Pod Save America - “OBAMAGATE!”

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Trump tries to make the election about Barack Obama, Democrats come up short in a California special election, Joe Biden announces a set of policy unity task forces, and Democratic strategists offer his campaign plenty of advice. Then Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal talks to Jon about her Paycheck Guarantee Act and her role as the co-chair of Biden’s health care unity task force.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, I talked to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal about the Democrats' new economic relief bill and her new position on the Biden-Sanders Healthcare Unity Task Force. But before that, we'll talk about Trump's decision to make this campaign about Barack Obama, the results of the special election in California's 25th district, and what the deal is with all the Democratic angst over Joe Biden's campaign. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben explain how

Trump's director of national intelligence is already hard at work using the Flynn affair to punish his political enemies. Then Patrick Radden Keefe, the host of Wind of Change, joins to talk about the CIA propaganda and how culture became a weapon in the Cold War. If you haven't yet listened to Wind of Change, go to Spotify, check it out now, binge the whole series. It's fantastic.

It's fantastic. It's great. It's dominating our house. It is on the Sonos at all times. Also, check out this week's episode of Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner, which is all about sex in the time of COVID. Don't really need more of a

plug than that, do I? You can find the show wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for Six Feet Apart. Finally, some great news. Our Coronavirus Relief Fund has now raised over $2 million to help people who are struggling right now um thank you so so much to everyone who's donated you are all generous wonderful people um now that we've crossed the two million dollar mark we're adding a few new organizations to the fund um jose andres's world central kitchen um which helps feed people all over the world and now here in the u.s and masks people, one fair wage and a couple more. If you can, please make a donation at crooked.com slash coronavirus for a very good cause.

All right, let's get to the news. This week, as the coronavirus death toll soared past 80,000 Americans and we hit depression levels of unemployment, Donald Trump turned much of his attention to the real threat facing America, Barack Obama. After a weekend bender that included more than 100 tweets that accused the former president of unspecified, entirely fictional crimes that seemed to have something to do with convicted criminal Michael Flynn, Trump was asked by the Washington Post's Phil Rucker what in the fuck he's talking about,

and he said this. Mr. President, in one of your Mother's Day tweets, you appear to accuse President Obama of the biggest political crime in American history by far. Those were your words. What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him? Obamagate.

It's been going on for a long time. It's been going on from before I even got elected. And it's a disgrace that it happened. And if you look at what's gone on and if you look at now, all of this information that's being released. And from what I understand, that's only the beginning. Some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. And you'll be seeing what's going on over the next over the coming weeks. But I wish you'd write honestly about it. But unfortunately, you choose not to do so. Yeah, John, please. What is the crime exactly that you're accusing him of?

You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers except yours. So I just say my-key favorite part of that is Phil Rucker starting by saying, in one of your Mother's Day tweets, happy Mother's Day, everyone. The former president has committed a crime. So Dan, two-part question for you. Can you explain what Obamagate is? And do you think Trump can explain what Obamagate is? do you think trump can explain what obamagate is well we know the answer to the second question because obviously he can't i mean i was trying to figure out what the best like pop culture version of trump's answer to that was and there

i came up with two options one is billy mad doing the debate against Bradley Whitford in the movie where the judge then says everyone is now stupider for that. But I think the more recent and relevant and less dating one is when Roman is asked about that book he says he reads in the last season of Succession. You know, the book. Everyone knows what the book is about. So Trump has no idea. He didn't even bother to read past the hashtag, which is sort of also emblematic of his pandemic response. But if we were to try to explain what Obamagate is, it boils down to Obama administration officials following all the right protocols to find out why Trump's incoming national security advisor was having conversations to undermine U.S. foreign policy with the Russians in weeks after the Russians had interfered in an election on behalf of the incoming president. That is the crime to which he is accusing Obama.

I mean, you know, Adam Goldman in The New York Times has a great piece about this today. It's like a pretty simple explainer if you want to go down the rabbit hole, which and if you don't, that's fine, too, because it is a rabbit hole. But like just a few things to remember to add to what you're saying. Russia sabotages the election. We know that. On behalf of trying to elect Donald Trump. So this is all fact. The Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have concluded this as well. A finding put forward by also criminal Richard Burr.

Yeah, that's a whole other story. So this happens. Obama, the Obama administration, put sanctions on Russia. Russia does not retaliate for the sanctions. Barack Obama talks to the intel agencies and says, can you find out why Russia didn't retaliate when we just sanctioned them? retaliate when we just sanction them? So they look at some of the calls because we monitor some of the calls made by Russian officials. Look at those calls. And the ambassador, Russia's ambassador to the U.S. is talking with an American and the American is saying, don't worry about these sanctions. When Donald Trump takes office, we'll take the sanctions away. And so then the question is, who was that American? Because in the intel reports, the Americans are masked. So no one knows who the American is talking to the Russian ambassador promising sanctions relief and to undermine U.S. foreign policy. So there's a process you go through that everyone admits,

even Bill Barr, even Donald Trump, was legally followed. You uncover that the person talking to the Russian ambassador is Michael Flynn, the incoming national security advisor. And then after that, Barack Obama warns Donald Trump during the transition when they meet, hey, just some advice. Don't hire this Michael Flynn guy. He's pretty sketchy. Donald Trump doesn't take the advice, hires Michael Flynn. It is reported that Michael Flynn was talking to the Russian ambassador,

undermining US foreign policy. Donald Trump says, okay, you're fired, Michael Flynn, because you lied to Mike Pence about it. And Mike Pence told the country on Meet the Press. And so because you lied, we're firing you. Mike Pence has asked about it. He said he made the right decision in firing Michael Flynn. And now, now we are told by Donald Trump that somehow Michael Flynn going down was an Obama

plot to bring down Donald Trump. It makes zero fucking sense. And if any of these fucking people peddling this conspiracy would talk to anyone outside of the Trump media bubble for five fucking minutes, the whole thing would fall apart. The entire thing. A couple other points on this.

One, quote unquote, unmasking. Were you, like. The reason why American citizens' information is kept private in these intercepts is oftentimes the Russian ambassador, in this case, someone who was being surveilled, could be having many conversations with American citizens that are of no interest to the federal government, to the intelligence agencies. And every once in a while, you will see one. And this happens with both suspected criminals, suspected terrorists, all kinds of intelligence targets, both at home and abroad. And they will see something interesting, and they will make a request to see who that person

is, because the other party of the conversation is relevant to the information they're trying to find out. That happens all the time. It's happened, I think Tommy mentioned the other day, 18,000 times under Trump. It's a very common thing. This is a open-shut case of when you would ever do it. It happens in gray areas, and I'm sure the intel community sometimes is overly aggressive in unmasking. But this is no question.

overly aggressive in unmasking. But this is no question. You have an incoming government official explicitly telling the Russians who just interfered in our election, do not worry about the sanctions. We're going to fix it for you. That's one. Two, because of the lying, Flynn was interviewed by the FBI. He lied in that interview. And that is not open for discussion. That is a well-known fact because he lied about what he told the Russian ambassador. That's why Donald Trump fired him. He lied to the FBI. He knew.

And then Michael Flynn admitted to that on multiple occasions under oath. He pled guilty to this crime. I lied to the FBI. I'm guilty twice. I lied to the FBI. He pled guilty to this crime. I lied to the FBI. I'm guilty twice. I lied to the FBI.

And it's not even mentioning a separate crime involving Michael Flynn, where he was representing the Turkish government as a foreign agent without registering and then lying on his forms that he filed afterwards about his work on behalf as a foreign lobbyist for the Turkish government, which he also admitted to under oath as part of his cooperation deal with the Mueller investigation. So he is guilty of many crimes. He's admitted to all of them under oath. All the procedures were followed. And now he's on the short list to return to the Trump administration in a second term. The best part of the entrapment theory, they're saying, well, the FBI entrapped Michael Flynn to try to it's a perjury trap to try to get him to lie. The FBI literally read words from the transcript of his call with the Russian ambassador and said, do you remember this?

We're giving you a couple chances. We don't want you to lie to us and get in trouble. Do you remember these words from this transcript he said no no i did not say that i did not say that um it's like and and the other crazy thing about this is again here we are down the rabbit hole um you know some journalists like marcy wheeler uh has have pointed this out that these doofuses releasing a fucking list of all the times that michael flynn was unmasked we have proven that most of the times that someone was unmasked and it ended up being michael flynn talking

to foreign officials it wasn't the kislyak call because that happened a little later it was before that so michael flynn was has raised all kinds of alarms with all a bunch of other conversations before the Kislyak thing. Just as one more point on Michael Flynn, which is it's now remember he will probably, if Donald Trump was reelected, he will probably work in the government again. Could be secretary of defense,

could be national security advisor. He'll probably be on the campaign trail. Yeah. And so let's put aside that he is an admitted criminal, right? So that should be, that's one disqualifying factor for serving in a presidential administration. The other one is, he's a particularly dumb criminal. Do you remember what his job was when he was in the Obama administration? The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. So of all the people in

the world who should have known that the Russian ambassador's calls were being surveilled would be Michael Flynn. Yet he still had the call and still lied about it. I mean, here's the Obama scandal. Why did we hire Michael Flynn in the first place? That was a that was a that was not a good one right there i mean we well he was he was a career military official uh but we did fire him so points to obama points was and and we thought points to trump for firing him but apparently you know now we're in fucking loonyville um so obama's approval rating is sitting at around 60% right now.

He is the most popular living president. One of the most popular public figures in the country. Is there any kind of strategy here on Trump's part or is he just losing his fucking mind? Uh, this morning he actually called on, uh, Senate judiciary chairman, Lindsey Graham to make Obama come testify before the Senate, which Lindsey Graham has rejected. And then said, if both presidents want to come testify about their thoughts about each other, they're more than welcome. But I don't think that's going to really help the country that much. I mean, you know, something has to be a terrible fucking idea

for Donald Trump to suggest it and Lindsey Graham to reject it. Yeah, publicly. Yeah, no, things have gotten bad. If Donald Trump was like Lindsey Graham run out into traffic, Lindsey Graham would do that. So this is obviously a terrible idea. Is there a strategy? Of course not. There is never a strategy for the things that Trump does. That is not how he operates. That does not mean – like this is born of a desperation of the political situation in which he finds himself right now and his just massive insecurity complex when it comes to Barack Obama. But just because there's not a strategy for why Trump does things does not mean there are not strategic consequences for the things he does. Right. And like we too often discuss Trump on one of two polls.

One is he's a fucking moron who's always doing stupid things. And the other one is he's this strategic political mastermind who has some sort of magic who figured out to win the hardest election ever. And it's much more complicated than that, like all things. political mastermind who has some sort of magic who figured out to win the hardest election ever. And it's much more complicated than that, like all things. This is a bad political strategy for the polling reasons you mentioned, and we can get to a few others in a second. But it's not a terrible PR strategy in the short term, which is Trump wants the press to cover something other than He wants the press to cover something other than his massively incompetent failure to respond to the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis. And he knows one way to do that is to go light a fire over here. And so he has done that.

And it will – and even if the coverage is not good for Trump, like that New York Times story you mentioned is terrible. It is coverage of something else. Right. And so in that sense, like there is like there is instinctual this is the instinctual PR part of Trump's brain has him doing this distraction ploy that he does a lot. Here's why I think that doesn't work, because, like you said, we're in the middle of a fucking pandemic um you know 30 million people don't have jobs right now um i would not say the response to the pandemic is going smoothly um and like tommy and i were just talking about this during impeachment our hope was that you know wall-to wall, 24-7 hearings broadcast on television would move a lot of voters to care about impeachment. That did not really happen. Right. Much to our chagrin. That was a moment of relative peace and prosperity in the country.

And because a lot of people, when you'd ask them, when you talk to them in focus groups, they'd say'd say yeah either i think trump's guilty because i'm a democrat and partisan or someone who thinks trump is fucking nuts or i love trump i think trump is fine but most of them would say well i care about my health care i care about my job i care about my wages i don't know that i care that much about impeachment so now imagine that feeling in the middle of a fucking pandemic when all these people are out of work and you turn to your federal government and the president is screaming about some vague conspiracy that the last president did. And he's yelling about Barack Obama and he's not talking about the pandemic and he's not talking about how to put people back to work. Like, it seems like a fucking political loser to me. I mean, there are reasons to be very alarmed by this, which we're going to go into.

But from a political standpoint, I just I don't I can't get why it helps him, except with his base. And his problem is not his base. Right. To the extent there's been a erosion. Obviously, the base gets excited about this. Obviously. But like the base was never going to leave him. There is no evidence that he he's losing his base or his base is not as fired up as they otherwise would be. So he has a base political play to try to solve a problem that's existing in the middle of the electorate. Where he has suffered and where he has to do the most work is between the 43% he has and the 47% to 48% he's going to need to win in these battleground states.

Like that is – and this does nothing for that. And I think, to your point, he's leading with his chin in two ways. One is he is focusing on something other than the thing people care the most about and think he's not doing a good job on. Right. It would sort of be like, and this is even less severe, but it would be like if Barack Obama was focused on a bunch of sort of like random things in the middle of the economic crisis in 2009. And we actually even, we suffered politically because we, for a lot of people, we did not connect healthcare to the economic crisis. So people thought Barack Obama was doing this other thing instead of the thing they cared most about, which was their jobs. Honestly, imagine if during the economic crisis, at the height of the economic crisis, Barack Obama was screaming about how John McCain needed to be prosecuted for something he said during the campaign. Yeah, right. Like that would be a political disaster. So that's point one.

Trump is focusing on the wrong thing, which is theoretically a political mistake. So that's point one. Trump is focusing on the wrong thing, which is theoretically a political mistake. And two is Barack Obama's numbers are at 60% with the overall public. But that's when you include Trump's base, which has Obama in the single digits in some cases. I have seen private polling from a number of different places that looks at Barack Obama's polling among the up for grabs universe, the persuadable voters, and his numbers are in the 70s. He is particularly popular among the people who will decide this election. And so in that sense, Trump is absolutely leading with his chin politically. But leading with your chin politically is only bad if someone punches you in the fucking jaw. And that's the question for Democrats is, how do they make Trump pay for this, right?

And it's not just enough to make fun of him for being a conspiracy theorist. It's not just enough to continue focusing on the pandemic. You have to tie Trump focusing on all these absurd things with the thing he is not focusing on, right? This is about Trump trying to punish his enemies and exercise his personal grudges instead of helping other people. There's a way to tie it to the Trump first America last message that we have talked about on a couple occasions. And if you do that, you like Democrats and Biden have the capacity to make him pay for this.

Well, let's talk about that. I mean, one concern I have now is how the non-Trump media is handling this concern is putting it mildly. You know, on one hand, there was a fantastic Washington Post piece on Tuesday by Toulouse-Olarania that read, quote, since Sunday, Trump has tweeted more often about alleged crimes by his perceived opponents than he has about the pandemic ravaging the country with mass death and unemployment and called it, quote, a familiar political tactic. That's what The Washington Post labeled this. So that is, to me, the model of how you talk about this and report on this. On the other hand, we have outlets like Axios that tweeted, quote, Joe Biden's presence on the list because Joe Biden was on the unmasking list of people who asked for these to be unmasked because he can because he was the vice president and that was his job. Joe Biden's presence on the list could turn it into an election year issue, though the document itself does not show any evidence of wrongdoing. And George Stephanopoulos asked Biden multiple questions about Trump's Flynn conspiracy on Good Morning America this week. Here's part of Joe Biden's response. Can you imagine any other president of the United States focusing on this at the moment when the country is just absolutely

concerned about their health, the health of their children, the health of their families, the health of their... I mean, this is... We have an economic crisis. We have a health crisis. This is all about diverting attention. Focus on what's in front of us. Get us out of this, Mr. President. So, Dan, it seems like, would you, let's talk about the media a second. First, I want to talk about Biden. Would you say that Biden's response there is sort of in line with how you're suggesting the Democrats take this on? Yes, absolutely.

And I think it's the right message. I actually thought that that was Biden's best interview in a very long time. I thought he was very strong and very passionate and has sort of begun to settle on a Trump narrative. And you see it in him focusing on himself and sort of the marginalia of American life and not what is affecting people's lives. And so I think that is – I thought that was very good and the right thing to do. Like interviews is not enough. This is going to have to become a context of paid communications going forward. But yeah, I thought Biden was good in that.

I think it's the right thing to do. On the media side, is this inevitable that a lot of reporters and editors are going to fall for this? And is there anything we can or should do? Yes and no all right well then we will continue to scream into the void about these reporters learning zero lessons from 2016 it like that was a particularly glib answer that I do stand by. But the problem is not like there is there's going to be plenty of great articles that put in context the absurdity of this. Yeah. And we just like like I said, Washington Post exemplary for calling it a political tactic and just basically reporting it for what it is. I thought Adam Goldman at The New York Times did a great job by just simply laying out the facts of the case. So, you know how ridiculous the conspiracy is. And, you know, I've heard from some reporters, too, who think this is completely fucking

ridiculous. So I do want to say that many reporters seem to have learned lessons from 2016. My concern is, as usual, like, you know, the usual suspects that we always talk about. And plus, this gets filtered through to the networks and their broadcasts, right, to editors who are writing headlines. I saw a fucking horrific L.A. Times piece about this that just basically like bought into Trump's framing. Like it does worry me a lot. Yeah, it absolutely should. And the challenge here is I think like when we talk about the lessons 2016, like there are many, there are many of them for the, for the media and everyone, ourselves included, everyone else involved.

But one of the ones that I think a lot of media have not yet wrestled with is they are very focused on the accuracy and fairness of the story they write. Right. And some of them will be very accurate and very fair. Some of them will be less so like it's going to be on a scale because it involves a lot of people. But I think too many of them do not think about how the things they write are weaponized in our modern social media environment. Right. Like that's where headlines matter a ton, right? Like there's a Politico story that is on its face, fine, I think. But the headline is like, Obama administration officials involved in unmasking, right? That headline, like exponentially more people will read that headline in their social media feed than will ever read the story. And so the headlines do not get

sufficient scrutiny. And you have to recognize it. It's all the ones that quote Trump saying a falsehood, right? Trump, pandemic from Wuhan lab, right? Which is Trump did say that in a normal world you would like. You could put that because people would be picking up in their newspaper and most of them would read the story. But that's not how the world works anymore. And so this is going to get completely distorted. It's going to go through the funhouse mirror of

all of this. The question is, what do Democrats do about in the short term? What do we do on the long term? And that question usually, the short term question usually revolves around, can we work the refs as effectively as Republicans work the refs? And I believe the answer to that is no. Why do you think no on that? Because, Serwer of The Atlantic had a very good thread on this. It's something that I spent a lot of time about in my book, which is it's a fundamental thing the right has understood for a long time, which is it is true that most, not all, but most reporters and decision makers are more liberal than the average Republican politician or voter. And they are very sensitive to criticism of liberal bias.

And so attack from the right about their coverage is a reason for self-examination about whether they are giving in to their liberal bias. And an attack from the left is a proof point that they are not giving in to their liberal bias. And an attack from the left is a proof point that they are not giving into the liberal bias. So like you see this all the time in some of the reporting at the New York Times in 2016 and beyond is the critiques from the right get you a meeting with the editor. The critiques from the left get you nothing, right? And there's just like we have to understand that this is a fundamental fact of journalism in this day and age. It does not apply to everyone. There are some who have been very, very good about this.

And I think the post, while not perfect by such imagination, has been more resistant to giving in to the impulses of the right than a lot of other media outlets. It has. But it's there is a question of are we treating the symptoms or are we treating the disease of the conservative advantage in media? And working reporters, I think, in sort of yelling about it is just dealing with the symptoms and not trying to cure the disease, which is why my big impetus is always on building up progressive media that is not dependent on the same economic model and same cultural institutions that traditional journalism is. What I would say to reporters, editors, headline writers, producers, because it's all of them, it's not just reporters. Sometimes it's mostly the other people who are writing headlines and on television. This is much bigger than partisanship, what's happening right now. And when Donald Trump attacks the press, when he attacks the freedom of the press,

reporters stand up for their rights and for the rights of reporters everywhere. And they don't see fighting back as partisan at all. They think that fighting back against attacks on the press is the right thing to do. And I agree with them. It is the right thing to do. So how is that different than an attack on the rule of law, an attack on democracy itself, which is what's happening right now with what Trump is doing? It is not about like Democrats versus Republicans on this. It is much bigger. And they seem to recognize that when it comes to his attacks on press freedoms. All I ask is that they recognize that when it comes to attacks on the rule of law and democracy itself as well. Like I just that that's what I would say, because the last thing we'll talk about on this is like this isn't, you know,

Trump is not just fucking riding solo on the train to crazy town here. He's got a he's got a whole cast of characters with him. He's got every right wing lunatic from Fox to the Federalist. He's got Bill Barr, you know, running an investigation into all this nonsense at the Justice Department. He's got fucking former Twitter troll turned DNI head Rick Grinnell giving Republican senators a list of senior Obama officials, including Biden, about this unmasking bullshit. And now he's got Republican senators like Rand Paul demanding Senate hearings and making the same wild accusations about Obama. Like, what is your level of concern about the consequences of Trump and the Republicans using the full power of government and law enforcement to go after their political enemies? government and law enforcement to go after their political enemies. I am deeply concerned about it. And I'm concerned about it in the here and now. And I'm incredibly concerned about what happens

if Trump wins this election. Because just think about this. We are six months from the election. And in the last couple of weeks here, Trump's incredibly partisan attorney general has reached his hand into the normally independent decision-making process among career prosecutors and dropped charges against Trump's longtime political advisor, Roger Stone, has undone a guilty plea from Trump's national security advisor, and released Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, from jail, even though he met none of the tests for the prisoners, low-risk prisoners who were being let out of prison to avoid the spread of coronavirus. And you have taken a- It's fucking May. It is May of the election year. What the fuck do you think happens in May of 2021 when Trump

never has to face the voters again? And so it is deeply, deeply concerning. In the middle of a pandemic and historic recession, by the way, that is the other backdrop to this. Like Trump's fucking like disregard for basic laws, democracy, everything else is terrifying in a normal time at a time where there's, you know, double digit unemployment and a disease, a virus ravaging the country. And everyone is fucking on edge anyway to have a president who can punish his enemies or his critics and protect his loyalists is fucking terrifying. It is terrifying. Do you remember when it's it's not an accident this is happening now either do you remember when i guess it was 2004 when both bush and carrie were in iowa and those

guys robbed all the banks i don't remember that wow maybe i maybe i made that up maybe that's a plot of a movie either way basically he's using attention on something else to it's we could also do the die hard with a vengeance version of this with the scavenger hunt a lot of analogies today i don't know it's well we had an extra hour to record today so i'm really uh i didn't modulate my caffeine intake appropriately for this um but we did it like that like he's getting away with this because people are focused on other things. And there is the element of slowly raising the temperature of the water with the frog in the pot because in and of themselves, any one of these things individually, absent all the things that came prior with Trump's creeping authoritarianism and attack on the rule of law, would be the greatest scandals in political history. would be the greatest scandals in political history. The attorney general forced the Department of Justice against the wishes of career prosecutors

to drop the charges against a man who had pled guilty to a crime because that man happened to be a close advisor of the president. Like that is what happened. That makes a lot of what happened in Watergate look like jaywalking. But we're just moving on. Right. Because people can't leave their homes.

50. We got right. We're all trying to fucking survive a pandemic. Yeah. Yes. Well, it's not great, Dan. So we so before we talk about the 2020 election, I just want to really quickly talk about Tuesday's special congressional election in the California 25th. Republican Mike Garcia defeated Democratic State Assemblywoman Christy Smith to serve out the remainder of former Congresswoman Katie Hill's term, which ends in January. That also means, though, that Garcia and Smith will face off again in November to determine who will represent the district for the next full two year term in the House. They're still counting ballots since most of them are mailed in. But on Wednesday afternoon, Garcia had a 12-point lead over Christy Smith, who did concede the race. Dan, why do you think this happened and how big of a deal is it?

Why it happened is a great question. And I can take a glass half full or a glass half empty approach to this. You know, after what we just talked about, let's do glass half full for now. OK, let's do glass half full. This is a Mike Garcia. The Republican candidate was a. Perfect fit for the district did not did not have a voting record that could be attacked. Was a fighter pilot. Not an incumbent. Yeah, not attached to the Republican Party in a serious way yet. Yeah.

So he had a great candidate, low turnout, special election in a non-battleground state in the middle of a pandemic. Suggests that perhaps we shouldn't draw too many conclusions about what it means for national politics. And plus, as we will talk about in a second, there was also an election in Wisconsin on the same day, where even though the Democrat lost the race, they outperformed partisan expectations for the district. So the Wisconsin result belies the idea that there's some that garcia's win as part of some sort of national trend in trump's direction now and yeah so i think the concerning part i'll just now i'll go glass half empty even though that's usually not my thing uh the the concerning part is like you know in sort of what you just

talked about is the recognition that we didn't have sort of the surge of voting in this district that both allowed hillary clinton to sort of win this district in 2016 and katie hill win this district in 2018 um now you could say well there was presidential turnout for clinton there was like record high turnout in the midterm for Katie Hill. But like it's it seems like the people specifically who didn't turn out in this district were sort of nonwhite working class what a mostly mail-in election will look like. Does it give you some concern as we head towards the fall about Democrats' ability to organize voters, especially voters who don't always turn out in the middle of a pandemic in a mostly mail-in election? Yes, it gives me great concern. And that's why I tend toward, like, I don't know whether I'm half full, half empty, two-thirds empty, whatever the right way to think about it is, but is I think Democrats would be unwise to ignore the result here.

Because, yes, we have this result in Wisconsin earlier this week, and then the amazing result that happened in the state Supreme Court race last month. But that should also not give us too much comfort because what happened in California in 25 is proof that it is very hard to turn out low propensity voters in a vote by mail election, particularly in places where vote-by-mail is not part of the political culture, right? And so if you think that's hard in California, which has offered vote-by-mail as an option for a couple cycles now, think how hard that's going to be in Pennsylvania, where they're doing that for the first time, Michigan, where it's newer, North Carolina, all these places where this is a real challenge. And even though we were able – Ben Wickler and the Wisconsin Democratic Party proved it could be done.

They have the best organization in the entire country. And there's a lot of – and Wisconsin has a much more ingrained culture of civic participation historically. It has very high turnout. And so like there are real challenges here. And we're going to have to build tremendous organizations in order to do that. Because the only way we're getting to 270 is by getting a lot of low propensity voters in battleground states to vote by mail for the first time, depending on what their in-person options are. So what happened in California 25 is not

predictive of what is going to happen in November 2020, but it is a warning sign that we got a lot of work to do if we're going to be able to succeed in the new environment in which we find ourselves. Yeah. And to end on a hopeful note, it's also proof that like organizing matters and what you do in the course of this election matters. Like everyone should go fucking learn from Ben Wickler and the Wisconsin Democratic Party who were able to organize an entire state to do mostly a mail in election just a couple of weeks before that Supreme Court race. And they were able to do it. And like, you know, we need to have that capacity that that Ben has shown and Wisconsin has shown in every single swing state for whether it's for the presidential, for the Senate, for down ballot races across the country. And that's going to require a ton of help.

And it's going to have to require a ton of people getting involved and being organized. And it's doable, but we've got to fucking do it. I mean, it was tough to get people excited or interested in this race in the 25th. We had Christy Smith on. We tweeted about it a ton. We talked about it on the pod. It is just it is very it was very hard to get people involved and excited. And it should be a fucking warning sign for Democrats that like we have to do the work.

Doesn't matter how unpopular Trump gets. Doesn't matter how much he fucks up this response. We have to do the work. And that's the message that I took from it. Yeah. I was going to say, obviously, easier to get people excited in a presidential race that everyone will know is coming. But we have zero margin for error.

And I've been thinking about this a lot recently as we were sort of dunking on Trump for having this stupid attack on Obama and doing all those things is we as Democrats have to understand that the Republican electoral college and structural advantages are such that Trump can do everything wrong and still win a narrow electoral college margin. We have- Like last time. Exactly. We have zero margin for error here. And so, yes, it'll be a very different situation than a low turnout special in the middle of a pandemic, but it

still means we can't leave no votes on the ground because we're going to need every one of them or we're going to win. Let's talk about 2020. On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced his selections for six unity task forces on climate change, criminal justice reform, economy, education, health care and immigration. According to the Biden campaign, the task forces will, quote, meet in advance of the Democratic National Convention to make recommendations to the DNC platform committee and provide

recommendations to Biden himself. Each task force is co-chaired by one representative chosen by the Biden campaign and one from Bernie Sanders' former campaign. This was part of Bernie's endorsement announcement. If you'll remember a few notable appointments, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Secretary of State John Kerry will co-chair the Climate Change Task Force. The Health Care Task Force will be co-chaired by our guest today, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and former Obama Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It also includes our Crooked Media pal, America Dissected host Abdul El-Sayed. Dan, what was your reaction to the announcement and to the groups? This is a very well executed piece of business by Biden and Bernie.

Like it like they're like these are the people you would want getting AOC, of course, most notably to be in charge of the climate change one. I will note that it really is. It's sort of funny that AOC is a lot in life is to work on climate issues with 70 year old men from Massachusetts. that AOC's lot in life is to work on climate issues with 70-year-old men from Massachusetts. So I think always bringing the party together is a very precarious piece of business. You've got a lot of people on both sides, frankly, rooting for failure on this. You've got people who are still angry at Bernie for 2016. You've got people on the left who are very distrustworthy of Biden. And the way this rolled out was with all the right people and very well done. I think it is a credit to both sides that they were able to do this without any real public bumps in the road yet. And so I think kudos. Yeah. And there's some serious people from the progressive

movement on these on these policy councils, not just AOC, like Varshini Prakash from the Sunrise Movement. Stephanie Kelton's one of Bernie's, you know, economic folks. These are serious progressive activists and progressive leaders on this. And, you know, you'll hear from my conversation with Congresswoman Jayapal. But, you know, everyone seems to be really excited about it. And they're all sort of going into this in a really good faith way, hoping to come out with some sort of exciting policy ideas. Obviously, this can have a policy benefit for Biden. Do you think it can also have a political benefit? Like, can it actually help him with younger progressives who might still be skeptical of his candidacy? Absolutely. I mean, be able like if you are an organizer, I was going to say if you're an organizer having a conversation

at the door, but if you're an organizer having a conversation on Zoom with, you know, a Bernie voter who is skeptical of Biden, particularly because climate change is their main issue, then being able to say that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is working on climate change with the Biden campaign is a very persuasive piece of information that Biden is welcoming to their views and that there is an ability to push him either now or over time in a way that you want more. So yes, I like a policy working group is not going to move all the voters. That could be a huge deal. But I do think it creates an entry point to a lot of folks on the left who have policy based skepticism of Biden. Yeah. And there is some

research that points to that as well. NextGen did a study on young voter attitudes a couple weeks ago, and they talked to Bernie supporters who were less enthusiastic about Joe Biden. And they did find that just clearly stating, not sort of overdoing or over-exaggerating Biden's progressive credentials, but basically by saying, you know, Joe Biden, while he hasn't always been with us, you know, he's listening to progressive leaders. He's working with them and he has adopted some progressive policies. Here's his agenda. Actually moved them towards Biden and made them feel a lot better. And it was introducing new information to these voters that they had never heard before.

So some of this. Now, look, credit to the Biden campaign for doing this because there also is risk here. Right. Like if some of these progressive ideas don't get adopted and some of these people on these on these task forces start complaining, like that's a that's a risk for the Biden campaign, right? There's also a risk, by the way, on the other side, the RNC already attacked these unity task forces for like Biden moving too far to the left.

He's got fucking I saw that like donors, Democratic donors were already like, what are you doing? You're moving too far to the left on this already, which is, you know, probably a signal that he's doing something right. But still, like, it's not without risk to do this. And so I do think the Biden campaign gets a lot of credit for putting these together and being so open to them, just as the progressives who have joined these task forces get a lot of credit for sort of coming to the table and working in good faith. All right, let's talk about how the party's feeling about 2020. I don't know if you've noticed this, Dan, but there are quite a few Democrats out there offering an unlimited supply of absolutely free and very public advice to the

Biden campaign. And many of them are in a mild but, you know, constant state of panic about November. You know, I'm sure that the Biden campaign is absolutely thrilled to get this advice that they did not seem to solicit in any way. You can tell that from their tweets. And I'm sure they were especially tickled when, quote, more than two dozen donors, advisors, activists and party strategists talked to The New York Times as they did for a Wednesday piece on Democratic worrying and said that the Biden campaign, quote, is exhibiting some of the same difficulties that prove troublesome in the primary. Slow decision making processes and multiple power centers across Mr. Biden's sprawling

political network, generational differences between some longtime Biden advisors and younger operatives, inadequate staffing, and a tendency to be reactive in the face of controversy. The Biden folks will, of course, say the former vice president has held a steady lead over Trump, which is now about four and a half points nationally and between about two to three points in some of the key battleground states. Obviously, Democrats will always bare their souls to political reporters, just as sure as the sun comes up. But would you categorize this New York Times story and some of the concerns you've heard as healthy worries or problematic panic? Let's rank it here. I do think you gave an A-plus intro to a segment of the podcast where we're probably going to offer advice to the Biden campaign.

Believe me, I was fully self-aware of what was about to happen. Okay. I mean, it's kind of hard to say, which is everyone like worrying is fine and everyone should be worried, not specifically because of something the Biden campaign has or hasn't done yet, but because this is the most important election in history, the literal fate of the planet and democracy are on the line. And Trump has a ton of money and a propaganda network and already exhibit a willingness to break laws to win the election so yeah like there's reason to worry i think how that worry manifests itself is in some cases the advice has been constructive in some cases it has not been in some cases the advice has been great in some cases, it has not been. In some cases, the advice has been great. In some

cases, the advice has been bad. But I think this is not to say I think the Biden campaign is doing everything right and that there is no changes need to be made. Of course, that is not the case. There's never been a campaign that did everything right, whether it's our campaign in 08, our campaign in 12, any of them, right? But I do think we have to give them a little space to build up to the general election. And don't grade them for what they're doing right now and panic about it. Let's see where they are in a month. Because the transition from a primary to a general is really hard. You are doing massive hiring. You are scaling up. You're trying to preserve the culture and the processes that put you in a place to win to begin with while adding a whole bunch of new people, many of whom you have never met, many of whom worked very hard to defeat their new boss.

You are like a primary to general are very different, particularly in a communications capacity, like what your strategies are, who you reach, what like your audience is. You've just done a two years worth of polling on Democratic voters who now you have to do like you have to learn about who your target voters are. And so it's really hard to do anyway. Biden campaign is doing this in a pandemic. They have a brand new campaign manager who basically, I think, got to go to one meeting at the headquarters and hasn't gotten to be in the same room with her candidate or her staff since then. And they are doing a lot of things.

They're already – I know for a fact, having talked to them, they're doing a lot of things that people are already suggesting they should be doing. Now, does that mean that they're doing it as fast as they can be or as fast as they should be? We're going to find that out soon. And so I think worrying, as with all things, everyone should be worried. But panic, it's not time to panic yet. Panic is never good.

The advice to panic is bad. Yeah, you always say this, that worry about everything, panic about nothing. that's that's where that's where i am that's where i am now and i would just say like i have worked with jen o'malley dylan for forever like she and i worked in i was doing this i was like like thinking about this this morning we worked together in the 2002 cycle the 2004 cycle the, the 2008 cycle, the 2010 cycle, the 2012 cycle. And so we've done a gazillion campaigns together.

And she would be my number one draft pick to run a campaign. And she would especially be my number one draft pick to run a campaign in a situation where you had to try to figure out how to do organizing in a world where most of it will take place online. Like she is like, she's got a huge task in front of her, a lot of impediments, but like before you decide to like layer a verdict on the campaign, you got to give it a little bit of time to ramp up to the general. And then let's see what they've built for the general and what their strategy is. There've been a lot of, there've been some promising signs, I think, that we should give them as much credit for as people have been dinging them for stuff they haven't done yet.

Well, a lot of the concern and advice has been focused on their digital strategy. Our good friends David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Liz Smith, all published op eds in The New York Times, sort of urging the Biden campaign to up their digital game and increase Biden's visibility. Why do you think everyone's so focused on the digital strategy? And what advice do you think has been good? I think everyone's focused on it because we've all convinced ourselves that that's why Trump won in 2016. And it is the most visible manifestation for political junkies of how campaigns operate, right? Like we all live on Twitter. And if you spent the 2020 Democratic primary on Twitter, all you saw was Biden getting dunked on 24-7 by everyone else, right? Obviously, Bernie Sanders had this massive digital operation. Elizabeth Warren did a bunch of smart things.

Buttigieg was everywhere. Kamala Harris did it. But like all these candidates were doing all these things and you didn't see Biden doing it. Now, Biden still won two out of every three Democratic primary votes. So that is – it's what we all care about because it's what we all see. It also was definitely a weaker part of his campaign in the primary. Right. And it matters more in a general, and it certainly matters more in a general in a pandemic. And they have some very talented people. And it matters more because

in a primary, it's easier to reach Democratic voters who are more activists anyway. More activist people vote in a Democratic primary. And in a general election, you're trying to reach folks who don't necessarily always turn out or pay close attention to the news, which means that it's sort of you need more, you need to have a better digital strategy to actually reach those voters where they are. That's right. That's right. You can, a Rachel Maddow interview, a Pod Save America interview, just to pick something out of a hat, being a good sort of the New York Times are all phenomenal ways to reach Democratic primary voters. They are like these are people who are deciding to engage very actively in the political process.

In a general election, you're trying, as you point out, you're trying to reach people who do not consume that political media at anywhere near the level, if at all. Right. And that's a much harder task. You have to figure out who those audiences are. Go figure out how to get in front of them. You have to. And you can't just do it by doing a series of interviews from your campaign headquarters or your basement or wherever else. It's a much more complicated piece of business. And so they have to build it up. They are massively behind Trump on that, on a whole host of measures. And they got work to do there. I think, by all indications from what they have

told me, there was a big story in the Post over the weekend about some of their hiring, is they're moving on it. Will they be able to move fast enough to build the operation they need? That's the question. But it's really to have the answer to that. So the other big concern that's out there is that Biden hasn't been able to leave his house because of the pandemic. Jen, who you just talked about, Amalie Dillon, she dismissed some of the complaints about this to the Associated Press. She said, quote, voters don't give a shit about where he's filming from. What they care about is what he's saying and how we connect with them. What did you think about that? I think that that that like there is definitely this obsession in,

within the context of a lot of this advice culture about the, about Biden only filming from this one room in the basement, which I think is where it is, or we've just decided it's the basement. We've just called it the basement. Yeah. Just to be, just to be projected somewhere.

Yeah. But from this one room. And I think Jen is right that no one gives a shit, whether he's doing it from his basement, his kitchen, in his yard, because the only people who know he does 10 interviews in a row from his basement are the people in politics who watch 10 interviews. This is the thing we always forget is you do 10 different interviews not to reach the same people 10 times.

It gives you 10 opportunities to reach different people. And so many people have only seen Biden with that bookshelf behind him once, if at all. So yes, she's correct about that. Separate point is if Trump is out in the country campaigning, like visiting factories, going to some sort of quasi socially distanced rally, and Biden can only speak directly to a camera from his home, that's a huge advantage to Trump. Biden is also, and we should be just, for all the people, free advice. I know this because my parents live in Delaware, not far from Biden's TV studio, that Biden is abiding by the stay at home order in Delaware. It would not be appropriate or good behavior

or anything that we would applaud for him to violate that and be like, you know what? Sorry, Governor Carney. I'm going campaigning. Like when that order is lifted, the question will be, what does he do that gets

sort of the mix of images and energy that puts him on par with what Trump gets or closer to what Trump gets? But like right now, it's not a solvable problem. Yes, he does some filming from his backyard. Now that looks very nice. But I don't think that's ultimately particularly

consequential. The bigger thing is when when can he get out there? And that is that is not something that he or his campaign controls right now. Last sort of meta question about this, like, how do you think Jen and the Biden campaign should deal with all of this unsolicited advice that will come from Democrats, that will come from us. Like, what did we do in 2008? Obviously, it was an environment where Twitter hadn't taken off yet. So that helped. But like, what were some of the lessons? Because I didn't field any of this shit, but I'm sure you did in 2008. parties or even like going to a bar and running into a bunch of reporters or our friends who worked on the Hill or the Clinton campaign who would sort of tell us like what, you know, would

tell us what a terrible job we were doing or just like spit conventional wisdom in our face. And one of the truths of Twitter now is you can't escape it, right? You can't, there's nowhere you can move where you're not going to get that all the time. The only thing I would say, and this is not really specific to Biden as it is to every campaign at any level, is one, if there's good advice, take it, right? If there's bad advice, ignore it. And you're going to make, you got to, only you know what your strategy is. And there are ideas offered that ladder up

to your theory of the case of how you win. And like that stuff is good, right? A lot of it is based in an alternative theory of the case that is not related to yours. But the bigger thing is, don't spend a lot of effort trying to win the conversation right now. Just try to win the election, right? That's a big thing you see campaigns do. And we fell victim to this in 2012 a couple times. And I'm sure 2008 too is like, you want to, like it, it is personally painful when people you respect suggest publicly, privately, publicly, I guess, primarily, but that you're not doing as good a job as you could be doing. Like that is painful. And you know, you, you know, and believe you're doing a better job than they think you are because they don't know all these things you're doing. So it's like,

we need to go out and put on a dog and pony show to show we're doing a better job than they think you are because they don't know all these things you're doing. So it's like, we need to go out and put on a dog and pony show to show we're doing a good job. And there is some value in that for dealing with- The media narrative. For me, well, I was even going to say, well, they're all related with donors, right? With potential endorsers. Which is very closely connected with the media narrative. Yeah, they're all related. And we certainly do that sometimes. But ultimately, you're sort of better off putting your head down, doing your job and being able to show results a month from now or two months from now than in like trying to convince everyone that you were right and they're wrong.

Yeah. And I would say like on the advice giver side right it's not i mean we talked about like sort of democratic strategists giving advice and we give advice but like we also live in a culture where um voters have become pundits and basically everyone will be giving advice and i do think all of us who will continue to give advice to the campaign, criticize the campaign, do whatever. Like we have to decide whether we want to be pundits or organizers in this in this race. And like you have to have to decide, like, is it more important to be right about the Biden campaign or is it more important to defeat Donald Trump? Because like we can sit around and criticize them all day long and say what they're doing is wrong and some of what they're going to do is going to be wrong.

Right. And they're going to deserve some of this criticism. But we can focus on that all the time. And then if Joe Biden loses, we can sit around and say, oh, yeah, we were all right. Or we can be like this. The outcome of this election is just as much on us as it is on Joe Biden. Like we have a responsibility to affect the outcome here, not just by giving advice to the Biden campaign, which they may or may not listen to, but organizing voters, getting people excited, like all the stuff that, you know, David Plouffe talks about all the time, sharing content, you know, promoting Joe Biden's policies, talking about why Donald Trump is bad, talking about why the stakes of the election are important, finding new ways to reach voters in the middle of the pandemic. Like that is a responsibility that all of us have just as much as Joe Biden has a responsibility to run a good campaign.

Like everything is on the fucking line right now. The whole country is on the line. So like it is on each one of us to like do whatever we can to help this man win the presidency. Right. And that goes far beyond just giving him advice and criticizing him on Twitter, which is OK. But like, just remember what the main goal is here. Yeah, it is like sometimes it's OK to put down the pen and pick up an oar and start rowing this damn boat, right? Yes. But it's also like-

As Barack Obama would say. Like there are degrees of this, right? Like we're obviously, this is our job. We do a podcast and so we talk about the campaign. So there will be advice in there and thoughts and critiques and some of it will be terribly wrong and hopefully some of it will be advice in there and thoughts and critiques and some of it will be terribly wrong and hopefully some of it will be right. But people are – I was thinking about some of the response online to Pluffin Axe's op-ed in the New York Times for the Biden campaign. And there was a lot of anger that they wrote the op-ed.

And I can – like look, if I was on the – like we are 100% biased towards Pluffin Axe. Neither of us would be anywhere in our career without them and they're two of the smartest people of course we've ever known and like i want all the advice they'll give me right on anything right like if i was buying a car i'd want pluff and axe's advice right like it's so the maybe not access but definitely pluffs the the um the same it was i think it was the day before that op-ed came out, we were all part of a fundraiser that David Plouffe helped host and moderate that raised a million dollars for the Biden campaign. So you can do both, right?

You can offer advice and be constructive. And, um, but like that you, your worry can be channeled in multiple ways, but channeling it toward taking channeling anxiety into activism is going to be the healthiest and most productive way to navigate this very treacherous and very painful election cycle. 2016 mostly is that we focus probably too much on punditry and like prediction of what was going to happen and maybe not enough on what should happen and what to do to make that happen you know and and that's why like everyone go to vote save america sign up like we are going to have plenty of opportunities for people to contribute to hopefully a Joe Biden victory. But it is going to require a ton of work. And worry is good because worry you can channel into action. Panic is not good because panic just makes you freak out and not do anything. And so, you know,

we were not going to talk about bedwetting again. But part of the whole bedwetting thing is like it doesn't do much good to freak out over a poll and to talk to people about it. You will freak out about polls. I will certainly freak out about polls. But the answer when you see a poll that's bad or when you hear some bad news about the campaign is to call up a few more fucking people. Right. Reach out to a few more of your friends. Try to get a few more people registered. more fucking people, right? Reach out to a few more of your friends. Try to get a few more people registered. Like we've just got to get into this rhythm of when there is bad news, when there is criticism, that it is then channeled into concrete action and not all of us just like waiting for the

Biden campaign to do something right. Right. Because like we can only have so much control over that. We have a lot of control over what we do and how we organize. So go to votesaveamerica.com and sign up and we'll have some great stuff soon that we'll be rolling out. When we come back, I will talk to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. I'm joined now by the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the National Health Policy Chair for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, and the U.S. Representative for Washington's 7th District, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. It's so great to be with you.

So I want to start with the HEROES Act, which is the $3 trillion stimulus bill Nancy Pelosi introduced this week. You have been trying to incorporate something called the Paycheck Guarantee Act into this bill, but so far haven't had any luck. Could you explain to people what the Paycheck Guarantee Act is? Yes. So the Paycheck Guarantee Act essentially says we have to stop mass unemployment, we have to keep paychecks in people's pockets, and we have to help businesses be able to not shutter through this crisis. And so the federal government would actually guarantee the paychecks of people

up to a salary cap of $90,000 in my proposal, of people up to a salary cap of 90,000 in my proposal. And businesses would just get that through a three-month grant initially based on whatever their revenue loss is. So if a business is operating partially, but they've got a 70% revenue loss, there would be a 70% grant to cover payroll and benefits up to 90,000 and to cover a 25% operating cost. John, this is something that would go directly from the IRS to the business. So very streamlined, very efficient.

So we don't have to deal with the banks like we're dealing with right now. Exactly. No winners and losers, right? Because a bank isn't going to decide based on their relationship with a business, whether or not you're going to be able to have access to some money which may or may not be forgivable and has all kinds of things that you can't meet in terms of really making it work for your business. So

we've seen a tremendous failure of the PPP program. It was very good ideas but I would liken this a little bit to what we did with airlines in CARES 1. You know, in the airlines package, we had money that went straight from the federal government to the airline to pay for paychecks, benefits. And of course, if we do that, we don't kick 35 million, a projected 35 million people off of their healthcare when they lose their jobs. And we don't have to do expensive COBRA subsidies to cover that healthcare. So at the end of the day, we'd also make it retroactive, by the way, so that we could recover paychecks. So people who had been laid off after March 1st, due to the pandemic, would be able to come back on to their paychecks, and it would be guaranteed. It would stimulate demand because, you know, if you know you're

getting your paycheck, and you know you're not not going onto the unemployment system, which by the way, is overwhelmed with the number of claims that we're dealing with, you literally are in a place where you're not going to, you don't know if you can put food on the table. You don't know if you can make your rent or mortgage payment. So it stimulates consumer demand at the same time. Simple idea. Most countries around the world in Europe have already implemented it, but also South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia have all put this in place to stop mass unemployment, to stop people from going onto the unemployment insurance system, to keep the productive relationship between workers and their employers in place, and to allow businesses to actually weather the crisis and be ready to go back once it's time.

So it sounds like a great idea. What are the reasons that democratic leadership has given you for why they did not include it in this bill? You know, it's all over the place. I would say that, you know, most of it has to do with how you think about the cost of this. I have gotten, you know, when you don't have legislative text, you can't get a cost estimate on the bill. And legislative text doesn't get written unless leadership prioritizes the legislative text. So that has been one challenge. But I didn't let

that stop me. I went ahead and did a full white paper. I got Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve Chair, on board. I got Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, on board. I got Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, on board. I got the entire spectrum of the Democratic caucus on board from conservative members, frontline members, on board with the idea. And I had Zandi, who's been really great on this, and nobody would call him. I was going to say, we used to quote him all the time in 2008 on the campaign because he was like, he had advised Republicans before. He has. He's advised McCain. But, you know, he also, I mean, he is a very well-respected economist.

But, you know, he also, I mean, he is a very well-respected economist. And I wanted to have, I had some estimates from some other more liberal-leaning economists and groups about the cost of this. But I wanted to have somebody who was respected on both sides do an estimate for me. And so he estimated the cost of the proposal. We went back and forth, you know, on a number of different pieces. And his estimate is that the entire package is about a trillion bucks for 36 million workers. But then when you look at the fact that in the HEROES Act, we are expanding unemployment insurance for everybody. That is costed at a significant amount. It's over $300 billion, $350 billion probably. So if you include, if you understand that unemployment insurance costs will go down because of this program, you automatically knock about $300 billion off of that trillion. at COBRA subsidies, which again, we're doing in the HEROES Act, that knocks off about $250 billion because you don't have to do COBRA subsidies if you're doing this. And this is frankly far cheaper.

Now we're down to under $500 billion. There's a sort of a half loaf measure called the ERTC, the Employee Retention Tax Credit, that's been put into the HEROES Act. It was in CARES 1. It's been expanded. I will tell you, very few businesses, and certainly small and medium-sized businesses, have trouble using these tax credits to get money back because you've got to get accountants. There are lots of restrictions. But that program, Zandi estimated, is about $350 billion. You knock that off, now you're down to $150 billion. You're not pushing people onto Medicaid. You're actually bringing taxes in for state and local governments when people get their paychecks and they continue to pay their benefits. You're doing work for

pensions. You don't allow for unions to die because all of a sudden they've got nobody in jobs, and so your membership goes down. So there's all kinds of benefits that ultimately, I think, if this were to be put in, you could even take the stimulus checks. We're doing another round of $1,200 for a stimulus check to a huge number of people. You could cut that number or you could take the entire amount of stimulus checks, but you could target it to the people at the bottom of the scale

so that there are still workers who may be getting paychecks, but 40% of people who have lost their jobs, according to Jay Powell's testimony two days ago, earn under $40,000. So they still may need some assistance. And you could target our safety net systems and other stimulus checks and rent and mortgage relief, those kinds of things, to people who desperately need it, whether or not they have a paycheck. So it would be a much more targeted approach to how we deal with this. And I actually think the cost argument makes no sense because every economist that I've talked to says, this is actually cheaper, not just in the moment, but also down the road because it helps businesses to continue to make it. And it puts our economy on

a quicker recovery track and it stimulates demand for all of the things that people might buy if they had a paycheck coming in. Yeah, so I did hear some liberal economists say, OK, well, if we have this expanded unemployment insurance where people, average workers are still making maybe 100 percent of their wages through unemployment insurance, plus COBRA. And if employers are furloughing employees, it's not totally severing the relationship. So maybe expanded unemployment plus COBRA is effectively the same thing as this. What do you and the other argument is, and maybe that's easier, because we already have an employment system set up and COBRA set up, so you wouldn't have to set up something new. What do you think about that argument? This is you've hit on one of the big tensions for why it's so challenging to get a new idea into into the mix. Right. Because people feel this tension between and we felt it during the first several CARES Act packages.

You know, let's do something immediately that responds. And we felt it during the Recovery Act. That was the whole problem. Exactly. And we should learn from the, you know, we should learn. I know. Believe me. And I do think that there's a difference in stages too, when you have to respond immediately to a crisis. So I put the first three cares packages into that category. We had to respond immediately. You use whatever systems you can, you, You expand unemployment insurance. This is not about UI versus a paycheck guarantee. That's really not what it is. You need different things to come in to meet different needs. Governor Inslee, fantastic Employment Security Department, really working hard to process these claims and doing much better than most other states. I would say we've processed about 50 to 70% of the claims that have come in, depending on how you look at it. But you know, my constituents,

most of my constituents still haven't gotten their money, but the claims are being processed. That's not true in Florida. It's not true in Texas. And even here in Washington State, the system is just overwhelmed. So that's one problem with the UI system is we're putting too many people in there. Some of these systems have COBOL as their operating platform. They were built in the 70s. But the other is, what happens to the psyche of people when you push them on to unemployment insurance? Most people have not ever accessed the unemployment insurance system. They also then, when they get put on COBRA, they get put on Medicaid, they get put on any number

of things, you have to navigate each of those systems. And what we've learned about our safety net systems is we lose a lot of people when they have to navigate those systems, and particularly low-income folks and people of color who really have a tough time. I mean, our office is flooded with calls trying to just help people of all kinds, not just folks of color. But that is a real problem in navigating the systems. Also, when you push people onto unemployment, what we know about racial disproportionality in this country is that it's baked into our systems. What happens when somebody is trying to get back into getting a job? The people that have the hardest time because of workplace discrimination and discrimination against workers of color are low-income folks and people of color

in terms of getting jobs at the other end. But I want to make a messaging point to you because you are such a political animal and the show is a political animal show. Democrats should be the party of keeping workers in their jobs, of supporting a capitalist economy, of continuing to show that this productive relationship between workers and employers is one of the best things that we have anywhere in the world. And so my belief is we can reclaim this recovery by saying Democrats are the party of keeping our economy going, keeping our economy strong by preserving the ability for people to stay in their jobs instead of pushing them to safety net systems, reducing the strain on the safety net systems, and then actually targeting the need for safety net to those who need it the

most. That seems like a winning political message to me, rather than, hey, let's push everybody onto safety net systems and hope for the best. This I have been saying something similar about this. But so here's my speaking of politics. Here's my sort of broader question about the Heroes Act. Trump and McConnell have called this bill dead on arrival. What is the best strategy going forward? Like should should Democrats try to compromise with Republicans to get some kind of stimulus passed again, knowing that so many people are struggling, even if it's far less than what's in this bill, even without the Paycheck Guarantee Act? Or is this, you know, should Democrats just take some version of the HEROES Act or maybe including the Paycheck Guarantee to the voters in November?

And this is our platform. This is what we're running on. And we give the voters a choice. How do you sort of see this play out? Yeah. So everything depends on, you know, what we think we need to do and what we think we can do. I mean, those are the two factors in politics all the time. So, you know, in terms of what we need to do, my hope was that this Democratic-only bill, because that's what maybe we'll get one or two Republican votes, I don't know,

but it's going to be a Democrats-only bill, because that's what maybe we'll get one or two Republican votes, I don't know. But it's going to be a Democrats only bill should be the vision that we put out to the American people that is that is evergreen for this moment, to push for what we need to have a very clear defined message about what we need in this country. And to me, it would be yes, we should fund our state and local governments. But state and local governments is something that politicians understand. Regular people don't see why that puts money in their pockets. So, you know, I understand that all the governors want us to vote for the Heroes Act and all of that. But I'm trying to figure out how do I tell my constituents that their life is going to get better? And a $1,200 stimulus check is not going to do it as much as I love that.

It's not a recurring event. $200 stimulus check is not going to do it as much as I love that. It's not a recurring event. It's not. So I think we should have used this bill and we still could, we still could, if there was the will, use this bill to say, we think that there are, you know, sort of four or five critical pieces that, that we're going to put into this bill. Number one, that we, we do fund our state and local governments. We've already done that. That's not really a messaging point. Number two, that we have a way to stop mass unemployment, that people are going to continue to get their paychecks. That is my paycheck guarantee act.

Number three, that we address health care so that not a single person in America is going to have to worry about the cost if they want to go for COVID-related testing, treatment, et cetera. We can't be throwing people off of healthcare. We've got a lot of ways to do that, but the bill doesn't do that right now. Number four, that we have a comprehensive testing, contact tracing, treatment plan,

and that it is tying state governments to CDC guidance before they reopen. Because that's one of the things that's happening is people are reopening too quickly. Some of that is economic pressure. But a lot of that is, you know, just negligence and intransigence. And so tie the ability of some states that aren't listening to CDC guidance, luckily, that's not my governor, but he's feeling pressure too. Everybody is. Tie that to something like Donna Shalala and Jamie Raskin's Reopening America Act. You know, have a real plan that you put in there around how America reopens. And then finally, yes, invest money in our health systems, our testing, contact tracing, you know, get the defense production, find an end round, end run around the Defense Production Act so that we can actually manufacture the things that we need here, not just leave the president to figure out how to use it incorrectly.

So to me, those are the things that should be in this bill. And that allows us to say a very clear vision that we are responding with scale and that we are responding with certainty, that people will have certainty, that I can go back to any one of my constituents, any one of my businesses and say, you know what, you're a small or medium-sized business. We're not picking winners and losers. Everybody gets this paycheck guarantee so that your business can survive. If you're a worker,

everyone's gonna keep getting a paycheck and you will have a job at the end of this because that anxiety is killing people. I mean, I see it every day and it's just devastating. And we've got a real plan on the public health side. Public health and economy are not trade-offs. They're one and the same thing. One and the same thing. Job number one is to beat the virus. If we want to beat the virus, you got to keep people at home. If you want to keep people at home, you have to remove the economic pressure. And you got to have a plan for them to go back to work safely. So the Biden campaign announced yesterday that you're co-chairing the Unity Task Force on

healthcare with former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. What made you decide to accept this role? And what are you guys hoping to achieve? Well, you know, I've been, healthcare has been my thing for a while. I'm the lead sponsor of Medicare for all in the house. I've been on your show to talk about this before, why I think healthcare is so essential. And I think the pandemic has showed us, anybody that wanted to argue with me before that employer covered healthcare was such a great choice. And I would say, but if you lose your job, you've got no choice. Well, I don't need to make a theoretical argument now. I was obviously a huge supporter of Senator Sanders. That's the vision I ascribe to. But there is no

progress that's possible with Donald Trump in the White House. And I think that I need to do everything I can to help Vice President Biden find a set of truly progressive policy platforms and ones that he can authentically push forward because, you know, people can smell inauthenticity in politicians, as you know. He's got to believe in it. And I am somebody who is very progressive, but I also understand the political process. And so I want to try to help the vice president to craft that set of policy proposals. And I want to help move the Not Me Us movement even further forward, because I think we've done an amazing job and Senator Sanders did an amazing job. job and Senator Sanders did an amazing job. We have to get young people and immigrant communities and some of the communities that Senator Sanders really inspired to feel like the Vice President is gonna fight for them. And I had a 15-minute conversation with the Vice President before I decided to

endorse him. I mean I was always going to endorse him, but the question is how enthusiastically, you know, what do you do? What role do you play? And so I wanted to be able to be enthusiastic about him. And I needed a conversation with him to just really understand and hear from him. And it was a very good conversation. I do believe he's very open to these ideas. And I think, you know, when they asked me to co-chair the task force, it seemed like an incredible opportunity to really be at the table and to bring the voices of people that I've been hearing from our movement. It's not really my voice. It's like all the people that we've been hearing to the table and to help craft some real policy proposals that will make

a difference. And it's a pretty amazing task force. I mean, you know, I would have picked some of those people to help figure out the problem. So Dr. Morthy, obviously, is, you know, we had a wonderful initial conversation. We're having another one today. We're going to, you know, have our first meeting of the task force on Saturday. Don Berwick on our side, Dr. El-Said, Abdul El-Said, 3K Henry. I mean, there's some, you know, really wonderful people on this task force and on all of them. And I just hope that this can be the unity platform that actually moves us forward, not just saying showcase, you know, not just like for show, but it actually helps us put together some policy proposals that do allow people to have some certainty around a real health care system that they can count on.

Just to nerd out for a second on the policy. So Biden's plan, I guess I would describe it as robust public option, more generous subsidies, and now, you know, lowering the Medicare age to 60. So obviously, he's probably not going to just embrace your Medicare for all bill or Bernie's Medicare for all bill. But in the middle between where he is now and where you guys are, what kind of policy ideas? And I realize that this is going to have to be the work of the task force, but off the top of your head, what are some policy ideas you think are on healthcare that could be realistic for Biden to embrace? Well, I think we should start with the principles, right? Before we get into the

policies, there's some things he can do that are really technical that will make a huge difference. There are some things he can do that were in the Affordable Care Act that have never been activated. But if the principle is, for example, to, and I'm, you know, I really want the task force to do its work. So anybody who might be listening to this, this is not, I really want to be allowed to let the process work. But if we can come to some agreement around a national health insurance proposal within a certain number of years, that would be a huge step forward. It wouldn't be Medicare for all immediately. If we can come to some agreements around how to cut costs, because you can't, it's about access, it's about coverage, and it's about

cost. And it's about the services, how comprehensive is it, you know, the quality of care. Those are all pieces that I think we can make significant progress on. And perhaps if we leave behind the label of Medicare for All, which obviously I'm attached to, because I've been pushing this bill, but it's less important to me, you know, I don't, maybe we have to change the name for whatever it is that we come up with so that we're not getting into this flashpoint argument. But I think that if we're going to, for example, if we're not going to be able to move to to having everybody covered through a public plan, are there ways that we can ensure that if somebody does lose their employment, that they automatically do get covered? I mean, what are the ways that we can start to move us in the right direction? You know, can we look at the Medicare system

and really think about some of the benefits of it, some of the problems with it. I mean, I think Medicare Advantage is a problem. And I don't know if the Biden people will agree with me there. But you know, I think there are ways to strengthen the comprehensive set of services that are provided through Medicare. I think there are ways to perhaps, you know, we could look at ideas around, should employers offer a public option type plan as one of their options? They can opt into it. So I think there are all kinds of things and, you know, I'm very open to what those might be. We've had an initial conversation sort of with, you know, with Don Berwick, who used to be the administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Abdul and I. And, you know, and I hope that we can have a structure that allows for some of the best ideas to come forward and we can debate them.

Maybe there are things we've never thought about that other people have thought about. So I'm really excited about it. I'm looking forward to it. It's not going to be the easiest thing in the world. It sounds exciting. Yeah. When you're an immigrant who came to the United States at 16 by yourself, you're used to pushing boulders up mountains. So I think that is a flex my rosy muscles. Last question on this. You know, you were talking about how you hear so much from sort of progressive activists. How confident are you that progressive support, support and enthusiasm even from younger voters, progressive voters is a challenge. And I always wonder, is it is it policy based? Is it something else? What do you think about that?

It's a lot of things. And I'll tell you what I said to the vice president. You know, people have to I mean, the one gift that he has is he is very authentic. One gift that he has is he is very authentic. I think people really, you know, he has an ability to connect with people on a human level that very few people do. And so I think that's a great strength. But he does need to have a vision that isn't just rooted in, here's what I did, you know, with President Obama. It's got to recognize that there were structural issues that were in this country, even during the Obama administration, before Trump came in. That is what Trump exploited, is the fact that people feel left behind by government. They feel like government, you know, everybody in the

administration, Congress, everything, that they are more interested in fighting for special interests than they are in fighting for real people. And I think that if Joe Biden has a set of really expansive policy proposals that recognize the pain that young people feel, you know, lecturing to young people is not a good idea. I'm the mom of a 23 year old. I can tell you that perfectly well. I'm also the mom, stepmom of a 40 year old. And it continues, you know, lecturing is not the way forward and certainly not when they get to a certain age and so you you have to I think they're right I think I'm with our young people that we are we are to use a technical term screwing them I mean we're leaving them with a planet that's burning. We're leaving them with no

healthcare, no real chance at a job, tons of debt on college. And so, you know, what are we telling them? And I said to the vice president that this is not just about winning in November of 2020. It's also about what happens in 2024. Because if the next president, including a Democratic president, does not dramatically fix some of the income inequality, the racial inequity, the gender inequity, the healthcare inequity, then we will continue to leave the door open for another Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is both a symptom and a cause. And so he really needs to be able to fix some of these things and have an answer to young people,

which is not, you know, you guys are too naive, you know, you're too, you know, you don't understand, that's not what we can do. No, if politics is the art of the possible, then it is our job as activists, as organizers, and as elected officials to make the case for what is possible and to lead people through. People are looking for leadership. They're not looking for somebody to say, yeah, I did that 10 years ago or 20 years ago. You know, I was a champion back then.

Look, we're in a crisis. And we need people to recognize the pain and the devastation, the suffering that people have, and then be able to really say, I'm going to fight for you. And here's how I'm going to fight for you. Then I think people will come out. If it's half baked, if it's not, you know, people are like, oh, I'm worried about the, you know, to this or whatever. Not, you know, people will like, oh, I'm worried about the, you know, this or whatever. Not, you know, people will sniff that right away and they won't go for Trump, but they'll stay home. And that will up and down the ticket.

Being a wet blanket has never been a winning political message. That's right. You guys, Obama didn't run on no, we can't. He ran on yes, we can. Well, look, the good news is um you know i have been some of the stuff you're saying right now i've been hearing joe biden say this recently more and more over the last couple weeks so um it it seems like you're you're getting through which is which is good news um thank you so much for joining us today please come back anytime it's always a

a pleasure to speak with you well you you guys wonderful. Thank you for the job you're doing on the podcast, and thanks for everything that you've contributed through your time in government and public service as well. Well, thank you, and stay safe. Thank you. Take care. Thanks to Congresswoman Jayapal for joining us, and

have a great weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket 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 Somanator, 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.