Pod Save America - "Putin Chooses War in Ukraine."

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Ben Rhodes joins to talk about Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as the response from the U.S. and the world. And later, Democratic strategist and pollster Celinda Lake joins to talk about the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s midterm manifesto, which includes raising taxes on more than 100 million Americans.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. And I'm Ben Rhodes. On today's show, Ben is here with us to talk about Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as the response from the U.S. and the world. And later, Democratic strategist and pollster Celinda Lake joins to talk about the National Republican Senatorial Committee's midterm manifesto, which includes raising taxes on more than 100 million Americans. But first, check out the latest episode of Pod Save the World, where Ben covers the latest in Ukraine with the Financial Times Moscow bureau chief Max Sedin

and our good friend and USAID administrator Samantha Power. Also, check out Hysteria, where Aaron and Alyssa dive into a shocking pro-publica piece that exposes states for sitting on $5.2 billion in welfare funds while needy families struggle to survive. New episodes of Pod Save the World drop every Wednesday and Hysteria drops every Thursday. All right, let's get to the news. Vladimir Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying that his goal is the demilitarization and denazification of Russia's peaceful, democratic neighbor. The nuclear- armed dictator also said, quote,

anyone who tries to interfere with us must know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never experienced in your history. Massive numbers of Ukrainians have started to flee the capital and other places under attack by Russian forces. Governments all over the world condemned Putin's war. NATO, a security alliance of European and North American countries formed to guard against Russian aggression, has announced an emergency summit. And President Biden joined other world leaders in imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia, which he talked about during a speech at the White House on Thursday. Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war, and now he and his country

will bear the consequences. Today, I'm authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia. This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time. We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies. Ben, what did you think of Biden's speech and how would you rate the severity of the sanctions that

he announced? Well, I think that, you know, they've been foreshadowing these particular sanctions for some time now. And what this is, is the financial sanctions target some of the largest Russian banks. Russian banks have been targeted in the past, but it's usually been smaller military associated banks. These are the really big financial institutions in Russia. It freezes their assets in the United States and essentially aims to cut them off from the capacity to do business in the international financial system. The oligarchs are the broader network of wealthy Russians who've helped subsidize Putin's corruption and benefited from his reign and kind of the lifeblood of his regime. And the export controls are an effort to use a U.S. capacity to block the export of certain materials into Russia that are important to certain critical sectors of the Russian economy, you know, their defense industrial base, their high tech sector. And so further trying to limit

Russia's capacity to develop and grow its economy. And so, look, this will have a hit on the Russian economy. You've already seen the Russian currency plummet. You've already seen the Russian markets plummet. But these are not the most severe sanctions. The two notable things that President Biden and the Europeans did not yet do, are essentially evicting Russia from the SWIFT system. That's the payment system. We imposed this sanction on Iran. This essentially kind of kicks you out of the international financial system. And energy sanctions, sanctions on the capacity of Russia to export oil and gas, which is obviously its biggest revenue generator. So this is about as far as they could go without going all the way to a place where there would either be really big disruptions

in the international financial system, which the SWIFT step might do, or bigger disruptions or inflationary pressure or pressure on gas prices in Europe and the United States, which is what broader energy sanctions would do. But I mean, it's a big, you know, it's a big deal. It's obviously not going to deter Vladimir Putin, but it is going to impose a bigger cost than Russia has faced before when it comes to sanctions. And is it right that we couldn't kick them out of the SWIFT system on our own, that we need the Europeans to go along with this? And I know that Germany and Italy at least are blocking this move. Yeah. So you want consensus with Europeans and on SWIFT, you'd want Japan and Canada and others on board. It does sound like

Germany and Italy have been the outliers, which is, you know, I got a bit of deja vu when we were imposing sanctions on Russia after the annexation of Crimea and the initial invasion into eastern Ukraine, which obviously wasn't as substantial as the military operation we're seeing now. Germany and Italy, well, Italy in particular, was often an outlier in wanting to minimize disruptions to their own economy. You know, we'll see what happens. But, you know, Biden made the point that the sanctions that they already did are as consequential as SWIFT. I think, you know, cumulatively, obviously, if you added SWIFT on top of that, it would have an impact. And the Ukrainians have been calling for that. But this is still, you know, a pretty significant hit to the Russian economy and one that's going

to ripple out across the global economy, including our own economy. Ben, a couple of things seem true here. One is what we have promised thus far has not deterred Putin, but also that there is no appetite anywhere for the use of force. Is there anything the US or the EU can do to, or any of our global allies can do to actually cause Putin to second guess this move? Or would Swift do that? Or are we sort of very limited here and he has sort of free reign? I don't think so, Dan, at this point. I mean, in part because, you know, the psychology of the person we've seen in Vladimir Putin the last few days looks like literally the man in the high castle. You know, it feels like he's a decision maker of one.

This is not even like a there's no Kremlin ology here. There's no Politburo. This is Putin. And this feels not even like a strategic move by him, but like a deep seated grievance fueled move by him, but like a deep-seated, grievance-fueled move by him. You know, today you saw Putin summon literally all the oligarchs who were in Russia to a meeting where he basically told them, hey, look, I had to do this. You're just going to have to deal with this, right? I do think that, you know, that the energy sanctions would obviously hit the hardest, but it would obviously hit us the hardest as well. So in terms of the near term, stopping somehow this current military operation, it doesn't feel like there's anything at all that

could do that. I do think, and I've been thinking about this overnight, watching how dramatic this is, you know, the conversation is so much about sanctions. And, you know, actually, you know, we were going back and forth last night about the UN Security Council and what a farce it was to watch Russia chair a meeting that was called because of its own invasion of another country. beyond needing to enforce these sanctions, go after all this wealth, is what can be done to just kind of kick Russia out of every club that we can. The UN is obviously a difficult piece of business to reform that. But there's a lot of institutions that Russia belongs to, from Interpol, which they've abused, to more symbolic things that they care a lot about, like international sports federations. But but essentially really just, you know, Russia has now made itself. I mean, if this really is kind of analogous, it was not analogous to, but it has echoes of, you know, Hitler's invasion of Poland. Right. Hopefully not as consequential, obviously, in the long run.

But, you know, this is one big nation invading a smaller democracy to conquer it. I mean, this is of a scale of aggression that we just haven't seen in Europe in our lives. And so I do think a really systematic effort to just kind of evict Russia from every community of nations and club and organization that is practical is the kind of thing that would impose a different type of cost over time. Again, it might not stop him in his tracks or anything. But, you know, I think we have to be thinking creatively about how to register that, hey, you just can't do this and expect things to get back to some business as usual. I think, you know, some people have talked about suspending any diplomatic relations. You

know, look, you still need to talk to other countries. So I'm not sure about that. But you saw, like, for instance, the United Kingdom took a step today where they banned flights into Heathrow from the Russian airline, you know, things like that that are just like, hey, you guys are out, you know, that will have a big impact and, you know, could create pressures internal to Russia that could create problems for Putin again over time. I mean, this is not going to happen overnight. Ben, just watching the scene last night with the U.N. and sort of just the just completely feckless nature of what was happening there. You know, you have NATO,

you have the world united against Russia, you have the UN, yet Russia proceeding and invading a sovereign nation anyway. Does this represent some sort of turning point or breaking point for the post-World War II order in the world about the power of these institutions who were designed to stop exactly this thing from happening? Yes. I mean, I think that I think that's exactly right, Dan. And, you know, you had this whole system set up after World War Two to prevent this, to prevent a war, particularly a war in Europe. Let's face it. Like that's I mean, obviously we care. We should care equally about human life that is lost in wars and other places. But that's what the UN was set up to do after World War Two. And the way I think about this is we are in a new era. You had the post-World War II era through the Cold War,

and then you had the kind of post-Cold War era. And that kind of ended definitively last night. I mean, it had already been unraveling for some time. The Trump presidency, obviously, was an accelerant. But this kind of period of time, the post-Cold War globalization on top of the post-World War II institutions, that clearly doesn't work anymore. And it's not working across the board. It's obviously not working in stopping Russia. But, you know, we you know, this is really what my last book was about is essentially that that order has fallen and something else is going to have to take its place. And so I think part of what's going to happen here is a rethinking of how the whole international system works, because when one of the big nuclear superpowers, Russia, completely opts out of any norms and, frankly, uses those institutions

to shield itself. You know, they use their UN Security Council veto to block the UN from doing anything. They use their oil and gas to leverage the whole global economy, which is dependent on the kind of free flow of oil and gas. They're using all these mechanisms to prevent consequences for them doing this kind of stuff. And then they have China pretty much backing them up on that and doing in their own way the same thing, although not nearly as dramatically. It's time for like a pretty fundamental rethink here. Your point earlier about Putin having made this decision on his own and being all by himself on this, like I saw even some Russia meeting you referenced that he needs to make sure Russia remains part of the global economy. There was a report that captured Russian soldiers were saying that they didn't know they were being sent to kill Ukrainians. Can you talk about how much of a risk there is to Putin that he may have overreached and

miscalculated and the Russian people may turn against him? I think that that's like a real risk. And, you know, in watching Putin for years, you know, when we came into government in 2009, he had, you know, he was Prime Minister Medvedev, Dmitry Medvedev was president, but Putin called the shots, everybody knew that. But there were like power centers, you know, Putin was the kind of guy who was the shot caller, but he kind of adjudicated between some more liberal advisors and some hardliners and some oligarchs and some military types. By the end of the Obama years, that had changed. And it was like Putin with a pretty tight circle of hardliners. And now I'm talking to people, you know, I know

in Moscow and actually Max Seddon made this point on Patsy the World, like, it's just Putin. He spent the last two years in COVID pretty much in total isolation. And if you watch that crazy Security Council meeting he had the other day before he launched this invasion, we kind of went around and kind of demanded to know what everybody thought. And clearly they were all nervous that one guy said the wrong thing. And it looked like he thought like, you know, a hook was going to come out from behind him and take him out. And meanwhile, that guy's the head of their foreign intelligence service. Those guys didn't look like they even necessarily knew exactly what they were supposed to say.

even necessarily knew exactly what they were supposed to say. And so you've got to have the sense that this isn't like there's some big cabal of hardliners who cook this up. This feels like Putin cooked this up. And I think the risk for him, therefore, is if you have the Russian public pissed off about this over time. And let's be clear, I think there's going to be pissed off Russians. And we've already seen protests today. But, you know, when Crimea happened, there were like very little casualties, very little fighting, very little cost to Russia. And Crimea is the one part of Ukraine that most Russians felt like was a part of Russia. That was a very popular thing that Putin did. That's not what most Russians think about, like the whole country of Ukraine. And so if you start to have Russian casualties, a bloody insurgency, military expenditures into Ukraine at the same time that sanctions are hurting their economy,

there could be general public dissatisfaction. But also, I've been wondering, are there generals who are beginning to whisper to each other, like, hey, what's this guy doing? You know, like how far is he willing to go? They're probably asking the Russian generals the same kind of questions that we are. You know, like, where does this end with this guy? And these oligarchs are losing all their money. You know, they're not going to stand up to Putin anytime soon. But, you know, those guys have kind of financed a lot of this stuff over the years.

And so I think the risk for him and who knows how long it takes is whether or not different forces inside of Russia start to think like, hey, this is dangerous, you know, and there have been leaders who looked really strong and including leaders of superpowers who, you know, once they start losing both elite and public support, it can go south for them. Again, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. But this could be the domino that Putin knocked over that ultimately circles back around to him. Ben, invading Ukraine is one thing, occupying it is another. Does Russia really have the ability and the will to occupy Ukraine over the long term? What's the end game here for Putin?

So I don't think that they do or want to. You heard him talk about denazification and demilitarization, which is chilling and crazy, especially given the fact that the president of Ukraine is Jewish. But we've heard this in the past. I mean, in Crimea, they said there were Ukrainian Nazis. It's a kind of weird allusion to the fact that some elements of Ukraine, you know, were on the other side in World War Two. It's obviously totally false today. But I think what their end game is to decapitate the government. Tragically, I think to probably round up and kill or detain a lot of the pro-Western Ukrainian

political elite. So essentially wipe out that government and wipe out the forces and leadership in Ukrainian society and civil society that has been behind this turn towards democracy and turn towards the West, install some pro-Russian apparatchik to be the president of Ukraine, and then to kind of treat it like a vassal state in the same way that they treat, you know, Lukashenko, the kleptocrat in Belarus, or, you know, some of these separatist regions that they've recognized in Georgia. I think there's a problem with that, though. I don't I don't think that the people of Ukraine, this country of 44 million people are going to go for that. You know, it's a big country. And if you look at the you know, every talks about what a, you know, chess, 3D chess player

Putin is. These other pieces of territory that he's kind of bitten off chunks of countries of since the invasion of Georgia in 2008 are small. They're really relatively small, concentrated areas. And they are areas that usually have a majority of kind of Russian speakers or ethnic Russians. That's not Ukraine. kind of Russian speakers or ethnic Russians. That's not Ukraine. So I think his end game is that to install a friendly government and turn it into kind of like almost like a Soviet republic. But I don't think that's going to work. I think you're going to find a mix of civil disobedience and violence and insurgency. And this thing can could drag out and lead to, you know,

all manner of unintended consequences. Right. Once a war starts, as our country learned in Iraq, you know, you start a big war. You don't get to choose how it ends. Well, speaking of consequences, I think one of the more chilling lines from Putin's speech last night was that any country that interferes will be met with consequences as you've never experienced in history. I was wondering when I heard that, because obviously a lot of people expressed alarm about that on Twitter for good reason. But I was wondering, like, how do you think your old colleagues at the NSC and the Defense Department and state and the White House reacted to that line in the speech, which was taken by many as an overt threat of nuclear

retaliation. Yeah, I think it was a threat. And if you remember, part of his like run a show leading up to this war was to kind of oversee these nuclear exercises. So I think it was all of a piece. Look, I think that they probably, you know, they're not sitting there thinking that we're on the precipice of nuclear war. And I think people can can chill a little bit about that in the sense that, you know, I do think Putin's objectives, you know, at least in in this chapter, are really focused on Ukraine. But I think what they probably started to do is like, hmm, like we're going to start watching for any signs of anything changing in the kind of deployment or posture of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

And I saw some comments out of the Defense Department today, kind of, you know, senior defense official comments that they hadn't seen any change. That's kind of Cold War shit, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we used to do. You know, you're like you're watching silos and, you know, you're and so just the fact that we're even having this conversation is alarming. And I will again, I don't want to be overly alarmist here. The one thing that has given me the most cause for concern in the last couple of weeks is this kind of window we've had into Putin's psychology. He's really and people who know better than us right people who? Who are in Moscow people who watched him for a long time that I know are like this guy seems kind of unhinged

You know doesn't seem even like the Putin of like a decade ago You know who is a already pretty scary guy so that you know, I think we're being reminded like history You know an So that, you know, I think we're being reminded like history, you know, an unstable or maybe that's not the right word, but a deeply aggrieved kind of messianic leader who is increasingly isolated from advisors and increasingly doesn't listen to people. That's a scary thing. True in Russia. True in the United States. True all over the world. Yes, it's always never good.

Aggrieved, deranged dictators with nuclear arsenals. Not a good mix. Not a good mix. Ben, thank you so much for walking us through all this, both today and in the last couple of weeks. And when we come back, Dan and I will talk through some of the politics of all this. All right, Dan, now that it's just us two hacks, let's talk about how this war is already affecting American politics. New polling this week shows how tricky this issue is for Biden.

Politico Morning Consult says only 40% approve of how he's handling this crisis, with 45% disapproving. 58% say they'd hold Biden responsible if gas prices go up as a result of the invasion, though thankfully a higher percentage said they'd hold Putin responsible. And 42% said that their midterm vote will be about economic issues, which dwarfs every other set of issues listed in the poll, including national security issues, which dwarfs every other set of issues listed in the poll, including national security issues, which were second place, listed issues like terrorism, foreign policy, and border security. That came in at 14%. Meanwhile, an Associated Press poll found that only 26% of Americans

think the U.S. should play a major role in Ukraine, and a CBS poll found that 53% of Americans think the U.S. should stay out of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia altogether. Now, of course, this polling was all done before the full invasion took place on Wednesday evening. So, of course, public opinion shifts very quickly in a situation like this. But did anything in the polling surprise you? And were there any other important takeaways that I missed just now? Well, I think if you take all these individual data points, there are two conclusions to draw. The first is, is the American people do not see this as connected to their lives.

It's not just that low percentages of American people want to be involved in Ukraine. Low percentages of Americans want the U.S. to be involved in the negotiations around Ukraine. We're not even talking about sanctions, troops on the ground, higher gas prices. We're just talking about just the use of American government time. This is not a focus of them. In the AP-NORC poll, they asked people a series of questions. It's a running battery they have, a series of questions about how concerned they are about various foreign policy issues. 53% of Americans are either

extremely or very concerned about Russia's influence in the world, which seems like a lot, right? It is a majority. But people concerned about China's influence in the world was higher, 59%. People concerned about cyber attacks generally was at 63%. And so this is for all, and as you say, this could change because of what people are seeing on their television, but it is the idea they are not yet connecting why what happens in Ukraine matters in their lives. And that therefore puts the Biden administration in a very challenging position because all they are seeing the Biden administration do a very challenging position because all they are seeing the Biden administration do, for good reason, right? This is not a critique of it, is doing stuff about Russia,

talking about Russia, going to meetings about Russia, photos about them talking about Russia, and not the things that they say is going to be the economy, inflation, et cetera, that's going to be at the top of their agenda when they go vote this fall. economy, inflation, et cetera, that's going to be at the top of their agenda when they go vote this fall. And I will say this isn't some new sentiment in America. There's been a long tradition in public opinion of not wanting American leaders to focus on challenges overseas when there are so many challenges here at home. And that sentiment became even stronger after the debacle in Iraq. And so as long as we've been in politics, you know, some of the best lines from politicians that are the highest polling lines are, we don't want to do X overseas. We want to build more X here at home,

right? You fill in whatever the policy issue is. So there is that sentiment that elected leaders have been facing for quite some time. But again, you know, I do think, especially after the images of the last couple of days, that sentiment could shift, especially since this nonstop. This is now every single second following it on social media, which is something that we haven't seen in quite a while, at least with a war this large. You've been in plenty of situations where challenging and unpopular foreign policy crisis dominates both media coverage and the president's attention. Like, what advice would you be giving to the White House right now? I think you ultimately just have to ignore the domestic politics of it. There is no good political position here. There is no good political message. I do not, I think they

should do everything they can, as the president did in the speech he just gave, trying to explain the American people why what happens in Ukraine matters to the American people. I do not think that is an argument they're going to win. It just, is even in more like, as you point out, other than the period right at between 9-11 and when it became pretty clear the Iraq war was a giant mistake, for the vast majority of the last 50 years of American politics, foreign policy has created this paradox for presidents where you pay a price for the chaos abroad, but you get no credit for preventing that chaos or returning the world to stability. And so it is almost, almost a lose-lose. And they're in this situation. So all you can do is do the substantively right thing. And I think continue to seem like you're doing everything you can, be out there publicly talking about it, but recognize you're going to pay – you're still going to pay a price on some level because you were not talking about the things that people want you to be talking about. But you couldn't talk about the

things you want to talk about because there was a war happening in Russia, right? Even if they were to come out and launch a new inflation plan today or some other sort of new COVID guidance or something that would address people's concerns, that would get no coverage. No one will consume it. So this is what they have to deal with. They just have to sort of bear down and get through it and hopefully bring it to a resolution and the most optimal resolution possible as soon as possible. But I don't think there's no message or communication strategy that's going to alter the fact that this is going to put some downward pressure on the president politically. Yeah, the president has the biggest megaphone in the country, but he does not control this news cycle when there is a war

in Europe. I do think, look, in his speech today, he had to announce a lot of the sanctions and explain what the sanctions were and all that. But towards the end of the speech, he did try to make that case about why ukraine should matter to us and it does fit in with a message he's delivered many times in his presidency and even in the course of his campaign about the global struggle between autocracy and democracy and i do think the strongest case for him is like we were just talking about with Ben, this is an autocrat, an aggrieved, deranged autocrat with nuclear weapons. And if we do not stand up to him here, what else might happen? And what other autocrats in other places in the world, some of whom also have nuclear weapons, what are they going to do? And this is a global struggle that we're facing right now between autocracy and democracy and democracy as frustrating as it can be uh as maddening as it can be as messy as it can be

this is why democracy is worth the struggle and and i do think that like like you said i still think you know i can hear the focus groups now you have plenty of voters in this country like yeah but what about my life and so they are going to take a hit for this probably but i think your best shot at telling people why this matters to them is talking about that global struggle which really exists right now yeah it is it is an uphill climb to say the least it is an uphill climb uh we talked on tuesday's pod about how putin's is splitting the Republican Party. That has continued all week to this day. Some Republicans praised Biden's sanctions. Some criticized them for being too late and too weak.

And some are in the leave Putin alone camp. Here's Tucker Carlson the other night. That hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in Eastern Europe. Before that happens, it might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?

Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. Where do you think the does he eat dogs thing come from? i had no idea what that reference was about i it seems like it might be the regurgitation of a 2012 romney campaign hit on brock obama people can google it i can't even that kind we don't have the energy or time to explain it but you remember what i'm talking about

that so that's tucker he's doing his thing he He's getting, you know, featured on Russian state TV because he's basically just giving them free propaganda. And then there's elder statesman Donald Trump who weighed in on the crisis a couple of days ago during his interview on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show. Here's a clip of Trump. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen and I said, this is genius. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen and I said, this is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful.

So Putin is now saying it's independent. A large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. By the way, this never would have happened with us had I been in office. Not even thinkable. This would never have happened. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. Of course, there was a response. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, okay, that was pretty nuts. Pretty nuts.

But, you know, it was a few days before the full-scale invasion, so maybe Trump will change his tune once he actually saw that there were bombs raining down on Kiev. Well, here's Donald Trump talking to Laura Ingraham last night, live, as the invasion was taking place. I think you're exactly right. I think that's what happened. He was going to be satisfied with the peace, and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration. And as an American, I'm angry about it, and I'm saddened by it. And it all happened because of a rigged election.

This would have never happened. Well, I think the whole thing, again, would have never happened. It shouldn't happen. And it's a very sad thing. But you know what's also very dangerous is you told me about the amphibious attack by Americans. You shouldn't be saying that because you and everybody else should know about it. They should do that secretly, not be doing that through the great Laura Ingraham. They should be doing that secretly. great laura ingram they should be doing that secretly nobody should know that laura and you know now that was the russian now those are the russian the russian amphibious i thought you said that i thought you said that no no no no no no no no no no no no

that would be that would be news yeah that would be news you fucking moron who used to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces you thought that last night at the beginning of the invasion that u.s forces were launching attacks in ukraine i mean also there's that there's also the fact that like that was maybe the quickest path ever between here's something happening in the world how can you make it about yourself this never would have happened if it wasn't for the rigged election. It took him like two sentences to get from what's going on in the world to the big lie, which is a record, I think. I would just love a follow-up question on exactly how those two things are connected. Is it because of the mysterious fake DNC server that he thought was in Ukraine? Is it because of his phone call?

How exactly? What led the Russians to invade? was it Dominion? What led the Russians to invade Ukraine because of the big lie like that, that we were in need of a follow up question there? Yeah, let's remember that he did withhold military assistance to Ukraine in order to make sure that he could dig up dirt on Joe Biden. that was that was the source of the first impeachment lest we forget let's we forget i don't know what else to say about trump here like do you think it's you think it's politically wise for him to be saying what he's saying right now like he doesn't seem it it does seem like a moment where donald trump and the tucker carlson's of the world are and the Tucker Carlson's of the world are out of step with most elected Republicans right now.

Even Josh Hawley, who had been on Tucker's program, and his interview was also used as Russian propaganda, today put out a statement saying, okay, we stand with the people of Ukraine, we've got to stand up to Russia, blah, blah, blah. It's getting pretty lonely in the leave Putin alone caucus among Republicans right now. It's like pretty lonely in the Leave Putin Alone caucus among Republicans right now. It's like Tucker Carlson and some of the wingnuts in right-wing media. Not a lot of elected officials there. Well, there's not a lot of elected officials, but it is the most prominent, powerful Republicans in the country who have adopted that position. And it is not a popular position. In the CBS YouGov poll you cited earlier, they asked, who do you support in the negotiations around Russia and Ukraine?

And they asked them, should the U.S. support Russia? 4% of people, 4% of Republicans support that position. getting enough attention that the most important prominent figures, including the leading contender to be the next Republican nominee, has offered words of support. His praise has complimented Putin at this exact moment in time. And every Republican should have to answer for that. Every Republican should have to answer for that. Everyone who's interviewed. I mean, do you think it's a problem that Republican messaging is contradictory between the, you know, the leader of the party still, Donald Trump and so many other Republicans and the media apparatus and elected Republicans? Like, is this a problem that it's contradictory? And is it possible for Democrats to exploit these

divisions? Well, the I think the reaction to the invasion is contradictory, right? Or the analysis of why the invasion is happening is contradictory. There is pro-Putin, there is pro-fascist, there's fascist adjacent, there is Putin apologist. There's a whole set of different sort of camps here. But there is a very consistent message as it relates to Biden, which is every Republican, whether they love Vladimir Putin or they pretend to love Vladimir Putin or they, you know, sort of Putin neutral, has argued that this is a direct result of Biden's weakness. The message Republicans have been hammering since last summer when the withdrawal around Afghanistan led to sort of the beginning of Biden's political troubles. And I mean, they're starting their statements about this. They blame Biden's weakness for why Putin did this as opposed to blaming Putin's aggression. And there is some political power in that message.

Strength and weakness is the paradigm on which Republicans always handle and discuss politics. And it is why they find themselves praising Putin as a way to draw a contrast between Putin and Biden. He is strong. Biden is weak. That's why this is happening. And so yes, they are incoherent. But I think it's not necessarily that we have to drive division between those two sort of confusing camps of dumb people saying dumb things.

But I think what we can do is point out that the Republicans are blaming America, right? That they are reeking of political opportunism at this time, that their leaders are supporting Putin or complimenting Putin at this time. This is not for Joe Biden to do. His job is to stay above the fray. But for every other Democrat, for all of us, they are punching Biden at every opportunity to try to use this tragedy, this global crisis, to score political points for the midterm. And they have to be called out on it. Also, all of them spent the entire Trump administration supporting a president lockstep who cozied up to Putin and praised Putin every single chance he got. And none of the very few of them, a handful ever spoke out about that ever.

So and that's that's just a completely true observation. So I think Democrats pointing that out is very fair if they're going to talk about Joe Biden and his weakness. OK, when we come back, we will bring in Democratic strategist Celinda Lake to talk about the Republican midterm manifesto. There was some big news about the 2022 midterms this week. Just a month after Mitch McConnell told reporters that his party wouldn't be releasing any kind of governing agenda before the election, the Republican senator in charge of winning back the majority went ahead and did it anyway. Rick Scott laid out an 11-point policy platform that includes massive cuts to education, discrimination against transgender children,

naming a border wall after Donald Trump, and raising taxes on nearly 100 million Americans. Here to talk about how this might fly with voters is Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake. Celinda, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. It's really a pleasure to be here. And it wasn't just 11 points. It was 228 points underneath that. Most of us can't count that on. Yeah, fortunately, I did not get through the entire manifesto. You conduct polling and focus groups all the time. How do you think voters in swing districts and swing states will respond to the Senate Republicans campaign plan,

districts and swing states will respond to the Senate Republicans campaign plan, particularly the part about raising taxes so that everyone has, as they put it, skin in the game. Yeah, I love that. Like we don't already have enough skin in the game. I also love that they plan to tax seniors and disabled people and veterans because they really weren't contributing enough already. I think this is an abundance of riches. And I can't believe that it's really designed for primary politics. It's really designed for the mega nation faction. And our problem is going to be that we are going to have to be disciplined in picking out of the 228 proposals, which 516 things do we have problems

with? So one of the things that I love, it reminded me kind of of Newt Gingrich's contract for America. And I think that's what they were really basing it on. But if you'll remember, when we took on the contract and we said it was a contract on America, not for America. We said, look at the fine print. And this is a case where, boy, look at the fine print. And there are just so many policies in here that are wildly unpopular and so much intrusion of the government in people's personal lives that is just astounding. And trying to take things that are working to our advantage, like let's look at the science and perverting completely what science is.

Let's look at what contributing to our society is and turning that on its head and saying seniors and disabled people and veterans don't contribute. This is just an abundance of riches. And we've got to figure out which two or three things are we going to drive home first. Do you think that the raising taxes on 100 million Americans is at the top of the list there? Yeah, I think it might be, particularly because during the Biden campaign, as you'll remember, we had to keep emphasizing that we were not going to raise taxes on anybody with incomes under $400,000. Well, now you've got a plan.

Not only is it raising it on half of America, but it's raising it on the half that's under $400,000. So now there's a real clear choice. Everybody gets their taxes raised, including seniors who make up a record number of the electorate. And our proposal, which said nobody gets their taxes raised under 400,000. And we're asking corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share. Dan, why do you think Rick Scott did this? McConnell wanted no plan. Scott released an 11-point manifesto with, as Cylinda noted, 200 and something points under that.

Which option gives the Republicans a better chance at winning the Senate? Well, I think Rick Scott did this because he's just dumb enough to think he's a serious person. And so every politician we've ever worked for thinks they have to be for something. They have to have an agenda. What am I running on? And of course, McConnell is right in this situation because Republicans want their agenda is less popular than Democrats. They themselves, the Republican Party, is in most polling less popular than Democrats.

They just want to be a generic alternative to the things people are pissed about. So when they remind, if you have a plan to go out and remind people what they don't like about you and how unpopular positions are, that is, at least based on my expertise or limited as it may be, bad political strategy. Yeah. I mean, it's clear from the polling I've seen that, you know, the economy is far and away the top issue for voters. Democratic economic policies are more popular than Republican economic policies. That said, Republicans seem obsessed with banning books, banning classroom discussions about gay people, a bill in Florida that just passed the House today, and banning health care for trans kids, as Governor Greg Abbott is trying

to do in Texas. And the polling I've seen also shows that all those bans are also fairly unpopular with most voters as well. So Linda, how do you think Democratic candidates should handle this? You know, voters want to focus on the economy. Republicans want to get involved in people's lives in an unpopular way. How do you handle that if you're a Democratic campaign? Well, the thing that I think that's amazing about this is that the Republicans here are intervening and fixing a whole bunch of problems that don't exist. One of my favorites was God determined that the nuclear family is God driven and only traditional nuclear families are families. Well, that in a country with a 50% divorce rate, a lot of single moms and dads were working

darn hard. A lot of grandparents raising kids. And as one person said in our focus groups, I got enough problems figuring out who's in my family. I don't need you telling me who's my family. They're fixing problems that don't exist and ignoring the problems that do or making them worse. You don't try to get your kids caught up on education by doing away with the Department of Education, a wildly unpopular policy. You don't tell seniors

who are really struggling on fixed incomes with inflation that your problem is you don't work and you don't pay enough taxes. So I think that the most important thing I think for Democrats is to lay out our positive agenda. Ironically, I don't think the Republicans needed to lay out an agenda. I think that we do need to remind people of what we have gotten accomplished. And then now we have the fodder for the starkest contrast of what an America under Rick Scott would look like versus what we are struggling with right now to help all Americans. And what problems we're trying to deal with that are real problems at your kitchen table, unlike these made-up problems, half of which have no definition. I mean, I love the one. They added in a little socialist everywhere they could

half of the americans don't know what a socialist is so uh you know sprinkle in some socialism whenever that's right just a little socialist does dan you and i have talked about how democrats should handle these cultural issues you know obviously what uh g Greg Abbott is trying to do in Texas is gross, disgusting, hateful. There hasn't been enough discussion about how it's unpopular as well. I mean, I looked at some PBS Marist polling from last April. Fewer than 30 percent of all Americans support state laws that prohibit gender affirming care for minors or that criminalize providers of that care. Even a majority of Republicans oppose such laws. prohibit gender affirming care for minors or that criminalize providers of that care. Even a majority of Republicans oppose such laws. Obviously, there's also polling showing that banning books in schools is very unpopular, even with Republican voters, banning classroom

discussions of about gay people, which I haven't seen pulling up. But I'm going to guess I'm not being a pollster. You tell me if I'm wrong, Celinda. I'm going to guess that that's not popular with a lot of voters either. So, Dan, how do you think Democrats should handle these? Well, I think, you know, you and I have talked to this before about how we tend to create this fake wall between, quote unquote, cultural issues and economic issues. And we have to knock that down because any time your opponent decides to adopt unpopular solutions to issues that people do not think is a problem or are not concerned about, you have to take advantage of that. And I think one way to handle this and connect it to what we have talked about many times is everyone's number one concern, inflation in the economy, which is this is what Republicans are focusing on. They're not focusing on lowering your gas prices or making it easier

to pay for food or raise your wages. They're focusing on banning books and criminalizing parents and attacking gay people and attacking trans people. They're focused on these things, and we're focused on the things that affect your lives. And I think this is what the great gift of the Rick Scott manifesto is. He does it, and I actually gave him almost credit for the fact that he sat down on a computer and put together a document that took the least popular corporatist elements of the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan agenda and combined it with the least popular, most bigoted parts of the MAGA agenda and put it in one document and said, enjoy Democrats. So thank you, Rick Scott. I think the other thing that's really important here is to assert what the motivation is. They're trying to divide and divert us because they want

to win political power and they want to hide their real agenda. Their real agenda is there is price gouging going on right now. And that's part of the contribution of inflation. And they don't want to take it on. We will. They don't want to take on the supply chain issues. We will. We will bring manufacturing back. And some of this stuff is just so non-common sense to women. It is so out of touch with their lives. I love the one about we're going to ban discussion of any LGBTQ issues in the classroom. Okay. So what happens when Susie very innocently asks the teacher, why does Molly have two mommies? We're not going to answer that question. And when Molly, every child in America has a child of LGBTQ parents in their classroom.

Now, really, that's the biggest thing you can be focused on. You're going to run in there and be the teacher police on whether you're going to answer the question, why does Molly have two mommies? That's ridiculous. It's obscene. It's obscene. So Republicans did not really get too excited about this Rick Scott manifesto. There's been a lot of reports that they're all grumbling about it. The NRSC itself was like, that's Rick Scott's own agenda. Rick Scott was trying to clarify things. He's

like, oh no, the tax increase won't hit seniors. So this is all a mess. Do you think Democrats will be able to tag the entire party with this agenda? And do you think that voters will buy that? Well, in some ways, I'm a little sorry that they're pushing back so fast and Republicans do cut their losses pretty fast sometimes. I was hoping they would ask, but the MAGA faction may well ask for endorsements of these positions in these primaries. And a lot of these Republicans are in pretty difficult primaries. And if you win the nomination as a MAGA candidate and you've endorsed this agenda, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do to suburban voters, to swing voters, to independents who will wonder what

the heck were your priorities and what is going on with these positions. Dan, if you were running a Democratic campaign, how would you use this manifesto? I would force our opponent to answer for it. I would take every unpopular position advocated by any Republican anywhere in the country, whether it's Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis, some random person with a Twitter account, and I would make the Republican answer for it. I mean, if you think about it, the Republicans took a position on defunding the police that was pushed forward by activists, but was not the official

position of almost any Democrat on the ballot anywhere in the country, successfully ascribed it to every single Democrat, including the Democratic nominee in the 2020 election. There is no reason that we can't take the positions adopted by the person in charge of their campaign arm, the governors of the largest state, leading presidential contenders, and make Republicans answer for it and try to use that to drive a wedge between, as Celinda said, the MAGA faction and what is in their broader political interests after the primary in these swing states. Celinda, what else are you hearing from the voters? We need to win the midterms. Can you give us the good, the bad, and the ugly? Yeah, three things we're hearing. First of all,

everybody's in a pretty bad mood and feel that things are really going bad. They're looking for strong leadership. They're looking for people in touch with their lives. They're looking for an economic agenda. The single most important thing that Democrats have to do is we have to get out our economic agenda. And we've been doing a lot on the economy, but voters don't know it.

They're confused about what's BBB versus infrastructure. Did infrastructure even pass? Did Republicans support the rescue package? We have to take a couple of issues and get out there and really emphasize what we got accomplished. So there's talking about what Democrats accomplished, and I imagine there's also talking about what Democrats would accomplish if the voters returned us to power and even if they enlarged the majority. What would you include in sort of a proactive Democratic agenda going forward? Well, you're going to hear me say the economy. It's back to 1992, right? It's the economy, stupid. So the number one thing. And also, we run so many winning candidates and we're running so many people of color. And in our research, winning candidates in particular need to prove that they are good on the economy.

And Democrats need to prove that right now. So you made a very important distinction. Our policies are popular, but we're behind 10 points on the economy. We need to get our policies out there. The second thing we need to do is set up some clear contrasts. And, you know, it's really interesting, Dan, what you say. This is so seductive. This is like crack for political consultants, right? There is so much here.

We could be on this and we could raise a ton of money on it and we could be on it forever. But I think we need to set up a ton of money on it and we could be on it forever. But I think we need to set up a couple of economic contrasts as well. And the tax one is a huge issue. It's not surprising to me that they're backing off that tax provision right away. And note that 60 percent of the electorate is going to be over 50 years of age. The last thing we can do is this is a ready-made template to get out our vote. We have faced the challenge that Trump voters and MAGA voters are supercharged. And Rick Scott's worried about that. We are the ones who really ought to be worried. And now we have a ready-made agenda. Do you really want someone who has this agenda being nominated, are we going to stop them now?

Celinda, last question. Dan and I and Ben Rhodes were just talking about the political challenge Biden faces when it comes to dealing with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. With public opinion where it is, how would you advise him to communicate about this issue? I think he's doing a great job, honestly. And I think this is a real opportunity to establish some character traits that are really, really important, independent of the topic, and that, frankly, took a hit after the Afghanistan exit. So he has come across to voters as a very strong leader. He has come across as expert. He has done a fantastic job of communicating regularly with the voters. Here's what the experts say.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to be tough. This is the implications it might have for you. I'm going to keep you posted. If we had had this kind of communication during COVID, we would be in so much better shape right now. And in our focus groups just a couple of nights ago, one voter said, you know, if he can be this strong on Ukraine, maybe he can finally get the economy turned around. That's interesting. That's very interesting. Celinda Lake, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save America and for all your good insights and advice. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. You all are the best. Thanks to Ben Rhodes and Celinda Lake for joining us today. Everyone have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Sedlin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Hallman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.