Pod Save America - “Make America 2016 Again?”

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

The President ignores the law and Congress in an effort to shut down further investigations, the federal government is woefully unprepared for future election sabotage, and former Vice President Joe Biden officially enters the Democratic primary. Then Mother Jones’s Ari Berman talks to Dan about the Supreme Court case over Trump’s effort to rig the Census in favor of Republicans. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, Mother Jones' Ari Berman talks to Dan about the Supreme Court case over Trump's attempt to rig the census in favor of Republicans. Before that, we'll talk about how the president has responded to evidence that he obstructed justice. By obstructing justice even more, the threat of foreign sabotage in 2020 and Joe Biden's entry into the Democratic primary.

Also, be sure to check out this week's episode of Pod Save the World, where Tommy talks about the Trump administration's decision to reverse Obama's Cuba policy. And good news, Pod Save America is heading to Vegas for the Life is Beautiful Festival, September 20th through September 22nd. Tickets went live today. More info for that show and for other touring dates at crooked.com slash events and finally we've got new pod save america merch go to store.crooked.com to find our new pod save america mug and three new tumblers including an audience requested design that says it's not great dan by popular demand well done we're selling a tumblr that says it's not great

dan um and we also have some new vote save america t-shirts so check it out all right let's get to the news in the wake of what amounted to an impeachment referral from special counsel robert muller over the president's multiple attempts to obstruct justice many democrats like n Nancy Pelosi, have argued that the House should first conduct a series of additional investigations before making any decisions on impeachment. Well, here's how Trump has responded to that strategy over the last week. First, he refused to follow the law and make his tax returns available to Congress. Second, he sued House Democrats to prevent them from getting his financial records. And finally, he announced that the White House will be fighting all the subpoenas issued by Congress because he doesn't want any of his staff testifying about any of the many

scandals and potential crimes committed by the president and his administration. So Dan, the president is once again placing himself above the law and above an equal branch of government. What's his bet here? Does he think he's going to get away with this? Or is it just that he thinks he'll get away with this at least until 2020 in the election? Both, probably. I think he has a two-pronged strategy here, which is, one, you point out, which is to run out the clock, try to get as much distance as he can, make these things work their way slowly through a court that is tilted in his favor and hope that he can get to the election, get past the election before having to turn over all of these fairly incriminating documents or have these incriminating witnesses speak in public. And the second one is to fight, right?

He, like he fights everything. It is good for his base to be seen as fighting. He is a person who needs a grievous to get up in the morning. And so this is like, he wants to muddy the waters. He's very, he's very good at this, right? Which is to take everything, make it seem like a giant fucking mess and then try to cast blame on both sides. So now if he is fighting with the Democrats, that allows him to proclaim his exoneration, say he's innocent and saying he is being persecuted by a group of liberal socialist AOC replicants or whatever, however he wants to describe it. replicants or whatever, however he wants to describe it. Yeah, I mean, demagogues need villains and they need to play victim. And they need to then say that not only are they victims,

but all their supporters are victims. And we are fighting against all of the same enemies, all the people who don't like us. This is, you know, this has been Trump's message since 2016. And just because now he's the guy in power, he doesn't want to give up on the fact that he's still, you know, this victim being attacked by the establishment. I also think he's, there's a little bit of a bet here that he's betting Democrats won't do anything about it or can't do anything about it, right? Yeah, I think that's possible. I think he, yeah, definitely possible. He thinks that we'll back off and that they can the Democrats can be bullied by Trump.

There's not a lot of history that shows that Nancy Pelosi is someone who can be bullied. But, you know, whatever you want to try, Trump. I mean, how how is what Trump's doing different than how other presidents have responded to congressional oversight? And how is it the same? Like, how did we respond to, you know, when the House Republicans tried to conduct oversight and all these investigations into Benghazi and whatnot? Well, I think there are two analogous examples, right? There is how Bill Clinton responded to independent counsel investigations against him and then impeachment. And then there's how Obama in the more natural course of business responded to Republican oversight from a very zealous – overly zealous conspiracy theory spewing Republican majority in the House. So in the Bill Clinton example, Trump is sort of rerunning some of that play, right? He's been doing this for two years, which is prosecute the prosecutor, you know, turn this into a – try to turn it into a big political fight, fight everything.

buried underneath all the insanity, as a lot of Trump's strategy is, but a message of, I want to legislate, they want to investigate. And that was a very powerful message for Bill Clinton. Trump is not – the context is very different here. The investigation is very different here. The Clinton impeachment was around a personal conduct issue, not a professional conduct issue, or at least that's how the Clinton team was portraying it. And so they maybe had a better argument. In the Obama administration, Republicans wanted the White House staff to testify, and we did not testify. Now, there are legitimate issues of executive privilege that deal with Congress getting into the president's decision-making process via his or her staff. That is something that

has been litigated in the courts many times, and presidents do have some rights there. And we exercise those rights at time. Now, what we didn't do was deny everything. We had non-White House officials testify. We didn't order them not to testify. We negotiated to try to find compromises, to try to find the ground between a partisan fishing expedition and Congress's legitimate rights of oversight. So maybe a White House official didn't testify, but they would conduct an interview about a topic like Benghazi or Fast and Furious, where even though the motivations leading some of the Republican oversight was absurd. Their right to do so was not. And so, you know, we tried to find a compromise. They are just trying to have a

fight. And I think that's very different. Yeah. We also didn't have a special counsel who concluded that Barack Obama had obstructed justice and tried to impede an investigation into foreign sabotage, in addition to another, I don't know, 10 or so federal investigations into Barack Obama's businesses, his inauguration, his transition, his administration, and a whole bunch of other things. So that was one big difference as well. Yeah, as a fundamental difference, Obama was not running a low-rent criminal conspiracy out of the Oval Office and Trump is. So the situations are at least different in that level. Wasn't a wasn't a mob boss in charge of the government.

That was a that was a slight difference. So what can Democrats do here and what should they do? Do they need is it is it time for the Democrats to be more aggressive? Because it does seem, at least from my point of view, that Trump is basically forcing their hand in terms of impeachment proceedings because he, you know, Pelosi's over there and a lot of Democrats have said, okay, let's just conduct a bunch of oversight investigations. Let's not jump the gun on impeachment here. But he is then, you know, in response, Trump is saying, well, I'm not going to let you conduct these oversight investigations because I'm going to stonewall. I'm not going to make any of my people available for testimony. I'm not going to give you the documents that you need.

So fuck you. Well, let me ask you this question. Do you think the Democrats have been not aggressive enough? Put aside what's happened since the Mueller report came out on Thursday. But do you think to date on the oversight investigation stuff, do you think they haven't been aggressive enough? So I don't know if the word is aggressive because they've obviously been moving forward on a number of fronts in terms of investigations and a number of committees, right? You've got judiciary. You've got – all the different committees are investigating what they should be investigating. I don't know that there has been a cohesive, consistent message and drumbeat from coming from the Democrats so that the American people know exactly what they're

investigating and why. Like it has seemed a bit scattershot. And so, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, obviously some of this was Democrats were waiting for the Mueller report. Now the Mueller report is here. And I do have this feeling like, OK, what are we doing? What's the plan? Elijah Cummings, is that the courts have shown that Congress has to show that they have made legitimate attempts to acquire the documents or get the witnesses before subpoenas and contempt motions and those sorts of things start to flow. And so they've been doing that. Now, the two challenges that I think the Democrats face is, one, I do think they are more afraid of a backlash for overreach in their investigations of Trump's than a backlash for underreach. And I think that should be inverted because not being aggressive enough would really does a disservice to the voters who turned out to overwhelmingly elect a check on the chaos and corruption in Washington. And then the second piece is I don't think that everyone, particularly the Ways and Means Committee, which has been tasked with trying to get Trump's tax returns, has fully embraced what Trump's strategy is, which, as we said, is to run out the clock.

So the tax returns in particular are going to work their way through the courts probably all the way to the Supreme Court, And that's going to take time. And so every day that you're like letting Steve Mnookin analyze the legality of the request is a day more that it's more clock that Trump has burned. And so I think in that sense, we should shorten the timelines. But we still have to they still have to do the work of trying to get this stuff through legitimate means, because even if we all know that Trump has bashed through all the norms, I'm not sure the course of the law have adjusted for that new reality in American politics. debated this now quite a few times, I can be persuaded that Democrats should pursue a series of investigations on the way to potential impeachment proceedings. But I do think that Democrats need to be very clear what the roadmap is and exactly what they're doing and what the timeline is and what happens at the end of this process. Because right now, I think a lot of people watching what Democrats are doing, you know, could rightly assume that Democrats are just trying to say, like, we don't really want to impeach the president. We're too afraid of the backlash. So we're going to say we're doing all these investigations. And hopefully by the time we finish the investigations, impeachment fervor will have died down and no one will bug us about this and we can all just move on to the election.

Like it does feel like that's happening. Now, I think Hillary Clinton wrote an op ed yesterday in The Washington Post also suggesting that Democrats conduct a series of investigations on the way to impeachment. But I thought she made an interesting point, which is, you know, she was obviously a part of the Watergate hearings when she was a young staffer. And she said in Watergate, Democrats held a series of investigations and hearings very publicly so that there wasn't just a report that the American people were digesting, so that there wasn't just a report that the American people were digesting, but that people could see on television, you know, just what Richard Nixon had done, because there was a like a long line of witnesses and everything was on people's televisions and stuff like that. And so if the purpose of the next couple of months is to basically make the Mueller report come to life on television for people so that in the course of all these congressional hearings, the American people can see exactly what Trump has done and hear from the witnesses themselves and see the evidence, then great. But if this is just a stalling tactic by Democrats, then I think that's going to be very problematic. And I think you're right that people who voted in 2018,

and obviously they voted to protect their health care more than anything. But people did vote for a check on Trump. That was part of what people voted for. And if they see the Democrats just sort of like move along and try to tell people, you know, don't worry, we're taking care of it, but then they don't actually do anything. I think that could be a problem. I think the question, I will, I promised myself I would not reopen the media impeachment debate, which is on podcasts, in the Slack channel, everything else. And I thought you, John and Tommy, had just a really great conversation about this on Tuesday. Tuesday. I do think there is this question that underlies whatever your strategy is, if you want to get to impeachment, which is, do you use an impeachment inquiry to build the political support for impeaching Trump? Or do you build the political support for impeaching Trump

and then decide if you should open an impeachment inquiry? That is sort of the two. I don't think anyone, with the possible exception of a brief moment in Steny Hoyer's life, anyone is advocating that we take them all to report, stick it in a drawer and pass, you know, some message bills on job training and tax cuts for jobs, for companies that ship jobs overseas, right?

It's sort of these two choices, which is hearings in the context of an impeachment inquiry or hearings potentially followed by an impeachment inquiry. And I think that is a question. The only other thing I'd say about it is you only open an impeachment inquiry if Democrats are united around that question. And it does not appear to me that they are yet united around that question. So whatever process, if you're going to get there, you've got to get Democrats united. Otherwise, it's a shit show of epic proportions that will undoubtedly benefit Trump if we're divided on it. that are as big as the release of the Mueller report so that Democrats who are wavering or other people can say, oh yeah, now he deserves impeachment.

I don't know how you can build more support for impeachment based on any specific revelation or moment beyond what we just saw in the Mueller report. That's the only thing that I keep wondering know, that I keep wondering about. So we'll see. I mean, we'll keep talking about it. Yeah, we'll keep talking about it. But here's the thing. Whether Democrats pursue more investigations or impeachment, no matter what, this is essentially a political and communications battle. Who has the more persuasive message, Trump or the Democrats? So what is Trump's message in this fight? We

talked about this a little bit. As you mentioned, he's saying, you know, we should be legislating, not investigating that. And, you know, these are all my enemies and they're coming after me. And this whole thing was a witch hunt and we should investigate them. That seems to be Trump's message. Is there anything else Trump's trying to say here or get across? mean he doesn't have enough twitter followers lou dobbs is awesome i mean he's this is the problem with trump always is there is actually a good message in like i want to legislate they want to investigate in addition to just the general rhyming couplet of it uh but he also is spending so much time doing other extremist shit that he's not a good messenger for that, right? It's not just that he's undisciplined, that he can't deliver the messages, that he is doing just dumb things all over the place, live tweeting Fox News.

So he's just not a good avatar for the idea of focus on good government use of time. And so that is the problem. Theoretically, he has a good message. He's just a bad messenger for it. Right. I mean, because there's been no evidence over the last couple of years that Trump has ever tried to legislate anything

or push any number of issues onto the agenda, right? I mean, except for the caravans coming and the Democrats are out to get me. Those have been Trump's two main messages since he has taken office. The Democrats are out to get me. This is a witch hunt. And by the way, brown people are invading the country and they're going to kill you in your sleep.

That is that's the entirety of Trump's message. Every once in a while, there's I'm going to take away your health care. I'm going to give you a tax cut. There's a couple of trade things going on. There's North Korea. I'm best friends with Kim Jong Un. So there's a couple of other messages there. But those are the primary messages. When Clinton was being investigated, Clinton had a pretty,

you know, tight message, which was like, you know, I'm trying to protect Medicare and Medicaid and education funding and the environment. And also the economy is going well. So why are you investigating with Obama when the Republicans are investigating? He's saying we're just coming out of this great recession. We're trying to bring jobs back. I'm trying to work hard to bring the economy back. So like these other presidents have had message, good messages to counter the investigations. Trump doesn't necessarily have that going for him. He could, but he just hasn't tried for the last couple of years. hasn't tried for the last couple of years. That's right. Clinton had an identity that was built up since the 92 campaign as someone that you may not trust, you may not like personally. And as we

learned in his presidency, is capable of some pretty disgusting conduct. But people believed, Republicans and Democrats, independents believed that he worked his ass off for the American people. He really finally honed that identity. So he was the perfect avatar for, this is the guy, he'll work for you till the last dog dies. He was pushing on an open door message-wise. Obama was someone that the public, if you were to kind of saw out the far, far right, but even mainstream Republicans, independents and Democrats all believe Obama was a person of moral rectitude and good ethics. And so it was not – when Republicans were trying to like spin these crazy theories about Benghazi and Fast and Furious and all these other things that Obama was somehow corrupt, the American people didn't believe it. So he had an advantage. Trump's problem is American people think he's incredibly distracted. He doesn't really focus

on his job and is deeply corrupt. So he is not the right person for this message. The problem is he is a messenger and the Democrats don't have a messenger. They have a thousand people talking about this, none of whom people know and none of whom have a... Trump's got the world's biggest megaphone and they have no real way to get their message out other than a couple of day side cable hits and 10,000 Twitter followers. So whether it's investigations or impeachment, what should our message be? What should Democrats' message be? And who exactly are we trying to persuade here? What's the audience? I think our – this is really hard because we are – we do know that public opinion on Russia and obstruction of justice has been pretty steady from the beginning, right? The Mueller report didn't really change a lot. It didn't help Trump. The bar exoneration bullshit letter didn't

help Trump. Maybe his numbers have dropped a point or two since the report came out, but it's all kind of statistical noise. It's been pretty steady. And so it's not clear that additional focus on that specific thing is going to move numbers dramatically. There's just not a lot of evidence of that. but not exclusive to Russia and obstruction of justice is a powerful message. So how do you wrap this into a larger message about Trump putting himself in his own political and financial interests above the interests of the American people? Like that is sort of the message. I think Democrats should scream, what are you trying to hide? Like, what are you hiding? Why won't you be honest with the American people? And then you say, the reason he won't tell us the truth, the reason he is stonewalling here is because he doesn't want you to know that he is putting money in his own pocket. He's helping his businesses. He's

putting himself before you. I think it has to ladder up to a larger message. It was simply about, this is not a trial. This is not law and order. You're not trying to convict Trump in the court of public opinion. You were trying to tell a story about him. And that story has to speak to something beyond an issue that has already polarized people into their camps, and they haven't really moved from. Yeah. I mean, the guy ran promising to put America first. All he's ever done is put Trump first. He betrayed the country to win an election. All he's ever done is put Trump first. He betrayed the country to win an election. He betrayed the country to enrich himself with a big deal in Russia that he tried to hide from the American people. And then he refused to defend the country from foreign sabotage and then tried to cover it up. And if it happens again, he's still not going to defend the country from foreign sabotage. He's trying to cover it up again. And all because he's worried about his own election, his own political legitimacy, and his financial gains. That's all he cares about.

And I think, you know, that message is a drumbeat. Like people think that about Trump anyway, or at least think something in the realm of that. They think he's corrupt. They think he cares only about himself. They don't think he really cares about them. They think he's a liar. They think he's dishonest. This is all, you know, what people believe about him. But I think the Democrats need to pound on that message from now until the election.

Yeah, you need a flip side of that message for sure. Democrats need to talk about what they're for, what they're going to do for people. Absolutely huge part of the message. But the story that we tell about Trump has to be that he puts himself first and he doesn't put America first, to me. That, to me, is the most salient message.

Yeah, that's right. And the challenge in it is people know who Trump is. What Democrats have to do is show why who Trump is is bad for them. Right. Like that Trump comes with a bunch of chaos and corruption. But how does that affect their lives? What are the consequences to their lives of Trump being who Trump is? Trump being who Trump is. There are no available voters to Democrats who think Trump is honest, forthright, ethical, etc. They definitely think he's a liar. They think he's fairly absurd. But they think that that doesn't affect their lives and that that is better than whoever the corrupt, more traditional politician is that is the potential alternative. And that is the sort of the key part of the story is not who Trump is, but how who Trump is affects your life.

Yeah. And that's how you're going to get back some of those. You will convince some people to come off the sidelines, the four plus million Obama voters who set out 2016, how you're going to convince the voters who switched from Obama to Trump. It's how you're going to keep the voters who switched from Romney to Clinton in our fold. Those are the three target universes, and you've got to make sure that message works with all of them. Yeah. Look, going back to 2016, there was a cohort of voters who told exit pollsters on election day, I do not approve of Trump. I do

not like Trump, but I voted for him. There's a cohort of voters who said they didn't like Donald Trump and they didn't like Hillary Clinton. And for voters who had unfavorable ratings of both Trump and Clinton, Trump won those voters by, I don't know, seven to 10 points, something like that. And so it's like, why would these people who said they don't, I to ten points something like that and so it's like why would these people who said they don't i mean there's a bunch of people who just like trump and they like his racism and they like his xenophobia and they like it all right that was like a big part of his base there's some people said i don't like trump but i'm voting for him anyway because i don't like hillary either so why did he win those voters because they thought well he's gonna blow up

the system right or he's gonna bring change to washington or he's a fucking businessman he's going to blow up the system, right? Or he's going to bring change to Washington. Or he's a fucking businessman. He's going to create jobs. Whatever bullshit people believed. But you're right. What they thought is, even though I don't like him, maybe he's going to make my life a little better. And what Democrats have to say is, no, he fucking lied to you. He didn't make your life better at all.

He did what he's always done for the last 70-something years of his miserable life. And he looked out for himself and he made sure that he was OK and he didn't give a shit about anyone else. That's what happened. And it's interesting that you can see people from different sides of the ideological spectrum in the Democratic Party making this argument. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is out there almost every day saying Trump lied to you. Trump broke his promise. He said he was going to improve your life and he didn't. And then you can see people like Joe Biden with that message as well and more moderate and centrist candidates. So it is an interesting like it can unify people across the Democratic Party that Trump basically broke his promise to people. Even if even if you didn't like Trump and thought he was going to fix things, he didn't fix anything. I always wonder, and I'd like to see research on this, about whether the broken promise message is persuasive.

Yeah. Because people know he's a liar. So are they shocked by it? And so is it more important that he broke the promise or is that the salient fact that he promised me X and he didn't do X or is it what X is, right? Is it just simply the mere fact that he – this is less – it's less about the promises and more about the populism, which is he said he was going to take on Wall Street, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect – not give tax cuts to rich people. And under Trump, you can make this very succinct argument that corporate profits are up, corporate

taxes are down, your wages are flat, your healthcare is up, the cost of college is up, the cost of food is up. Are you better off? And you can make –, is that the better argument than Trump said he would do this, Trump said he would do this, he didn't do those things. And I think that, I don't know the answer to that, I don't know that anyone knows the answer to that,

but it's gonna be an interesting strategic calculus going forward. Because with a normal politician, the broken promises thing is incredibly important. It was the death of George H.W. Bush for saying he was going to, when he said, read my lips, no new taxes. And then he gave people new taxes. But is Trump unique in the sense that the dishonesty is priced into the baseline? economic populism, right? He said he wasn't going to raise your taxes and he did. I think it's a combination of both, right? Like I think if you just do a ton of broken promises and they don't all have an economic theme to them, it doesn't really work as well. Though I will say that even

for the immigration hawks out there or the xenophobes out there, Trump promised that he would fix immigration. Didn't do that. Trump promised he'd build a wall. Didn't do that either. Now, a whole bunch of people in Trump's base are going to say, I don't really care that he didn't do that. Trump promised he'd build a wall. Didn't do that either. Now, a whole bunch of people in Trump's base are going to say, I don't really care that he didn't build the wall because I know that he acts like a xenophobe and that's really all I wanted in a president. So you're certainly going to have a bunch of people like that. And there's some people who are just happy that Trump gave the middle finger to Washington and to elites and to the establishment, even if it didn't produce any real results, which it didn't. But again, those people were not really trying to reach as much. We're trying to reach both,

both trying to get our base out to vote, trying to get non-voters out to vote, and then trying to get a bunch of people who, you know, some of the swing voters that we captured in 2018 out to vote again. So we'll see. All right, on to the next cheery topic. The New York Times published a story this week that former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had wanted to make election security a top priority, but was warned by the White House chief of staff never to bring it up around Trump because it would make him angry. The piece said, quote, in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. As a result, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a

strategy to protect next year's elections. Also this week, Jared Kushner said he thinks the Mueller investigation has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than, quote, a couple of Facebook ads. Dan, what do you think? If you're the Russians, do you even bother to change up your strategy in 2020? Or do you just pretty much double down on what worked so well in 2016, knowing that trump's not going to do a damn thing about it so that new york times story caused me to nearly spontaneously combust as i was reading it really for two reasons one just generally as a country what the fuck are we doing the fact that we can't even organize a single White House meeting around a looming threat to the country in actual attack on democracy is bananas.

Like that should scare the living shit out of people because the meeting is the easy part. The hard part is executing the plan that comes out of the meeting. But hurricane preparedness, natural disaster, the fucking measles outbreak that's happening in America from our anti-vaxxer commander in chief who's been tweeting about this stuff for a long time. Like there's a lot of shit happening and not a lot of competent people on deck to do these things. And also, by the way, I would just I would just say that for that reason, this is why Democrats should be talking about the Mueller report, too. this is why Democrats should be talking about the Mueller report too, right? Because I do think if all we do is say, Trump's committed a bunch of crimes, he's a criminal, he's corrupt, whatever, you know, people could say like, well, like, are they petty crimes?

What kind of crimes are they? But what Trump has done is to impede an investigation into foreign sabotage of our democracy that may happen again. Like, it does get to a national security argument that like Trump, Trump is not defending the country. He is not willing to keep you safe because he cares more about his own political standing. I do think that's a powerful message, as you just demonstrated. The second reason that story drove me insane, which was there is this world in which Trump actually benefits from the low expectations that the media puts on him. The way that story is written is that Trump can't have the meeting because he is too much of

a toddler to have a conversation about Russian interference because it goes to his insecurity or his anger at the Mueller investigation. And it puts the motivation in the most benign way possible for him. It doesn't speak highly of him as a human being or his qualifications to be president, but it also doesn't even contemplate the other possibility, which is just as likely or more likely, which is that he wants Russian interference in this election because he knows it will benefit him. He is someone with a long documented history of cheating. We know for a fact he cheated to win this election, both in the illegal payments of Stormy Daniels to prevent that story from coming out, the efforts to collect, quote unquote, dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians, asking the Russians to hack her emails. He cheats on his taxes, we know. We know in the new book that he cheats at golf, which is the least fucking surprising thing ever. And so why is the assumption not that he is openly inviting Russian interference because he thinks he needs it to win what is a very close

election? And so we should spend as much time thinking about that as just, oh, there goes Trump again, forgot to take his nap, and he's grumpy so we can't talk about an attack on America. Yeah, I mean, he's publicly asked Russia to help him win an election before when he asked them to get Hillary's emails back in, you know, July of 2016. So this is nothing new. He has invited foreign sabotage of our elections. His TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, just the other day say what's wrong with said what's wrong with getting information from the Russians to help you win an election? I mean, it's just it's all there in plain sight. It's all there in plain sight. And look what we know from the Mueller report and from reports, you know, over the last month is not only, I mean, you know, to Jared's fucking stupid point, this wasn't a couple of Facebook ads either.

They hacked into Democrats' email systems. They stole emails. They stole documents. They tried to then publish those documents through WikiLeaks. And they targeted voting systems in all 50 states. They actually targeted the voting systems themselves. And if we think that they're not going to do that this time around, we're sort of crazy. Because, like, why wouldn't, what incentive would the Russians have not to pursue this again?

You know, Mueller said they did it, but no one in the U.S. government has really done anything to stop them, punish them. We've sort of dragged our feet on sanctions. There've been a few sanctions here and there, but the Trump administration has dragged their feet on sanctions on really punishing Russia. Trump is out there saying a million times, including when he stood next to Vladimir Putin, that the election sabotage didn't really happen. And as you said, we know that Trump really wants to have, that the election sabotage didn't really happen. And as you said, we know that Trump really wants to have help winning the election, no matter who he gets it from, whether it's illegal, not illegal, cheating, not, he just doesn't care. He wants the help to

win the election. He'll take it from anywhere and anyone. I used to believe, based on our experience working in the government, when I talk to people, you know, friends and family who, you know, haven't worked in government, who just would be panicked about the state of our ability to protect America against terrorism or crime or hurricanes or whatever else, because Trump is an idiot and he is staffed by idiots. And so this sort of view is like, is the country totally screwed? And I would argue that on a certain set of things, and we know this, that there are career professionals, bureaucrats, patriots, who would be working on these things. And what Trump tweeted, or whether he was going on Fox News or not,

or Stephen Miller's presence in the White House, were pretty irrelevant to that fact, right? The government was kind of going on beneath the chaos. And I actually no longer believe that. I believe that to be true in 2017. In 2019, I'm much more worried about it because the government is a fucking ghost town. The White House has not hired people to replace the people who've left. Half the cabinet is acting officials. It's basically being run by a temp agency. We don't have a secretary of defense. We don't have a secretary of Homeland Security. So all up and down. And that has an impact, right? People are,

the competent people are leaving because they're being pushed out. It's empty, right? We don't even have people to do the jobs. And that is worrisome. And it allows sort of the nefarious motivations around something like potential Russian interference in 2020 election to like trickle down and have a real impact. We are there. I don't we there is no sort of, quote, unquote, patriotic deep state protecting us from Trump's incompetence anymore. So the question is what are the people? people, but it is what it is. No, it should be scary. And the question is, what can Democrats do about it? One thing Democrats have decided to do is pledge that they will not take advantage of any hacked or illegally obtained information for political or campaign purposes, something that obviously the Trump campaign will not commit to. Dan, was this the right move for Democratic campaigns and the DNC and Democratic super PACs and all the rest to take this pledge? Or are we putting ourselves at a disadvantage here, considering that the Trump campaign is welcoming foreign interference in the election? By the way, reporters and journalists are surely going to print information about hacked and stolen emails again.

They haven't made any indication that they're going to change their ways from 2016 when they all had running blogs about various WikiLeaks dumps. I'm really torn on this question. I think for 100% certainty, Democrats should not use any stolen or hacked materials against other Democrats in the primary. Yeah. Right. For some, if the Russians somehow were to penetrate Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders' email systems and release those emails, Democrats should pledge not to use that against other Democrats. Now, in some ways, maybe this is a hypothetical situation that will never come to pass because we didn't face this in 2016. It wasn't like there were a bunch of hacked Trump emails that the Clinton campaign or the DNC

decided not to use because even though the RNC and some of the other Republican Party entities were reportedly hacked, those emails somehow didn't make it through the WikiLeaks editing process. And we never saw those. But were they to come? Like, let's say we're in a general election and it's Democratic nominee X against Trump. And somehow someone has hacked Trump's tax returns or other stuff. Should a Democrat not use that? I'm not so sure about that.

I, I, I mean, I don't feel good about it, but this world of unilateral disarmament against Trump, you know, seems, I'm not sure that's wise.

It's not great. I don't feel great about it, but I don't know that we were not going to get, you know, as Tommy said, recounting his high school football glory days, he's fucking sick of moral victories.

Tommy's glory days. I'm not sure whether it's right or wrong. I just don't know if it's feasible. I mean, I do, you know, there is a debate about whether it's right or wrong. But what I wanted to what I'm wondering about it was whether it's feasible, because the way this plays out in the general election is not that someone hacks trump's tax returns and then privately gives it to the democratic nominee and says okay do with this what you will what happens is they get hacked it's out in the public every single media outlet

does a story on trump's hacked tax returns and what is the democratic nominee going to do i'm not going to comment on those stories about trump's leaked tax returns because I had a pledge not to use stolen information to our advantage. That's not going to happen, right? When everyone in the country and the world is talking about it because it's been made public. So I don't know if it's a feasible pledge for the general election because of the way hacked information is disseminated through today's media environment. Yes. So I think you're exactly right that this is probably a dumb discussion because the real problem here is not the Trump campaign. It's not the Democrats. It's the media. Right. So the one scenario is it's sort of the equivalent of the Trump Tower meeting, right? So all of a sudden, the Democratic, you know,

the research director of the Democratic nominee opens their email, and it's Trump's tax returns. So what do you do there, right? Like, that's a different question than, does someone hack Trump's tax returns and give them to the New York Times? The New York Times reports on them. And then, obviously, in that world, you're not going to pretend like they don't exist. That would be an absurd proposition. I think a Democratic campaign that receives stolen materials has to call the FBI. Like that is the only viable right thing to do. I say that as someone who worked on the Gore campaign when the Gore campaign received stolen debate materials from George W. Bush's debate prep And the first thing that our campaign did was call the FBI.

You mean you didn't write back and say, if it's what I think this is, I love it, especially in the summer. Well, my 24-year-old self would have done that, but I wasn't the recipient. Someone higher up on the food chain received the debate prep materials. Okay, let's turn to 2020. After months of speculation, Vice President Joe Biden has made it official.

He is once again running for president. In a video released this morning, Biden skipped the usual talk of policy or his record or his biography and instead talked about Trump's reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He said in the video, quote, We are in the battle for the soul of this nation. I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen. Biden would be 78 the day he takes office. He served in the Senate for decades before joining Barack Obama's presidential ticket in 2008.

He served in the Senate for decades before joining Barack Obama's presidential ticket in 2008. In the months leading up to his announcement, Biden's long record has come under close scrutiny, particularly on criminal justice reform and abortion. But he comes into the race with significant name recognition, and he's consistently performed at the top of polls of Democratic primary voters thus far. His advisors are telling reporters that their strategy is to just let Joe be Joe. Dan, what did you think of his video and his overall plan to win the nomination? I mean, I guess I would give the caveat first that like Joe Biden, I am from Delaware. Delaware is a small place. I have seen Joe Biden, known Joe Biden, been around Joe Biden my entire life. I have very vivid memories of meeting him for the first time when I was, I think, in first grade or second grade at the Flower Market, which is sort of like our state fair

in Wilmington, Delaware. So I'm not like, and we worked with him in the White House. He's been, you know, up to 2017, and this speaks to his age and long time in Washington. Up through 2017, he had been either my senator or my vice president my entire life. And as it's been well reported, I'm not that young. So I can't pretend to be completely objective here. But I thought the video was good. I mean, very traditional, right? Like Biden seems to be making an argument that is a different version of Trump's, right? Normally in a lot of campaigns, you have a argument for nostalgia on one side and an argument for progress on the other, right? other, right? Trump, make America great again, is an argument for a older, more conservative,

whiter version of America. And Trump was able to win with that. Joe Biden seems to be arguing for a different form of nostalgia. I saw someone say this on Twitter, an argument to make America 2016 again. Dave Weigel quoted an organizer saying that. It's unusual to have two people making nostalgic arguments just for different versions of the past. So, you know, it's hard to say how it'll go. I think, you know, we'll have a conversation shortly about his strengths and weaknesses. But I thought as an announcement video,

if he is making a nostalgia argument of sorts, it worked very well as that. Because when I was watching it, and this is partially, I think, related to sort of my and all of our long-term relationship with Joe Biden in our political lives, is it felt like something that happened before the words of Trump. It's sort of you have this Joe Biden making a case, quoting Thomas Jefferson or whatever else and talking in these sort of platitudes about the soul of America felt just like a different version of politics or maybe a politician in a version of politics that existed in a pre-Trump television show or movie. Yeah. I mean, look, I will make the same stipulation. I did not. I have not known Joe Biden as long as you have. But ever since he joined the campaign in 08 and then worked in

the White House with us, I have come to know him well. I think he is a good man. I don't think he is a perfect person. I think he's made plenty of mistakes. But he is someone who has learned from has shown the capacity to learn from his mistakes. He has shown the capacity to grow, to change. And I think he's just a fundamentally decent and good human being. And so, you know, that that's that Trump is some sort of aberration. Right. And I don't think that is a settled question among voters. I think for a lot of liberals, especially those of us who pay close attention to politics, we don't believe Trump is an aberration. We believe that he is a symptom, not the cause. is a symptom, not the cause. We have said this before, and that the Republican Party has become rotten to its core and has sort of radicalized over the last 10, 15, 20 years. And the question is, has Joe Biden not seen that radicalization of the Republican Party, or does he still believe

that the Republican Party today is the Republican Party that he worked with back when he was a 29-year-old senator, 30-year-old senator in the early 70s, which is a Republican Party where you could disagree on big issues but still come together and forge compromise? There's probably a lot of people out there, a lot of older Democrats, some Republicans who don't like Trump, some independents who don't like Trump, who do believe that Trump is some kind of an aberration. And I think Biden's video basically makes that argument, too, by using Charlottesville. It's like, why did he decide to focus the whole video on Charlottesville? Because Charlottesville is the most extreme example of this isn't just a Republican president we disagree with. This is someone who said there's very fine people on both sides when Nazis and white supremacists march through the streets of Charlottesville. And that is while you may have disagreed fundamentally with George W. Bush and thought he was the worst president in history, you know, mostly because he took us to war in the wrong country. You know, even he would not have called neo-Nazis and white supremacists very fine people and other Republican presidents

wouldn't either. Donald Trump has, and so he's different. That's Joe Biden's argument, basically. And the question is, you know, do enough people buy that argument or do they think, no, Trump is just the latest example of the Republican Party's radicalization and we need big sweeping progressive change to fix this country? And I think that's the big question here. Yeah, I think that there is an open question about the political appeal of Trump as an aberration. And Trump as an aberration is important if you're making a nostalgia-based argument for your candidacy, which is, if we get rid of Trump and you put me in,

we will go back to this politics as usual that you didn't love but was better, right? Where Democrats and Republicans could, we would disagree but get along. There'd be less yelling, less tweeting. And frankly, you'd probably pay a lot less attention to politics, which is probably very appealing to a lot of people. Maybe not people who have podcasts, but generally appealing. But there may be a question about the political appeal

of that argument, but there is no question about the inaccuracy of that argument. Trump is not an aberration. Trump is a direct extension of where the Republican Party has been going for a long time, from Ronald Reagan's state's right speech to George H.W. Bush's Willie Horton ads to the homophobic nature of the Bush 2004 campaign to everything that happened since the day Barack Obama stepped onto the national scene. And this, to everything that happened since the day Barack Obama stepped onto the national scene. And this, win or lose, if we beat Trump, we still have a giant fucking problem in this country because the Republican Party is the party of Trump. It was the party of Trump before Trump showed up.

He just put his fucking name on it like a third tier building in New York. And so it may work politically as a governing strategy. If you walk in there thinking you're going to be able to cut deals with Mitch McConnell because of your old relationships, that to me is a very naive approach. And Joe Biden is not the only person who's taking that approach. There's a handful of Democrats who are yearning for this politics of the past. But I think Democrats have to recognize that politics is behind us and that it's going to take real aggressive action to change it. And that, I think that, that is, that is going to be an important aspect of the Biden candidacy that's, that'll be worth discussing. Yeah. No, I, I, people ask me all the time, like,

well, what are you guys going to do? What's, what's going to happen if we, uh, you get rid of Trump in 2020 and then everything's back to normal, you know? And it's like, no, if we get rid of Trump in 2020, first of all, Trump's not going away. It's going to be an ex-president who's going to be on Twitter all the time. It's going to be booked on every fucking cable show and news show. Unless he's in jail, John. Unless he's in jail. Right. Yeah.

But so he'll still be around. But Trumpism will still be around, too, because that is the Republican party. Now the Republican party is not going to go back to some, um, you know, wonderful time when they were a bunch of moderates on the party and stuff like that. Like that, that's gone. That is gone for good. Fox news is still there. You know, the Breitbarts of the world are still there. The right wing lunatics of the world are still there. And a lot of them are populating the elected ranks of the Republican Party. In fact, most of the elected ranks of the Republican Party. And Democrats have to understand that and reckon with it, right? Like, that's not to say we have to be at total war all the time, or that total war is something we should aspire to. But we should at least be realistic about the party that we're dealing with. That's what we're asking for here is just a realism about the party that we're dealing with here. So is Biden immediately the front runner? Yes. Yeah.

I mean, just some fact, you know, he's out polling Bernie Sanders, who is the next closest candidate to him, by about eight points nationally and seven to eight points in Iowa, according to the average polls. He's got the highest favorability ratings in the field, and he has relatively low, pretty low unfavorability ratings. So yeah, that's, you know, he, by, you know, we were,

we had this conversation a couple weeks ago about how Bernie Sanders was the front runner, and he was because Biden hadn't officially announced yet. But now that Biden announces, I mean, we'll see what happens to the polls over the next couple of weeks. But I think it's pretty fair to claim that he's a frontrunner right now. Yeah, I think we should. It's worth discussing his sort of strengths and weaknesses candidate. Yeah. Well, I mean, like right now, his numbers are held up by three things. Name ID, a perception that he is the most electable Democrat with the obvious and consistent caveat that no one knows what electability is.

And those who think they do are often operating on gender and racial stereotypes that lead some people to believe somehow for some reason a white man is the most electable person, which we know from 2008, 2012, and the 2018 midterm that that is not the case. Not to mention Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016. And the third thing is a close association with Barack Obama, who has a 95% approval rating among Democrats, which is leading Biden to receive north of 40% of the African-American vote in polling. And that is both important in terms of propping up his numbers, but when you are trying to accumulate the delegates you need to win the Democratic nomination, the African-American votes are actually, because of the way congressional districts are drawn, more valuable than any other group because you have the ability to net the most delegates from majority African-American districts if you're polling strongly with that group.

Yeah. Now, the question is, are those sustainable over time? Name ID is, by its very nature, a diminishing resource, right? As more people get name ID, then your advantage for that goes down. Electability, right now he is seen as the most electable candidate based on what people know of him and his association with two winning national campaigns. But now he's a candidate. Now he's got to show his electability every day. If his campaign in 2016 looks at all like his campaigns in 2008 and 1988, then that perception of electability could erode

very quickly. And the third question is, there's going to be a battle over just who is the heir to the Obama legacy? Is it someone like Biden who can be seen as a throwback to that legacy, or can be seen as someone like Elizabeth Warren, or Kamala Harris, or Cory Book Booker or Beto O'Rourke or Mayor Pete, who can be seen as the next step, right? The person who's going to take the baton from Obama and sort of finish that work, right? Sort of the next generation of young progressive leadership in this country. And those are all open questions. Now, the challenges are very long voting record with a lot of troubling votes, particularly with the view of hindsight, but even many of them even troubling at the time.

And, you know, we would be remiss to not mention that he was most recently involved in a controversy with a lot of criticism for being inappropriate, inappropriate touching, getting inappropriately close to women that, you know, and that, you know, certainly is, you know, he's had to deal with that and how he dealt with that didn't indicate, I think a lot of, I don't know what the right word is, but it didn't indicate a real understanding of the gravity of that situation. And if he, that has not dealt with, that is also a huge problem in this election. Yeah. I think, I think all that is right. For people who do not want Joe Biden to be the party's nominee, of which there are quite a few in the activist and base community and probably other people as well. One thing I would caution against is making the argument that Joe Biden is out of step or out of touch with where the Democratic Party is right now, because I don't know that that's true. the Democratic Party is right now, because I don't know that that's true. I mean, he, you know, roughly half the voters in the Democratic primary describe themselves as moderate or conservative.

Another thing to keep in mind, 56% of Democratic voters in 2018, in these last midterms, were over 50, while just 29% were below 40. So you do have a quite a big cohort in this party of older Democrats who are more moderate or conservative, who won't necessarily see Joe Biden's troublesome record as a deal breaker, partly because these are people who may have evolved on all of these positions themselves. And partly because when they think about Joe Biden, and like, as you said, he's got near universal name recognition. Almost everyone knows who Joe Biden is. When they think of Joe Biden, they have a strong correlation to Barack Obama. And they think, okay, this is a guy who was vice president to the most popular Democratic president in my lifetime. And he was a good progressive vice president. He, you know, jumped the gun, came out for gay marriage even

before Obama did because he let it slip on meet the press, right? Like, these are the memories that a lot of voters, and not just older voters, by the way, but like you said, African American voters, young voters, all kinds of voters. These are the memories that people have of Joe Biden. African-American voters, young voters, all kinds of voters. These are the memories that people have of Joe Biden. So then to say, oh, but look at this record in the 70s, 80s and 90s, that's way more conservative than it should be, which is true, to say, look at that record is going to cause some cognitive dissonance with a lot of voters. Now, can that change over time?

If one or more candidates makes a sustained argument against Joe Biden for the policies that he has supported in the past and his record? Yeah, possibly. But that is not where we start this race. It's just not. I think reporters and pundits and political operatives probably spend more time thinking about older positions and not enough times thinking about current positions. Yes. And I think voters sort of think about the opposite, right? I totally agree. Biden's past votes, everyone's past votes, whether it's Bernie's votes on guns, Kamala

Harris's support on policies on criminal justice or Beto O'Rourke's votes in the House, everyone's positions are – past positions are relevant. But voters put a lot more value on where you stand today. And they give people a wide berth for evolution if they can explain why they did what they did and why they would do something differently now. And so what's going to be much more relevant to Biden's success or failure in the race is not what he did in 1975 or 1993, but what he says he's going to do in January of 2021. And that is real because we don't really know. Like his policy agenda is a blank slate. Like we've assigned sort of this moderate,

you know, we, the, I don't know, people with blue check marks and podcasts and cable TV, cable TV jobs or whatever, you know, have with blue check marks and podcasts and cable TV, cable TV jobs or whatever, you know, have signed in this sort of moderate lane. But like, what is his position on healthcare going to be? Is it going to be for a public option? Is it going to be for Medicare for all or simply improving the ACA? Where is he going to be? What's his taxation plan? Where is he going to be on regulation of Wall Street? All of those things are going to be more relevant than what he did before. Although the stuff he did before is – I'm not saying it's irrelevant, but people often are more looking forward than looking back when it comes to what a politician has said and done. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

I mean I think that if I was running a campaign, a primary campaign against Joe Biden, I would look at the policies proposing now and try to draw differences and not necessarily spend too much time on the record. The exception is where his past record, sort of what it tells you about the policies he's proposing now. So for example, in 2008, in that primary, Hillary Clinton's vote for the Iraq war was a very big issue in that election because Barack Obama was against it. But it wasn't just that Obama kept harping on the vote. First of all, the vote wasn't that far in the past. It was it just been, you know, a couple of years ago and we were still involved in the war. Right. But Barack Obama talked about that vote to say this is the kind of commander in chief she'll be now. She's more

likely to get us into war or to take us to war because of this vote and because of her past foreign policy positions. That was the argument that he made. So if Joe Biden comes out with economic policies that are not sufficiently progressive, for example, then saying, oh, and by the way, he supported this bankruptcy bill in 2005 that made it harder for people to declare bankruptcy, working families to declare bankruptcy. And now he refuses to go far enough on X economic issue. Then I think that's a more salient argument and that might be more effective than just pointing to things he said in the early 70s and positions he took in the early 70s that he has since completely changed. he took in the early 70s that he has since completely changed. Yeah, I thought like a model for the way to handle this is how Kamala Harris responded to your question on the podcast a few weeks ago about the much maligned and rightfully

maligned truancy policy that she had as Syracuse District Attorney. policy that she had as a Syracuse district attorney. And to say, I was wrong. Here's why I wouldn't do it again, is how you have to do it. And I think if you can explain that well, you'll get a pass. But it's hard. Biden is not someone who spent a lot of his time in life apologizing, right? He's a very prideful individual. His explanations of things like Right. So that will be a challenge. It is hard for, you know, I think it's hard for him to do that. But he's going to have to if he wants to win this nomination. Yeah. And I do think the most important thing here is where does he come down on the issues of the day, right? Like we know, you know, in 2016, he came out for a $15 minimum wage.

He's come out for free college for four years for public universities. But like you said, we still don't know exactly where he stands on health care, a whole bunch of other issues. So, you know, the policy pronouncements he makes in the coming weeks, I think, will be very important to what happens in this race. Last question on this. How much should Democrats worry about two men in their late 70s, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, potentially battling it out for the nomination since they are the, you know, number one, number two candidates in polling right now? I worry about it. I worry in two ways. I worry about two 70-year-old white men battling for the Democratic nomination. And although that's ultimately the choice of the voters, not the activists. And I worry about how young people and people of color and other people

around this country who are most affected by the policies the government makes feels about a general election between two white men in their 70s battling it out. You know, I think that that, you know, I think one of the challenges we had in 2016 was, despite Hillary Clinton's history making role as the first female nominee of a major party, because of all of the baggage that came from years of investigations and caricatures and unfair coverage of Hillary Clinton, for a lot of people, that election felt removed from people's lives, right? It didn't feel – it felt more like the past than the future. And a 2020 general election that feels more like the past than the future is worrisome. Now, to Bernie Sanders' credit in this, he has a demonstrated record of exciting young people. Yeah.

And maybe his age has not been relevant, has not been something that has been prohibited from exciting young people. And so if he were the nominee, then there's a chance he could replicate that on the national scale. This goes to the – our friend David Oxenrod always says that voters look for the remedy, not the replica. And so when you look at the Democratic field, what Axe means by that is they usually want the opposite. If they're going to unseat a president or replace a term-limited incumbent president, they usually want the opposite. Thoughtful Obama was the opposite of impetuous, intellectually uncurious Bush who got us into Iraq. Trump was the opposite of Obama. Who is the candidate who is the most opposite of Trump in this race? And some people have argued,

I think I actually even saw Axelrod's quote used to describe this as, you know, that's part of the appeal of Mayor Pete. That's part of the appeal of an Elizabeth Warren or a Kamala Harris. It feels very different. It feels more like the future than the past. And I think that's just as we try to figure out what the fuck electability means, the future, you know, who represents an exciting future for America is an interesting question. And, you know, as to what is who is best to beat Trump. is an interesting question and, you know, as to what is who is best to beat Trump. Part of the problem with the remedy replica saying with regard to Trump is Trump has so many uniquely awful qualities. Like he is one of our worst people, as Lovett always says, that there's a ton of people who are the opposite of Trump.

You know, like it is not clear in this field who is the most opposite of Donald Trump. Right. Like there are a number of candidates that can lay claim to being opposite of Trump. So it's sort of a tougher thing to figure out. as you said, Bernie Sanders has dominated with younger voters, did in 2016, and so far in polls is today. It's hard to say that for a lot of those younger voters who are supporting Bernie, that he represents the past or something like that, because they don't believe that. I actually am thinking more of what it means to serve as president in your late 70s, because I do know that in 2008, there was a very big issue made of John McCain's age, partly by us, partly by the media. And he was in his early 70s. And I think the job of president is very difficult and it is trying and it wears you down and it's tiring.

is very difficult and it is trying and it wears you down and it's tiring. And imagining two men in their late 70s serving in that role, you know, it's it's tough and perhaps they're both up for it and they're both very energetic. And you can see, you know, Bernie's been running all around the country and Joe Biden ran all around the country in 2018. So, you know, perhaps they're fine, but it does it does worry you that people in there, you know, it's, it's a very, very difficult job being president. And these, you know, both Bernie and Biden would be the oldest presidents by far. Yeah, it's a very fair point. So that's, that's one thing, but you know, they could surprise us and just be as energetic as the young folks. So, okay. When we come back, we will have Dan's interview

with Mother Jones's Ari Berman. We are now pleased to be joined by Ari Berman. Ari is a senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights. He's the author of Give Us the Ballot, The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Ari, thanks for joining us. Hey, Dan. Thank you for having me. I want to start with some basic table setting. You have been, as much as anyone, covering the

question around the Trump administration adding a question about citizenship to the census. Can you explain how that question came to be and why it is so unusual? Well, you're right, Dan. On the face of it, it seems like a really basic question. It's a nine-word question that basically asks, are you a citizen of the United States? And I think for a lot of people, that doesn't seem like a big deal. But the Trump administration added this question in March of 2018. And the problem is that the census is supposed to count everyone in America, not just every citizen, not just everyone who's here legally, everyone who is here, whether they are legal or not. It is a just and perfect enumeration

of the population, which is what the founders intended. And the problem with this question about U.S US citizenship is that immigrant communities, particularly non-citizens, particularly Latinos, are going to be very uncomfortable giving the Trump administration their citizenship information, giving everything that we've seen with the Trump administration's immigration policies and the incredible climate of fear that now exists in this country. And so if immigrant communities, if Latinos do not respond to the census, what's going to happen is that the areas where they live, places like California where you live, places like New York where I live,

we are going to have less economic resources devoted to us. We're going to have less political representation. We are going to have fewer House seats. We are going to have less political representation. We are going to have fewer House seats. We are going to have fewer electoral college votes. Because the big picture here is that the census does so much important stuff in our country. The census is how we allocate $880 billion in federal funding. It's how we draw voting districts. It's how we decide how many seats states get in the House, how many electoral college votes they get.

So if the census is rigged, if the census is manipulated, then basically all of American democracy is rigged as a result. Can you sort of just, not to get too basic about it, explain how the census fits into the allocation of political power in America, just so our listeners understand the stakes here? The census is really the basis for American political power. It is the survey that then determines how political power is allocated. So every 10 years, we do a census of the entire country to count every person who is here. And once we figure that out, then we decide, okay, this state gained X number of people, so they should get X number of House seats.

This is how their state legislative map should look. This is the number of votes they get in the electoral college. So if we have a census that doesn't count immigrants in large numbers, then states with a lot of immigrants, places like New York and California, and some Republican states like Texas that are fast growing, that have a lot of immigrants, they are going to have less political power than places that are whiter, more rural, and have fewer immigrants. So that's why the census is such a big deal. It really is the baseline for how we allocate political power in America. And just to be super specific, that means fewer house seats and fewer electoral votes in places that generally elect Democrats, correct?

Yes, by and large. I mean, there are some places with a lot of immigrants like Texas that are controlled by Republicans or they are trending democratically. But what's happening here is that the country is becoming more democratic, more urban, and more progressive. And the census, if we have an accurate census done in 2020, it's going to show that the country is more diverse than ever, that we are heading towards a minority-majority future, meaning that white people are going closer and closer to becoming the minority in this country. But what the Trump administration is trying to do in the census is to halt the impact of that demographic change. So instead of resources being allocated to more

diverse, more progressive, more urban places, instead resources will be redistributed to more rural, more conservative, wider places for the next decade. And if the census is rigged, we won't be able to get any do-overs. It's not like we do another census in 2021 or 2022. We do it in April of 2020, and that's it. And then we have to live with the consequences for the next decade. And so this issue has been working its way through the courts. There's a hearing in the Supreme Court this week. I believe you were there. What has the legal arguments been about, and what are the prospects for the court stopping this issue? I was there in the Supreme Court. And the thing

to remember is that three different federal courts have already struck down this question. So there's been lawsuits filed against it by New York and 17 other states, by California, and by Maryland and some other places. And so this has already gone through pretty extensive litigation in the lower courts. And the federal courts in all three cases have been withering in their assessment of why Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross added this question and basically called him a liar without exactly saying so. Because Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary who oversees the Census Bureau, he added this question about citizenship in March of 2018 and claimed it was needed for, quote, better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. And this is really a laughable argument, because the Trump administration hasn't filed a single lawsuit to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

They have been actively hostile to voting rights in just about every area. The census hasn't asked about U.S. citizenship since 1950. And of course, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. So we hadn't needed a citizenship question on the census to enforce the Voting Rights Act for more than 50 years. And basically what the federal court said was that this was pretextual, that Ross added this question for other reasons. And the other reasons included trying to diminish political power for areas with lots of immigrants, possibly trying to draw districts to exclude immigrants from counting altogether. That Ross, when he made this decision, consulted with people like Steve Bannon, people like Chris Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas, who are among the most anti-immigrant people in the country, the architect of the Trump administration's white nativist strategy. So this had nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act. But the interesting thing, Dan, is when this came

before the Supreme Court, the conservative justices seemed to buy this argument, that John Roberts in particular said, well, don't we need this question to enforce the Voting Rights Act? What's wrong with that? And this was incredibly ironic because it was Roberts, of course, who wrote the majority opinion in 2013 gutting the Voting Rights Act. So the same people that had gutted the Voting Rights Act are now turning around and saying, we need this question to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which is just a complete farce if you look at it.

And let's say the doomsday scenario comes true and the Supreme Court rules in the Trump's administration's favor. Is there like, there is no recourse? We're just fucked for a decade? Is that I mean, it sounds like a depressing question, but people are wondering. convince people to still respond to the census to make sure that the citizenship information, if it's given, is confidential so that immigrants aren't afraid of answering this question, that people may respond to the census but actually skip this question. And I think it's very possible that if we get a bad count, that if it's obvious in some way or another that immigrants were not counted in large numbers, I could then see groups challenging the validity of the census itself. And that would be a whole nother battleground. But of course, that would have to happen after April 2020. And what I'm really concerned about is even without

the citizenship question, the census is going to take place in April of 2020, right in the middle of the presidential campaign. And can you imagine the impact if Donald Trump tweets that day that the census begins, that we are making the census great again? I mean, that would have probably a catastrophic impact on people responding to the census. And so this issue really needs to become depoliticized. This, at the end of the day, is a survey. It's a survey of who we are as a country. And the more politicized it becomes, the less likely people are going to respond to it. Who is running the census within the Trump administration? Is that someone who gives you confidence? Well, that's another problem, is that for a long time, we didn't have a leader of the Census Bureau. There was an acting leader. The longtime leader of the

Census Bureau who started under Obama was a guy who was very well respected. He stepped down for about a year. There was no leader. Now there is a new guy by the name of Stephen Dillingham, who is fine. I don't think – he's a career bureaucrat. People don't have any problems with him. But the feeling is that Wilbur Ross is running this show and that he's running the show with people like Chris Kobach whispering in his ear, saying we need to do, and people like Stephen Miller most likely whispering in his ear, and saying we need to do everything to try to make it so that white political power is protected

in the census, and that immigrants and the areas where they live have less clout than they should have, and that this is our grand strategy to try to halt the impact of demographic change, to make sure that the impact of demographic change, to make sure that even after Trump leaves office, that white political power is protected and Republican political power is protected to the next decade. So really, I think it's Wilbur Ross and then the anti-immigration hardliners inside and outside the administration that are running this show. And that's what makes me so nervous.

Do you know of any nonprofits or other groups out there who intend to work with the immigrant community or others to try to maximize census response? A lot of groups are working on this. And in fact, that there is a big coalition of philanthropic and nonprofit groups working to get out of the count, whether it's groups like MALDEF working on the Latino community or groups like Asian Americans Advancing Justice working in the Asian American community or the NAACP working in the African American community. Groups like the Ford Foundation are funding this. There is a big coalition to try to get the count out. But it's going to be very difficult if the citizenship question is on the census. I was in the Central Valley of California, Dan,

where there are a lot of Latino immigrants, a lot of undocumented immigrants reporting on a story about the census in the spring of 2018. And I met a lot of undocumented immigrants. And I asked them, would you respond to the census if it had a question about US citizenship? And they all told me no. There wasn't a single person that I knew that was undocumented that said that they would respond to that question. And it's going to be very, very difficult to convince people that are incredibly afraid of the Trump administration's immigration policies, that feel like they could

be deported at any minute, to then turn around and say, you should trust the Trump administration with your confidential information. That is going to be a very, very difficult argument, no matter how many resources are devoted to it to be able to make. You know, you've talked about the census question in the context of a larger Republican strategy about curtailing the political power of a growing, progressive, diversifying majority in this country. What else around the country are you seeing that gives you great concern about the fate of our democracy and the fate of people's right to vote? Well, the rigging of the census has to be seen as part of a broader strategy to try to dampen

the voices of an increasingly diverse, increasingly non-white emerging majority. And so you can put the census alongside things like the extreme gerrymandering we've seen over the past decade in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina to try to entrench white Republicans in power for the past decade, which has been remarkably successful. You can put it alongside efforts to make it harder to vote, which had a big impact in the 2016 election in places like Wisconsin are having a big impact now. Republicans have not taken their foot off the gas pedal when it comes to disenfranchising voters. We're seeing efforts right now in Florida, in Texas, in other really important states to try to make it harder for

people of color to be able to vote. And so if you just had this question about citizenship and nothing else was going on, it might be possible to justify it. But when you look at it as part of the attack on voting rights, as part of the extreme gerrymandering, as part of the attack to undercut the power of democratic election officials, which we're seeing across the country, both in lame duck sessions and now, you see this as part of a broader whole, where basically Republicans are becoming the minority in this country, but they're trying to hold on to power as long as possible. And they are manipulating the institutions of democracy to be able to carry out that grand plan. You know, we always talk here on Potsdam America about the best and perhaps only

solution to these efforts beyond putting our faith in an increasingly conservative court, is electing Democrats at the state and local level. You know, obviously, 2018 was a very good election for Democrats, not just in taking the House, but governorships, state legislatures. Have you seen anything from the newly elected Democratic leadership of some of these states that suggests that we are going on offense on voting rights? Absolutely. And 2018 was a really key hinge moment in which Democrats, and I think the public more broadly, went on offense on voting rights. You had eight states that passed ballot initiatives to make it easier to vote, to put in place policies like automatic registration, like election day registration, to draw districts in a

nonpartisan way. This passed not only in liberal places, but in conservative states like Utah and Missouri, they did this as well. Now, we have to be very vigilant about people trying to roll back these initiatives, which they're doing in a bunch of places. But the fact that these initiatives passed so overwhelmingly was really important. And then when Democrats have gotten majorities in places like Washington State, for example, they've been very aggressive in expanding voting rights. New York, where I live, is a great example. We have had some of the worst voting laws in the country in New York for decades. And then when Democrats got a majority in the state legislature for the first time in what felt like a million years, they went on offense. They did

things like early voting, like online registration, that are really, really important, that a bunch of places have had for decades, but that New York didn't have. So I think it's really, really important that when Democrats and progressives get power at the state and local level, they do things to expand democracy, which is not only good for their party, but is good for democracy writ large. My one concern here, Dan, I imagine you share this concern, is that so much attention is going to the presidential race right now, that I think it's in some ways eclipsing the importance of these state and local races. And I hope people realize that in 2020, we're not just electing a president, we are electing in particular governors and state legislators that are going to then draw the redistricting maps

for the next decade. And it's really, really important we don't lose sight of that. All right, that's such a great point. And I guess my last question for you before I let you go is, do you think the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are talking enough about voting rights and the health of our democracy? Would you like to see more from them? I would like to see more from them. And I'd like to see it be targeted. So I mean, I think it's great to have a hypothetical discussion about whether prisoners can vote. But right now, for example, there are critical elections in places like Virginia in 2019 that's going to determine who draws redistricting maps for the next decade. I would like to see the Democrats running for president campaign for down-ballot offices,

talk about the importance of voting rights at the local level, and not just have a hypothetical conversation about what we should do, but a practical discussion and say, hey, listen, if you elect a Democratic legislature in Virginia in 2019, they already have a Democratic governor, we can then draw redistricting maps that are more fair for the next decade. And that is really, really critical. And I think some Democrats have talked a little bit about this, but I would like this to be a central issue of the campaign, that democracy is on the line, not just in the presidency, but democracy is on the line in the states in 2020. And the Democratic presidential candidates have to highlight that and draw attention to it so that people don't forget.

Ari, thank you so much for joining us. And we hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks to Ari Berman for joining us today. Everyone have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Bye everyone. Thank you.