Pod Save America - "OK, Groomer."

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Democrats navigate immigration, student debt relief, and gas prices with an eye on the midterms, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler joins to discuss the strategy behind some of the big wins in his state’s local elections this week, and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party has taken to calling everyone who doesn’t agree with them a pedophile.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Democrats navigate immigration, student debt relief, and gas prices with an eye on the midterms. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler joins to discuss the strategy behind some of the big wins in his state's local elections this week. And later, we'll talk about how the MAGA wing of the Republican Party has taken to calling everyone who doesn't agree with them a pedophile. But first, more guest announcements for our upcoming live shows on May 5th in Chicago and May 6th in St. Louis. We'll be joined by Hysteria host Alyssa Mastromonaco.

How great is that? So good. So exciting. Tickets are on sale now for these cities and more. Get yours at crooked.com slash events. Another exciting development. Ira and Louis let me be a guest host on Keep It this week. How about that?

How did that happen? I don't, I think, I think we forced them. Okay. No, I got an invitation. So that, it just happened. And you know what? It was great. We talked about the Grammys.

We talked about Bruce Willis, Sarah Palin, Elon Musk. I saw the show notes on that. And I didn't take he was either Bruce Willis or a Grammys expert. So I was sort of surprised you got Sarah Palin. Yes, I understand why that happened. Dan, I did some prepping. I did some prepping for Keep It. I watched Die Hard again because Emily hadn't seen it.

I watched the Grammys on Sunday, the entire Grammys. So yeah, I was deep into it. And when you got the invitation, were you concerned it was a trap? And that's what I said to them. I replied and thought it was a trap because it came on April Fool's Day. Oh, interesting. Which would have been a great prank. But anyway, I did it.

It was fun. New episodes of Keep It Drop every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Shirley Ralph was also on that episode. Way more important than me. It was a fantastic episode. Go check it out. All right, let's get to the news. On Tuesday's pod, we talked about the very happy news that Katonji Brown-Jackson will

be the next Supreme Court justice. I believe the vote was just held today, Thursday, 53-47. She's heading to the Supreme Court. But today we're going to talk about three developments in Washington on issues that will be a bit more challenging for Democrats as we approach the midterms. Immigration, student debt and gas prices. Lucky you, Dan, you don't get the you don't get the happy Katonji Brown Jackson episode. You get this pile of shit. Everyone, I think, has an allotted amount of news luck. And I think I use my entire balance for 2022 with the Madison Cawthorn orgy party. Yeah. But this morning we woke up and there is a great Washington Post interview with Donald

Trump that we will talk about. So that's for us. That's for you. That's for you, Dave. Thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you. All right. Let's start with immigration, which is back in the headlines after the $10 billion bipartisan COVID funding deal we were talking about on Tuesday fell apart the next day over the Biden administration's decision to end a Trump-era pandemic rule known as Title 42, which has allowed both administrations

to turn away asylum seekers at the border for public health reasons. Senate Republicans wanted to vote on an amendment that would reinstate Title 42 as part of the COVID funding. Chuck Schumer said no, and now the bill can't pass. Meanwhile, the combination of Title 42 ending and a spring surge of migrants at the border has drawn Republicans to Fox News cameras like a Cawthorn to a Coke orgy. Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington, D.C. Now, the leading paper in Washington has as a slogan, democracy dies in darkness. Joe and Kamala want darkness on the disaster that they have created.

and Kamala want darkness on the disaster that they have created. What we are seeing is a systematic attempt by the Biden administration to essentially destroy our southern border and empower the cartels. This is gonna cause massive injury to migrants, cartels empowered, Americans endangered, fentanyl pouring across our border, all because the secretary refuses to do his job. This is an unexcusable dereliction of duty by the Secretary of Homeland Security. It is an impeachable act. I have to say that I think Ted Cruz really swerved out of his lane to try to hit the Washington Post in that darkness. What was he doing there? What do you think about Biden's decision to end Title 42? in there. What do you think about Biden's decision to end Title 42? He should have done it a long time ago. Any policy that was authored and pushed by Stephen Miller is a policy that a Democratic

president should not have. I think it was about a year ago, we had Dara Lind of ProPublica, the immigration reporter on, I interviewed her, and she talked about the fact that a year ago, that policy, a lot of people thought that policy should go away because it was, it didn't make a lot of sense. There were obviously very serious moral questions about it, substantive questions, legal questions. And so getting rid of it was the right substantive decision without a question. But it comes with some real political risk as we're about to talk about. I think for all the reasons you just cited, that's correct. I would also add just for public health reasons, right?

There's absolutely at this point, no public health rationale for expelling asylum seekers as every country in the world has now demonstrated. Even the most restrictive masked places like South Korea, a lot of those East Asian countries, like the most effective way to handle Omicron right now is with vaccines, boosters and treatments. And that will significantly reduce the severity of your inevitable exposure to Omicron. And the

idea that with all of the transmission that's happening, not just in the United States, but all over the world, some rule about expelling asylum seekers at the border is going to somehow curb transmission is preposterous at this point. I mean, we should just note that the absolute rank hypocrisy of the Republicans who have downplayed the pandemic from the beginning, they have said that accused Democrats of overhyping it, using it as a way to control people, and then turning around and using the pandemic as a way to treat migrants terribly is a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. So the politics here, as you mentioned, are complicated by the fact that nearly every

Senate Democrat who's up for reelection in 2022 has criticized Biden's decision to end Title 42. Mark Kelly, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Raphael Warnock in Georgia. The first two, Kelly and Hassan, just introduced a bill today with three other Democrats and six Republicans that would prevent the Biden administration from ending Title 42. Why do you think they're against it? The fact that they are against it is says something very alarming about what they're seeing in their polling. says something very alarming about what they're seeing in their polling. And it is the thing that really scares the shit out of me about not necessarily the issue of Title 42, but just how scared Democrats are and what people's internal polls are telling them is that Mark Kelly is a moderate. He is from a very immigration sensitive state. I don't agree with what he's doing there, but I like him being upset about this makes some measure of political sense. I don't agree with what he's doing there, but I like him being upset about this makes some measure of political sense.

I don't agree with it, but I can see you get there. Raphael Warnock is not a moderate. He is not someone who naturally like their first instinct of political trouble is to side with Republicans or criticize the president. He's not from a border state unless he's concerned about people from Florida, which is, I think, a very legitimate concern in a lot of ways. And so it tells me that people are in sort of a near state of panic about and looking for ways to diss themselves from the president on an issue that Republicans believe is very powerful for them. And I think the approach they're taking is very problematic in a lot of ways, but it says that people are very, very concerned and they're starting to like lash out in ways that are going

to be unlikely to be constructive, I think. Yeah. I mean, we don't know what their private polling is saying, but we do know what the public polls are saying. Morning Consult polled this this week. 56% of all Americans oppose Biden's decision. And that is the largest backlash against any Biden policy that Morning Consult has tested in the last two years. This is the most unpopular thing that he's done. I do think, you know, whether you're Mark Kelly or really whether you're any senator, and of course, Kyrsten Sinema is also on this bill, along with Mark Kelly and the other vulnerable Democrats. I think people I think they are concerned about a very real challenge, which is a surge of migrants and asylum seekers at our southern border that has in the past and in May again this spring overwhelmed our already overstretched immigration and asylum systems. So you have thousands of people in these border communities who can't get their asylum applications processed in time, who can't get the help that they need if they've just been fleeing from other country, because we just

don't have the resources to handle that many asylum seekers. And the number is, of course, has been growing every single year. So that is a real challenge. But Title 42 is not the way to deal with that challenge because Title 42 is about a public health. It's using a public health reason to turn away asylum seekers fix our immigration system so that it is orderly, so that people who are fleeing violence from war torn countries can apply for asylum and get asylum here and not be not have to like wait around for a year because there's not enough asylum judges or courts and then everyone's hanging out in border communities. Like there is a problem at the heart of this. It's just not what Republicans demagogue or what Title 42 is for, which is all about public health. So it's almost like this whole Title 42 thing is like a stand in for an immigration system that has been broken for far too long and which Republicans will not help Democrats fix because there is a plan to fix immigration that Joe Biden has that Barack Obama had too, that would like give a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and, you know,

make sure that the border is secure and orderly as well. Republicans don't want to have any part of this because they want to demagogue the issue. How does COVID funding get done now? Great question, John. It seems like a real paradox because Republicans won't support it without Title 42 and Democrats may not support it with Title 42. So I think what I think will probably happen here is, and it sort of depends on what Republicans demand, are they demanding inclusion of the Title 42 provision or are they demanding a vote on the Title 42 provision? Because this could go two ways, right? There could be a situation where they're going to demanding a vote on the Title 42 provision? Because this could go two ways,

right? There could be a situation where they're going to have a vote. It's very clear that if there is a vote, that enough Democrats would join with Republicans to add that to the bill. That seems like that's definitely going to happen. It is possible. What I think one way out here that Schumer may be working on is looking for a Democratic alternative to the Republican policy. So there will be a re-institute Title 42 amendment from like one of the horrendous people that who we just whose voices we just listened to. And then there's a Democratic alternative that maybe puts in place, you know, maybe delays the decision puts in place some steps that have to go in effect before that can happen. Republicans vote for theirs, Democrats vote for theirs, maybe that maybe neither of them pass,

and then we get the bill. But it has to get done, and there's bipartisan support to get it done. So they're going to have to figure something else out here. Yeah. One hint may be in the bill that they introduced today, that bipartisan group of senators, because I guess that bill says it will prevent Biden from lifting Title 42, quote, without a detailed plan to stop an expected surge of migrants at the border. So perhaps there's some kind of plan that they can all work out that shows that we're ready to deal with the spring surge of migrants at the border that will placate enough Republicans and Democrats. And I also think that could be the answer, because when you look at the Republicans who are on this bill with the Democrats, they are not the most extreme Republicans in the caucus who probably want this issue to demagogue Democrats with.

I'm sure all Republicans want this issue to Democrat. But at least the Republicans that are on this bill seem like they could be open to working out a solution where Department of Homeland Security just says, here's our plan. Here's our resources. Here's what we're going to do. That is a classic. It's a classic thread the needle legislative move. We're going to say that we oppose this thing, but we'll let it go if you send us a plan. There are people in the government whose whole job is to write these plans and send them to the Senate. Fun. Seems like a good time. Republicans are

overjoyed, of course, that immigration is back in the headlines. How should Democrats respond? Not like this, John. I think the problem with, like, I want to stipulate, as you pointed out, that there are substantive concerns here. And I think that those are sincere. So I'm not suggesting that this is all panic. But in some of the messaging on this, thus far from this group of senators and other moderates out there, is what we are doing is accepting the premise of the Republican argument. Like we are immediately accepting things are terrible and this is going to make it worse and you should be scared. And once you accept the premise of the argument, you've already lost.

So I think the way to approach this is – and you can have a position, and I think this alternative bill is a good way to get there, is to go on offense and also talk about the things that you were doing and Republicans are stopping you from doing to fix this problem. And that Republicans want to use the issue to divide Americans to be able to put in place this agenda that's X, Y, and Z that keep you know, keep tax cuts for the wealthy, cut Medicare, all of those things. So you have to reframe the issue on gun offense as opposed to restating the premise articulated by your opponents. Yeah, I mean, and also Republicans are the ones with extreme positions on immigration. Make them own those positions. You know, like I would say that Republicans are demagoguing this issue to win an election. And if they take power, they've told us what they're going to do. They're going to deport dreamers. They're going to deport children who lived in this country their entire lives.

And they are going to cut back on legal immigration. Remember that during the Trump years, it went from Republicans wanting to stop undocumented immigrants from coming to this country to actually cutting legal immigration. People who are doing everything right, who are going through the process, they wanted to end that as well. Tag them with that position because it's not a popular position. Deporting dreamers is not a popular position. And then, you know, Cecilia Munoz, who worked on immigration in the White House with us, as she always says, Democrats should be the party of fixing the problem. There is a broken immigration system. We want to fix it.

We want to make sure that people who come to this country have a path. People who are in this country have a pathway to citizenship, that we legalize dreamers and that, you know, we have an orderly immigration system. That's that's the most popular position. And that's where the position that a lot of Democrats hold. They should be proud of it and they should talk about it. President Biden took another big action this week when he extended the moratorium on federal student debt payments through August 31st. The administration also announced that whenever payments resume, borrowers would be given a fresh start that will automatically eliminate delinquency and default. So when I asked Ron Klain about Biden canceling student debt during our interview last month, he said

that they'd make a final decision before the moratorium ended on May 1st or before whatever date the moratorium is extended to, which is now August 31st. Why do you think they decided to extend the moratorium instead of just canceling debt? And why do you think they picked August 31st? I think it is pretty clear based on reporting we've read, sort of reading between the lines in that conversation with Ron from a few weeks ago, that there is real division in the White House about the substantive, political, and I think also legal arguments around canceling student debt. And I think they should cancel it. I think that is the right thing to do. That is clear that

there is not unanimity in the White House. The president has always been more conservative on this and a lot of people he ran against. I think even for people who are for it, and I think a lot of really smart legal people have made a lot of really smart, solid arguments about why he has the authority to do it. But in the end of the day, a rigged Republican Supreme Court is the arbiter of whether he has the authority to do it. But in the end of the day, a rigged Republican Supreme Court is the arbiter of whether he has that power. And I can see a situation where in the White House, you're trying to make a decision about whether you do this, and you do it, and people are excited about it. Maybe they make some financial decisions based on it. And then six months later, Clarence Thomas,

Brett Kavanaugh, et al., nix it. And so what I think is August 31st makes no political sense, because why would you kick a very important, tough decision to right before the midterms? The only reason I think, I guess the substantive reason would be this is a conditions based policy. Theoretically, it's because of the pandemic. And in a conditions-based policy, you should check in every few months to see if the conditions that you use to put in place the policy still exist. It's hard to square, like the Title 42 thing, this is not really about the pandemic. Because you can't argue that we've completely recovered from the pandemic, but also we have to keep this policy in place. The reason we have to keep the policy in place

is because the cost of college and student debt is a gigantic disaster for this country and for so many people. I assume the delay here is because of this division in the White House, there is this ongoing policy debate. And this is how policy gets made in the White House. And sometimes it's very messy, is this is sort of the deal they came up with. Some people who think it's a bad idea, people think it's a good idea. And you kind of just split the difference. And it's August 31st. And now they're just going to have to deal with this all over again in two months. But maybe it's hoping some people buy time in the process to get to cancellation before the election. Yeah. I mean, so here's the deal with the moratorium. So, you know, Biden's the first president where no one has no one who has a federal student loan has paid anything during the whole course of his presidency. So this what is now that moratorium is not completely free. And also, you know, I think some people think that the student debt relief is about like sticking it to the banks or the colleges. But in this case, that's not true at all, because this is only about federal student loan debt.

So the person that we're, the entity that we're sticking it to is the federal government. And which is fine, but it's, so it's about $4 billion a month to have a blanket moratorium like they're doing. Biden, when he was running, promised something a little more specific, which is canceling up to $10,000. Now, you know, Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, a lot of other Democrats want $50,000. I'd love $50,000 to cancel $50,000 in debt. I think that's a good idea. But Biden's promise during the campaign was never about $50,000. In fact, he rejected it. It was about $10,000. Fine. So why don't we get $10,000 debt cancellation? Honestly, if you want to be targeted and help the people who need it most,

canceling up to $10,000 in debt is probably better than a moratorium, which like 73% of all student debt payments come from the top two income quintiles right now. So if you're just doing a moratorium, the benefit actually accrues to the wealthiest borrowers and not to some of the people who probably need the help the most. If you cancel up to $10,000 in student debt just permanently and don't keep extending the moratorium, you're going to help more people who actually need the help. So I don't understand. And on the Supreme Court thing, I'm like, try it. Just try it. If they knock it down, they knock it down.

I mean, if we were sitting in the White House, that's the argument I would make in there. I do understand why people and we had we dealt with this with a lot of, you know, executive actions that Obama took. Right. That there was this risk. And is that a huge because ultimately, if you do it and it gets struck down, you haven't helped a single person. And you're taking this theoretical political blow. And it's like there is that I think that's a that is a reasonable debate about which is better. I think it is worth noting also that Biden in the campaign, his strong preference articulated over and over again was to do it legislatively. Right. And that's why I get a little annoyed when all the legislators just tweet out the hashtag at Joe Biden cancel student debt when they I recognize Joe Manchin is not for this so that is a problem

but they haven't really tried either right it's like they act as if they have no ability you know particularly the leadership of the Senate Chuck Schumer loves to to tweet cancel student debt at Joe Biden even on the day Joe Biden announced the moratorium, he tweeted that at him. And it's like, do you have a bill? Have you tried to pass that bill? Are you arguing for it in there? Are you working Joe Manchin to try to see if you can get something done? You have agency here too. And so activists, others tweeting at Joe Biden, I'm for that. If you're the Senate leader, at least acknowledge that you have tried and failed or try and fail publicly and show that. I still think on the legal front, just from a purely political standpoint, like would Joe Biden rather people say, hey, why didn't you ever try to cancel our debt?

Or would you rather people say Joe Biden tried to cancel our debt and then this right wing court decided to strike it down? Fuck those people. Wouldn't you want that? Yeah, I think I think I think that is the better argument. I just have heard many people make the opposite argument in those meetings. And I'm sure that someone is making those arguments in those meetings. Yeah. So Democrats in Congress also grilled a bunch of oil company executives this week over high gas prices. Their argument was that oil company profits are soaring because of the war in Ukraine, but oil company executives are using those extra profits to enrich themselves and their shareholders instead of helping people who can't afford higher gas prices.

What do you think of that hearing? And is this something that could move the needle for Democrats? I mean, what congressional hearing does not move the needle, John? Look, I think it's great they had the hearing. It's the right thing to do from a substantive perspective. It's the right thing to do from a political perspective. There was this very famous hearing in the eighties, I think, where they brought all the heads of the, of the tobacco companies before the committee, our old friend, Phil Shalero helped organize that for Congressman Waxman. Everyone's been trying to recapture that magic at hearings for the last

30 years or whatever. You know, obviously, most people won't see the hearing, most people won't read about the hearing. But it is a data point in trying to make the argument that one of the reasons for high gas prices is corporate greed. And so I think it's great they did it. And I think what the next step is to communicate to people,pts from that hearing, moments from that hearing to help buttress that argument. Because I think that is our, more so than Putin's price hike, I think corporate greed is our best argument for the midterms on gas prices. Happens to also be true, whatever Larry Summers might say.

Again, the argument here is not like, oh, the oil companies are the reason that gas prices are high. We realize it's a commodity. We realize there's a world market here, all that bullshit. Their profits are at record highs right now. And what they're doing is just buying back stock and just like reaping the rewards themselves. And at a time where prices are high and people are having a hard time filling up their tank, then yeah, whether it's a windfall profits tax or whether it's at least, at the very least, taking away the taxpayer subsidies

we give to oil and gas companies right now. At least do that at a time where they are making record profits when gas prices are this high. Take away their subsidies, maybe use the subsidies to give Americans a rebate check for gas. I don't know. Do fucking pass some legislation. I mean, I think it'd be great if the House passed something that obviously the Senate is not going to pass that and Republicans would filibuster whatever, but it would be good. It'd be a good

vote to have. Yeah. I wonder if you could get Joe Manchin in the reconciliation bill, if you could get him on board with, you won't get him on board for a windfall profits tax for oil companies and fossil fuel industries, but I wonder if you could get him on board for getting rid of the subsidies. You might be able to. I don't know. I'm sure he has an articulated position on this. Yeah, that if you asked him about it would change. It's a class. Yes, it depends on what moody is when he bumps into Manu Raju in the breakfast line. So Democrats clearly want midterm voters to know that they're doing everything humanly possible to bring down costs. Here's a new ad from the House Majority PAC that was released this week. Two years ago, we were in crisis.

Democrats rescued the economy. The biggest single year gain on record. 7.9 million new jobs. A record drop in unemployment. Now Democrats are working to lower costs, tackling gas prices by releasing a million barrels of oil per day from our reserves. And they just passed a $35 a month cap on insulin. Democrats are getting things done to create jobs and lower costs.

House Majority PACs responsible for the content of this ad. Democrats deliver! What did you think of that ad, and what else do you think Democrats should do to go on offense against the Republicans? I mean, it was missing the hashtag Democrats deliver, so huge oversight on that part. No, I think it's a good ad.

That was the spirit. I think it's a good ad in the sense that when Democrats do things, they have to pay to tell people they did those things. Otherwise, they're not going to know. None of the voters that we need to reach because they are less engaged with politics than the already decided voters, many of the listeners of this podcast, have no idea these things happen. They're not going to watch the newscasts that are going to cover them. The newscasts aren't really going to cover them that much anyway. So you got to pay to tell me. So I think that is the exact right thing to do. Like this isn't your closing

argument ad in any way, shape or form. It is, you know, you often start in a, you have to think of ad campaigns as a long process to tell a larger story. And you often start with what you did in your positives to build credibility with voters to then make the case against the other side and to inoculate yourself. So I think this is a good ad. You can tell because Ali Lapp, who's the founder of the House Majority PAC, tweeted it out that this is the House Majority PAC telling Democrats who they have limits in how they can communicate with them because they're a super PAC. Talk like this, right?

It's not just for voters. It's for the members of that caucus to say, talk like this. Talk about cost. Talk about the things you did. If you talk about the things you did, these are the things we would highlight. And so I think in that sense, it is a it's a good message and worth doing. And I'm glad they're doing it. It's a good message and worth doing, and I'm glad they're doing it.

Yeah, I mean, for a million reasons that we've talked about before, economic messages tend to not break through the clutter these days. Culture war issues, Donald Trump issues, legal issues, COVID, everything. Economic issues, people struggling with costs and what Democrats are going to do about it. It's a tough one to break through these days. And so I think you need ads like that just to, you just need to do that over and over again. And I do think like the one, I don't, I mean, they couldn't have included everything in this ad, but the other way that Democrats really need to go on offense is I'd like to see some ads where it's not just like, here's what Democrats are doing. Democrats have delivered and here's what we're doing to bring down costs. It's, oh yeah, and by the way, if Republicans take over Congress,

they said that what they want to do is raise taxes on 100 million people and take away your health insurance. Seems like it's an important thing to mention. And the reason they're doing this is because they want to have that money so that the rich and powerful and the oil companies and the 1% can keep their tax breaks that they got from Donald Trump. Yeah. And the way that they're going to deal with the government's finances is let the rich people keep their Trump tax breaks.

Let the oil companies keep their tax breaks, but raise taxes on 100 million Americans and take away their health insurance. That's the choice in the election. Americans and take away their health insurance. That's the choice in the election. And I have no doubt that that is sitting on a hard drive at the House majority pack right now, but you have to establish some credibility as a messenger that you have in order to say that they have opposed all these things. I understand the imperative to say that you delivered on these things first. Yeah. The other midterm challenge Republicans have to contend with is Donald Trump. We say this almost every week now, but that's only because Donald Trump is physically incapable of shutting the fuck up. Every time he opens his mouth, says crazy shit, case in point, the interview he did with the Washington Post's Josh Dossey this week from

Mar-a-Lago. Here are some highlights. This is the highlight of the piece. On the January 6th insurrection, quote, Trump said he deserved more credit for drawing such a large crowd to the Ellipse and that he pressed to march on the Capitol with his supporters, but was stopped by his security detail. Quote, Secret Service said I couldn't go. I would have gone there in a minute. The crowd was far bigger than I ever thought. But you see very few pictures.

The fake news doesn't want to show pictures. But this was a tremendous crowd. So Trump's only regrets are that he didn't get to storm the Capitol and didn't get enough credit for bringing together all those insurrectionists. That's his big regret from January 6th. Do you think that's the best thing to say when you're being investigated for your role in inciting a violent insurrection against your own government? at the absolute last minute and giving us this gift. I think they're so like this whole thing is so great. You may say, why was Donald Trump talking to Josh Dossi at Mar-a-Lago? Oh, because Josh Dossi had either crashed or been invited to a movie premiere that Donald Trump was hosting at Mar-a-Lago for a film about how Mark Zuckerberg stole the election.

how Mark Zuckerberg stole the election. True story. All of the Star Wars bar freaks of Trump world all showed up. It was their, I guess, their version of the White House Correspondents Center. I do not know. I mean, it's just, I highly recommend everyone read Josh Dossi's story from Wednesday. There was about, I think it was a Wednesday that was about this completely insane, embarrassingly sad event. But I also just want to note that Donald Trump has told many big lies, but the biggest lie may be the idea that he wanted to walk one mile from the White House

to the Capitol. Yeah, that was not going to happen. That's not because of the Secret Service. That guy's like 20 years past being able to walk to the capitol doesn't walk when he golfs maybe he wanted to take a golf cart that i just had this vision of him in the front in a golf cart with some mega flags on it just leading the way and like seven miles and riding shotgun and riding like seven mile driving seven miles an hour as people amble behind him because the golf cart is so slow. It's great. What an asshole. Were there any other gems in that story that you found particularly noteworthy? Either story. The Wednesday story is great, of course, about the party itself, about the Zuckerberg film. But also that just the interview with Josh Dossi is that he does is wild. In I mean, this is not the biggest issue in the world. But in the article about the film premiere, in his remarks introducing the film, Donald Trump talked about how excited he was to have a new film to screen because he was bored of screening Citizen Kane and Titanic all the time.

Like he's a huge Titanic guy. What do you mean a huge a huge Citizen Kaneane guy really donald trump's getting into the classics now that i understand because he's an old old man who thinks that nothing created that nothing that happened after the pastor of the civil rights act is good so like that's probably where his interest in film stops but titanic like he does like is he into the kate winslet le Leonardo DiCaprio love story? Does he stand on the Truman Balcony and scream, I'm the king of the world? Like, I found that notable. That is the part of the story that's not getting enough attention, in my opinion.

Yeah, he's got a lot of thoughts on whether Jack could have made it onto that raft. That's his big thing. Yeah, it's wild. And by the way, like, again, we talked about, we've been talking about this. his big thing yeah it's wild and by the way like again we talked about we've been talking about this i do think he continues to put more pressure on uh the justice department and merrick garland to charge him it's it's it's just daring them at this point like oh the insurrection that all my staff said no he didn't want people to go to the capitol he was blah blah oh i would have gone with them yeah i would have gone with them to the, I would have gone with them to the Capitol where they stormed the Capitol and tried to obstruct Congress from certifying the election that I just lost. I was trying to go. And by the way, didn't I draw a big crowd of insurrectionists to Washington? Shouldn't I get some credit for all the fucking insurrectionists I brought to the Capitol that day? He's just daring people, daring them to indict him. The other thing that's great is his daughter went to Capitol Hill to testify,

I assume under oath, about the president's views on this. And he immediately does an interview with the Washington Post to possibly contradict everything she just said under oath. That'd be cool. Dad of the year over here. All right, when we come back, Dan talks to Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler. Yesterday, Wisconsin held local elections races for school board, city council and mayor.

And we were thrilled to say Democrats held their own. Joining us now to talk about is the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Ben Wickler. Ben, welcome back to Positive America. Thanks so much, Dan. Always great to be with you. So, Ben, I don't know how much news you've been reading recently, but Democrats really need some good news, right? And so tell me why what happened in Wisconsin last night should make Democrats feel good. What happened in Wisconsin last night should make Democrats feel good. Republicans think they have a secret weapon, a magic silver bullet in the form of divisive,

race baiting, fear mongering attacks on teaching history accurately and on trans kids to sweep school board races and ladder up to governor's races across the country. And they put it to the test all over Wisconsin this Tuesday, and it flopped. Republicans won in places where Republicans already have the majority of the votes. And in the purple and the blue areas, their school board candidates came up far short. We swept school board races from Eau Claire in western Wisconsin to Appleton in Northeast Wisconsin, and even in some red communities like Holman, Wisconsin and Sparta, Wisconsin, we won the school board races there after a huge, well-funded Republican push that included both official party organizing and right-wing talk radio and dark money ads often in these local

races. What we saw is that if you stand up strong for public education, you organize hard and you have candidates that are proudly talking to voters about their values, you can win in these races. And that speaks volumes about what can happen up ballot as well in November. Can you maybe help explain to our listeners why who don't live in Wisconsin are very obviously concerned and interested in defeating Ron Johnson, in winning Wisconsin in the presidential election, why fighting and winning these school board races matters for those larger statewide and federal races. Absolutely.

So the first big thing is that if Republicans have people in local office, those people can actually affect the lives of the people in their school districts and their schools. And of course, local government, we're gonna talk about the sort of broader political implications, but it matters enormously in people's lives. So in my view, it is always worth voting

and organizing for local offices, even just by the very fact that local office saves people's lives. That said, Republicans think of these offices as opportunities to chip away Democratic advantages, you know, up ballot. They want to have people who can become local spokespeople for Republican causes, who can go on right-wing talk radio and blast. In Wisconsin, we have a governor who was a former teacher. Tony Evers is the education governor here.

He was a science teacher, a school superintendent, the state superintendent of public instruction. If Republicans can grab education as an issue the way that they are so proud to have done in Virginia, they think that that is their way of going after the core strength of Tony Evers. And the reality is Republicans have the biggest glass jaw in the world on education. Rebecca Clayfish, their front runner for governor, massively cut school budgets. We had a teacher crisis. They not only assaulted teachers unions, they also just stripped away funding from school districts around the state. And Wisconsin rankings in the U.S. News School rankings plummeted as a result. And now they're back in the top 10 under Governor Evers.

News School rankings plummeted as a result. And now they're back in the top 10 under Governor Evers. So when voters were looking at these races, they look at these Republican candidates using the exact same issues that statewide candidates like Rebecca Clayfish are running on, these attacks on trans kids and these totally BS claims about the way that history is being taught at our schools. And they thought they were on offense. And it fell flat with actual voters who were not already in the bubble. And that tells us something really powerful about messaging, about whether Republicans have this kind of secret weapon here. What we did, we used this framework called the race class narrative, where we said, why are Republicans trying to divide people? It's because they're massively cutting school

budgets and they want to turn us against each other so they can come after our public schools. And we helped make these things backfire. At the same time as we elected school board candidates across the state, voters passed big increases in school funding and school referenda in most communities across Wisconsin. This is an area of strength. We should not get scared and stop talking about education. We should stand for our values on education and go after the Republicans for what they're trying to do, which is profoundly unpopular. In your messaging, how much was offense and how much was defense?

It was a mix. A lot of it is defense in the sense that it's not countering point by point what Republicans are saying. It is introducing people to our candidates and what they stand for. So there was less going after individual Republicans and ripping apart their claims. There was a lot of making sure that every Democrat knew that there were actual champions on their side who they could vote for and turn out for. And I think one of the things that's really important in midterms, differently from presidential campaigns, but frankly, important in presidential too, is that we shouldn't assume that people know who our candidates are or what their values are. You actually have to make the case for your people. And a lot of the kind of, you know, the studies I've seen, it races up and down the ballot, is that if you talk about,

you know, your candidates, what they stand for, what they want to do, and their, you know, whose side they're on and whether they can actually deliver. That moves people a lot. Most of what the general public and certainly swing voters and Republican voters learn about Democrats, they learn from Republicans because Republicans have such a big noise machine. You write powerfully about this and I'm grateful for it. In Wisconsin, there are 81 right-wing talk radio stations and they crank out misinformation constantly about Democrats. So if you actually lay out what you're for and do it in a way that draws a clear circle that includes you and the voters and not the Republicans, that can go a long way towards

defining what the playing field, what the races are about. And once you do that, then you also want to push Republicans out of the circle of common sense and trust and make clear that they would break their promises to voters and that they are against the things people stand for. But you have to plant a strong flag and make a case for yourself as a first step so that you actually have a two-way fight in these battles. What I thought was interesting about what you said is saying who they're fighting for, whose side they're on, because that's one of the most important parts of messaging, because it is a positive message but is an implicit contrast, right? because it is a positive message, but it is an implicit contrast, right? Which is like we sort of sometimes divide messaging into positive. These are the things I do.

These are things I've done. And then negative messaging, which is why this person's bad. But ultimately, it's everything. Positive and negative messages is a message about why you, why not them, why your values are good and correct for the moment, why theirs are not. So I think that's great. Another part of what was on the ballot last night was the big lie. Wisconsin is ground zero of the big lie. Ron Johnson is one of the biggest proponents of the big lie. Your really wonderful state Republicans

have been pushing the big lie. They continue to push it. They are very clearly and explicitly setting the stage for using similar tactics in 2024 with the hopes of being more successful than they were in 2020. Was there anything from the results last night to tell us either about the potency or the peril of the big lies of political message in Wisconsin? For sure. And it is a mixed report card. So I want to be really upfront about that. And I think it's critical for folks to recognize that this is an active thread. It's an organizing principle on the right. It does fuel base energy on the right. At the same time, it can be a source of tremendous energy on our side. And so I look at a few different races when I think about what we learned. My favorite one was in De Pere, Wisconsin, a 25,000 person city in Brown, cast her fake Electoral College vote for Donald

Trump at the same time as I was elsewhere in the Capitol casting my actual elector vote for Joe Biden very proudly. And she was subpoenaed by the January 6th committee. And then she decided to run for reelection as an alder in De Pere. And Pamela Gantz, who's a real estate agent and a poll worker, ran against her on the basis of, you know, we shouldn't have conspiracy theorists who choose who the clerks are who administer our elections. Now, they both talked a lot about local issues. There were a ton of, you know, roads and bridges and the kinds of local issues that make up a big part of these races. But there was also this democracy element. And Pamela Gantz welcomed support from the Democratic Party.

We were proud to work with her on mail and organizing. And she crushed. She won by a double-digit percentage margin. And Kelly Rue lost in that election. So that was great. At the same time, in Green Bay, in the city council race, the right has been on fire attacking the mayor and the city council over their giant heap of lies about whether the 2020 election was free and fair. And they have this constant flood of stuff. The Dick Uline, the Stop the Steal funder,

right-wing billionaire actually had TV ads on and cable TV in Green Bay attacking the city council. And a group of pro-big lie candidates defeated some non-big lie candidates. Now, it was a more complicated picture. And a lot of voters were sick of partisanship in general. Some of the incumbents took a no partisan pledge. So we actually couldn't make in kind and direct contributions to support them. Some of the nonpartisan folks lost and some of them won. Some of the folks who worked at the Democratic Party lost and some of them won. And not every Republican won in those races. But it's now essentially six Republicans, two kind of moderate Republican independents,

and four more progressive candidates. It's pretty split. And the key, key, key thing now in Green Bay is the mayor, Eric Genrich, who is great, who believes in democracy, who's up in 2023, again, before 2024. And so, you know, my lesson from that is we need to stay in the fight on this thing. And the fact that Republicans have been incessantly messaging and hammering, we can't let it go unanswered. We have to be able to keep communicating about the fact that this election is real and people are trying to steal our democracy. Why?

In order to give themselves power and then rip people off regardless of their politics or their race or where they live. Republicans are trying to lock in control so that they can keep shoveling money to people like Ron Johnson and his billionaire backers. And that's a message I think that can be really powerful in November, in 2023, and in 2024. We're obviously looking at a lot of political headwinds for Democrats this year, inflation, just sort of the historical snapback after presidential elections, so much of what's going to happen in the midterms is going to happen in Wisconsin.

As the party chair, what strategies are you putting in place, either organizing or messaging or whatever else, to try to counteract those headwinds to ensure that we can defeat Ron Johnson, we can reelect Governor Tony Evers and win all the other races you talked about here? The stakes are enormous and the environment is tough. So Wisconsin was a tipping point election in 2020 and 2016. It's the only state where four of the last six presidential elections came down to less than one percentage point. And those enormous stakes weigh on people pretty intensely. And what they tell us is that we have to do everything all the time, year round, statewide.

We have to do persuasion and turnout. We have to experiment with new tactics and do stuff that's proven. We have to communicate in every available channel and medium and turnout. We have to experiment with new tactics and do stuff that's proven. We have to communicate in every available channel and medium and language. We operate now in English and Spanish and in Hmong. We have about 50,000 person Hmong population in the state of Wisconsin. But I think the central pieces to the strategy are, first of all, find every Democratic voter and make absolutely sure that they vote. And part of that is making sure people who voted by mail in 2020 get absentee ballots now and vote before election day so that we can focus our volunteers and our energy on the people who have not yet voted. If you have

half your votes cast before election day, it's like you double your field organization on election day because you're chasing half the number of people. So absolutely blow the roof off in terms of organizing for turnout, but then simultaneously make sure people know how absolutely awful and radical people like Rebecca Clayfish are, how extreme and out of step with Wisconsin voters and people like Ron Johnson. And then thirdly, define our, well, accurately communicate that people like Governor Tony Evers get it, they're on people's side, and they can actually deliver the goods. And Evers is like the most non-political human being you'll ever meet. He's literally like the science teacher that you love and trust from high school or middle school, if you're lucky enough to have that person. And he has actually helped their

schools, paved enough roads to drive to Denver and back from Wisconsin, and gotten Wisconsin's unemployment rate down to a historic low by investing a billion dollars in small businesses in rural and urban Wisconsin alike. He has a really clear record that reflects his values, which reflects the fact that he gets what people are going through, and the Republicans running in this election are profoundly radical. If you go back to 2010 and you look at the races where Democrats won, that was a Republican wave year. It was really tough. In Wisconsin, that's when Scott Walker and Ron Johnson swept in. But look next door to Minnesota, the Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, won by under 10,000 votes, but he won. And Harry Reid won in the Senate race in Nevada

against Sharon Engel, an extreme radical. They made those elections about the specific people involved, a choice between the actual Democrat and the Republican. They made it not just like a competition of what the national talking points were, but about the actual humans, a choice between these people. Who's on your side? Who gets it? What are the local issues that you can deliver on?

people, who's on your side, who gets it, what are the local issues that you can deliver on? And we're going to localize this race, building on the extraordinary things President Biden has delivered and enabled us to do in Wisconsin, but we're going to make sure that people actually understand who these people are, what they stand for, and whose side they're on, and then turn out every voter we can find. That's the kind of core of the recipe for us. And we've seen it work even in really tough environments. And we just saw it work in cities all across Wisconsin in these local elections. So it is full steam ahead and impossibly high stakes. And I feel really good about the energy driving our side. So Ben, for our listeners out there who want to help you put in place that strategy, how can they do that? Delighted by that question.

I can't believe you let me get to the last question before the call to action. I thought you were just going to do it on your own. So I'm pleased. I'm smiling ear to ear for people not watching on video right now. So you can go to wisdems.org, that's W-I-S-D-E-M-S.org, slash volunteer and sign up and we will put you to work. If you're in Wisconsin, you'll knock on doors. If you're anywhere else, we want you to call people's phones.

There's so much to do. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have their IDs on file to get an absentee ballot who did not vote in 2018, who voted for Biden by mail in 2020. Let's call all those people until they get their absentee ballots now. So there's a ton to do on the volunteering side. And then become a monthly donor, which is my favorite kind of donor in the universe. If you go to wisstems.org slash donate and click make it monthly, that allows us to budget all the way through election day. And literally the biggest budgetary decision I'm going to make is whether to move organizing

hires earlier in the year. If you start earlier, you can build neighborhood teams that become self-running organizing operations in communities around the state. If you hire someone in August or September, it's too late to build teams. You can't do that kind of work. So my goal is to know that we'll have the funding to keep people on staff and expand the team as much as we can, as early as we can. And you listening right now with your power to give a monthly donation can make that possible.

So we want your time and your treasure. Donate and volunteer. And we want your talent when you're doing either of those things. And with all that, we're going to blow the historic midterm trends out of the water and demonstrate what's possible. Ben Muckler, always great to talk to you. You always make us feel a little bit better, a little bit more inspired. And so everyone go to wissdems.org and help Ben win Wisconsin. Thank you. Thanks so much, Dan. All right, before we go, the hottest new trend among Trump Republicans right now is calling people they don't like pedophiles.

The latest craze started when Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz spent much of Katonji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing accusing her of going soft on pedophiles despite her objectively mainstream sentencing record. despite her objectively mainstream sentencing record. Then Marjorie Taylor Greene got in on the act after learning that Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney would support Judge Jackson's nomination. She tweeted that the three Republicans are, quote, pro pedophile. Then she went on television and said this. The Democrats are the party of pedophiles. The Democrats are the party of princess predators from Disney. The Democrats are the party of teachers, elementary school teachers trying to transition

their elementary school age children and convince them they're a different gender. So this isn't just Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republican pundits like Molly Hemingway, Benny Johnson, Candace Owens have all started calling everyone they don't like pro-pedophile. What's going on here, Dan? Are they just trying to lock up the QAnon vote? I feel like they already have it. Yes, they have. They have the QAnon vote. They're worried they're not going to show up at the polls. The QAnon folks vote for Republicans. The issue here is that these are the worst fucking people in the world. They are gigantic, historic assholes in desperate need for attention, for relevance, for profit, for political power. And this is what is alarming about this is this is the incentives of the attention economy, of the outrage algorithms. It's the world Mark

Zuckerberg built, which is the best way to get people to talk about you, to get your tweets to go viral, your Facebook posts to go viral, is to say something so out of the mainstream, so outrageous that people react to it. And what happens is someone says something and then gets attention, and then everyone else says that. So now it gets less attention. And there are diminishing returns for that level of outrage. And so you've got to be more outrageous.

And so by this time next week, you're not going to get the attention you want from calling someone a pedophile. So you have to be something more extreme than that. And that like that is what is going on here. I mean, it is like this is where this is the inexorable path of conservative politics in the age of social media. And of course, as many have now pointed out, there was a Republican lawmaker in Tennessee, a state legislator, who recently said to introduce a bill that it's an anti-gay marriage bill here in 2022. And he basically wanted to create an institution for people to get married who didn't want their marriage to be like the same as marriages between gay people i don't know how that works but that was his fucking bigoted bill that he introduced and in the bill he did not include an age limit um on when you can get married and democratic legislators in tennessee brought that up and say well where's the age limit in the bill and he and he said oh i it's it's just assumed they're like well then why

isn't there a specific age in age limit in the bill about granting people the right to get married didn't know now marshall blackburn who uh questioned Katonji Brown Jackson about her sentencing record, didn't bring this up, even though that's the state that she represents during the hearings. And then after a big fuss over this, finally, someone got someone got them to put an age limit in this in this bill. But like the idea that Republicans are going around, some Republicans are going around accusing people of being pro-pedophile or soft on child abuse, particularly, and it's not just Democrats they're going after, now they're going after their own, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney for voting for Katonji Brown-Jackson. It is absurd. It is absurd. You know who they're not going after? Matt Gaetz, who is reportedly under criminal investigation for sexual misconduct with a minor remember roy moore yeah many of them supported in campaign for

ginny thomas's favorite senate candidate remember republican house speaker denny hastart mark foley how many i mean it's you know now how seriously do you think we should take this because i do think you know accusing people of being soft on child abuse, of being pro-pedophile is, you know, it didn't just happen recently. It is a tried and true tactic among the extreme right here in this country and autocrats, right wing autocrats in other countries. right-wing autocrats in other countries. Orban did this in Hungary. Putin has done this in Russia. There's a long history of some right-wing extremists accusing their opponents and autocrats accusing their opponents of being soft on child abuse. This has a history. And part of it is dehumanizing your opponent because you try to say the worst thing you could possibly say about them, which is that they abuse children. I do not believe that a quote-unquote persuadable voter will hear Marjorie Taylor Greene or other people say that Democrats are

the party of pedophiles and find that believable. I don't think there's probably a single person who is an available voter to Democrats to believe that. But the danger here is not political. Correct. It's actual. Because what you were doing, and this is why so many of the people that you list have done this in history, you're right, is to dehumanize people. It is to spark violence and retribution against them. And this is not liberal panic. It's not trying to make this into more than it is. We know that this can happen because of what happened due to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which was the conspiracy

theory that's at the core of QAnon, that there was a DC pizzeria where there was a basement that Democrats and Hollywood elites and others, including the Clintons, were using for child sex trafficking. Now, that is obviously not true. The pizzeria doesn't even have a basement, but someone who believed it showed up at the pizzeria with an assault rifle. And fortunately, no one got hurt, but that can and will happen again. Someone is going to get hurt because of this. It could be a teacher. It could be someone just walking down the street, and it's because of this dehumanizing language. It is deeply, deeply dangerous. And there is no one in the Republican Party with the political credibility or the moral authority to stand up and say, stop. Haven't heard from Kevin McCarthy on this one.

Kevin McCarthy, very upset when Madison Cawthorn said that maybe Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans were attending Koch orgies. Very upset about that. Didn't hear him say anything about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that Democrats are the pro-pedophile party. Or didn't even come to the defense of his fellow Republicans in the Senate who she accused of being pro-pedophile. So that's what you're getting from Republican leadership. But yeah, no, it is dangerous in that it is an attempt to potentially justify political violence because your opponents are sexually abused children. That's what they're trying to do. And it's pretty, pretty gross. Anyway, that's that.

Republicans are bad. Full stop. Yeah, just in conclusion, Republicans are bad. bad so just yeah just in conclusion republicans are bad um thank you so much to uh to ben wickler who was good who did some great work in wisconsin this week for joining uh joining the pod that's a happy note that everyone should think about and get people to work really hard ahead of the midterms because they had a number of big wins in wisconsin this week so you know and again katanji brown jackson is uh the next supreme court justice so we end on a high note. Yep. And thank you, Donald Trump, for saying more crazy shit. Of course.

As always. As always. Have a good weekend, everyone. We'll talk to 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.

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