Pod Save America - "New Year, New Biden."

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

Joe Biden marks one year in office with a two-hour press conference, Run For Something’s Amanda Litman joins to talk about the local races that could help prevent the next coup, and Donald Trump’s legal troubles pile up.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden marks one year in office with a two-hour press conference and a Republican filibuster of voting rights. Run for Something's Amanda Littman joins to talk about the local races that could help prevent the next coup. And Donald Trump's legal troubles aren't going away. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben interview Secretary of State Tony blinken just hours before he jumped on a flight to make a minor incursion into ukraine great sure you were paying attention dan great ukraine joke good been workshopping that all morning um also tommy and ben offer some tips about how to respond to whataboutism and foreign

policy in this case, they're talking about comments by a soulless Silicon Valley billionaire who said he didn't care about the genocide against the Uyghurs in China. Also, check out this week's America Dissected, where Abdul talks to former CDC director Tom Frieden about the past, present, and future of the agency he once ran. New episodes of America Dissected drop every Tuesday. Don't miss it. All right, let's get to the news of which there was plenty on Wednesday. Senate Republicans filibustered the John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act. 48 Democrats voted to break the filibuster, but failed because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused to change the Senate rules. And during the longest presidential press conference in history, Joe Biden predicted

that Russia would invade Ukraine, expressed confidence that Congress will pass parts of Build Back Better and reform the Electoral Count Act, took responsibility for being slow to ramp up COVID testing, said that the prospect of an illegitimate midterm election is possible, and touted his administration's progress on the pandemic and the economy. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something. And it depends on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion. I'm confident we can get pieces, big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law. I predict you they'll get something done on the electoral reform side of this. I'm going to continue to make the case why it's so important

to not turn the electoral process over to political persons who are set up deliberately to change the outcome of elections. Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we're doing more now. I didn't overpromise. But I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen. What a journey. I want to start by pointing out that reporters were tweeting complaints during Biden's opening statement that he hadn't taken any questions yet, during Biden's opening statement that he hadn't taken any questions yet right before he held the longest press conference in history and took a lot of questions. Just like, wait a couple minutes

for the fucking opening statement to end before you start tweeting your complaints. I mean, how many times, I mean, you saw it yesterday as well, where reporters are like, why won't the president answer our questions? Why are his answers so long? It's just, it's unbelievable. How do you think it went? What was good? What was less good?

And do you think it was a net positive overall? Okay, well, first, I love the energy. And here's the context. The reporters have been complaining for months that Joe Biden doesn't do enough press conferences. So here is Biden's attitude. You fuckers want a press conference? I'll give you a press conference. Here's two hours.

You want ice cream? You're going to eat ice cream until you puke. That's what we're doing. That's what he gave them. That's what he gave them. Was it a net positive? I think it absolutely was. I think it is incredibly important. We'll talk about this a little bit later in the pod,

but it's incredibly important that people see more of Joe Biden. And he's either going to tell his story or someone's going to tell it for him. And being out there was the right thing to do. Was it perfect? Of course not. No one has given it to our press conference in history, and no press conferences are perfect. I thought the good part was people seeing Joe Biden being in command delivering his message. That is good. Were there some problems? Look, I don't pretend to be an expert in Ukraine. All I know –

Nor do I, Dan. But I had a little – something went off in my head when you said that. All I know about the issue is what Tommy and Ben tell me on Pod Save the World. So I'm going to have to really wait until next week's episode to fully understand what would happen. But I got the sense since Jen Psaki tweeted afterwards a clarification, and then Biden clarified it again this morning, that the message delivered was not exactly what sort of the interagency process would have wanted him to deliver. But all in all, I think it was a good performance. It dominated the coverage going in. Think about it this way, I guess. Either the coverage going into the one-year anniversary is going to be about Joe Biden's press conference, Joe Biden

making the case for what he's done, or it's just going to be a bunch of videos of Kyrsten Sinema getting her high fives from Republicans as voting rates goes down. And so this is preferable to that for sure. So I thought on the good side of the ledger, like you said, energetic, mostly a happy warrior, a few moments, a few moments where he got a little annoyed, but mostly a happy warrior, which is where you want Joe Biden to be. He's speaking to the most annoying people on the planet, asking questions designed in a lab to be annoying. Like, yeah, we know that.

We know that he took all their questions, even the dumb ones, took responsibility where he needed to. I think there were he clearly they prepped him on this. And there was a few times where he pointed out over and think there were he clearly they prepped him on this. And there was a few times where he pointed out over and over again that Republicans have no agenda. Talk said, what's your plan, Mitch? I thought that was probably some of the strongest messaging from him during that press conference. Look, on the less bad side, you know, you put it out the Ukraine thing. But I think the Ukraine answer stems from a larger issue with press conferences in general. Like people,

voters, they care about answers to their problems, right? So you're at a town hall, they ask you questions like, what are you going to do about inflation? What's your plan to end the pandemic? Reporters care about making news. So they're going to try to bait you into political analysis and hypotheticals. And Biden took that bait way too many times. Right. He took it on the Ukraine answer. He got himself into this mess on, you know, do you think the midterms will be illegitimate if we don't pass voting rights? Just like an annoying question. But, you know, he sort of went down the path when you really read the transcript. It's such a mess that I don't he didn't actually say the midterms are going to

be illegitimate. He said if someone tries to overturn an election or throw out votes, it could be illegitimate, which like, yeah, obviously, but it was like all messed up and a lot of jumble there. But the problem is, I think when you, when you start engaging, and this is why every staffer tells their boss to not engage in hypotheticals with the press, because when you start engaging in hypotheticals you start sounding like an analyst you start sounding like someone who um is just like observing events as opposed to shaping events and i think one of his biggest challenges right now and his one of his biggest challenges in the last year is that he's looked like someone at times who has been who is just observing events instead

of shaping events, which you're supposed to do as a president. I think Ashley Parker with this this piece in The Washington Post the other day and cited some focus groups that Celinda Lake did, who's a Democratic pollster who worked for the Biden campaign. And one person like I think one suburban mom in the focus group was a swing voter, said sometimes Biden seems like he's a supporting actor. Right. And so when that is the view, you just have to think about using language that's more like I am going to do this. We should do this. I believe in this. I won't let Vladimir Putin do this. Like you just need to speak in more active language and not do so much analyzing, which is, I think, what happened in this press conference a lot. I think this is a problem that all presidents

stumble into. Our former boss certainly did. It's a problem. Yeah. This was the guns and religion thing, right? He's analyzing voters in Pennsylvania. You never want to be doing that. Yeah. You never want to do some sort of psychological diagnosis or sociological diagnosis of a person or a population. But I think- Or Vladimir Putin. A rule for the press and presidents is, if the question sounds like something that Anderson Cooper would ask David Axelrod, you shouldn't ask that question. And if your answer sounds like what David Axelrod would tell Anderson Cooper, you shouldn't ask that question. And if your answer sounds like what David Axelrod

would tell Anderson Cooper, you shouldn't give that answer, right? It's like, you're not, you're not pundit in chief. Everyone falls into this. The president's fallen into it. But I do think the hard part, like, obviously, I do want to say that I am sort of selling myself short as a Ukraine expert, because I still, to this day, I believe, am banned from entering Russia because I talked about Ukraine on Meet the Press in 2014. So that's some credentials right there. You and Rhodes, right? You guys are both banned from Russia?

Tommy could just go to Moscow whenever he wants. Tommy. Anywho, but I think one of the problems for Bideniden is he's giving this like obviously he was a senator for a very long time this is how senators talk and so that right because they're not they're not used to being executives with power and can take action that's even vice presidents right it's similar dynamic but also the problem is he knows a lot more than the rest of us do so he knows what's likely to happen so it's very hard to like, do not do this thing that I know is going to happen. I know how, how limited my options are. And so the answer was not great, but I sort of understand the context that presidents

can find themselves in, in those situations, particularly as it relates to Russia. Yeah. I mean, look, I think overall he probably had to do this because he hadn't done a press conference in so long. And, you know, reporters whine incessantly about it. This would not be part of my strategy in 2022. I would not do these these press conferences again. I would do interviews. I would do some shouted answer, some shouted questions here and there from reporters. But every time the press whines about having another press conference i would go do a town hall with voters i think they ask and it's not like voters not voters even asking softball

questions when voters ask tough questions they are still questions that force an answer out of you that is speaking to the concerns that are relevant to people's lives and not speaking to what's going to make some reporter news so they can get clicks. I mean, town halls is clearly Biden's favorite format. And he's done a bunch of them. He did a lot during the campaign. He clearly prefers them over both press conferences, as anyone would. Press conferences are one of the worst ways to get your message out.

He also prefers them over one-on-one interviews. He's done very, very few one-on-one interviews, and I'm not sure exactly what the reason is. The problem with the town hall strategy is there's CNN and there's MSNBC. There's just a limit to the number you can do. Maybe every once in a while you can convince ABC to do one with George Stephanopoulos, but they can't be the centerpiece of a communication strategy because there are just limited numbers of times that you can do that to get any sort of traction. Yeah. Well, you'd have to make news at them. Yeah. So, I mean, you could have a situation where you go to a town hall because you have a piece of

news to make. And then even if it's not like the whole thing's not covered live, you're still making some news at the town hall because you're announcing something. And then you're still just taking questions from voters. Maybe they cover the whole thing. Maybe they don't. But at least the headline is Biden was at a town hall when he announced something from the infrastructure bill, some grant. Right. So you could argue that this press conference was a microcosm of President Biden's first year in office, which has had its share of ups and downs. His administration vaccinated over 200 million

Americans, saving at least one million lives so far. They oversaw an economic recovery that's led to the biggest drop in unemployment and the most jobs ever created in a single year. They passed one of the biggest economic relief plans in history that's led to the lowest child poverty rate ever and five million more Americans with health insurance, the largest investment in infrastructure since the Interstate Highway Program, and they confirmed more judges in their first year than any other president. On the other hand,

two new variants have prolonged the pandemic into its third year and sparked the worst inflation in decades, while a deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan kicked off the final months of a year where Congress failed to pass legislation on climate, healthcare, immigration, voting rights, criminal justice reform, student debt, the minimum wage, gun violence, and much of the rest of Joe Biden's

agenda, leaving him with an average approval rating of 42 percent in a country where 70 percent of the electorate thinks we're heading in the wrong direction. First question, listening to this list. Were you at the press conference yesterday? Are you the optimist from the press conference? Why do you think the bad news has crowded out the good news in the media and in people's minds? Well, I think the most, I just want to say one thing that sort of gets left out of the conversation about this past year. Donald Trump is not fucking president. Yeah.

That's a big deal. You think that you think that you think people need that reminder? You don't think people know that? Well, I just think as we're thinking about things that Joe Biden accomplished that were really good for America and the world, that's one of them. He beat him. Might be baked into the baseline. Well, I'm not so sure given where the baseline is these days. Yeah, that baseline is a little bit lower the number of people who very much wanted Donald Trump to not be president. Yeah.

Okay. So to your question is, why is the bad news crowding out the good? You sort of answered that question in your question, which is we are entering the third year of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and inflation is at a 40-year high.

That is a big deal. So it's very hard to make the case about all the things you've done, the things that are going to have benefits over the long term, the fact that the economy is doing better when you can't leave your house, you're worried about your kids, a lot of life is screwed up because of the pandemic, and your cost of groceries, gas, and a whole bunch of other things have gone way up. So your dollars are going less far. And that's not Joe Biden's fault by any stretch of the imagination. But because he's the one in charge, he's paying a price for it.

And so there's just not with given that those facts, the public is not open to arguments about why things are good. Hopefully, that's going to change in the coming months. They were open to why arguments about why things were good a year ago when people were getting vaccinated pre-Delta before gas prices spiked up, which have come down in a lot of places. But that is the primary problem is the political atmospherics suck. And there is no message. There is no slogan. There is no press conference.

There's no five-hour press conference, no two-hour press conference, no town hall with Don Lemon that solves that problem. You need the clouds to recede to be able to tell people how good the weather is. What about another CNN host besides Don Lemon? Would that do it? What if it was Dana Bash town hall

or Jake Tapper town hall? I mean... No, I mean, you're right. It's negativity bias, right bias right negative things are negative feelings two problems negative but like when there's also good things that's everyone's like oh it's the the media the media is brainwashing people into thinking everything's bad no when when there's high inflation we're still in a pandemic negative feelings stick in our mind more than positive or neutral feelings that's a psychological phenomenon from way back when.

It's just like we focus on the negative. That's what happens. And so that's where we are right now. What do you think? Well, there's a media problem too. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the media is. No, I'm going to defend the media. Yeah. Once again. They're doing a great job as they always have been. I mean, the media covers bad news more than they cover good news. That has always been true. It's exponentially more true now that much of the media depends on referral traffic from the Facebook

algorithm, which, as we know, is a fucking hellhole of toxicity, sending people bad news. And it's so, oh my god, supply chain crisis, the stores are empty, we must cover that story. And then it's like, oh, no one writes stories about people's Christmas gifts arriving on time. And that's been true for a long time, but it's even more true now in a sort of social media clickbait driven digital advertising world. So knowing all this, what do you think president, the White House, Democrats in Congress could have done differently over the last year and what was beyond their control? The biggest – I would say that 80 to 90 percent of Joe Biden's political problems are beyond his control. I think that's true for most presidents.

are beyond his control. I think that's true for most presidents. 80 to 90% of Donald Trump's political success over the first few years had nothing to do with Donald Trump. He was succeeding in spite of himself because he was governing in a time of a great economy and relative peace and prosperity around the world, and no pandemic. And it wasn't until the pandemic hit in 2020 that the consequences of his disastrous leadership came into play. Just because you can't control most of it doesn't mean you did everything perfectly. Obviously, there are things around the pandemic, particularly in Omicron around the availability of testing and masks and clear, better guidance from health officials around boosters and which masks to wear and when you're safe and when you're safe and

when you're not and when to quarantine and when not to quarantine would make things easier. But even if they did that perfectly, you would still have a huge political problem. I think the biggest mistake that everyone made over the last year politically is expectations management. Say more about that. Well, we have continually made promises we cannot keep and sort of knew we were unlikely to keep. $6 trillion Build Back Better plan, $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan. Now, people were out there saying

that we think we're going to get this big bill with all of these things, including expansion of the child tax credit, while Senator Schumer was walking around with a signed note from Joe Manchin in his pocket with Joe Manchin's upper bound limit of like a trillion and a half and a bunch of things he wasn't going to do that we wanted to do. And we never told people that. Doug Sosnick, who was Bill Clinton's political director and a really smart political advisor for a number of years, had a quote in that same Washington Post story that you mentioned, where he said, he made a similar point about expectation management. He

said, there's a saying in Washington where it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you beat the spread. And we've continually put ourselves in a position where things that would be huge, gigantic successes in any other situation are devalued because we promise something bigger. And that's true in the Senate. That's true from the White House. I think that's true from some of the things we've said on this podcast. And we have not really reckoned with the reality that we live in a world with an incredibly narrow House majority and a Senate where Joe Manchin, in a state that Donald Trump won by 40 points, and Kyrsten Sinema, who seems to be a real challenge in all sorts of ways, sign off on everything. And so they're just limits.

Yeah, I mean, for those of us not on the inside, you know, there was plenty of times where you could parse Joe Manchin's statements, which are I don't know if you've noticed, not very clear all the time, and think like, maybe he's willing to do this or maybe there's some give here, blah, blah, blah. To a lesser extent, same with Sinema, just because she doesn't talk as much publicly as Joe Manchin does. But I always thought that on the inside, if you were Schumer or the White House or something,

they were having conversations making them a bit more optimistic. Like, I still don't know why you don't just pull Manchin and Sinema aside very early on in the year and be like, hey, what's possible? What's not possible with you two? Just let us know now so we can plan accordingly. And I don't I don't understand. I mean, maybe they did have those conversations. Maybe they were lied to. Who knows?

Who knows? But I do. Yeah, I think there were four things beyond their control. Delta, Omicron, mansion, cinema. Five, inflation. Those are the and inflate. Well, Delta and Omicron led to the inflation. Right.

That's the inflation is coming from COVID. We probably would have had inflation, at least not this badly, without a pandemic. And I think, so what was within their control is how they responded to those four things. And I think you're right. There was an expectations management problem with Mansion and Cinema. And there was also letting, I mean, it all comes back to the same thing I was saying for the press conference, which is it's too much letting other people drive the narrative. And on the legislative side, that was like all the goobers in Congress. And on the pandemic side, it's like, look, Joe Biden came into the White House promising to follow the science, unlike Donald Trump did. But and I don't think like he should have ever put politics ahead of science

when it comes to like, you know, stepping over CDC's recommendations, stuff like that. But in terms of communicating to the public about the pandemic, that is the Biden administration's job. And I think that like, I'm sure I'm sure they are not so happy with the CDC in the White House and some of the proclamations that came from the CDC. And I think like taking over messaging from the CDC, again, not disagreeing with them, not trying to say, oh, this is more politically important. So I'm going to, you know, ignore the science on this. Don't do any of that. But like the coordination of the message about the pandemic has to come from the White House and the CDC and everyone else has to be on board. And I think probably in the next year, hopefully we're not talking about it in a year's time, but like messaging about new variants, new waves, new restrictions, new tools, all this kind of stuff has to come directly from Joe Biden himself much more than it's coming from the CDC and these other public health agencies. I think that is one of the big problems that I think is being – we're seeing it being addressed

as the calendar year turns because Biden gave that big January 6th speech. He gave that big voting rights speech. He chose to give this press conference. I mean, it is not – there is a tradition that presidents give press conferences the day after elections. There's no tradition that's like you give a one-year press conference that just happens to fall on the day that the Senate decided to run directly into a wall repeatedly. But he did it, right? Because I think there is an acknowledgment that Joe Biden has been overly absent from the political conversation over the last year. And they're trying to change that. And that has not – because

it was true in the campaign. The more people see Joe Biden, the more they like him. And they haven't seen enough Joe Biden over this year. And look, I am sympathetic. They're doing a gazillion things. They're doing it in the most challenging situation possible. Biden made the point when he talked about getting out of Washington that the pandemic has made things much harder. It absolutely has. But you're sort of now going to have to work around some of that stuff. And he has to be sort of, you know, we're going to see more of him making his own case, which I think would be good. And I should say, look, there is no shortage of advice for the White House right now. All you have to do is click any news site. There's a lot of, you know, what Joe Biden should be doing

differently. So which is always always fun advice to get when you're sitting in the White House making all these decisions. And we should say that, like, I don't think I don't think you believe either that like more Joe Biden and better messaging can fix a lot of these fundamental challenges, many of which are beyond his control. But you're sitting in the White House every day. You need to do something. You need to have some kind of messaging communication strategy and legislative strategy and policy strategy. And even if it's not likely to fix everything, you got to try. Right. And so I think you saw Biden do that, as you mentioned, at the end of the press conference, he was asked some question about what he was going to do differently, said he wants to leave

the White House more so he can talk directly with more people. He said bring in more outside experts and advice. Staff loves that one. Staff loves to hear that more experts and advice are coming. And focus on campaigning in the midterms. One, does that all seem right to you? Two, if you were sitting in the White House, what would your memo to the president say about 2022?

The famous Dan Pfeiffer memo. Famous, infamous. It's hearing it sort of gave me a little bit like unfortunate deja vu to hear Biden say those things he was going to do differently because it is part of a well-worn DC ritual that whenever a president hits really, really, really rough political waters, they have to publicly eat shit for the pleasure of the Washington establishment. And it's always the same things on the shit-eating tasting menu. It is. I got to get out of Washington. Different kinds of shit, different is. I got to get out of Washington. Different kinds of shit, different flavors. I got to get out of Washington. That's a very important dish on this menu.

I'm going to have to get out of my bubble and talk to experts. And to be clear. Get close to the ground. Got to get close to the ground. Yes. And experts means a very specific thing. It means people who dine at Cafe Milano in Washington and people who frequent cable news green rooms. Those are experts. We're not talking about get out of your bubble and see real people. Don't fucking talk to any person who works in a diner or is trying to – once it increases minimum wage, you've got to talk to different Washington people. That's very, very important.

David Brooks writes a bad column about you. You go talk to David Brooks. I mean, there I would. Somewhere David Gergen is walking directly from the hermetically sealed cryo chamber, which he lives at CNN, to the White House for a meeting with Joe Biden right now. It's happening. And then the other thing that they want, and there were some questions about this as well,

is the Washington establishment wants a blood sacrifice. You've got to fire someone. And Joe Biden very wisely resisted that. I don't think he will. He's very loyal. That's a mistake that it would be a dumb thing to do. Can you bring new people on your team? Can you do things differently? Absolutely. But firing someone just so you get better cable news coverage or better political story is a fool's errand. Now, if I was writing an amendment to Joe Biden, I think I would say the following things. Number one, more Joe

Biden. He's got to be out there more. He's got to seem like he's in charge. And one of the reasons for that is the Republicans have, with some success, used their huge media apparatus, their sort of mega megaphone, as I like to call it sometimes, to drive this narrative of Joe Biden being, as you said, an observer of events, too old, too weak, tired, not up to the huge challenges we have. And people say, well, they did that in the campaign and Joe Biden won. In the campaign, you people saw Joe Biden in high profile moments, seem like a leader. Convention speech, three debates. It was also buttress with a billion dollars in television advertising showing people every time they turn on the TV or open their phone, Joe Biden,

not the Fox News caricature of Joe Biden, Joe Biden himself. And you just, it's part of the, both the presidency and a little bit of the sort of the decision-making they made early on that they were just going to do the work. People see so much less Joe Biden now that he's president than when he was running for president. There aren't a billion dollars in ads. There aren't these high profile moments that everyone tunes into. Number one is Joe Biden now that he's president than when he was running for president. There aren't a billion dollars in ads. There aren't these high profile moments that everyone tunes into. Number one is Joe Biden. Number two, less Congress. You're president, not prime minister. I'm not saying don't try to pass what remains of Build Back Better or get that China competitiveness bill or notch some wins. I'm just be less publicly associated with Congress. Do the negotiations

quietly. No more going up to the Senate, no more going to Mitch McConnell's office. Like if we know one thing from this year, it is that making congressional negotiations, and I understand why they made that bet. I understand why they did. But what we, I think we can say without a shadow of a doubt that making public, making congressional negotiations like sort of a major public spectacle doesn't guarantee success and is hurtful politically. So try to do it quietly. I think that's right. And, you know, you saw this today because Biden expressed confidence that pieces of Build Back Better would pass. They go to Manchin Thursday morning, ask him about it.

He starts saying, well, I want to take care of inflation first and debt. We're going to start from scratch and my other offers not on the table. And then you could see, you know, Manchin always talks to reporters, then reporters go to the White House. What do you think about Joe Manchin saying this? And then now you're in the back and forth. Yeah, they went and they went to Pelosi. Right. And the White House just be like, we're having negotiations. We're having negotiations. We'll let you know when we have something to report. No more predictions, no more updates, no more call

readouts. Like what they want is one day they're going to call the press into the briefing room. Joe Biden's going to walk in. He's going to announce, build back better. We have a deal and they're going to pass it. No more predictions. That's it. Just away from Congress publicly. And the last thing is focus on the Republicans. Biden started this on January 6th then is every statement about every issue, particularly on the economy, has to be one part what we've done, one part we want to do, and one part what Republicans will do if they get in charge. We have to begin to drive that narrative and make them own some of the problems. And it's not easy.

It's hard. It's incredibly hard in a midterm election when you control Congress and the White House. But we got to get started now. And he started that. And we need more and more of that. I think that's such an important point. I mean, Biden says it all the time himself. We've said it before.

You're not running against the Almighty. You're running against the alternative. Literally everything he does or says should be framed as a choice because now we are in an election year, right? Republicans are in this for their jobs and their own gain and their own rich friends. I'm in it for you. They voted against vaccines and treatments and testing. They voted against health care.

They voted against middle class tax cuts. They voted against a higher minimum wage. They voted against health care. They voted against middle class tax cuts. They voted against a higher minimum wage. They voted against roads and bridges. Like, just continue to remind people of all the things that, like you said, that they have done and will do, which right now we don't know because they don't have an agenda. Mitch McConnell basically said, fuck it, I'll tell you my agenda after you elect us, which seems like it's something we should remind people that he said over and over again. And then I think you should point out their extremism wherever possible, right? There's some of these fucking candidates running for office on the Republican side, most of them

running for office on the Republican side who were way, way, way outside of the mainstream, who will be like beloved by the MAGA base, but not the rest of the voters they need to actually win some of these races. So you should point that out too. I think I would add two more things to your list. Like he's got to have another, he's got to have not just a message, but a new strategy on COVID. No more COVID, no more COVID restrictions, no more COVID inflation. lives. We now have all the tools we need to fight this virus, vaccines, treatments. And there's another wave or variant. We're going to be ready. We'll have temporary restrictions. We'll have metrics to know when to drop those restrictions. Other than that, go live your lives. Right. And I think this should be a big part of the message in the State of the Union in early March. Hopefully by then you'll have the vaccines for under fives. We'll be out of

the Omicron wave. We'll be ramping up production of the COVID treatments. But like people want to get back to normal and they want to know the government is doing everything possible to make sure that they can live their lives. They don't expect Joe Biden to say like, I promise there will never be another variant again. They don't expect that, but they expect him to be like, this is the way that you're going to be able to live your life normally. They do expect that and he should lay that out. And then I think part of that, the final thing I'd say is the economy, right? And the inflation problems are stemming from the pandemic, but everyone is most concerned about the economy. Not just like swing voters, not former Trump voters, not independents,

everyone. It is the number one issue for black voters, for young voters, for women, for every demographic group. It's the number one issue. So he should be out there talking about it every fucking day. Everyone is, people are concerned about inflation. They have not been brainwashed by the media. They are actually concerned. And I think he should be out there saying, like, I'll fight every day to bring prices down, to help people pay for their gas and groceries. I'll use my power to pressure CEOs. I'll call Republicans out to keep voting against cutting costs for families. I'll take executive actions. The court wants to strike them down. Go for it. You know, like every single lever he can pull to help bring prices down and to let people know that he's fighting to bring prices down. He should do and it should be an everyday thing. And look, you already see them doing this. They've done some events on inflation at the beginning of the year. He's been talking about some of the supply chain fixes they've been doing. Like, but it's something that you've got to, you know, how messages, like you've got to fucking hammer it every single day that you can so that anytime anyone sees Joe Biden, they see that he's talking about getting the country back to normal, getting us over the pandemic and making sure the prices come down.

This is, as you and I know, one of those very weird times in the White House, which is you're back, everyone's paying attention. It's your one year anniversary, but everyone is working towards the state of the union. And there's a whole bunch of cards you're waiting to play on the biggest stage. And so it's like this weird treading water phase where you're testing some things out, you're doing stuff. But like the real moment when you turn the corner on these things, you do lay out the new COVID strategy. You lay out this economic message is going to be in the state of the Union. Yeah, and that's March 1st. And part of the reason you do these things is, look, does the president have, you know, limited tools that he can use to bring down inflation in the short term? Yes, of course. But as the pandemic recedes and things start to

get better, you want to be out in front of that parade, right? You're like, it's already happening, right? Like, you know, after the Omicron wave, things are going to start feeling better. Hopefully, supply chain issues start easing. Inflation eventually starts easing. And you want to make sure that voters give you credit for fighting hard to make sure those things are better. And that's why I think like, you know, you gotta, you know,

I saw some reporting that they're like, our COVID strategy for next year is the same as it was this year. And I get why they're doing that, because they believe they have all the tools necessary. But you need a turn, right? You need to like, let people know we are headed into a new phase. And I do think the State of the Union is, you know, again, that's not going to fix all your problems. Again, it's the State of the Union. So it's going to be very long and there's going to be tons of issues and there's going to be Democrats standing up and clapping and Republicans sitting on their asses, not clapping and blah, blah, blah. But it is a rare opportunity where you get to speak to the whole country or at least speak to the millions of people who tune in. And you're going to want to use it to both sort of

like mark that this is a new phase in the presidency and to let people know that you're fighting like hell for them when the other side is just fighting for their own jobs. Anything else you do in the State of the Union? No, I think all that's right. I think the State of the Union is a launching pad. We tend to think of it in the old way of it is a speech as if the entire nation tunes in. The entire nation does not tune anymore. So it is a run-up to it. It is the speech. And then it is what happens afterwards. It's obviously a very – it'll

be the most watched thing Biden does all year. But it's also the organizing principle for the entire year. It's how you get the entire government to come up with new policy ideas, come up with plans, to come up with timelines. And so it's really important. The only other thing I would add to all of this is you sort of understanding the limits of what the president can do is you need a metric of success, not just for Biden, but for all Democrats to think, are we moving the needle with our messaging? A number that I would look at in polling is whether people think we're focused enough on the economy or the economy and inflation. And that number is well below where it should be right now for the entire party. And how can we, like, are we moving that over time with what we're

saying and how often we're saying and the paid advertising that's supplementing that? And if it's not, then we are in big trouble and we got to change strategies. So you always need it. Like, we can't just like, here's what we're going to do. And we're going to see how it works on election day, right? You need, because I don't think you're going to change people's approval of the economy, but they can change whether they think you're doing, you're fighting for them on the issue they care most about. That's the key. That's the key. Okay.

When we come back, Dan, we'll talk to Run for Something's Amanda Lippman about local races in 2022. Now that voting rights legislation has run aground in the United States Senate, here to help us figure out how to save democracy is the co-founder of Run for Something, Amanda Littman. Amanda, welcome back to Pod Save America. Hi, Dan. Always good to be here. I want to start with just your reaction to what happened last night. night um infuriating predictable disappointing i mean it it is so mad infuriating that it was so predictable it was so disappointing it was all of those things and i think it really cemented that we cannot count on congress to save us and we cannot count on federal legislation

to come through when it comes to protecting democracy. So while I am so mad, I'm seeing red, I am also very sort of in some ways a little bit grateful for that clarification of who we can and can't rely on and what the next steps are. Well, let's let's talk about that. Because you when there was a lot of despair, a lot of cursing various centrist senators on Twitter last night, you took the time to put together a thread to try to give people a little bit of hope. So help explain to everyone the role Congress plays. I think, as you point out, everyone has assumed the only way we were going to fight back was through Congress and what other levers we have to pull as a Democratic Party or a progressive wing. So it's worth zooming out a moment. We do not have one national election.

We have 50 state elections. Then we have about 3,000-ish county elections. And then we have thousands and thousands more town and city and municipality elections. And each of those are governed by, in some places, the same laws, but in some places, very different laws. And even within a state, you can have the, for example, Pennsylvania elections that are governed by the state legislature, by the counties, and then also by the cities. When you think about the number of elected offices in the United States, which as I've said many times over, there are more than half a million of them. Most of them are not in Congress. Most of them are not federal. They are things like school board and city council and state legislature. And many, many, many of those positions touch

election administration. One of the things the Republican Party and especially the worst parts of the Republican Party, although they're all pretty bad at this point, but Steve Bannon, QAnon, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the like are investing a bunch of time and money into is recruiting people to oversee elections, whether that's as secretaries of state, which we know there are at least 15 sort of big lie propagators running for secretary of state, to things like city clerk, county recorder of deeds, election judge. Steve Bannon goes on his podcast every week and talks about how every one of his listeners should run for these positions. Trump went in front of a group of

Republicans in Pennsylvania via video and said he's more invested in the supervisors of elections, the people that count the ballots, than the ones who are on the ballot. All of that's to say is that these are really critical positions for determining how these laws get implemented and what actually happens on the ground. You know, how easy is it for people to register? How well funded are these offices? How many different languages are they printing materials in? How late and how often are polling places open and how well are they staffed? The experience that a voter has is really determined by the person administering that election. Now, it is very complicated. There

are something like 2,000 positions on the ballot in 2022 that touch election administration. There's another 1,000 in 2023, and then anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000, depending on how you define it, in 2024. And that includes even some positions that then appoint the person who actually runs the position. Now, it's very, very messy, which can make it seem like an impossible problem to solve. But the fact is, because it breaks down into such small pieces, it's very easy. We need to find as many pro-democracy people as possible to run for these offices. And we need to do it in as many places as possible, in as many ways as possible. We need to do it in an effort that has never before been seen because this is the last bulwark. The 2024

election subversion, I hope it doesn't include another violent mob storming the Capitol, but it might. More likely. But it may not need it, which is the problem. It may not need it. More likely it's going to be one county canvassing board in Michigan that refuses to certify the votes. Or a town clerk in Wisconsin that decides they're just going to randomly close a bunch of polling places because they feel like it. feel like it, or a wave of red city and county clerks or county recorders of deeds across a couple of states that just undermine faith in the system. It is so important that at this critical part of the institutions, we are shoring it up with good leadership. And so you talk about the focus Republicans have on this. You know, Steve Bannon talks about it. Trump talks about it.

You pointed out a report on Twitter report the other day that the campaign organization responsible for electing Republican secretaries of state raised $33 million last year. And the Democratic Association secretary of state, the Democratic counterpart, raised $1 million in the first half of 2021. So two questions to that. One, why do you think Democrats aren't more focused on this to date? And do you think that focus has improved? Or have you seen additional intensity as it became more clear in the recent days and weeks as that voting rights was not going to succeed at the Senate level? I think historically, Democrats have had a problem as a party with investing in infrastructure, investing in the boring stuff, investing in the things that aren't so flashy, that don't make for good viral videos, that don't get you invited to a cocktail party, but that do meaningfully build

power. And we've known this for at least a decade or more now. I mean, this is why we're in this mess with state legislatures in particular, in that the Republican Party invested $100 million into state legislative races after the 20, ahead of the 2009-2010 elections. And then we're able to redraw their maps so they could control Congress. We are getting to a place where the Democratic Party and especially the funding base is getting better. It's improving, but it is really, really hard. I have tried. I have tried really hard to make like a catchy video that will go viral about local election administrators. Like it's complicated and it's difficult both to talk about and also to do, which is why a lot of places don't touch these races. But I think we are seeing some momentum. I will say so far, January 2022 is Run for Something's best recruitment month yet.

We've seen thousands and thousands of people sign up to run for office and thousands more chip in to help us recruit them. So I am cautiously optimistic that the tides are turning, but you know what they say about making plans. That's very, I'm very excited to hear you say that run for something's, that this was run for something's best month to date, because I've always sort of viewed run for something as a bit of a barometer of the enthusiasm of the base post-Trump, right? Pre-Trump, we're just not running candidates anywhere. We're not recruiting candidates.

We're not investing local races. 2016 happens. You start running for something. We have this wave of people, right? Someone have run in on everywhere in Virginia in that 2017 election, everywhere. And it's like the thing I've worried about is the first place where you would see

the tides recede would be here because this is the hard stuff. Like you said, it's not the exciting stuff. And so was 2021 a tough year and it's sort of changing as maybe people are thinking or have you seen a continued level of engagement among Democratic activists who sort of got into politics because of Trump, post Trump. So we thought that 2021 would be a little slower, like we built our program, assuming it'd be a little slower. And the insurrection happened. Well, and before that winning Georgia happened. And people showed up 2021 was our best recruitment year yet. And 2022 is on pace to exceed it. And I think it's important to know why. One is that the pandemic and the uprising of the summer before really indicated how important

local government is, especially conversations around school boards and city councils and the way that they're making decisions around keeping places closed or open and what our kids are learning. All of that is locally determined. But I also think running for office post-Trump was never really about Trump. And we did a study here. We found that only 3% of the people who signed up with us mentioned Trump in their intake survey. He was like the water folks were swimming in, but he wasn't the bait. The bait was wanting to make a change. The bait was being furious that their streets were not paved well or that their state legislature wasn't passing criminal justice reform. The bait was seeing out of touch, disconnected leaders who

weren't engaging with their communities, weren't showing up at meetings, weren't holding town halls. And I think especially for young people who run for something primarily works with candidates 40 and younger, it is about seeing that enough is enough with the status quo. So I am just so pumped that this year has been better than the last. And it makes me really stressed because our team is already so tired. And so for people who are listening to this, who are inspired by what you're saying, scared about what's coming in the country and want to do something, but running for office seems like a big step, right? In a really tough, what is a tough political environment. And we're talking about on the other side, it's Steve Bannon and QAnon and Proud Boys. Like what would your message

to people be who are thinking about it, but very nervous about the prospect of putting themselves out there so much to run? I'd say it's never too early to just start a conversation. If you go to runforwhat.net, you can enter your information. You can find the offices available for you in 2022. You'll also start getting materials just to think about, like, how do you plan a campaign? What do you need? But I would also really encourage you to start volunteering locally. You know, it's going to be really tempting this year and really important to go knock doors and make calls for our Senate candidates and our congressional candidates and the like. And yeah, you should do that too. But when you

have your very precious free time, go knock doors for a city council race or a city clerk race or a school board race in your community or the community an hour over. Keep it local. That will really allow you to understand what goes into a campaign. You'll get to know the candidate too, which is really fun. And when you win or even if you lose, it'll feel really personal. You'll get to live the results of that. And I think it's the best way to get a good sense of what you're in for if you decide to do this. And the benefit is that working on local campaigns trickles up. The organizing that you do locally, the doors that you knock, the calls that you make will all help the top of the ticket. And we've got some really important top of ticket races this year, congressional, gubernatorial, secretaries of

state, Senate races and the like. And the places where those campaigns are going to be organizing might not include where you live, but the votes that you turn out for Democrats will make a difference for them. That is a phenomenon known as reverse coattails, correct? Correct. And you guys have done some studies on reverse coattails that speak to the impact of it. Can you just give people a little insight into that? Yes. And we have done this study twice now because people didn't believe us the first time. We found that simply contesting state legislative races in

districts that were previously uncontested, meaning there was only a Republican on the ballot, when you can just put a Democrat on there and have them run a campaign, it increases turnout from anywhere to half percent to 1.5 percent for the Democrat. Now, those are small margins, but most of those are margins at the top of the ticket wins by, you know, especially in a state like Georgia or North Carolina or Wisconsin. These are very, very tight races. Sometimes what the local candidate is trying to do is lose by less. And that can feel like a weird goal to have. But it's really meaningful because even just running up the score and moving a district from

70-30 red to 60-40, it helps. And it also builds power for the next time around. So for someone who is listening here who either wants to run for office or wants to help you recruit and treat, but to run for these offices to save democracy, where can they go and how can they help you? Go to runforsomething.net. You can learn more about running for office. You can make a donation. We are going to have to field thousands of candidates this year. So every single dollar is going to go a long way. It is more money than we've ever needed and more money than we've ever spent. And I'm very excited and anxious about it in equal parts because I think the impact

is potentially huge. Because I think the impact is potentially huge. We are at a crisis for our democracy that requires an equal and an opposite force to protect it. So that's what Rembrandt Something is trying to be this year. We're trying to protect democracy by winning small in as many places as we can so that we can fight the big fights together. Amanda Lippman, thank you so much for being on Positive American. Thanks for everything you're doing. Thanks, Dan.

All right, before we go, some deeply enjoyable news for your weekend. The law may be catching up with Donald Trump. In a 160-page court filing, New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed that her civil investigation into the Trump organization is based on evidence of, quote, fraudulent and misleading business practices, namely, misrepresenting the value of its properties and assets for economic benefit, which would be wild because the Donald Trump we know is just, he's not a corrupt cheater. Crazy. The filing was in response to Trump's efforts to stop the civil investigation, stop the attorney general from participating in the parallel criminal investigation, and avoid subpoenas that ask for testimony from the former president, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump.

Apparently, Eric Trump already testified and took the fifth in response to more than 500 questions. Which is also what he did on the SATs. But wait, there's more. Just a few days after Trump's lawyers dismissed James's investigation as a politically motivated partisan witch hunt, Trump's politically motivated partisan Supreme Court gave him some trouble as well. With only Clarence Thomas dissenting, the other seven justices denied Trump's request to block the release of White House records relating to the January 6th attack on Congress, records that are now, thanks to the court's order, in the hands of the 1-6 committee.

Oh, one more that just broke today. Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Williams is requesting a special grand jury to assist her investigation into whether to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump and his goons for pressuring Georgia officials to overturn the election, a decision she is expected to make in the first half of this year. Dan, is this it? Did we get him? It is. I am currently lighting my Robert Mueller votive candles as we speak. Getting him out of my closet, lining him up on my office desk, just waiting for the impeachment eagle and the Supreme Court marshal to come take him away. Got it.

How much potential legal trouble is Trump facing here? Seems like a lot to me. trouble is Trump facing here? Seems like a lot to me. It's like you never, in general, you don't want to be under criminal investigation for one crime. You don't want to be under criminal investigation for three crimes in three different jurisdictions at the same time. That seems bad. And you definitely don't want the Supreme Court, of which you've appointed two very right-wing justices, to rule against know, you're trying to hide records from the January 6th committee. Three justices? Three.

Oh, I'm sorry. Three justices. You know what's funny is I always focus so much on Kavanaugh and Barrett, I always forget that fucking we got Gorsuch from him, too. The maskless wonder. Three. Anyway. Yeah, so it seems like he could have some trouble. There's two criminal investigations, a civil investigation and an ongoing bipartisan congressional investigation.

How big of a deal is that Supreme Court ruling on the 1-6 stuff, do you think? It seems like a big deal. It's important because the Republicans are in this strategy with the witnesses to delay testifying, Because the Republicans are in this strategy with the witnesses to delay testifying, to try to drag this out as long as possible to making it so the Democrats cannot finish the investigation, do their report until after the on things that they won't be able to do pre-testimony. If they are able to depose some of these key witnesses who have, as of yet, been unwilling to cooperate, then you will have these documents as a way to frame those conversations and make those interviews as worthwhile as possible. I think it's an absolutely important thing. Also, it seems like if the Supreme Court is saying that you can't exert executive privilege over the documents as a former president,

I don't know what would shield you from testifying. Yeah, the only thing they have on their side is time. Right, right. So Maggie Haberman responded to the Tish James filing by tweeting, any question of whether Trump runs seemed to have been answered this morning. His aides have always signaled that if the investigations progressed, that he would run for president again. What do you think of that? Well, per usual, the reaction to it was a little disproportionate. It's like you people got to calm down with the Maggie Haberman tweets. She's like, anything she tweets now, it's like, did Trump tell you to write that?

She is telling you what Trump's aides told her. You know what that is? That's reporting. That's Maggie's job. She's supposed to report things. Yeah. You can just,

if you have problems with the reporting, if you disagree with the reporting, that's fair. But she's just reporting. You're yelling at the weatherman, people. It's not his fault it's raining. So, I mean, when you say the thing that Trump people are telling Maggie out loud, it sounds so fucking stupid. It's hard to imagine.

Look, Donald Trump was not going to run. He was happy with his life, just living a more long go, conducting illegal SPACs for a fake media company. And then Letitia James stepped up. And I'm going to show her, by running for president, this thing I was definitely not going to do otherwise. Like, it sounds idiotic. But there is one important thing to note, which is maybe we've sort of memory holes some of our real deep dive legal discussions from the 2017, 2018 era. But if you remember,

there was an Office of Legal Counsel memo that says that sitting presidents cannot be indicted because it was the founder's intention that the impeachment proceedings would be the proper forum for adjudicating presidential crimes and misdemeanors. And Donald Trump knows that could a jury in Manhattan convict him? Yes. Could a jury in Fulton County convict him? Yes. Will the United States Senate ever deliver 66 votes to remove Donald Trump? Absolutely not. It is basically like moving to legislative hamsterdam. There are no crimes for republicans in the senate so he is fine now i i thought about all this news and i was like i mean we joked about bringing back our muller bobblehead dolls but like i don't think people should view this as okay these investigations

are going to save us from another term of donald trump as we found out before, even if he is indicted, he can still run for office. People should know. He might even be able to run for office if he's in jail. But I don't know. But if he's indicted, he certainly can. I do think they could be used as part of a story about Donald Trump

should he run again, which is he's a loser. He's a cheater. He's a scam artist who's running again to avoid jail time and bankruptcy. Right. That's also just chaos, right? Yeah. People are so fucking sick. This is what we want. This is what you want. Life to return back to normal, which is what people want right now, which is part of the reason they're upset with Joe Biden. They just wanted life to return back to normal after Trump. And that's what they thought they were going to get. And now you want this fucking jackass with all of his indictments and investigations following him.

It's just, yeah, it serves to remind people of the drama around Trump. Again, we're not talking about the MAGA base. We're not talking about his supporters. They all love it, but they are not enough to win an election. He still needs to win over a lot of those sort of middle of the road swing voters that he has won before. And those people, they might be targets for a message campaign about why Donald Trump is just too much drama for 2024. On the Tuesday pod, when you guys talked about the Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump feud, something I've never been more jealous.

I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. The timing was bad for you. What did we do last Thursday? A minute by minute breakdown of Kirsten Sinema's defense of the filibuster. What do you guys do? Two assholes fighting.

Yay. What are we going to do this Thursday? Voting rights failed that joe biden gave a two-hour press conference i'm sure with my luck eric trump will be indicted for a crime on sunday so you guys can talk about it monday evening dan you're gonna pull you're gonna pull a good news cycle eventually i know eventually but i the serious part of that is in that conversation you guys quoted some trump advisors from a, lo and behold, a Maggie Haberman story about that feud, about how the Trump advisors sort of said the chaos

and drum around Trump was one of their biggest concerns about him. And this is a bunch more chaos. And this report will come out theoretically around the time Donald Trump's going to have to, the January 6th report, around the time Donald Trump's going to have to be, the January 6th report, around the time Donald Trump's going to have to start be seriously making decisions about whether he's going to run. Right. So stay tuned. Well, look, I tweeted yesterday towards the end of the press conference, I could have done without the last 30 minutes or so. And someone on Twitter replied to me, that's how I feel when it goes past the first hour of a Pod Save America episode. So I am going to leave it there. It's a fair point.

It's a fair point. It was a great retort. That's the kind of Twitter retort I can get behind. Everyone have a great weekend. And thanks again to Amanda Littman for joining us. Everyone go donate to run for something. Make you feel better about yourselves this weekend. And we'll see you next week.

Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse. And Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.