Pod Save America - “He did it. Not guilty.”

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Trump is acquitted despite a bipartisan majority voting to convict and a few last-minute witness surprises, Republicans can’t quit Trumpism, and Democrats look to pass reforms that would save democracy. Then Heather McGhee talks to Jon Lovett about her new book The Sum of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail].

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, we'll talk about a few of the last minute surprises in Trump's second impeachment trial and the coming battle over voting rights and democracy reform. Then Heather McGee is here to talk to Lovett about her new book on how racism costs us all. But first, Lovett, I heard the show was horrible this weekend. Convince me otherwise. I can't believe Emily said that. No, it was a great episode, per usual.

Akilah was very funny in the monologue, talked to Dr. Atul Gawande about the vaccine rollout, and then we played a dating game with Pallavi, one of our writers, in which he went on six speed dates, and it was very silly and very fun. Yeah, I think that must be the first podcast ever that had Atul Gawande and a dating game

on the same episode. Yeah, and he was pretty surprised to be on one of the dates. Also, don't miss America Dissected this week. Abdul talks with the show's resident virologist, Dr. Angela Rasmussen,

all about the COVID variants, the latest vaccine news, and where we go from here. Be sure to check it out. All right, let's get to the news. Trump's acquittal had been expected since the trial began, but the overwhelming majority who voted to convict him represents the largest bipartisan impeachment in history. All 50 Democrats and seven Republicans found the former president guilty of inciting a violent insurrection, while 43 Republicans chose to protect the man

who left them to die at the hands of an armed mob of Trump supporters. Just before the vote on Saturday, there was one last surprise. The House impeachment managers announced they wanted witness testimony from Republican Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Butler, who confirmed in a statement late Friday night a conversation she heard about between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump

during the attack on the Capitol. Let's play a clip. He said, well, Kevin, these aren't my people. You know, these are Antifa. And Kevin responded and said, no, they're're your people you need to call them off and the president's response to kevin to me was chilling he said well kevin i guess they're just more upset about the election uh you know fast than you are wow now there's there's another report that the next thing that mccarthy said was who the fuck do you think you're talking to don't know if I believe that second don't know if I believe that that was a garble of which color starburst do you want now sir I think was what he actually what he said yes so Tommy the

house managers then asked for a vote to allow witnesses, which they won 55-45. Two hours later, they made a deal with Trump's lawyers and the Republicans to instead enter Butler's statement into the record rather than deposing her or calling other witnesses. What happened? What happened? Good question. So what it sounds like from all the reports since this went down was that the impeachment managers were genuinely torn about this question about whether or not to call witnesses. Obviously, people around Trump that day on January 6th could have offered clarity into his actions and his mindset. But the Democrats were worried about their ability to call witnesses in a timely manner, their ability to get, you know, former White House aides to actually testify or Pence to testify because they point out that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel,

his request for testimony is still being litigated for impeachment 1.0. So as the trial went on, there were some Republican senators, specifically Mitt Romney and Bill Cassidy, who expressed interest in Trump's mindset. They got into this question of his intent on the day of the attack, especially when it came to Mike Pence's safety. And then on Friday night, CNN reports the Jamie Herrera-Butler conversation that we just played for everybody. And that gave the impeachment managers a window into or a tactic for how to get some testimony that would seem to speak to Trump's mindset that day in a way that would be easier than, say, trying to subpoena someone who worked at the White House. So they basically made this call to go ahead and seek witnesses about five

minutes before they announced it publicly before the Senate chamber. I think it surprised a lot of Democrats. It surprised Trump's very professional lawyers, caused them to lose their respective minds, and it sort of threw the place into chaos. And I guess, you know, as these negotiations ensued after several Republicans and most of the Democrats, I think all the Democrats voted in favor of witnesses, Chris Coons, Senator from Delaware, went and told the impeachment managers that getting more witness testimony might actually cause them to lose Republican votes because everybody had basically made up their mind. They'd heard enough. They wanted to go home

and they had Valentine's Day reservations because that's very important. So the net effect was to raise everybody's expectations that this trial was going to broaden, that we were going to hear from, you know, maybe one, maybe two, maybe infinite witnesses. And then we were all quickly deflated when the outcome was just reading this statement into the record. And then the Senate voted a few hours later to acquit President Trump. Lovett, what did you think of the decision? Because take what Tommy said about sort of the time it would have required to depose a whole bunch of witnesses, as well as the fact that some of those witnesses may have been hostile to the prosecutor's case. Right. If you if you subpoena Kevin McCarthy and Kevin McCarthy's like, no, I never said that. Or Kevin McCarthy. I remember it differently. I just remember it differently. Or as, you know, Representative Stacey Plaskett has pointed out, like we're still in court over Don McGahn's subpoena back in the first impeachment

a year ago. We still haven't gotten done. So a whole bunch of witnesses could take some time. But you got Herrera Butler saying she's a friendly witness. She remembers the conversation. You got Herrera Butler saying she's a friendly witness. She remembers the conversation. Why not just try to depose Herrera Butler, get a video of her, play that video, which would have been powerful TV. Why not do that? What did you think of the whole decision? Democrats look bad toward no end whatsoever. The day ended as it began with no witnesses. Like that's how the vote, in the morning there was going to be a vote and there was going to be an acquittal. We didn't know exactly who would vote to, which Republicans would vote to convict or not, but that was basically written. McConnell comes out and says he's going to vote to acquit. And then all of a sudden there's this sudden emergence of the idea of witnesses. You know, Brian Boitler, editor-in-chief of Crooked, is on the edge of his fucking seat, thrilled to high heaven. He can't believe it. It's happening, his dream.

And then within a few minutes... I was excited. It's Saturday morning. I wake up at 7 a.m. I'm sitting in bed. I turn the TV on. We got witnesses. Oh'm sitting in bed. I turn the TV on. All of a sudden, we got witnesses. Oh, look, this is exciting. And, you know, one thing that I found striking during the impeachment week, this impeachment week, was that even when we know what the future is, we're really bad at predicting the future. Like, when Trump loses the election, we say we're worried he's going to contest the results. We're worried he's not going to accept it. He then doesn't accept it, but obviously it's still shocking in how it unfolds. We know that we're heading towards an acquittal and we know that there's not going to be witnesses during the trial. And yet the trial itself is in many ways more riveting than we expected.

The evidence is more chilling. The facts are more persuasive. The American people in poll after poll becomes even more convinced that Trump should be convicted and banned from seeking office in the future. So what I thought when I saw this debate unfolding about witnesses is, OK, it's written. We know an acquittal is likely. And yet even that likely outcome, we don't know what it would look like if it unfolded. And I was very frustrated to see the idea of witnesses pop up and then be immediately beaten back into a tidy hole.

Because even if ultimately we land at the same vote totals, even if we lose a vote of a Republican, we do not know what it would have looked like to have witnesses. Now, is there a possibility that weeks from now, depositions are ongoing, impeachment keeps coming up, it slows something down, Republicans use it as an excuse to delay confirmation or to delay a vote on legislation Democrats view as a priority. And then everybody's hand wringing about this impeachment thing dragging out. Of course, I don't think it was like a cut and dry, easy strategic decision. But I think the way it unfolded was sort of the worst of both worlds because Democrats looked incredibly weak and the day ended as it began. I think that the House managers made an

incredibly effective case. They made a very strong argument. They got seven Republican senators to convict. I think this in the in the grand scheme of things, this was a minor error. But I do think it was an error. Yeah, because like like they were first of all, they were going to get a conviction, right? They were going to get 17 senators. Mitch McConnell, before the witness thing even began, puts out a statement saying, you know, I'm voting to acquit based on an imaginary constitutional issue that we'll talk about in a second. the goal should be to make the most persuasive case possible to the public without dragging the trial on so long that you put basically unemployment benefits at risk by not passing COVID relief by mid-March, which is when unemployment benefits expire. So there is a clock ticking. But would deposing like one friendly Republican witness delay COVID relief past mid-March, especially when this week the Senate's in recess, the House is in recess.

And I'd say, oh, well, the Republicans would call 100 witnesses. Republicans couldn't call 100 witnesses because you need 51 votes to do that. So I'm not sure. I don't understand why they just didn't say to the Republicans, all right, we get one witness, you get one witness, and then that's it. It's one and one and we're moving on. And then if Republicans want to vote that down or Republicans want to delay the trial for that, then take that to the public and say the Republicans are delaying the trial for 200 in favor of witnesses. And everyone's like, oh, he's got some he's hatching some scheme to drag this out for months. But there weren't going to be 51 votes to drag this out for months. We don't actually know what there would have been, like what the compromise for witnesses would have been. There was a possibility that they actually, you know, step back from the trial and then go into a period of deposition. And the trial pops

up later after COVID relief. There's like a number of different ways it could have gone that we'll never know because within a few hours, the witness, the witness dream was dead. Tommy, should the Democratic Party be canceled for this? I mean, I felt like it was one of those situations where everyone was mad online and everybody was right. Like if your position is why do impeachment without calling witnesses and kind of half-ass it, I hear you. If your view is that what voters really care about is moving forward with the Biden agenda and COVID relief and money for vaccinations, I totally agree with you there. I think what the House impeachment managers did here was they created an expectations management problem, and they did it at a moment when everyone was paying attention to this trial because suddenly we seem to have gone off script and there was a hope that something revelatory was going to break.

Maybe some big change would occur, and that obviously didn't happen. And to let everyone down, did it? Did it change the ultimate outcome? Would a bunch of Republicans have voted to impeach him? I don't think so. In part because, as you mentioned earlier, Mitch McConnell sent them a strong signal that they could not vote their conscience, right? I mean, he basically just said, I don't care. I'm going to give you a pass on this. And so we ended up with seven instead of what we needed. But it was an annoying moment. It shouldn't take away from the very good job that the impeachment managers did generally.

In fairness to the managers, it's a rough job as prosecutors when a third of the jurors are afraid of the defendant and another third is afraid of the trial. You know, that's a tough draw. And a couple of them are like in the room with the defense lawyers giving them tips. That's also tricky. Most of those tips said Van Der Veen, stop yelling. You utter lunatic. I'd say, though, I don't know if I look if I had

a slip and fall and I was faking it, I'd go with him. I'd go with him. He's very kid conviction up there. Yeah, those eyebrows. I will say I will say, you know, Brian Boitler made the point to me. He's like, forget about the politics of all this. Like, I wanted witnesses because I think I want to know and I think the American people deserve to to further investigate the attack on the Capitol. Republicans like Lindsey Graham said they support such a commission, although that was like a flag for me because I'm like, do we think that a commission can be worthwhile if the Republicans who chose to acquit Trump are on the commission? Well, look, there's a. No. Well, you know, the rhetoric has been really interesting because there's been this elision between the two overlapping, the two overlapping emergencies, right? When Nancy Pelosi talks about a commission, she says, we need to get to the bottom of the security lapses that took place on Capitol Hill, and we need to get to the bottom of the security lapses that took place on Capitol Hill. And we need to get to the bottom of the president's complicity and what unfolded.

Graham just does the first part. And we kind of have examples from the past couple of years that go in both directions. I think like some of the reports out of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I think, are instructive in that they were actually more bipartisan than you would expect in terms of the conclusions they drew about the harm Donald Trump did. But then Democratic members of the committee would go to the podium and describe the results faithfully. And people like Marco Rubio would go to the podium and describe them dishonestly as if Donald Trump wasn't found to have been involved in certain ways. So my fear is there is going to be bipartisan agreement around security lapses.

There will not be enough bipartisan agreement on Trump's complicity. And then you end up with a report that focuses entirely on like building walls around the U.S. Capitol and nothing on the fucking coup that the president led from the White House. Yeah, it's like there's basic questions that should be answered about like, why was there more security? What took so long with the National Guard? Like, how are we this vulnerable 20 years after 9-11? But is this commission going to subpoena former White House staffers who watched Trump that day and understood his mindset so we can finally learn that information?

It doesn't seem like that's the case. We also know that like he's paid no price to date for his lie. The Republican Party was often complicit in the big lie that led everyone to be there. So yeah, I don't have a lot of faith in this 9-11 style commission solving any of these problems or answering the much more important questions about disinformation and lies that made the attack possible. Yeah, looking forward to candidates in 2022 and 2024 on the Republican side being asked what they think of the report and them saying, what report? What attack? It was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax already, which is what Ron Johnson's already saying today. What attack? Ron Johnson's like

armed insurrection. What are you talking about? I didn't know there were any guns. It seems like they were just pushing people. And by the way, like there's some there's also a little bit of collective amnesia around the 9-11 commission and the way in which the Bush administration was resistant to cooperating with the commission, whether or not even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be put under oath when they talked to the commission behind closed doors. So that was not a perfect process. And the 9-11 commission did not have a tweet from George W. Bush from September 10th saying, watch the skies tomorrow. It's going to be fucking wild. I'm sorry. It's like. That is true. That is a fair point.

Too glib. Too glib. Let's talk about the seven Republicans who voted to convict. Most people thought that the only five Republicans in play were Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania. Not only did all of them find Trump guilty, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and North Carolina Senator Richard Burr voted to convict as well. All right, guys, more surprised that we got seven Republicans or that we lost 43? Tommy. Got seven. Yeah. Love it. Got seven. Look, you know, some key retirements made it easier for a couple of Republicans to vote for conviction. And Cassidy follows an ancient Senate rule called the wackadoo rule. It's kind of an odd bird, you know, and occasionally you get the odd birds. it, you really do. Two are retiring. That's Toomey and Burr are retiring. Cassidy's been rumored to potentially retire. But like, except for Murkowski, none of these people are facing voters until either four years from now or six years from now. Yeah. So we had so we had basically seven Republicans who actually I actually think it was it was fairly like vote whether they're

facing retirement or not. I think it was a fairly politically courageous thing to do in that party, considering the immediate censure of all of these Republicans from their state Republican party. Yeah. And then you also have people like Rob Portman is retiring too. And that fucking guy didn't decide to vote to convict. He's not facing voters again. He still acted the way that he's supposed to be like a mainstream Republican. Yeah, he's a coward. I mean, yeah, but like Bill Cassidy is rebuked by the Louisiana Republican Party. The party that very recently brought us David Duke is the one rebuking him. So, you know, I would take that as a badge of honor. So Mitch McConnell has been on something of a publicity tour after announcing his vote to acquit even before the witnesses and closing

arguments. He tore into Trump in a speech on the Senate floor saying that he was, quote, practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. Here's a clip. The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. No. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Now even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in Even as the mob carrying Trump banners, beating cops, and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his own vice president. Suddenly, very familiar with tweets that the president sent after four years

uh i will say the speech works better when read it really it really does i was just gonna say like we we talk about mitch mcconnell so often on this podcast don't hear his voice that often uh yeah you get a speech like that there's a reason oh yeah he's a real he's a better behind the scenes sort of guy so mitch goes on to say that trump isn't constitutionally eligible for impeachment and later added in a wall street journal op-ed that quote this selective disregard for rules and norms is a civic disease that is spreading through the political left. Tommy, what's he up to here, aside from being a dick? I love that. Yeah. Yeah. He's basically if the glove don't fit either way, I don't give a shit was my my summary of the McClellan. Thank you. That was good. Thank you

for that, Johnny Cocker. So. All right. Remember, this is the guy that stole a Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama and then jammed one through at the end of Trump's term. So his complaints about norms and institutions are probably not credible. I thought Jamie Raskin made a very compelling argument that McConnell is wrong about the constitutionality question. Part of that argument is rooted in evidence from history of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers, British history. Part of it is just logic. Why would you set up a system where the president of the United States gets a free pass for criminality in the last month of

his term? That makes no sense. But to me, I mean, you kind of you joked about the tweets. I mean, to me, this this was just the impeachment version of the I didn't see the tweets excuse. It gave Republicans a way to vote against impeachment without engaging in the substance of what Trump did. And it was just, you know, like it's cowardice disguised as principle. And, you know, I saw Dan making the case that McConnell was signaling to corporate donors that they can now give to Republicans again. Right. And maybe it was about that.

But what I don't really understand and what drives me crazy about McConnell is I sincerely believe that McConnell doesn't like Trump and that he wants the party to move on from him. But McConnell understands raw power politics better than almost anyone. And he had a chance here to prevent Trump from running again. He had the chance to rid the Republican Party of this guy. But instead, he constructed the impeachment hearings in a way that created this constitutional question and gave his party and himself a way out. And then he voted against conviction.

And now he's trying to say that the judicial system can deal with Trump and that there might be civil litigation or the courts, the courts that he packed with like 32-year-old unqualified MAGA lunatics. That's the solution he has for us. So I find myself very confused by how this works for McConnell other than just kind of like getting along to the next day and trying to just dispense with this. Love it. What do you think of the point Tommy raises there? Because I think I have one answer, but I want to hear what you have to say first about what McConnell's up to and like what what are the politics driving this?

Yeah. So first of all, I will say, like, I think our our bona fides on being anti McConnell are well established. Before I say, you know, we started a fund called Get Mitch or Die Trying. It succeeded. I feel very good about that. We got a Mitch Mitch apologist here. Here we go. I will say I think he's given the two best speeches of his life were the speech before the certification and the speech he gave about impeachment. It is the best possible argument a Republican can make to vote for acquittal while recognizing the harm that Donald Trump did. It's a bullshit argument on the merits of the Constitution to the points Tommy made. A lot of people are saying that McConnell in the speech says, oh, that, you know, there is a justice system. He basically says there's a justice

system. The impeachment is limited, but the justice system can apply. But he also says earlier in the speech, he does not believe necessarily that what Trump did rises to the level of criminal incitement. So he's sort of passing the buck, not just, he's passing the buck more fully than I think even people are recognizing in the speech. It seems like what he wanted to do is get credit for telling the truth about the insurrection without causing the Republican Party to ramify into a Trump Party and a Republican rump. There is a risk of that, whether in actual forming of a third party or in just the kind of base turning completely against what were once mainstream Republicans. And it seems to me he is more afraid of that than he is about the risk of Donald Trump

becoming the nominee and taking the party back in four years. We will see how that plays out. He's putting a lot of faith in the justice system outside of the incitement question to take care of Donald Trump for him. I think this is about 2022, even before it's about 2024. And I think it's not it's I think Dan's partially right that it is about getting back corporate donations, but I think it's about more than that. So McConnell not only gives this speech, he writes this op ed in The Wall Street Journal. He gives an interview to the journal and an interview to Politico about his strategy. Like he's very

explicit on this. He says he wants to get involved in primaries in 2022. There's a section at the bottom of the Wall Street Journal story that says, inside Mr. McConnell's orbit, strategists calculate that radical elements inside the party can be weeded out and separated from what they see as a larger group that has unwittingly fallen victim to a misinformation about the 2020 election. They are still riding the tiger. Mitch McConnell wants Trump voters in 2022, but he doesn't want Trump candidates. So a QAnon candidate who wins a Senate primary in Pennsylvania might scare off the suburban voters in Philly and Pittsburgh that they need in November, but they want the QAnon voters to show up in November. They just don't want the crazy

candidates because they might lose, but they want the voters. It's also wishful thinking, right? The idea that, oh, there is a conservative majority in America, and then there's this fringe group of Trump Q radicals, just not what the facts bear out. The majority of Republicans don't accept legitimacy election. They're not they're they, you know, they're not bamboozled by Trump and but for Trump eager to support McConnell's deregulation, low corporate tax agenda. That's just not what's on the table. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton today introduced a proposed raising the minimum wage and tying it to, you know, doing backflips to make the connection, tying it to undocumented immigrants. There is a core of the base that is not for the Paul Ryan agenda. And Republicans everywhere are desperately trying to figure out how to manage this majority of their party that is much more interested in grievance politics and anti-democratic politics than anything else. And McConnell basically admits

too, he said to the Journal, my goal is in every way possible to have nominees representing the Republican Party who can win in November. Some of them may be people the former president likes. Some of them may not be. The only thing I care about is electability. I mean, he's on as always. McConnell is honest about his cynicism and what his game is, which is power. All he wants is for Republicans to win here. And, you know, Cornyn sort of gave away the game to like wherever side you fall on.

Is it still Trump's party or not? Did you convict him or not? He said, you know, we'll we'll focus on what the Biden agenda looks like. That will create some cohesion. They're going to now unify by attacking everything Democrats do, because that's the only way they can come together as a party. Much like for Democrats, a lot of the fishers in the party were sort of set aside because we were all focused on Trump. They're going to now try to do the same thing about Biden and try to sort of, you know, minimize these fissures by focusing on Biden. Yeah, look, I mean, I have no doubt that 2022 is going to be about, you know, Hunter Biden leading the Antifa caravan in Guatemala, right, or whatever the fuck they talk about. But I think that there's a good chance that Trump consumes this so-called moderate

wing of the Republican Party before they even get to that point. I think McConnell has been playing footsie with Trump for years, and he continues to approach him in a way that's weak. And I just I don't think you can win that way. Tommy, do you think that the second impeachment trial has weakened or strengthened Trump's standing with Republican voters? I think he's like almost exactly the same, right? I mean, there was a poll out this morning. He is still the overwhelming favorite in the 2024 primary. Fifty nine percent of Republican voters say they want him to play a major role in the party going forward.

I think 53 percent of those voters say they want him to be the nominee in 2024. I think the question is what happens next, right? So if Republicans who supported impeachment or were opposed to the effort to overturn the election are systematically primaried and picked off, Trump will end up looking much stronger. If Fox News decides that their shows have to be just nonstop Trump propaganda for the next four years because that's the only way they can not lose viewers to OAN and Newsmax. He will stay strong. I just think the Republican Party has the same collective action problem. The base loves Trump. The anti-Trump voices are too fractured and disorganized and too weak to offer

some sort of meaningful alternative. And so this McConnell split the baby approach of reading Trump the riot act, but voting against impeachment. I just I think it's more of the same. Love it. What do you think? I will note that the poll that Tommy just mentioned where he said 59 percent of Republicans say they want Trump to play a major role going forward. It's up 18 percent from a January 7th poll that they did and nine points from a January 25th poll. So, of course, the first. But I just make the point on that. Like, I think what we see constantly is Trump does something bad, like lead a violent insurrection

and people forget about it. I don't think blaming impeachment for that is quite fair, which is sort of why I said it's the same. Oh, I don't think I don't blame impeachment at all. I was going to say that's the exact dynamic that you just mentioned.

Like insurrection happens, the most horrible thing ever. Everyone's like a Republican. It's like, OK, maybe we'll back off, back off. You give it a few weeks and they're right back. And they're like, ah, but cancel culture, right? You know, they died, but cancel culture. They're right back there. Love it. What do you think? There are these studies that show that

when there's a gun in the room with you, you tend to be more violent. That guns, your finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger pulls your finger, that like the idea of invoking something makes it more likely. Trump is like now a gun on the mantle for the Republican Party. He is in their minds. They see the way his politics have worked. Even when people like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity are not outwardly discussing their politics as it relates to Trump. It fully reflects a Trump worldview and a nationalist worldview that has fully infected

all of the fringe content that tens of millions of Americans consume. And that is the underlying condition that will shape 2022 primaries, that will shape the 2024 primary. So at a certain point, it stops really even being about Trump. He showed them a path, and they took it, and they don't see another, right? We're about to talk about it. They don't see their future in building a multi-ethnic coalition of working people. They see it in competing for an ever-shrinking white minority to retain power in every way they can, with power as the only thing they care about. How Trump figures into that depends a lot on him, on what he does over the next two years in a world where he can't tweet every day. It depends on where he intercedes and

where he doesn't. But in a lot of ways, the die is cast. The Republican Party is a nationalist, revanchist party. And anyone trying to fight that is desperately trying to figure out how to win with that majority while still pursuing policies that fall outside of it. I thought the most telling thing was there's a story in the Philly Inquirer about Toomey and the state Republicans censoring Pat Toomey. And one of the county chairs said, we did not send him there to do the right thing. We sent him there to represent us. And then another state party chair at the end of the story says, he has been conservative, but we just never really felt that he was behind the president, which I think says all you need to know about the Republican

Party. Like, I do not think you can have a future in national Republican politics, especially presidential politics, if you openly criticize Donald Trump at this point. I don't. What do you guys think? I mean, 59 percent of Republicans support someone named Trump in the primary. 53% Don, 6% Don Jr. Like, that's not a good sign for anybody else in the Republican Party. Get those people help. Get that 6% help. have pushed him out of politics forever because Trump is going to freeze the 2024 field and it's going to be Trump and then a bunch of mini Trumps hoping that he Trump drops out. And so someone might jump in to that presidential race and with a message about moving on from him. But I think that message is severely weakened by allowing Trump to claim that the election was stolen from him. You want to be able to say he lost. He's a loser. We need someone who can win. Instead,

it's all about voter fraud. And like these these statewide election officials are playing a mealy mouth middle ground. Redistricting is going to make everything worse. Like I think the Marjorie Taylor Greene types are going to be the future of the Republican Party, especially as they go forward with redistricting and, you know, other anti-democratic reforms. I mean, even put Trump aside, let's say Trump is prosecuted in New York, say the children are prosecuted, too. They're all going to jail. Take them out of it. This is still a party that is going to nominate someone whose main issues are owning the libs, cancel culture, some kind of racist shit. Like the idea that what, whether

it's a Nikki Haley or a Mitt Romney or a Ben Sasse, what they represent, the type of conservatism that they represent could be ascendant in this party that is controlled by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and all the crazies on the right wing and all the Trumpy type people is crazy to me. I just don't understand how it can happen. Like, it may not be Trump, but it's going to be someone who is just like Trump. Yeah, I mean, that's the point I'm trying to make, too. It's like, you look at, you know, no longer can you hide behind the kind of reflexive explanations that were all over the place in 2016.

It's not that Trump's drawing a plurality and the majority doesn't coalesce around something else. It's not name ID. People know who Mitt Romney is. People know who Marco Rubio is. He ran already. He did better the last time in the polls than he's doing now. 2%. 2% in the poll Tommy mentioned. And you think about what McConnell's saying. Oh, there's a group of people that have been ensorcelled by this argument and we can pry them away. Like, this is what they think. They don't think something else. They're not pretending to think this. They're not kind of for this. This is what the base of the Republican Party wants. And we should be honest

about that because I think not being honest about the base of the Republican Party for a very long time is what led us to this moment. So what do we do about the base of the Republican Party for a very long time is what led us to this moment. So what do we do about the fact that Trumpism is still a threat? Democracy is still under attack from this Republican Party. One of the most important steps we can take is to pass a piece of legislation called the For the People Act, which focuses on three types of democratic reform, voting rights, gerrymandering, money, and politics. On voting rights, it would provide for automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, mandated early voting,

limits on voter purges, and an end to the disenfranchisement of people who were formerly incarcerated. On gerrymandering, it would require nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw state maps. And on money and politics, it would require public financing for house campaigns

and expanded disclosure requirements. Love it. All these reforms sound good, but why are they so important now? There's a headline in Esquire over the weekend that reads, if we don't pass H.R. 1, which is what this bill is called, we are fucked as a nation. These are pretty simple. We won by 7 million more votes. We barely were able to retain power. The force of our democracy is already that weak. We are about to go through redistricting because of the census. Republicans have already said that they believe that they could potentially win the House with enough seats just by drawing new lines using the census. And in the wake of an historic voter turnout, Republicans across the country have introduced bills in state houses to restrict voting rights everywhere they can in advance of

the 2022 election, which means we are hurtling towards elections where democracy will not be strong enough to overwhelm anti-democracy. We need, we have one shot here to make sure that our votes count enough, not equally, but enough to retain the power that the majority of the country over and over again has tried to give to Democrats. And, you know, we have to use it or we're going to lose it. Tommy, there's a bunch of polling on this bill, including our poll with change. All of it shows the legislation is enormously popular across party lines. What are the major obstacles in getting this passed? I mean, the major obstacle is the Republican Party. But, you know, we could get around them if we got rid of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, then we could pass this bill on the party line and vote. But there are some

moderate Democrats who have not yet gotten there. So that is the big hurdle. But like Levitt said, this is a problem we need to deal with as soon as possible, because the Brennan Center for Justice found that there are 106 bills in 28 states that have been introduced that will make it harder to vote. These Republicans, despite all their concerns about what happened on January 6th and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they are still using the big lie about election fraud and stolen votes and vote by mail to pass voter suppression laws that will make it harder to vote, which will lock in a minority rule for maybe another decade with redistricting and the census. with redistricting and the census. Yeah. And look, we have talked before about the obstacles in the way of getting rid of the filibuster. It is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two Democratic senators. They've they're the ones who are on record. There are potentially others who are resistant to this. The question is, what are the strategies to persuade them otherwise. Obviously, there are no easy answers here.

But I do think on this bill, we need President Biden and the Democratic Party to make a sustained public case. You need to frame this as, I think, as a civil rights, voting rights issue. You need to tie it to the insurrection and the conspiracy to overturn the election. You should highlight all the ways Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote next time, just like Tommy was citing from the Brennan Center. I mean, just so that Kyrsten Sinema knows, you know, there are bills in Arizona right now that would make it easier to remove voters from the permanent early voting list or eliminate it entirely and add voter ID and notarization requirements to mail ballots. This is a state, Arizona is a state that has been doing mail-in voting forever. And imagine now with your mail-in ballot, you have to go get it notarized from fucking notary. Like if Kyrsten Sinema wants that to happen, she can allow it to happen. If not, she can vote to get rid of the filibuster.

What's more important, making sure that people can vote in Arizona or keeping the filibuster? Like at some point we have to make it so that she has to be forced to make that decision. And I also think they just need a little space for people like Sinema and Manchin to climb down from their position. So I think it can't be keeping the filibuster as is or eradicating it forever. Maybe you could talk about filibuster reform, preventing abuse of the filibuster, you know, getting rid of the filibuster for certain pieces of legislation. But to your point, John, I mean, Georgia Republicans introduced nine bills to restrict voting rights on the first day of Black History Month, including getting rid

of automatic voter registration, no excuse, absentee voting, mail ballot drop boxes, things, by the way, that most Republicans used to support because they used to think that absentee votes were good for them. They wanted people to be able to vote absentee because their base used that form of voting all the time. So yeah, I think this is not some esoteric good government thing. This is urgent and existential. And I think we need to make that case. Yeah. Love it. No, I think the point that Tommy's making is really important, which is there's four basic, I think, ways we need to talk about the filibuster. One is about preserving our democracy.

One is about just our capacity to make progress as a country. But there's two other pieces of it. One is about their interest in the Senate as a body and its function. And the other is their interest as individuals, as senators. You got a part of that. But I do think we need to make an intellectual case that takes people like Sinema at their word when they say they want to preserve the Senate as a deliberative body and they believe in the institutions of the Senate.

We have to meet them there. You know, she gave this interview to Politico, which was, I think, set a real she has a maximal position right now. Right. She doesn't just want to preserve the filibuster. She wants to strengthen the filibuster. Well, that means we have a lot of work to do and it's going to take a lot of space to find a compromise where she can get behind it. But we talk about democracy. We talk about our ability to legislate. How about the fact that a 50 vote threshold means

bipartisanship can happen? A 50 vote threshold means the Senate can actually legislate again and you can actually use your power effectively as an individual because you can build unusual, unorthodox coalitions because it's easier to get 51 bipartisan votes than it is to get 60. Like there's a lot of parts of this argument that I think are quieter and not as resonant to the country or to the 2022 midterms that we have to start making because I think we need to make the case not that we want them to like, but the case according to their own standards that they have set. Yeah, I do think, you know, Joe Biden has a State of the Union coming up or addressed to a joint session, which is what you call the first State of the Union. I would make this a very big part of that speech. Obviously, he's going to have to talk about COVID

relief. That's going to be number one. But I would also devote some time in the speech to this. I would make it emotional. I think groups outside should run ads about this like it's a campaign. I do think that we should, to your point, love it too. Let's talk about who is opposed to these reforms, which is Republicans. I don't think it is useful, at least just yet, to go all out against Manchin and Sinema and Democratic senators who don't want the filibuster. Let's set the battle lines of this fight right now, which is Democrats want to expand the right to vote and protect the right to vote. Republicans do not.

And make the Republicans sort of own this, make this a very popular issue, and then ask people within our own caucus to make sure that they vote for it. So, OK, when we come back, we'll have Lovett's interview with Heather McGee. Joining us on the pod, she is a political strategist, chair of the board of directors for Color of Change and author of the new book, The Sum of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. It's a fantastic book. It's officially out today. Welcome back, Heather McGee. Good to see you. I'm so glad to be here. So I want to start by talking about the minimum wage because it's having a moment.

Pramila Jayapal joined Dan last week to talk about how important the fight is to pass the minimum wage through reconciliation now as part of COVID relief. Some Democrats are skeptical about whether that's possible. Others, like relief. Some Democrats are skeptical about whether that's possible. Others, like Joe Manchin, are skeptical of the number of going to 15. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of this fight to the kind of solidarity movement you talk about in the book? It's just time for Democrats in power to deliver. And so these are fights that people who have the absolute most to lose have been fighting in the streets with their employers, with their city council members for almost a decade now with the Fight for 15. And so many people, not just, you know,

the suburban moms we hear about all the time, God bless them, but people who really have been at the bottom rungs of our economy. People in fast food making a thousand times less on average per hour than their CEOs have been putting it all on the line to try to get this done and to truly transform their lives. And that is an essential part of the Democratic coalition. And if the Democrats don't realize that, that they've got to just absolutely pay back the people who have done so much for them time and time again with every opportunity they have, then they're missing the boat and they're going to suppress the vote in the midterms. Also today, and I thought this was interesting, Mitt Romney, Tom Cotton, two tribunes of working people introduced a proposal to raise the minimum wage, but tie it to immigration enforcement and talk about how we have to we can't allow them in their words, illegal immigrants from from taking jobs from Americans. What do you make of that kind of conservative politics that mixes, that tries to outflank Democrats on a key issue for working

people while adding in some of the immigration politics that has been so central to the Trump coalition? You know, it's really smart politics, right? Trump used to always say that he, you know, wanted to raise the minimum wage and wanted to put all this money back in the broader multiracial working class by resentment politics, by saying that it's either a dollar in your pocket or it's a dollar in the pocket of brown and black people. So it's a message bill. It doesn't really make sense in terms of how it would actually work. It's also really clear that we've been enforcing and enforcing and enforcing immigration policy and that that is not the answer to making working class people who come here seeking better lives and better jobs,

you know, able to actually come out of the economic shadows. It is legalization and citizenship that creates more bargaining power for the working class. But, you know, you don't hear Mitt Romney talking about bargaining power that often. You know, the Biden immigration proposal was basically laying out all the pieces of it that have to do with the path to citizenship, to helping dreamers, to reforming the legal immigration system. And then the parts that are least defined in his plan were the parts around enforcement. But traditionally, it's always been understood that if we're going to get a coalition to pass immigration reform, that it's going to be the rhetoric of nation of immigrants and nation of laws, that that is always

going to come to be part of it. How are you thinking about that now as part of a working class politics? You know, you talk about this in the book that there that there was somebody you met who didn't understand class solidarity until the fight around the minimum wage and didn't understand how to think about their non-white working people as part of their coalition. Like, how are you thinking about how immigration fits into this working class solidarity? Well, we've got these amazing bridges of empathy that have been built through some of the most traumatic and cruel public policies that we've seen in my lifetime with family separation, with the Muslim ban. I just don't think it is smart or fair or moral to leave that behind, right? A huge part of the coalition

that made these historic wins for Democrats were people that were morally outraged by the dehumanization of immigrants. And there's very much a link in those voters' minds between the kind of enforcement first, deportation only cruelty of the Trump administration. And they've been educated and a bit radicalized on these issues so that the ball has moved down the field from the Obama era where the President Obama I'm talking about, you know, really, I think felt like he needed to do a lot of enforcement to bring Republicans along. And so I think we are much farther down the field towards a more humane set of policies. We have effectively closed our borders now for so much time. We have, you know, really pushed people way into the shadows between ICE enforcement internally and the incredible chilling effect of the pandemic and the job losses that have been concentrated among low-wage service workers, that now is not the time to be putting more people in jail. Now is not the time to do anything but heal our

communities and bring everybody in and make everyone healthy on an economic level, on a physical level, on a security level. That's got to be what Democrats say to the public. So we just went, we just had an election. The popular vote Democrats won by 7 million votes. That resulted in a presidential win that still hinged on closer votes in a few key states. We kept the House but lost some seats. We won the Senate in a photo finish. And following an election with an historic turnout, Republicans across the country have introduced vote suppression bills that they're poised to pass. And the Republicans are in some ways being completely explicit that they can use gerrymandering alone to take back the House. Into that context, we have a fight over democratic

reform in the Senate. What is the best argument that we should be making to the country, but also to three or four or five democratic senators about the urgency of passing these kinds of reforms, despite procedural hurdles like the filibuster? So I think the three or four potential holdout Democrats, frankly, that's a quiet conversation, right? They're not trying to be moved by flag waving or by, you know, the same things that the American public could get stirred up by in terms of rooting out corruption in our democracy, both the corruption of big money and corporate power and the corruption of the

tinkering of votes and the tinkering of our election system, sorry, and the corruption of the tinkering with our election system that happens when politicians get to choose their voters, right? That kind of messaging about what we lose with this widespread corruption, how it skews our tax policy, how it skews our ability to raise the minimum wage, that's the message for the public. I think a lot of people do that very well. Tie it to the issues, make sure you include the voting and the money. People get it. It's actually something that gets a tremendous amount of bipartisan support. What do you do for senators who are flexing their muscle and, you know, want a horse trade? You horse trade with them. You get it done. You figure it out. There's obviously a self-interest argument for any Democratic politician to say that you will have a better caucus, a better time

defending your seat, a better time defending yourself against dark money if we have these reforms. So Kyrsten Sinema is actually who's been on my mind. A lot of attention goes to Joe Manchin, though I think sometimes Joe Manchin stands in front of a bunch of other Democrats behind him who also are a bit reluctant, squishy on the filibuster. who also are a bit reluctant, you know, squishy on the filibuster. But Sinema did an interview with Politico where she basically said she doesn't want to overrule the parliamentarian. She supports a 60 vote threshold and actually would like to see it made even stronger. Right. This is a that is a that is a maximalist position on the filibuster. And I'm glad to hear you talking about this sort of quieter conversation. Are you engaged at all with some of these quieter conversations that are going?

Because it sounds to me like this is like not just not even about self-interest, like there is a like intellectual persuasion that needs to take place. So I think that, for example, you know, my friend Adam's book, Kill Switch, which is about the history of the filibuster, has been a super helpful intellectual weapon in, you know, just batting down some of the nonsense that, you know, pro filibuster politicians try to say to keep it right. is a racial equity issue, that this is a Jim Crow era relic, as President Obama said, and that today it stands in the way of the kind of civil rights and democracy reform legislation that would allow us to keep a multiracial democracy in America. There are lots of arguments like that you can make. There are arguments that you can make about how bipartisanship will actually be more possible if people have to negotiate with one another because there's going to be legislation moving?

If there's no legislation moving and I can make a phone call to the Senate cloakroom and stop anything from happening, what incentive do I have to be bipartisan? Right. It's really important that people like David Brooks, right, who's this sort of moderate bellwether, you know, come out and say that we need to kill the filibuster. But I think it's also really important that, you know, and this is the kind of organizing that I do think people are doing, that the people who are funding Kyrsten Sinema's campaign, that she feels like she needs in order to, you know, still be able to fund her campaign, because it's not a grassroots swell of working class people who are behind her, you know, that they are also equipped with the kind of arguments they need. This is the bottom line for me. If Democrats keep the filibuster and all of the other arcane Senate rules that are stopping progress and therefore are not able to deliver real change in the lives of working people, they will not be

reelected. There is nothing more important to the self-interest argument and this idea that Democrats shouldn't get rid of the filibuster because if they did and they became the minority in the future, there's no quicker way to guarantee that the Democrats are the minority in the future than if they keep the filibuster and aren't able to deliver at this time of record, than if they keep the filibuster and aren't able to deliver at this time of record, record economic pain for most Americans. Can I as a follow up on that about reconciliation? So I obviously we agree on this topic. We're in vigorous disagreement. I feel like there are a lot of podcasts about the filibuster in which people are in a state of vigorous agreement about what to do about it.

If bipartisanship is served by a 50-vote majority, even with a kind of recalcitrant partisan Republican minority, why is it that we're not seeing Republicans recognizing that the reconciliation bill is moving and trying to change it and by promising their votes? Like, why aren't we seeing that kind of give and take in the Senate right now on the 50 vote bills? You know, I think because right now there's, we're still in war footing. They're still getting marching orders from McConnell that says, don't do anything whatsoever to legitimate what is the majority party of this country. I think it's also really important to recognize that Republicans have a very, very uncomfortable base right now. Their donors are disgusted. Two-thirds of the country is

interested in a third party. The polling about what January 6th did to, you know, a good 40% of the Republican base, 40 to 60%, depending on, you know, what question you ask in terms of just feeling like a bridge had been crossed, they are really unsure how to act. They don't know which direction to step in in order to preserve their power and preserve their base. And so the safest bet is to do nothing. McConnell has a lot of sway on this issue. This is not something that I think Trump is tweeting about, you know, would be tweeting about, or that this is not an issue that I think Trump is, you know, has a lot of opinions about. So they're not getting, you know, any kind of orders from there. And I think that they're really just frozen. They don't have a

governing principle other than to maintain the status quo at all costs. I want to ask you about a story in the book around bankruptcy and one of your early experiences on the Hill. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw and what it showed you about the broader connection you draw in the book between public goods and racial grievance? and racial grievance? You know, I was a young whippersnapper, a young policy wonk in 2005. And we had done a lot of work at Demos on the issue of debt. And so we had our research and we were, you know, taking it from Senate office to Senate office, trying to convince them not to reform the bankruptcy laws to make it harder for working and middle class people to have a second chance after they'd

lost everything. And we brought the numbers and the figures. And then I'll never forget, I was walking down the hall in the Senate office building, Russell Senate office building, and I had these terrible shoes that I'd just gotten for this lobbying visit. And so they kept falling off. And I bent down to, you know, put my shoe back on. And then I heard a senator, I believe it was a senator, just because of the way the other people around them were sort of kowtowing to him. And he was just sort of being bombastic, right? He was talking about these freeloaders and deadbeats who had, you know, babies with multiple children, I'm sorry, who had babies with multiple women, and, you know, use the multiple children, I'm sorry, who had babies with multiple women,

and, you know, use the bankruptcy to evade their personal responsibility. And it like made my like, you know, me hot under the collar, because it was like, a very sort of gut level feeling like, whoa, the picture they have of who's seeking bankruptcy is so different from what the research says, right? So different from the truth. But it is this stereotype. And it felt to me really racially coded. It reminded me of the welfare reform debates, which were, you know, both about the deservingness of people who don't have any money. And in America, you know, poverty is so racialized. And it just felt like, whoa, we have totally missed something when we are trying to bring economic arguments to what is ultimately a fight about identity and culture and deservingness and worth and status and these things that in America always seem to turn

on race. It was one of a few early moments in my career when I realized that if we were trying to address economic inequality and not address those core questions of racial hierarchy, racial status, racial stereotypes, then we were never going to make progress. end you talk about in the book, that when you actually tackle this coded language, the way in which our economic arguments have been infused with racial stereotypes, prejudices, notions of who deserves things and who doesn't, that when a public good is shared beyond white people, those white people lose. Can you talk a little bit about some of the examples where people have been able to kind of build those coalitions to overcome that kind of coded language and build something new. Yeah. I mean, I did find that this term solidarity dividend kept coming up in my mind. And so

it's basically what we can gain when we actually defeat the divide and conquer politics of racial resentment. When white people particularly reject the zero-sum story that it's either a dollar in my pocket or a dollar in yours, and people link arms and actually get a majoritarian movement going for the things that we all desperately need. I think about Bridget from Kansas City. This is a white woman who'd worked in fast food her whole life. She really had no faith whatsoever that the Fight for 15 would win, that somebody, as she said, like her, would ever get $15 an hour. But she went to the first organizing meeting anyway. And there she

met a Latina woman who stood up and talked about her own life, talked about living in an apartment with plumbing issues, with three kids and feeling trapped. And Bridget saw herself in her. And it was a wake up moment. And then Bridget became, you know, one of the real leaders in this organization, Stand Up Kansas City. You know, she was in a fully multiracial organization, pretty much evenly divided, black, white and brown. And the way she talks now, she says, you know, it's not about us and them. I had, you know, bought this zero sum us versus them lie about immigrants and Black people. And now I know that in order for us to come up, we all have to come up. Because as long as we're divided, she says, we're conquered. many other examples of that, of basically, you know, it really does come down to white people rejecting a story they've been sold for the profit of, you know, economic elites and saying, you know what, there's actually not so much so different between you and me, and we've got to do this together. Heather McGee, thank you so much. The book is The Sum of Us, and I really

hope everybody buys it. It is out today. I think that there are a lot of political books that people say you should read because really what they mean is they think other people who don't already agree with us should read them. Like, I agree so heartedly with this book, so you should read it. But this is a book that I think does something rare, which is it puts together a lot of pieces about what is broken in our system and helps you have a way to think about it that you might not have seen before. So Heather McGee, thank you so much. The sum of us out today. Thank you, John. Thanks to Heather for joining us today. Everyone go buy Heather's book,

and we will talk to you later this week. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin,

and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.