Pod Save America - "Ridin' for Biden vs Rootin' for Putin."

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

The January 6th Committee lays out potential criminal charges against Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s State of the Union gets good reviews from voters, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain joins to talk about the President’s agenda for the year ahead, and Elijah has some piping hot takes in a special State of the Union edition of Take Appreciator.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, the January 6th committee lays out potential criminal charges against Donald Trump. Joe Biden's State of the Union gets good reviews from voters. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain joins to talk about the president's agenda for the year ahead. And Elijah Cohn has some piping hot takes for us to consider in a special State of the Union edition of Take Appreciator. But first, Offline is back for good this Sunday on its very own feed with the perfect guest to kick things off, Kara Swisher. We cover a lot of ground, including how the internet and social media are shaping the war in Ukraine. Here's a quick clip about her thoughts on Ukrainian

President Volodymyr Zelensky. Why do you think his use of social media has been so effective? Because he's this guy in a shirt. He looks good in it. He wears a little thing. He looks like he's under siege. He looks tired. He looks, he's like, oh, here I am trying to defend democracy with my t-shirt. You know, it's a great shirt. His messages are very simple and to the point. He's got a great, I don't want to say he's got a great narrative because it's true, right?

But he's definitely leaning into beleaguered. He's definitely leaning into beleaguered. I promise the analysis gets even more serious from there, but it was a fantastic

conversation with Cara. Please do me a favor. If you haven't yet subscribed to Offline and you're a fan of the show or you're interested in just hearing really smart people talk about how we stopped the internet from breaking the world and our brains,

take 10 seconds to search Offline with Jon Favreau on your phone and smash that subscribe button. The more people who subscribe and rate the show, the easier it will be for others to find it. There's my pitch, Dan. I'm a little upset with your use of smash that subscribe button.

I have. Have you and Elijah trademarked that? Our attorneys are in court right now trying to get a little TM on that for Political Experts React. But I feel you should definitely, you've earned it. You can use it as a multiple time guest of Political Experts React. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I appreciate that. Go subscribe to Offline. Also, check out this week's Hysteria, where Erin and Alyssa kick off Women's History Month with presidential historian Alexis Coe, who talks about how the male gaze has distorted our perception of history, as well as the often manufactured nature of Women's History Month. New episodes of Hysteria drop every Thursday. All right, let's get to the news. We start with the huge story that broke Wednesday night. The best thing about Wednesday night is that it's not after we record on Thursday. From the New York Times, quote, the House Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to

conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the results. So we learned this from the committee's lawyers through a court filing here in California, where they're trying to enforce a subpoena for emails belonging to John Eastman, the right-wing lawyer who advised Trump that Mike Pence could overturn the election. Here's the key line from the court filing, quote, the evidence supports an inference that President Trump, John Eastman, and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist

in that effort. Dan, is this it? Did we get them? It's done. We got it. It is done. I would, I'm, by the time you were listening to this, Donald Trump will be in prison. He will not, he will not pass go. He will not collect $200. It's a big moment for us. I think we should thank ourselves.

What role did our tweets play in this significant? There are lots of people to thank on this huge, important day. The Krasensteins, Michael Avenatti did some important work early on. The Tessin aged. Well, this is a big day. Occupy Democrats. Reach, Aston Steens, Michael Avenatti did some important work early on that hasn't aged well. This is a big day.

Occupy Democrats. Retweet if you're glad Trump is in prison. All of our Mueller NFTs are at peak value right now. This is a huge, huge moment. This is probably our last podcast. Crisis averted. Trump is gone. The pod saved America.

Good stuff. Good stuff, Dan. All right. So why did the committee's lawyers have to reveal this in a court filing? Why are we learning about this on a random Wednesday evening? Because people deeply respect the importance of getting the news out before the Thursday podcast. That is correct. As you pointed out in your lead into this, the reason for this is that the committee is in court. John Eastman, the president's crackpot attorney, who is at the center of all the legal proceedings and legal theories behind Trump's attempts to overturn the election, has sued the committee in order to prevent himself from having to release documents, including emails emails with president Trump and his team about the conspiracy. He has asserted attorney client privilege. They need to, the committee is trying to show that two things,

one that Eastman may not actually have been Trump's actual attorney because all Eastman has to prove he was his attorney is an unsigned letter, something you can create in a word document, but also there is something called the crime and fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege, whereas if the attorney himself is involved in said crime and fraud, then obviously attorney-client privilege cannot be used. That is why they laid out this crime. Eastman testified in front of the committee, but he took the Fifth Amendment north of 100 times, I think, over the course of that testimony. And so this is an effort to get those documents from Eastman. It may also be a signal to Merrick Garland,

but we can talk about that later. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, a few other things to note just from the filing. So the January 6th committee lawyers asked the judge in the case to privately review the evidence they've gathered. So there's presumably a lot more evidence to back up this claim than we have seen so far or that was included in the public filing. One thing that was included in the public filing was Jason Miller's testimony. was Jason Miller's testimony. Jason Miller, former Trump aide, testified that soon after Election Day, Trump was told by a campaign data expert in, quote, pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose, which suggests that Trump knew all along that the big lie was, in fact, a big lie, and that he was trying to break the law in order to stay in power. And it certainly seems from the filing that there's plenty more evidence where that came from.

The filing also referenced a ruling from a federal judge that we talked about with Leah Lipman a couple of weeks ago on the show, where the judge said, quote, it's plausible to believe that the president entered into a conspiracy with the rioters on January 6th. So it seems like they're all taking this pretty seriously. Yeah, and there are three specific crimes that are mentioned in this filing. One is a conspiracy to defraud, which is what you referenced there. Also, an effort to obstruct an official congressional proceeding, which is a crime. If anyone other than Congress obstructs their congressional proceeding. Congress has been obstructing Congress for

years now. That's not new. Yes. If someone other than Joe Manchin does it, that shit's a crime. And then common law fraud, which I think it's just a great term, which is just, it's just like run of the mill everyday fraud or all the three crimes here. And it is, I thought the Jason Miller piece was very notable that Trump was told this. And I'm sort of curious what the Trump defense team, sort of what the Trump's defense argument will be, just that he was too dumb and deranged to understand the evidence or care about the evidence or believe the evidence. Yeah. He's going to say that like the campaign data expert was an idiot or something that he just didn't believe him. I'm sure. Yeah. yeah that's also there'll probably be a lot of mountain

of evidence that the trump data expert was an idiot so so what happens if the committee believes that trump committed a crime what power do they have here they have the immense power of writing a letter to merrick garland and asking him to do something about it. Yeah. That is the legal authority. It's a criminal. It's known as a criminal referral they can make to the Justice Department, which, as you pointed out, is a letter to the Justice Department saying that we believe Trump and potentially others have committed the following crimes. And then the Justice Department, run by Attorney General Merrick Garland, will

decide whether to charge Trump and others. So that's where the shit really hits the fan. Yeah. And this has to be factored into the fact that there is a large debate among all of our favorite Twitter lawyers about if Merrick Garland is actually investigating Trump and the people around him as part of their January 6th criminal investigations. Some people look at the smoke signals from the Department of Justice and say, yes, they're doing it. Others say they are not. If they are, how what the committee finds would interact with the evidence compiled to date by the Department of Justice. Isn't it a very interesting question about what that will mean and how they will handle that. But thus far, the Justice Department is either doing nothing or saying nothing.

And it's not clear which. So we are not lawyers. We don't work in the Justice Department. So we can't comment on the legal nature of all this. I mean, we could, but we won't. Well, we will. Yeah, no. But on the politics, which we can comment on,

like what does the Biden administration do if they get a criminal referral for Donald Trump a few months before the midterms? Remember, the committee has said that their report, their final report will be out a couple of months before the midterms. This whole thing should be wrapped up before the fall. Well, they need to get it done before the midterms

because of the way the committee is constructed. Were they not finished, if the Democrats were to lose the House and Kevin McCarthy were to become Speaker, he could shut down the committee and all of their authority. So they got to get this done. And the number of Democrats who keep retiring suggests that the general belief

inside the Democratic caucus is it could be a tough election. Not one of unbridled optimism. Yeah, it's not one of confidence that this committee will be operating at its full authority in 2023. I mean, you can't even really talk about the politics of this because the thing we know from Merrick Garland's history and how I think the Biden administration would approach this is with apolitically. Everyone

who has any political appointee, any sort of political influence in the administration is going to be walled off from this decision-making process. It will be decisions made by career prosecutors, and it will be done in a way that is both consistent with a case that they believe they can successfully bring to court and one that protects the reputation of independence in the justice department. The last thing anyone wants within that building is to make it look like this is just Trump redux, right? Just once again, more political investigations, more political interference.

And so this will be, I'm sure that nuance will come through when Fox news reports it. Yes, it will be. I mean, this will be Matt I'm sure that nuance will come through when Fox News reports it. Yes, it will be. I mean, this will be mad. I mean, it's a losing battle for sure. But there are two parts of the battle. There is the public part. And then there is the Justice Department is a building staff largely by career prosecutors who are there in Democratic administrations, Republican administrations.

And they have to manage that workforce as well. And if there is a whiff of political interference, I think that would be very problematic in the ability to do their jobs. And this is going to be immensely frustrating to Democrats. Maybe the result will be frustrating and we will not get what we all hope will happen. But the process of getting there will be less public. It'll be slower. It'll be more judicious, no pun intended, than one would hope. This is not going to happen on a Twitter news cycle for sure. I think this is brutal because there's really only two headlines here.

Joe Biden charges Trump with a crime or Joe Biden lets Trump go. No. You know? And both have enormous political challenges. And neither are accurate. Right, exactly. But again, yeah, you're right. When I mentioned the headlines,

I'm talking about the headlines that people probably consume from either right-wing media or Twitter or whatever, right? Not the like carefully written New York Times story about this that will inevitably come out. So it's tough. And I think, you know, we've talked about this before, like what should Merrick Garland do? I think you got to follow the law. If you think you really have a case,

you charge the case and you try as hard as you can not to let political considerations enter your decision-making process, either political considerations in terms of, oh, is it going to look like this president went after the former president or political considerations where you say, OK, well, if we if we let him go, are we going to get in trouble for that, too? Right. Like you just have to follow you just have to follow the case. And if you're going to charge him and you're going to charge potentially some of his co conspirators, you want it to be a case that you think that you can win.

I think also, right? Like some of these, you know, charging people for obstructing official proceedings of Congress is not something that happens too often. It's not a very common charge. So you have to feel like you're on pretty firm legal ground before you bring the charge, I think. I think there's a little bit of a, you come at the king, you best not miss situation here with. All right. Yeah. All right.

Charging with charging Donald Trump, Donald Trump with a crime. If you're the Biden administration. I mean, and that is I mean, even politics like what that means for Joe Biden aside. That's the one thing we know is from Trump. That's the one thing we know is from Trump, the twice impeached Trump, is that for every crime he gets away with, it just emboldens him to commit more crimes. January 6th happened because of the Senate Republicans' refusal to hold Trump accountable for strong-arming, denying Ukraine, ironically enough, military assistance in order to try to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. And if you were to try, it would strengthen Trump's hand politically if the Biden administration went after him and failed, for sure. It's all one story, Dan.

From the moment Trump got elected, through the first impeachment, through the second impeachment, through right now, up into the midterms, what if we're just... I mean, if you want to really dig deep into the vaults here, right now, up into the midterms. What if we're just... I mean, if you want to like really dig deep into the vaults here, I mean, Trump is president largely because one Justice Department official decided to allow political considerations to influence their decision to reveal the existence of one criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton, but not the criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Time is a flat circle. All right,

speaking of the midterms, Joe Biden in the White House gave us plenty of clues as to how they see the race shaping up during the president's well-received State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Even though they rewrote the speech at the last minute to start with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the key political messages came after that. Let's take a listen. We meet tonight in an America that has lived through two of the hardest years this nation has ever faced. The pandemic has been punishing. And so many families are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep up with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and so much more. Inflation is robbing them of gains they thought otherwise they would be able to feel.

I get it. That's why my top priority is getting prices under control. One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages. Lower your costs, not your wages. Here's the choice. Make Americans poorer or make them richer. I choose richer. That's good messaging.

That's a classic. I'm just turning my dial to the right here. That's advanced political strategy right there. No, what did you think of the speech? Look, I thought it did exactly what it needed to do. You're better equipped to talk about the speech writing, the speech craft. You are someone who's very focused, as I know from our text messages, on transitions, the existence of them. Or lack thereof. There's no time for transitions in this speech.

You know what? Good for them. Because there's never been a transition that was not awkward. And as we resolve our problems at home, we turn our gaze abroad. That's literally, that's very close to what Rod's and I do between the domestic and foreign policy collections. I know. Did you have anything more to say about this? Yeah, yeah. I just say like the way i try to look at this

speech is from the very very beginning of the process that we all went through so many times which is before you start with any words or structure or transitions or not it's what are the political goals what are the strategic imperatives you were trying to drive in this speech and i i see a couple that i think were probably on the whiteboard in Mike Donilon or Ron Klain or Jen Psaki's office or whoever was doing this is – one is – I think they just stepped back and looked and said, when we gave this speech a year ago, Biden was in the low 50s. Today, as he gives these in the high 30s, not great. How do we remind people of what they liked about Joe Biden last year? How do we rebuild some of those core character traits? I think those were capacity to handle a crisis. I think in particular, COVID, the place where there's probably been the greatest erosion in Biden's numbers is on trust

to handle COVID. How do you regain some of that view of Joe Biden as someone who wants to make the economy work for you? This middle class Joe, Scranton Joe, that's been lost in this process? And how do you just reassert the things that you like about Joe Biden? And I think across those measures, they achieved that. And they did it, I think, under what was an incredibly difficult circumstance, which is all of a sudden, as you point out, a few days before the speech, you have to rewrite it and spend whatever was a third of the speech on Ukraine. Obviously, the most important thing in the news. And obviously, it got him a lot of bipartisan applause, but was certainly not on the whiteboard when they sat down to figure out the speech a month ago.

Yeah, I'll give you the speechwriter's perspective here. You sit down, you have about an hour to say everything you need to say about all of your accomplishments, all and the economy, the top concern of voters, top concern of the American people in every single poll. That's going to be a huge part of the speech. COVID, we're still in the middle of a pandemic, hopefully coming out of the worst part of it now. So that's a huge piece of business in the speech. So you had those two pieces of business before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Then you've got that. Now you've got three pieces of big business in an hour long-long speech plus you need room for all of the other shit that's by the way really important to people and really important to the country in the world so i think they got an

incredible amount of business done in a speech that was politically astute for some of the reasons you mentioned some of the reasons we're going to talk about in a second. And I wasn't at all surprised that viewers reacted positively because I think it was a very politically smart speech. I think that somewhere in that State of the Union is a shorter, tighter, sharper, and more thematic stump speech for the midterms. And I think that that stump speech could really hammer home the choice between a world run by rich and powerful autocrats like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and a world of multiracial democracies where everyone has equal rights and equal opportunities. As I was listening to that speech, I'm like, somewhere in there, there's that tight 15, 20-minute speech that really lays out the choice that Biden did in just a much longer State of the Union address. I mean, isn't that always true, though?

I mean, the bulk of the – I mean, the State of the Union is the organizing principle for the White House for the year. It is where you force every department to come up with their policy ideas. It's how you force every department to come up with their policy ideas. It's how you develop your legislative agenda. And it's how you essentially hammer out and get decisions on core messaging questions. We're going to focus on A, we're going to highlight B, and then you have to take it. And we didn't see a lot of news coverage of this because of Ukraine and Russia. But then what happens is the next day, the president gets on a plane, goes to somewhere in the Midwest, does a, you know, remember, this is always your least favorite part was the cut down of the State of the Union. You got to cut it down. No, that was my favorite

part. You got to go. Well, yeah, but you were pretty tired when you had to do it. You got to go. Oh, yeah, I was tired. But here's the thing. Most beach riders hate the State of the Union because, you know, everyone's like, oh, I don't want it to be a laundry list. It's going to be a laundry list. It's always a laundry list. That's not even a criticism at this point. It's just the way state of the unions are, unless you want to be, you know, you want to take a risk and do something that no one's ever done before and just say, all right, this year we're not going to do all the policies. We're just going to do 20 minutes, and it's going to be all thematic.

That's that, you know, and no one has done that yet. that's that you know and no one has done that yet um but i i do think that's when you have a when you have an hour to include every issue under the sun you lose the ability and they did this year especially because of ukraine to tie the entire thing together with one theme i think that's what you lose uh in in an hour- address. And I think you get that back when you cut a lot of the smaller policy stuff and develop a stump speech that's cut down. About 38 million people watched the speech, a number that's comparable to Trump's final state of the union and much bigger than the 27 million who watched Biden speak last year. CNN and CBS polled some of those viewers after the speech and our friends at Navigator Research conducted a focus group during the speech of swing voters and soft

partisans. Soft partisans are Democrats who are registered Democrats, but, you know, maybe don't always vote or don't always vote Democrat. Dan, what jumped out at you from all this research? I just want to take a step back. The 38 million issue point is a very good number. It's very impressive in a world of political exhaustion, disaggregated media, et cetera. But it's still 159 million people voted in 2020. So it just gives you a sense of the fraction of that. And the people who watch, which is why these sort of instant snap polls are misleading, people who watch, which is why these sort of instant snap polls are misleading, are disproportionately the supporters of the person giving the speech. And almost everyone who's watching is a decided, is almost essentially a decided voter, a Democratic

partisan or someone who's hate watching it. I mean, 7 million people watch it on Fox on Tuesday night. I don't think a lot of those people were riding with Biden, if you will. Would you say they were rooting for Putin? There we go. There we go. There's our title. Yes, which we have stolen. Anywho, I think my big takeaway from the research is twofold. One, there is real power and appeal in a populist economic message. This isn't rocket science. We've known this. It always has been. But the fact that it tests so well on inflation is really important. Democrats are getting hammered on inflation. It tops every poll list of things people are

concerned about. Consistently, you see voters say that Democrats and Joe Biden are not focused enough on inflation. They're focused on everything but inflation. And so if you have a message that punches back on inflation by hitting, that focuses on corporate price gouging and corporate concentration, that could get you off your hind foot and on offense. And I can hear our economist friends taking off their green eye shades to look down their nose at us and point out. I can't because I've muted them all. Yes. Just kidding. But no one is arguing, and Joe Biden isn't arguing, that the sole cause of inflation

is corporate gouging. It is that we are living in a world where corporations are not just passing the increased costs onto the consumer. They're using it as an opportunity to make even more money for stock buybacks and corporate bonuses. And if we focus on corporations, that puts Republicans on the defensive because their natural instinct is to defend big business. So I think there's real power there. More broadly, my takeaway is we need more Joe Biden. When he speaks, he has the ability and power to shape the narrative in a more favorable way for himself, his agenda, and Democrats. People saw it. They were more hopeful.

People saw it. They were more supportive of Democratic policies. People saw it. They thought he was more focused on inflation. just the never-ending cascade of crises we faced. But too often, someone else is telling Joe Biden's story. And last night, he had a chance to do it. And it was like a huge argument for why he is going to have to, over the coming months, go way out of his comfort zone to do more, to be out there more, to be trying to drive the news and drive the narrative. And I think, look, it's not going to change the fundamentals of the political environment,

but it can help on the margins. And the close elections are won on the margins. Yeah, a few numbers stuck out at me from the Navigator research. I'm picking that even though it's a focus group, so it's a smaller number of people than CBS and CNN. But to your point earlier, these are swing voters or soft partisans. So there may be people who haven't made up their mind. And probably wouldn't have watched the speech had they not been paid to sit in a room to do so. Correct. Correct. So right track, wrong track went from 19% right track, 81% wrong track before the speech to 46, 54 after the speech. So big jump there.

Pre-speech, more people expected to hear about policies that will benefit people wealthier than them or poorer than them. Post-speech, more people thought the policies in the speech would benefit people just like them. They tested a bunch of attributes about Joe Biden. The biggest change was, does he stand up for the middle class? A swing of 54 points towards Joe Biden. Does he try to bring people together? A swing of 34 points towards Joe Biden. There's also a 51 point swing in his ability to handle the crisis in Ukraine. And then in terms of policies, the most popular parts of the speech, the buy American proposals, taxing the wealthy, Medicare negotiating for cheaper prescription drugs, and capping insulin at $35. Again,

maybe not surprising to us who've seen polling like this for years and years and years, but potentially surprising to people who read the news and never hear about this stuff because it doesn't break through. And again, it's to your point. Yeah, and more Joe Biden. But the challenge always is, you know, we used to say this when Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union as well. You get an hour of delivering your message that doesn't have to go through the media filter and doesn't have to grapple with right wing propaganda. So you get a whole stage to yourself. And I think the challenge is how do you give the president more messaging opportunities like that? And not just the president, but the White House, Democratic surrogates, et cetera. How do you have more

opportunities to get your message out in this kind of media environment? That's the real challenge, I think. What did the speech tell you about the White House's political strategy on economic issues going forward? Is this going to be just really hammer home the message on inflation from now until the midterms? I think so. I think it is a more aggressive populist approach on inflation. And the numbers you point out about the shift in people who think the policies benefit the middle class or people like you, that's the metric they have to change. I think that is probably, if they're looking at one thing that they want to measure progress on, because the thing people have to understand is, you and I sit here, we say this is a very successful speech.

The polls look great. Like a week from now, there'll be a political morning consult poll. It'll show that Biden's, you know, it's very likely it'll show Biden's numbers stayed the same or barely went up. And the press will be like, morning consult poll. It'll show that Biden's, you know, it's very likely it'll show Biden's numbers stayed the same or barely went up and the press will be like, what a failure. But presidential approval is a lagging indicator. What you move first are the character traits. And I think the character trait around advocacy for the middle class is critically important. The more you can move that between now and November, the more of a fighting chance Democrats will have. I thought it was also helpful that in the section on inflation, they really

basically narrowed the entire Build Back Better agenda, RIP, to just like four points. Lower the cost of prescription drugs and health insurance. Lower the cost of energy by $500 a year for families through investments in clean sources of power. This is the climate change part. Lower the cost of child care. And then pay for all this by raising taxes on people making over four hundred thousand dollars and making sure the big corporations pay their fair share. Pretty, pretty simple, pretty straightforward, extremely popular. You go out and you say that message everywhere. It's it's going to have an impact. But then, of course, there's Joe Manchinchin who told Politico after the speech, first he was like sort of given his typical hard to decipher annoying comments.

And then he sat down with Burgess Everett at Politico to really talk about what he's willing to do. And he did say he's willing to, he's still willing to cut a deal on an economic package that increases taxes on the rich, allows Medicare to negotiate for cheaper prescription drugs, and then uses half of those savings to lower the deficit and the other half to fund the climate change and child care portions of Biden's agenda. How do you think Biden and other Democrats should handle Manchin on this, knowing that, of course, he could drag his feet and change his mind 20 more times before they actually get a bill passed. Let's put aside the sort of abject political and policy

stupidity of spending money on deficit reduction at this point in time. That is performative, stupid stuff. But if it's the price of getting this bill, then that's a price worth paying. Yeah. What I think the Democrat, what should, what the way the Democrats handle this is they should have a bunch of private conversations with Joe Manchin and hopefully Kyrsten Sinema, if they can find her and try and do not talk about it publicly, do not raise expectations, do not do events about it. Just like, I don't use this. I wouldn't, I don't say this lightly,

but Joe Manchin's sort, the best case scenario was we passed build back better, you know, $6 trillion of really important spending childcare, everything else. But in the current form, the fact that Joe Manchin has killed build back better. And you know, Joe Biden did not use that word when he did his event after the State of the Union. He did not have build back better messaging behind him for the first time.

Let's take that gift and come up with something else that is created for this moment in time where inflation is everyone's focus. And you have this cost-cutting bill that also saves the planet and helps lower energy costs. That seems perfect. There are a lot of details to figure out there. And Joe Manchin can be really annoying and slow in this process. But if you can get something done here, that would be a huge boost politically and substantively. Yeah, I think there's an inside-outside strategy here. The inside strategy is exactly what you just said. You keep your negotiations with Manchin and Sinema and the rest of the caucus quiet. You

don't talk a lot about it. You don't raise expectations. I think the outside strategy is Joe Biden and other Democrats running in the midterms go out to the country and say, this is our plan to fight inflation like Joe Biden did in the State of the Union. And let's make sure that we have a Congress after the midterms that can get that done. And then if it happens before the midterms, great. Right. But like you just ignore the whole ignore the fact that there are negotiations going on. No one really cares about that. And there's not a lot that people can do to influence that right now. It's just up to Joe Manchin and the Democrats in Congress. But that doesn't mean that you can't go out as a candidate and say, this is what the Democrats plan is.

What's the Republicans plan? And that's the choice in the midterms. After Biden spoke about Putin's invasion of Ukraine, his plans to fight inflation, the state of the pandemic, he had to quickly tick through every other important issue from criminal justice reform and voting rights to immigration and LGBT rights. One of the more notable parts is what he said about crime. Here's a clip. We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It's to fund the police. Fund them.

Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect our communities. Resources and training. Well-known applause line. Why do you think he said that or really emphasized that a couple of times? He ad-libbed a couple of fun the polices. I mean, it is an interesting strategic choice to do so. And I don't know that it was the right one,

but let me at least make what I think is the – let me at least explain what I think the strategic rationale for doing it was. We know that the term defund the police, as construed by the right-wing media in its most pejorative sense, is one of the least popular political policies in the country. We know that Republicans have successfully branded a whole host of Democrats from Joe Biden on down as supporters of defunding police when they do not support. It is a false allegation. And I don't want to get back into the great AOC, Abigail Spanberger, Conor Lamb, New York Times debate of November 2020 about what role it played in 2020.

Right. No, thank you. But we know that it played a role. And research done since the election has shown, at least some research has shown, some evidence that it was particularly problematic with Black and Latino Democrats. And so you can see why correcting the false impression that Democrats support defund the police is important. And then you say, you're Joe Biden, you're giving your biggest speech of the year, here's your chance to do it. And you do sort of know that it is a moment that will involve conflict. Republicans will say you're full of shit. People in your own party will be mad about it. The press is obsessed with it. It'll generate conversation. And so you're sort of leveraging the press's addiction to conflict to make it

get more attention. And so that's what I think was, you know, it's a high profile moment to try to solve what people believe is correct, a false impression about democratic policies. And they took advantage of it. And I think it had the effect they probably intended because you and I are talking about it right now. I think, you know, some people might ask, why not just leave this phrase in this debate? In the past, it was something that was argued about in the 2020 election. I think the reason he brought it up is, you know, at the beginning of that section, he talked about crime. Yes, people, what their top concerns are, economy and inflation are far and away number one. Now Ukraine is up

there as well. And then, you know, in a lot of these polls, crime is the third, fourth, fifth issue that people care a lot about right now. Again, we can argue whether that's a perception, whether it's real, it's what, how people feel about crime right now. And, you know, in the Navigator research and the focus groups, that clip that we just heard, Fund the Police got a huge jump from independent, liberal, and conservative-leaning voters, but it was liberal-leaning voters who rated it the most positively at 85%. And this goes back to, I think we've talked about this before, there was a Pew poll in late fall about this. 47% of all adults say that funding

for policing should be increased in their area. Only 15% say it should be decreased. That includes a majority of black Americans, 76% of whom would rather increase funding or keep it the same versus 23% who would rather reduce funding for policing in their area. Again, we should have a whole entire other policy discussion about does increasing funding for policing actually help reduce crime? A lot of evidence to suggest that it does not. But you have a bunch of people in this country, a majority, who are a little more concerned about crime and do not want to reduce funding for police in their area at a time where they're concerned about crime. Now, do I wish that Joe Biden and Democrats had a more confident, forward-looking message where they talk about what they're going

to do about criminal justice reform and reforming police departments potentially so that they are not killing black Americans? Yes, of course. But clearly they in that speech, Biden and his strategists are trying to respond to the rising concerns about crime in this country and to reflect where public opinion is, which is certainly not in a place where people, a majority of people, white or black, want to reduce funding for policing at this time. To the extent I think that there was a mistake or something they could have done better in that situation, it would have been to pair that statement with a more forceful call for the George Floyd Police Reform Act, for talking just more compassionately about Black lives and

police reform and all of that, as President Biden did throughout that campaign, particularly during, you know, in the aftermath of the murders of George Floyd and Brown and Taylor and others. But I just, we also know how this process works. And I'm sure that there was probably a paragraph with that in there that somehow ended up not in the final copy. But that I think would have made it a more effective move. Yeah. And you still could do both, right? You pair it together for sure.

Why do you think he didn't mention some of the Republicans' favorite culture war issues like banning books or Florida's don't say gay law? Don't say gay law. He did mention protecting the rights of trans kids, but he didn't get into a lot of the other Republican favorite culture war issues. I think there are two factors. First one is space, right? I think that ultimately the you lose a lot when you have to dedicate a third of the speech to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So a whole bunch of things that I'm sure were in the original copy prior to the invasion fell out, and this may have been one of them. The other one is Biden tended to, both broadly and in this speech, sort of allied these cultural wedge issues. That is sort of consistent with his political persona over many years. I tend to think

in this instance, it's a mistake. I think the Republicans that don't say gay law, the laws on book banning are huge political vulnerabilities for Republicans. They'll only be political vulnerabilities if Democrats highlight them and take advantage of them. And maybe he will do that and he felt like this speech was not the place to do that and he will do that on the campaign trail going forward. But I think we absolutely have to weaponize the Republicans' culture war against them. We believe that parents and teachers should decide which books are taught in our classroom, not politicians in Washington. He could have said that. You know what I'm saying? You're totally right about just things falling out because it's an hour so i completely have sympathy for that but i i made that point just to emphasize that like you don't always need to say and there's a bunch of republicans who are for banning books

and blah blah blah in the middle of a state of union which feels weird in the chamber you can still deliver the hit in a more oblique way that still shows that you're on the side of not banning books in schools. I mean, this is like always the, this is like probably way more inside based when anyone cares. There's always the dilemma in the writing of these things, which is if you do not,

most people aren't aware of this is happening. If you do not provide context, what's the point, but running context takes too long or is not sort of appropriate or doesn't feel right in the speech so you could say that line about teachers should be doing this and like that will matter to the people who know what's going on but isn't really informing anyone so i can sort of feel the dilemma and how you do that but just to put it the media will give you that will give people the context as they report it that's the thing a light touch goes a long way

because the media gets what you're talking about. But you're right. People who are just watching the speech might not get it. But just to get, I just to get the book, anything, some perspective now Navigator has a poll out this morning on book bans and 16% support banning some books because how they talk about race and 76% oppose.

And when the, when your opponent is doing something opposed by 76% of the public, you want to highlight that as often as humanly possible. You sure do. All right. When we come back, more on Joe Biden's agenda, the war in Ukraine, Joe Manchin, and student debt relief with White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Here to talk more about the State of the Union and what's next for the Biden administration is White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Ron, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me, John.

So I have never felt worse for a fellow speechwriter than when I heard you guys were rewriting the speech a few days ago to start with Ukraine. Can you talk about why you all made that decision and then what the process was like in the final 24, 48 hours before the speech? Well, let me say several times in the past week, I've missed having you and Dan here at the White House, but I can assure you, you did not miss being here. You know, I think that, look, I think that we knew for several weeks that Ukraine was going to be a part of the State of the Union. And I think it has been looming on the horizon, the present war in the country, war in the world about Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine over a month ago. So it's always been part of the

mix for the State of the Union as we approach the state. But once, of course, the Russians actually launched the invasion, it became a larger and larger part. And so we made the decision to take the Ukraine part of the speech and move it to the very front, obviously make it a little bit longer part of the State of the Union. And that obviously changed the beginning, changed the focus, changed the emphasis at the front, and then required us to kind of compress the rest of the speech to not have it go too long or lose its focus. As you know, the State of the Union, it's always a work in progress until the 9 p.m. Eastern time when the president gets up there, but a little more perhaps, a little more so this time perhaps than others.

But I thought it all came together very, very well. I thought the president did together very, very well. I thought the president did a great job delivering it. And I think that we made a strong message on Ukraine and still were able to deliver what we needed to deliver on the domestic agenda, on moving forward, on the economy, on COVID, on crime, the things that people wanted to hear about. All in 6,400 words, which I will say is very impressive as someone who's done the word count on many of these. So that was good. So in that first section, the president talked about how he has imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia. Some Republicans are now saying that would

really hurt their economy and their ability to fight this war is ending oil and gas imports. If Russia continues to escalate, are energy sanctions on the table? Well, look, John, I think we start from the premise that the goal is to cripple the Russian economy, not cripple the American economy. And I think we need to be very careful about how these sanctions work. Why are they so successful? Look, this is the largest set of sanctions that have ever been applied against a large country. It's hard to sanction a very large country that's interconnected with the world economy. They've been successful in doing catastrophic damage to the Russian economy because we built this coalition of countries that have participated and all agreed to apply these sanctions.

That includes our European allies. It includes the United Kingdom, it includes Japan and Australia, Canada, of course, a wide array of countries. And so as we go forward, we need to keep that unity. The unity is what makes the sanctions work. And I think that's the first principle. And that's why, you know, you look at the damage the sanctions have done, devastating damage.

The ruble, it's 110 rubles to the dollar now. Stock market hasn't opened for days in Russia. So you see the economic damage. We've got to keep everyone together. Once you get to these sanctions on oil and natural gas, it gets more complicated on keeping everyone together. That's the first point. Second point is what you don't want to do is do anything that drives up the price of gas even more, because then whenever gas Putin is able to sell, he just makes as much money, sells less gas, makes as much money. So we're looking at this very carefully. We're trying to keep the allies together. We're trying to make sure that we don't do things that harm American

consumers that do the maximum damage to Putin and his oligarchs. So that's our focus. Ron, even in the best of times, the State of the Union process is a long, windy road. It includes a gazillion issues, a tour of the world, but it always begins with one theme or idea. What is the one thing that the president wanted to communicate to the American people last night about himself or his agenda? What's the one takeaway for the people who didn't watch the speech that you would want the folks who did watch it to share with them? Well, I think, look, I think a big theme in this speech last night was unity. And it kind of began with unity and it ended with unity. It began with the fact that we put together this incredible coalition of countries, united our allies, united a wide array of international partners to bring these sanctions

against Russia. And it ended, and we, by and large, Donald Trump aside, by and large, Democrats and Republicans have kind of come together around that agenda in terms of tackling this crisis. And the speech ended with a discussion of unity on the domestic front. What are the issues where Democrats and Republicans can find common ground and move forward on things like fighting opioids, dealing with mental health, dealing with the impacts that social media companies have on mental health, helping our veterans, and fighting cancer? And so I think unity was a central theme in the speech. I also think, look, there's no getting around the fact that thematics aside, we know that economic issues are very important to voters. We know that when people associate the president and the Democrats with success on the economy, our party does well. And when they don't, our party doesn't do as well. So I think a second key theme of the speech was delivering a strong economic message about the success we've had on the economy and acknowledging the problems we're having with inflation, what we want to do about it. So I think kind of unity is a big theme, but the economy is

a big part of the core content of the speech. Speaking of unity, Senator Manchin today made some news where he indicated a willingness to reenter negotiations, whatever that means, around a package that would include raising taxes on corporations and having Medicare negotiate prescription drugs, two things the president has supported as part of his larger Build Back Better agenda. They would then use that money split 50-50, I think, by his language, between deficit reduction and climate spending. Is this something President Biden is open to? Is this a good idea? Are you leaving us right now to head

immediately to the House boat to try to hammer out the details here? What do you guys think about this? Look, I think we're always open to conversations with people about how we can move forward parts of the agenda here. And what Senator Manchin talked about today are critical aspects of the agenda. You heard the president last night say that tax fairness is an important objective. I think it was one of the big applause lines of the speech last night. No one thinks the tax system is fair. If we could fix that, that would be a big achievement. We have to deal with the climate crisis.

It's one of the most important things we have to do. And I will tell you guys, you guys, I know we're doing dial groups last night looking at it. The part of the speech that talked about addressing prescription drugs and the high price of prescription drugs really connected with a wide array of voters. So I think there's some very powerful ideas on the table there. We obviously have to talk to all the Democrats in the Senate. We're getting every single one of the 50 to have a path forward. But I'm encouraged by Senator Manchin talking about this today. And I think it just shows what the president

illustrated last night, that there is a way to move some of these big ideas forward. So one of the most common questions that we get from listeners about the president is whether he'll take action to provide student debt relief. I know he said that he'd signed legislation canceling up to $10,000 worth of debt. I know he said that he'd signed legislation canceling up to $10,000 worth of debt. I know the Department of Education has drafted a legal memo about whether the president has executive authority to cancel debt on his own. What's stopping you guys from either releasing that memo or at least summarizing its findings? Look, I think the president's going to look at what we should do on student debt before the pause expires or he'll extend the pause.

I mean, I think Joe Biden right now is the only president in history where no one's paid on their student loans for the entirety of his presidency. And so the question of whether or not there's some executive action, student debt forgiveness when the payments resume is a decision we're going to take before the payments resume. Right now, people aren't having to pay on their loans. And so I think dealing with the executive branch question, what we should do about that, what his powers are, how much we should do on that, that's something we're going to deal with later on. Ron Klain, White House Chief of Staff, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America. We appreciate the time. Great. Thanks for having me, guys.

All right. Before we go, we're going to play a special State of the Union edition of everyone's favorite Pod Save America game, Take Appreciators, hosted by our chief take officer, Elijah Cohn. Elijah, take it away. Hey, John. Hey, Dan. Welcome to a special State of the Union edition of the Take Appreciators. I'm going to share some notably bad punditry with you. The producers have seen these takes, John and Dan have not. They'll give their reactions and then rate them on a scale of one to four politicos. John and Dan, are you ready? So ready. Okay. So if you didn't watch the speech, Joe Biden invited this cute kid who needs insulin to come to the State of the Union in a section of a speech that was about drug prices and health care. It was this kid's birthday the day before the State of the Union and Biden

wished him a happy birthday. So with that context, let's roll the clip. The young kid who suffers from the diabetes and needs his insulin loved that. But again, even there was a missed moment for humanity, the president says and it was his birthday yesterday well then clue sing happy birthday yeah that's what we do like have a human moment what a monster joe biden is wishing this kid a happy birthday without breaking into song in the middle of his hour-long speech fucking monster uh john dan any guesses as to who said that and on what program i know i have one yeah you go john do we both i can't remember who i talked to about this shit did we text about this dan of

course we did of course that was that was former white house press secretary dana perino on i actually don't know the fox fox show it was tucker i think it was tucker was it tucker correct it was tucker i'm worried about your memory because i think your main, your text to me was about Tucker nodding along as she got recalled on it to say, sing happy birthday. Even Tucker thought it was so stupid. He was just like, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Again, because, you know, the full playbook is for someone who came up with a take that was just specifically designed to trigger people as much as possible.

I think that hers was just sort of stupid, just like a stupid thing to say. So I'm going to give it three, three politicos and not the, and not the full playbook just because I don't think the intention was behind it. I think she was just dumb. I,

she gets a one from me. It's just, it's stupid. It doesn't make a lot of sense. She's confused Congress with a Chili's. Like no one is bringing out a brownie with a candle in it for him. It's just, it's stupid. It doesn't make a lot of sense. She's confused Congress with a Chili's like no one is bringing out a brownie with a candle in it for him. Like it makes, it's just, it's just dumb. Not even trying hard enough to get, uh, multiple politicos in my view. I personally would have loved to have seen Joe Biden start singing happy birthday in the middle

of the state of the union. Would been memorable i mean she's she's right that it would have been a memorable moment for sure i mean why did no one give this kid a present doug emhoff was right there where were the fucking balloons biden huh where's the cake jill joe biden you know what he should have done he should have jumped out of a cake to start the speech all right let's move on to some highlights or lowlights of the live to start the speech. All right, let's move on to some highlights or lowlights of the live coverage of the speech. This is a two-parter. First is a fact check from the New York Times. During the speech, Biden said, quote, our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs last year, more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of America. The Times rated this as partially true because the government only started collecting data

on that in 1939. I'll pause there. Any reactions to that fact check? You fucking dweebs. Dan, you give a more thoughtful. You, I mean, as a speechwriter, you have a very contentious relationship with overly aggressive pedantic fact checkers. So I understand that. Look, what we can take a step back. What do we really know?

Can we know without with certainty anything? Isn't everything partially true? Is math real? Is history real? Are we living in the matrix? Can we know without with certainty anything? Isn't everything partially true? Is math real? Is history real? Are we living in the matrix? It's just, I mean, there's a serious case about how this level of fact checking actually aids disinformation because it sows distrust in institutions, which creates the vacuum for disinformation. But this is stupid. And I give it three politicos. Yeah, we'd have to. I just want to speak up for yes. Yes. The speechwriters

have always had a contentious relationship with the White House researchers because they fact check our speeches and they point out inconsistencies just like this one. But you know what? We love them. We love them so much that Cody Keenan, who took over for me as chief speechwriter, married Kristen Bartolone, who was the head of the research department. So, you know. Who has fact-checked all of my books and is superb. And I actually have a series of outtakes that I will share at some point with some of her most amazing fact-checks. Yeah. I had some pretty amazing fact-che checks too. But again, back to this, I give this like two politicos because it was just some fact checking dweeb at the New York Times who

couldn't help themselves. Well, part two is a live tweet fact check from a conservative pundit who said, quote, this 6.5 million new jobs line is a total lie. We still haven't regained all the jobs we had in March of 2020 when a disastrous lockdowns happened. Do those jobs just not count? What? Who is that idiot? Any guesses? No. That is Clay Travis, sports analyst who just interviewed President Trump.

I mean, isn't he your former coworker? Wasn't he your boss? I did use to work at Fox Sports. You did, yes. Your mentor? Mentor. Yes. I'm going to hold back my comments about Clay Travis, but I'm not a fan.

No, not a fan. All right, let's go to the last take. I really wrestled with putting this one in or not. It's kind of shock jockey. But, you know, John and Dan sometimes see the takes, even though they don't know what's coming in this segment. They sometimes see them on Twitter, as they did with the Dana Perino clip. I confirmed beforehand that they had not seen this, and all of our production staff has seen it. So now they have to hear it.

And I'm sorry to the audience, you do too. Kyle, play the clip. So you started talking about the pandemic and this is where the lies begin. Because when you're the president of the United States and you've had the worst 14 months of any president of the United States ever, ever. I mean, Abraham Lincoln had a full-scale insurrection on his hands in the beginning of his administration. That wasn't caused by Abraham Lincoln. Everything bad that has happened over the last 14 months is a completely self-inflicted wound.

Joe Biden is the Kurt Cobain of politics. He put a shotgun in the mouth of the American body politic and then pulled the trigger, and the brains are on the wall. Oh, my God. Well, the voice is a giveaway there. body politic and then pulled the trigger and the brains are on the wall oh my god well the voice is a giveaway there yeah you mean the dulcet tones of Ben Shapiro yes what the

that wasn't even you're right it was shock jockey because it wasn't there's so many problems with the metaphor you know like not to get into that because you don't need to but he's like he just said it to be a fucking asshole yeah i mean that was horrible elijah and i am mad at you for sharing that with me like it's not often that like terrible shit happens on the internet and i

managed to miss it and then here you come you force you force fed me that take and i am not happy about it yeah and again you know what ben shapiro wants all to do he's like oh what a horrible person for doing that and how could he in outrage it was just dumb it was dumb the bad metaphor not what are you doing you're an idiot yeah he he's trying to troll us and we're not yeah he is he's trying to troll us and he didn't do it very well zero yeah you get to zero you get a zero because we we do not acknowledge your take your take is unacknowledged here i don't i don't acknowledge the take uh bonus kicker do you guys want to talk about the chuck todd ukraine interview that happened right after as well any comments for that this was? Do you have that clip? I don't have the clip. The context is that right after the State of the Union,

Chuck Todd was doing some analysis and he was talking to a correspondent on the ground in Ukraine. And he said, how do you think the Ukrainians responded? To the speech. Yes, to the speech, to Joe Biden's speech. And the correspondent said, they're preoccupied right now. They haveussian troops in their country trying to take over their land i just don't i mean again don't think that chuck intentionally meant that but it's so washington brain to be like yeah these people who are hiding in the subway right now is the russians bomb their country or probably like quick someone uh someone pull up biden's state of the union address 20 of the u.s electorate watch the speech talk about a fucking bubble the correspondent also pointed out that biden's

speech started at 5 a.m ukraine time. That was probably it. It was probably the time difference. Well, they're going to watch it. They're going to watch it on tape delay later, like, of course, of course, like any democracy lover would. Man, good round, Elijah. Good round. Yeah. Thanks for playing. And I'm sorry. No, this is your job. This is your job. Sometimes it's tough. Thank you to Elijah for a wonderful round of take appreciators. And thank you to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain for joining us. Everyone have a great weekend and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez

is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, 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.