Pod Save America - “How Trump can win.”

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Trump attacks Dr. Fauci and science as his campaign descends into chaos and recriminations, but both the Trump and Biden campaigns still see a path to victory for the President. Rudy Giuliani recycles smears against the Biden family, and Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes talks to Jon Favreau about how the race looks in one of the most important battleground states.

Could you imagine if I lose my whole life? What am I going to do? I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country. I don't know. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, I'll talk to the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, LaVorah Barnes, about how the race looks in one of the most important battleground states with just 16 days left to vote.

Before that, we'll talk about the MAGA meltdown happening in Trump world, how the president can still win, and the latest garbage attack on Joe Biden's family. But first, Lovett, how was the show? Great, Lovett, or leave it. Talked to Hari Kondabalu, W. Kamau Bell, who are hilarious. And then I interviewed Dave Weigel from the Washington Post about what he's seeing on the campaign trail. It was a good time.

Good time. Cool. Dave Weigel, man. Hardest working road reporter in politics. Just always out there. Yeah. Well, it's also he's like one of the best people about being on the ground and it's been harder to be on the ground yeah which sucks uh one more quick note if you haven't already this is the week to make a plan to vote do not wait if you can take advantage

of in-person early voting if you'd like to vote by mail get your ballot and then figure out exactly when and where you'll drop it off there are plenty of options to vote early and safely. If you need any help at all, we've got you covered. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash plan to make your plan, find your voting location and vote as soon as possible. And if you've already made a plan or if you've already voted, your work isn't done. You got to go help at least five other people in your life make a plan to vote who don't already have one. That's what I'm asking you guys to do because i'm sure a lot of you're just like i've already voted don't talk to me there's other people that you know who have just sitting there on their ballots you know

you know other people yeah okay that's right all right let's get to the news with 16 days left to vote here are some of the headlines the president is getting. The Daily Beast. Trump is taking down names as Republicans begin jumping ship on his, quote, totally off the rails campaign. Axios. Trump's advisers brace for loss. Point fingers. The New York Times reports that aides are quietly conceding just how dire Trump's political predicament appears to be. The Washington Post reports that the mood inside the Trump administration has been, quote, grim. CNN reports that former Trump chief of staff John Kelly has told friends that Trump is, quote, the most flawed person he's ever known. And here is some leaked audio of Republican Senator Ben Sasse talking about Trump on a phone call with his constituents.

The way he kisses dictators' butts. I mean, the way he ignores that the Uyghurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn't lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers. I mean, he and I have a very different foreign policy. It isn't just that he fails to lead our allies. It's that the United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor, the ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending, I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency

like a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists. I don't think the way he's led through COVID has been reasonable or responsible or right. And I'm worried that if President Trump loses, as looks likely, that he's going to take the Senate down with him. I'm now looking at the possibility of a Republican bloodbath in the Senate. The debate is not going to be, you know, Ben's asked, why were you so mean to Donald Trump? Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump? It's going to be what the heck were any of us thinking that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea.

It is not a good idea. That was Ben Sasse talking about the candidate he's going to vote for for president, Donald Trump. So before we get to the shit show of Trump's campaign right now, Tommy, do you have a reaction to our two most recent Republican profiles in courage? Ben Sasse and John Kelly. So frustrating. So frustrating. I mean, look, I guess better late than never. It's not the worst thing to have Ben Sasse say all of this in October before the election. But man, that wasn't a list of news stories. You know, Ben Sasse could have been speaking out about the Uyghurs in concentration camps for years.

But, you know, we'll set that aside. Like, I hate these stories for so many reasons. We read all the same stuff in 2016 about how Trump was angling to buy a TV network and the staff knew they were going to lose. And so, like, here we are again. No one should be celebrating on the one yard line. John Kelly, let's just pause there. The most flawed person you've ever known. OK, that's great.

That's lovely. No one said you had to work for him. No one said you had to rip kids away from their families at the border. You chose to take that job. There's no honor in that kind of service. Here's an idea for something you could do. A bunch of newspapers reported that Trump questioned whether the service made by members of the U.S. military was worth it while standing next to you at your own son's grave. If you think he's the worst person on the planet, why don't you speak up about whether that's true or not? You know, you're the only one who knows for sure. And you can clarify. So, again, like I guess there's some political benefit to us for having this stuff out there.

I'm also grateful to the lower level staffers who joined like Republican voters against Trump and are making these on the record sustained, potentially career ending efforts to defeat him. But God, I'm so sick of these like leaked or half assed comments. Right. Or like John Kelly or Jim Mattis who say, well, we don't want to get involved in politics. Well, when you decided to take off the uniform and be secretary of defense or the White House chief of staff, the most political job in all of the U.S. government, you cross that line, right? So like you don't get to duck these questions now. It drives me nuts. Love it. What do you think? And do you find either of these comments useful in some way? Well, sure, it's useful. It's all useful. You know, Ben Sasse was quite muted when he thought he might face a primary and he thought he might want some of those Trump voters. So no, no profile encouraged there. Yeah, I would divide Republicans who have spoken out against

Trump into two categories for the country and for the record, like for the country are people who have taken great personal risks to speak out. They have filmed ads. They have endorsed Joe Biden. They have been honest. They put their faces on camera. They've done it repeatedly. They've done it because they believe it's what's in the best interest of the country. I have no doubt that Ben Sasse believes what he says in that audio. I don't think he is just doing it because he's trying to earn plaudits. But I do think he and John Kelly are in some sense saying it for the record. When we look back on this moment, they are on the record having issued these criticisms. But Mattis, Kelly, this is America in 2020. Put your fucking faces on camera.

That's what matters. It matters. It matters when you say it to an Atlantic reporter so that it spreads around DC or say it on a background call or say it to friends or say it to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic and then go hide from people trying to confirm it. It matters. It matters. So, you know, I appreciate the people doing it for the country. I'm glad when people do it for the record, because I do think it's of some use to have Trump tweeting at a serious conservative and lambasting Ben Sasse on Twitter. I don't think that should be his message. It's a good distraction for us, but we should appreciate that distinction. Yeah. My view is I don't really give a shit about Ben Sasse, what he has to say, who he really is. Like my mind in the last 16 days is just like

pure political animal. What's going to help us win? And as soon as I heard, I had read this story about Sasse and I knew it was leaked, but I didn't know someone had the full audio that they were playing until I was prepping for the pod. I'm like, why isn't that in an ad yet? Yeah, that should be on air. I want Ben Sass's comments in front of Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters. Because, you know, you look at some of these stories about undecided voters right now. I know. They exist.

They're out there. And, you know, they all say the same thing. They they sort of like either Donald Trump's policies or think that as president, he hasn't done that bad of a job, but they hate him. They're disgusted by him. Right. And I do think that playing like Ben Sasse's comments for some of these voters may give them the permission structure to say, oh, here's a Republican who may agree with me on a lot of policies, but he hates Donald Trump too. So maybe I can, maybe I can jump ship. He's obviously a coward. Everything you said is right. Love it. He's a complete coward, but I'm just saying like, let's get this stuff in an ad. For sure. For sure. And I look, I'm, I'm in the same,

I'm in the same boat. Obviously all I care about is what helps us win. Of course, of course. But like when it comes to Ben Sasse, I do find it just a little bit interesting about what's going to happen to Republicanism in the long haul, because Ben Sasse is a good example of someone who like had a reputation of being serious, of being more intellectually honest than most, of having genuinely insightful things to say that were conservative, but like worthy of discussion. And what the lesson of Trump is, you can't be halfway to Trump and walk away with your dignity. You just can't. Because he has spent all of that capital these past four years and emerges a shell of the kind of politician he thought he would be. Let's talk about who's blaming who within the Trump campaign. The Washington Post reports that staffers and advisors are trying to decide whether a potential loss, quote, should be attributed to an undisciplined message, the coronavirus pandemic or campaign spending and choices made by former campaign manager Brad Parscale. What do you think, Tommy? Who's at fault here?

I mean, I can't I can't believe that reporters put this stuff in print. Like, yes, Brad Parscale burned through a ton of money too quickly. They raised and spent a billion dollars. And that means that Trump hasn't been running ads in places like Iowa since July. And now that the race is competitive, he had to visit there last week. They had to go back up on air. There's a competitive Senate race. It's a mess. But Trump hired Brad Parscale. Right. And so, yes, like flying to California a couple of weeks before the election, really bad. But the fault for winning or losing relies with Trump and Trump alone. There's no amount of campaign ads or strategy decisions that can make up for their disastrous

handling of the coronavirus. And as we were recording, someone sent me a tweet from Donald Trump where he's again criticizing Dr. Fauci for making bad decisions about masks. And then he ends it with also bad arm. Trump is making fun of Dr. Fauci for throwing out the first pitch at that baseball game and doing it badly right now. This happened like as a minute ago. So look, that's the problem. Like that's the reason they're losing, you know, like not because of Brad Parscale. He certainly didn't help. But the real problem is mocking Fauci on an

all staff call, as he also did today, empowering people like Scott Atlas that are basically like pandemic truthers and doing a disastrous job. Right. Like, that's your problem. In fairness to Trump, of course, he's making fun of Fauci's arm. Fauci is going to use that arm to vote for Joe Biden. And like, that's something to keep in mind. I just love that, like, everyone's like, you in mind. I just love that. Like everyone's like, you know, let's go through the spreadsheets to see where Brad spent too much money or something like that. Meanwhile, we're looking at headlines, like you said about the Fauci thing, which has

gotten really out of control in the last 24, 48 hours on a call with reporters today. Trump said, Dr. Fauci is a quote disaster who is a quote a, quote, bomb every time he's on TV. He's called other health officials idiots. He said Americans don't care about the pandemic anymore and just think whatever. And then last night, there's an NBC News headline. Trump mocks Biden for trusting scientists about COVID. Warns that he'll listen to the scientists if elected, which Joe Biden just like used as an endorsement. Like there's Donald Trump. Donald Trump's out there being like,

don't you like Joe Biden? He's going to listen to the scientists if you do. Like, yeah, no shit. Yeah. I mean, look, we really are in this sort of like decadent decline, last days of court. Trump is like, what's the guy whispering in Trump's ear is this crank radiologist named Scott Atlas.

It's the only person feeding him the kind of information he wants. The consensus is obviously where we all know it is on mass and testing and all the rest. I mean, the bigger problem is that cases are exploding right now. Like we are back up to really serious, scary numbers of new coronavirus cases. And everyone is predicting that it's going to get worse as it gets colder. And Trump is attacking Dr. Fauci in campaign calls. And right now, one of the holdups on stimulus is the fact that the White House is refusing to go along with expanded testing.

Why? Because Trump doesn't want to do it. And Scott Atlas is telling him it's a bad idea to test people and find out if they're asymptomatic so they can't spread it to other people. We were just talking about that. Like, there's two things. I would love Joe Biden to bring up both of these at the debate to like pretty easy to understand points.

There was that story that the Trump administration was going to mail masks to every single American and then Trump didn't want them to because he didn't believe in masks. And then the point you just made, Lov it that now we know um that there was a plan to do more expanded testing and scott atlas and donald trump are just like no we don't want to do more testing so they didn't want to hand out masks and they didn't want to do more testing like pretty easy to understand how badly he fucked up the pandemic um now he did in a sign of how the money issues for the campaign you know uh might be problematic, Trump did spend Sunday with, you know, 17 days to the election here in Orange County, here in California, down in Orange County, raising money because his campaign has about

half the cash on hand that Biden does. And that's because of pretty weak fundraising and the crazy spending. Tommy, how like real and problematic do you think the Trump campaign's money issues are in the homestretch? So I don't think any amount of paid advertising is going to really overwhelm the broader news cycle. But like there are key states where Trump is getting outspent by Biden and his allies. So the Times had a big piece on spending over the weekend. And if you look at states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Biden is basically has a two to one advantage in those states. And Biden's also spending in places like Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska. They're spending a little in Georgia.

He even went up with like a six million dollar buy in Texas. So it has allowed Biden to spread the field. It gives him a lot more paths to 270. the field. It gives him a lot more pass to 270. It also, I think like, yes, the value of ads can be overstated, but I think like when you are on the air in a market and your opponent is not, or is on the air like half as much as you are, that actually can move the needle. So I doubt any of this is determinative, but you know, like clearly it's built awareness of who Biden is, his plans, his record, it's helped his favorables go up. Hopefully it can help drown out some of this last minute crap. But yeah, like a candidate

coming off the campaign trail to fly to California on what was it, October 18th or whatever it was yesterday, like that is an absolute failure of strategy. Utter failure. Yeah. So we obviously love a good Trump and disarray story. But in each of these pieces, there are also Trump officials saying that they still see multiple paths to victory, even if they are narrow. This morning, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters, quote, he feels better about our pathway to victory than we have at any point in the campaign. And it's not just the Trump campaign saying that over the weekend. Several outlets published excerpts from a memo written by Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon, where she wrote the following. The reality is that this is a far closer race

than some of the punditry we're seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest. In the key battleground states where this election will be decided, we remain neck and neck with Donald Trump. Yikes. Love it. First, the Trump campaign still sees a few net paths to a narrow electoral victory. What are they? I mean, well, so they are looking at paths where they think if they can win Florida, Pennsylvania and Arizona, they don't need Michigan and they can win maybe one vote in Maine. Right. There's like a bunch of different paths where they don't think they need Florida to win.

If they have Florida, things get very easy for them. Right. They can win Florida. They can win North Carolina. They don't need Pennsylvania. They don't need Michigan, but they need Arizona. They're looking at paths where if they lose Florida and they lose Michigan, they can still win with a vote in Maine, Wisconsin, Arizona, but then they need Nevada, right? Like there's like a few different routes for them. But one

of the things that is striking about it is if you just go and sort of look at the map, right? Like you move Florida and Pennsylvania over, right? You can imagine them going together. And then all of a sudden, we're it's 2016 and our stomachs are in a knot and we're panicked and we need to win everything that's left, right? Like the lesson of 2016 is like every state doesn't run elections independently. They will move together. And we don't know exactly what surprises there will be on election night, but there will be surprises.

Like there will be surprises. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Now, you have to take all this with a grain of salt, of course, because, you know, campaigns Like there will be surprises. Almost all their paths to victory have them losing Wisconsin. So they feel they don't feel great about that. They do feel very good about Florida. They think that Florida is easy. At least that's what they say. And then it seems like Pennsylvania, Arizona and maybe Michigan and Nevada are all four states where they feel they feel like the race is tight, but they might be able to pull it out. And then, of course, I should say they feel he, at least in that story, said he felt good about North Carolina. But there's an ABC News story this morning that said Trump officials are suddenly not feeling good about North Carolina.

But who the fuck knows? Tommy, what advantages does the Trump campaign still have right now? Like, what are some of the reasons they think they can still pull this off? Yeah, well, Trump still dominates the news cycle like no one we've ever really seen. It has been quite the net negative for him lately, but that still is a lot of power. And it worries me. His ability to get the press to report on basically anything he wants is a huge advantage. We don't really know the impact of potential voter suppression or how voter tendencies might have changed because of the pandemic. We can't really understand,

I don't think, how much all this disinformation and these conspiracy theories that are flying around is impacting voters. I'm not suggesting there's some big foreign intel operation, but you are seeing sort of QAnon or QAnon adjacent stuff coming up anecdotally. It's reaching millions of people on Facebook. I don't think we really know how that cuts. We know that Republican voter registration has increased in some states. Maybe there's this big surge of like white men who are going to vote that we're not seeing in polls right now. We know that Trump is pretending the pandemic's not happening and doing big rallies and having his field team do in-person canvassing. Maybe that will pay dividends. Maybe undecideds will break to him. Maybe the polling is off. Right. So like those are all the major caveats we see out there. I do think like the thing people need to know is

like 90 percent of Trump's past victory involve him winning Florida. So that's a big piece of this for them. And for Biden, his easiest path is basically win the Hillary states, win Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and he's at 278 electoral votes and this thing is over. So there's just a lot more optionality for Biden now. I would just add two things to the list that Tommy just mentioned. We talked about spending. Sheldon Adelson just decided to dump $75 million into the race. And two, you know, Fox News is an in-kind contribution every single night for three hours a night worth billions of dollars in free advertising. They're pushing out, you know, the latest sort of

shit from Giuliani. They will be helping him all the way down the homestretch. And it's actually, I think, something that was also true in 2016 that maybe we're forgetting, which is there was a Hillary advantage in the closing days of that race, too. But Trump was able to overcome it because of the kind of shadow campaign other organizations were running around the kind of chaotic, floundering operation that he was running. And we're seeing the same thing now. running. And we're seeing the same thing now. Yeah, I think the fear from the beginning has been that the Trump campaign would register a whole bunch of non-college educated white voters, specifically, as you noted, Tommy, men in some of these swing states that are Trumpy kind of voters, but didn't vote in 16. So and look, in some of the registration data, we see that they succeeded

in registering some number of new Republicans. And then the other scary thing is there's a pool of registered non-college educated white voters who just simply sat out in 2016 and 2018, but have been registered to vote and that they would turn out those. And they do have this very big ground game. And, you know, I think Priorities USA, like a month ago, they did a presentation. That's the big Democratic super PAC. And they said, if you just increased, you know, sort of white working class turnout in some of these swing states by 4 percent and you decreased turnout among voters of color by 4 percent in some of these swing states, suddenly it's a razor's edge race and Trump could easily win it. And I think that's what they're looking at. I mean, do you think, Tommy, do you think Jen's warning about the race being close is what the Biden campaign is seeing in their polling? Or do you think she wrote that memo to avoid complacency? I know for a fact that it was part messaging and they are warning against complacency. And I think that is smart. But there's some reality to it, right? Like there have been polls that have Biden up like eight points in North Carolina. The Biden campaign does not think that those are real. They think Biden is closer to like one or

two points up in North Carolina. There was a poll, a Quinnipiac poll, a good poll that had Biden up 11 points in Florida. The Biden campaign thinks that is nonsense. The race is like three or four points. So their message is take nothing for granted, keep donating, keep volunteering, like run through the tape. But we all have to remember that we've never voted in a pandemic before one and margins of error exist for a reason. And so if it's a plus or minus 4% margin of error, that margin applies to both numbers, right? So you could see an eight point swing in a poll with a plus or minus four MOE. And that's just something to remember. Like polls are not determinative. There's snapshots in time.

They're imperfect. The averages that FiveThirtyEight and all these sites are doing is better. But again, like we've never voted in a pandemic. We just don't know. So we got to work hard. I mean, if I told you boys that there was a one in 10 shot,

I put a bomb in your car, you'd be fucking terrified to start it. Unless I was Donald Trump and then I'd say it's fake news. There's no bomb. It's fine. Then you'd say Eric just started. He's just saying Eric just started. No, I mean, I get, look, you know, Jen said the race isn't up double digits. They don't have it like that. You know, if you look at the state polls right now, they sort of add up to a seven or eight point national lead, not quite the 10, 11 point lead that you see in some of the averages. So, you know, it could be all that that could be what what she means by that. But it's close in a

lot of these swing states. And partly it's close because, again, as I was just saying, like, we don't know what the turnout is going to be that polls are only as accurate as the type of electorate that ends up turning out. And that is just as much art as it is science sometimes, figuring that out. The other worry I have is rejected ballots, right? All these people are voting by mail, and by all these people, I mean mostly Democrats, right? The disparity between Democrats voting by mail and Republicans voting in person is huge. And so if there are a bunch of rejected ballots, it's going to hurt Democrats more. So that is the other X factor here

that's sort of unnerving. One other just, you know, things that are happening that you might not think about, right? Well, when the electorate shifts redder as we get closer and closer to election day, the kind of shit Trump's pulling that's designed to motivate his base

will matter more for them than it would in the opposite for us, right? Like if they're going to be pushing misinformation for the next two weeks really, really hard to build up to election day, like that could work. That could manifest in a bunch of Trump people showing up who aren't telling pollsters right now that they're planning to vote. Or a bunch of people who might be voting for Joe Biden deciding to stay home because they're so turned off by both candidates, which is the other thing that I really worry about. which is the other thing that I really worry about.

So any of the Trump campaign's paths to victory require destroying Joe Biden's very favorable image with voters. And now that Sleepy Joe, Senile Joe, Antifa Joe, all that hasn't worked. They're back to where they started, which is Joe Biden criminal mastermind. You will all recall that Donald Trump was impeached because he extorted the Ukrainian government to launch a sham investigation into Joe Biden and his family. Well, last week, Rudy Giuliani and federally indicted Steve Bannon gave Rupert Murdoch's New York Post a bunch of emails they say they got from a Trump loving computer repair shop owner in Delaware who says he took them off a laptop that Hunter Biden brought in for repair in April of 2019. The repair shop owner also reportedly gave the laptop to the FBI, which is reportedly

investigating whether the emails are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, which might make sense because Rudy has been known to work with at least one Russian agent to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Can we just also just please note, because it's my favorite part of the story, that the repair shop owner who apparently ID'd Hunter Biden said on the record that he's legally blind. So just let me know how that identification was made. There's something else about a sticker, but again, worth noting. I want to get to why like all of this seems suspect, but love it. What are the various

allegations that Bannon and Rudy are trying to push here based on the content of this laptop? And again, just a warning for everyone. We have to go down every once in a while. We have to do this. We have to go deep down a rabbit hole of Fox News universe here and right wing universe to really unpack all of this. I mean, look, one of the key allegations from this weekend is that Joe Biden is a supportive father who loves his son even as he's struggling to overcome addiction. Like that's one of the hardest hitting piece of this. That's one of the big ones. It's actually hard to say exactly what they're alleging. Was there some money exchange, some corrupt deal between Burisma and Hunter and Joe Biden? It's very similar to Benghazi in the sense that the core facts are

quite well known and they have been investigated. Joe Biden has been found to have had no wrongdoing by two Republican investigations in Congress. And the most important facts, the key part of this story, the part that they have to ally to make it sound like there's corruption is Hunter Biden was paid by a company in Ukraine. Joe Biden, advice president, did the opposite of influence peddling. He did the opposite of what that company wanted.

He did what was right, what the US government wanted, and it hurt that company. It's the opposite of what that company wanted. He did what was right, what the U.S. government wanted, and it hurt that company. It's the opposite of Hunter's influence having any effect, right? That's the facts, right? Burisma would have wanted something to happen. Joe Biden said, no, we're doing the opposite of that. That's it. And everything else is an effort to find something that sounds bad, that looks bad, that sounds like what corruption should be, that sound like what influence peddling is. But they don't have that. So they spread these sort of like misbegotten emails and what have you to try to create some sort of illusion of malfeasance.

Tommy, what are some of the many reasons the entire story is almost certainly bullshit? Well, I mean, to love its point, I mean, the underlying allegations that somehow Joe Biden used his position in the government to help Burisma and help his son has been thoroughly investigated by Republican-led congressional committees and found to be untrue. The latest kind of twist of the knife here is a suggestion based on a wild interpretation of an email that maybe Joe Biden himself got money or a kickback or some sort from one of these deals. But the problem with that is that Joe Biden has released like a decade, many more maybe, worth of tax returns. So if Joe Biden got some big influx of money from Burisma, it would show up in those tax returns or he has committed massive tax fraud.

Right. So there's just a million parts of this underlying allegation that seem completely false. Now, some of the people who want to make this bad for Biden are trying to get into a game of like, are these emails real or not? And the Biden campaign doesn't want to go down that path because all of a sudden you have to confirm or deny everything Rudy Giuliani says. And I think that's nutty. But like there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of all of this reporting. Yeah, the supposed bombshell in New York Post story is that maybe Hunter introduced Joe Biden at one point to one of his someone he was working with at this Ukrainian company. That's it. Like the Biden people were like, well, that's not on the official, the vice president's official schedule.

So it wouldn't have been any kind of serious meeting. And they're like, well, could he have possibly like, you know, just said hi to him once? And they're like, well, we don't know. He's met like, you know, like, so, but even if that's true, like, so Joe Biden says hi to you, a Ukrainian executive in the worst case, right? Like that's the bombshell.

That's why you have to come back to like, there's going to be a lot of noise. They rely on the fact that like things that are like investigation shaped are covered like investigations. Like the core allegation is false, right? Like whatever kind of shit that gets turned up about this, we know what happened at the time. They're public.

It's public information. Yeah. No, I mean, there's a few other things, too. Like, you know, Tommy mentioned the Republican led Senate committees that couldn't find it, find anything, even though Ron Johnson, dipshit from Wisconsin, admitted that the investigations were purely political to hurt Joe Biden in the election. And they still couldn't find anything. Rudy Giuliani admitted he went to the New York Post, admitted this because he didn't think any other outlet would take it or if they did they might fact check it multiple other outlets reported that the new york post reporter who wrote the story refused to put his byline on it because he didn't think it was credible and this morning we learned that fox news passed on the story because they

didn't think it was credible though it didn't stop all of their fucking opinion journalists in the primetime lineup from talking about it nonstop for the last week. But the news section of Fox said, no, this story is too crazy for us. Yeah. Rupert Murdoch basically decided that he wanted to make this a thing. And so he did. The the the lead author on the story has no other stories written for The New York Post and until recently was a producer for Sean Hannity. And her Instagram apparently is just full of pictures of her with like MAGA people. So, you know, that's kind of the level of sophistication we're dealing with. A lot of credibility. I mean, let's talk about how the media has handled this in general. You know, Twitter initially banned all links to the New York Post story, saying it violates their rules

about distributing private personal information and their rules against distributing hacked material. They then backtracked to say they'll only remove such content if it's distributed directly by hackers or their accomplices. Facebook said it reduced the visibility of the story until it could be fact-checked. No non-MAGA news outlet could confirm any of the story. Most of them reported it rather skeptically, although a CBS reporter who asked Biden about the New York Post story got a fairly annoyed response from the former vice president. Lovett, how do you think the press and social media platforms have handled this? I was surprised by what Twitter did. I just was genuinely surprised by it.

It's a strange thing. Like, this is, I think, is a problem for two weeks and four days from now. But like, there is no coherence at all to Facebook or Twitter's decision making around what it considers misinformation and what it doesn't. I get that it's a really hard question, but like banning it and then unbanning it and basically giving the right wing this like talking point that they're being kind of manhandled by Twitter, I think is like a strange thing to do. I think what I saw is like a mix of people kind of trying to figure out how to cover this appropriately, right? Like, I think that there's, you know, there is obviously an important story here.

I think the question is, what do you think that story is? Is it the story that Rudy Giuliani is trying to say? Or is it the story about what why Rudy Giuliani is doing this and how he's doing it? And as part of that, an examination of what this material is to To me, like, that should be the core of this story. Like, what is the chain of custody of this information? Why is Rudy Giuliani doing this? Who is he partnered with? What does it tell us about the way right-wing misinformation and disinformation and Russian intelligence operations really work? What does it say when you have Trump's handpicked intelligence chief on television doing his dirty work as if he's a member of the campaign, right? There's like, that to me is the bigger story than whatever they're trying to pump out of the New York Post.

Tommy, how do you like as a having been a press communication staffer on a lot of campaigns, like there's always a balance when stories like these come out where you want to knock them down, but then you also don't want to give them too much oxygen because then everyone's talking about it. Like, how do you think the Biden campaign should handle this? I mean, I think at a staff level, they're doing the right thing. Like they can't get into this game where every piece of misinformation or everything that Rudy Giuliani says gets thrown to them to confirm or deny. Right. Like you see a lot of people on Twitter right now saying, you know, Democrats are suggesting that this is Russian disinformation, but the campaign refuses to confirm or deny whether these emails are real. I just don't think that's a fair standard. You

can't say that Rudy Giuliani can work with some Ukrainian goober who's been sanctioned by the Trump administration and called a Russian asset and then like leave it to the Biden people to figure out what to do with that. I think the debate is a different story, right? Because like associated with the substantive critique of Hunter Biden and Burisma, and we just talked through all the ways that is garbage. There is a real human element here, which is the New York Post releasing private personal information, not about a candidate, but about his son and about

his grandkids. And so it's just so gross to see text messages from a father to his son who is struggling with addiction get splashed out for all the world to see. It is so gross to see text messages from Hunter Biden to his daughter treated like there should be public information because it somehow makes the rest of this garbage the New York Post is peddling more credible. So I would want Biden to sort of focus on that human element and how gross it was and sort of repeat what he said at the debate, which is like, my son struggled with addiction. He's in recovery. I love him. I respect him for it. What Rudy Giuliani and

your surrogates are saying is disgusting. It's offensive to anyone who has someone in their life with a substance abuse problem. And like, I'm not going to make this about families, but I can tell you what I will do as president is I'm not going to use the office that I hold to steer taxpayer dollars into the family business the way you have. I'm not going to install an incompetent schmuck like Jared Kushner in my White House because he's my son-in-law and then put him in charge of the pandemic response. I'd want to go a little bit on offense with this, but in a way that is not like fully down in the dirt. You know, I would say your children have used the presidency as a business opportunity,

and those aren't my words. That's what Republican Senator Ben Sasse said on a call last week. Yeah. I would put it in Ben Sasse's mouth. I agree Biden should go on offense. I was like, I find myself just really sad, like having to read some of those texts and feeling really bad for Hunter and the family and the grandkids and everyone who've gone through, who've gone through a family member having addiction. And like, it's not only morally repugnant, by the way, like, I don't think that fucking works.

Like there is so, how many families in this country have struggled with a family member who's had an addiction issue? Like millions and millions, not just Democrats, Trump voters, right? Like that, that cuts across all demographics, all party lines, like going out there and gleefully mocking a family's addiction. I just don't think it's a, I don't think it's a great political play. Well, it's also, you know, in those messages, you see, like, I saw like, you know, Eric Trump and Don, Don Jr. sort of gleefully tweeting this, right? And all we have seen, if they're true, are signs of a good father showing an incredible amount of love for his family. That's what they managed to reveal to try to kind of to smear the Biden family. And it is a testament to just how

kind of how low this operation that these people cannot see that this is not an attack. It's not bad for Joe Biden. It's just a human. It's a human story. And they're so inside of this evil Trump orbit. It has broken them. And they think that this is appropriate. That's all. All right. We have time for a few questions before the interview. Questions. Stacey Smith-Clayman via Facebook asks, talk about Texas and our early voting turnout so far. What does it mean? We can back up and talk, sort of talk about early voting, reading early voting tea leaves in general. Anyone want to take a stab at that? It's exciting. Don't do it. Like, I'm glad to see the turnout. It's really exciting to see

people showing up. If we waited four years for this moment, let it motivate you. Let it, let it, let it excite you. Let it inspire you. Don't take any, any aspect of it for granted whatsoever. Why is reading the tea leaves on early voting turnout, um, not the most accurate way to find out whether we're ahead or not? Well, first of all, this is true in any election. We know based on polling that because of the asymmetric information around the pandemic and voting itself, people who are voting for Biden are tending to vote earlier by mail and people who are going to vote for Trump are planning to do it in person. It's a huge, huge disparity. So even in a normal year, you can't read a lot into it. But now it's all it tells us is that Democrats are voting, but we would know that anyway. Yeah, the other issue, too, is you can't really determine who's ahead by party registration

when one of the reasons that Biden has had a big polling lead, if the polling lead is true, is that he is pulling a lot of Republicans and independents, especially independents, a lot of Republicans and independents, especially independents, in addition to just Democrats. So if you just see early voting, that's like D this number, R this number, non, you know, independent or no party, this number, it's really hard to find out who's ahead then. And then, like you said, Levitt, it's apples and oranges in a year where we've never had this many people vote by mail. So it's good to see enthusiasm, but that's it. It's also the opposite, right?

There are counties where Trump won by 20 points, but there's a Democratic registration advantage because there are a lot of former Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016 and probably will again. Yeah. Alex Medrano via Facebook. Is there any way we can get back into the Iran nuclear deal if Biden is elected?

How long will it take for the US to regain its reputation on the world stage after all the damage Trump has done in terms of foreign policy? World O. I mean, the reputation question is, is it going to be a generational problem? So good luck with that, Joe. Yeah, he can get right back in the Iran nuclear deal tomorrow and then hopefully renegotiate a stronger follow on agreement that extends it. I'm hoping that that's one of the first things that that Biden does if he wins, because right now, we should be clear that we are much less safe. Iran is enriching uranium at levels that they were forbidden from doing under the Iran nuclear deal. And on top of that, the Trump administration is putting more and more sanctions on them and just

destroying their economy, destroying their ability to get in like medical supplies in the middle of a pandemic. It is really a bloodthirsty, vindictive, horrible policy that is being implemented on the Iranian regime. And I'm obviously no fan of the leadership in that country, but you have a bunch of people trying to live through a pandemic and they're just crushing them. And it is deeply fucked up. All right. Last question. Julie Finn Bakey via Facebook asks, at what point is it too late, not effective to donate to candidates? I'm thinking specifically of Senate candidates. Can my money still help Doug Jones or Gary Peters? Are donations useful right up to election day? Or is there a cutoff beforehand where it becomes too late to place ads or send out mail? beforehand where it becomes too late to place ads or send out mail. You take that one. Sure. I think I mean, maybe not on Election Day, but I think in these in these last couple of weeks, your money is

very effective, right? Like campaigns place last minute buys all the time. They can go up on air really fast. There's also in addition to advertising, that's not just where the money's all spent. There's also a field operation. There's ballot chase operations to make sure that you go find voters who haven't returned their ballot yet. Like, there are so many things campaigns can spend money on towards the end. And if they are hurting for cash or they are being outraised or outspent by their opponent, then yes, that money helps.

Your money tends to help most in close races and especially some of the down ballot races where it doesn't take a lot of money to suddenly have a cash advantage. Right. Like that's why we've been raising money in our fuck gerrymandering fund for a lot of state legislative races. We've been trying to do things like, you know, on Thursday's pod, we told you about that poll in Doug Jones's race in Alabama. Doug Jones raised. How much was it, Tommy, over the weekend? They didn't. That wasn't an external number. how much was it tommy over the weekend uh they didn't that wasn't an external number oh sorry sorry um you know so we we tried to raise a bunch of money for um doug jones's race over the last couple days can we keep in that tommy knows the internal number because i think

it's cool well that you know they they reached out to us because they were looking for some help raising online and i do think it speaks to john's broader point which is like doug jones is someone who is uh in a really tight race and a really hard state. And they think that they have a little if they can get a little more money in to go up on air and do more in these closing weeks that they might be able to win. So we'll see. Yeah. So maybe when it comes down to like the day before the election, maybe you don't donate. But up until then, keep donating because it could help a lot. All right. When we come back, we'll have my interview with Lavora Barnes, who is the chairwoman of the Michigan

Democratic Party. I'm now joined by Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. Thanks for coming on the pod. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. It's cool to be here. Good to have you. So I want to start with Donald Trump's trip to Michigan on Saturday, where he told Governor Whitmer to end a stay-at-home order that hasn't existed since June. And then when the crowd chanted, lock her up, he said, lock them all up. Obviously, that is dangerous and horrific. How do you think voters react to that sort of

thing, especially after their governor was the target of a domestic terror plot? Here's the thing that the voters here in Michigan know that this governor stepped up and took care of us in a way that many other governors did not in their states, and certainly in a way that Donald Trump did not for this nation. And they're grateful to her for that. So to hear the President of the United States and his supporters suggest that somehow she needed to be stopped or should be locked up, I think is a little bit scary to our voters. I think they understand the danger that our governor is in. There's a terror plot out there. Who knows what other plots are out there? We cannot have a president who incites that sort of violence and hatred. It needs to stop. It's dangerous. It puts her in danger. It puts all of us in danger.

And the fact that he doesn't care about that should frighten the voters, frankly. Let's talk about the race. 2016 was a bad year for Michigan Democrats. 2018 was a great year for Michigan Democrats. Can you talk about what changed between those two elections and what lessons from 2018 specifically you guys have applied to the 2020 race? So I'll start with the lesson from 2016, which was that we as a state party were not prepared with a ground game. We had not been organizing in a grassroots way as a state party leading up to 2016. And what we did when we woke up after that 2016 election was to build that ground game. We started a project we called Project 83, which is for the 83 counties here in Michigan, so that we

would have organizing activity in every county of the state starting in 2017 and not stopping. And we haven't stopped all the way through to 2020. So obviously that paid dividends for us in 2018. And we continued that work on the ground all the way through so that right up until COVID turned us into a virtual campaign. We were on the doors, having conversations with voters and visiting their neighborhoods all the time, not just showing up right at the end of the election to ask people for a vote, but having good conversations with voters about issues that matter to them and how Democrats would respond to those issues and what's important about participating in the election

and supporting Democrats. It also helps that in 2018, we ran a slate of badass women who worked hard, who ran all over the state, made sure they were in every part of the state, having gone through those conversations with voters everywhere. I call it now a full Whitmer

when you win all of the counties. And it makes a big difference to actually show up everywhere and have those conversations. And we're doing that again in 2020. Well, so obviously, you know, Governor Whitmer won by such a large margin that she earned a huge share of voters who actually cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2016. What share of those sort of Trump-Whitmer voters do you think that Joe Biden needs to win the state this year? So as you know, I think as everybody knows, we lost in 2016 by 10,704 votes, the tightest margin in the country. So what I tell everybody is that those 10,704 votes are in your neighborhood, 2.2 votes per precinct.

So our goal is to go find those 2.2 votes plus more. So I want the full Whitmer Trump voter to come out and vote for Joe Biden and then some. And I think that we can get there. This feels good here on the ground here in Michigan. One of the big issues in 2016 was a steep drop in turnout among Black voters. What has the party in the Biden campaign been doing since then to energize communities of color? Great question. So one of the first things we did was open and keep open offices in those cities where people of color are the majority. So Detroit, an office in Detroit that stays open all the time, that has staff, that's sort of become a community center. And it's been open even during COVID. People go in

there masked up and socially distanced. It's where they can go get a sign or whatever they want and volunteer. But those offices stay open because we need to continue to have conversations in those communities all the time. We need to stop being the candidates who show up to go to church in October and then disappear until it's time to get elected again and show up to go to church in October. So we've been in these communities having conversations with these voters, supporting these communities around the issues that are important to them, whether it be water shutoffs or redlining or just clean water in their homes like in Flint all the time. We can't just show up for the vote. We have to be there for the community. And that's what we've been doing. Michigan was hit pretty hard by COVID, especially early in the pandemic. How do you think that experience has shaped people's political views in the state?

Obviously, I'm sure there's a huge number of people in Michigan who have a special appreciation for how scary and serious this virus is. And of course, we also saw at the beginning, you know, there were anti-lockdown rallies at the Capitol. So how has the pandemic sort of shaped the politics of the state? The first thing is that this governor's response to the pandemic has provided for us a stark contrast between how Trump has handled this virus and how we've handled it here in Michigan. And I think that makes it easy for us to have that conversation about the need for change in Washington is to just point to what's happened here in Michigan and what's different. Number two, I think that the governor and the

lieutenant governor have recognized how hard this virus hit the Black community and have stepped up to make sure that they began to put in place health care beyond just COVID, but health care resources for the communities that were hit so hard by this virus, something that the federal government has not done. And that's something that we can remind folks over and over again, that when you have Democrats in leadership, folks who care in leadership can really make a difference in people's lives. And then finally, I think the callous disregard for life that's been shown over and over again by the Trump administration really hits home here in Michigan, where I don't know a single soul who doesn't know someone who has had or someone who has passed away from COVID. It is a painful part of our lives. And the fact that this administration just doesn't seem to care makes us angry and makes us all want to vote.

And how have registration efforts been going with the pandemic? Do you still feel good about where you guys ended up? So registration's hard because so much of what we would do to register voters would be in person and close. So we stopped registering, frankly, for a while as COVID came in. But what we have in place is a terrific secretary of state who recognized that the voter registration efforts that we all as a family, not just the Democrats,

would undertake were stopped or slowed by COVID. And she has done some terrific work making it possible for folks to register to vote online and has been pushing hard to get folks to register. So she just announced

that she's got over 100,000 new registrants that came through programs that she built out and that she's been pushing to get folks to register. So she just announced that she's got over 100,000 new registrants that came through programs that she built out and that she's been pushing to get folks registered. So yes, we feel good, but luckily we can register folks right up to and on election day and we're not stopping because I know that there are young folks out there who turned 18, my son was one of them, who needed to get registered. We walked him into the clerk's office and got him registered and we need to make sure that we're doing that all over the state with folks who need to get registered. We walked him into the clerk's office and got him registered. And we need to make sure that we're doing that all over the state with folks who need to get themselves registered who haven't been into the Secretary of State's office because of COVID.

And therefore, I haven't gotten that registration taken care of. Really important point. If you live in Michigan, if you know someone who lives in Michigan, you can still register. One million Michiganders have already voted. What do we know about who's already voted? Are you seeing any signs in the numbers that give you hope? Or is it just far too hard to tell what's going on with the shift in mail-in voting this year? So because we don't register by party here in Michigan, it is really hard to do what some states are doing and point to an advantage in terms of who has voted so far.

But I will tell you this, when you look at the cities and the places where folks are voting, those are places where lots of good Democrats live. We feel good about where we are, about the work we've done to talk to voters about the importance of voting early and voting safely. We're telling folks to get those votes cast,

get them in, take them to a drop box, go to your clerk's office. And people are responding and people are voting. And our goal is to get as many of our votes banked early just to make sure that folks are voting safely and don't have to stand in line in a mask for hours on Election Day. And I feel good about where we are and where those numbers are. And I think we're at 1.5 million voters. OK, nice. Very good. I like that. So Joe Biden's consistently polling fairly strongly in Michigan, but incumbent Democratic

Senator Gary Peters is running behind him in a lot of polls. What do you think accounts for this gap? And what do you see as sort of the work that Gary Peters has to do from now until Election Day to to pull this out? Yeah, Gary Peters is a terrific candidate and he's doing a great job. to pull this out. Yeah, Gary Peters is a terrific candidate, and he's doing a great job. He is being hit hard by the Republicans who see him as a target, I think, in part because of the Trump margin here in 2016, I think in part because they have a candidate that they really enjoy talking about and are supportive of, and who apparently supports the president 2,000 percent and who's got some really wealthy

donors behind him, including the DeVos family. All of this comes together to mean that that candidate is well-funded and is working to continue to raise money, probably spends more time out of state raising money than he does in state talking to voters here in Michigan. And you know that that sort of onslaught from a candidate with all kinds of money, a party with all kinds of money, and then third party groups that want to attack Senator Peters makes for a lot of work for Senator Peters to get this done. But he's doing the work. He's broken fundraising records himself. Every quarter, I'm surprised again by Senator Peters' numbers. He's doing a terrific job. I feel confident that Senator Peters will win.

You know, we always run, you know, those of us further down the ticket always run a little bit behind the top of the ticket because that's just what happens. Right. But I do think that Senator Peters will indeed be fine. He's doing some terrific work. I've had people, I don't know if you know,

Magic Johnson was in town. I heard, I heard. That's a good guess. Senator Peters was there, and I have not seen Senator Peters have so much fun at an event as the videos I've seen. He's having a good time out there on the campaign trail, but now he's got to go back to Washington and do some voting. So we'll pick up the mantle for him and make sure his words are being heard. So a Michigan court recently ruled

that ballots that arrive after election day can't be counted. Is the Michigan Democratic Party going to challenge that ruling? Is there time to do this without confusing voters? Right. I'm not sure that there's time to do that. And what I'm trying really hard to do is not confuse the voters on the messaging here. So we've been very clear, even when that judge did say that we could count those ballots up until 14 days, we were still very clear, get the ballots in early, get the ballots in fast, because we knew that this court ruling was in jeopardy. We need to be just focused on making sure folks get voted, get those votes in. I think that we should challenge this later, beyond this election day, because elections keep coming everywhere. And we will want to continue to have this discussion about how

important it is, because, you know, the postmark, I think, should be enough if you've postmarked yourself. But here in Michigan, you've got to get it in by 8 p.m. on Election Day. And we're just going to continue to share that message with our voters and make sure they get those ballots in. Too many people, I think, it's a big plan, but too many people's ballots don't get counted because they get late. I think there were about 6,500 folks in the August primary here in Michigan whose ballots arrived too late to be counted. And we can't afford that. No, that's what we just told everyone on the pod today.

Make a plan this week. Get the ballots in. So the Trump last question, the Trump campaign is telling reporters that at least one of their paths to victory includes winning Michigan again. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who worried that Trump would win last time, says she's still worried. That's usually what she does. What specifically are the things about the race that are keeping you up at night? I know you want to say everything, but what's keeping you up at night? So here's the thing that worries me. And I think your listeners won't be surprised when I say this. I don't trust them to follow the rules or follow the law. So it's the things

that they will do when they see that they are losing or have lost that I don't know about, or I can't dream about because my brain won't let me think that way because I'm a good, honest person. It's those things that worry me, the unknowns out there, the fact that we have very little understanding of what's in their minds in terms of voter suppression, in terms of trying to block people from voting, trying to block us from counting the votes, all of those things. So what we've built a magnificent team of lawyers, probably the biggest team of lawyers I've ever had around an election day operation, almost ready for anything. And really they can make up some scenarios that I'm like,

that will never happen. And they're like, well, it might happen. So let's be ready for it. And that's my goal is to make sure that we're ready for that, that we can afford to pay for that. And so that whatever happens, we can fight back and make sure that we protect the vote because that's what this is about. It's not just about winning at that point. It is about protecting this democracy.

You know, Americans have been voting legally, carefully, safely through war, through everything, but through Trump, this is where we are right now. And of course, the best way to avoid the scary scenarios is to win big

and for everyone to get their ballots in. So everyone, everyone go vote. Everybody vote, win big. Okay. Thank you their ballots in so everyone uh that's exactly right everyone go vote win big okay um thank you so much lavorra barnes for joining uh pod save america and good luck to you in these last uh these last couple days and uh let's flip michigan back my pleasure my pleasure thanks so much for having me and thanks for paying attention to what's happening in michigan thanks to lavor barns for joining us today and um we

will have another pod on wednesday uh dan and i will do the pod on wednesday and then we will have our post debate for the final debate our post debate pod with all four of

us on friday aren't you glad there weren't three in the end yes so glad oh my god there's too much stress terrible i don't even want i don't even want another one yeah three in the end. Yes. So glad. Oh my God. Too much stress. Terrible. I don't even want,

I don't even want another one. Yeah. 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 Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support.

Into our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narumel Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.