Pod Save America - "Pardon the Insurrection."

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Donald Trump threatens to pardon the insurrectionists while potentially inciting new ones, guest host Ben Rhodes talks about his new Atlantic piece that focuses on how to fight Trumpism, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro talks about his democracy-focused campaign for Governor in what will be one of the most important races of 2022, and a wave of book bans sweeps through red states.Organization’s to SupportBaby to Baby, an LA non profit that provides children living in poverty with diapers, clothing, and basic living necessities.Star Legacy Foundation, a non profit organization dedicated to reducing pregnancy loss and neonatal death.Baby Quest Grants, a non profit providing fertility grants to those who can’t afford costly procedures like IVF and egg freezing.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 Jon Lovett. And I'm Ben Rhodes. Tommy will be out for a little while because, as you may have seen from his posts, on Thursday, he and Hannah lost their baby girl at just 24 weeks. It is an unfathomable tragedy. It is an especially cruel thing to happen to two people who have fought so hard to be parents. Emily and I are devastated for our best friends. So it's difficult for me to even talk about.

But somehow Tommy found the words to do so in a beautiful Instagram post that honors their daughter. Because even though he and Hannah are suffering through the worst moment of their lives, they want other people who've been through this to know that they don't have to be suffering alone. And that says everything about who Hannah and Tommy are and why we all love them so much. I know the two of them have also been incredibly touched and sustained by the outpouring of love and support that has come from all of you. And it's reminded all of us that you guys have been the best part about doing these shows for the last five years. And we feel so grateful and privileged to be part of such a kind,

generous community who cares so deeply. Tommy wrote in his post that for anyone who wants to help, what would make him and Hannah happiest is if you'd put resources towards helping women and parents who aren't as fortunate. And Emily posted a few organizations on Instagram that Crooked Media also tweeted out. And a huge thank you to everyone who's donated i know it means the world to them okay guys tommy we love you hannah we love you we're thinking about you um we won't let uh ben replace you it's not allowed uh as hard as he tries uh that was the marching orders i got more than anything else and um you know a friend of mine when they heard the news

sent a note to me and said you know I've never met Tommy but he's been in my ear for four years and he feels like a friend and I just know that there's a lot of people out there that we have the privilege of talking to who get to feel close to us and we feel that same closeness with you

and so you know I think the outpouring has been a lot to him and it's been really heartening. Yeah. I mean, I'm just temporarily filling this seat. The only thing I'd add, John and John, is that, you know, first of all, you know, Tommy's a pretty private guy. And so for him to share that message, if you didn't see it on Instagram, was really courageous. And because he was thinking, as he always is, about other people. And, you know, one of the things that I, you know, I've been thinking about, John, is that, you know, in our group of friends, like

Tommy would be the guy like helping the person out who went through this, uh, quietly, never, you know, like, uh, without anybody knowing that he was doing it. Um, he's done that for me over the years. He's done that for people in my life. Um, and we know when I first moved out to Chicago, he wasn't even there and he was checking in on me, even though he'd never met me, you know, when I first moved out to Chicago, he wasn't even there. And he was checking in on me, even though he'd never met me, you know. So I'm glad to be with you guys here today because it's a reminder that this is a community and a family where we pick each other up. And, you know, tomorrow I'm going to have to sit here and do Pazzi of the World. But I know Tommy's lifted up by, by all the people who've reached out. And so I encourage people to do that because I, I, I know it helps them,

the messages of support they get. Yeah. And I will say, uh, Tommy's a private person. Hannah's an even more private person. Um, not, you know, not, not on Twitter, but, um, she is the kindest and strongest person you'll ever know. And I know that all these messages have really meant a lot to her right now, too, because she's been going through something that none of us can even imagine. Okay, so we're going to take a few seconds, and then when we come back, we'll have our show. welcome back uh let's get to the news and uh believe it or not it starts with donald trump um honest honestly i didn't even know there was a Trump rally over the weekend at first. And I very much wish it wasn't worth covering. But here's the lead of the New York Times story about the event, which I think sums it up quite well. Quote, Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that if elected to a new term as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for attacking the United States Capitol on January 6th last year.

He also called on his supporters to mount large protests in Atlanta and New York if prosecutors in those cities who are investigating him and his businesses took action against him. Here's a clip. If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly, we will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly. If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in washington dc in new york in atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt i didn't realize until i just listened to the clip that he also called for protests in washington where he last time he called for a protest in washington it ended up in a fucking attack on the Capitol.

Normal stuff from a normal guy. And just to put the cherry on top of his crazy Sunday, the former president also released a bizarre statement opposing efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act, in which he said that Mike Pence had every right to, quote, overturn the election. Lovett, do you find any of this more alarming than Trump's usual alarming behavior,

or is this just par for the course? What do you think? I'll answer your question with a question, John. Yeah, sure. If someone is driving the wrong way down a highway at 70 miles an hour, is it an escalation when they start hitting people? Does that make sense? I think so. I guess Trump's politics have not shifted. The final escalation was january 6th right that was when he reached his i think final pokemon form um and ever since he's sort of been like a traveling insurrection the the the fact that he feels i think stronger politically than he does legally is a real indictment to um our society uh but i think you hear in his voice and you hear in this speech like the places where he's trying to find rooms to maneuver like one thing that's in this speech is really interesting is

there's some really very clearly worked over legal language that tells you the legal threats are quite serious and once he doesn't feel totally in control of we relied on major law firms accounting firms and other professionals to do this work and to to the best of our knowledge, they did it well. Yes. That's wild. Look at you listening to the whole speech. I did it. Not me. I couldn't do it. The whole thing. I thought, I'm going to listen to the whole thing. Thank you, C-SPAN, for allowing twice the speed. It's quite energetic at twice the speed. But then he also said, murderers and drug dealers are on the streets, but they're going after Trump as long as I'm leading in the polls. If I don't run, they will stop. Of course, he can't stop because that's not true. And so they're kind of feeding off each other. His sense that his political fortunes are more in his control than his legal

troubles means he can try to run as a means of generating the kind of backlash and intimidation that he needs. And of course, he wants massive protests and ideally violence. He is a car going the wrong way at 70 miles an hour and people get hit, people get hit. Ben, I couldn't help but think when I was reading this, like how would you react if you read about a former world leader saying all this in another country? Well, first of all, he describes the people from January 6th like they're visiting from another country,

like they're from January 6th or like they're frozen in time there or something. I mean, I think that the pardons that he did don't often get enough attention for how completely fucking crazy they were because it started like it was like Sheriff Joe and Denise D'Souza and whomever. But then it was like Flynn and Bannon and political allies, Roger Stone, like cementing those people's indebtedness to him. And, you know, when I think about how this would look from, you know, from the distance of another country, which we may all have to move to if he's elected, you know, I think sometimes people think of the danger of his autocratic tendencies in the justice system as who he might put away, who he might lock up. And I think there's another way of thinking about that threat. It's that by offering this kind of promise of immunity, essentially, of erasing the past, erasing past crimes, he is deeply incentivizing people to support his political career.

You know, he's tethering people who may be committing crimes right now to him based on the knowledge that he will take care of them. And this is something that we've seen in autocratic systems where leaders like to have the kind of absolute loyalty that comes from the leverage of the justice system being wielded on their behalf. I think the other thing is, if you look at places, including like Putin's Russia or Viktor Orban's Hungary, where Tucker Carlson was just hanging out, they often don't take action against, you know, like civil society activists directly,

but they so aggressively incite mobs of people to go after those civil society activists directly, but they so aggressively incite mobs of people to go after those civil society activists, those journalists, that I've talked to people, you know, in places like Hungary who said, yeah, the government didn't come after me, but there were people outside my house. There were people intimidating people in my family, right? And so you see here both him locking in that loyalty from people and really raising the stakes for people to support him with everything they've got because he's their ticket to kind of a permanent get out of jail free card, literally, and potentially inciting people to do things that he can have some deniability from. I was going to say, it's not a direct incitement to violence. Yeah. But if he says the people who violently attack the Capitol and violently attacked people in the Capitol on January 6th will get a pardon.

And by the way, if they come after me, you should have a massive protest. Yeah. What do you think the protesters are going to think? What do you think they think is going to think? Well, if I do something bad, if I'm a little violent, Donald Trump's going to pardon me. Yeah. Donald Trump's president. If Donald Trump's president, I can do whatever the fuck I want and I'm going to get a pardon.

Yeah. As long as I'm loyal to him. For my friends, everything. Yeah. Trump's president, I can do whatever the fuck I want and I'm going to get a pardon. Yeah. As long as I'm loyal to him. For my friends, everything. Yeah. For my enemies, the law. It's also, the language is very careful. It is very couched. He says, if they deserve it,

it's all very, if it's fair, whatever. He gives himself the outs. And by the way, one thing that you're going to see happen is this is going to become an issue in any Republican primary. And all of these fucking squishy people, if anyone even deigns to run against them,

all of a sudden they'll be triangulating with fascism to come up with their more acceptable, serious sort of Zambonide version of pardoning insurrectionists. Like that is the next move. They will all, they're already basically there that these are political prisoners. And, you know, there were consequences

almost immediately for this kind of speech. You know, the Georgia DA, Fannie Willis, who is investigating Trump in Georgia, this morning asked the FBI for a security assessment of the Atlanta courthouse because of Trump's remarks, because she expects people to take him up on that. Also, like, it's running through the entire Republican Party, right? This is not just Trump. Over the weekend, there's a candidate for governor in Michigan, Ryan Kelly, who told prospective poll workers to unplug tabulation machines if

they suspect fraud. And then if that wasn't bad enough, there's a state Senate candidate who was right next to him at the same event, this guy, Mike Detmer, who said, we need to be prepared to lock and load, show up armed imagine these are people running for office it's absurd it's um you don't need to unplug it you just hold down uh the power button and you'll probably get a hard reset yeah do you think it's like a step to like they have to find the plug yeah i just it's gotten out of so extreme can i like why do you guys think Trump is making these more overt, extreme threats right now? Because we've sort of taken this now from he is a very scary sort of fascist in waiting here trying to become president again, which could be very true. that he's doing this out of fear and weakness, fear that these investigations are coming closer to him, and also a concern that maybe he doesn't have as tight a grip over the Republican Party

as he thought he did. There was another New York Times story about this. There's an AP poll, 44% of Republicans are saying don't run again. NBC polls says 56 percent of Republicans define themselves as supporters of the Republican Party and only 36 percent say they're supporters of Donald Trump. That's way down from what it was in October of 2020, including among white Republicans with no college degree, 62 percent of whom said they were supporters of Trump back in October of 2020. And now only 36 percent of them say they're supporters of Donald Trump. Now they say they're more supporters of the Republican Party. There's an echelon poll that showed Trump led Ron DeSantis by 40 points in October in a primary, only 25 points now.

Do you guys think there's anything going on here or is this just coincidence? I mean, I think, look, first of all, you mentioned like he's he's normalizing if crimes are committed on the pathway to him getting back in the White House. He is laying a predicate for the ability to wipe all those clean. But I think, you know, what's interesting to me watching this is if he's he's basically waging a permanent culture war, you know, to benefit his own politics. Yeah. But if the conversation is about like lockdowns or vaccine mandates, right? Well, that's like the field that Ron DeSantis is playing on right now. And Trump needs that cultural war to swirl around him. Like he wants the Republican party and all

those kind of crackpots running for local office and all those local activists who are going to unplug the voting machines to not be focused in the culture war on, again, what Ron DeSantis is talking about. He wants him focused on the steal and on the persecution of Trump. And because once the conversation kind of moves to something that he's not directing, then that kind of de facto empowers other Republican officials. That's a that's a really good point because I think last couple of times we've been talking about Trump's speeches, we've been saying that like he has sort of an effective message buried in there if he ignores, if he could get himself

past some of the stop the steal, big lie bullshit. But it's a good point that that's actually what separates him from these other Republican candidates. And the, the, the closer those polls get, the less he's going to worry about that because the more he's going to be in a primary, not a general. Like, I think that up until, I think what is different about now is he's, I think contemplating a primary. And if he's contemplating a primary stop, the steel is a great message. It's an incredibly popular message amongst the Republican base. And just having now, once again, watched an entire Trump rally,

I will tell you, like, I would say the three biggest areas for applause were around election fraud, they were around masking, and they were around trans athletes. Like, those are the places where the audience went crazy the most. And so I think he feels the feedback is great.

And you're right. He can be the alternative to Biden and he likes being an alternative, but so can DeSantis, but not on the election, right? His story is very much things were incredible. Now they're bad again. Yeah. And also we're talking about all this as if there's some kind of strategy in Trump's mind, which is like giving him a lot of credit. He is basically his entire life is running in a primary. That's just his instinct. Whether, you know, whether he whether someone's telling him to or not, he's always running in a Republican primary. Yeah. And he's always looking for outs, right? Like this is it's you know, why is he he's why is he talking about the prosecutors?

Why is it's like he's he's just he's always a guy looking around for exits. He's a criminal. He's just a criminal by nature. He's seeing where he can get out in the event of some kind of a catastrophe so a number of republican politicians actually criticized trump's statement when asked about it uh republican governors larry hogan of maryland and asa hudgenson of arkansas said that trump shouldn't run again lindsey graham said the comments were inappropriate as did susan collins though collins then refused to roll out voting for Trump in 2024 saying only it's very unlikely warming her hands on the burning pile of money outside the Gideon campaign what was more surprising to you guys Lindsey Graham criticizing Trump or Susan Collins

refusing to rule out voting for him she'll do one of those weird things though where she'll like write in George H hw bush or something you know forever yeah yeah exactly the bushes of kenny bunkport forever i don't know but she's like the thing with susan collins is it's one thing if she's like warding off our primary challenge she just won a fucking six-year term what the hell is she doing i think she stinks she's yeah you know what she stinks she stinks she stinks it doesn't have to be said it doesn't have to be more uh more astute than that. Should have been easier to beat her, I'm just saying.

Yeah, yeah, I'm saying. Cal Cunningham catches a lot of shit. Great. Sarah Gideon. Okay. He's lucky he only caught shit. I mean, how do you think Democrats should handle comments like these? Because I hear Republican, anytime I hear one Republican saying one thing, one of them saying another, they're stumbling, you know, my political sense is always

like, okay, this is an issue where we can maybe divide the party. I think that like at a minimum on this kind of stuff, you know, you want to make Republicans as uncomfortable as possible by posing the question and kind of forcing the question as much as you can. If there's an area where they're squirming, it's clearly a place that they don't want the conversation to be, you know? But, you know, like at the end of the day, like you have to assume that these people are not obviously going to come to their senses and that like, you know, you have to act as if you're running against Trump and they're a part of that. Yeah. We've talked a lot about how Democrats need to tell a story, not just about Trump and the Republican Party, but about our own vision for the country and not just a list of policies. Ben, you wrote a fantastic piece about this for The Atlantic last week where you argued that when it comes to telling our own compelling story, Trump has wittingly or unwittingly created a trap for the left.

Can you talk about that trap and why you wrote the piece? Yeah, I was thinking about this a lot in the aftermath of the Virginia election, which seems like it was about 700 years ago. And, you know, what occurred to me in kind of stepping back and thinking about where we're at in our politics, where everybody's kind of angry and dispirited and kind of grim-faced on our side, is the trap is, look, what Trump does is he is just waging one massive identity politics culture war that suits his pathway to autocracy while waging a playbook, you know, which we've described at length for how to entrench minority rule of the majority. That's what they're doing. And the policies are part of that,

but they're kind of almost incidental to it beyond when they kind of enrich themselves and their supporters. And the trap is that Trump himself confirms a lot of people's worst fears about American identity on the left. And I write in the piece about how, like, look, part of the reason we're on the left is that we see the distance between the promise of equality and the lived reality of racial injustice, of special interests, of gender inequities, and all manner of injustices in American society. And the trap is that, you know, Trump proving your worst fears about America then leads you in response to want to reckon with some of the worst aspects of American character. And yet, who are the people that we need to essentially save democracy? Because as you guys have pointed out, it's not going to be

Bob Mueller, you know, no matter how many Mueller time stickers we have. It's not going to be this special committee on January 6th. It's not going to be Tish James in New York. It's not going to be some external legal investigation. It's going to be winning elections. Or we can't count on it. Yeah, exactly. Let's hold out. Let's put out, let's light a candle. We can light a candle to it. Maybe our Fauci candle. Yeah. And so you're talking about, you need to persuade the people in the middle who are not in the 35% who are just gone and locked in some alternative information system. And you need to motivate enough younger people to get involved so that you have both the mobilization and the persuasion strategies.

Right. And to do that, I thought a lot, John, about like what Barack Obama used to do well, which is he talked about progressive change change not as something that asked people to reject their core identity. What he would say is that America has all these problems, but we're a great enough country that we're capable of changing. And therefore, change was seen not as a repudiation of American identity, but an affirmation of it. And I think that actually did create a permission structure for those people in the middle to feel like it was patriotic to be a part of a movement for change. And the same thing with younger people to say, America has problems, but it's not like inherently a corrupted enterprise. Because if it is, then why is it worth trying to save democracy in the first point? Which I think is the most important point, right? I mean, and Obama, I think, said this most articulately and powerfully in the Selma speech.

Yes. Which is like what's quintessentially American is not airbrushed patriotism and chest thumping and all that kind of stuff. It's the civil rights movement and workers rights and women's rights and gay rights and like all of the people throughout history that have tried to bring the country's reality closer to its promise. And there is something that can be patriotic about that, that we can feel good about, because it's about the downtrodden and the marginalized in this country who tried to make this country better. And if we can't rally around that story, like you said, then why is America worth saving? Why are we doing all of this? And people want that story, like you said, then what, why is America worth saving? Why are we doing all of this? And people want that story, I think. Yeah. I mean, look, I remember after Trump won, I felt like the two, two great fears I had were one, that we would be stuck in this vice grip

in trying to prove a game is worth playing according to the rules while playing a cheater, right? That, that like, no, no, no. Democracy is a great thing to do if you follow the rules while trying to beat someone who doesn't care about the rules and wondering when do we bend the rules? Just try to get a leg up. Uh, and the other was that cynicism would inevitably take hold because someone so despicable, uh, someone I do think who, who represents like American flaw in human form, when in political office, truly like venal and grasping and despicable and, and, and,

and, and, and in all the awful things. But the other piece of it was that in that cynicism, what you would see is the inability of the broad left that runs all the way from Joe Manchin to AOC and further left than that would find ways to stop seeing each other as being on the same team because there's vast differences inside of our movement. You said this in the piece, which I think is true, like the MAGA

movement is a community. It is. It absolutely is. It's harder for us to build community on our side because we are not a dwindling monoculture trying to retain control. We are a diverse group of people with many disparate interests. But you watch that Trump rally, which, again, I did today in full. He's having a blast. The people there are having fun. They view themselves as being part of something fun and exciting. And, you know, I remember I did a climate change speech for Hillary Clinton in 2007. And I got a call that Bill Clinton had edits on the speech at like 2 in the morning.

I think he was in Vegas, I'm sure, helping out at a hospital. But anyway. And getting healthy speaking. Yeah, yeah. Volunteering. But anyway, I'm getting healthy speaking. Yeah. Volunteering. And then so no, but and so I got a call from from the the the the traveling group with Bill Clinton saying he had these edits on the speech. And I will vividly remember the feedback on the end of the speech, which was all of the kind of language was crossed out. And it said, this is going to be an adventure. This is going to be a great and fun adventure, like defeating climate change and building this renewable energy world. Like it's going to be a blast. It's basically what I was like, this isn't going to be a slog. Politics doesn't have to be a slog. And, you know, you talked about this as well, that like there's a kind of grim and joyless

aspect to what politics has become. And like nobody wants to become part of a sour and sanctimonious movement. As hard as things are, as awful as our opposition, as feckless and stupid the mainstream media is, as much as Trump has allowed to take advantage of so many cracks in our system, and as much as Democrats, so many of them are old and annoying and silly and don't seem to have any fight left in them, that doesn't change our obligation. That doesn't change what we have to do. And I think finding a way to meet their fun with our own version of fun, whatever that looks like, as bad as things are, I think is the only way. The fun thing is in the belonging communities is such an important part of it because

the purpose of politics is to bring people along with what you're doing. And there were two Obama anecdotes that stuck in my head as I was writing that piece that I didn't include, but one is about what not to do, right? Because I think politics has really been about trying to convince people about what's wrong, what's wrong with the Republican Party, what's wrong with America. And that's important. But I remember when Obama in 2008 famously said that because of the changes wrought by globalization, some of the white working class had gotten bitter and that bitterness had caused them to cling to their guns or their religion aspects of their identity. one that i agree with but he recognized that like i i want to bring some of these people along and asking them to accept my analysis about what's wrong with their identity is going to foreclose my capacity to do that you know and and then the other one that is was in born of tragedy was when he sang amazing grace and it's the worst possible moment of his presidency like a white supremacist

walked into a Bible study and killed a bunch of people because they're black. And yet out of that, he like summoned this kind of joyful moment. But what was joyful about it was that we're stronger than these people. We're not scared of these people. We don't shrink from the fight.

There's defiance in it, but it's also like, this is our community community right and i think you know the voting rights that was a pretty joyless fight you know that just took place yeah and it has to be just not just about how terrible their laws are but what is so great about what we're trying to do now i can i can hear the criticism of this conversation yeah and part of the reason i can hear it is because I tweeted about your story. And if you want to find a place where people express their cynicism, you might want to check out Twitter. And the criticism is like, you know, okay, Barack Obama told a nice story. He gave fancy speeches.

People liked them. Then Donald Trump was elected after Barack Obama. And maybe story doesn't really matter so much as the systemic injustices in this country and the structural inequality, particularly in our democracy, where we have an anti-majoritarian system that is stacked against us. I hear all that. I think we dismiss the power of a compelling story at our peril. It is not just about trying to bring along people in the middle or bring along people that vote for Donald Trump. That is part of it. Most Americans, the vast majority of Americans, and particularly American voters, are not political news junkies. Their vote isn't based on tallying up the number of

issues on which they agree with the candidate. Message matters. Story matters. It is a factor. It is maybe not the biggest factor, but in a country that is as closely divided as this one, every factor matters. And this is the one factor, one of the few factors that is entirely within our control. The story that we tell as Democrats, what candidates say, what we all say, that is entirely within our control. And there's not a lot of things we can shape. And so, like, it really makes a difference. And by the way, we all know Donald Trump's story about America. We can all recite it. And it should give us pause that we are more familiar with Donald Trump's story about America

than we are Democrats' story about America. Yeah. And I'll say, you know, if you want to see evidence that the story is the only thing that matters, Donald Trump's defeat is an example of how story is the only thing that matters. Because thankfully, as of this recording, the tether between the things people say and the world we actually live in still exists. It's barely there, but it's still connected. Right. And as hard as he could, as hard as he tried, Trump could not make enough Americans believe the story he was telling because it was so disconnected from the reality they were seeing. So I can feel criticism from the left of this conversation as well. That also is about it doesn't matter what you say if you're not actually delivering. Cancel the student debt. Abso-fucking-lutely. Deliver on

your promises. Democrats have been saying a lot of the same things and telling a lot of stories about the economy for a long time, and people have not seen enough change and positive outcomes from those policy promises over a very long time. How many Democrats have said for 30 years, we're going to stop shipping jobs overseas and we're going to do this and we're going to build jobs right here at home, factories, da, da, da, da. John Kerry said it in 2004. I remember it. So it's like, yeah, there's a limit to the power of a story that you can tell.

But it's incredibly important. And the story is not just the speeches you give. It's everything from the policies you pursue to how you conduct yourself in politics, to how you try to build coalitions, to what you're saying. Yes. And I think we've also fallen in this trap where we like pivot, right? Well, we're going to try to pass some policies now, and then we're going to go tell a story, and then we're going to go try to do something on democracy. And this is not a criticism just of the Biden White House, because this is something that I think has to permeate. If you care about democracy, whether you're a citizen or whether

you're a business leader, whether you're someone in media or whether you're in politics, you have to think about what is the larger cause that I'm trying to be a part of, that I'm trying to advance. And weirdly, like we've been fighting about individual pieces of our agenda while they've just been out there mobilizing around their story. And it's a horrible story. It's the reactionary white supremacist story that has been a vein through American history. And we need to beat it with our story as well as everything else that we can do. And again, like I understand the argument that we are facing sort of a rigged system, an anti-majoritarian system right now. But I'll just say, in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that are very diverse, that have been blue for a while now, where it is very easy to vote. In fact, they have passed so many voting rights reforms that it is

really accessible. We lost. We lost badly. And Terry McAuliffe, yeah, centrist Clinton person, whatever, fairly progressive governor, but also forget about Terry McAuliffe, yeah, centrist Clinton person, whatever, fairly progressive governor, but also forget about Terry McAuliffe. Phil Murphy, very progressive governor in New Jersey, still won. 11 points swing against him and Terry McAuliffe lose. So clearly, like story and message and candidates, it matters even within a system that can sometimes be unfair. And I'll also I'll also say part of what a story is about is helping people imagine the future. And I have to say, I am pretty fucking sick of people talking about how they want to get rid of the Senate, how the Senate's unfair.

Yeah. Abolish the Senate. Yeah, let's fucking sign me up. Great. Let me know how you're going to do that. Where are you going to abolish the Senate? We, as a party, need to have enough imagination to recognize that there are certain things that aren't immutable just because they've been true for 10 years. It is not immutable that the identity politics that have riven the country that have meant we have lost whole parts of rural America, which means the Senate is not just anti-democratic, but anti-democratic in a way we suddenly don't like.

There's no reason to believe that that is permanent. anti-democratic in a way we suddenly don't like. There's no reason to believe that that is permanent. It is not. The delta between how people vote on policy questions when they are on the balance in those states and their decision to vote for a Democrat or not is enormous. And that is a hopeful delta. That is a hopeful space. The fact that these policies have a chance in those places, but Democrats don't, should give you a reason to think about how you can appeal to people in a new way. And I think that starts by looking at what is appealing, not the fucking racism, but the sense of community, not the xenophobia and the anti-immigrant bias, but the way that someone like Trump

is playing on real human feelings that those people have. And think about how we can win, how we can beat that story for not all those people have and think about how we can win, how we can beat that story for not all those people and not for the 30 percent that will never leave Trump, that will be buried in his fucking pyramid with him, but for the people that are just able to be dragged along with that movement because the people around them are all voting for Trump and they're going that way, too. There are people that we can get back. There are people that are going to fall into the Trump orbit that we can keep from falling in to the fascistic authoritarian right-wing movement in

this country and we have to do that in a kind of mercenary and and with like with the kind of resolve of like of of graveyard shift nurses going into places and meeting with people that we don't agree with on a bunch of stuff to see where we can find places where we start peeling people off or or or authoritarianism well i was going to say and by way, we also look in terms of non-voters, they require persuasion too, right? This whole, the base strategy versus the persuasion strategy is something that we like, forget about. Every voter is a persuasion target, whether they don't vote and look like Democrats or

whether they voted Republican in the past, you have to persuade all of them. And politics in a democracy is fundamentally about a persuasion or else it is not a democracy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just to circle all the way back to the joy point, like, you know, interestingly, in the early Trump years, and it helped that we weren't in a pandemic, you know, people were like into having this fight and they wanted to mobilize and they wanted to be out there and they wanted to knock on doors and i i totally understand that people have been worn down even without a pandemic we grind it down and we want to fix this thing it's crazy that joe mentioned kristin cinema there i'm sorry i said their names we could have gotten their

whole episode without it um and i said as an avid listener but like the reality though is you have to tell yourself hey look like we're you know we didn't get everything done on the filibuster this time but we left a big dent behind. And the next time we come for that fucking thing, it's going down. And like you have to tell yourself like not that like politics sucks and this country is so inherently corrupted and you can have all your correct opinions about why some of those things might be true. opinions about why some of those things might be true. But like the flip side of that is what an opportunity we have to be the people who saved this, you know, enterprise, to be the people who prevented America from being its worst self and to love its point off in the future. There's something we're working towards. There's like a better America. That's an extension of the good things that have happened in this country. Like that should be something that is

is a joyful enterprise and a motivating enterprise. And i think one small step we can all take especially for those people who are active in uh on the social medias is um uh the competition to prove you get how bad things are uh is not one anyone can win it isn't it isn't it isn't we're all wallowing in it yeah we get it yeah we got it you know we're there you we all yeah it's it's tough it's tough um okay well when we come back we will talk to one candidate one democratic candidate who's who's running in 22 who's going to try to uh turn things around very polished very polished attorney general josh sapiro who's running for governor in Pennsylvania. Here we go. Hey, guys. Hi there. How are you? I'm so good. How are you? Good. Thanks for doing this.

Man, I'm excited to do it. Thank you for having me. Of course. You know, we're on the same Zoom screen, John and I, which is an unusual way for us to do this. But what's unusual about it is I never see his face in a mirror. You know what I mean? You never see your friend's face in a mirror. I know. Is that good or bad? It's bad. It's bad. It's not the symmetry I'm used to.

It's reversed. It's deeply uncomfortable. It's an uncanny valley thing. Well, instead, we can look at the attorney general instead of each other. We should probably start. I don't know that I'm an upgrade, guys, but it's great to be with you. I just walked in my house after a long day and I've got four kids in utter chaos here.

So hopefully it'll be quiet for kids. Oh, wow. OK, yeah, that is a lot of chaos. Wow. OK, I'm very proud, by the way, for all the zooms and the TV and everything I've done in this seat. If you can look over my shoulder i don't

know if you guys could see it that's a picture of me and president obama in the uh oval office it's always there love that i love i was the first guy in pa to endorse him way back were you i didn't know that oh my god oh look at that ed rendell told me i was crazy so, that's how you knew it was the right move. And Ed Rendell knows crazy. Okay. One of the most competitive and important contests of the 2022 midterms will be the race to succeed Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat who is term limited. Republicans have a crowded primary full of some very Trumpy candidates. While Democrats have rallied behind the man we're about to speak to, who's supported by Wolf and just earned the endorsement of the entire Pennsylvania Democratic

Party, Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Josh, welcome to the pod. Hey, it's so cool to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. So Donald Trump tried pretty hard to overturn the results of Pennsylvania's 2020 election. What do you think could have happened if a Republican had been governor instead of Tom Wolf? I think there's no question that if any of the Republicans from the modern day Republican Party, hell, any of the 15 Republicans running against me right now for governor, since the governor here in Pennsylvania is the one that has to certify the election and thus submit the electors forward.

There's no question in my mind that they would have heeded the calls of Donald Trump. Look, we were battling Trump. He sued us over 40 times in the election, 20 times before a single vote was cast to make it harder for people to vote. And I say this respectfully, guys, they weren't trying to make it harder for people who look like us to vote. They were trying to make it harder for black and brown Pennsylvanians to vote. And I say this respectfully, guys, they weren't trying to make it harder for people who look like us to vote. They were trying to make it harder for black and brown Pennsylvanians to vote. And then they sued us another 20 times after we had a free and fair, safe and secure election to try and make it so those votes wouldn't be counted. And I know that if I wasn't there as

the attorney general, if our governor wasn't there, there's no question that the modern day Republican Party would have done what they needed to do for the former president instead of our democracy. So obviously, if you're governor, you can certify elections that deserve to be certified. What else can you do to protect the right to vote and protect democracy in Pennsylvania as governor, particularly with a Republican legislature that's filled with people who won't even acknowledge that Joe Biden won in 2020? Look, the first appointment I'll make is a pro-democracy secretary of state, someone who's going to respect the will of the people, someone

who's going to certify the election based on the actual votes that were counted, not based on some political pressure. Second, I'm going to veto any attempts to try and undermine vote by mail or make it harder for people to access the ballot box here in Pennsylvania. And third, we're going to actually expand voter access. We want to do things like automatic voter registration, same day voter registration, early voter registration for young people who are 16 and 17 to get them ready. We're going to do everything in our power to make sure the ballot box is accessible to all legal eligible voters. So I'm going to not only stop the bad stuff from happening,

we're going to make a lot of good stuff happen. And I'm going to make sure that our Secretary of State is pro-democracy. So you've been talking about these issues during the campaign. You've made them central to your campaign. But there's a lot of consultants who say that that's like a bad idea, that if you look at the polling, right, actually Republicans are more activated around Democratic. They think democracy is more under threat than typical Democratic voters, that if you, that the most important thing a Democrat can do to protect democracy is win. And if you want to win, you need to focus on the economy, to focus on jobs, you need to focus on like kitchen table issues. How do you think about that as part of your campaign? Well, look, guys, I'm not I'm not the political expert or pundit that that you guys are. And so

I'll let I'll let you all form whatever conclusions you want here. Here's what I know. I'm I'm the twice elected attorney general here in Pennsylvania. I've won in really, really tough environments. I won when the top of our ticket lost, and I earned more votes in 2020 than any Democrat has ever earned in the history of Pennsylvania. when he was running back in 2008, I spent a lot of time out in the community and I listened to people. Pennsylvanians have a lot to worry about right now, from COVID to their kids' education to the ever-changing economy. They shouldn't have to worry about the instability of our democracy too, and they are. And my point to Pennsylvanians when I talked to them, one of the reasons why the first plan I put out in this campaign was a plan to protect our democracy and voting rights is that's at the foundation of everything else we have to do. The so-called kitchen table issues that you talked about, which are unbelievably important, which we talk about every day, we don't get to fully address those issues unless we have free and fair, safe and secure elections

where everybody's voice gets to be heard. You see, the other side, the reason why we're having this battle is the other side is trying to remove people from the conversation, take people away from the table of progress, make sure certain people don't count. And that affects all of those other policy issues. So I would just push back on you respectfully or anybody who says is you can't ignore our democracy. It is central to making progress on all of these other issues and central to the concerns that I know people feel day in and day out here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I'm pretty disappointed by that answer because in nowhere in your litany of issues, did you mention that there are currently books in our schools in which boys kiss boys. And there's

also comic graphic novels that do reference the Holocaust, and kids are seeing these things every day and finding out that gay people and history have happened. And what are the steps you'll take as governor of Pennsylvania to prevent our children from finding out about gay people and history? Look, I mean, I know you're saying that tongue in cheek, but there's there's a broader, deeper point here. And that is and I've done this as attorney general. I'll do it as governor that we've got to make sure that our commonwealth, our laws work for everybody, no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, who you pray to or choose not to pray to. And I think we are a stronger community when people are respected. I see this as the AG when we have hate crimes or acts of ethnic intimidation against people based on

their faith or based on who they love or whatever the case may be. And the reality is that makes us all less safe when one person is targeted because of a particular characteristic or belief or whatever the case may be. We have got to push back on that mentality. We've got to make sure that that is not something that infects our schools or our democracy. And we've got to treat people with dignity and respect. That's what I've always tried to do. And that's what I'll certainly continue to do as AG and God willing, as governor. Doesn't sound like a lot of books are going to catch fire with this guy.

It does not. No, unfortunately. I totally take your point that you are not a political pundit. That is good advice. You should not be a pundit. You should be the candidate. But I know that you're obviously trying to run a campaign. You should not be a pundit. You should be the candidate. But I know that you're obviously trying to run a campaign. You're trying to win. It is a very tough election year

for Democrats. Yeah. So was 2021. Like, what's your assessment or at least your campaign's assessment of why Democrats lost Virginia and had an 11 point swing against them in New Jersey? What do you what lessons do you take from those elections? Yeah, and look, obviously I'm not the expert on Virginia or New Jersey. I'm here in Pennsylvania where the results in 2021 in Pennsylvania were not what they were in New Jersey or Virginia. But I take your question. I think what is clear from those two races is that the voters that I think some of the pollsters and pundits thought would simply go away when Donald Trump was no longer on the ballot, that assessment, that assumption is just not true.

And we saw that play out in Virginia and in New Jersey. But I've never assumed that they wouldn't show up in Pennsylvania. And indeed, part of my ability to win in 2016 when Secretary Clinton lost and outperform Joe Biden in 2020 is by competing in those areas and by going to rural communities, going to places that, quite candidly, our national party has forgotten about and not spoken to in a way that, you know, former President Obama and others have. And so I think that from my perspective, while I saw that play out in Virginia and New Jersey, those voters continue to come out. I assume they're coming out in Pennsylvania, and I'm going to compete hard to continue to earn their votes here in our commonwealth. So you're obviously going to get this voter in your travels throughout the state. I'm a cranky Pennsylvania voter who tells you that, you know, even though Joe Biden and the Democrats promised a return to normalcy, we're still in the middle of a pandemic, still dealing

with restrictions, still dealing with high prices. Democrats still haven't passed most of what they ran on in 2020. Why should I vote Democrat? Well, look, I would just say from my perspective, I'm running to be your governor. I'm not going to Washington, D.C. And I take my cues from Washington County, Pennsylvania, not Washington, D.C. I'm a proud. There's a Washington County. It makes the line work at that. Look at that. County. It makes the line work. Look at that. Look at that. What a pro. What a pro. Uh-huh. Yeah. Pittsburgh, not Paris, right? I've got plans to try and make their lives better. And I will say to them what I've said before. Give me an opportunity to serve you. It's what I've done as Attorney General, making sure that we look out for you. And what I'll do as Governor, making sure

that we give every single child, no matter what zip code they live in, a quality education, making sure we've got safe communities all across Pennsylvania, making sure we have an economy that lifts up all, not just some. And then finally, making sure folks just don't get screwed anymore, right? Too many people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, they're frustrated because you're getting screwed by some big corporation that's putting profits before people. They're getting screwed by a government that's not looking out for them. Well, what I've done in public service is look out for people, whether it's returning nearly $200 million in student debt cancellation to students that got ripped off from Navient or some for-profit college, making sure it's finally seeing survivors who suffered in the shadows of

abuse at the hands of predator priests, thousands of them in Pennsylvania. We're making sure that we were able to preserve and protect access to healthcare for 1.9 million Western Pennsylvanians. I've delivered for people in Pennsylvania. And while I recognize a lot of folks are frustrated about D.C., I'd say, forget D.C. Focus on what's happening here in the Commonwealth. Focus on my record of standing up for folks who are getting screwed. And I'll do more of that as governor by helping people who are in need. Anything you're hearing on the trail that is surprising you or that you feel like is not being covered in the national press that's like a real concern for people? You know, if you're interested in sort of those national issues, I'm surprised at the disconnect between the bill Congress was considering on the social investment and the disconnect between

the good things that are in there that would help people's lives and them feeling as though not only was it not going to help them, but the money would probably be wasted or go to somebody else, right? And that's not my fight to battle, of course. That's up for our federal officials to make the case there. But I've been surprised at the disconnect there between sort of what's happening and the efforts that I know are real to try to help people coming out of Washington, but it's just not resonating, which is why I focus on these issues at our state. And why, you know, why I think folks are sort of, I guess you asked like kind of what's the national media missing, you know, I'll drill down maybe a step further, because I think this is a really critical point. There is so much attention on Washington, D.C. when it comes to voting rights, when it comes to civil rights, when it comes to reproductive rights.

I think people are kind of waking up to the fact, I hear this every day, the fact that they can't rely on the Supreme Court of the United States anymore to protect our reproductive rights. And the only thing standing in the way of doing away with a woman's right to make a decision over her own body is the veto pen of our next governor or the pen to sign a bill like that Texas abortion ban into law. Obviously, I'd veto it. I think they've realized that Washington has failed to deliver. At least a couple of folks in the Washington, D.C. world have failed to deliver on voting rights. And they realize that if they want to be able to have access to the ballot box, it's going to come down to their governor, their secretary of state protecting that right. And so I think a lot of folks are kind of waking up to the fact that these battles are now going to be waged in the states. And Pennsylvania is really

the epicenter of that battle. And I think some in the national media, I'm not being critical of the media, but just some kind of missed that point about the important role that the states are going to have to play. And in particular, Pennsylvania, you can be critical of the media here is welcome. All right. You're visited by some sort of a ghost in the night and you're required to give an answer to this question. Okay. Yikes.

I don't know what he's going to ask here. You have to pick one of these three movies that are all based in Pennsylvania as your favorite and face all the political consequences therein. Yeah. The three movies are Rocky. As long as you're not making me choose

between our sports teams, I'm happy to choose. I'm not aware of what they are. You have no idea. I'm familiar. I'm happy to choose. I'm not aware of what they are. I'm familiar. I'm sure they are. I picture yellow and some sort of a hockey stick and like a someone yellow and a hockey stick.

Great. There you go. The point is you have to choose between trading places, Rocky and Groundhog Day, man. They're all really good. By by the way we should go to Punxsutawney sometime they have a great Punxsutawney diner there which is

they have terrific food I'd have to go with Rocky I mean it's just sort of like the ultimate I've seen all of them many times I'm trying to get my kids into them too it's I mean come on do you think it's weird that movie you have to say Rocky.

Groundhog Day is one of my top five favorite movies of all time. So I might have to say that. But Rocky, if you're running for office, you have to say Rocky. You always have to say Rocky. Even though it's like, it doesn't seem like that big a deal to run up those stairs. Don't you think that movie makes it a much bigger deal to run up those stairs than it really is? It's hard to run up those stairs. I know, but not like cheer for 15 minutes.

Hard. People do it every day for fun. Now, come on. That's not easy, man. Get up there and then do what he did. That's,

that's not easy. You know, the Rocky statue is there at the art museum as though he's, you know, a real person, not a fictitional character, but Rocky's the man. Uh,

yeah, it is hard to run up those stairs. It's also going to be hard to, uh, run for governor in Pennsylvania, but we, uh, wish you's the man. Yeah, it is hard to run with this. It's also going to be hard to run for governor in Pennsylvania, but we wish you all the best. Look at that transition out of this thing. I'm a pro now. I'm a pro. You know, I'm just trying to move things along. Here's another transition for you, if

I may. If you're interested in pitching in and helping our campaign, just text us at 32210. We'd love to have your help. We've been proud in this campaign to not only get contributions from every single county in Pennsylvania, but every single state in the nation. And we're really grateful for the broad support. And we're going to keep working hard to protect democracy and move our commonwealth forward. How was that for a transition?

That's right. That is nailed it. We're going to end there. Attorney General Josh Shapiro, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. Best of luck on the trail. Hey, guys, thanks so much for having me. All right. Before we go, Republicans across the country are censoring libraries and banning school books that have LGBTQ or racial themes. A Tennessee school board voted 10-0 to remove Mouse, a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin started a tip line so parents can report inherently divisive practices happening in schools. I don't know what the fuck that means.

And a state legislator in Texas put together a list of 850 books that might make students uncomfortable. Lovett, I believe you have something planned for us on this. Yeah, this is all to protect the children, which really means protecting the parents of children who themselves do not like to encounter challenging ideas any more than they're interested in encountering challenging cuisines. I think that's, yeah, no, I think that's right. There's a phenomenon that author Gwen Katz dubbed pajamification. It's when a book that touches on a difficult theme in history is scrubbed to provide for a sanitized and less honest version. So instead of mouse, kids read John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,

a safer version from the point of view of a German boy rather than a Jewish boy who sees the horror firsthand. Because inevitably, if you remove something that teaches history in a way that's difficult, you're left with something that that is uh uh less faithful and less true of course being uncomfortable isn't bad it's good and we know that these conservatives understand that because the best-selling book of all time is filled with uncomfortable unpalatable history and characters so i'm going to quiz john and ben in a little segment we call band or bible i'm glad this is the episode I'm on. The narrator describes entire groups of people being murdered

with the killers directed to not leave anything that breathes. That is going to be Bible. That's correct. Ben, the narrator describes entire groups of people being murdered with the killers told it's because they are not human. That would be Bible. Nope, know if that is that is the graphic novel mouse uh john two boy rabbits fall in love despite protests and plan to go on a bunny moon after getting married is that in the bible i'm gonna say that's uh mouse yep it's from uh

jill twists is a day in the life of marlon bundo. And we must keep it from the children. Ben, a guy asks the father permission to marry his daughter, but the father disapproves, so he gives the suitor the impossible task of paying with 100 penis foreskins cut from murdered victims

in exchange for marrying his daughter. Whoa. Squid Game? No, it's the Bible. John, a young Vietnamese boy who loves fairy tales uses one to tell his immigrant parents that he's gay. Not the Bible. That it's the Bible. John, a young Vietnamese boy who loves fairy tales uses one to tell his immigrant parents that he's gay. Not the Bible. It's from the Magic Fish.

Not the Bible. Ben, a man spots an interracial couple sleeping in a tent and gets so upset he stabs them both in the stomach. I'm trying to think about my Bible there, John. Seems like you've got to think a little harder. Maybe refresh your reading of the good book. Yeah, I feel like something like that was in the Old Testament. Yeah, it's in Numbers.

It's in Numbers. This is all Old Testament. That Old Testament God was not easy. Yeah, they turned things around. Yeah, they came up. Well, it's all Revelation now. Honestly, the end is pretty yeah they uh well it's a revelation honestly yeah well yeah it was a sort of new writers had been brought on this project kind of lost the original thrill of it you know they're you know they tried to keep it going it's like

when sorkin was replaced on the west wing that is an analogy that no one has ever made and that is for no one that is just That is an analogy everyone hates. Final question. A woman is forced to become a handmaiden to bear children for her mistress's husband. Definitely the Bible. Oh,

is that the Bible? Yes. Handmaid's tale? You're both right. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. You're both right and you've won the game. What do you win?

What don't you win? It's the end of the show. That's what you all win. You've won the end of the show. Bander Bible. Thank you to Josh Shapiro for joining us. We should have just given him this quiz. That would have made him pretty nervous.

That would have been really helpful. He would have definitely fired a few campaign staffers had we given him that quiz. Very, very on message. Very, very, very on point. You know what? Very on message. But it's a good message.

Might be a little dry for our podcast, but the campaign staffer in me thinks it's a good message. Might be a little dry for our podcast, but the campaign staff are in me, thanks. That's a good candidate right there. That's why that guy won when Hillary Clinton did something else.

I always wonder when people ban these books, like, wait till they find out what life is like. The books are usually like a little bit better. Yeah, where are you going to protect people from

anything bad or uncomfortable or weird or or things that they are they haven't been familiar with for what their whole lives until they go out into society and live it themselves do we think it's the people do we think the people like the people that are pushing for these book bands you think it's because it's like now i didn't read a lot of this when i was a kid but when i discovered literature as an adult that's when it really meant the world to me no these are not these are these are like they don't want gay kids to read about gay kids because they don't really like gay kids.

They don't like gay stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you to Josh Shapiro for joining. Thank you. And Ben, thank you for being here today.

Good to see you. Glad you're here. Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Mews, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer.

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