Pod Save America - “Juneteenth and the GOP’s anti-anti-racism.” (with Jelani Cobb!)

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Joe Manchin is Joe Manchining all over infrastructure and voting rights legislation, New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb joins to discuss the right-wing hysteria over teaching kids about racism, and Joe Biden meets Vladimir Putin in the most hotly-anticipated summit of the summer.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Manchin is Joe Manchin-ing all over infrastructure and voting rights legislation. New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb joins to talk about the right-wing hysteria over teaching kids about racism. And Joe Biden meets Vladimir Putin in the most hotly anticipated summit of the summer. Just impossible to get tickets, Dan. It's just impossible to get tickets, Dan. But first, but first, Juneteenth is just around the corner and Crooked has some excellent episodes to celebrate.

DeRay and the gang talk about the importance of the day on Pod Save the People. Akilah and Gideon talk to UCLA professor Brenda Stevenson about how Juneteenth came to be on Whataday. And Annamarie Cox is joined by former U.S. ambassador to Belize, Carlos Moreno, for a discussion about the Tulsa race massacre. Check out all these episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Also, the Crooked Store has some great new additions. Our first ever beach towels with phrases like vaccinated, let women run shit,

and gay for democracy. As always, a portion of every order in the Crooked store is donated to vote writers. Go shop now at crooked.com slash store. I'm very excited for my vaccinated pool float, which is coming any day now. Is that a real thing? Yeah, Dan, it's a real thing. They sold out almost instantly. Smart.

That's like the Apple thing where you dramatically understock to create uh a sense very popular item all right let's get to the news now we got two big updates to talk about on infrastructure and voting rights that both involve washington's most annoying houseboat resident joe mansion on infrastructure joe has now expanded his gang of bipartisan goobers to 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans who have all reached an agreement on a $1.2 trillion plan focused on roads, bridges, railroads, energy infrastructure, public transportation, and broadband that's financed without any tax hikes. The dude who counts the votes on the Republican side, Senate Minority Whip John Thune, said that the plan has been received well by even his more conservative members.

But on the Democratic side, Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders has already said he won't vote for the deal. Senate Democrats agreed to pass a second reconciliation bill that gets rid of some of the Trump tax cuts to pay for climate, education, housing, caregiving, maybe even immigration. And as one Democratic source told CNN, quote, every Democratic priority from the last 40 years. All right, Dan, I got some questions. First of all, what do you think of let's let's take it from the side of the progressives, the side of Manchin and Sinema and the centrists, and then Biden. On the progressive side, what do you think of this strategy and how much leverage do they actually have here? You would never know it from reading Politico, Punchbowl, or any of the other Capitol Hill publications, but every vote in the Senate counts the same. So Bernie Sanders' vote is worth as much as Joe Manchin's vote.

Elizabeth Warren's vote is worth as much as Kyrsten Sinema's vote. So yes, they have all the leverage in the world if they are really willing to tank a deal because it doesn't have it. So that's part one. Part two of the progressive point is they are morally correct that it is absolutely fucking insane that you would pass a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending and not focus a large portion of that on climate. Their slogan, no climate, no deal, is an insane thing to do. Even in the search of bipartisanship and improving airports that we haven't visited in a very long time or roads we haven't driven on in a long time, the idea that you would do that is crazy. Because as everyone who's ever worked on Capitol Hill or the White House knows, every legislative accomplishment makes the next one harder.

Every dollar spent makes the next dollar harder. So if you're going to spend a trillion dollars on something that doesn't help the climate, it's going to be that much harder to spend the money you need to do something about climate or any of the other things we care about. I'm wondering how much leverage they actually have. I realize their votes all count the same, but now that we have a deal that Republicans seem to like, like John Thune saying that, so far, they started with 10 Republican votes for this deal in the Senate. Then Jerry Moran came on as the 11th Republican vote. So before they had the 11th Republican vote, Bernie saying he was voting against it meant that it wouldn't fly in the Senate. Right. Because you need 60 votes to pass something. So then Jerry Moran says, oh, I'm for it.

So now it doesn't matter that Bernie's against it. I guess the question is, how much leverage do the House progressives have? Because in the Senate, like now you need another Senate Democrat to come out and say no to tank the deal. And if Thune's saying that even some of his more conservative members are open to it, you could conceivably see a bipartisan infrastructure deal pass the House and the Senate with Democratic and Republican votes, even if a bunch of progressives say that they're opposed to the deal, correct? Yeah. I mean, the sequencing matters here, right? It's easier for Bernie Sanders or a Senate progressive where they would do it. It really is not just Bernie, right? You have Markey, Heinrich, Merkley. Warren. Yeah, there's a whole bunch who say no climate, no deal. Currently, there's no climate, therefore there is no deal. It's easier to vote no on something that hasn't happened than it is for a democratically controlled House to vote down a bill that has the support of 70% of the Democratic caucus at the end of the road. Like what can happen is the Senate passes its deal. The house passes an amended version or a different

deal. And then there is a, I mean, this is so crazy, but there's a conference committee where people get together to hammer out the differences. So there is, there is leverage here and it's, it is smart of everyone to highlight their opposition and their leverage because it strengthens the hands of the Democratic negotiators in the room, right? It makes it easier for the Democrats to say, well, I can't do this because I'm going to lose. Republicans get to do that all the time, right? Well, so-and-so is going to tank this, so-and-so is going to tank this, or Manchin is going to tank this, or Sinema is going to tank this. But it helps for the White House and Schumer and everyone else involved to say, well, that you can't do that or you have to include this. Otherwise, there will be no deal

because I cannot muster enough of my caucus to do it, either in the House or the Senate. So in theory, this progressive strategy for saying, OK, I'm not going to back this bipartisan deal until every Democrat commits to a second simple majority reconciliation bill that contains all of our other priorities and raises taxes on the rich. Seems like a great idea. The challenge is Joe Manchin won't commit to supporting a second reconciliation bill.

Why do you think he won't do that yet? Because he wants leverage. And I also think if Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema committed to supporting a deal of reconciliation, it would sink the bipartisan talks. Like this is ultimately like, I've never seen something with more motion and less movement than these infrastructure negotiations.

It's like every day there's like breathless reports about statements and like this pay for that pay for, but no one has yet put together a plan that either is a bipartisan plan that actually has 60 votes in a capacity to pass the House or a partisan reconciliation plan that has 50 votes. And you have progressives not committing to the bipartisan thing. You have moderates not committing to a reconciliation plan, and we're just going in circles. And there is a little bit of an alarming for the People Act situation here where we do not know what Manchin and Sinema want to include in a reconciliation deal if they were willing to do that.

Are they going to support a huge child care provision? We don't know that. And so we're having this theoretical discussion of, well, it's like, well, we can have this bipartisan deal right here that is insufficient, but better than nothing. Or we can have this giant, amazing wishlist of everything we care about. And that's not a real thing. We don't know what that is. Even if you could get Manchin to go along with a reconciliation, which I will say is important to note that he has not committed to it, but he has not taken it off the table.

Yeah. I mean, look, we should say, I don't believe there's anything objectionable in this bipartisan deal. It's just, as you said, insufficient, right? A lot of spending on roads, bridges, broadband, great. I think it's shitty that it doesn't raise tax, like doesn't take away the Trump tax cuts at all. But as long as it doesn't like, you know, raise the gas tax, which was floating around, I think that it, again it's a it's a it's a fine proposal. We need infrastructure. Great. But it is woefully insufficient. All of Joe Biden's other priorities are just sitting out there.

They need to go into a second reconciliation bill. My belief here is that once again, Joe Manchin is in the houseboat driver's seat because I think what's I think what's going to happen. So he said yesterday when he said he wouldn't commit to the reconciliation bill, it's not that he doesn't want to commit to the concept of a Democrats-only reconciliation bill. It's that he doesn't want to commit to the substance of it before he knows what the substance is, which honestly, I get, right? If you're Joe Manchin, you're not going to say like, yeah, no matter what you guys put together, you can count on me for a yes, right? It's insane. I mean, I would say that if I was a

Democratic senator, but this is Joe Manchin we're talking about. He's a centrist. He's not going to do that. No one should expect him that he's going to do that. He said the other day, I'd like to see a good piece of legislation, and I think we can all start working on it now. I'm not opposed to doing anything that's going to help our country. Absolutely not opposed. Just need to see something. I'm not opposed to doing anything that's going to help our country. Absolutely not opposed. Just need to see something. So it does sound like what Manchin's going to do here is really push for this bipartisan deal to get done.

If a bunch of Democrats fall off and he needs to make up for their votes by getting a bunch of Republicans on board, he'll try to do that. Get Biden to sign a bipartisan deal and then basically shape the reconciliation only bill to as much money as Joe Manchin feels comfortable spending. And he'll get away with that, too, because you need Joe Manchin's vote to pass a reconciliation bill. I mean, does this seem right? Yeah, I mean, I think that is the hope. But the other thing that's happening here is the clock is ticking.

Right. We have there is no deal. There is no legislative language. There is no bill on even on this bipartisan thing. And it is now the middle of June. Congress takes August off. They take off like seven to ten days in July. They've been working hard.

Yeah. And so there is no – when are these things going to happen? We also have to save democracy in the interim, which I know we'll get to. They are burning clock on the Democrats. And every one of those days matter. We say this all the time. You never get a second wasted back in a presidency. The election still happens at the same time on the same day. And so if you spend six weeks on a bipartisan bill that does not happen or is both fully insufficient, that's six weeks you didn't spend on the American Families Plan, the American Jobs Plan, the For the People Act, a wide array of other things you could be doing. And there was a story in Politico the other day about what the Republican strategy was

here, which I think is pretty fascinating in a couple of ways, which is because you sort of wonder. It's like McConnell said he wants Biden to be a one-term president. John Barrasso, who is actually a real person, I did make that up, said that he wants Biden to be a half-term president, which I assume is somehow related to Trump's pending reinstatement. And so you're saying, well, if you think that, then why are you working on a trillion-dollar economic bill with the president? And the reasoning in the story was the Republicans seem quite confident they're not going to get Manchin. The Republicans seem quite confident

that Manchin and Sinema are not going to be for a big reconciliation bill, whether they're right or wrong, who knows. But they do believe that this bipartisan, both in terms of eating up the clock and getting something done, makes it less likely that Biden will get a huge deal. And it says a lot about how Republicans think about politics because sort of in the traditional Washington way, you would think a big bipartisan infrastructure bill would be a huge political boon to Democrats. But that's not what McConnell thinks. What McConnell thinks is a bipartisan deal is a price worth paying to prevent them from doing a bunch of things that would really deliver for people and make the Democratic base happy. And I think that is a real window into what the risks of this are.

I think the Republicans are wrong about this, but I think that the real challenge for the reconciliation bill here, which we haven't talked much about because it's always like in the background, everyone like, oh, we'll do everything else in the second reconciliation bill, is that while you can lose some Democratic votes on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, if you make it up with Republicans, we need just about every Democrat in Congress and the House and the Senate to agree on whatever's in this reconciliation bill. And like that Democratic source told CNN, everyone's looking at this bill to include like 40 years of Democratic priorities. We got climate, we got education, we got housing, we got healthcare, Bernie wants prescription drugs.

We got tax increases on the rich, right? Like this is everything. And so this is a bill where you either have AOC and the House progressives agreeing with Joe Manchin on the bill, all of them together, or we don't get anything done and Joe Biden's and the Democrats' biggest priorities just don't happen. So like for all the maneuvering and all the confusing stuff here, all you need to know about the second reconciliation bill is AOC and Joe Manchin have to agree on it or else

nothing gets done. That's where we are. How do you think Joe Biden should play this? How do you think the White House can help here? There are a whole bunch of stories today that are like, Biden returns home with a big decision. Does he get behind reconciliation or bipartisan talks? No, that's not how it works.

He needs to do what he has been doing and what I think Schumer is doing, which is could get this going on two tracks. Sanders seems very confident. You hear Bernie Sanders. He seems very productive and pretty optimistic about what can happen here, and he should start his reconciliation process. We should keep doing the bipartisan thing. Steve Reschetti, one of Biden's top advisors,

met with some group of members recently. It was reported that he said that Biden was going to give this seven to 10 days, whether it'll really be seven to 10 days. We've crossed multiple deadlines in the infrastructure talks, which is something that I think probably makes Mitch McConnell smile if he were a human being capable of smiling. But the right thing to do is keep this going on two tracks and show openness to both tracks to keep everyone on board. I don't think you have to pick one path right now. Yeah. So also on Wednesday, Joe Manchin came down from the mountain with a tablet of provisions on voting rights and election reform that his highness deems acceptable, that those include banning partisan gerrymandering, at least two weeks of early voting, automatic voter registration through the DMV, making Election Day a national holiday, and forcing super PACs to disclose their donors.

But Manchin also wants to require voter ID with allowable alternatives like utility bills. He doesn't want to require no-excuse mail-in voting, and he doesn't want public financing of campaigns. no excuse mail-in voting, and he doesn't want public financing of campaigns. So also breaking news from this morning, Stacey Abrams said on CNN that she supports this compromise. Why do you think she does? What do you think of the compromise? And should Chuck Schumer and the Democrats put this compromise version of the For the People Act on the Senate floor for a vote? I imagine that C.C. Abrams supports this compromise because it wouldn't solve every problem. It might even create a few, but it deals with some of the bigger challenges we currently have. And most importantly in there is partisan gerrymandering. Partisan gerrymandering is a

10-year problem that makes all the other things we care about, voter ID, voter suppression, everything else so much worse. And so if you could do something right here, right now to deal with partisan gerrymandering, which would increase Democrats' chances of winning the House, would make Congress more representative, would be a huge, that is a 10-year solution. And there is no other solution to this, right? The Supreme Court does not believe that partisan gerrymandering is a justiciable issue. They think that the only way to win, the only way to deal with rigged districts is to win in rigged districts, which is a particularly stupid way of thinking. And so, yeah, it's not awesome, for sure. No one wants to be for voter ID. It is a policy that is racist in intent and almost always

in practice. But if you were to have to make some trades to get something done, that is a trade that I think you would make every single time. So that's Stacey Abrams. Which again, we have to make trades to get something done on this. There is no world where for the people passes as is.

No world. Joe Manchin has a vote. You might hate it. He's annoying, lives in a houseboat. He's got a fucking vote in the Senate. He's told us a million times he's not voting for it as is. So get it out of your heads that it's going to pass as it is. It's not. It feels to me like you were taking a real risk and we're about to get some real blowback from houseboat people who probably have a huge voice on Twitter that

we're unaware of. Like this is a constituency you've repeatedly attacked. Please bring it. Bring it. I'll take it. I'll take all the criticism on the houseboat people. attacked please bring it bring it i'll take it i'll take all the criticism on the houseboat people once when i worked in the white house i made a joke about um the funding in some republican bill for the davis cup no not the davis cup what's the sailing thing america's cup i made a joke about funding for the america's cup and the sailing yacht community wrote letters to the white house i had to do a phone call with someone. It was very disturbing. Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. Yes, they should put it on the floor because the only way we're going to have a chance to actually have the conversation

around the filibuster is to get a bill that gets a majority of Democrats. And that bill is whatever Joe Manchin wants it to be. Like you say, that sucks. We should have won more Senate races, but that is the world in which we live. So I think you have to do that. Schumer hinted at that last night where he said that when he was going through the calendar that the week of June 21st or whatever it is would be the For the People Act, but that could be a placeholder for some sort of agreement. Compromised legislation. Yeah. Two things on voter ID. One, Dave Weigel had a good point about this from the Washington Post on Twitter yesterday. He said, you know, it would be a good deal for House Democrats

because many of them have won in states with voter ID requirements. If you chop up their districts with gerrymandering, they can't win, which I think really sums it up. The other, you know, Tim Kaine said yesterday that he was talking to Manchin about this. And he said that, you know, Manchin requiring being for requiring voter ID, but allowing a lot of exceptions like presenting a utility bills would actually help in states that currently have really restrictive voter ID laws. The problem would be states that don't have any voter ID whatsoever right now, then it would suddenly become more onerous for them because you have like a blue state that doesn't have voter ID

and they would have to set up voter ID. So he said he was talking to Manchin about somehow not forcing states that don't currently have voter ID to have them. So I do think that's something to keep in mind. I think the real question is, does even Manchin's compromise get any Republican votes at all? Because Manchin told reporters on Wednesday that he's still not budging on the filibuster because he believes he can get 60 votes for this compromise. And quote, you should not pass

any type of a voter bill in the most divisive time of our life unless you have some unity on this thing. But, and this is a huge but, The Intercept got leaked audio of a Zoom call Manchin did with the centrist group No Labels and a bunch of billionaires. Literally no one I'd rather meet with less. Zoom or no Zoom. And in this leaked audio, Manchin said that he's in favor of requiring at least 41 senators to show up for a filibuster. That he's open to lowering the filibuster threshold from 60 to 55, that he's open to filibuster reform in general, as long as people know that he's not open to getting rid of the filibuster.

Manchin was asked about this leaked audio, and he responded by asking a reporter, who in the hell is the intercept? But like, I feel like that part of the story, because there's all, you know, there's all these stories about the leaked audio, and he says a whole bunch of other things. And of course, he's meeting with billionaires. So that gets a lot of headlines, too. But the news about what he's open to on filibuster reform seemed huge to me and kind of buried. I mean, is that hope I feel? Am I just what's going on? Did you watch the NBA playoffs last night, John?

I didn't know I was preparing for this pot, Dan. Well, I should have been because the Philadelphia 76ers blew a 26-point lead and basically sank their entire season. So, no, I don't feel hope. I did see the headline about that. Yeah, hope. My message to everyone, take it from the people of Philadelphia. Do not feel hope. It hurts.

We should note just the other thing that Manchin said in there that is has got a lot of attention, probably should. He told these billionaires to offer Roy Blunt, the retiring Republican senator, a job so that he'll vote for the January 6th commission. It's just like, well, but even that was so. Yeah. Or he didn't say offer a job, but he said, be nice. Roy Blunt, you might work with Roy Blunt someday. Be nice to him. Try to try to switch his vote on the 1-6 Commission because I need to get there, but his private comments offer much more room to get something done on the filibuster that might increase the chances of a version of the For the People Act happening. Prior to that phone call being leaked to The Intercept, the strongest belief based on what Manchin said is there is no chance for the filibuster, therefore there is no chance for the For the People Act. based on what Manchin said is there is no chance for the filibuster. Therefore, there is no chance for the Poor People Act. This offers a different, more nuanced view of that. So if you were someone who still had the capacity for hope, this would be a reason to feel it. Yeah, I think what I'm

looking for now is does he get even one Republican in the Senate for this compromise? Because what, you know, like if Lisa Murkowski says yes, or mitt romney and susan collins say oh i'm interested i'll take a look at it then you have a situation where you wonder okay if mansion can say i got a couple republicans so it's bipartisan and my stupid fucking standard was it must be bipartisan okay so even if you get one or two and it's bipartisan can you then say all right my two must-haves are i want it to be bipartisan and I want to keep the filibuster. OK, fine. So if you get two or three Republicans, can you make an exception for the filibuster this time? Can you lower the threshold from 60 to whatever, however many Republicans you have?

And then you are true to your original statements that you want to keep the filibuster and get some Republicans. But also you're not going to get 10 Republicans for this compromise. And that's still OK. Like, so if I see one or two Republicans come out and seem like they could be in favor of this compromise, then I'll start feeling hope. If you don't hear from any Republicans and everyone starts shutting it down. Like Mitch McConnell is speaking today. I'm sure he'll come out against this compromise for sure. But that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for a couple of Senate Republicans to be interested in this, I think. I think you might get some people who

express vague openness to the idea. Like once again, it's a one-page Word document. It's not a bill. There's not legislation involved. I just cannot imagine a world in which a single Republican senator votes for a bill that includes a ban on partisan gerrymandering. Yeah, it seems like a long shot to me too. I mean, as we've said before, the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013. There has been no effort from the Republicans other than Lisa Murkowski, one person who has a very specific and very narrow view of what you should do, being for fixing a giant hole in American democracy. Yeah, but I think the bottom line is there is at least some daylight here. There is

some opening. And so I do think keeping up the pressure, you know, not necessarily on the specific original version of H.R. 1, but keeping up pressure on everyone in Congress, you know, not necessarily on the specific original version of H.R.1, but keeping up pressure on everyone in Congress, especially Democrats, to pass something to protect voting rights and election reform, and especially to stop partisan gerrymandering, which could cost us the House, is really important to do. Because, you know, this is still possible at this point. Today, President Biden signed a law establishing June 19th as Juneteenth National Independence Day, a new federal holiday

to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States and a small but important step forward for a country that's still reckoning with a dark history. But even though all but 14 House Republicans voted for the holiday, most of the party doesn't want our kids to know why it exists. Since George Floyd's murder a year ago, Republicans have labeled seemingly any attempt to educate children about the legacy of slavery and the effects of structural racism, critical

race theory, and are currently trying to pass laws that would restrict such teaching in 21 states. They've already succeeded in Oklahoma, Idaho, Iowa, and Tennessee. Texas is about to sign a similar law. And just last week, the Florida State Board of Education voted unanimously to ban teaching critical race theory in Florida schools. Republicans in Congress have also introduced a bill as well. Like all good culture wars, this one started on Fox News, which has mentioned critical race theory 1300 times in just the past three and a half months. Take a listen. So this is someone who's trying to hurt your children and attack them on the basis of something they can't control their skin color. Well said. I think that critical race theory, especially when it's taught to kids, Todd,

is really a form of psychological slavery. It is obviously aggressively, flamboyantly racist. I think cultish is a really good way to talk about this. That's what it is. This is indoctrinating kids. Sean, thank you. I just think it's inspiring that someone wasn't going to let their kids be destroyed. Joining us to talk about all this is New Yorker staff writer and Columbia professor Jelani Cobb, who's called these attacks on critical race theory, quote, an attempt to discredit the literature millions of people sought out last year to understand how George Floyd wound up dead on a street corner. The goal is to leave the next dead black person inexplicable by history. Jelani, welcome to the pod. Thank you. I think a lot of people who don't mainline Fox all day hear about this controversy and ask themselves, what is critical race theory? How did this whole thing start?

And what is actually happening in our schools? Would you mind taking a stab at that for us? questions, you know, because we can start with the fact that what they're calling critical race theory has nothing to do with what critical race theory actually is. And then go beyond that to say that no one's children were being taught critical race theory. It is an academic field of study that predominantly, though not exclusively, related to law and litigation. And so, as I've been saying, unless your child was also taking torts and contract law and, you know, advanced constitutional law in fifth grade, they were not going to encounter critical race theory in any classroom, any textbook,

anyway. So there's that part of it. But what's really kind of disturbing, and I also think there's a tell attached to this, that all of the people who are denouncing critical race theory have nothing to say about the actual literature. because this is an academic field of inquiry, there is a gigantic literature on critical race theory. Nobody cites anything. No one makes reference. No one quotes anyone. You know, even as some of this is dense legal theory, you know, no one is going around saying, well, in this article, in this law journal, like none of them have any view of that whatsoever, because they're not concerned with critical race theory as an actual intellectual undertaking. They're interested in it as a phrase that includes the radioactive word race that they can use to

construe white people as the victims. And so they're saying kind of psychological enslavement. That's astounding. You know, no one would want to be subjected to enslavement of any sort. Oh, wait, about 40 million people in this country trace our ancestry back to people who actually were enslaved. And so it's this kind of bizarre inversion that we're seeing and is being used, I suspect, for political purposes. When we look at what happened last year with George Floyd, I think that the shock of that sent people, as it should, sent people to the archives, sent people to the bookstore, to the library, to kind of find out, you know, what exactly did I not know? What is the context? How did this happen? And, you know, what exactly did I not know? What is the context?

How did this happen? And, you know, what is this related to? And that translated into a lot of political activity. You know, that when people were saying, what can you do to honor George Floyd's life? A lot of people said vote. You know, that was the response that they took. And we saw, you know, some element of that in November. And so in order to curtail the impact of that and the validation of a view

of the centrality of race to American society, they've gone after it and distorted it into something that's completely unrecognizable. it seems to me that what is happening in a lot of schools is you know something else that happened in the wake of george floyd's murder is a lot of educators and school districts and school boards and parents too wanted to make sure that kids are learning about both the legacy of slavery and the ongoing effects of systemic racism. And that's what they're calling critical race theory sort of as a catch-all just to make it seem scarier than saying, oh, we're teaching our kids about racism. Right. And so it also is part of a kind of more established trend that was a little bit subtler

before this time, in which the conversations between the right and the left as it relates to race tend to break down over how much racism there is in American society. And, you know, on the right, people will grant that there are a handful, like five people in the country who are actually racist. like five people in the country who are actually racist. And then, you know, on the left, people are much more interested in talking about institutional practices. And the kind of breakdown of the idea of saying that systemic racism is just a non-starter for people. And this was even back in the Trump era, you know, when Jeff Sessions said that explicitly, that there was no such

thing as systemic racism in policing, except that you then have the confounding question of why you have all of these racially aligned disparities in American institutions, in our housing institutions, in our educational institutions, in our healthcare outcomes, in our lifetime, in our life expectancy, in our lifetime earnings, in our home values. We can kind of just walk through the data and find institution after institution after institution that reflects these bigger prevailing themes. And so it's really a kind of, and of course, one of the points of this is that if you move away from the idea that there is like one or two idiots who actually qualify, those are just people to be ignored. And we can just kind of go on our merry way. Dan, this is quickly becoming one of the Republican Party's top strategies for winning the midterms.

Right-wing media is all in. Republican politicians are all in. NBCnews.com reported this week that the group's targeting school boards are being funded by right-wing think tank assholes, one of whom wrote, the goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. My question is, do you think this is a strategy designed to excite the Republican base, persuade swing voters, or both? I think that's a bit of a false choice in American politics right now. Because if we were having, if we exist in a world with a national popular voter running a

national referendum, you have to choose between Republican base and quote unquote swing voters. But here in a world of the Electoral College, Senate, Mallet Portiam, and Jerry Manor districts, it's base plus a little bit, right? So American politics is a game of inches here. So exciting the base is table stakes for what they have to do. But Republicans have seen great success over the long history of the party in doing this very thing, which is ultimately Republican politics has been about since the Southern strategy about making white people scared about how a multiracial, advances it towards a multiracial democracy affects their lives, right? And particularly white Christian people, that the political power and cultural dominance that they view as their birthright is under threat. And the place where they've had the most success is in schools, right?

Because there are – they have had – whether it was textbooks, busing, critical race theory. I mean, you remember President Obama was going to give a national address to schools and Republicans went insane over this because they thought he was going to indoctrinate their children. They believe, with some historical validation, that there are a group of moderate-ish white voters who are for these advances in civil rights and dealing with systemic racism in theory. But in practice, that is where the backlash happens. And the place where it happens and the place where that is most personal is in the schools when it relates to their children. And so I think there is real political power here for what Republicans are trying to achieve. I'm not saying this is the strategy that's going to win them election or the White House or whatever else, but it's easy

for Democrats to look at this and say, look at all these polls that show that most people don't know what it is, or it's completely, as Jelani points out, what they're saying is complete bullshit, right? It has no bearing on reality. But too often, Democrats focus on facts and Republicans focus on feeling, and they are sowing real insecurity and disorientation among voters by using these buzzwords and using these, you know, very alarmist caricatures about, and false representations of what's happening. Can I add something to that, you know, about kind of what the kind of meta dynamic of this is. You know, if you talk about what critical race theory actually is, they are literally following kind of what it prescribes.

It would be like telling someone, I think you have a problem with violence. And they say, I have no problem with violence. And to saying that, I'm going to punch you in the face. the ways in which race could profitably be used and in cynical ways and also to the detriment of vulnerable communities, specifically communities of color, black people. trying to study this dynamic and then do that, it's almost like when you line up a mirror in front of a mirror and you can look at the reflection, bounce back into infinity. It's like they're doing that. It's like inception of something. Because we're saying, Derek Bell, for instance, one of the kind of cornerstone thinkers, was talking about this, saying that even as we try to achieve a more equitable and democratic society, we find people working to engineer and re-engineer racial hierarchies such that they remain sustainable, even in the face of progressive progressive reforms. And that's what happens. We have this titanic turnout in 2020. A candidate

of choice is elected largely on the strength of African-American voters as part of this very dynamic, multiracial, cross-class alliance that looks, dare I say, democratic, like democracy. And the reaction has been precisely what Derrick Bell prescribed. What he was saying was likely to happen in these kinds of situations. So the NBC story has an anecdote that I think illustrates the larger challenge here. Last year, a school board in an extremely white, fairly blue suburb of Portland, Maine, puts out a letter in the wake of George Floyd's murder denouncing white supremacy. One parent reads the letter and claims it says the entire community is filled with white supremacists. And that leads to lawsuits, a Tucker Carlson segment, and all these national groups

descending on this little town starting a campaign to get the entire school board to resign for supposedly pushing critical race theory. Of course, these schools aren't teaching critical race theory, and the letter doesn't call everyone in the town white supremacists. But the letter does say, quote, we will work to reassess our curriculum and dismantle the anti-blackness all of us have internalized by living in a society built on white supremacy. Now, because we're steeped in the language of progressive politics and social justice, the three of us are like familiar and comfortable with this language. But I'm wondering, like, how do you think this lands with your typical apolitical set of suburban

parents? And more importantly, what's the most effective way to persuade those parents that we should be teaching about the effects of structural racism, knowing that the right will say it's all about teaching kids to hate white people and hate America. Jelani, do you have thoughts? So, I mean, that's a really good point. Like, I would not, politically speaking, have written that letter. Because you know how a letter like that is going to land. And it's almost predictable. And I have conversations with people who legitimately, first off, we're a very ahistorical society.

You know, we don't know fundamental things about our government, about our founders. As you know, I was talking with a filmmaker recently and saying that most people who are diehard Democrats can't point you to how the Democratic Party came into existence. Nor can most Republicans. You know, we don't even know the origins of the parties we vote for in these ways. So not understanding the way that anti-Blackness is baked into the structures of American society is par for the course. And I don't even set that apart from a general kind of historical ignorance. I would have parsed that language differently. That said, you know, I think that, you know, Tucker Carlson and Fox News

and the rest of the people who are operating so cynically in that context know exactly what they're doing. And they likely do know. They have had these arguments and had people on their shows and so on. They know exactly where people are coming from with this and I think are cynically trying to exploit it. Well, I mean, and this is a question for you, too, Dan, like what what's the best way knowing that this is going to happen, knowing that these attacks are out there, that Republicans, as Jelani said, are going to cynically use this over and over again and sort of twist these words. Like what's the best way for Democrats and progressives and activists to handle sort of this Republican war on educating kids about racism? A couple, a couple of things here. The first is, I do think it's one other point to make about why this is such an imperative for Republicans. Part of it is

they are desperately looking for their new version of the Tea Party. They got to fire people up. Biden doesn't get their folks worked up like Barack Obama so unsubtly did. But there is a bigger existential threat to Republicans from the conversation that came out of George Floyd's murder, which is conservatism is about maintaining an old order and an old power structure. And when you have a big conversation about the tremendous flaws and cruelty that went into that power structure, it becomes very problematic, right? It actually raises the question of whether you really want to make America great again, because of what that means. But the problem here is you just can't, and Republicans weaponize this all the time, we just can't live in a world where we are going to convince a political well meeting school administrators and teachers around the country to all adhere

to a set of less easily demagoguable language. Right. Right. Like it's just, we can't like, there's just no way that's going to happen. These people are, they're incredibly well-meaning.

They're trying to do the right thing. They have no expectation that the letter they write to their town in Maine is going to end up on Fox news. Right. That is this sort of where we are. So I don't have like, that's letter they write to their town in Maine is going to end up on Fox News, right? That is sort of where we are. So that's not a problem we can solve. I think there is a way to talk about this overall, which is to take a step back and ascribe motivation to the cynical people, whether it's Tucker Carlson or some of these local activists for what they are trying to do. And the folks, not Shankar Asario, and the folks behind the Race Class Narrative have put together a messaging memo on this for local officials

to talk about why the, about, to call it out what it is and why these politicians are trying to divide us. And they very, I think, smartly focus the motivation is to continue, is they put it back in schools to say, these are the same, because they're really talking about local politicians, the city council members, the state legislators are trying to, you know, ban critical race theory or ban the 1619 project or whatever that is, and say, this is never to divide us. They continue to starve our schools of the resources that we need. And that all we're trying to do is give an accurate rendering of history. And so there is language to use, I think is most effective,

but we have to recognize that there's not, letters like that are gonna continue to happen throughout time. And there's still, and there's a massive conservative apparatus to go find those things and then turn them into giant stories. Yeah.

Jelani, what do you think? I mean, one thought I had is, I don't even know that we should buy into their framing and call it critical race theory because it's their frame and it's not actually what's being taught, as you pointed out. on the kind of specific part of it as a person with a background in American history, I'm inclined to say we have like founding documents. So we have documents that point to these various things. And so we need to talk about that. We should talk about the constitution, the whole constitution, which means we need to talk about the three-fifths clause. We need to talk about the protection of the transatlantic slave trade. We need to talk about the fugitive slave clause. We need to talk about the electoral college. And so these things and the debates over the electoral college, this

is not, you know, some committee of woke activists writing this into history. If you go back and read the debates around the Constitution Constitution and the fights over the Electoral College, it's explicit in there that this is, you know, what this is doing is creating a mechanism to give more political power to Southern white people by using, literally using the bodies of people they were holding in slavery. And so I think that there's a way that you can get at this by simply pointing people to the original documents, which are, I think, less impeachable than people who've subsequently done things. They'll be on your Twitter feed in a minute declaring you a Marxist, you know, if you're making these arguments. Be like, wait, no, that's not me.

That's John Jay. I think that's one part of it. jay you know right i think that's one part of it i mean i also think i think it's important to not allow them to not cede sort of the mantle of patriotism to them because one thing that they're trying to do is say that um critical race theory is anti-american right and this is about hating your country and nicole hannah jones has obviously been one of the main targets of this from the right, you know, she tweeted the other day, she quoted the 1619 Project verbatim, black people have seen the worst of America, yet somehow we still believe in its best, despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. And I do wonder if part of this is sort of reclaiming what patriotism and allegiance to America actually means, which is an allegiance to an ideal that was set out, as you said, in those founding documents that we have never been able to live up to.

Right. And I think that that's the point. Like, even we, like, so what we're really talking about, I think, are two different conceptions of exceptionalism. Like, one set of people think that we're exceptional just because we're so fucking phenomenal. Like we kicked Hitler's ass and we have this unbroken chain, well, mostly unbroken chain of peaceful elections. We have all those things that we've done, you know, we're the greatest example of democracy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And other people have a more, I think, complicated and enduring sense of being

exceptional in saying that we are flawed, but we have again and again and again tried to be better. And, you know, when I was talking, I was talking with a group of students and kind of jokingly said, in any other context, we willingly adopt this idea of Americans being people who don't always get it right, but we are distinguished by our willingness to keep trying. That's why Rocky was such an icon. Like, Rocky gets knocked down in every round of every fight. It's like, oh, round one, Rocky's on canvas. Round two, Rocky's on the canvas. It was like, but over the course of this, you get to understand that what makes him heroic

is the fact that this dude will never stay down. And I think that that is an actually inspiring conception of saying that this is a society that was conceived in these titanically flawed ways, reaching for this ideal, falling far short of it, and then subsequent generations of people whose names we don't know, some of whom, you know, we know risked their lives because they were trying to burnish this ideal into something that was usable for future generations like that is exceptional and that's amazing but that's not what we get it's you hate america you know right it's like no i mean telling your doctor he hates you because

he diagnosed you with blood pressure it was like high blood pressure like no no actually i'm really i really want you to stick around. That's why I'm telling you. Okay, well, we will end on that note. Jelani, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America. When we come back, we'll talk about all the media's hyping and griping surrounding Joe Biden's blockbuster summit with Vladimir Putin. OK, Biden, Putin ahead of the summit. Here's a sample, Dan, of the media coverage. This set of questions was published by Politico. Will the two men face off like boxers ahead of a match?

Will Putin tear off his shirt? Will there be smiles and elbow bumps or lectures and jaw clenching? Hard to believe, but the actual meeting did not live up to that hype. Biden did leave the summit saying that the tone was, quote, good, positive and, quote, I did what I came to do. Putin said, quote, there has been no hostility and said the meeting took place in, quote, constructive spirit. The two leaders agreed to begin negotiations on nuclear talks, return each other's ambassadors back to their posts, and to work on specific understandings on what's off limits when it comes to cyber attacks, though Biden did threaten to retaliate in the future, saying we have significant cyber capabilities and he knows it. What did you think of the media hype over the summit versus the actual outcome?

And do you think the Biden folks are happy with the outcome? The way this played out in the media is just a reminder that so much of political media is about making the ordinary seem interesting and interesting seem exciting, which is why it has to be discussed. Obviously, those political questions are in jest. I don't imagine there's anyone at Politico who thought Putin might actually disrobe in this meeting. But much of it, but they- Hard to tell, Dan.

Hard to tell. Fair, fair. It's Politico. But much of the coverage had this like sort of steel cage match-esque, like two men go into a meeting, who comes out, who wins, who loses. It's just a diplomatic meeting, right? It's just two people meeting. This is not the first summit between an American and a Russian president in decades or anything like that. Obama met with Putin all the time and Medvedev before that. And Trump obviously very famously met with Putin in Helsinki. But it is newsworthy. It is fair to say it is the biggest story in Washington politics for the week and maybe even the month. Russia is an adversary. They obviously interfered in our election. There's a lot going on there. They play a big role in the world and one that is often in conflict with us.

Obviously, China is actually a much bigger deal than Russia, but Russian summits get more attention and Russian-US relations get more attention because of the long history of the Cold War and summits between Gorbachev and Reagan and all of that pageantry that comes with it. But it's fair to say that the coverage, while worthwhile, was bordering on the absurd. I mean, partially, the Biden folks also leaned into this. I think they had a purpose. I don't think that's the wrong thing to do. They could have done what usually happens is they could have just done a bilateral meeting at the G20 in some conference room. Right. And then just. Right.

But instead they went to Geneva summit. There was a lot of pageantry to it. I think they wanted to make a point, not necessarily for domestic politics, but both to Russia and the world that this is a new era in U.S.-Russian relationships, both for good and bad. Like we are going to be tougher than we were, but we're also going to be less ridiculous. So there was a there was a point to it. Yeah, it seems like they wanted to get the message out that the U.S. wants to be constructive on some issues, but also tough on other issues like the cyber attack issue, where Biden was a little tougher. One thing that the Biden folks probably weren't too happy about was the

president's first response to CNN Caitlin Collins's question about Putin at the at Biden's press conference after the summit. Take a listen. Why are you so confident he'll change his behavior, Mr. President? Yeah, I'm not confident he'll change his behavior. What the hell? What do you do all the time? So when did I say I was confident? I said, I said, what I said was, let's get it straight. I said, what will change their behavior is that the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world. I'm not confident of anything. I'm just stating the fact.

So before leaving Geneva on Air Force One, Biden then walked over to a group of reporters on the tarmac and said this. I owe my last question an apology. I shouldn't have been such a wise guy with the last answer I gave. Anyway, thanks for being here. So Biden gets a little feisty with a reporter, snaps, apologizes, complains about the press. He said after that clip, why do you guys always ask negative questions? You never ask positive questions positive questions to me it seems like a small fairly standard bit of jousting between politicians and the people that cover them

dan is that how it was um is that how it was treated in the on the twitters no it was not tweeted that way i'm taking a deep breath to try to handle this appropriately. I take so many deep breaths on this one. Last night was the night of deleted tweets. My drafts folder was on fire about this. Ultimately, I'll say a couple things. One, it is never a good idea for politicians, athletes, public figures to be jerks to reporters. it's just not the nice thing to do. And more often than not, it is women reporters who are on the receiving end of those moments. You see it all the time in sports, in politics, it's what happens.

It's very, it is, it was good. And frankly, unusual that Biden went out of his way, went over and apologized for doing it. Clearly what happened is these trips are exhausting for the president. This is the last day of a very long foreign trip. They're jet lagged. They haven't slept. They've been meeting 24-7 and he lost his temper and he apologized for it. And that is a human way to do it, the decent way to do it. But, but, but, but, but, but. And Caitlin Collins is a

good reporter who deserved better for sure. Like this is not – like if he was yelling at Peter Doocy who was just trying to be a troll, that's one thing. But Caitlin Collins is a real reporter asking a totally fair question. Although, you know, I – yeah, asking a question she's never right to ask. But we need to have a more nuanced conversation about media criticism that a politician criticizing reporter even losing temper the reporter is not an assault on the free press it's not a message to authoritarians that is that and that is not us as partisan democrats that is true of republic Republicans doing that as well. If a Republican president

did what Biden did, not like, and everyone's like, oh, well, Trump's at a low bar, so you shouldn't talk about Trump. No, I get that. What I'm saying is that both Democratic and Republican presidents should be able to criticize the media. Just as you have a First Amendment right to report, a politician or a reader or a podcast host or anyone else has a First Amendment right to complain about what you reported. That's how the fucking democracy works. And the problem with it is, like, it is certainly fair and appropriate for reporters to go on Twitter and defend Caitlin Collins's journalistic credentials. Like, that is what a good colleague would do. I like to think we

would do that for each other and our friends if they were in a similar situation. But all of the stuff about how this was bad for democracy and this is an assault on the free press is there's like a real like boy who cried wolf problem with this. We can't distinguish between media criticism and actual assaults on the media or calling the media itself an enemy of the people or directing violence at the media. And liberals on Twitter were responsible for some of this conflation in the Trump era where we would treat Trump calling the media the enemy of the people or banning media outlets from covering the White House or getting on Air Force One or whatever else with Trump being mean to Jim Acosta, right? Or whatever else. Those are not the same things and it's important to separate them. And there are very, very, very real threats, particularly in the Trump era to the role of the free press in American democracy. You had Governor DeSantis sign a bill only in front of

Fox News, in front of a live broadcast of Fox and Friends. There's like some real things happening here that changed the role the press plays. But Joe Biden getting snippy with a reporter is not one of those things. And then it was the coverage of it was interesting. It was like he got snippy. He apologized. People were like, oh, that's great. He apologized. That's the right thing to do. And then he complained about his coverage after that. And then they got all mad again. They got all mad. Yeah. Look, so I saw like a bunch of people on Twitter saying, oh, well, Caitlin Collins put words in his mouth. She misquoted him by saying, why are you so confident? He never said he was so confident. In a way, that's right.

Like, I didn't like Caitlin's question, but she has every right to ask that question. And also, Joe Biden could have responded by simply saying, I didn't say I was confident. And then his answer. Like, very easily, he could have just said that. He could have said, no, you're you put words in my you could have even said that's putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that. And then and then moving on. Right. Like he could have said that, too, but he didn't. So it is how he snapped at her. Right. That's why he apologized. So there's that. But on the other hand, like so many reporters, not Caitlin, but a whole bunch of other reporters on Twitter,

turn this into some larger issue. Brian Seltzer in his media newsletter last night. And by the way, it's a fantastic, Reliable Sources is a great nightly newsletter. I read it all the time. And I think Brian's one of the best media reporters. But he wrote, a media exec recently asked me if I see a path toward persuading the Trump fan base that brands like CNN actually supply real news. Is there a way to show the people who swallowed Trump's anti-media lies that we're not the monsters he claimed we are,

that we're flawed but not fake or enemies? If there is such a path, it involves days like Wednesday, days defined by strong questioning of people in power regardless of party. I just, I don't think that's what that was. Like the fact that they, it's very revealing that Brian wrote that because I do think a lot of reporters believe that if they show how tough they are on democratic politicians, that Republicans won't call them fake news and Republicans will suddenly stop attacking them. But that's like,

it's not the Republican attacks aren't on the level. They're not waiting for you to be just as tough on Democrats as they are. And I'm like, they don't think that the free press should exist. A lot of them on the MAGA world, right? Like they're constantly attacking your very profession. They're calling you liars. They're trying to discredit everything you do. They're not just waiting for you to be tougher on Democrats so that they can say, oh, OK,

no, we're not going to call you fake news anymore. It's a game that they're playing. And I'm not sure enough reporters quite understand that. This is the sad truth here that I agree with you. Most people don't get. The Republicans waged a decades long war against the media and they won. It is over. The Republicans have won that war.

They have convinced enough Americans that the media cannot be trusted. What that means is, therefore, the days in which large portions of the public all agree that the media is some independent arbiter, fact checker, or referee of American politics, American democracy is over. That doesn't mean that the media doesn't still play a very important role. The investigative pieces they do are incredibly important. And there are some media outlets that are succeeding despite this as businesses and as journalistic endeavors, and they're doing great work. But the old world in which they could call balls and strikes on American politics is over.

They lost. And this is what happens when someone wages a war on you. Instead of fighting it, you cover it. They lost. And this is what happens when someone wages a war on you. Instead of fighting it, you cover it. And just and just to put a put a point on this later in in Brian's newsletter, he notes that Laura Ingram played a brief portion of Biden's exchange with Collins, but called it, quote, a total meltdown with his own comm shop, which is, of course, incredibly insulting to CNN and Caitlin's Caitlin Collins for doing her job. And then half an hour later, she ran a segment titled Media Dutifully Defends Biden's Meagre Performance.

So it's like even though the reporters were all saying, oh, Caitlin was so tough on him and it's important to stand up and blah, blah, blah. And that will maybe change. No, no, no. This is what's going on on Fox while that's happening. They're still shitting all over you and telling you and calling you fake news and saying that you're Biden's comm shot. So like whatever you do, you should still look. That doesn't mean reporters shouldn't still ask tough questions of Democratic politicians and hold Democratic politicians

accountable. Of course they should. But they shouldn't do it thinking that somehow that's going to win over MAGA voters and thinking that they can trust the press. Yeah. I don't think Caitlin Collins or anyone else who has a tough question of Biden or Obama or Schumer or Pelosi or anyone else necessarily doing it because they think it's going to win them plaudits with Republicans. But until you recognize the way the ground has shifted and what is possible and impossible, you're not going to be able to adjust the models for how you think about your business for the current environment. CNN has viewers. They service those viewers. Their job is to inform those viewers. I'm sure they all wake up every day

and say, our job is to hold politicians accountable. There is some very important journalistic work that does that. But you are doing it for the purposes of your viewers. You are no longer – nothing you say about Donald Trump is going to change the mind of a Trump voter because Republicans spent 40 years telling everyone that you were biased against Republicans. And you never pushed back on that. And your response to that was to cater to them, to offer to basically appeasement, right? The mainstream media's response to Republican aggression was appeasement. And now the game is over. And so the question is, now what do you do? What is the role you can play in American politics, American society, American democracy that has value? There still is a valuable one. It's incredible. We subscribe to a gazillion various news outlets and newspapers, and we find it very valuable.

But it's not the same role in which I think a lot of journalists see themselves and a lot of sort of American political thinkers think of the role journalism plays in American politics. Yeah. It's not on the level. Okay. That is our show for today. Thank you so much to Jelani Cobb for joining us. Everyone have a great weekend and we'll see you next week. Bye everyone.

Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support.

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