Pod Save America - Scranton Joe vs. Park Ave Trump

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Prosecutors in Donald Trump's criminal trial call their first witness: a former National Enquirer publisher who puts the former president at the center of a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election. Joe Biden wins a major endorsement from the building trades unions and works to define Trump as an out-of-touch rich guy who only wants to help his rich friends. In Pennsylvania, Connecticut hedge fund manager Dave McCormick officially wins the Republican nomination for Senate and will face Democratic Senator Bob Casey in the fall. Then, George Stephanopoulos talks with Dan about the challenges of covering Trump, his new book about the White House Situation Room.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden tries to make the race a contest between Scranton and Park Ave. The Pennsylvania Senate race is set between Bob Casey and another out-of-state rich guy who says dumb shit. And later, George Stephanopoulos talks to Dan about covering 2024 in his new book full of untold stories about the White House Situation Room. But first, Dan, Donald Trump doesn't seem to be having much fun at his criminal trial. He doesn't? No, he's not. Unlike all those other people who

have fun at their criminal trials. He's complaining that the court isn't allowing his supporters to protest outside, which isn't true. It's just that less than a dozen have showed up. He's complaining that the courtroom is too cold, that he has to sit up straight for too long. And mostly he's complaining about his gag order, which he seems to have violated multiple times, though we are waiting for a ruling on that from Judge Mershon, which could come at any moment. David Pecker, who testified that he personally spoke to Trump and Michael Cohen about a catch and kill scheme where Trump would pay Pecker to bury political damaging stories about him and publish politically damaging and often false stories about his opponents. Trump's defense is that he didn't know about any of this and didn't have any affairs. But you know what? Our boy Mitt Romney isn't buying it.

I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character. And so far as I know, you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you. Wow, Mitt Romney. There are a lot of jokes. I will make none of them. I was going to say, I'm not going to make any of them either. But the first time I saw that clip, I was like, oh, okay. All right.

I didn't i didn't expect that coming at the end let's start with opening statements which the jury heard on monday prosecution argued that trump committed election fraud pure and simple accused him of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election trump's lawyer argued that trump uh really did reimburse michael co Cohen for legal expenses and that there was nothing illegal about Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels, nor is there anything wrong with trying to influence an election. He said, quote, it's called democracy. Dan, what'd you think of the opening statements? Well, John, I've heard enough and he's definitely guilty. Totally impartial

juror right here. I should have my, I should have my merch on right now. I actually thought the opening statements were a very interesting window into the, not just the legal strategies, but the political messaging strategies of both sides, right? From the perspective of the prosecution or the people trying to defeat Donald Trump, there's clearly an effort to try to make this incident, which happened eight years ago, about originally personal conduct, to make it matter to voters now. Why should you care? Why is this more than just something Donald Trump did to hide up a personal misconduct? For the defense, this is an effort to take what the prosecution is alleging to be a major criminal conspiracy and make it essentially a paperwork error that would never be prosecuted were it not for that paperwork error being committed on Donald Trump's behalf, right? This is a political effort. And both sides are trying to – and you can see the challenge of making this falsifying business

records to say that it really was an effort to interfere in the election to hide things from voters. That requires a logical leap for jurors and voters. And for the defense side, there's a lot of... We'll get into some of the very compelling testimony you've heard already, but you can see how this fits very well with Donald Trump's narrative of victimization. And you can see a couple of jurors who are pretty skeptical of political institutions and law enforcement and government buying that argument. So I thought it was a real interesting window into how they're thinking about the case. And this is one of those rare times where the legal strategy and the political strategy, I think, align. I do think I noticed in the prosecution's opening statement, they did preview a lot of hard

evidence that there's going to be a tape of Trump telling Michael Cohen to pay off Karen McDougal, who's the playboy model that he allegedly had an affair with for a year, which of course would make it hard for Trump to say that Michael Cohen is just a liar who's acting on his own. And so I do think that they will, they definitely signaled that they have a lot of evidence beyond just they know that like relying solely on michael cohen uh and his testimony is probably not going to get them all the way there so i think that it was interesting that they were previewing that they had uh other evidence to that they're gonna introduce and then i thought it was interesting that trump's lawyers like the challenge that all of trump's lawyers have is that he doesn't want them to tell even a little bit of truth about that he did anything wrong you know and so you could imagine a defense attorney saying like sure he was involved in this catch and kill scheme and sure he was doing this but like you know he just he had no idea about the business records and everything else he did was wrong but

like the defense has to be like oh no Donald Trump is perfect in every way he was shocked, shocked when he found out that Michael Cohen was committing crimes behind his back. It's just not, it's just not believable to most people. But you kind of have to do it to keep the client happy. Yeah. The people would believe the idea that Donald Trump is not a details guy. We got really in the weeds of how they were doing it. But as you're right, you can't he will not accept any fallibility on any issue. And that has been his political downfall in many, many instances. I will say to your point about the victimhood narrative, I think they might be overplaying their hand on that one. Trump's pollster told Mark Caputo of the bulwark, this is more about biden's real motives to lock up his political opponent the key is taking a really bad situation and turning it into an opportunity to

help win the election biden and his supporters are intent on making trump the nelson mandela of america that nelson mandela line from trump that wasn't just like you know he like threw off the line into truth this is now his his pollster is using this line. I mean, do we think, do we think turning Trump into the Nelson Mandela of America? Do we think that's, do you think people are going to buy that? I mean, being Trump's pollster is a lot like being Trump's lawyer, which is you can't do the smart things. You have to do the things your dumb client tells you to do. Unbelievable. Uh, so let's talk about David Pecker's testimony. Uh, he was quite explicit about the catch and kill scheme and the prosecutors shared some of the national inquirer headlines that uh america's nelson

mandela essentially bought uh here's a few ted cruz shamed by porn star uh another one ted cruz sex scandal five secret mistresses not believable and, shady lady who could ruin Marco Rubio. There was also a headline about Ben Carson leaving his sponge in someone's brain because he's a brain surgeon after surgery. Believable. Absolutely believable. And there was one about, there was also a, the whole conspiracy that Trump spread about Ted Cruz's dad killing JFK. Pecker admitted on the stand that the National Enquirer didn't just run the story and it was a fake story. They had a fake picture of Ted Cruz's dad and Lee Harvey Oswald.

And he admitted that they just faked the whole picture. They just put them together and copy-pasted them. admitted that they just faked the whole picture. They just put them together and copy-pasted them. It's just like, this is what the prosecution is trying to do here, which is to get away from the, either this is just personal sex stuff, or this is just some business records and paperwork issues. This was a presidential campaign that was working and directing a major media company to just be its propaganda arm for an entire campaign and then hiding it from people.

I mean, that does seem like more of a conspiracy than just like a hush money payment and business record. Yeah. Donald Trump working with a major media outlet as he serves as his propaganda arm. Hmm. Let me think. Any of those on cable perchance i was i was gonna say well they just uh they were just held liable for quite a bit of money for doing that kind of thing you know uh fox news of course for those who are not following dan uh so what did you make of pecker's testimony and most importantly for political purposes how it was covered I understand the legal strategy behind it. It was quite revealing. It does very quickly get this beyond a paperwork error, just simply as under Trump's sort of convoluted explanation, filing something legal expenses that shouldn't have been legal.

Like all of this is, there's clearly a concerted conspiracy here that goes well beyond this specific instance. And all of those things help prove why this was not a mistake. So I agree with all that. I thought it was – I mean, you could not ask for a story better designed for media coverage in this day and age than Donald Trump working with the National Enquirer to put up a bunch of disinformation. That is that. I don't know from a political perspective that people are going to hear this and be shocked that Donald Trump was working with the National Enquirer, a journalistic institution which most people hold in very high esteem, to plant stories about Ted Cruz. They did break the Edwards affair and were correct.

I mean, broken clock, right? It's like if you accuse every politician of having an affair, eventually you're going to find one. They lost some credibility by alleging that people wanted to have sex with ted cruz like that was not believable but five secret mistresses yeah at least go with like one to two so i you know i don't i think this is matters more in the legal case than it does politically i just ultimately and this is something I've been thinking more and more about as this trial has gone on, is that while a conviction could be very meaningful, more revelations and evidence that Donald Trump is a crook is not particularly decisive in this election because that's kind of already priced into the baseline in how voters see him. Yeah, I tend to agree with that. I do think that from a a legal standpoint, you know, you start with your most important witness.

And it's clear they started with Pecker because they wanted to lay the groundwork for the conspiracy. It is quite compelling that there was an actual meeting with Pecker and Trump and Cohen in 15, which means you're not just relying on Michael Cohen. Now you're relying on David Pecker's testimony as well. They started the scheme there. They paid off McDougal. They paid off a doorman who said that trump had a child with a mistress and that story turned out not to be true but they paid to kill it anyway and then of course there was the stormy daniel one which pecker was like we're not i'm not i'm not paying to kill this one because you didn't reimburse me for the other ones yet which is so funny which is so which is very believable by the way um so clearly you know laying the groundwork that trump knew this was going on this was the plan all along

also pecker testified that he witnessed trump handling accounts payable paperwork like the kind that are at issue here personally signing checks after reviewing the attached documentation which i think is also very helpful for the falsifying business records because you're like, oh, he's not a details guy, but here he is like looking through contracts, signing his name. So, you know, that's probably helpful to the prosecution.

There was also a separate hearing on Tuesday about Trump potentially violating his gag order. Our old friend Norm Eisen wrote that he thinks Judge Mershon will almost certainly hold Trump in contempt. Trump and his allies seem convinced that complaining about this gag order can help Trump politically. Are they right or have they spent too much time on truth social? Truth social. I think there is, as we stipulate, none of us went to law school here. None of us are practice attorneys, but I do speak English. And based on that, I can promise you that Donald Trump violated the judge's orders on multiple occasions. That is without question. He obviously

did it. He did it with impunity. And so I'll be very interested to see what the penalty is. I hope it's more than the $1,000 or whatever it is per violation that was talked about previously. In terms of the political merits of this, I'm being gagged argument, it would be more believable if he was not delivering this argument at a press conference held on live cable television. Every day, multiple times a day. And then truthing up a storm all day long when he's not in court. Yeah. The other part of this is, and I think this speaks to some of the bigger political challenges for Trump in this trial, is that in 2016, when Donald Trump won, we talked about this before,

but his message was, I am an asshole on your behalf. You are the victim, right? There's a lot of idiocy and red herrings and just a bunch of absurdity with all things Trump. But at its core, he was going to be your asshole. He was going to fight for you. And then when we got to 2020, all of his grievances were about himself, right? People were mean to him. He's fighting with celebrities.

He just made it all by himself and he lost. And I think for most of this campaign thus far, he's been pretty disciplined, judged on the Trump scale, right? This is not compared to any normal human, but judged for Trump. He's been pretty disciplined about having more of his 2016 message, more, I'm fighting for you. I'm going to take on these people for you. They're coming after me because they really hate you. And he has kind of lost that since the trial started. It's all about him. He looks whiny and weak on a daily basis in all these press conferences.

The judge won't let me speak. And he's holding a printouts of articles that he can't read out loud. And that's just, that is not why people like him. It's not as what has brought some people back into his camp. It's kind of the exact sort of behavior and demeanor that pushed people away from him in 2020. So I think it's been pretty bad for him. You don't think that it's an effective message

that he's out there fighting for all the people who pay major media companies to catch and kill bad stories about them, about their affairs? You don't think that's a... If it can happen to him, it can happen to any of them. I mean, that is basically the entire populace

of Waukesha County, Wisconsin. Everyone's just going around looking for a media company to pay to kill a story about their affairs. That's what they're doing. I mean, if that was the case, local journalism

would be doing much better. I mean, to the point about this not really resonating with a lot of people, what do you make of the fact that Trump can't get a crowd to protest outside the courthouse? I think it's kind of emblematic of how surreal this trial is that people seem pretty freaking chill about the potential next president of the United States being on trial with a potential jail sentence looming six months before the election. It's like no one can really-

Are people just that checked out of the news? Is it really that? I think it is. I really think it is. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is sitting in the courtroom facing felony charges every day, and everyone's like, whether you're for him or against him, remember what I'm just saying? charges every day and everyone's like whether you're for them or against them remember just thinking i mean maybe you know there was all this uh discussion when the latest uh mission

impossible movie came out and i called it part one that people didn't go to the theaters they were just gonna wait for part two i kind of feel like people may be waiting for the better the sequels to this trial but it is like in all seriousness there is something weird going on like the the press is trying to cover this as best they can like you know cable's got every lawyer in town. They're up there. The New York Times is live blogging it with an entirely impossible to follow user experience that I can't stand. People are tweeting about it, but if this was happening in 2016, 2018, 2019. If you went, this is not like-

We'd be camped out in Manhattan. But just like you would hear people, you would be somewhere and people would talk about it. You would hear someone just like, hey, and it's kind of almost fitting this is happening in the context of OJ Simpson passing away a few weeks ago. This is a drop in the ocean compared to the attention that that trial got. And obviously, it's his much greater consequence for the country. This guy could be President of the United States. He was President of the United States. Even if he wasn't running for president this time, if he wasn't the nominee, this should be a gigantic deal. And it just feels like maybe it's just technologically and culturally impossible

to grab the nation's attention, but the nation's attention is not grabbed by this. And that is probably very good for Donald Trump, presuming he doesn't end up in prison at the end of it. Yeah, big if. Do you think it has something to do with the fact that it's just not being televised? That we're just like, if people walked into stores or any airports and they looked up at the TV and there's Donald Trump sitting sitting in a at a trial i think that would probably captivate people a lot more yeah i think we're just we're just a tv

we're just a visual tv culture and have been for a long time but we're just not a linear tv country we're not linear but like well you'd be looking at your phone you'd be looking at your laptop i mean wherever right people are watching shit on their screens and, and a lot of people just aren't reading. Yeah. I mean, I think if the, if it was being televised, it would,

people would be, would be paying more attention because you would, there would be just the clips would be going viral and people who were not tuning in would see more stuff than just one weird photo a day and a couple of awkward press conferences. But there is some, there is something going on here that is beyond just this trial. And I, that is, I think speaks, is beyond just this trial. And that is,

I think speaks, you know, this is the topic of your other podcast, one of your many other podcasts, but about just how the media environment has changed in pretty dramatic ways. Yeah. Joe Biden, meanwhile, has made the unorthodox decision to campaign by not farting himself to sleep in a freezing courtroom. Imagine that. The president was in Florida on Tuesday reminding people that they can thank Donald Trump for the state's abortion ban. This was after Biden's week in Pennsylvania hitting Trump on the economy with a Scranton versus Park Ave message. Biden got some help with that today when he won the endorsement of North America's building trades unions, which CNN reports will invest in an eight-figure

organizing program to try to deliver their 250,000 members in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The head of the union, Sean McGarvey, said of Biden, quote, it's almost like the perfect leader was sent at the perfect time for working people. It's quite an endorsement. And then McGarvey had this to say about Donald Trump. Donald Trump, he's not a good man. He's not a good person. He does not care about anybody in this world except Donald Trump.

I can tell you that he personally committed to me that he was going to get our pensions fixed. He understood who was affected by these pensions. He assured me, I'm the president of the United States. I'll just call Mitch. I'll tell him to put it in the bill. Is everybody going to love me? Everybody loves me, right? Is everybody going to love me? Yes, Mr. President, you fixed the pension,

everybody's going to love you. That was wasted breath. There was lots of other things put in that bill. There was tax cuts put in that bill for rich people. What I love about that hit on Donald Trump is that it is so believable as to what Donald Trump's character is, right? Like there's a lot of allegations of Trump

where you're like, I can't tell if that's really it. Donald Trump saying like, I'll help you. I'm going to put this in the bill. I just want to be loved. And then realizing, I don't give a fuck about this. I'm just going to do tax cuts for rich people is like so on brand for Donald Trump. I mean, it's pitch perfect messaging.

It's great. It's like one of the better, I wanted to play the clip because it's like one of the better attacks on Trump that I have heard. And in terms of what's going to actually resonate with working class, middle class voters across the country. It is. It's perfect. I'm not saying Sean McGarvey is a message box box reader but he gets the vibes that's what i'm saying

i mean i know this endorsement wasn't too surprising but mcgarvey did say that his members were split fairly evenly between trump and biden in 2020 he acknowledged that the leadership of the union's probably more pro-biden than the actual members but i do feel like this will be very helpful this time around, particularly in the battleground states where they have a lot of members, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. What do you think?

Yeah, I think that's important. I think people just naturally assume that most unions are overwhelmingly Democratic. That is not true. I mean, obviously, the Fraternal Harbor Police has endorsed Trump on multiple occasions. But of the construction-related, labor-related unions, the building trades has always been the most Republican. And so this is a big deal for Biden. And it speaks to what I think is a powerful argument for him, which is the most pro-union president in modern history. modern history. And that is important. Unions are more popular than they've ever been.

And politics is, honestly, when you boil it all down, throw us all the bullshit we talk about all the time, all it really comes down to is who do voters think you're fighting for? And if you fight for unions, you're fighting for workers. And having the support of unions, having that persona and that knowledge that he is someone who fights for unions, having gone to that picket line during the UAW strike, that is all great stuff. And I think it is very valuable for him as he makes the case in these states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc. And what's important is Joe Biden being the most pro-union president. It's not just about his rhetoric. It's not just about the fact that he was the first president to go join a picket line i mean just uh yesterday the administration um banned non-compete agreements um which is huge for workers so there's you can't do non-competes

anymore um outside of executives and um they also um raised the threshold for overtime pay for hourly employees, which is huge. So like they have delivered quite a bit to working people from a union perspective and from a non-union perspective, too. so i want to talk a little bit about this scranton versus park ave message that that biden's been hitting the new york times uh framed the approach in a way that was uh scientifically designed to get a mention on this podcast quote can biden make trump seem like mitt romney a lot of mitt romney in this podcast who Who knew? The piece is about whether Biden can do to Trump what Obama did to Romney in 2012, which was define him early as an out of touch rich guy who wants to help other rich people. I think Trump has proven to be a tougher target than Romney on this for a host of reasons we can talk about. But do you think you think that's you think Biden will be able to pull this off? But do you think Biden will be able to pull this off? I think it's the right message to do. I think it is very important. I have seen polling that shows that among most of the voters that Biden needs to win back are voters who have become much more cynical about politics since 2020.

They feel like the system's not – the politicians don't care about them. They care about big money. They're not thinking about them. Politics doesn't work for them. And so they're checking out. They're thinking of not voting or voting for a third-party candidate. And one of the best ways to bring those people back into Biden's camp, these potential third-party voters, double haters, whatever you want to call them, is to tell people about some of his economic accomplishments and the specific economic accomplishments where he is taking on a powerful special interest on their behalf. And the most popular one, as we've talked about before, is fighting the prescription

drug companies to lower prescription drug costs, to cap insulin at $35, opposing tax cuts for additional tax cuts for corporations and the rich, protecting Social Security and Medicare. We also know from polling from Blueprint, we've talked about before on this podcast, that working class voters, one of their biggest concerns about Donald Trump is that he will give tax cuts to the rich, tax cuts to corporations. And so you have a message here that Biden, I thought, delivered quite well, that Joe Biden is going to fight for working people. He has delivered for them. He's going to lower your prescription drug costs. He's going to lower your healthcare costs. He's going

to protect Social Security and Medicare, and he's going to fight against additional tax cuts for the rich. And that works with Trump. It's not going to work with everyone, but for a core slice of voters, I think it's an excellent message. And it tells a story about who Joe Biden is that's more important than the details of the white papers that undergird those policies. Yeah, Blueprint tested a bunch of economic messages from Obama and Biden without telling voters who said what. And Obama's 2012 messaging on the economy was the most popular. And Evan Rothsmith, who's the polling director at Blueprint, said that painting Trump as only looking out for the rich tests at Obama levels. So I do think it's a very it's a powerful message.

And, you know, I think just calling Trump rich doesn't really do it because sometimes people always rich. He's successful. Great. It really is about what he's going to do when he's in office and what he did do when he's in office. Again, his only accomplishment, his only big legislative accomplishment when he was president was passing a tax cut for the rich that the rest of us are still paying for. And now he wants to do another one. That's, I mean, that's it. That's, and I don't think you're going to necessarily, like, I don't think Biden can, it's going to be hard for Biden to overcome Trump's advantage on the economy because people have these hazy memories that we've talked about before of, oh, during the Trump administration, I felt like I was better off. Inflation was low until, of course, the pandemic hit.

And so I think that's going to be tough to beat. But I think you can battle him to a draw or at least make the case that, yeah, but he was really looking out for the rich and he's going to do it again. And Joe Biden's been fighting for you and will continue to do so. The transition for Biden here, which I think was started on this trip, is right now this is being judged as four and a half years ago. Right. Not four years ago. It was four years ago. Donald Trump would be fucked. But four and a half years ago, pre-pandemic cost of eggs, cost of gas, just how you felt in the world against right this exact moment. And that's not a good comparison for Biden. It's not his fault.

It's largely Trump's fault. But it's the reality if you're talking about if the focus of people's minds is on cost of groceries. That is not the right comparison. The better comparison is not past versus present. It's future versus future. Who's going to fight for you going forward? And that tax cut that Donald Trump passed in 2018 expires at the end of next year. Donald Trump not only wants to renew that, which is going to cost, I think, somewhere north

of $3 trillion, overwhelmingly benefit corporations and wealthy, he wants to expand it and further lower tax rates for corporations. Joe Biden doesn't want to do that. He wants to help working class and middle class families. He wants to protect Social Security and Medicare. And if you do Donald Trump's tax cut, the only way that we will end up paying for that is to cut Social Security and Medicare and repeal the Affordable Care Act. So he wants to cut your Social Security, cut your Medicare, make your healthcare premiums higher, all in service of paying for a tax cut for rich people like Donald Trump. Yeah, no, it's a good message. And I imagine that Biden will keep hitting it.

Speaking of campaigning in Pennsylvania against an out of touch rich guy, Democratic Senator Bob Casey officially has his Republican opponent after last night's Pennsylvania primary. It's Republican Dave McCormick, a former Wall Street hedge fund manager who lives in a rented mansion in Connecticut. McCormick started his campaign at an event where he responded to a question about the high cost of gas by telling the voter, Hey, here's my wife. She's on the board of Exxon. Just like, what was he thinking? Was he joking? And then just last week, the Times ran a story about how mccormick's

claim that he grew up on a family farm is a bit misleading he actually lived in a mansion 10 minutes down the road because his father was a college president and they merely owned the farm where his mother raised arabian horses as a hobby how amazing is that like what um we haven't talked about this race yet, but even though it's probably not as tough as Sherrod Brown's race in Ohio or John Tester's race in Montana, and even though Bob Casey is a beloved Pennsylvanian

and Dave McCormick only owns an Arabian horse farm there, this is a very competitive Senate race. How do you see this one? And do you think that Casey can rerun the campaign that John Fetterman ran against Dr. Oz with some success here? I think this is going to be a very close race, right? I think Bob Casey has an advantage, but there is a dissonance between how close I think this race will be and how critical it is to keeping the Senate majority. Because there really isn't a Democratic Senate majority if we're not winning in Pennsylvania. There's not a place to find another Senate to go.

A lot of people are losing if Bob Casey's losing. And even if we win everywhere else and Bob Casey loses, we need it. We absolutely need it. And so there is this dissonance between how much it's talked about and how important it is. And I think we should talk about it more. People need to help Bob Casey. We need to focus on it. In terms of the strategy, Dr. Oz was a little bit like Trump in the sense that he was well-known and weird. And the Fetterman campaign brilliantly took his weird, out-of-touch, rich guy stuff and made him pay for it, right? The being from New Jersey, the very famous crudite video from the grocery store, which I know everyone listening to this

podcast has definitely seen a thousand times. But just as a purely political matter, put aside social virality, just like what would work in an ad or a focus group, Dave McCormick telling voters worried about the high cost of gas that he's on it because his wife is on the board of Exxon is 1,000 times worse than Dr. Oz thinking somehow that salsa goes on a crudity platter, right? It's just- Or like anything Mitt Romney did. I mean, it's really like the Exxon thing is just so bad. It is. The strategy here, it's a little from column A, a little from column B. It really

is the Mitt Romney strategy because Dr. Oz was well-known to voters because of all the time he'd spent on television like Trump was, and this is why Trump's a harder target than Romney strategy. Because Dr. Oz was well-known to voters because of all the time he'd spent on television, like Trump was, and this is why Trump's a harder target than Romney. Romney was an empty vessel to voters. They knew he was rich, and they knew that he was a moderate governor of Massachusetts. That's all they knew about him when that campaign started. McCormick, all they know, they know him a little bit more because he spent a lot of money running in 2022, but still, a lot of the ads were negative against him, and it's that he's a rich guy from Connecticut. And then you can fill in the rest of it with arguments about who he'd helped, who he'd fight for, how he's full of shit. And so I think you'll see, the question is, can Bob Casey turn Dave McCormick into Mitt Romney? And I think the answer to that is yes.

I think so too. And there's also, he might not give us as much fodder in terms of like him being as weird as Dr. Oz or like as out of touch as Dr. Oz. But I did notice that he was on a podcast right after he started running where he talked about one of the most popular beers in Pennsylvania, of course, is Yingling. And he called it Yangling. I mean that, you'd have to leave the state. It would be like mispronouncing. It was one of the syllables was very badly pronounced, which is crazy to me because like, what are you doing, man?

It would be like mispronouncing Dunkin' Donuts running from Massachusetts. It's like that. Dunkin'. Dunkin'. Yes, I want to go to Dunkin' for a coffee. America runs on Duncan. Yeah, no.

What a that's. But so Casey has like a mid to high single digit lead so far. But again, Pennsylvania is a tough state. It's a close state. It's going to be close between Biden and Trump there. So go help Bob Casey. And of course, if you want to donate in the in the Senate fund, Vote Save America has a Senate fund that you can go to Vote Save America dot com and check it out. Before we move on. Last night was the Pennsylvania primary. You have any thoughts on 155,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania voting for Nikki Haley after she's been out of the race for

50 days? Seems notable. We've talked about this after every primary and some of these people voted for Biden 20, but just if even a some of these people voted for Biden in 20, but just if even a fraction of those people don't vote for Trump, he will lose the state. There is something happening here, and it may even be somewhat related to the absence of protesters in Manhattan. It's just there's something going on that's not getting enough attention as it relates to Trump's coalition. Every time a single thing happens with Biden, the entire election is viewed through Biden's weaknesses and Trump's strengths. How is Trump keeping it all together with all of these felony indictments? Look at all the love for him. And it's like one person

tells Nate Cohn that they voted for Biden in 20 and are thinking about voting for someone else now and everyone panics. Trump has a huge problem with his coalition. Biden also has challenges, but Trump really does. And it keeps showing up in these primaries. It's not just that they didn't vote for Trump, it's that they voted and voted against Trump. They went out and voted. There was not really a lot of competitive... There were a couple of competitive House races, one on the Republican side, one with a Democratic incumbent. McCormick wasn't in doubt. And so people went out for the express purpose of voting against Donald Trump. And I think that's just interesting. It's not an open primary first. That's important. Not an open primary. No, it's a closed primary. And I crunched some of the

numbers on this because I'm interested. Oh, wow. I know. I want to hear it. Here I am. Just call me Nate. So in the 2020 general election in Pennsylvania, according to the exit polls, Biden got around 220,000 votes from self-identified Republicans, people who I deed as Republicans. But keep in mind, that's a presidential electorate, so a lot more votes than a primary. And, you know, 155,000 Republicans voting for Nikki Haley and not Trump. Now, again, some of those Republicans will vote for Trump in the general election for sure. And a lot of them are probably some of these 220,000 Biden voters from 2020, but that's still coming out in a primary where that's non-competitive to do that. That's, that's something, that's something. And especially it was heavily, her vote was heavily concentrated in a lot of these collar

counties around Philadelphia, a lot of the suburbs around there that are going to probably, that usually decide Pennsylvania in a general election. So, all right, before we go to break, a reminder that if you like to freak out about polls, not me, you've got to check out Dan's subscriber-only pod, Polar Coaster. On the latest episode, you guys looked at why voters rate Trump's presidency more highly now than when it was actually happening, right? Yeah, let me rephrase that in perhaps a more evocative way. Why have so many Americans forgotten about what a shitheel Donald Trump was? I pitched it as a title. It didn't work.

Who did you talk to on this one this uh you may know him he's on the zoom call now reed churlin our executive producer yes reed churlin is our executive producer of politics and also happened to work in the white house with uh with with and the obama huge pool nerd reed churlin huge pool nerd that's most important be sure to join friends of the pod for access at cricket.com slash friends and on the theme of uh of dan's wisdom which we love to talk about here uh your motto dan worry about everything panic about nothing the crooked store is now stocked with new always worry never panic stress balls keychains and mugs to help you make it through november

do you get a cut uh i guess i'll find out because I'm learning about this right now. That's how I find out about everything in this country too. I guess I should open, I will say, I guess I should open that mug-shaped box that came from Crooked Media about a week ago. Anyway, check them out at crooked.com slash store. And also, you know, if you like Pod Save America Rate us, write a review And, you know, tell a friend

We're getting close to election season We're going to need a lot of volunteers A lot of help to go out there and beat Donald Trump So if you're enjoying Pod Save America Please, you know, tell a friend To go subscribe When we come back, Dan's interview With George Stephanopoulos.

Joining now to discuss his forthcoming book, The Situation Room, the inside story of presidents in crisis, something both of us have some experience with. He's co-host of Good Morning America and anchors This Week on ABC. George Stephanopoulos, welcome to Pod Save America. Hey, Dan. Great to be here. Thank you. It's great to have you here. I have been on your show before. We have had a share of crises. Yeah, that's right. I feel that it's very interesting to be able to turn the table and interview you now. So I feel that is great. I'm going to get to your fascinating book in a second, but I want to start with this campaign we're in the middle of, and it sort of pains me to say this, but this is now the third presidential campaign involving Donald Trump within less than a decade that we're all covering. And I'm just curious how you're approaching it. Are you approaching it differently than in 2016 and 2020? Just where's your mentality right now? It's a very, very good question.

You know, because we learned a lot by how we covered 2015, 2016. I think we made some improvements in 2020, but have to do even better in 2024. I mean, you know, I've probably interviewed Donald Trump. It's been several years now, but I've probably interviewed Donald Trump. It's been several years now, but I've probably interviewed him about 50 times in the 2015-2016 period, 40. And what I learned through that process is the normal things that reporters, journalists,

interviewers do don't work in this environment. Normally, if you show that somebody's not telling the truth, generally, the politician or the policymaker will stop repeating the lie. That didn't happen in this case. Normally, if you show that someone has been hypocritical, flip-flopped, same thing. And then you combine that with his tendency to simply kind of flood the zone with controversy and falsehoods. It makes it almost impossible to wrap your hands around it. Certainly impossible to play his words. I mean, one of the biggest things I've learned on my broadcasts, we don't show a lot of Donald Trump because he so often doesn't tell the truth. So then, and I refuse to put on a soundbite that is not true. That's a good example of what we've

learned 2015, 2016. In 2015, 2016, we thought the best practice was kind of a sandwich. You tell the truth, you show him telling the lie and you say it was a lie. I don't even think we can do that anymore. I just think we just don't show it. Now, the flip side of that is that there's a danger in when you do that of sanitizing Donald Trump by only reporting the normal things he says or relatively normal things he says. It makes him look like a normal candidate, which he clearly is not. And then you brought up a great point

a couple of weeks ago in that interview with Hugh Hewitt that Trump had where he accuses Biden of doing the State of the Union on Coke. The world would have stopped if Joe Biden had said that about Donald Trump or anybody else. We didn't even cover it. Now, I can go both ways on that. I can say it's a mistake not to cover it. And I can say it's a mistake. And I can also say, well, maybe it's the right thing to do, but it shows the dilemma you're dealing with all the time. Yeah. I don't envy the decisions you guys have to make because

it seems both quite, like you don't, like one of the lessons, not just of 2020, but of January 6th is that people see what Donald Trump says and enough of them believe it to take very dangerous action. Well, and there's a second point to that. And this is where my focus has been in the 2024 campaign, particularly with interviews. I've started to focus a little bit less on Donald Trump and a little bit more on what I will call the enablers. And so, you know, for me, I'm perfectly willing. I've done this week for 25 years. I have interviewed thousands of Republicans thousands of times. I have no problem doing that. It doesn't have to be a partisan brawl every time. is pretend that someone who is endorsing someone who inspired an insurrection, has been indicted four times, is sitting down in the first criminal trial of a former president, is, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to allow them to talk about other things

before they address those issues if they are a supporter of Donald Trump. And what it ends up meaning is that often at this point, and I'm perfectly fine with that, the interviews don't go beyond those issues. Right. This is the Chris Sununu experience of a couple of weeks ago, right? Precisely. Yeah. So then I guess let me ask this question, given how difficult Trump is to interview, getting that it's impossible to fact check him in real time, right? He doesn't play, as you say, he doesn't play by the same rules. You can't interview Donald Trump live. Okay. That's my question.

There's no way I would do that anymore. Listen, we all deal with, and you, you, you worked for a president who was very good at it. I worked with a president who was very pro-lex as well. You know, interviewers are always working against the clock and politicians and policymakers know that and so you know it's always a tussle over how much you can get in a set amount of time there's no way it can work uh with with with donald trump uh the only way i would do an interview listen i don't think he's going to do anything. He's suing me. I don't think he's going to do anything anytime soon. But the only way I would do it is if there was, I would say, at least an hour and I had

full ability to edit it. And would you think about interspersing that with fact-checking and stuff like that? Oh, it would be. I mean, I could probably make a two-hour show. At least. An hour-long interview with Donald Trump that I could edit. But there's no way I'm just going to allow him to steamroll through an interview. And we've seen examples of this. And I hope everybody's learned the lesson that it's bad journalism to do that. Speaking of Donald Trump on live national television, you have hosted a presidential debate before. All of the fears, Donald Trump also doesn't follow the rules in a debate.

This does feel to me like the first time in my memory where it seems very possible that the debate won't happen for various reasons. I would be more surprised if it happens than if it doesn't. From Trump alone or from both sides? Well, Trump will pretend he wants a debate, but I'm not sure that's true. But also, I mean, I would love to see a debate in some fashion, although I think everything I just said about live interviews holds just as much for a debate. And I think that's the dilemma that you face.

Yes, it's a public service to have a debate in theory. I'm not sure it works in this case. I mean, you're always up against the clock. The longest debate would be 90 minutes. And there's no way, let's face it, there's no way either candidate would abide by the time restrictions. And there's no way you can truly fact check in real time. And I think that it automatically, I think, creates this situation where there's, I mean, I would say sort of a false equivalence. I mean, in my mind, and listen,

maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I am, but maybe I'm wrong. In my mind, before you address anything else with this presidential campaign, you have to address the criminal element, not just the trial in New York, but the classified documents case and the January 6th case says. We just learned today that Donald Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the state of Michigan for the false elector cases as well. And I was thinking of that as the bulletin came across my email about an hour ago. I can imagine and we'll see what happens tomorrow morning. But I was already imagining the debates and i shouldn't put it in terms of debate i would i was already imagining what it would be like to

get that in the show tomorrow morning and having some people think oh well you know what's new about that what's new is the fact that he's an unindicted co-conspirator again if this were anybody else at any other time in any other presidential election campaign, that fact alone, which is barely a blip on the radar today, would be massive front page news. And we can't pretend that it's not. I mean, it's there. There's so much going on here because there is a sense that Trump is almost winning by numbing us to every pass outrage. And then there's also just a change in the media environment that it's very hard to, like Jon Favreau and I were just discussing in the earlier part of this podcast, how it

feels like, I mean, this trial should be the OJ trial on steroids, right? In terms of national consequence, this trial in Manhattan is exponentially more important than the OJ trial. And that's the proper use of the word exponential, by the way. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And yet it doesn't feel that way on both sides, right? You guys are covering it. You're doing the new kind of coverage. It's leading the news. But I don't think I've walked into a coffee shop or in the grocery line and heard other people talking about it in the way,

I mean, you know, I skipped class to watch the OJ verdict and that's, you know, and everyone did, right? And this is just, there's just something going on here that is just very, you know, I think part of it's a media environment, part of it's Trump that is advantaging him, I think, in some way through all of this stuff. Although you get to, it will be interesting to see, I mean, I was actually in the White House during the O.J. verdict. We had four days of meetings ahead of the verdict preparing for violence. I don't remember the exact statistic, but it was something about how the cell phone traffic completely cratered in the five minutes once he had said, you know, the jury is finished, about to hear the verdict. America, stop. But to your point, the same thing should happen

when the jury is called back in this trial. Yeah, and I'm just not sure. I'm not sure it will. I want to pivot to your book because I think it's fascinating. And I think it actually is a very helpful way of understanding this election because, you know,

but I want to start with one thing is, so you are possibly one of the busiest people in all of media. You host a morning show, which means you don't sleep. Then on one of your days off, you host a Sunday show. I go to bed early. I go to bed very early. What time does your alarm clock go off? I don't, you know what, I've been doing it for so long that I set an alarm as a backup. I haven't woken to an alarm in years. And what time is it that you get up?

I wake up at almost exactly the same time every day. And it's been for the last six months or so, 312. So three, you wake up. And I just, my eyes pop open. Yeah, 312, you wake up at 312 during the week. And then on Sundays, you wake up and do another show. You've got a whole host of other projects. Like why in God's name did you write a book?

Like, what made you do this? You know, it's a very good question. And I haven't written a book since my memoir, All Too Human, which came out in 1999. And I've thought about it many times. I actually started a book many, many years ago. And each time, I had an internal standard for myself, and I don't want to cast aspersions on any of my colleagues in the journalism world, but my one, one bar for me was that it, it couldn't be like a potted book, a book that doesn't really, that isn't really new, isn't really journalism,

just sort of rehashing stuff. And number two, I really wanted to do a book where it felt new and different, at least, and it would be a book where I would consider it a good book if I read it. And frankly, I started a book many years ago, and I could tell four chapters in it was not meeting that standard. I put it aside. In this case, somebody came to me actually and said, how about a book about the Situation Room? And immediately, I thought about it. My second question was, has it been done? And the truth is, there's never been a popular history of the Situation Room. And there was one book by a former staffer, a guy named Michael Bone,

which came out 20 years ago. And when I heard that it really hadn't been done and saw that it could be a window into looking at crisis management in the White House, I immediately said, wow, this is a great idea. I should also add that I'm in the it takes a village world of writing a book. I certainly wrote it, but I had a co-writer, Lisa Dickey, and I had a terrific research team, Cameron Peters and Emily Michelle. And they were just fantastic. And having that whole team being able to work together on it made it very possible.

I would work on it every afternoon for one to three hours every afternoon. And with that team, we were able to get it done in about 15, 16 months. Has Wolf Blitzer called you to complain about your subject matter? But he has not yet. And I'm trying to schedule a time to go on his show, but he was actually, a couple of people have said, why are you writing a book about Wolf Blitzer? I said, I mean, when I got to the bus, I half expected to see a bust of Wolf Blitzer in the situation. So it becomes so synonymous with it. But why?

So why the situation room? Right. Like, what did you have? Was there something about your time in the White House having been in a meeting situation? I mean, you know, from your time in the way, this is the nerve center of the White House. It's the center of national security decision-making. That was number one. So it could give you a window into how the presidents and their top political advisors and national security teams made their decisions. But secondly, and this ended up being, for me, the best part of the project,

you also know from working in the White House that the professional staff in the Situation Room, the detailees from Army, Navy, Air Force, NSA, DIA, Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, are some of the top professionals in government, rigorously apolitical, so dedicated to serving the White House as the eyes and ears of the White House, you know, the funnel for all the communication coming into the White House and a lot of the communication going out of the White House. So such impressive people. And it turned out to be for me, the best part about this book was being able to tell their stories, interviewed dozens of them, interviewed over 120 people in all. and to hear the stories of these detailees who, when they come to the White House, it's either like the stepping stone to far greater things that they're going to do later in their career, or the capstone of an already terrific career in the national security establishment. Being able to tell their

stories was just a great treat. And frankly, to go back to the top of our discussion, a wonderful tonic for an antidote to dealing with our current politics every morning. I was saying this to some friends the other day. I probably go into GMA, I get there by 350 each morning. And frankly, I start each day, you know, a little bit angry, a little bit irritated, a little bit sad about covering politics, because it's, I think it's become so toxic. And, you know, and the stakes are so high. And to be able to, in the afternoon, talk to these, you know, amazing people and tell their stories was, you know, gave me, gave me a lift every single day. And, you know, it turns out, you know, we've heard a lot about the deep state in the last

several years. My insight after, you know, spending the last couple of years on this book is the deep state is packed with patriots who are doing an amazing job. Your conversations and the stories of those professionals really spoke to me because I remember, I mean, it's now been many, many years, but on the very first day, inauguration day 2009, I'm sure you had a very similar experience, is you go to inauguration, you get on a bus, they take you right to the White House, they show you your offices, it's got your name on a Post-it note on the door. And I remember sitting at my desk, and there's no one in the White House, right? Because they only put like the first like 30 people or something. Walls are blank. Nothing on the wall. And I remember looking at my phone

and like becoming for the first time very scared. Like the next time this phone rings, like we have to answer it, right? It's like I see David Axelrod walk in the hallways and Valerie Jarrett's there. And I was like, this is it. And then about 30 minutes later, I went down to the White House mess, which is right across from the Situation Room to get a Diet Coke. The door opens and I see this group of people come out, a couple of them in military uniforms. They seem very serious. They've just left a meeting. And I was like, oh, they're adults here. There's someone who could- Well, and also you talk, I mean, I write a bit about this in the book. Inauguration Day 2009 was kind of a historic day in the situation because it was the first

time I could find, at least remember the situation was started by Kennedy in 1961, but it was the first time I could find where you actually had both teams, both the outgoing George W. Bush team and the incoming Barack Obama team, they're working in the Situation Room in real time monitoring the events minute by minute because you guys were facing a very serious terror threat that day on the inauguration. The president even had, as Rahm Emanuel is telling, and I know he talked with David Rackrod as well, an alternate inaugural address in case something happened, something that he would say to the crowd. And what you had was both teams working together in those hours between basically 9 and 2 in the afternoon

until it seemed like the threat had passed. And I actually got to talk to one sit-in room staffer, one of the professionals, who got to give President Obama the news, got to welcome him into the office and give him the news that the threat had respeded. I mean, that's very, very cool. One of the interesting things you do with the book is you organize it around various presidential tenures. And so you've, and I think you've picked the sit room, you've talked to professionals, but this is obviously a way to... And you pick crises that these presidents

deal with, right? The bin Laden operation for Obama, the withdrawal from Afghanistan for Biden. And Ukraine for Biden as well, both. And Ukraine for Biden, exactly. And it gives you... But it's a way to understand how these presidents make decisions in crisis, right? Which is where you really can tell who the president is, what they stand for, their values. What did you learn through those conversations about both Biden and Trump that would be relevant to voters heading into this election? Oh, well, a lot. In some ways, the Trump chapter was the most difficult to write because, again, we've all

become so numb. I came up with the title before I came up with the final shape of that chapter, but the title for that chapter is called Postcards from the Edge. And what I ended up doing is organizing it around basically a series of oral histories from people who worked for the president entirely. And the theme of that chapter is that there's a line of continuity from Kennedy through Biden with one aberration, and that is Donald Trump. And this was just, you know, there were always partisan differences. There were differences of the amount of control the National Security Advisor had, the amount of time a president would spend in the Situation Room. The difference with Donald Trump was the difference between normal and abnormal presidencies. crises was what anyone would recognize who worked in a Republican or Democratic White House for, you know, 40 years in that, actually now 60 year period as normal, nothing he did.

And it turned out that during the Trump era, the president was the crisis to be managed. And that became the theme of the chapter, how people would, you know, maneuver around him, how they would try to set up situations where he would have a little bit less control to do some of the things he thought he could do, like sell Greenland, for example, or trade Greenland for Puerto Rico, some crazy, crazy ideas that were coming out of the Situation Room. On the Biden, you know, it was interesting to me, and you know, you know what lead times of books are like. I actually had turned in this book last September, so it actually ended with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and then an epilogue on the renovation of the Situation Room, beginning of the war in Ukraine, and then an epilogue on the renovation of the situation, which is just an amazing renovation under Biden. But one of the things I learned from him is how, number one, probably no president in the history of the Situation Room has spent more time in the Situation Room than Joe Biden because of his eight years as vice president now, four years as president.

And he's learned a lot about the process from that. You know that during the Obama administration, he was kind of like the devil's advocate in the situation room for President Obama, who would give the president space to make his decisions. In the Biden administration, it seems like Jake Sullivan is, to the extent anybody's playing that role, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, is playing it. But one of the things I took away from it is that the Biden team learned, though, from the mistakes that were surrounding the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the lack of, you know, not insufficient contingency planning, which even the State Department Inspector General said that, and they made sure to put that experience to use as they were preparing for

the war in Ukraine. George, the book is fascinating. Remind me when it comes out again? May 14th. Available pre-order right now. Yes. Pre-order the book. I promise you, I learned, I've had many meetings in Situation Room. I've walked past it a gazillion times in my life and I learned a ton from this book. I highly recommend it. Thank you. That was one of the best parts for me is that I've covered a lot of presidents, five, six presidents. I worked in the White House for four years, but the best part for me was in the course of researching around this book, I learned a lot that I didn't know. And that was really fun. So George, thank you so much for your time. I hope to talk to you again soon and good luck covering this campaign. Thanks, Dan. You too. Take care.

Thanks to George Stephanopoulos for joining us today. We will be back with another episode on Friday. It will be Tommy co-hosting with Alyssa Mastermonica. Fun stuff. Bye, everyone. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you're already doom-scrolling,

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