Pod Save America - "Hits from the Aaron Sorkin bong."

Episode Date: August 24, 2017

Trump goes off the rails in Phoenix, and continues his war with the Republican Congress. Then Jon and Dan talk to focus group guru David Binder about Obama-Trump voters, and Ana Marie Cox joins to discuss the white nationalist resurgence. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we will talk to the man who's conducted political focus groups for Barack Obama and dozens of other campaigns, the best in the business, David Binder. We'll also talk to the host of With Friends Like These, Anna Marie Cox. Also, don't forget to go download Pod Save the World. Tommy talks about Trump's Afghanistan speech this week with former White House National Security Council staffer Kelly Magsaman. It's a great episode. And let's begin there.

Let's start with Trump's first primetime address as president, where he managed to read the prompter without praising any Nazis. In the Afghanistan speech, he completely changed his position. During the campaign, he said about a dozen times, we should pull out all of our troops. Now he's adding more troops, though he wouldn't say how many. There were reports that say it's around 4,000. There's, of course, 8,400 American troops already there. He said the goal is victory, but he wouldn't tell us what victory looked like or under what conditions. We'd finally bring our troops home. He said he wants to focus on counterterrorism instead of nation building.

Wouldn't say how that's different than what we're already doing. Dan, what did you think of the speech? I did not watch it. I'll tell you that much. I did not tune into this one. I missed it. That's very unlike you. I know it is.

I'm just busy. Sorry. I mean, you just tweeted and texted through the whole thing. Right, right. I made it for the commentary afterwards, like most Americans. Good. for the commentary afterwards, like most Americans. Good. Hard to say what to think about this in the sense that Afghanistan is a incredibly challenging problem with no good answers. So it's I don't have a critique of his policy. Like I've, you know, I've understood, you know, what Ben Rhodes and

other people and Tommy that we who know this stuff better than I do, have said about it. And that makes sense to me. But I don't think there's there's not some magic. There's not some silver bullet that Trump is not firing or it's just it's a really hard situation with no good outcomes. Yeah, if I was being if I'm going to be as generous to Trump as love it was to Gary Cohn and Dina Powell on the Monday pod, I would say to Trump's credit that for the first time ever, he acknowledged a change in position. Like he put in context why he flipped, which normally he just engages in this factual nihilism where he just pretends like he never had that position and just denies it to the end and we move on. And he actually said, I had this one position. I came in.

I met with a bunch of people. I learned this and now. I came in. I met with a bunch of people. I learned this. And now I'm doing this. And so I guess we should give some credit there. What I found, if I was the networks, which it's important to understand that the White House has to go to the broadcast networks and say, will you give us free time? And they hate to do that because that means they're not going to show commercials. It's going to fuck up the whole schedule. But they do it.

But usually there's a pretty high bar. Like you have to announce something or it has to be an emergency or something that the public needs to hear. And Trump didn't really – he must have told them he was going to announce his Afghanistan policy. And then he did not actually do that. There were no details of what his policy was other than he was switching from a time-based to a conditions-based approach and basically said, I'm not going to tell you my plan because I don't want the Taliban to know my plan. I know. I thought about all the times that we did big primetime speeches. And can you imagine if we went out with the speech and the policy people were like,

we can't give you the exact number. We've decided we don't want to do the exact number of troops. We're not going to be specific about the goals. Like you and I would have been sitting there thinking we are going to get killed in the press for being this vague and having an, and ask for a time to a prime time address. And I would not have wanted to take any of the calls from the networks who would have been rightfully rip shit about that. It's a small thing,

right? Like no one really cares about the plights of the, the network presidents, but that will matter. There will be a point in the future where they will ask for time and the networks will be more skeptical of giving it for that reason.

And people say, well, Trump's great ratings. So that's why they did it. Well, he's not actually great ratings. Those ratings were fine. But it doesn't matter because they can't sell commercials against it. So it's not good for them to do – like they don't get anything out of it. So it is actually a public service that they do and Trump took a little bit of an advantage of them. Yeah.

Would you say he was a new president that night? Yes, I would say he was a new president. I want to say – I actually feel bad for – Phil Rucker of the Washington Post tweeted, Tonight is a new President Trump acknowledging a flip-flop and talking about gravity of office, history, and substance. And there were about 4,000 replies to Phil's tweet. It was sort of the, you know, tonight's the night Donald Trump became president kind of thing. You know, I don't know what to say about it. At this point, it's just

like, enough is enough with the like, is he a new president? Which president, which Trump will show up tonight? Can he change? Can the staff change him? Will the shakeup change anything in the White House? Like, no, the answer is no, no, no, it's never going to change. Let's like move on to talk about other things. I will say I like Phil Barker a lot. I think he's one of the great reporters, great reporter, very smart. And he didn't actually mean what he tweeted, I think, because you said you sent it to me when you were so busy not watching the speech. I got enraged. I retweeted and said, I want to take bets on how long this lasts. And he responded within like two seconds to say, till tomorrow night's rally in Phoenix.

So he was sort of the victim of, like if Twitter allowed 220 characters, his next line would have probably been until tomorrow night. But he's the symbol of a terrible trend in and punditry i don't think he actually believes that donald trump became president that night well it's pretty clear he does not it's this like washington punditry need to declare like grandiose you know things about a about a speech or a moment or something like that. It's like, you've got your one line on cable news and Wolf just asked you the question and what are you going to say? And you're like, oh, I need a soundbite that sums up the whole speech. It's like, you know, we really don't need that. Yeah, it's our hot, it's the hot take culture.

It is, it is, it is a hot take culture. But yeah, so anyway, so he gives this speech. Can I say one more thing about Phil Rucker? do you know how much self-resistance it took to not tweet what about your gaff phil i i thought the same thing and i thought people probably a lot of people probably don't know what our reference is go google what about your gaffs romney 2012 campaign because there is a video where romney is overseas and Phil Rucker is just screaming and Ashley Parker are both just screaming at him what about his gaffes and we played we played this clip on the Obama campaign at least 5,000 times it's very enjoyable all right so anyway so he finishes this very sober Afghanistan speech, which marks a change in policy, though lacks, you know, a lot of specifics.

But fine, we're moving on. Good for Donald Trump. Then he goes to Phoenix. New Trump lasts exactly 24 hours, which is what Phil said. And in Phoenix, he was back to his old self during a rambling defensive 77-minute tirade. What were your first impressions of that speech? Did you watch this one too? This one I watched. This one I watched every second. Yeah, me too.

Could you imagine being on the East Coast for this and watching it until after midnight? I thought about that. No, because I was watching it in my living room, and Emily came home, and she's just like, ugh, do we really have to do this right now? Yeah. Hallie and I cleansed our palate afterwards by watching an old West Wing on Netflix to remind ourselves that there was a time, at least in our fictional history, when we had a good, sane president. Yeah.

Hit from the air in Sorkin Bong right there. That's right. Look, it started out normal. As she was reading from a prompter, he repeated the Charleston cleanup message that he used at the top of the Afghanistan speech. And I thought this was going to be another one of those, we get all wound up for insanity, and then we get let down by expectations.

We were all texting about it and Tommy's first text to all of us was, you know, this is pretty normal so far. Maybe he's not going to go crazy. So I was trying to think to myself, what would a normal, decent president have done in this situation? Like, what could this speech have been without completely changing Trump's beliefs and positions and all that kind of stuff? Like, he could have started, as most presidents would have, by offering thoughts and prayers for the 10 missing sailors from the USS John McCain. He was in Arizona, right? And all these soldiers are missing. So you'd think he would talk about that. He did not. Then you go on to thanking, you know, elected officials. You think he would have thanked

Arizona's two Republican senators, particularly John McCain, who's undergoing treatment for brain cancer. Then he could have reiterated the important points from the Afghanistan speech. He could have used some transition line like, you know, we have to get back to doing some nation building here at home and then talk about his economic plan. Maybe he takes a few whacks at Democrats who are standing in the way. Maybe he even does some light criticism of the media and say, you know, they won't report this, but here's what I want to do. Then a big call for unity at

the end of the speech, wrap it up. Pundits love him. New President Trump. He's off. That did not happen. It did not happen at all. It was really an amazingly transparent view into the psyche of Donald Trump and how – and I think somewhat fairly into the struggles of the White House staff. Because he – they told him. They're like, don't do these things. Like, do not mention – you're not going to pardon Joe Arpaio tonight. We'll let you do it down the road, but not tonight. Don't do it here. I'm sure they're like, you got great reviews from the Afghanistan speech.

You saw those reviews in the folder of self-selected positive press coverage we gave you earlier this afternoon. selected positive press coverage we gave you we gave you earlier this afternoon you you know don't attack jeff flake and john mccain by name because that will be the news of the speech as opposed to our immigration message which is i think what was ostensibly supposed to be the message of the speech and he did not do those things but he did the he said my staff told me not to do this so i'm going to do it, basically. Yeah, like, okay, let's go through what he actually did here. So first, he reread all of his various Charlottesville statements. Not even, I mean, once in a while, we used to make fun of Barack Obama, because he would do a lot of, look, what I have said is, and he would quote himself from an earlier speech,

and he would do that for a couple words and then move on. Donald Trump literally took out a piece of paper from his suit coat and just re-read like three days worth of Charlottesville statements, except he omitted the worst parts of all those statements. He didn't say the many sides thing. He didn't say the very fine people on both sides. So he basically just redid a version of the prior week's events, but sanitized to make sure that nothing bad that he said was in there. He just tried to rewrite history on the fly

leaving out the many sides part of his saturday statement would be like if george bush was angry about his response to katrina and he read his remarks from new orleans and left out heck of a job brownie. That's the thing. Like, that's why people are pissed. Like, of course,

when you read everything other than that, it sounds fine, but that's not the point. And it's just so, I mean, that's so insane in so many ways because you just have to like the self-delusion there are two elements of the interesting one is to delude yourself that you didn't actually say that is interesting but also to believe that you that you can convince people that it was never said just

because you were saying it directly to them and they will believe you over their over what they read or see or even what they remembered from seven days prior is like a real window into Trump's brain and how he thinks about persuading the public yeah no it's pretty uh pretty scary uh well and then the most frightening part of the speech, of course, came when he went on an extended tirade against the media. He singled out the New York Times, the Washington Post, little George Stephanopoulos got a new name, and CNN, of course, which led to a bunch of CNN sucks chants, and us, the crooked media, of course. We got a few shout outs in the speech. a bunch of CNN sucks chants, and us, the crooked media, of course. We got a few shout-outs in the speech. It's time to expose crooked media. If you want to discover the source of the division in our country,

look no further than crooked media. So, yeah, that's free exposure for us, which is great. But seriously, I think the worst thing he said, the most disturbing thing he said about the media is, quote, these are really, really dishonest people and they're bad people and I really think they don't like our country. The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself and the fake news. I was trying to figure out, you know, if he had stooped this low before in attacking the media and attacking specifically journalist patriotism. And I remember, I guess someone pointed out he did tweet back at the beginning, I think back in January or February, that the press is the enemy of the American people.

We had a whole, it was hard to remember that whole dust up. But this was really just another level. People have pointed out similar things he said as a candidate. Right. But here's the thing. He's not a candidate anymore. He's president of the United States. And when the president of the United States tells his supporters that the media are not patriotic, do not support the country, we can talk about the dangers of democracy, but there is also a danger to the individual reporters.

Yeah. He, I mean, he, when you demonize people like that in such rabid ways to your, it's, you're inciting mob violence against reporters. And that when the president says it,

that is just, that is a deeply dangerous thing to do. And I mean, it is very clear that Trump does not know or care about how his words matter as president. But in situations like these, they do. And we live in such a world of insanity and outrage that sometimes sometimes we don't, we're not even able to grasp onto something that insidious and dangerous. Do you know who does stuff like that? Third around the world. That's who does that. That's what Putin does. That's what Chavez did in

Venezuela. I mean, there is a long history of this. And we think we are immune from that because of our 200 plus years of democracy. But there are things that if we saw a CNN report about another leader doing that at a rally, talking about his free press, we would not go visit that country. Like there would be a challenge for the president of the United States to meet with that leader. And by the way, authoritarian leaders and governments that crack down on journalists are taking what Donald Trump says as a signal that it's OK to do it and to and to, you know, up the pressure on journalists and to put more of them in jail and to crack down even harder than they already are because they see that the President of the United States is doing this in this country. And a lot of journalists, you know, were really worried about what he said.

And they should be. Like, if, God forbid, if there's any kind of violence against journalists in this country, it is his fault. It is Donald Trump's fault for inciting this like this. He is inciting the worst instincts, the worst impulses of this country. He's doing it every day he gets up there and says shit like that. You saw a lot of reporters on Twitter and being self-aware saying, bashing the media has never been a bad political strategy or the public doesn't care about the plight of reporters. And that is totally true. That is 100 is 100 true but we're also not necessarily

trying to win an election at this exact moment in time that's not the point everything can't be punditry you know it's like we get permission to do it yeah and you know people oh well other you know you guys attack the media sometimes right every single president attacks the media or complains about the media at least criticizes the the media. Barack Obama did it. George Bush did it. Bill Clinton did it. They all did it. It's very different when a president of the United States gets up there and attacks their patriotism, says they're bad people, says that they're giving a platform to hate groups. And one other thing, you know, it is very obvious when Donald Trump goes off script and just kind of says his own shit and, you know, flies off the handle and now he's off the cuff and okay, he says, even though his staff tried

to corral him. And, you know, what you said earlier about how the staff wanted him to give a much more normal speech, I think is right. But if you look at that speech and you look at that transcript, a lot of the speech that was written for him, that was in the transcript, that was in the prepared speech, were pretty bad attacks on the media. It wasn't exactly the sentence I just read, but it accused them of fomenting division and hatred. And those were lines certainly written by Stephen Miller, who writes like, you know, a fascist bad imitation of Aaron Sorkin, because he's a first of all, he's just a bad writer. But you can tell when it's Stephen Miller's writing versus Trump's writing, because Stephen Miller puts together like, you know, full sentences at least. And in the prepared text, there were attacks on the media that were pretty gross.

And I can't believe they got past the vetting process. I can believe when trump goes off on his own and just says whatever he wants but for all the talk about like john kelly and everyone trying to calm him down the prepared text was pretty fucking crazy too the the best part is when you said the vetting process there's no vetting process i know i know i know there's probably no vetting but no i mean that's that's probably true it's probably step Stephen Miller writing the shit and sending it right to Donald Trump. Or maybe they're working on it on the plane and the speech doesn't go around to anyone else in the White House. Or maybe it does and they're all just monsters. I don't know. The thing I also think is,

my favorite part of Trump's speeches is where it's pretty evident that he's reading the words on the prompter for the first time. Yeah. Like he's never seen them before. And he's just like knowing like, oh, I like that. Or, oh, don't like that. But it's their first introduction. He does like an instant pundit reaction to his own speech. Yeah. So there was the media tax. Then we get into the Sheriff Joe Arpaio part, right?

So as you mentioned, there was predictions that maybe he would pardon Arpaio on stage. He did not, but he said to everyone, oh, I think he's going to be just fine. I'll predict he'll be just fine. I'm not going to do it here, but I predict he'll be just fine. So we should tell everyone just a little background here. So this is former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio was recently convicted of criminal contempt after he violated a court ruling that ordered his police department to end its practice of illegally detaining people based only on

suspicions about their immigration status. For those of you who don't know, I mean, this guy is pretty bad. Bad, bad, bad news. He would detain Latinos without any reasonable suspicion that they were violating laws. He would just do it at traffic stops. His department ignored complaints of child abuse because a lot of the children abused were undocumented immigrants. he established what he called Tent City, an outdoor detention center that he compared. He compared favorably to a concentration camp. It was surrounded by electrocuted fence. The temperatures would reach up to 141 degrees. They would have people on chain gangs. There would be humiliating practices like public parades. There was substandard health care in the detention.

There was suffering. Some people died. substandard health care in the detention there was suffering some people died i mean it was if you look up what joe arpaio did in arizona as sheriff it is revolting revolting bad dude he's a bad hombre if you will he'd be offended by the use of spanish which is why i said it he's a bad hombre and this and trump's gonna you know thinking about fucking pardoning this guy like what is that i mean you were talking about this, Dan, like sort of the moral, political, symbolic importance of this. both at the top of the Monday night Afghanistan speech and then the Tuesday night Phoenix rally speech. And then you decide to pardon one of the most divisive figures in America who is divisive for racial demagoguery.

And to do that in the wake of Charlottesville, it makes it very clear that you do not believe or care about the words you read earlier in the speech. But it's also – like the presidents have the power to pardon for sure and they do it. But let's be very clear about what Trump is doing. He has not like looked deeply into this case and decided that Judge Arpaio was wronged in the system or that he had rehabbed and can come out and become a contributing member of society, George Arpaio was one of the biggest, most important endorsements that Trump got early on. So he is paying back a political crony with a pardon. If Obama, six, eight months into his presidency, had pardoned a major supporter, political supporter, just because he can, for no reason other than that, there would have been calls for impeachment in the Republican Congress before the ink dried on the paper. Yeah. And it's not just a political

supporter. It's not just about like some kind of money thing or, you know, someone had some misdemeanor or whatever. Like, this is someone who the criminal conviction is based on racial profiling and just putting people in horrible conditions, subhuman conditions. I mean, it's just, it's outrageous. The other thing about this is that Sarah Huckabee Sanders briefed the press in the morning that there would be no discussion of the pardon tonight. I know, I love that. In the know, as always. Also, do they still brief ever? I think today they're briefing. They're probably briefing right now, breaking all sorts of news

while we're doing this podcast, if history is any good. Such is life. Yeah, such is life. So at one point, so to keep up with the message, after Arpaio, he also says, you know, if we have to close down our government, we're building that wall. So this brings us to Trump's continuing war with his own party in Congress. It used to be that Mexico was going to pay for this wall. Now, American taxpayers have to pay for the wall or else the government shuts down. Veterans don't get benefits. Seniors don't get benefits. Military doesn't get paid. Federal employees out of work.

Parks closed. That's what happened. That's how the wall gets paid for now. I could not think of a worse message. Also, Republicans control the government. There's always this battle. We've had two government shutdowns in recent memory, or maybe not in that recent memory. One in the 90s, when Clinton was was the president and Republicans were controlling Congress. And then once in the Obama administration, when Republicans controlled the House, and Democrats controlled the Senate

and the White House. And there's always this big battle about who's going to get blamed. Will it be the Congress who's shutting down the government of one party or the president of the other party? And how's blame going to be allocated? Many people believe Bill Clinton used that shutdown. He won that battle, helped him win re-election. We won the public opinion part of our battle with Republicans. But in this case, there's no debate. The Republicans control Congress and the White House. So we know who's going to get like, we know they will take all the blame. That's just how it will be. It is the amount of encompasses it would take for a government to

shut down in one party control is mind boggling, even with Donald Trump as president. And this is all him, right? I mean, Republican Democrats don't want to shut down because just Democrats don't want to shut down. They just want the government to continue to function, right? They're normal. Republicans don't want to shut down, you know, a shut because they're worried they're going to get blamed for it. And also a shutdown is going to get in the way of them doing tax reform, which they want to do, right? So we have this setup here where Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are all saying, all right, let's pass a government funding bill. By the way, let's also make sure we

lift the debt ceiling so we don't have a global economic catastrophe. And let's get this done in September and we can all move on to, you know, the next fights. A lot of Republicans, many know, the next fights. A lot of Republicans, many Republicans, especially in the Senate, don't want to build his stupid fucking wall. They don't want to fund it. They think it's a crazy idea. A lot of them are tough on immigration.

Maybe they want to beef up the border. Maybe they want more border security. Some of them have proposed various legislation for that or they want to stick that in the government funding bill, whatever. They can hash that out with democrats but enough enough republicans have said they don't want to fund the wall that it's you don't see it getting out of congress and getting to trump's desk a piece of legislation that has all the funding he wants for his stupid fucking wall right so donald trump is now saying he could get a piece of bipartisan legislation with Democrats and Republicans passing it to fund the government, to lift the debt ceiling, starve people of benefits, all because he wants money for an actual physical wall between us and Mexico that Mexico is not going to pay for.

That's where we are. A physical see-through wall so that we can see when they're throwing the drugs over and we don't get hit in the head by them. Big, big, beautiful door. To be specific. Be beautiful. With solar panels on top, of course. I mean, there is a shutdown problem and a debt ceiling problem that's bigger than just the wall, which is the House Freedom Caucus also wants a bunch of other spending cuts and reforms in exchange for paying the bills they've already incurred on the debt ceiling and like we are barreling towards a cliff

and we have drunk people driving the car it is incredibly dangerous and no one competent to solve this problem don't make any plans for september guys if you thought august was amazing september is going to be even scarier and what's complicating this whole debate is, it was we saw this morning on Twitter, Donald Trump is just out there attacking Republicans left and right. He attacked McConnell this morning for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare again. He attacked McConnell and Paul Ryan this morning on not putting the debt ceiling measure in the VA bill that just passed, I guess. He's attacking Jeff Flake, tweeted about him yesterday, even though he didn't name him during the Arizona rally. He's trying to back a challenger for Jeff Flake because, you know, who knows why. There's this New York Times story the other day

where he and McConnell apparently had a phone call that devolved into a profane shouting match what is going on here one that was a killer segue into this section of the outline so i didn't i nail it i think i really really you're really becoming a real pro at this um it is it's I mean, to try to understand this, I think you have to understand that Donald Trump did not run for president to do anything. He is. There's nothing he wants to accomplish. He just wants to be applauded. Yes. He wants to win.

He wants applause. And he wants to, as most of the Republican media does, to piss off liberals by just annoying them and annoying the press. for Trump to triangulate between the Democrats and congressional Republicans. One of the reasons people elected him was because the Russians told us what was in John Bidess's email. But beyond that was because he offered, he was not a politician. He was not part of the crowd in DC that wasn't getting anything done. And they associated Hillary Clinton because of a long time of the political stage with that crowd. And so if he attacks Republicans and attacks Democrats,

you could say that that would be a political strategy to become more popular or to get reelected. It is not, however, as annoying as Mitch McConnell is. And I guarantee you he is incredibly annoying. Attacking him is a really bad way to enact your agenda. If you ran because you wanted to give health care to people, like Obama did, or if you're Trump, if you cared about a tough-on-borders immigration policy or tax reform or an infrastructure bill, you would not attack Mitch McConnell, even if you wanted to, because you need, we have three branches of government and you need him to do it. He doesn't really care about getting things done. He cares when people make fun of him for not getting things done, but he doesn't really care about the policy stuff. So he allows these personal vendettas to get out there. I don't want to go all Luis Mench on you,

but do you think some of this has to do with he thinks something's coming on Russia? Because I'm reading a bunch of these stories yesterday, and it's like he'll lash out at these Republicans, but then it always has something to do with Russia. So there's a Politico story. He yelled at Bob Corker about the Russia sanctions bill. He called up Tom Tillis. He yelled at him about his bill that would protect Mueller from being fired, which Trump doesn't like. Why don't you like a bill that protects Mueller from being fired unless you're thinking of firing Mueller? And some Republican senior Republican aide said, it seems he is just always so focused on Russia. I don't know. I don't

know if he feels like something's coming or he's just super annoyed that it's in the news still. I don't know. It's barely in the news. There was a big story about how yet another senior Trump aide was involved with possibly arranging a meeting with Russians, this time Rick Dearborn, who was a senior policy advisor on the campaign, now Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House. But other than that, we've really been, we've been much more focused on the Nazi side of Trump than the pro-Russian pro-Nazi side than the pro-Russian side for the last, at least the last couple weeks. So maybe they know of something that is percolating in Congress that has not come out yet or some

movement in the muller investigation that they know about but has not leaked out yet so that is possible i'm always hesitant to ascribe grand strategy to trump's temper tantrums. Oh, yeah. No, I don't think it's strategy. But actually, I actually have a point of reference. I think it's more just it might anger him and then he might lash out, you know? Yeah, that is true. There's someone tweeted this morning about the attacks on McConnell and Paul Ryan from Trump this morning that just that these tweets are about the dossier. Because I guess there was some report that Mueller Mueller's team had interviewed the guy who wrote the dossier, Christopher Steele, I saw that somewhere on Twitter. So I'm sure it's true. But I guess my question for you is, if you look at the Trump speech, like we hate Trump, we think he's dangerous, like, like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell,

we think he's dangerously unfit for office we just are willing to say it but do you think because we hate trump so much and we think he's so nuts and stupid that we miss the political strategy behind what he did on tuesday night i think about that often well that's why i was i was i read that speech a couple times and i wanted to read the prepared text instead of just like what Trump's version was because the prepared text would give you some hint of an actual strategy. So, look, I think if he gave that speech and he was incredibly hard-lined on immigration and tough on the media but not as tough as he went, you know, then we could be missing something because he's trying to rile up the base. He's basically said, there's a political story about, you know, all these people who went to see him over his vacation said, oh, you've got to moderate, you've got to grow your base. And Trump basically said, I don't want to grow my base. I don't want to change

anything. This is the base. This is who we have, right? So you could have this, you could do this base strategy. But at some point you think, why did these people vote for Trump? Why do they like Trump? He's not offering them anything yet. He is offering them attacks on the media, right? So if you only like Trump because your enemies are his enemies and he attacks those enemies every day with force and doesn't give a shit what they say, and that's the only reason that you like him, then yeah, it's a good strategy. But if you're looking for someone who's going to deliver, if you're looking for someone who's going to try to improve your life or get something done, even if it's something done that we don't agree with, that you and I don't agree with, then it looks like kind of a mess right now. And it doesn't look like he's being very effective.

Now, those people could be different than the base base voters who just only want, you know, a troll as president, a Twitter troll as president. Those people are going to be just fine with whatever he does. But there has to be another subset of Trump voters who voted him because they were like, you know, he could bring about change, he could shake up Washington, and doesn't look like he's doing that right now. What it looks like he's doing is just now. What it looks like he's doing is just sort of lashing out at everyone. Let me make the counter case, which I don't, I'm not sure I fully believe, but I think it's just worth talking about.

And the voters you're talking about who maybe have left Trump or may not just, well, let me say, or may not just, well, let me say, here's what he gives his voters, is a voice. They believe that no one speaks for them and that Trump is the first person to do that. Agreed. And that's a whole array of things. Their hatred of elites, racial animus, economics and trade, on a whole host of things. It's identity, not ideology, I think. And he speaks to that identity. And it is white. He speaks to white victimization among a certain subset of the population. Correct. And they believe no other Republican does that. And they are accurate in that because most of these other Republicans are most comfortable negotiating tax breaks for

billionaires and millionaires on Wall Street. That is their ideology. And they love trade. They are a Wall Street party with a working class voter base. But if you are Trump, and you look at the world, and you're like, these congressional Republicans do not like me, they did not want me, they are looking at Russia. They already screwed me on this Russia sanctions bill. The Democrats hate me. What is my one piece of leverage? Why is it that Mitch McConnell, who is a pretty tough SOB, basically just bended the knee to Trump over the attacks and doesn't respond? It's because Trump's leverage is his voters.

And as long as he holds those voters, they can't do anything to him. That's why Paul Ryan will attack neo-Nazis, but never say Trump's name. He's afraid to say Trump's name because he's afraid of their voters. Now, I would argue that is not a great strategy to get reelected. A pure base strategy is not a great strategy to get reelected in 2020, but it may be a good way to survive the next four years because it's what he holds over the Republicans. And to that point, when you say, oh, it's not a good strategy to get elected in 2020 trump right now is thinking well they all told me in 2016 that this wasn't a good strategy to get elected and they were all wrong and he's right yeah so and because he won this completely unlikely you know a victory

and everyone told him it was impossible and all the polls said it wasn't going to happen, he's going to charge ahead into 2020 saying, I don't fucking care what the polls say. None of this matters. And we're going to see if he's right. I think that's right. The other thing I'd say is, you know, you said you read the speech, the prepared text of the speech to see if there was strategy there. And I think that may be the reverse of the way to do it because the P even Steve,

Stephen Miller might be the slight exception here, but the, the rest of these folks who are there in the white house, especially now that Bannon's gone are traditional Republicans. Well, that's not, they don't have a different view about how the party should be. They just weren't talented enough to get on Mitt Romney's campaign. And I mean, that's why if you talk to the Republican consultants and strategists,

which we know who are all never Trumpers, they think these guys are a group of yahoos because they couldn't get in the door. It just happened to be the only candidate to hire him as Trump. Trump's strategy, I think, is instinctual, not intellectual. Like, I don't think he has thought this through in any real way. But his he sir, I do think he sort of gets negotiation and leverage. And you know, he thinks I'm stealing this from someone who said it to us. Everything with Trump is a negotiation over marble counter, you know, how much how much is going to cost for granite counters in a new apartment building. And he's negotiating with contractors and so his strategy is leveraged i think you know gary cone wants tax reform and john kelly wants x and stephen miller probably wants some immigration bill trump only wants to remain in power and be applauded for being in power

dan it's love it that was my line hello and stephen miller wants a girlfriend no what's interesting is the afghanistan speech was not trump and not stephen miller and not for the base because his base does not want to be in afghanistan just like our base and but the phoenix speech was the stephen miller trump mind melt and like you said trump probably had an even even better instinct than Miller did about what his base wants. But that was much more for the base than the Afghanistan speech. The Afghanistan speech was the result of establishment thinking, for sure.

While we're all here together, can we talk about the fact that we've been mispronouncing Axios for almost a year now? You know what, Dan? Here's the thing. I think we shouldn't really beat ourselves up about that. I believe they chose a Latin word or a Greek word.

Greek, yeah. It's Greek, so... It means worthy. What's the appropriate pronunciation? Axios? Axios. Axios. Axios.

But honestly, I think if we want to call it Axios, I think that's also fine. I mean, I don't think it is, but it's... Okay. When we come back, David Binder. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have David Binder, who conducted most of the focus groups for Barack Obama during his time in politics and many, many other campaigns and candidates.

Welcome to the show, David. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Okay, so I think some people's only experience with focus groups is the Frank Luntz silliness they see on Fox. Could you talk about the value of doing focus groups and how you go about conducting them? Oh, absolutely. You know, one of the things about focus groups and how you go about conducting them? Oh, absolutely. You know, one of the things about focus groups, it's different than just kind of quantitative research

and the telephone polls that are primarily reported. You get to dig underneath in focus groups and try to understand what it is that's causing people to have the opinion that they have. Obviously, polls provide a lot of data with statistics and percentages of the opinion that they have. Obviously, polls provide a lot of data with statistics and percentages of the percent that are going to vote for Trump or percent that are going to vote for Clinton. Focus groups tell you more of the whys. And they also give you an opportunity to kind of figure out how people are thinking, taking an examination of their emotion, and seeing what is cutting through. So, you know, focus groups are, for those that are unaware, and you're right, Lennox has done several of them on TV, but not quite the way that we do them,

a little bit differently. But, you know, you get voters around a table and they just sit around and talk and they ask questions, you listen to them go back and forth, and how they respond to each other when different arguments are made. And through the course of that discussion, you're listening to how people talk about an issue, what they think is the most important aspect of whatever the topic is, and understand a little bit about what's going on underneath. And how do you control for getting just the right subset of voters into a room and making sure that they, you know, are not self-selecting because they want to talk a room and making sure that they you know are not

self-selecting because they want to talk about politics and making sure you have just the right number of independents and Democrats and all that kind of stuff yeah we're very very diligent about this sort of criteria that we required before inviting anyone to these focus groups and you know focus groups are done with different segments of the population there There are many times during both of the campaigns that we did focus groups for, we are looking at swing voters. And we invited voters who said that they have a history of voting both for Democrats and Republicans, or those that may be undecided in the contest that we were asking about but the other thing that's important is to uh... calling uh... indeed the invitations that we sent out uh... that we uh... we

actually called on the desk and uh... to invite invited to the group's but those are done from borderless uh... certainly a lot of focus groups i have uh... regular databases people become regularly to focus groups and know what they're all about and get paid. Those sorts of people offer their opinion on food items or new models of cars or things like that. But when we do voter groups, we ask the facilities to look at registered voter lists and just cold call people and say, hey, we're doing a paid research project. It's going to take about two hours. We're going to give you a little bit of reimbursement for your time and travel. And what do you think?

And they go through a set of questions to make sure that they are indeed either independents or swing voters or whatever the criteria is for that particular project. And that's a process to get them in the groups. David, we often talk about how America is becoming a nation of pundits and how social media has changed the way people talk about and interpret politics. Have you seen changes over the 10 years since we first met you in how people respond to politics in focus groups? Do they know more? Are they more passionate, more engaged? Has anything changed in their approach to discussing politics? Definitely, Dan. One of the things that we do, we have a warm-up question that we use regularly when we go around the table at the

very beginning of the group and ask people to tell us a little bit about themselves and where they live and the basic stuff about themselves. But we also ask them to say, where are you getting your news and information these days? What is the primary source of your breaking news when things happen? And what's happened over the course of the 10 years is that people have more and more moved to social media as where they're getting their news. I mean, a lot of people say they're getting it off their phones, but many more people are getting it off Facebook. Even more people are getting it off Twitter now than they were 10 years ago. And that has a real effect for how they're viewing politics, because it's not just where they're getting their information, but it's who and what is filtering

their information. 10 years ago, we heard a lot of people talking about cable news and local news on television, and we still do. There are still many people that get their news that way. But these days, we're finding a lot of people saying, hey, I'm getting my news from Facebook. And they're getting their news from friends on Facebook or people that are already in their friend circle. So the way that they're consuming news and that they're getting information is now being filtered through their own friendship circles or other sorts of people they follow on Twitter. So we're finding a little bit more isolation in the degree to which people are getting their news, meaning that they're not always hearing both sides of the story. Lovely.

I remember you did a series of groups after the election with Obama-Trump voters. Yes, John. What kinds of explanations did these voters give for wanting to vote for Trump after they had voted for Obama once or even twice? These were fascinating groups, John. I tell you, I mean, it was one of the big questions we had when we realized what happened after Election Day. And everybody was kind of saying, well, what would cause people who voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012 to go to Trump in 2016, especially with President Obama campaigning so vigorously for Hillary Clinton?

So a lot of pundits were scratching their heads. How could that possibly make sense to anyone? So we did some focus groups with these people, and we actually recruited them like we were talking about before and asking them to to you know disclose who they voted for. We sat down with them and we did these in a couple of the swing states and just listened to them and said hey what you know you guys voted for Obama in 2012 and 2008 you voted for Trump in 2016 and there are some you voted for Trump in 2016, and there are some, you

know, some people would look at that and say, well, that's a little bit odd, given that one was a Democrat, one was a Republican, and President Obama himself would have, you know, was campaigning hard for Hillary Clinton. Well, how do you justify that, or how do you explain it? And what they told us was they didn't see any inconsistency at all in voting for Obama and Trump. And so I'm kind of like, you know, sitting at the end of the table there, kind of squinting a little bit. Okay, tell me a little bit more about that. Why do you feel it's consistent?

They said a couple things. Biggest thing, I think, was the idea that they were looking for change. They were looking for something different. The biggest thing, I think, was the idea that they were looking for change. They were looking for something different. And in their minds, Obama in 2008 was clearly something different than anything they'd had before as a president. He obviously was of a different ethnicity. He spoke differently.

He seemed to be coming from a different background. And voters at that point were saying, hey, let's look. We want something new. We want something different. In 2016, they said the same thing. We, you know, we had Obama and we, and many of them still like Obama. It wasn't that they turned against President Obama. They still had positive feelings and gave him a positive job review, but they said they still want change. And they looked at Trump and they thought that he is now the next version of change, the next version of something

different, someone who would shake things up. The other thing they said was that, you know, Trump appeared to speak very from the heart. And certainly a lot of people were saying he said things that concerned them or embarrassed them or things that they wished he hadn't said, or maybe he should have a filter. We heard that a lot in our focus groups. But at the same time, they kind of said, this guy's saying what he thinks, and he's fresh, and he doesn't worry about saying things that are, you know, dare I say, focus group tested. So, you know, to them, both Obama was a sincere candidate and sincere president who spoke from his heart. And to their outlook, Trump was doing the same thing.

So they were saying, hey, we're looking for candidates. You know, it's funny. Sometimes people, I think there's a little misconception sometimes that the voters are always looking at policy. you know, tax policy, or they look at, you know, child care policy or, you know, social issues or who's going to, you know, change the trade policies and things like that. And that is true to a degree. Many voters do. But a lot of other voters are just going on gut instinct. Which candidate makes me feel better? Which one do I kind of have a better feeling about? I trust more. For these Obama-Trump voters, they just felt that Trump was a more real person who they could connect with than Hillary Clinton. And they

felt that with Obama versus Romney in 12 and Obama versus McCain in 8. So for them, they didn't see any contradiction at all. David, in thinking about these voters, what I've really been wrestling with is, is there support for Obama, the exception or the rule? Meaning, would they have voted for Republicans in 08 and 12 if Obama was not such a unique change-oriented candidate? Obama was not such a unique change oriented candidate. And like at the heart of that question is, are these voters gettable for Democratic Democrats, congressional candidates and gubernatorial candidates in 2018 and a Democratic presidential in 2020? Or are they gone from up for us? No, I don't think they're gone at all, Dan. I think that they, I mean, a lot of these voters are people who reject party labels. They say they vote for the person. And as I said, they vote for someone who makes them feel better.

And for most all this group, you know, and some of them are, identify as Republicans, some identify as Democrats, but these groups, these are not traditional party line voters. They're not partisans. And they look at candidates separately and individually and what they're saying, you know, on the stump or in the media or from their Facebook friends. So I think certainly Obama was a unique candidate in 2008 and 2012 that caused some of them to gravitate to him. 2012 that caused some of them to gravitate to him. But, you know, as we all know, every election's a choice. And, you know, Obama contrasted favorably for these people compared to McCain, who was more older in status quo, and Romney, who they viewed as a little bit more out of touch with their lives. And in 2016, and, you know, I did focus groups for the Clinton campaign and was one of the, you know, consultants on her team. But it was, you know, I did focus groups for the Clinton campaign and was one of the consultants on her team.

But it was, you know, listening to these voters, they were saying that they weren't trusting Hillary Clinton. And they didn't feel that she was the one who was speaking from the heart or, you know, she was more traditional in status quo. And they were looking for something other than that. So I look at 2018 and I'm thinking, it depends on the contest. It depends on the contrast between the two candidates they're deciding for, whether it's governor or senator, but I have no reason to think that they're lost forever. I think they very easily could come back to the Democrats, depending on that particular race, but I suspect many will. It seems like there's this disconnect,

though, because we always hear that voters are concerned know, are concerned about issues and they're concerned about at least what affects their lives. Right. And if they're concerned about that, a lot of people are probably going to listen to your explanation and say, well, then why are they caring just about performative aspects of these candidates? Right. Like Trump makes me feel better or I like the way Trump speaks and I don't like the way Hillary speaks, and I don't trust her, or this or that. Do you get the sense that these are low-information voters, that they were vulnerable to misinformation, or that they, did they know Trump and Clinton's stances on all the different issues, and they just didn't care? Or what's going on there? Yeah, no, I do, it's a great question, John. I think that they do know to some degree what their policy positions are, but for a lot

of them, they don't care that much about it. I think what's going on is that you're absolutely right that voters are looking for a candidate who's going to improve their lives and make their economic lot in life a little bit more promising. The idea that they're looking at which candidate's going to help me is absolutely accurate. They want to know which candidate's going to make their lives better, help their family, give them a future, their kids a future, whether it's college or jobs. But I think what we hear from these voters is that that first line of attraction to a candidate is one of kind of instinctive trust and sense that they are people that are going to fight for them.

And a lot of that comes with this kind of gut feeling or this kind of sense that the candidate is someone that is going to be an honest person and has integrity and all that. So while they're looking for which candidate has a better solution or is more equipped to work with Congress to get things done and, you know, and improve the economy and create jobs, you know, everyone says that. All the voters that we talk to in our focus groups say that that's important. But for these kind of Obama-Trump voters and the other ones that seem to be swinging back and forth, before they believe that a candidate will make a difference in their lives, they want to know that the candidate is someone that they have a good feeling about.

Does that make sense? It does. It does. It's frustrating, and it makes sense. I laugh a little bit when I talk about these sorts of things, because this is exactly what Focus Scripture 4 is, kind of like listening to how people are, what steps they take to decide how to vote. And for a lot of these voters, despite the fact that they are concerned about job creation and college affordability and health care and making sure they have access to health care. Those are all extremely important issues.

They talk about it all the time. But they're looking for the candidate who seems to be able to shake things up in Washington, do things differently, and they're hoping that if someone does come in with a different perspective and shakes things up a little bit, that they're more likely to be able to make progress on the issues they care about. How much do you think sexism played a role in 2016? Did you hear that in the groups at all? Or I know people wouldn't explicitly come out and say that necessarily, but did anything people say give you a sense that maybe that was playing a role?

You'd actually be surprised. Occasionally they do say it explicitly. There you go. We have heard it. You know, in Florida we always divide the groups by gender just because of the group dynamic and a focus group discussion. Women and men sometimes talk about things differently and react differently if there's a gender mix in the room, so we split the groups just for that purpose. But yeah, I think it was clear.

And even among...when we talk about sexism, sexism, I think a lot of us assume that means men won't vote for a woman. But we even found women that wouldn't vote for a woman who said that I'm not. It was more than once and more than a couple of times we did focus groups in which one female participant would say, I'm not comfortable electing a woman president right now. one female participant would say, I'm not comfortable electing a woman president right now. But, you know, that's probably less than the number of men who said, I'm not comfortable electing a woman president right now. And, you know, it wasn't always them saying that no woman could lead the country.

They wouldn't say that explicitly. But there was a sense that, you know, there may be difficulties for a woman as president. This went back and forth, and one of the best things about focus groups is hearing people kind of fight each other on this. People would say, hey, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, and she has experience. She was in the White House before as First Lady. She's a senator. She's incredibly qualified to be president. And then the other people would say, yeah, but you know, maybe when she goes to

the Middle East, they may not treat a woman the way they would a man, and that could have implications for foreign policy and that sort of thing. So, you know, they don't always say, I'm not going to vote for a woman, but they come up with excuses to say why women may not be as good a president as a man would. David, have you done some recent research that gives us a sense of where the electorate is on Trump eight months in here? Yes, we have done some. We did a recent poll in California, which I'm getting ready to release, in which we

asked California voters. This is a little bit different. Obviously, California was a state that was incredibly pro-Hillary and anti-Trump back in November. But we asked the question a little bit differently. We said, would the country be better off if Donald Trump left office before the end of this term? Would the country be better off if Donald Trump finished his term and ran for re-election?

Then we allowed some people to volunteer a response that the country would be better off if Donald Trump finished his term and ran for re-election. Then we allowed some people to volunteer a response that the country would be better off if Donald Trump filled his term but did not run for re-election. And California found 60% said they would prefer that he left office before the end of the term. 29% said he should finish and run for re-election. But 7% said that, yeah, let him finish but don't run for re-election. But 7% said that, yeah, let him finish, but don't run for re-election. So you add that up, and that's two-thirds of California voters who say they don't want him to run for re-election, and 60% say it'd be better if he got off now. And the thing that's interesting is that even 10% of Trump voters said they'd like him to get out of office before the end of his term.

So we collected that data, and I know that California is a very different state than the rest of the country, and especially in the Midwest and the other places that gave Trump the electoral votes to win. But we're also in our focus groups, too. We're hearing people say that they're concerned that nothing's getting done. Certainly Trump has his base in the times that we had to talk to Trump voters, that they are still backing him, and they're kind of excited that he's taking on the media, and that he seems to be doing things differently and causing all these waves. His base likes that. But what we're finding is that that base is not growing. And some indications are that it's shrinking. And I know

other pollsters have data on this, but what we're seeing is that his base is devoted to him, but his base is in the range of 33% to 40%, and there's no sign that he's getting close to a majority. So if anything, the other 60% to 67% that are not with him are just as strongly moving in the direction against him as his bases perform. So we've seen polarization grow, but we're not seeing any sense that he is expanding to get anywhere near a majority support. What is the biggest concern among swing voters with Trump right now? In other words, if you were, you know, one of the challenges the Democrats face is there's a million different criticisms of Trump and they're sort of all over the map because he gives us, you know, enough ammo for weeks and weeks of ads every single hour on Twitter. But what do you think is the most potent message in running against Trump right now?

Well, the two things that we hear most in our focus groups when we ask people kind of like what is concerning them now about the state of the country is, like I said, three things. One is nothing's getting done as far as they're not seeing any progress on the issues they care about, whether it's health care or the economy or any other sorts of college affordability. The sorts of stuff that they mentioned are so important to them. Second is the tone. A lot of people are very concerned about increasing anger and, you know, the behavior of the president and how that is filtering down through the communities and more strife on the streets. We hear mothers saying that their children are more likely to be bullied and that there's more of a negative atmosphere, short fuses abound. A lot of people are concerned about the tone of social interaction. And then the third thing we hear, quite frankly, is the sense that America's position internationally isn't what it was before.

And now, you know, we're not. Some people use the term laughingstock, but other people say America's credibility is a world leader, which all Americans are proud of. Even those Americans who say we should spend more money on the United States than we spend on foreign aid, even they want America to be respected around the world and view America as kind of a moral beacon globally. And they're saying that's being erased right now. And they're looking at Europe, they're looking at countries around the globe saying that they don't hold America in the same esteem as they did before. And that's very troubling to people. David, is there anything

in particular that, you know, one of the things that is alarming to Democrats is you look at Georgia 6, where there are a decent number of Republicans, Republican-leaning independent voters, maybe some of them are Obama-Trump voters, who disapproved of Trump but voted against the Democrat. Is there anything in particular you would advise Democrats to do to try to, in addition to trying to get more Democrats to vote, but to win over, particularly in these purple or red-leaning districts, to get those Democrats to vote, but to win over, particularly in these, you know, these purple or red-leaning districts, to get those voters to vote for a congressional Democrat as opposed to a congressional Republican?

Well, one thing I think the biggest lesson of the last November's election was the degree to which voters look for authenticity in candidates. We really want candidates who are not trying to be politically, you know, cautious. Speak from the heart. Explain. If you have an unpopular position or position that may not be held by a majority of voters in your district, go out and explain it and say, this is why I think it's right. And you may disagree with me, but these are my principles and values, and I stand by them.

And when voters hear that, even if they don't agree with it, they respect you for saying it. They respect you for holding your gun. So a lot of the advice I have for Democrats running in 2018 is to be yourself, speak from the heart, and, you know, respect the voters' decision. And if you have a position that's controversial or, you know, one that maybe is not a majority view in the district you're running in, own it. And just, you know, say, hey, you know, this is the way I feel and this is why. And if you explain it and speak authentically, then I think voters are going to respect you and that makes a big difference. And the other thing I really believe right now, and I know I just sound so little, but we say this a lot,

but voters are really looking for people that can work together. And this kind of strife, and they look at what Trump's doing with not only Democrats, but also with his congressional Republicans now, and it just seems like the fight's gone to such an extreme that we just don't have any confidence that anything can get done. And this is part of the reason why they gave Trump a chance, some of them, because they thought that the Republicans had stymied President Obama so much and nothing got done over his period because Republicans are so obstinate that they were hoping Trump would come in from the outside and shake things up. But now we see things are worse. Not only is nothing

getting done, but people are just constantly fighting. So I'm going to tell Democratic candidates in 2018 that, you know, you've got to, you know, you have to hold your principles and speak from the heart, but also say, you know, the time for digging in the sand is, you know, we're going to do it when it's necessary for an issue that we have values on, but we really need to find common ground and try to find ways to work with the other party. David Binder, thank you so much for coming on. This was very illuminating. We know you have a flight to catch, so we'll let you go, but please come back and talk to us again sometime.

Happy to, guys. Invite me back anytime. When somebody doesn't show up, just call me. I'll fill in. Excellent. Thanks, buddy. Safe flight. Take care. All right.

When we come back,na marie cox on the pod we have with us the host of crooked medias with friends like these anna marie cox hello fellas hello uh we have spent most of the pod talking about phoenix that just brilliant speech that will go down in history wonderful performance he is a man of many moods our president apparently indeed which president will show up today it's your guess is as good as mine although the safe money is always on the crazy one um it's his gettysburg address um but if lincoln had lost and spent most of his free time like looking for memes about himself right like i i actually was entertaining myself as i was waiting for you guys to call thinking about what it would be like if obama just like spent time at the resolute desk looking for memes like yes someone asked

like what would obama be doing at 8 30 in the morning? And I said, he'd be tweeting angrily about a David Brooks column. Maybe he has a secret account where he does that. Let me tell you who knows Reinhold Niebuhr better. Many people are starting to talk about the Tea Party. The Tea Party. A lot of people aren't talking about it. The Tea Party. I do want to believe that he has a secret account where he's doing that stuff like that's that is the that is the thought that's gonna make me smile today

but we're gonna we shouldn't be smiling too much you guys wanted to talk about phoenix and phoenix was scary yeah we talked about what happened inside the rally with trump but i know you wanted to talk about sort of what was going on outside the rally and the effects of what trump said and what trump's been saying over the last couple of weeks on giving aid and comfort and encouragement to the white nationalist movement. Well, I mean, you said it very succinctly. That is what he is doing. Richard Spencer tweeted basically that that speech, whatever it was, it wasn't quite a speech. That, you know, rolling id in words,

basically was an attaboy, you know, for the white nationalist and white supremacist. They saw it as a validation from him. And they, of course, like everyone else, can point to a speech like that and say, that's the real Trump. You know, I mean, it matters like this difference between teleprompter Trump and rally Trump. It's not just about theater criticism, you know. Right. It is something that people pay attention to who are looking for meaning in his words. And you can tell when he really means it. And I would remind you guys, you know, I had Tom Nichols on my show last week and he's a national security guy.

And he's talked about how foreign powers look at this, too. national security guy and he's talked about how foreign powers look at this too like it's not his state of mind is a national security issue when you can tell when he means what he says and when he doesn't like that's something that other countries are looking at and paying attention to yeah it's interesting i was listening to um michael barbaro of The Daily. He interviewed ex-white nationalist Derek Black this week. And this is a guy who's like dad, basically, you know, does Stormfront Radio and his godfather is David Duke. And he left the movement, you know, at some point in college. And he said that he was so shocked that Trump came back and gave that press conference, the famous one in Trump Tower from last week, that basically said, yeah, I'm with you guys. He was like, people in the white nationalist movement are thinking, like, never in a million years could we have dreamed that this guy would come out and be so open as to call us fine people and to say that he loves all of us and to say all this stuff like

they are so pumped about this and that's fucking terrifying it is terrifying and it's not terrifying to me i said that trump's state of mind is a national security issue like this is a national security issue too because he's empowering them and there was a great story in mother jones this week about this about law enforcement officers saying that that speech worried them. Their quote was, it's hard to view this as anything other than a disaster. For them, on the ground, trying to counter homegrown violent extremism from the right. And you guys probably know that the Trump administration has cut funding and research into violent extremism on the right. There is one group in America that does outreach or one group that I know of that does outreach to white supremacists and tries to de-radicalize them. It's called

Life After Hate. They were being federally funded to do this. And the most important thing they could be doing at this moment in history, and it was cut by the Trump administration. Yeah, no. Well, of course, one thing that's amplifying all this or, you know, we could be seeing all this and like, yeah, obviously obviously this is bad. He's giving encouragement to white nationalists. But if you're watching Fox or you're reading Breitbart, it's all about Antifa, right? It's just violent. They did a story this morning on violent left groups about to explode. That's the main source of concern. Right. Kato did a study released not too long ago that said that far right extremists have killed literally 10 times more people than far left extremists in this country. 10 times more people. It's fake news. That's what that is. It's fake news. By the way, I think it is called Antifa. And like, you say Antifa, like, i think we need to settle on a pronunciation i think it's antifa well i don't think it's antifa because it's anti-fascism so so okay so antifa is the more

natural way to pronounce it but i agree with you anna that like axios right like right exactly it's antifa antifa antifa is right but it doesn't it doesn't have like the typical cadence of of english so we we struggle with it. I think, what's that called? It's like a trochee is da-da-da, but it's just da-da-da. And I don't know what that one's called. But anyway, they exist. And they're probably going to grow, of course, thanks to this attention.

But you know what else is going to grow? Those white nationalists and white supremacist groups, thanks to this attention. those white nationalists and white supremacist group thanks to this attention. They are now like possibly one of the only areas of growth for young conservatives in this country. I shouldn't say you just were the conservative. We have plenty of friends who are conservative. That's not necessarily what drives white nationalism and white supremacy. White supremacy and white nationalism drive it. But this is turning into a growth industry um for people who are aligned with trump let's say that um that's probably one of the only areas where his support is growing and you guys know

as well as i do like the support for him is shrinking and we should probably emphasize that when we talk about things like phoenix there are more of us than them but he's definitely them is louder yeah them is louder and them are dangerous. You know, they're the more dangerous of the two. And he's that's what I'm really scared of. You guys know this. I've been at a Trump rally where he turns the crowd on journalists. I've been in that journalist pen in the back of the room. What was that like? It's terrifying. Like I feel a little bit like a wimp telling you that and using that word but to have an entire group of people just focus their hate on you and there's only a

few of you and there's a lot of them like it's a physical like fight or flight response you know like it scares you and it's intended to scare you. And the line between doing that and inflicting actual violence is pretty. I mean, it's a bright line. Like I don't want to over dramatize this, but you're definitely getting close to that line and calling journalists bad people. I don't want to overdo the journalist as heroes thing. Right. But it's a part of a spectrum of what he's doing. Right.

as heroes thing right but it's a part of a spectrum of what he's doing right which also includes things like that arpaio pardon and the transgender you know revitalizing or you know reanimating the transgender ban he is othering bunches a group of people he is scapegoating them and he is he is urging on the most ugly of feelings that his supporters have for those groups. And he's validating those feelings. That's what's so crazy about this, right? Because when you think about what Obama did, love him or hate him, but what he did in moments of national crisis is he tried to set an example of how we should feel about something. Yeah, that's what presidents are supposed to do like it was like he tried to set a tone of sorts and not everyone agreed but i think we can agree that he was usually calming like he wasn't trying to stir up more and it's not just ob. I mean, we all we talked about this a lot. But when Bush

went to the mosque after 911, to make it clear that this was not an attack by Muslims, or what was about to be a war on Muslims, it was about basically almost every president except I mean, I think Nixon, you know, was a little more of an agitator, but most presidents have taken it as their role to be someone who calms the nation in times of crisis. And to take the opposite tack is just, again, it's not theater criticism. It's not just talking about his performance. It is something that matters because it tells Americans what's okay. You know, what are the limits of your behavior? No, there are, there are real effects to, to the words that the commander in chief uses, even when it's Donald Trump. Anna Marie, thanks for joining us. Who do you have on the show this week?

On the show this week is Jack Jenkins from ThinkProgress to talk about the history of Christian nationalism and the way that that ties to Donald Trump and how it explains a lot about why evangelicals are probably not going to turn on him, this sort of infrastructure of Christian nationalism that exists. And then Listener Mail, new regular segment, Parker Malloy and I tackle a question from a listener i want to have you guys on sometime by the way to help sweet anytime point me at a microphone all right all right well thanks for joining and i think let's do our outro we're doing we're all here it's the outro it's the outro uh you know we've often said that the hardest question you ask donald trump is like what is your health care plan do you think it would help with evangelicals if someone turned to donald trump and said uh you know donald trump you've professed that the hardest question you'd ask Donald Trump is like, what is your health care plan? Do you think it would help with evangelicals if someone turned to Donald Trump and said, you know, Donald Trump, you've professed that you're a proud Christian. Tell us about Jesus.

Tell us some facts about him. He's basically been asked that. He's the greatest. He was the best. He was amazing. Yeah. The Bible is the only book better than Art of the Deal. Go listen to it with friends like these.

Subscribe to all the pods. Go get it. Subscribe. Merch. Live shows. We got live shows. Crooked.com slash tours. Crooked.com to all the pods. Subscribe. Merch. Live shows. We got live shows. Crooked.com slash tours. Crooked.com slash tours. I think Ann Arbor,

I mean Wisconsin went on sale today. I gotta tell you, you know, there's no consequences, but this is not our best outro. Chris, please clean up this outro. No, don't clean it up. I think it should go exactly like this and let's just say goodbye now. I have to do my ads with Love It anyway.

This is like we're a transparent organization. This was a shitty outro. Let's just live with it. Take care, everyone. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye, guys. Bye, Dan.

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