Pod Save America - “More Warren, less Kushner.”

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Donald Trump and Jared Kushner let the states fend for themselves, Republicans in Wisconsin fight Democratic efforts to make voting safer, and Bernie Sanders’s advisors encourage him to end his candidacy. Then Elizabeth Warren talks to Jon F. about her plans to fix our public health and economic crises, and how she’s thinking about the November election.Crooked has started a Coronavirus Relief Fund for organizations supporting food banks, health care workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others in need. Donate: crooked.com/coronavirus

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, I chat with Elizabeth Warren about the fight over the next coronavirus relief bill in Congress. Before that, we'll talk about how Trump's decision to let states fend for themselves and compete with each other when it comes to fighting this pandemic, why we should all be paying attention now to how we're going to vote in November, and the possibility that Bernie Sanders may soon end his candidacy. But first, love it.

You had a very funny show this weekend with some very funny people. Tell us about it. We had a great love it or leave it. Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon played the newlywed game. We had... That was very funny. That was great. The newlywed game was great.

It was a... They were so delightful. That was very funny. That was great. The new internet game was great. It was a, they were so delightful. We had, and also it was good to finally talk to Kumail about his physical transformation. No, I found that offensive.

I was glad you took him to the woodshed on that one. You gave him a lot of shit for that. Unbelievable. He's lost 30 pounds of funny. And he hasn't, he hasn't. And then Alex Wagner from our new pod, Six Feet Apart, helped me call listeners with their new self-care habits. And Saru Jayaraman came on to talk about the plight of restaurant workers and how we can help them, including through our fund.

So it was and and we did a live show for Seattle, which was really fun. We talked to like 50 people over Zoom. So it was we're experimenting. Check it out. Good stuff. As you mentioned, you had Alex Wagner on from Crooked Media's brand new podcast, Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner, which everyone should subscribe to. If you haven't already, you are missing out. In the first episode, she interviews the CEO of a large food producer who's doing a great job protecting his employees from this pandemic, as well as a crew member at Trader Joe's whose employer is not doing a very good job. It's a fantastic show.

You'll learn a lot. You get to hear the very human stories from this pandemic that aren't being covered everywhere else. So check it out. New episodes come out Thursdays. Finally, tune into our Instagram, at Crooked Media, where all your favorite Crooked Media pals

have been going live to answer your questions and talk about our lives. Right here in the copy, it says, ad lib about your lives. Here's the thing about ad libbing about our lives. There's no improv in our lives. There's no ad lib. Our lives are all the same. We're all having the same life. Small and sad.

All right. Well, that's why you should tune in. Also, our video team has been churning out some fantastic explainers and other fun stuff on youtube.com slash cricket media. So go check that out as well. We're spitting out the content here, left and right. All right.

So here's where we are. In the span of about one month, we've lost over 10,000 Americans to COVID-19, and there are now more than 330,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. On Saturday, Donald Trump said, quote, this will probably be the toughest week between this week and next week. There will be a lot of death, unfortunately. I'm sure his tone was just right when he said that. death, unfortunately. I'm sure his tone was just right when he said that. And even with 90% of the population under orders to stay home, many states are still terrified that their hospitals will quickly become overwhelmed and are really struggling to get protective gear for healthcare workers and ventilators for patients. Let's listen to what Andrew Cuomo had to say about the current

process. Look at the bizarre situation we wind up in. Every state does its own purchasing. So New York is purchasing, California is purchasing, Illinois is purchasing. We're all trying to buy the same commodity, literally the same exact item. So you have 50 states competing to buy the same item. We all wind up bidding up each other and competing against each other where you now literally will have a company call you up and say, well, California just outbid you. It's like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator. bidding on a ventilator and you see the bid go up because California bid Illinois bid Florida bid New York bids California rebids that's literally what we're doing I mean how inefficient and then

And then FEMA gets involved and FEMA starts bidding. And now FEMA is bidding on top of the 50. So FEMA is driving up the price. What sense does this make? Tommy, why is this happening? So, you know, this is happening because Trump and Jared and his entire team are trying to push responsibility for the response from the federal government into the states. So instead of trying to centralize the purchase and manufacture of these crucial medical supplies, they're telling states, basically, you got to figure out how to get this stuff on your own. Don't count on us. But there's just a finite number of suppliers and manufacturers out there.

So you have New York competing with California and Illinois and FEMA and foreign entities. And, you know, it's a disaster. And, you know, Cuomo was saying it drives the price of ventilators from $25,000 to $45,000. But for some states, it's even worse than the price. You've seen states saying, when we're about to get shipped an order, the federal government swoops in and takes our order. It happened in Massachusetts. It happened to Kentucky. Charlie Baker, a Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he bought 3 million masks and they were confiscated in New York. So then they had to have the New England Patriots

owner fly to China to pick up a million more. So it's this ad hocery. What we need is a competent, highly technical manager to nationalize, oversee, and streamline the process. But the federal government won't do it. Gavin Newsom here in California is trying to build a consortium of states to work together to put their purchasing power together and stop competing. So Cuomo is doing his best. He said, I think a thousand ventilators are arriving soon from China. Oregon is loaning New York City 140 ventilators in a sign of kindness and decency that we wish was coming from Trump. But it seems like it's going to be this like everyone fend for themselves effort for a while. Love it. That thing that Tommy just mentioned about Newsom building a

consortium of states to buy protective gear in bulk. Like, isn't that what the federal government is for, if nothing else? Well, I mean, look, I think one of the things you can do is you can kind of form this consortium of states and then maybe have a set of rules. You kind of have them work together, create a set of rules like who's in charge of this and it's sort of a federal system. It's a good idea. Certain safety balance. You have to have checks and balances, right, because you don't have too much power to accrue to that kind of consortium. Yeah, no, look, it's horrifying. It's compounding the early mistakes, right? We learned over the weekend that it seems as though the Trump administration did not actively start pursuing purchasing of much needed medical supplies until mid-March. So now they're coming in trying to make up for their own failures. The governors are desperately trying to

build up their own capacity because in part the federal government failed. And the end result is the early failures to actually take this seriously are now being compounded by the federal government coming in and competing with the states for resources, driving up the cost of everything and creating a chaotic situation in which, you know, it's not just, you know, Tommy said it's Kentucky, it's Massachusetts, it's Maryland, it's Colorado. All these states are discovering that they're now competing with the federal government when the federal government should be coming in and making sure that every state has what they need when they need it. It also seems to be that there's some politics driving these decisions. You know, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine

received a fraction of what they requested from the federal government. Florida got everything they asked for within three days. It's not perfectly aligned to Donald Trump's political considerations. Like apparently Georgia couldn't get what it's wanted. You know, New Jersey is getting what, what it wants. So it doesn't perfectly line up, but it does sort of fit with both incompetence. And if you happen to know someone in the white house or you're in a state that Donald Trump needs to win,

maybe you get your call answered a little bit quicker. Yeah. I mean, his staffers are saying on background that like Trump cares a lot about Florida because it's a swing state, too. So that kind of helps spell it out. Well, yeah. And when there's no process, when there's no one really serious running this and it's all done, as Tommy said, in an ad hoc way, a well-timed call comes in and gets answered. Another call doesn't get answered. It's all, you know, it's a combination of Trump's like venal political necessity, plus just chaos, like every story coming out of the White House over the weekend. Yeah, there's a lot of nefarious purpose, but there's also just

incompetent boobs in charge of things they have no business being in charge of. Great segue. Love it. One place that's theoretically... I read the outline. Wow, you know where I'm going. One place that's theoretically supposed to help with the shortage is the Strategic National Stockpile, which manages the country's emergency medical supplies, except it's now almost empty. When asked about this at Friday's briefing, Jared Kushner climbed out of Donald Trump's pocket and said, quote, the notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile.

It's not supposed to be state stockpiles that they can then use. This directly contradicted the description of the stockpile on the government's website. So, of course, the White House responded by changing the description on the website to fit Jared's bullshit. Guys, how do we feel now that our lives are in Jared Kushner's tiny hands? Tommy, you want to start? Long fingers. They're skinny. They're skinny.

What do they call them? They're denigrating him and his buddies as the slim suit crowd or something like that. I mean, look. Slim suit crowd. Jared Kushner running a pandemic response is the, it's not a joke. It's the worst case response. It's the reason you need anti-nepotism laws. It's the reason they were designed to prevent this situation. And you can tell from these briefings that Jared isn't just

this like way fish little idiot who's in over his head. He's actually like an actively vindictive little guy. He takes the same tone rebuking governors that he doesn't like that Trump did. And frankly, like he was just as arrogant and dismissive during the Middle East peace discussions. And like, just a quick aside, like the way, you know, Jared is very dumb is if you told me, hey, here's a giant, like catastrophic problem. You could either take 20 representatives from these big companies or harness the power of the federal government. Which fighter do you choose? And the answer is obviously the federal government when you consider like the capacity of the military alone has, but instead he's like bringing in like a UPS representative to his office for some reason. So whatever, but like, you know, look, this is a problem.

Like Lovett was just saying the AP did this big survey to figure out when federal agencies started this bulk purchasing. So we're now way behind on N95 masks, which are hard to make and often produced overseas. And you have a scenario where like the hospitals are running out, the stockpile is about to run out. No one is really asking the question, then what? Because it is such a frightening answer. Love it. What do you think about Jared? I mean, it's not just like such as anti-nepotism laws. It's like anti-dipshit law.

I mean, it's not just like such as anti-nepotism laws. It's like anti-dipshit law. It's just even if he wasn't related to the president, he was like he's so unbelievably unqualified. He has failed at everything he's done in his life except marrying into a wealthy family. Yeah. I mean, look, he's been right. He's no success. He's never succeeded. He has no you can't say like what's Jared's biggest accomplishment? There's none, but he's been kind of socially passed throughout his life because of money. He bought a spot in Harvard, you know, goes into real estate, buys a building on Fifth Avenue, blows that. Obviously Middle East peace has not been resolved. And now he's in charge of this. And it very much is like Jared Kushner has been in the little baby seat with the wheel his whole life.

His whole life he's been driving just in a little car, you know, in the passenger seat, driving his little wheel while the real person was driving the whole time. And now he's supposed to be driving and he has absolutely no idea how to drive. He has no idea what he's doing. In the Washington Post piece, there's a long, long, long story, yet another kind of, what would you call it? What's it called when you open up a corpse? What do you do it? What's it called? Come on, autopsy.

It's an autopsy. Oh, okay. There you go. This is what it said in the piece. Right now, Fauci is trying to roll out the most ambitious clinical trial ever implemented to hasten the development of vaccines that a former senior administration official in frequent touch with former colleagues, by the way, I haven't guessed

who this is. And yet the nation's top health officials are getting calls from the White House or Jared's team asking, wouldn't it be nice to do this with Oracle? And so you have like this little band of dummies talking to corporations, doing like what they did when they went to Davos and went to Bilderberg and trying to Bilderberg the fucking coronavirus while the real professionals are stuck batting back fake, fake, fake cures that haven't been proven yet. And, and whatever shit Rudy Giuliani is saying in Fox news and whatever Dr. Drew is up to. And you know, it's, it's not just that they're not successfully making a response. It's that Jared Kushner is actively hurting our country's ability to help people.

It's also it's like it's Bilderberg, like global elites thinking they can solve problems combined with Silicon Valley arrogance slash naivete that we're going to we're going to hack the coronavirus. We're going to hack hack poverty it's like you are fucking morons we need a grinding like logistical organized effort this isn't a hack well he's been installing his people in different agencies and um whoever at fema described it as um a frat party that descended from a u UFO and invaded the federal government is just that is 100 percent right there. Nailed it. So, you know, Trump isn't just leaving states defend for themselves when it comes to medical equipment, but also when it comes to issuing stay at home orders. There are still eight states that haven't.

All of them read all of them run by Republicans. North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas and Wyoming. This is after Dr. Fauci said we should have a national stay at home order to which Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds responded, quote, maybe Fauci doesn't have all the information about what states like hers are doing to slow the virus. Why has this been left to the states? And why is this so dangerous? Tommy, you want to start? So two guesses. I mean, first, it's a lot easier, right? I mean, managing a huge problem like this, all the complex needs of individual states and the components of the government, it's very hard. And this is a massive, unprecedented challenge that requires competent people. And Trump has fired all of them in lieu of hiring those who tweeted MAGA at a certain date and time because they passed loyalty tests. And what we know about

the core of Donald Trump is that he wants credit for everything without taking responsibility for anything. And so he's pushing it off into the states. There's also, though, a deep-seated belief in some Republican ideologues that you want a weak federal government, that states should somehow be in charge of most things, if not everything. There's the libertarian, don't tread on me, strain of Republicanism. And both of those perspectives, Trump's lack of responsibility and the laissez-faire, don't tread on me government perspective are running headfirst into the reality that public health infrastructure in this country has been underfunded on a federal level and in many cases gutted at a local level.

And it's a recipe for a very bad outcome. I mean, look, it mirrors what happened with the Medicaid expansion in that, like, I actually don't have a problem with the fact that the federal, like the president not dictating a nationwide stay at home. I'm actually like pretty comfortable with the idea that the president could say to the country, I'm urging every governor in the country to issue a stay at home order. Because what we haven't seen is Donald Trump actually direct a policy that made it clear to those states that they should stay at home. In fact, when DeSantis was dallying and delaying, dallying? I liked it. Dilly dallying? Yes. Dithering. When DeSantis was dithering, delaying, dilly dallying. Dicking around. Dicking around.

Mike Pence is in the briefing room calling him decisive, and Trump refuses to criticize him. You know, the same Republicans who said we need to let the states do what they will with health care have consigned millions upon millions of people in Southern American states, particularly black, poor Americans, to not have health care because we gave states the choice and then states didn't act on it. So, you know, I don't know what it looks like if Donald Trump had been an actual leader early on, if states that hadn't yet done a shutdown would have done it despite it not being dictated by the federal government. But we'll never know because the response was so mismanaged. That's all. Yeah, I mean, two points on this. One, you hear a lot of these governors

when asked about why they haven't issued stay at home-home orders, their excuses, well, I haven't heard anything from the federal government to do that. I haven't heard the president say this. So it is that they are looking to Washington and to the president for leadership on this, or at least, at the very least, using him as an excuse for doing what they want to do anyway. Second, the reason why this is so dangerous, first of all, it's tragic for the people in these states who are now going to experience higher rates of infection because the virus will be allowed to spread in these states because people aren't staying at home. It also affects the rest of us, which is why it should be national. We have been home. We have been under a stay-at-home order since March 21st here in California. been under a stay-at-home order since March 21st here in California. We are now going to have to stay at home longer and probably extend these social distancing guidelines because there are

going to be states like Florida and states like Georgia and states like the eight or nine that I just mentioned that still don't have stay-at-home orders where the virus runs wild. And what's going to happen in those states, those people in those states are going to travel to other states. And it's, you know, just as we keep, say we keep infections down here in California because we all stayed home since March 21st. Well, what's going to stop all the people from the other states where they don't have stay-at-home orders to start coming to California and causing outbreaks again? I mean, this is why you can't have a fucking state-by- state response to a national pandemic, a global pandemic. What frustrates me so much about this is Trump has so much political leeway to do the right thing here. If Barack Obama were president and he called for a national shelter in place order, you would have like Greg Abbott down in Texas saying the government was going to come take your guns away. You know, like all the fever green bullshit they did to him.

saying the government was going to come take your guns away. You know, like all the fever green bullshit they did to him then. Trump and the MAGA cult has the political ability and space to say, hey, we really need to do this. This isn't just owning the libs. We all do need to stay home because the key to social distancing is to do it before the numbers explode. And all these governors are too cowardly. And they're saying, well, we haven't seen a big explosion of cases here in Iowa yet. I don't know what Dr. Fauci is looking at. And the reason

is just time. Like you're going to see a big explosion of cases if you don't do the right thing. And that's why I find this so frustrating. It's also, you know, Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, has been talking about this. It also runs counter to their economic goals, right? Like, okay, they don't care enough about, they're too cowardly to care enough about the health of their own people. Fine. They're just worried about their economic conditions going into November or going forward. Fine.

If you don't do what you need to do to contain the virus when we're all staying at home or when, what, 90% of the country is staying at home. Yeah. And then we start to come out and the disease is coming back and you can't trust that it's safe. You will not see the recovery. You will not see the recovery if people can't be confident that when they go back to restaurants, go back to movie theaters, go back to their jobs, that the government has successfully

done what it said it was going to do. And so you end up with this slow rolling disaster. The same bad decision making and fear and political cowardice that led us into our homes now is going to mean that the pain, the economic pain continues far longer than it needed. So another confusing development over the weekend was the new CDC guidance that all Americans should wear cloth face masks when going out in public. Trump made this announcement at a briefing where he then said he wouldn't be wearing one himself because, quote, I just don't want to. According to The Washington Post, the guidelines were the result of a battle between the CDC and the White House. The White House folks were against it. The CDC was for it. Tommy, why do you think Trump and his political people aren't thrilled with this idea?

You know, so like Love, I was saying, like, this is one of those issues where, like, I'm not as worked up about it. You know, at the risk of sounding like Trump, like, I don't think it's the most important issue for all of us to be fighting about, right? Social distancing is the key. And I would love to have a bigger fight nationally about why some states aren't doing it. But like when it comes to masks, civilians shouldn't be using the N95 masks or even surgical masks. If you have to leave the house and go to the grocery store, the CDC is now saying maybe wear a cloth mask, which might help, especially if you are infected and you don't want to be, especially if you don't know you're infected, you don't want to be spraying more spit that has the virus in it on places and then

inadvertently spread it. It's probably not going to do anything to protect you, the individual here. I'm guessing that, I don't know, there's probably two parts to this. Like Trump probably just, he's vain. He doesn't want to look stupid by wearing a mask on TV because it'll mess up his hair or whatever. He's also just a petulant asshole in the face of any authority or common sense. I also suspect that he thinks the whole country wearing masks will make things look and feel worse and scarier for a lot of people. So there's probably a psychological element of this. But like, I don't know, man, he just picks every fight. Love it.

What did you think? I'm sort of with the last point that Tommy made that he is anything that makes this he's still in this fucking warped alternate reality where anything that makes this look serious or makes this seem scary, he wants to avoid, even if the science tells him otherwise. Yeah. I mean, if Americans are walking around with masks, it means the virus won and beat him personally. It's a personal rebuke. That's really what's in his mind. Now, I feel like there's some dissensus about the value of masks. I mean, the government has sent incredibly misleading signals for months now about when and where to wear masks. I think

they were correctly worried that people would hoard masks. So they said, you don't need masks. Well, probably knowing that on the whole, while it might not protect you from getting it for someone else, it might help other people, even if you have a cloth mask and not a medical mask. And then there's some question about like, well, if a bunch of people wear masks, will they think they're more protected than they are and put themselves at greater risk, right? They're sort of like unintended consequences. But that is not what Donald Trump cares about. Donald Trump is not not not going to Dr. Fauci and saying, you know, I've looked at some of the data and in the crosstabs, it's pretty clear that there might be some countervening effects. No, he's like, it looks bad.

It looks like I lost. But it's just like, you know, you just normal leaders just follow the science. Right. The masks are not a cure all. The mask should not take place of social distancing measures. But there's clearly been enough studies that show that if everyone wears masks and a large percentage of people

are asymptomatic who have it and you're doing social distancing, but you're going to the grocery store and you have a mask on, then yes, there is, whether it's 10%, 20%, whatever percent, less of a chance that you will transmit the virus. So take it, right?

It's not a guarantee. It's not 70%. It's not 80%. But it's some small chance that you might reduce the risk of transmission. So we should do it, right? There should be no politics entering the consideration here. But this is like with everything else, which is now what he is enthusiastic about that we saw yesterday is an anti-malaria drug called hydroxychloroquine that he pushed again

at Sunday's briefing, despite the fact that doctors and health experts say that it hasn't yet been proven to work against coronavirus and that it may cause dangerous side effects. For example, after Trump said, what do you have to lose by taking the drug? The president of the American Medical Association said, your life. Why? Concise. Why do you think he's pushing this drug so hard? Love it. What do you think?

I don't think we know. We like genuinely don't know. Like there's a couple layers to this. One is he just wants to tout something. He's just going from news cycle to news cycle and he wants to latch onto something because maybe it'll go goose the markets. Maybe it'll send a good signal that we're going to be able to get out of this thing

and get him to the next briefing. There's two, there's a bunch of, you know, people who circle him like Rudy Giuliani and Peter Navarro who are pushing this. We don't totally understand why. I don't know what Rudy Giuliani's personal financial interests are in this. Nobody does.

Kind of feeding him bad information, which is also being spread on Fox News. Then part of it, too, is that there's a kind of like, you know, in the financial crisis, like Goldman makes money whether you lose or not. Like if it works, they're going to say, see, I told the scientists, see, I told the doctor, see, I told the media. And if it doesn't, they'll just pretend it never happened and bounce on to the next thing. It's a completely just unethical, chaotic, grabbing at something in the news and latching onto it without much of a real justification. That's it. Yeah. Tommy, what do you think? It's so weird. It's so weird. So to love his point, like the Washington Post reported that Rudy Giuliani has been pushing it and that he's getting his information from a right wing doctor on Long Island, who, according to The Washington Post, once pleaded guilty to conspiring to extort Steven Seagal.

So that's all I know about that. I'm guessing he has a financial interest. He's a scumbag. Rudy Giuliani is a terrible person who gives awful advice that got Trump impeached. But, hey, whatever. Do what you do. Axios. I have it on good authority from Joey Buttafuoco that this works.

Axios reported also that there was a big fight over the issue in a recent coronavirus task force meeting. And so Fauci's in there and he said this publicly that he believes there's only anecdotal evidence that this drug might work. Trump literally jumped in and took a question to prevent Fauci from talking about it at yesterday's White House briefing. But I guess in this situation, we're meeting Peter Navarro, who is Trump's right-wing trade advisor, exploded on Fauci and was dumping studies on the table that he had downloaded. And just remember, this is a guy who works in the White House because Jared Kushner Googled how to learn about China and found his book on Amazon. So he has no medical expertise. So like initially when I started hearing everyone fighting about this, I was like,

I don't get why he's fighting this battle. I don't know how hard to push back because to Levitt's point, like if it ends up saving a bunch of people, he'll say, aha, I was right. I do worry about someone taking a drug that they weren't prescribed that seems like it could lead to bad outcomes. I worry about a run-on supply for others who actually need the drug, but I can't stop him from repeating his bullshit. But then I watched Sunday's task force briefing, and so much time was spent by repeated individuals focusing on efforts to procure and distribute this drug to places. And I'm worried about how much time is being pissed away on hydroxy whatever versus like ventilators or N95 masks or all the things that we know could actually move the needle. Or other treatments, right? I mean, Dan Diamond at Politico reported this a couple of weeks ago that there's a lot of

government researchers who say that they are being pressured by trump to chase down whether uh hydroxychloroquine works um when there are a whole bunch of other antiviral treatments that may be promising right like if it works that's great we can all say like trump was right the whole time i don't give a shit i'll throw a parade a bunch of lives great fine good for donald trump but like again just like the masks let the fucking science dictate what treatments and cures and vaccines you pursue not like rudy giuliani and a bunch of right-wing goons and like of course i don't put it past any of them to have a financial motive here but i don't even think they have to like i think it is everything we have seen so far points to one explanation, which is that Donald Trump wants an easy way out of this. He does not believe that we need to be sacrificing as a nation, that we

need to have this, like, long period where we're all staying at home. Like, he wants out of this as fast as possible. He wants an easy way out. He's like the original fucking get rich quick guy, right? He's a, he's a salesman. He's a snake oil guy. Like his whole life, he has believed that you can do something easy to get ahead and believing that there's some treatment out there that all he has to do is just yell about at the briefing and that's going to fix everything. Fits perfectly in line with his worldview. It also like the lack of expertise, the lack of expertise, like Donald Trump saying,

what do we have to lose? Peter Navarro throwing down studies he doesn't understand on the table. There's a reason people like Fauci and other experts have caution in these moments because they have a wealth of experience. And we don't, I don't know anything. I don't have a wealth of, we don't know about this,

but we know that they're drawing on a lifetime of seeing potential medicines that ultimately don't work and do more but we know that they're drawing on a lifetime of seeing potential medicines that ultimately don't work and do more harm than good, unintended side effects, unintended consequences of early pursuit of potential breakthroughs. They're drawing on a history that teaches them to be cautious in the wake of potential medical treatments. And because people like Jared Kushner and Peter Navarro and Donald Trump have never literally never thought about this stuff before in their entire lives. They're arguing they have they're arguing for things they have no basis to argue for. That's all.

So, you know, as part of Trump wanting an easy way out of this, he did a call with sports commissioners over the weekend and said that he wants the NFL season to start on time in September. Of course, governors of both parties have now said they don't expect to be filling up stadiums this fall in cities like L.A. and places like Ohio. You know, Trump at the briefing on Sunday was still pushing for the country to open up soon, kept talking about that. How is this going to work out? How should this work out? Like what what is the most realistic path out of where we are now? Short of a vaccine, which scientists keep telling us is 12 to 18 months away. I mean, let's just start like real quick. Let's just start with how Donald Trump spends his time. He does two hours of these briefings maybe every day.

He makes his whole task force, who I'm sure are working 24-7, seven days a week, stand there and just hurry up and wait. Like that's hours of lost time they'll never get back. Doing a call with sports commissioners, like yes, we'd all love to see sports start again. It would be a welcome distraction from this nightmare we're living in.

But like in terms of sequencing, giant events with huge crowds are probably going to be pretty far at the end of the list of things that are going to happen again. So it's just like, it's PR nonsense. So if we had the ability to test people repeatedly and quickly, you could see a scenario where things start to slowly open back up in a controlled way. I mean, I saw footage of China today on CNN, literally of stores and markets that were completely closed down that are now bustling with people. They're several months ahead of us. They were dealing with this horrible outbreak in January. Look, that decision could be a disaster if they are not careful. The 1918 flu was much worse when it came back after the summer for the second season. So we can't open up too quickly. I'm also really

concerned about healthcare workers who like above all else need a break. Like that's why we're doing social distancing. Remember, it's not that, you know, it's to make these hospitals not just be overrun with patients who can't seek treatment. And I'm like worried about these people hitting a breaking point. So I don't know that this could work right now. I think it's insane that we are in the same briefing. Trump is saying like there will be death. And then in the next breath, he says, we have to open our country again. We don't want to be doing this for months and months. We might have to do this for months and months. The mixed messages are driving me crazy. Love it. Trump thinks if there's no football in the fall, it will make men really mad at him.

Yeah, what African-American men will he yell at about kneeling, right? Right, we only really get one shot to prove that our effort to control this the first time worked. We get one shot to come out in a way that is safe and based on science that gives everybody the confidence that they can trust that it's safe to go to the movies, it's safe to go to a concert, it's safe to go to a football game, it's safe to go to the ballet or whatever is more popular.

I don't know what's more popular, ballet or football, but whatever the big things are. And Donald Trump doesn't care about that. He cares about November. Everything for him is now about November. He is seeing that the delays that led to, you know, the 70 days of stupid that led to this moment are meaning that his fall, this key moment where he's going to campaign for reelection on an economic comeback, are maybe starting to go away. And he's panicked. He's panicked and he doesn't know what to do. But the one thing he doesn't care about are the people that will be hurt and the pain that will be caused by too quickly coming out of uh um this like stay at home effort when is the call with blue band group or cirque de soleil or lin-manuel miranda yeah i'm upset yeah apple plus can't shoot their season two people this really worries me because, you know, I'm concerned that we're going to make the

same mistakes and not preparing for the fall that we made and not preparing for what we're dealing with right now. And, you know, people like Scott Gottlieb, who is Trump's former FDA commissioner, people like Andy Slavitt, who worked in the Obama White House, like all of these health care experts, epidemiologists are sort of coalescing around two things that we need to do right now to make sure that we can at least start opening the country back up. And Tommy, you mentioned that number one, the most important is testing like fast, available, reliable testing all over the country, testing not just of symptomatic people, but asymptomatic people and a surveillance system so that you know who's tested positive, who hasn't, where there might be outbreaks. So then you can have certain cities and

states more open than others. And like, it's going to have to be sort of a series of rolling shutdowns and opening the economy back up. And that's the best case scenario here. And then the other thing that, you know, we just mentioned is serious investment in treatments um if we if we can't get to a vaccine for 12 to 18 months are there treatments that make the disease more manageable and are we letting the scientists find out what those diseases are and pushing them just to discover whatever's out there as opposed to donald trump's favorite drug and i don't see either the testing or the uh investment in um in finding the treatments ramped up like they should be right now. And every time I see one of these fucking briefings, I just want reporters to keep screaming at Donald Trump and the people up there until they get answers about the fall and what's going to happen with the fall.

And, you know, Jake Tapper did a great job of doing this at the end of his show on Sunday, asking the president, where's the plan? What is the plan for the fall? Speaking of the fall, as you said, Tommy, you know, a lot of experts believe that there's a potentially deadlier wave of the virus that comes in the fall. So it's even more outrageous that Donald Trump and a bunch of Republican politicians are now against making it physically safe to vote in the presidential election, either with universal vote by mail or more early voting or whatever. Politico reported on Friday that the president's reelection campaign and the RNC are gearing up for a massive legal fight in the months ahead to stop Democrats from trying to make voting safer and easier. And here's what New York absentee voter Donald Trump said

about why he doesn't think others should have the same privilege. Do you think every state in this country should be prepared for mail-in voting? No, because I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting. I think people should vote with ID, voter ID. I think voter ID is very important. And the reason they don't want voter ID is because they intend to cheat. When you get something, when you buy something, you look at your cards and credit cards and different cards. You have your picture on many of them. Not all of them, but on many of them.

You should have a picture on your — for voting. It should be called voter ID. They should have that. And it shouldn't be mail-in — excuse me. It shouldn't be mail-in voting. It should be you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself. You don't send it in the mail where people pick up. All sorts of bad things can happen by the time they sign that, if they sign that, if they sign that, by the time it gets in and is tabulated. No, it shouldn't be mailed in.

You should vote at the booth and you should have voter ID. Because when you have voter ID, that's the real deal. Thank you very much. We'll see you tomorrow. So I think this is very dangerous. What about you guys? What's your concern level here on voting? Tommy?

High. I mean, it's quite high. Look, it has been a Republican strategy for a long time to make it harder for people to vote, especially people of color, low income people, people who have to work shift jobs. And this is an extension of an incredibly cynical strategy that is born of their coalition, older white people dying off and refusing to change their platform that might bring in Latino voters, young people, others, right? So they are going to ride this strategy until the party no longer exists.

And so it's so cynical, it's hard to even believe that a party would push a strategy that might lead to people dying because they wanted to vote, but here we are. Mark Elias, who's an incredibly smart election lawyer, wrote a great piece about all the things that we should be doing. That includes making curbside voting available for everyone. A lot of disabled people now can drive up, get a ballot, fill it out, hand it off. We need to expand early voting, and that should include weekend voting for people who just can't get off work. We should adopt vote anywhere rules, which means you don't have to go to your location and hope to get a provisional ballot. If you go to the wrong polling location, you can vote anywhere.

And then also we need to make a vote by mail, the standard across the country that might take a little longer, but you know, that has to include, include paying for postage, um, making sure that these signature matching laws that are being used to throw out tons of vote by mail applications or ballots aren't too onerous, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I mean, look, in 2018, 68% of poll workers were over 60 years old and more than a quarter were over 70. So that's an incredibly at-risk population that we're asking to make our elections happen. And that's unfair to them. Love it. It does seem that Democrats should be screaming about this and demand voting protections as

part of the next coronavirus relief bill, right? Yeah, yes. Look, we were heading towards a November election that everyone anticipated to be the biggest turnout in history, right? There's the turnout. The turnout is going to be incredible. The Republicans are going to turn out. The Democrats are going to turn out.

You know, we have an election in Wisconsin that's in chaos right now. Absolute chaos, right? And why is it in chaos? You can point to the efforts of Republicans to prevent people from voting for a long time that have continued now in a kind of truly nefarious way. But underneath that, it's pretty simple. There's two things going on at once. You need to stay home to stay safe and you need to leave your house to vote. They have put those two things on at the same time. Both of those things are true and they conflict and it's created chaos. And that's exactly what we will head to in November. You know, yes, we need more vote by mail. They say that there's fraud. There's only been one big case of vote by mail fraud in recent years. It was a Republican scam in North Carolina. That's it. That's the example.

It was Republicans trying to steal an election. So if we don't want to wake up on Wednesday, November 4th to the chaos of an election that didn't work on a grand scale like what we're seeing in Wisconsin, we have to act now. We have to make it so that, yes, there's more vote by mail. There's more voting sites. There's more options. There's more ways to vote early. And we need to give states the money and the resources to put those things in place right now or we are going to head towards like a potential a potential illegitimate election

that we've just not seen. I mean, it's just it's a truly terrifying outcome. Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of people talk about like, what are we going to do if Donald Trump cancels the election if Donald Trump postpones the election? First of all, he can't do that. Only Congress can do that. But that's there's an equally terrifying and probably more likely scenario here, which is that the virus comes back in the fall. Donald Trump decides to downplay it like he did in the first place. He says it's nothing but a liberal hoax because they're losing the election. And he tells his supporters, go out and vote anyway.

It's going to be fine. Meanwhile, all the Democratic supporters and the Democratic nominee and Democratic governors and mayors are saying it is dangerous. It's dangerous to vote. We want to do mail in. But in some states we can't do mail in because these Republican legislatures and Republican governors are refusing to do this. And so then you have Donald Trump and his supporters feeling like they can go to the polls because their president told them to. And our supporters terrified to choose between the virus and voting. And by the way, where are the lines now, right?

When there's a big crowded polling place, where are the lines? They're not in the rural white neighborhoods. They are in the urban areas. They are in black areas. They're in Hispanic areas. They're in poor areas. That is where we have seen these big crowded places. Now imagine what it looks like if the government is telling people they must remain six feet apart and a lot of senior citizen poll workers have decided to stay home, it is a predictable disaster. It is a predictable catastrophe. I have to say, I mean, Republicans, this has been a Republican strategy for a long time. And the debate usually ends up being voter fraud versus voter access. And I don't think that Democrats have always done well in terms of making the case and fighting for this.

I do think as cynical and disgusting as it is, it provides us an opportunity to say the Republican Party wants to make voting dangerous to your health. The Democratic Party wants to do all these things to make sure that you can vote without getting sick. I suspect that that is a message that will cut across all party lines, especially for people over, let's say, 60. I mean, a Republican operative is quoted as saying there's a major feeling that absentee and early voting are tools of the left to make up for the fact that they can't win on election day. Like, think about that, that voting safely is a tool of the left now. Early voting is a tool of the left. Making it easier and safer for Americans to vote is now a partisan issue and it's a tool of the left.

Fuck these people forever. I think the Democrats, like, whatever is in this next bill, and Mitch McConnell's going to scream about it, and Donald Trump's going to scream about it, and a whole bunch of Republican senators are going to scream about it. And I if they have to hold up the relief bill for this, I think they have to. It is you know, there is stopping the spread of the virus. There is fixing this economy and this economic disaster.

And then there is protecting our democracy. I just don't see anything more important than that right now. I agree. Yeah. All right. Let's let's end by talking about the Democratic primary, which actually still exists. But according to The Washington Post over the weekend, some of Bernie's top advisers, including his campaign manager and a senior adviser, are now encouraging him to end his candidacy. Love it. Are they right? You know, his primary is over. It's over. You know, Biden is on track to win

by a huge percentage in Wisconsin now. That's what his own advisors are expecting. The coronavirus hit in the days, I mean, really became a national crisis in the days following the final contest in which Biden basically created an insurmountable delegate lead. I understand how hard and painful it is for the Bernie supporters and Bernie staffers who put so much on the line for their candidate, who believe in their candidate, who saw how close they were to having this nomination in their grasp and to see it slip away. I don't see how Bernie Sanders' own goals are served by it continuing. Like if you believe in the vision of a world that Bernie wants to create, Bernie has a lot of power now to to to shape the platform, to shape the kind of administration Joe Biden puts together. And he should use that power. He should use that power and that platform.

His candidacy has created. And and and like, you know, there have been people online who say like, oh, if you think Bernie should drop out, it says something about how weak a candidate you think Joe Biden is. It doesn't. I just want us to have the best chance in November. That's where we're at now. And I don't see a path for Bernie to be nominee. Barring a catastrophe, Joe Biden is the nominee. And now we need to do everything we can to help Joe Biden win because we have a economic depression, a medical emergency on a grand scale, plus a threat to our democracy unfolding in real time. It has never been more clear how urgent it is to remove Donald Trump from office. And that's it. Tommy, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, look, Bernie would have to win like 60 percent or more of all the remaining pledged delegates to win the nomination. And there's no indication based on polling that he is in a place where he can do that. In fact, the opposite is true, which is that Biden seems to be on track to rack up more big wins. And like like Love it was saying, I can't imagine how weird it is to run an election and work so hard and then have it come to a screeching halt because of a pandemic. That must be weird and infuriating and hard to manage. But I also think the writing was on the wall in terms of where this thing was headed before that happened. And, um, you know, like, I think we need to figure out a way to bring the party together, uh, to help Joe Biden raise money and build up the infrastructure he's going to need to win an election that's going to be fought in a way that's totally different than what any of us expected.

I hope that Bernie uses his leverage and all the goodwill he's built up to fight for policy priorities and that the Biden team listens to him and agrees to some things. But yeah, I mean, I think it would be good for us to have a nominee and to rally around that individual barring some major event. Yeah, I mean, Bernie would have to win every remaining state by the margin where he won in Vermont. That's the only state in his home state. That's the only place he's won by that margin where he won in Vermont. That's the only state in his home state. That's the only place he's won by that margin so far.

And, you know, as you look at the polls since then, even the polls recently, it shows the same margin of Biden over Bernie. Bernie hasn't narrowed the margin at all. But, like, just from Bernie's own perspective, from, like, what's good for Bernie here, I do think that Bernie has more leverage now. Joe Biden wants Bernie to be out of the race, right, because then Joe Biden can move forward on his VP process. He can start fundraising. He can start focusing on the general election. So Biden wants Bernie to drop out now, which means that Bernie has more leverage over Joe Biden now than he would have if he waits until the convention, which is now in August. And he has more leverage to tell

Joe Biden, here's the kind of people I want to see in your administration. Here are some policy ideas that I've proposed or that are more progressive than you currently have that I hope you accept. I think he has this leverage now and he may not have it later. And so Bernie, who I know, cares so deeply about the ideas that he's pushing, the movement that he's built. Like it's just in his interest and it's in the interest of the movement he built, I believe, to end it now, which is also what, you know, according to The Washington Post, Faz thinks his campaign manager and a whole bunch of other other senior advisors on his campaign. So it does probably make the right amount of sense. your advisors on his campaign. So it does probably make the right amount of sense.

What do you guys think Biden can start doing to unify the party in the scenario that Bernie does drop? I mean, I think it would be helpful to identify some key policy areas that Bernie has been driving and move to the left on them. So I think the easiest, most obvious one would be on climate change. He needs to roll out a big, aggressive, serious plan. It sounds like he's been taking meetings with some of the most important activist groups on this subject, like the Sunrise Movement, Data for Progress is in there. A bunch of progressive groups have been talking to them. So I think he can secure some wins on those major issues and cement his place as someone who has done more to bring the mainstream of the party in his direction in a short period of time than like anyone that I can

remember recently. And so, you know, hopefully just showing that commitment on key issues will do some work in terms of getting people on board. Love it. What do you think? Yeah. And I think that's right. I think it's embracing some of the ideas that excited people about Bernie to begin with. Part of that, I think, is the rhetorical case to the many people who are Bernie Sanders supporters who have not seen Joe Biden as sort of as an avatar of their movement, of their needs, of their sense that America is in crisis. And so when we talk about uniting the party, I think sometimes Twitter makes people very brittle and say like, you know, support me or else, get with me or else. If you don't support me, you're a bad person in every direction possible,

a bunch of sort of moral posturing. But in the effort Joe Biden mounts to unite the party, I would just love to see him just speak honestly about the work he has to do to win them over and say, I'm going to do what I need to do to earn your support. If I don't have your support, that's not on you. That's on me. And I'm going to listen and I'm going to listen to Bernie supporters. I'm going to listen to all the people who haven't yet come on board to learn and try to bring you on to earn your support. I'll also say one last thing on the policy front. I think if if this was before this crisis, I think the Biden folks, I could see them saying, well, you know what? Bernie, of course, wants us to move left on some policies, but we were right about what the electorate looks like.

And you weren't because, you know, there were more moderate voters or people, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, there were more moderate voters or people, you know, all that kind of stuff. Now that we are in what could be the greatest economic calamity of our lifetime, maybe since the Great Depression, maybe even worse than the Great Depression, and face the greatest public health crisis of the century. there's no way that this electorate isn't more economically populist angry upset than ever before like this this electorate is going to look more like an electorate that finds what Bernie proposed and Bernie fought for appealing and I think that and I hope that the Biden people see that and realize that like where the electorate was when we were running this primary. I don't I'm pretty sure it's not going to be there by the time we get to the fall. And so I totally agree with Tommy that climate is a good place. I also think, look, I don't expect Joe Biden to suddenly embrace Bernie's Medicare for all bill. But maybe there's something that he can do on health care that inches his plan closer to Medicare for all or some version of it.

So I do think that, you know, in again, we said this last pod to like the danger for Democrats in this moment where so many people are out of work and so many people are struggling and so many people are hurt from this health care crisis is thinking too small. care crisis is thinking too small and not realizing the scale of the catastrophe and how it is going to fundamentally shape reshape politics for a long time afterwards, just like the financial crisis did in 2009. But perhaps this even even more transformative, this is going to be even more transformative. Yeah. And by the way, in ways we do not understand right now, I think that's also worth just adding a caveat of we are in the middle of it. We don't know what the toll will be.

We don't know what the medical or economic or financial or political consequences of this be. Not just what the crisis is unleashing, but how it will change the way we vote. I mean, we are really in such an uncertain, unfirm ground here that I think it's just worth everyone having humility as we approach the end of a primary that was the only thing we talked about one month ago. Yeah. And some breaking news right before we go to Elizabeth Warren is Tony Evers, the governor of Wisconsin, just issued an emergency order shutting down Tuesday's election and delaying it until June 9th, which is good for him, but wild because he called the Republican legislature into session this weekend so they could do it because he thought that they would have to do it. They refused, and now he's doing it himself. That's going to be interesting in Wisconsin, but I'm glad he did it.

I'm glad he did it too, but there's so much punting of hard choices happening right now. We're going to vote on June 9th. Are you fucking kidding me? We're going to gather in a gigantic convention in mid-August. Are you insane? None of these things are going to happen. Football's not going to start on September 9th. Like maybe I'm wrong. I hope, I pray to God I'm wrong. But like, I do think the entire political establishment, it would be nice if people were preparing us for how long this could be. Because at least then you could wrap your brain around it. Now it's just like delay delay delays and people are gonna feel frustrated and say i thought we're gonna have a convention blah blah blah it's just so i'd be nuts i'm with you on the i'm with you on the convention and the football i think that on this it's not about um

or it may not be about let's all then gather in june but now they have more time to do mail in voting, to send out more absentee ballots for people to get the absentee ballots back in time. Do all of that. And potentially they can do more early voting where they like, you know, if you have three weeks, you can say, all right, 10 people at a location, you go in one at a time, whatever. You can make appointments. You can make appointments to vote. That's one of the other things Mark Elias talked about. We should be able to make appointments to vote. So by June, that might be possible.

But certainly what you're saying, Tommy, it would not be possible. Probably not with this Wisconsin legislature, for being honest. But like hope springs eternal. Yeah. All right. When we come back, I will be chatting with Senator Elizabeth Warren. I am now joined by the senior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Welcome back to the show, Senator.

Thank you. It's good to be back. Thank you, John. How are you doing? You know, like everyone else, I'm doing it all from home. But I'm very lucky because I've got Bailey here. And Bruce, of course. But Bailey first, of course. I say that about Leo. Yeah.

So here's the latest thing keeping me up at night, which is a lot of things at this point. Let's say we get to the other side of that curve and cases start decreasing in May and June, but we're still a year or so away from a vaccine. We know this thing could hit us even harder in the fall and then again in the winter and so on. Is it possible for us to return to some version of normal? And what do you think that would look like?

So that is a great question. And here's how I think of what we should be doing right now, what the government should be doing. Think of this in terms of three parts. Part one is we need immediate emergency medical response, more testing, more protective equipment, more money into our hospitals, making sure everybody knows they can get treatment at no cost so everyone comes in. Emergency to get as much of the medical part of this crisis under control. Part two, we need to be focusing on emergency economic response. That means expanded unemployment insurance and help for small businesses and making sure that if big businesses get a bunch of bailout money, that they really are spending that money in supporting payrolls and workers. But part three right now is we need to be thinking about how to come out of this.

So let me describe it this way. You know, by the end of April, we'll have millions of people in this country who have had the virus. And at least if this virus is like most viruses, they're likely to have a lot of immunity against it and may in fact be people who can be out among everyone else without any risk to themselves and without risk that they're giving it to someone. So when you've got millions of people who could start moving, you want to be able to let them move, right? You want to be able to let them move to help support the healthcare part of this. They could be delivering meals in hospitals.

They could be driving Uber, right? So you can move people back and forth without risk from the driver and risk to the driver. You also want them to be able to start on the economy, helping restart the economy. So a small business, for example, that half its workers now know that they are immune to the virus would be able to come in. And that's how you get your production line started. That's how you get things moving again. So in other words, it's kind of a slope up. But all of that depends on testing. And in fact, the science shows that people are immune. Well, to know that, we need to be planning right now, planning right now for millions of the COVID-19 tests for actively do you have it,

but also millions and millions of those tests for serum testing for whether or not you already have antibodies to it. And that means you're someone who can start to go in the economy and start to get it up and moving and help on the health care crisis. Are you worried that this becomes polarized by Trump and Fox News so that you have half of America thinking it's fine to go back to normal life when it may not be and another half that's fighting to keep social distancing measures in place? Yes, of course, I'm worried. Look, I am worried about the impact of having a president who for three years has basically just been anti-science, right? Anti-fact, anti-reality. So we all know about how politicized the question around climate change has become in the Trump administration. I hope we'll get a chance to talk about this shameful business of the EPA reducing regulations so that big polluters can pollute more. That's how we're going to solve this health care crisis.

But a big part of that, of course, was trying to undermine the science, to make fun of it, to be anti-science. But remember, that's been the case for the Trump administration from the beginning. What was the first controversy of the Trump administration? How many people showed up at his inauguration? And he didn't care what the photograph showed. If the photograph showed that a lot more people had been to President Obama's inauguration than his inauguration, then the answer was take down the photos and fire the people who posted them.

And that's been the move all the way through this administration. So they drove out the scientists from the agriculture department, right? Over and over and over. And what I fear here is when reality contradicts what Donald Trump says, that Trump will double down on denying reality and way too many Americans

will go along with him on that. And now that puts people's lives at risk. So Nancy Pelosi has started to float some ideas for what they're calling phase four, another coronavirus relief bill. What does an economic plan look like to you that actually meets the scale of the devastation that we're seeing right now? Well, what I would like to see are things that get more structure in place over a longer arc. I know that we needed to get out checks immediately to people, which it looks like, once again, not only does the Trump administration have a problem with science, they also have a problem with competence, just getting those checks into people's accounts. But what I'd like to see

is that we cancel student loan debt and that we increase payments to everyone who receives social security and disability. The reason I pick those two are that we know that money put in to those folks' pockets is money that's going to make it straight back into the economy and keep going back into the economy. And it's called velocity of money. How fast can you get it in and then on through the economy? And it would help both boost confidence, not just of the people who receive that financial help, but also boost confidence for small businesses who will say, wait a minute, there are a lot of folks who do still have their jobs, and there are folks who are going to have more money to spend. That's a reason if I can get the right people maybe to crack my doors open a

little when it is safe to do so. So I'd like to see us put money on both of those. We're going to have to put a ton more money on helping state and local governments. I do regular calls with my mayors here in Massachusetts. They've just gotten slammed, and so has the state government. Massachusetts, they've just gotten slammed. And so is the state government. Massachusetts is now on target to have a $3 billion shortfall because of this crisis. It's upended all planning in the state and all the budgets in the state because they're spending so much more supporting people during this crisis and trying to support our hospitals and public health at the same time that revenues are falling like a rock because small businesses are closed,

because we've delayed tax filing date until July 1st. So we need to keep that money in because we don't want to see layoffs at the state and local level. We want to see them be able to have the resources to have the public health response. But we also want them to have the money so they can have the economic impact that a steady and strong state and local government would have. So there are at least two, three places we should be putting money in. I'm glad to talk about more as long as you want to keep going. Well, I was wondering what you thought about what some European countries are doing right now, which is essentially just paying people to stay at home and paying their employers to cover the payroll so long as they don't lay off or furlough workers in the first place. Do you think

we should be looking at something like that? Or how do you feel about that? Yes, I do. I think that the economic response to this crisis in the short term is that we try to keep people employed, payroll support, that's what we're doing with small businesses, and that we should demand the same thing of large businesses if they're going to get money from the federal government. You know, this is what the airline package looks like. And that is there is money specifically available for the airlines, lots of money, but only if that money is used to support payroll. That is, people get to stay on their jobs. And the advantage to that, rather than just increasing unemployment, is they maintain a relationship with their employer, which is important. They can be put back to work when

and where it is safe. And that's important. And they keep benefits. They keep their health insurance. They're continuing to contribute to their retirement and so on. Look, it is a lot easier in a crisis to support an economy and try to keep it going, even if it's at somewhat depressed levels, than it is to let it crash and then try to get it started again. Let's talk about the politics of this. I mean, I think back to 2009, our ambitions for recovery were limited by the fact that we needed Republican votes to pass the bill. Today, we've got Mitch McConnell saying we may not even need another relief bill. Donald Trump has expressed some interest, but he's not always the most reliable negotiator.

How should Democrats navigate the politics here to get the next phase through? What kind of leverage do we have? I think on the politics of this, what the Democrats could do best is ignore Donald Trump, ignore Mitch McConnell, and basically go straight to the American people and lay out a plan that works. So, for example, the fact that we expanded unemployment insurance

and said it's not just going to be for people at full-time regular employment in the way we thought of it back in 1954, but instead is going to cover gig workers and part-time workers and self-employed people, that is a real change. And this is what the Democrats fought for. It's what we got in the law and the fact that we just recognized that unemployment insurance, the dollar figure, is too low. So we added a $600 federal check weekly on top of that so that roughly it's about median income 100% replacement for most workers in America, for the median income earning worker. And again, the importance of this is people get it. They understand why you put this kind of money into unemployment. Now, part of the problem is, you know the tools of Congress. We can appropriate and we can make it

the law that this will be available, but you rely on the administration to be competent, to be able to actually make it happen, push this money out. And right now, what we're seeing, for example, on the checks that went to everyone, $1,200, you know, based on your income, $500 for each child. The administration has stripped itself down, doesn't have people who seem to know how to get this done. And the states, you know, ever since the crisis in 2008 in particular, states stripped down their investment in just basic state government, you know, just kind of how you keep it going day to day. And look, that meant long lines at the DMV. It meant long lines at the unemployment office. And most people just kind of did a, well, what can you do, rather than saying, you know, this is our government. We could make it work better.

See how this underinvestment has this terrible impact on how people across this country, millions of people who are entitled to unemployment relief, can't get anybody at the unemployment office to pick up the phone or to answer an email to try to make this happen. So I think part of this is going to be, we need to think big as Democrats, but we also need to push on the notion that we demand competence from our government and we're going to hold our government accountable. If Congress is willing to allocate the money, then by golly, it is then responsibility of the federal government and the state governments to make sure that the wheels turn so that these policies can be implemented and people can get their money.

Should Democrats demand that some form of universal vote by mail is included in the next relief bill as a condition of our support? I have three answers to that. Yes, yes, yes. This is also keeping me up at night. Absolutely. We should be demanding that. Look, I don't have to tell you. Voting is the very foundation of our democracy. This is the legitimacy of our government. And we have enough warning now with the primaries that have been put off that in a health crisis, voting could become an activity that a lot of people don't want to engage in because they're worried that it could threaten their health. So we should demand both parts that we put enough resources in for vote by mail and online registration and enough requirements that we are ready to make sure that every American citizen can vote come November. Later this week, I'm putting out a whole plan around voting.

You know me. I like plans. I love it. I believe in plans. You want to get something done, you ought to have a plan. But I'm putting out one around voting because I think this is so powerfully important. And it is part of our response to this healthcare crisis. We cannot say that democracy and your health are somehow in tension with each other. We want every American citizen to have an equal chance to vote, and that means vote by mail. We were still grappling with the political and economic fallout of the last financial crisis when this crisis hit. As we look to the presidential campaign in the fall,

what is the message and the platform that lets people know the government is truly on your side for the long haul? What is the contrast with Donald Trump and the Republicans on this? I think it's about our actions and linking them each time to who we're fighting for. We're fighting for expanded unemployment insurance. We're fighting for small business relief. We're fighting for controls over the Trump slush fund so that if money goes out to big corporations, it's there to help people. I think that should be part of it. I think part of it should still be on the health care front, though. And how it is that, look, I was putting out a plan for the coronavirus in January. This is not something that we didn't see coming.

We had a lot of warning about this. We knew what was happening in December in China, and we knew the kind of risks it posed to the people of the United States. I think we ought to talk every day about the job of the president of the United States, and that is to keep America safe. And that safety is sometimes about military force. It's sometimes about our diplomatic engagements, but it's also about our public health. And making those investments, seeing the warning signs early, so that if we'd started in January, making sure that we had plenty of masks and ventilators, we wouldn't be in quite such

dire straits right now. This election, more perhaps than any other in our lifetimes, is one that's about the role of government and the reminder that we need a government that is on the side of the people, that that's where the heart is, and also a government that is competent in executing on each of its plans. Lives are at stake in this one, and we just need to keep hitting that over and over. You had some really nice things to say about the kind of leadership that Joe Biden's been showing during this pretty scary time for the country. If he's the nominee, what's the case that you're going to be making to some of your supporters or some of Bernie supporters or other progressives who say, I'm just not sure, or I'm just not that excited? What will you be telling them? If he's the nominee, I think it's the time to talk about what we know about Joe Biden.

And the first thing we know about him is he has a good heart. He gets out there and speaks from the heart. He wants to be a good public servant. There are times when we may disagree on policy, but I never, never think that Joe Biden is out there other than doing what he believes is right. And part two, he believes in competent government. He's been in government long enough to believe that government can and should be able to execute on its basic functions, that the Senate should be able to meet and pass legislation, that the Environmental Protection Agency should be able to go out there and protect our environment. Oh, here's one that'll be a shocker, that we should have a Department of

Education and a Secretary of Education who actually believes in public education. You know, things have gotten so far out of line with Trump and his entire administration, where Secretary of Defense is a former defense lobbyist, and the head of the EPA is a former coal lobbyist, and the head of the Department of Education is somebody who doesn't believe in public education. That trying to pull us back to just the heart of let's make government work and make it work for the people, I think that's a really key part of what the election of 2020 is about. Also, I'll do one more, and that is times change. And I think Joe Biden realizes that in the same way that Bernie realizes that, the same way that I realize that.

What is possible today was not possible back in 2008. And so now that we have had Donald Trump for three years, we've watched what happens at the EPA and the Department of Education. We've watched what happens at the EPA and the Department of Education. We've also had this pandemic that puts our lives and the lives of our loved ones at risk. I think that people are ready to look again at the role government plays and how government can be a force for good if we decide to do that. And I think that opens the door for us to make some bold changes to make this government work, not just for those at the top, but to make it work for everyone. Would you be interested in serving as vice president if he asked? That would be presumptuous for me to talk about. And also, I'll just say, right now, I've got to tell you exactly where I'm focused,

and it is on this crisis around us. It's about how we respond to the health part of it and how we respond to the economic part. We need to be doing things today, not a week from today or a month from today, both to save lives and to save our economy. So, you know, I'm out there, as you may know, all the time pushing on this administration. We have got to act today to save our health and to save our economy. Last question. to save our health and to save our economy. Last question.

So we have a social distancing movie club at Crooked Media, and our producer is a big fan of The Rock, as I know you are. What is The Rock movie you would recommend for this moment? Or would you just say, like, go binge ballers? Oh, I'm ready. I'm ready. Tooth Fairy. Tooth Fairy.

One of my faves. Great choice. Michael can be very happy about that answer. Have you seen it? I have not seen it yet. No. Then don't laugh until you've seen it. I promise you this. Watch Tooth Fairy and get a bowl of popcorn.

Tooth Fairy and popcorn. And when you're finished, tell me you don't feel better okay that's good i i need a movie to make me feel better so i'm gonna take you up on that uh elizabeth warren thank you so much for joining us um give give our best to bruce and bailey and and and hang in there okay and you do the same be safe out there. Thanks to Senator Warren for joining us today. Good to see you guys, as always. Good to see you. We just like we like staying on the Zoom just to have human interaction. So I ordered delivery barbecue, OK, for dinner. From where? on which which barbecue uh blood sauce yes love blood and then on sunday morning there was a little extra brisket so i chopped it up and i mixed it

with eggs and then i had leftover tortilla chips that were about to go bad and i made egg brisket nachos and i had an avocado mix that that up. I made guacamole. That's just something that happened on Sunday. That sounds amazing. We got John and Vinny's takeout on Saturday. Tell me what you did with the slow cooker. No, I didn't really cook that much this weekend, John, but thanks for asking.

We did John and Vinny's takeout on Saturday, and Friday night we did night and market, which if you're ever in Los Angeles, those are two phenomenal places. John and Vinny's is Italian. Night and market is sort of like Thai. It's just amazing food. market which if you're ever in los angeles those are two phenomenal places john vinnies is italian night market is sort of like thai it's just amazing food we did uh the counter in santa monica also great just trying to shout out local businesses here which uh local restaurants which are important to uh keep frequenting and then emily made a fantastic steak dinner last night

nice yeah i went to the grocery store on sund and was thrilled to do my prep for the pod after where I saw Dr. Burke said, don't go to the grocery store this weekend, which was cool of her just to slip in there on a fucking Saturday briefing. But, you know, we'll see. Oh, always comforting information coming from the White House.

All right, everyone. We will talk to you later. Bye. Bye, everybody. Boop. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.