Yeah. And I saw some people asking, well, why do we have to do this right now? This bill is all about immediate relief, and that's important. Let's get that done. We can worry about this later. And what I don't think a lot of people realize, you just pointed out is it has to start now because there are so many different obstacles in the way of states doing this, that if we hit September or October and coronavirus

is still here, like Fauci predicted, it probably will be too late for a lot of states to switch to vote by mail at that point. It has to actually start happening right now. And so I think if there is a phase four, what they're calling it, a phase four bill, another stimulus bill, we have to push really not just push really hard. I think Democrats have to demand that vote by mail is in the next stimulus bill and make that a condition of supporting the bill. I just don't see any other way around it. Yeah. I mean, like Democrats have a lot of leverage here for the political incentives of McConnell and Trump we talked about, and this is something that we should use it for. Yeah. For all the like, you know, every once in a while we get the

scary question from people like, what happens if Trump loses the election but doesn't leave office? And, you know, there's all these crazy scenarios. It's like the more likely scenario is in a pandemic. We get to November and a whole bunch of people can't go out and vote. And we just saw what happened in the last primary with, you know, Mike DeWine in Ohio pushing the election off and the courts telling him not to. And there was all this. I mean, it can get really, really ugly on an international election. to and there was all this. I mean, it can get really, really ugly on an international election. And the only way to ensure that doesn't happen and the only way to protect our election in November is vote by mail. I do think like along with, you know, fighting the virus itself and helping fix

the economy, it is like the top priority. It should be the top priority for the government to ensure the sanctity of voting in november all right dan uh you have named this section give me gdp or give me death i stole that from someone on twitter so whoever actually tweeted that uh no one knows that we did take credit look i we we gotta be we gotta look there has to be did take credit look i we got to be we got to look there has to be one we're straight shooters we have to be straight shooters yes i only want to be respected by one side but i want to be a straight shooter so we talked about this a little on monday's episode after trump tweeted we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself he has now doubled and tripled down on the argument that in just a few weeks we should

end the orders to shelter in place stay at home and socially distance because he believes that ending those orders will get the economy moving again. And to him, that's more important than slowing the spread of a pandemic that has already killed nearly a thousand Americans of all ages, some with no underlying medical conditions at all. Here's public health expert Donald Trump explaining his new timeline. I'd love to have it open by Easter. Okay, I would love to have it open by Easter. I will tell you that right now. I would love to have that.

It's such an important day for other reasons, but I'll make it an important day for this, too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. but I'll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. That's April 12th. So we will watch and see what happens. I'm going to toss it back to my cohort, Bill.

Thank you, Harris. That would be a great American resurrection two and a half plus weeks from now. So Dan, this seems like one of those situations where the president is able to show that he's both a malevolent sociopath and a complete fucking moron. What do you think about his latest turn here? I am laughing now because you made a joke. turn here i am laughing now because you made a joke but over the last few days i have not been this angry about anything since frankly paul ryan last opened his mouth this is such and that and

that seems quaint compared to this i know imagine when paul ryan was something to be worth being angry about i mean he is on the board of News, so he's primarily responsible for his being in this situation in every way, shape, or form. Good. We can talk about that later, but you are not off the hook, Paul Ryan. the most dangerous thing that a president has proposed doing in a century? Yeah. Because it's not – like we should be clear. Donald Trump did not turn the economy off and he can't be the one who turns it back on, right? People are not working in New York and California, all across the country because governors, mayors, and employers have shut work down to follow

the advice of public health experts. But Donald Trump framing this as a choice between the economy and health is going to get people killed because this is giving people permission to stop the social distancing, to go out, to facilitate the spread of the disease. It's not just that he's talking about it. It's that in doing so, he is minimizing the dangers by comparing it to the flu. I don't know how many times we have to do this, but this is not the flu. It is more contagious than the flu. It is much more deadly than the flu. It lives on surfaces for days. It is so much

more dangerous, and people will die. And it's not just the people, and you may say, well, I'm a young, healthy person. And yes, some young, healthy people are getting it. Some young, healthy people who get it are dying, but the odds of that may be small. But it's every person who goes to the hospital means that someone else who needs medical care may not get it, right? What is happening in Italy is because of the virus, but it's also because the medical system has basically collapsed and people can't get the care they need. And when you hear it, it's like Donald Trump is living on another fucking planet from what is going on. I'm so angry about it that I can't even get up the – I can't even make my – it's like silent rage.

I can't even make myself yell about it because it's just so – I mean I guess it shouldn't be shocking but it's so shockingly dangerous and irresponsible that the president of the United States will say this and that many people will enable that argument either by supporting it or by framing it as an actual thing. It's like your choices look both ways before you cross the street or run out into oncoming traffic. Those are not two sides of the same coin. One keeps you safe and one gets you killed. I have to say when he tweeted that Sunday night, I have to say when he tweeted that Sunday night, I felt both enraged and terrified. And also, and I think I said to you guys, I knew it was coming. I knew this is where he was going to go because he he has no patience. He has no intelligence.

And the reason I said it's not just about him being it's not just about Donald Trump and, you know, his Republican goon friends in right wing media, you know, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested on Fox that there are a lot of grandparents out there like him who would be willing to sacrifice their lives in exchange for, quote, keeping the America that all America loves alive for their kids and grandkids. And Glenn Beck said, I'd rather have my children stay home and have all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy working and working. Even if we all get sick, I'd rather die than kill the country. And it's not just the right wing media goons, it's CEOs and the Chamber of Commerce and people like that and trump c are

saying and in all of these people's minds they it's it's so ridiculously fucking stupid to think that somehow if you quote unquote turn the economy on if you had the power to do that and just let the virus one run wild what would happen is the economy would come back and then just some old people would die, just like the flu. And like, none of that is true. None of it is true. First of all, as you pointed out, like young people with no underlying conditions are getting very sick and going to the hospital and needing ventilators to live. That's happening all over the place. Look at the statistics in New York City. All of the epidemiologists from Fauci to everyone else think that, you know, if we let the virus run wild, over half the population would be infected. Half of Americans be infected. And so with a death rate of about 1%, which we're lucky if it's 1%,

it could be more, we don't know yet. 1.7 million Americans could die. And the flu, by the way, kills 37,000 people per year. And car crashes, which Donald Trump also compared this to, kill 37,000 people a year. Compare that to fucking 1.7 million Americans dead. You think you're going to have a roaring economy with 1.7 million Americans dead, the healthcare system completely overwhelmed, so that if you don't have coronavirus and you need to go to the hospital and you need to go to the doctor, you can't. This is also nothing to say of all the people who,

despite what Donald Trump says, will still socially distance and socially isolate and won't go to work. Like what he doesn't fucking get is we can only get through this thing together. Right. Like if there are a bunch of people in hospitals because they're sick with coronavirus, that affects us all. If there are a bunch of our fellow Americans too sick to go to work, that affects us all. That affects the economy. There is no choice between fixing the economy and fixing the virus. It is the same fucking thing. You cannot fix the economy by letting the virus run wild and opening up all of these governments. You cannot do it. The choice here is not health or the economy. The choice is saving lives and a very painful and hopefully short economic disruption, or exponentially

more Americans die in a longer, much more painful economic crisis. Those are the choices. And every reporter, pundit, cable host, chyron that puts it health versus the economy is facilitating an argument that will get people killed because that is not the choice. No one believes that this choice. No one is calling for this other than Trump and a bunch of fucking yahoos on the far right of the Republican Party. If Glenn Beck is so willing to sacrifice his life to help the country, get out of his mother's fucking basement and go volunteer in a hospital. If you're willing to put yourself at risk, do something real. This is all bullshit, and it is dangerous bullshit. And we should also

be clear. Trump is like, people want to go back to work. Of course they want to go back to work. People want to go back to normal life in America. I would like to leave my house. We would all like to be able to go to the store without treating it like being in a scene from the movie Contagion. We want to go back to normal life. That is not what we are in right now. What Trump is arguing for is not to let workers go back to work. What Trump is arguing for is to allow employers to force employees to work at the risk of their own health and the health of their loved ones in the middle of a recession. We are in the middle of one of the worst recessions. This could potentially be one of the worst recessions in history. And what are you going to do if you're a worker and you're lucky

enough to still have a job and your employer says, we're opening the office back up. Come on in. Yeah, I have my parents living in my house. I have a child with asthma. What is your choice? Lose the job. You may not be able to get another one in this economy or go to work and put your life at risk. This is about helping employers. It's not about helping workers. And it is so dangerous. It is just the whole thing is so dangerously irresponsible that it is like Trump should not shock us at this point. But this actually shocks me because it is so fucking bananas and is so dangerous. And like, I don't know what's going to happen. It seems pretty hard that Trump could

rescind the CDC guidelines as deaths are going up exponentially. Like you said, we were near 1,000 deaths today. By the time this comes out, we will certainly be over that. We're going to see a giant skyrocketing the number of cases in California because you have nearly 50,000 pending tests. And how you do that, and we see this spreading across the country. Louisiana's net, this is not California, New York. Louisiana is having a real problem with this. Obviously, Michigan, and I want to talk to Governor Wittner about this, are having a big problem. It is spreading across the country. And so there may be some places where it is not bad yet, but where it could very easily become bad in part because people travel, right?

That is the problem with – like you keep comparing – like we keep comparing our model to what's happening in New York and where New York is on the curve or California is on the curve to where China and South Korea are. But those are countries where you can control your borders to keep people out. If California does everything right and we turn it on in the rest of the country, people from the states who have now been exposed because of governors like the governor of Mississippi are being dangerously responsible, are going to come to California and infect people, right? And like, it's just, ugh, it's just, it's so, it is so stupid that it's, it makes me angry we have to talk about it.

Well, and the reason it's so dangerous, too, is because, of course, there are millions and millions of people in this country, especially in areas where the virus hasn't hit yet, who are thinking, of course I want to go back to work. I'm scared. I don't know where my next paycheck is going to come from. And now we all have to stay home because of this virus that I haven't seen affect my family, my life, my community. And, you know, if Donald Trump wants us to go back to work and thinks we should go back to work, I want to, people want to believe that that's the case. I want to believe that that's the case, you um but like he is he's just like the fact that he is doing this and and sort of feeding those desires like i'm not going to be surprised if a bunch of polls come out and a bunch of people are going to say yeah no we believe donald trump

we we want to go back to work because we want to fix the economy like it's just he's the president united states and people look to the federal government for guidance and for to set an example and if what he's going to do now is like you were sort of alluding to this so like let's say he you know donald trump says okay i want to open everything back up now so then you get a bunch of governors like our governor g Gavin Newsom, Governor Cuomo, other good Democratic governors. And by the way, a bunch of Republican governors. All the Republican governors. Yeah, right.

They're all on board here. So now you have a bunch of governors who are going to say, no, we're going to keep things. We're going to keep things closed. We're going to keep everyone sheltered in place. And then you're going to have Trump start to say these Democratic governors and Republican governors, because he doesn't care who he attacks, are out to get me. They're out to get you. They don't care about you and your job and your future. And all these we're going to listen to all these scientists and these liberals and the lame. You know, he tweeted yesterday. Hold on.

The lamestream media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before. So this is now going to be the coming battle. And part of me wonders if like Trump knows that he can't open everything back up again, but he just needs to sort of set the terms of the political fight right now so that he's seen as fighting on behalf of most Americans against the liberal elites and the scientists who are all worried about everyone's health. I think there's a lot to that. I think he thinks he probably can and should open the economy,

That is – I think he thinks he probably can and should open the economy. But we were having this discussion both in text and on Twitter this morning about how you think about Trump's strategy. And you have to separate the effect of what he does from why he does things, right? I think he does this because CNN has reporting on this that mainly he is so sick of being in the fucking White House. He can't go to Mar-a-Lago. He can't golf. He can't do the rallies. He can't get the sustenance. Poor guy.

I know. It's hard. Look, we should not diminish the victimhood of Donald Trump in this. He had that very painful test that one time we keep hearing about. Someone sucked something up his nose. And so let's not erase Donald Trump's pain from this. But I think he's just reacting viscerally because that's what he does. But the effect of it is he is the one pushing to get the economy back to work. And he just – like,

Donald Trump doesn't need to win arguments. He just needs arguments. And the argument he wants to have when the economy – if the economy is in a really bad place in November is that it's not his fault. It's these other people's fault. Now, we can debate later whether that is an effective argument. But I think that is potentially the result of this. But the problem is that this social distancing, responding, preventing the spread of this depends on social pressure, right? You want – you need people to feel like even if they maybe are not as worried about it themselves or feel like it's less serious, that they won't do things like go play basketball at Venice Beach or go to Spring Break or congregate because there's social pressure to do so. And when you have the person with the largest megaphone in the country

undermining that collective effort, it's very damaging. Because maybe we don't end up – like governors are not going to lift the shelter in place orders and employers because they don't want to be legally liable. A lot of them may not open for business. But the people who do the things like gather in public are more likely to do that if the president implies that it is okay. It's also not a fucking political winner to do this. As of all people, Lindsey Graham pointed out the other day. There's an there's an Atlantic piece. It said, Graham disagrees with Trump about this. And he told the Atlantic, quote, should Trump repudiate public health experts advice

and take steps that cause infections to spike, he would, quote, own the fallout, Graham said. Quote, any increase in the mortality rate would be a huge problem for him. The biggest political risk any president takes is deviating from sound advice. The economy can recover. Once a person is dead, that's it.

So it's interesting that Graham is trying to sort of appeal to even Trump's base political instincts here to try to tell him why this is so fucking stupid. I mean, Lindsey Graham is a one of the worst people in American politics, but he does have an ability to speak Trump's language on the things he wants Trump to do. Like the morning after Trump tweeted the turn the economy back on thing you talked about, he said, one of the most brilliant, you know, something I'm paraphrasing here, but you can imagine this in Lindsey Graham's voice, which is Frank Underwood on helium. But he tweeted that Trump's decision to stop travel

from China was one of the most brilliant decisions ever. And if he were to turn the economy back on too soon, he would undermine his great decision, which is a pretty clever way to get Trump to do what you want to do. So let's talk about what the way out of this is or could be, because obviously, you know, you can have a rational debate about like, how fast do we sort of open up various sectors of the economy, lift the social distancing guidelines, lift the mass, the shelter in place orders? When do you do it? Like how much risk do you take? How do you help? How do you protect people at the same time as allowing the economy to continue knowing that a recession and potentially a depression really does exact an incredible amount of pain on the population, just like the virus does? And so what is the way out

of this? I mean, we're having a false choice about this because the option is not everyone suffers economic devastation or we kill a lot of people from the virus, right? The other option is we keep these measures in place, we flatten the curve, we slow the spread, and the federal government of one of the richest countries in the world at a time of basically zero interest rates spends money to keep companies, families, and individuals afloat. We don't have to choose here, but there's such a poverty of imagination in how we think about this that it creates this choice. No, the government could do exponentially more than it did in this bill, and it can do it for an unlimited amount of time. We'll have to pay some form of the bill later, but if you keep people afloat, it'll make it easier to bounce back both economically and fiscally when this comes back.

Because if you leave with people in such a gigantic, if we come out of this with everyone in a gigantic economic hole, like in 2008, because people's central asset, their house, was the value of it was devastated. If they come out of this, like with like, it'll hurt for sure. But you can make it hurt less for the both on a macro and micro economic level. I also think, you know think the original sin of the Trump administration and the government's response to this pandemic was the failure of testing, the failure to have tests, the failure to get the test to work. And I think on the flip side, the ultimate solution to this could be ramping up testing on a nationwide scale that is very quick and very reliable and so um you know this was in the guardian yesterday um they said this is

what's happening in the uk mass home testing for coronavirus antibodies will be available in the uk within days which will quickly let people find out if they've already had the virus most importantly health care workers will be able to learn if they've had the virus and are therefore immune, allowing them to go back to work. Also, millions of 15-minute coronavirus tests are set to be available for Amazon delivery in the UK very soon. So if you combine the social distancing measures that we're currently using right now with widely available mass testing

that can happen very quickly. What you can start doing again is finding out where in the country the outbreaks are, locking those places down, opening up other parts of the economy so people can go back to work, and you can start sort of working backwards and then once again start tracing where the virus is and knowing of course who's had it who's immune who can help contribute to the economy who can't who's vulnerable who needs to be protected and it's basically like i think someone in the atlantic made this uh metaphor it's like whack-a-mole right where for a lot it still takes a long time and there's a lot of people who are going to be sick and we're going to have a very bad recession. But at the very least, if you start monitoring who has the virus and where and you have a reliable testing system that you can figure out how to start opening up parts of the economy again over the next, you know, four or five, six, seven months. And I think Ron Klain also had a really smart piece in The Washington Post last night that the question is not when to open up everything again, but how.

And so you could see a scenario where like people go back to work, but maybe, you know, in an office you have desks that are very far apart. Or maybe we start having sporting events again in months time, but there's no audiences at first, right? And so there are things you can do that are sort of in between sort of letting the virus run wild and a complete shutdown that we can start to engage in at least once the worst of this has passed. I think one of the things that it's worth, I think that's all true. And one of the things that is, I think it's worth reminding people that's also part of the danger of Trump's approach is the reason you hit – you have such a – you go to such massive social distancing and shelter in place is to flatten the curve and to slow the

rate of infection. The reason you do that is so that the hospitals do not become overwhelmed. Because once they become overwhelmed, then people who could be saved will die, right? Because they cannot – they can't get access. Which is where we're headed now. Yeah, and we are in a number of places. And what you have to do in that time is surge hospital capacity, surge and distribute the personal protective equipment like masks that healthcare professionals need. And you have to surge ventilators, hospital beds, et cetera. ventilators, hospital beds, et cetera. And the problem we have is we've been doing this for,

I don't think we're, I think we're on day like 12 or something of the national guidance. And Trump and his administration have absolutely shit the bed on what they're supposed to do to help people prepare. They've refused to use the Defense Production Act to get ventilators and respirators where people need. Some states and cities are already at capacity. They have not done enough to help cities and states where it has not hit yet prepare for it to come, right? Like we're in New York and California, where it is currently the hottest, we are fighting from behind. And Cuomo and Newsom, I think, have done as much as they possibly can and have been true leaders in trying to get people ready. But we know it's going to be elsewhere. So why aren't we turning sports arenas or convention centers into hospitals, right, to a surge capacity? And that is ultimately what people have to realize is that every person who gets sick makes it more likely that someone else

will die because they may have to go to the hospital and use a hospital bed that someone else won't get. Yep. All right. We talked about Trump's poll numbers a bit on Monday, but I do want to get your thoughts on this. The 538 average shows Trump at his highest approval rating since his first few months in office, though it's still relatively low at 44.6%. The uptick has been driven entirely by approval of his response to the coronavirus crisis, and it's been driven specifically by independents and Democrats. What in the ever-living fuck is going on? I mean, when you are people in our situation, probably in the situation of a lot of our listeners, who maybe live in areas where the coronavirus coronavirus that are hot zones, where life is fundamentally changed in ways you've never possibly imagined, where you know people who have the

virus, you know people who are medical professionals are being forced to use one time use masks five and six times at their own risk. And you watch every one of those fucking briefings, you read every story. You've cited like nine Atlantic stories since we've been here. Like, we are fucking deep in this, right? And we know, like, we can recite to anyone who asks all of Trump's list of monumental fuck-ups that made this situation so much worse. You see these numbers and you're like, what the fuck is happening in America? Like, what planet are people on? But then I think it's worth stepping back because I do think one thing that political pundits, elites, you know, Democrats I think maybe to a greater extent don't do enough is put themselves in the shoes of people who don't follow the news as closely as we do.

as we do. And so you're just a person now who's probably working from home with children who are home from school with no childcare, trying to figure out how to keep your family safe, how to go to the store without catching a potentially deadly virus. And you're following the news, but you're watching a few minutes of the nightly news. You're scrolling through Facebook and you're just seeing video of Trump say, we sent this many masks, we sent this many ventilators, we're going to have this many tests by next week. He's surrounded by credible seeming public officials like Dr. Fauci, I mean, who is obviously credible, but he's up there doing things that normal presidents do in normal times. And even some of the words sound like the things normal presidents would say in crisis. And you think, well, they seem to be doing the best they can. And so people are giving him

the benefit of the doubt. And I think then the question is, what does that mean for November? And I think that's a very fair question. Now, I think it is, you know, I don't want to make predictions, but I think it is unlikely that the Democrats who approve of Trump right in this moment, in this moment of national crisis, or approve of his approach to this national crisis are people who are going to vote for Trump in November. These are not available voters to him. So we shouldn't be – we should worry about this greatly, but we should not panic about it. The independents, I think, are very much worth watching because the gain is among independents who have disapproved of him almost every day of his presidency. And it's worth knowing whether this is ethereal or something real. So we're going to have to track that. And so I think we should have a conversation about what we can and should do about this and what we can and should worry about it.

Yeah, there's a few other things, too. I mean, just for some comparisons, this is a moment of national crisis. There tend to be a moment of national crises, sort of rally around the flag, rally around the leader effects. That happened certainly with Bush after 9-11. Of course, after 9-11, Bush's approval hit, what, like 80%? Higher, higher. I think he got to the 90s, yeah. Right.

And if you look now around the world, the approval ratings of foreign leaders everywhere have jumped, and they have jumped far more than Donald Trump's approval rating. The approval rating of governors in the United States have jumped far more than Donald Trump's approval rating. The approval rating of governors in the United States have jumped, have jumped far more than Trump's approval rating. And so, you know, some of this is natural, just people wanting to, you know, rally around a leader who, like you said, is on TV every day telling us everything's going to be OK. And again, I think the misinformation is having an effect as well. I'm sure, like you said, there's a lot of people who are in communities that haven't been affected yet by the virus. And I say yet because no community, no matter how rural or ex-urban or whatever, is going to be able to hide from this. Those people are thinking of the

virus partly because of Donald Trump, partly because of their own experience, is something that happens to older people and something that is just like the flu. And I think that has stuck with a lot of people. And if you think that, then when you see Trump on TV saying, yeah, we're sending the ventilators, we're sending this, we're doing this, you think, okay, well, he's actually, yeah, I don't like him. I don't think he's a great president. I haven't thought he's a great president, but he's actually handling this better than I thought. That's probably what happens if you're one of those people who's not paying much attention to the news but i do think some of this has to do with as you pointed out trump's communication

strategy which clearly seems to be working so far um there was a new york times story yesterday that said trump's daily briefings have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news which is roughly the viewership of the Bachelor season finale. And it was a pretty shitty season finale. I'm glad you could shoehorn that take in to our pandemic pod. I had to insert some whiteness there. We should very clearly note that

while Trump's public health response has been an epic disaster, his public relations response has been thus far quite successful. Now, a couple of things that are worth noting, which is there is no communication strategy that solves the problem of a pandemic and a global recession. I remember in 2010, Obama's approval ratings had come back to had fallen. Now they had fallen to a level that Donald Trump would sell two of his children for, but they had fallen. And there was a lot of hand wringing in Washington about, you know, about Obama's, you know, what had happened, right. And so the New York Times, I think, was writing a story about Obama's economic message. Like, why, like, what, like, what had happened, right? And so the New York Times, I think, was writing a story about Obama's economic message. Like, what is he not saying? Or like, why isn't he selling the economy

better? And I remember our friend David Axelrod saying, you can't spin double-digit unemployment, right? Like, the reality, communications and messaging is incredibly important to political success, but it happens on the margins compared to the driving force of reality and what people feel in their daily lives. And so, you know, the question is going to, if this continues on the trajectory that it's on, no amount of press conferences, no amount of tweets are going to be able to convince people that it is going well. And we are not yet at that point. We'll see where we are in a few weeks. And I think the question for Democrats is how do we think about successfully communicating in this environment? Yeah. And there is some evidence that, you know, views of this are

changing a bit. Navigator Research is doing a daily tracking poll, and they found in today's poll, more Americans now believe that Trump is not doing enough in his response to the crisis than getting it right. And there's a nine point swing from earlier this week. And his approval in handling the crisis is down four from their earlier poll. So you may be starting to see some movement. To your question about what Democrats should do, there was a very effective ad release this week from Unite the Country, which is a super PAC supporting Joe Biden. So let's take a listen to that. Crisis comes to every presidency. We don't blame them for that. What matters is how they handle it. Donald Trump didn't create the coronavirus,

but he is the one who called hoax, who eliminated the pandemic response team, and who let the virus spread unchecked across America. Crisis comes to every president. This one failed. Unite the countries responsible for the content of this advertising. So yeah, so what do you think of that ad, and what what do you think sort of the best messages from Democrats in general? Well, I think I think that is an excellent ad.

And, you know, there is a tendency whenever Trump or the Republicans do well to yell at the Democrats for why they aren't doing better. And let's stipulate that we can as a party, we can always have a tighter message. We can deliver it better. There can be more ads, et cetera. But I think we have to have a fair-minded conversation about this, which is it is impossible to compete with a president with a bully pulpit in the middle of a national crisis. That's always been true. That's true before Trump. It's especially true in a Trump

media environment that is fueled by Facebook and cable news. But it was always been true. And yes, Democrats could do somewhat better. But look, Biden has been out there. He even brought out the biggest gut in the arsenal, which is a op-ed on crooked.com. But he did, he's been, he's been, you know, he's been blanketing the airwaves, right? And ultimately, the problem we Democrats have is what viewers are seeing is Trump and then Democratic governors, like particularly Cuomo and Newsom,

who are in a stylistic and substantive contrast to Trump are devastating to him, but they're not making an argument against him because they know he's a lunatic who will stop sending ventilators to their state if they criticize them. So they're often praising Trump. So they see Trump praising himself, they see Democrats praising Trump. And I do not think Cuomo and Newsom should change their approach. Like, we just have to get through it. And the way I think, and you know, and as we point out, there are ads, we always yell about ads, but the Biden Super PAC has ads. Biden, his campaign has some digital videos.

Pacronym has ads. Priorities has ads. American Bridge. There are ads out there. The Democratic Super PAC community is stepping up, which is very impressive actually in a time where fundraising has frozen. So as people who yell about this all the time, we should give credit. And if there are people listening who have money and want to contribute to the effort, those groups are groups that I just mentioned who are the ones who are going to lead the charge here. And if you can support them, that's great. I think the way to think about this is we are not going to persuade

voters to definitely vote against Trump right now. But what we can do is inform them of information that serve as valuable data points and create a context for that decision later. And so we are not going to persuade voters to decide to definitely not vote for Trump now among our persuadable voter universe. Trump now among our persuadable voter universe. But we can use this moment of hyper engaged media consumption to inform them about information that will create a context for them to decide to vote against Trump in the fall. And in that sense, like one of the arguments about Trump is the cost of his chaotic leadership. And here we are seeing that cost in lives and deaths and jobs, right? That was a much harder argument to make when the economy was roaring and things seemed

to be stable in this country. So I think the way to measure success for Democrats is not what is Trump's approval right now? What is the approval of his handing on the coronavirus? Because that's ultimately not going to matter. We should be looking at in polling, what do people know the key pieces of evidence that he fucked this up, that he fired the Global Pandemic Response Unit, that he caught funding for CDC, that he opposed expanding and expediting testing, that he is ignoring- Downplayed the severity of the crisis.

Downplayed the severity of the crisis and led the consequences of that. And so, like, are people learning that information? Are Democrats successfully informing voters of those things? And that will make it easier to make the case in the fall. And so this is not a moment to win the election. This is a moment to inform people of very valuable information on a life or death situation. very valuable information on a life or death situation. And remember, before this crisis happened,

we were talking about how there's plenty of research out there from a lot of groups that we knew on the Democratic side that basically came to the conclusion that the most effective argument against Trump is that he's been an ineffective president, that he just hasn't gotten the job done. He hasn't fixed healthcare costs. He hasn't fixed the wage problem. He just hasn't done any of the things that he came to office saying he would do. And he hasn't fixed any of the big problems in the country. And that's

especially effective among former Trump voters, independents, swing voters. And now with this crisis, we have the most immediate, urgent example of him being an effective president. And I think that's one of the reasons why that Unite the Country ad that we just played was so powerful, because it starts by saying Trump didn't cause the coronavirus. Trump didn't create the coronavirus. So it's like we're not blaming him for the entire thing. What we're blaming him for is the response which has been like criminally negligent woefully inadequate causing a lot of pain a lot of suffering death job loss like and so i think by almost giving him that at the beginning of that ad like you know trump trump didn't uh trump didn't cause the virus but trump's response to it has been fucking abysmal. That to me is it fits with

what we already knew people think about Trump, which is I just don't know if he's getting the job done, because like you said, his leadership is too chaotic. He's tweeting all the time. He's not he's he's only cares about himself and his own political future. And he's always getting in fights with people and he makes everything political and he's just not fixing the problems at hand. We know people already thought that about Trump. And now we have to make sure people understand that his response to this crisis is the perfect example of that. That's right, that there is a cost to the chaos, right? And here's what the cost is. And I think it is incredibly important. I said one other ad that I think is worth citing is Packernim has this very effective, I think, digital ad that uses Tucker Carlson criticizing Trump's response. dismiss even nonpartisan media figures as people who are inherently anti-Trump. But when you have Tucker Carlson, Trump's favorite white nationalist, criticizing him,

that can be very compelling. Back when we were allowed to congregate with people and we did live shows, every time we would get a question, it's like, I'm going to Thanksgiving. What do I say to my Trump-loving uncle? And that's a very hard thing. But if this acronym ad with Tucker Carlson showing Tucker Carlson criticized Trump is the sort of thing that can be persuasive to people who are skeptical of Biden or Democrats, but open to Trump, right? Even Tucker Carlson says he did a shitty job. That's right. Okay. Well, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. I'm now joined by the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. Governor Whitmer,

thanks for hopping on Zoom with me. Yeah, happy to be here. Well, Governor, I wanted to start by getting an update of what is happening on the ground in Michigan as you're dealing with the coronavirus. So in Michigan, we are, I think, you know, just behind New York in terms of seeing this exponential rise in cases. We went from zero cases just over two weeks ago to now we have 2,800, over 2,860 deaths. We've got hospitals that are already at capacity, and we know we're still on the upward trajectory. We have too few masks, too few gloves, gowns, all of the PPE that everyone's looking for. But we're really at a critical stage very quickly. And I know we're a hotspot. How have your interactions with the Trump administration been about getting

the necessary resources and supplies you need? Well, you know, early on, we had a meeting with all of the governors and the president and the vice president. And the message was, you know, the national stockpile is not equipped to handle what we have coming and you should start working on your own. And I think that was the moment for me that it really became how clear and how serious this was and how we had to mobilize outside of the federal government to try to start getting what we need. We've been contracting, and even in some of those contracts, they've been upended because they've been redirected to the federal government. So to say it's frustrating is putting it lightly. It's scary because people are fighting for their lives right now. And we have not given, as a nation, the seriousness and the planning that should have gone into this situation.

And now all the states are behind the eight ball, and you see governors across the country stepping up to lead and to be the aggressive policymakers that really should be a national strategy coming out of Washington. Do you think it's possible for Michigan and the rest of the country to get the ventilators and equipment it needs without the president more forcefully invoking the Defense Production Act? I don't. And it pains me to say that, because there are going to be a lot of people in states, in every state in this nation, who are going to require a ventilator and won't get one. And that's just simply a part of the math that we have right now as a country. If the president decides to use the Defense Production Act and start really ramping up on ventilators, it's still going to be too late for many,

but we can meet the needs of a lot of people, but it has to get started. And that's why I think the situation is so desperate. We're looking for old ventilators that have been retired and trying to, you know, clean them up and to fix parts so that we can get them back into production. clean them up and to fix parts that we can get them back into production. I mean, even with that, we are going to be far, far under, you know, unable to meet the needs of the people that are going to need them. Are there other specific things other than the Defense Production Act that you'd call,

you're calling on the administration to do to help the people in Michigan and around the country? Well, we need a national strategy. This patchwork of states having policies, depending on who the governor is, creates a very porous situation, which will prolong the time that the pandemic is ravaging our country. It'll mean more people will die. It'll mean a longer, hard time on our economy. And that's why I really think that a national strategy at using all of the powers of the federal government to meet the needs of people in every state is absolutely essential to get through this. And so I, you know, I take it that you would not be on board with the president, relaxing the standards and reopening the economy,

quote unquote, reopening the economy in at least parts of the country by Easter? I think part of the reason that we have the spread that we do as a state, but also as a country is because there have been inconsistent messages coming out of the federal government for months, questioning whether or not this was a real serious issue that we're confronting, making light of it, hyperbole and half-truths. And so now people don't take this with the seriousness that they must. The thought that we could be all back to normal and just flip the switch and everything will be as we knew it is not supported by the science. And that's why,

as people are asking me, is that real? I say, I'm going to take my advice from the epidemiologists and the scientists that have informed every decision I've made, because we don't want to emulate other countries that just went right back to life as normal and saw another spike. It just endangers too many people and it prolongs the pain on our economy. So I'm going to take my advice and I'm going to make my decisions based on the best scientists out there, not on

the political remarks of anyone else. Do you have a sense of the timeline that you're looking at in Michigan in terms of your stay at home order? So it is effective through April 13th. I know that there's a possibility I might have to lengthen it. I'm going to make those decisions as we get closer, as we have more data. One of the fundamental problems I think we're going to have as a country in determining when we've hit the apex and when we're leveling off and when we can start to think about ramping some things back up in the economy is testing. We have to be able to do robust testing so that we know who has had it, who has it needs to be isolated. So we have data to make informed decisions. We do not have enough tests right now. We do not have

enough swabs to conduct those tests right now. We do not have enough of the reagents to preserve the swabs so that we can do those tests. And so each of these pieces is really critical to our ability to determine how long a stay-at-home order should last, when we can safely start to go, you know, rev up our economy again, when it's okay to send our kids back to school. So we need data, and it's all driven by those tests. And school. So we need data, and it's all driven by those tests. And that's what we really need more than anything right now from the federal government. And are you getting any message on when you might see more tests and more swabs and more reagent? Well, there's a lot more. There are companies that have come online with tests that

have been validated and can be used. That's good news. But if we don't have the swabs to do them, it doesn't do me a whole lot of good. And so I've asked for 200,000 swabs from the national stockpile. I was until yesterday when I finally got on the phone with the vice president that I got acknowledgement that the request has been received. I still don't know if it'll be granted and how much of it will be coming and when, but that's a continual source of stress in the system. I mean, obvious as we sit here stopping the spread of the virus and dealing with those affected is most important, but this entire experience is having a dramatic impact on the economy. And I wanted to get your reaction to the stimulus bill or the economic rescue package that passed the Senate last night and is passing the House today. Is it going to be

enough to help the people of Michigan in the coming months? And what would you like to see in a future piece of legislation? Well, I think that we have to be very mindful. There are a lot of people that are out of work. There are a lot of small businesses that are going to struggle. There are a lot of children who aren't in school getting the education that they need. We are going to have incredible needs. And as states, we can't run deficits. We have to have balanced budgets. And so the financial needs of our states to just provide the basics and to help people in their recovery are going to be astronomical. And that's where I think the nation's governors, Republican and Democratic

alike, are working together to make sure that the feds understand how immense this is going to be and how important this is as we even think about next steps beyond the current crisis we're confronting. Another looming issue, which is addressed somewhat in the bill, but more work seems to be done, is how you plan for and administer elections in the middle of a pandemic, particularly if this is still going on in November. How are you thinking about that? And is Michigan prepared to move to vote by mail in time for the election? Well, in 2018, we swept all of the executive offices. So we've got a fantastic Secretary of State who is an incredible advocate for vote at home. This is something that I think now more than ever is incredibly important. And so we are working

together to fashion a strategy to ensure that our election can be conducted, that everyone will have an opportunity to vote, that it is secure, and that it is on time. Because I think that if this country can go through a civil war and have an election, we can get through this and have one and count on it and know that it is valid and that we don't deviate from these core principles of our democracy. Governor, before I let you go, I just want to ask one final question, because I know you have a lot on your plate today. What would your message be to the people of Michigan and around the country as they are dealing with competing messages about the

severity and danger of this virus and are afraid for their health and their financial and economic well-being? Well, it's a hard time. We've been through tough times. And what we know is that tough times don't last, but tough people do. We're up to this challenge, but every single one of us has to do our part. Even in the darkest days, there are sources of inspiration. If everyone does their part, if you stay informed and you stay home, we are going to get through this and we'll minimize how many people get sick because of it and how long this impacts our economy. We got this. We have got one another. We've got to all do our part to get through it. Governor Whitmer, thank you so much. Good luck with everything you're doing.

And please stay safe out there. Thanks, Dan. You too. Thanks to Governor Whitmer for joining us today. And Dan, it was great talking to you for an hour here in social isolation. And have a good weekend at home. And we'll talk to you guys on Monday.

Yeah, everyone stay safe out there. Bye, guys. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricut Media. The executive 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 Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,

Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.