Pod Save America - "Statues over soldiers.”

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

Trump does nothing about reports that Russia put a bounty on American troops, shares a video of his supporters chanting “white power,” and asks the Supreme Court to end the Affordable Care Act. Then Biden adviser Ron Klain talks to Jon Favreau about the state of the pandemic, and the state of the 2020 campaign.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, I talk to Biden advisor Ron Klain about the state of the pandemic and the state of the campaign. Before that, we'll talk about the stunning report that Russia put a bounty on American troops in Afghanistan, that the Trump administration has done absolutely nothing about it. We'll also talk about the president's decision to double down on racism as a 2020 strategy and the fight over health care that could shape the fall campaign.

But first, Lovett, how was the show this weekend? Great, Lovett, we'll leave it with Larry Wilmore, who joined for the monologue. We had a great conversation. And Ari Berman came by to talk about efforts to stop vote suppression after the primaries we saw last week. And we had highlights with Guy Branum

and Travelle Anderson from our Pride Parade. And it was a delight. A delight. Quick notes about two other Cricket Pods. The final episode of Wind of Change is now available on all platforms. So check it out if you haven't already. And on Pod Save the People,

DeRay and Sam have welcomed two new people to their team. Kaya Henderson and Diara Ballinger will be joining for the news each week. Kaya is the former chancellor of the DC Public Schools and Diara is a State Department alum who is also Hillary Clinton's Director of Engagement. will be joining for the news each week. Kai is the former chancellor of the DC Public Schools, and Diara is a State Department alum who is also Hillary Clinton's director of engagement. Very exciting additions. If you haven't already, go check out Pod Save the People.

All right, let's get to the news. So the bar for what counts as a bombshell story has been raised pretty high here in the Trump era, but the New York Times certainly cleared it with their piece on Friday, quote, American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan. And here's what's even more stunning. The Times reports that this information made its way, quote, to the highest levels of the White House, was included in the president's daily brief, and was the subject of a National

Security Council meeting in late March. It is now late June, and the Trump administration has done absolutely nothing to respond to intelligence that Russia paid militants to kill American troops, which, according to another report last night from The Washington Post, they succeeded in doing. Here's what Joe Biden had to say shortly after the news broke. -"Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law,

Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin. He had had this information, according to the Times, and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought to invite Russia to rejoin the G7. His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin. But this is beyond the pale. It's a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them in the

harm's way. Tommy, Trump says he was never told, never briefed. The White House said he wasn't briefed. But they also haven't really challenged the central reporting about the existence of the intelligence report, or the fact that there was an NSC meeting, or the fact that the administration hasn't responded yet. I guess Kayleigh McEnany just now was given a press briefing where she said there wasn't consensus in the intelligence community about the report. Do you think it's believable that Trump wasn't briefed? And I guess beyond that, what's your general reaction to this whole story? I don't think it's believable. I mean, look, I assume they're lying with most things, but this in particular, I mean, Russia deciding to put bounties on the heads of US and British service members is a very big deal. It's something that would require a

policy decision and that you'd need to brief to the president of the United States. When I initially read the reports in that denial, I did wonder about the intelligence itself and wondered maybe if it wasn't all that strong. But there have been these subsequent press reports that say the basis for this intel was Navy SEALs found $500,000 in US cash in a Taliban stronghold, which is very unusual. And then they were interrogating captured Taliban members and they heard about the bounties that way. The Times also reported that the CIA later confirmed what the military had learned and that the U.S. had briefed the U.K. on these findings. So those are all indications that we believe this to be true or we believe

it to be credible enough to share with allies. And so I guess there's a chance that Trump wasn't briefed on the information because he like just literally doesn't do his job, right? I mean, John Bolton in his book says Trump gets the PDB once, maybe twice a week. He doesn't read any intelligence reports. He doesn't try to learn about policy. So maybe their argument is like, hey, we would have briefed them if we had time, but he was too busy watching Fox and Friends. But, you know, I just think that the other option maybe is they're so conditioned to hearing Trump get mad when he hears something negative about Russia. He has this weird affinity for Putin.

He consistently takes Putin's word over his own government. So maybe they don't broach the subject anymore around him. But look, I think we should just default, assume that they are lying about this like many other things. What are some of the possible reasons for the Trump administration not responding to this? I don't know. It is baffling. I mean, options include incompetence, the fact that he doesn't want to hear anything negative about Russia ever. I don't know. I mean, it's really hard to speculate on why it is they are so bad at the job. But there are a host of reasons

one could consider. Love it. What was your reaction to the story? It was very bad. Very bad story. You know, I was struck by so first of all, it's remarkable how much of our politics rotates around what this means for Trump, even in the immediate follow on to a story this damning, not just about Trump, but about what Russia is doing to attack the United States, attack U.S. interests, whether it's interference in our election or trying to have Americans killed abroad. And immediately Trump's response is, I didn't know anything about this. As if that's the most important question. You know, we don't know what the truth is. We'll never get a true answer from the White House about it. Was it something in his daily brief that he didn't read or didn't pay attention to?

Was it something that they are conditioned by Trump's abusive office to not bring to him? It doesn't really matter. You know, what we learned from the Bolton book, what we learned from the reporting around Ukraine, what we just learned in reporting around what Trump said about the Uyghurs in China, you know, Trump views everything through the lens of what it means for his personal relationships, his past, present and future financial interests. You know, Biden's response is all about, you know, Trump being in the pocket of Putin. And I understand that. I get that. But we are constantly confronted by a president who on across a variety of fronts doesn't care about America's

interests, doesn't care if we live or die, whether it's around the coronavirus or American service members in Afghanistan, because it's 100% through the lens of what it means for him, his ego, what he said in the past, what he's tried to do around the G7 or what have you. And it's just yet another sort of damning example of that. It does seem like this is one that sort of I mean, a number of Republicans in Congress have also sort of like demanded more information, including Trump supporting conservatives like Liz Cheney, Dan Crenshaw, Lindsey Graham. I see that the White House is giving a briefing today about this only to Republicans. Yeah, only to Republicans. Way to build confidence in your response. Yeah. I mean, it does. I do think it's, you know, I think I saw Pelosi on

the Sunday shows talking about, you know, as I always say, all roads lead to Putin. But, you know, there is the Putin angle to this. There is also the angle that just like, can you imagine being American service members and learning that there was possibly a bounty put in your head by Russia and your commander in chief knew about it or his administration knew about it and did nothing about it. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's why you see even people like Dan Crenshaw, who is like as, you know, big a Trump fan as there comes tweeting that we need to get to the bottom of this. I mean, I think this is not going to go over well in the US military or among veterans. I mean, it is really pretty staggering to just sit on this information for at least three months. There are some reports that they heard about this intelligence back in January. Like what the hell was done to protect US service members from these attacks? Literally, this is your job as commander-in-chief.

This is one of the most important things you do. It's such an overdetermined sort of Trump scandal, right? Like, it would be enough if he was sycophantic towards Russia in a way we can't fully explain based on the information that we have. It would be enough if he was so grossly incompetent that he can't read or pay attention to the intelligence briefings he received. It would be enough if he had this deference towards dictatorial regimes and autocrats around the world. Like all of those individually would be a scandal of epic proportions

for the American presidency, but he does them all at once. And it makes it really hard to meet out what the exact motivations are and what's going on inside the administrations, especially because they're never going to tell us the truth about it. Yeah, he's also like we learned, I mean, Biden said this in his response, but since then he's talked to Putin and invited him to the G7. Knowing this intelligence, at least the administration knew this intelligence. I mean, it is wild. But to your point, Levitt, the motivation almost doesn't even matter at this point.

It is yet another example of the fact that Donald Trump, president of the United States is just not cut out for the job, not doing the job, not, you know, like the world happens around him, crises happen around him and he is just sort of not there, not doing anything about it. That is like the results are the same, even though we can't always tell what the fucking motivation is with him. Yeah. It's bad. All right, so the president was not going to let this Russia story keep him from his true passion

of tweeting the most awful shit possible all weekend. On Sunday, he shared a video with his 82 million followers that showed his supporters driving a golf cart in a Florida retirement community while chanting white power to a group of protesters.

In a tweet, Trump thanked the supporters, who he referred to as, quote, great people. Three hours later, the tweet was deleted and the White House said that Trump didn't hear the phrase white power, even though it was repeated three times by two men in the first 12 seconds of the video. A few weeks ago, we talked about that NBC story about how the Trump campaign couldn't decide whether the president should embrace police reform and give a speech on race and unity or whether he should double down on racist culture wars. Seems like he made a decision, huh, Tommy? Yeah. You know, look, he is he is basically a rusty old Confederate monument just waiting to be torn down himself. I mean, I love the I love the suggestion that a phrase uttered in the first 10 seconds of the video, just like he didn't hear it. But that like a bunch of like a half dozen old people on golf carts showed enormous enthusiasm for the Trump campaign. Like, it just, it's not funny because it's disgraceful

that our president would tweet out white supremacist content repeatedly on top of all the other stuff he did this weekend. But like, their lies are just so unbelievable at this point that I almost can't believe that four years into it, you still have the media sort of treating them as credulous and being like, well, the president says he didn't hear the obvious, loud, you know, white supremacist remark made right at the beginning of the video. It's just it's ludicrous. I also love it. Notice on a couple of people on Twitter being like, it's a diversion. He's trying to he's trying to distract us from the Russia story. And I'm like, he's trying to distract us from the Russia story.

And I'm like, here's the thing. First of all, first of all, it's not a diversion. It's morally repugnant racism, first of all. Second of all, if you want to talk about the politics of it, just from a pure political level, like why is he distracting us to pay attention to something that is also not politically helpful for him? Yeah, you know, don't pay attention to something that is also not politically helpful for him. Yeah. I, you know, don't pay attention. Trump's launch of a nuclear missile into Western Europe is a distraction from, yeah, I'm not interested in that at all.

It's so frustrating. It is amazing. It is now four years since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, basically. So it is amazing. It is now four years since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, basically. And we're still playing this game with his sort of selective hearing. You know, he says there's great people on both sides, but wasn't talking about them saying Jews will not replace us. Now he's tweeting this white power, but he deleted it three hours later after some criticism because apparently he didn't hear it. Of course, he's like this wink and a nod, the kind of not really plausible, but what they would consider plausible deniability on his ability to kind of send a message to the worst parts of his base, the white supremacist base, his either future political

coalition or future audience at Trump News, the renamed OAN, whichever way it goes, he'll be fine. And it's a waste of time to, you know, debate what his intentions were. We know what his intentions were. They've been the same since he fantasized about bullets dipped in pig's blood as a candidate. We know what he's after here. It's not a secret. It also seems like it is much more than that tweet and whether or not he fucking heard the video. I mean, middle of a pandemic, coronavirus cases surging, economies in the shitter, police reform sort of like paused in Congress and is probably dying in Congress. And on Friday, his executive order is directing the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of protesters who damage federal monuments.

So like, you know, Donald Trump's big move last week was protecting those Confederate statues. And he thinks this is a winning issue for him. He was also tweeting out FBI wanted posters of protesters who tried to take down those statues all weekend. He basically thinks this is a winning issue, but it's not right. Like his culture war identity politics, at least for right now, are not working for him and his campaign. Why do you guys think that is? I think people's views on race have changed and they've changed dramatically. And I think the Black Lives Matter movement deserves a lot of credit for it. I mean, the recent New York Times poll, I believe, had 59 percent of voters who believe

that George Floyd's murder was part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence towards African-Americans. Black Lives Matter and the police have nearly identical, very favorable ratings. But Trump's handling of racial issues is disapproved by basically a two to one margin. So people are not stupid. They see that he is inciting racial violence and it is not lost on them that rushing to put out an executive order about protecting statues is an absurd waste of time when you have coronavirus cases spiking and the economy in free fall. And so like, I think

people have just seen through this. Now, what's particularly worrisome to me is that a lot of these tweets seem to really be promoting like vigilantism. When you're tweeting out like most wanted posters, when you have people taking violent action at protests, like in New Mexico, there was one far right extremist who shot a protester, right? This is really bordering on incitement, if not already there. And it's really worrisome to me.

But I do think like just politically, he is so far off of understanding where the country is right now, that it is a very self-defeating strategy if there is a strategy at all. There's this strange phenomenon right now, you know, there's people joke, oh, Twitter is not real life. Twitter is not real life. But because so much of real life has been turned off because of the pandemic, in many ways, like a lot is playing out on Twitter and it becomes a place where people surface what they see. And it becomes a place where some of the worst behavior and worst conduct is shared like

a Victorian melodrama. You know, it's, there's like snidely whiplash piano music. And it's like, look at this woman throwing shit at a, at an AMP because she didn't want to wear a mask. Like, look at this awful conduct that we saw. A lot of it, an important symbol of people's selfishness, people's racism. Like that is a big part of this moment. Trump sees that. And as president, he sees a rising kind of multiracial coalition currently protesting, currently coming out in favor of more compassionate, more generous policies. And it's not just a danger to him. It's a danger to the operating

principles of Republican politics. And he doesn't particularly know how to respond. But the one thing he knows is that what has worked for him in the past is find the sources of division, find the places where there's the most animus and anger and rage and grievance and spin that up. Share the couple on their lawn pointing guns at protesters who are doing nothing more than passing by their house. Share a video claiming that there's nothing to the Black Lives Matter movement. Share an image of of a bunch of old people bickering over him about him, including two old people saying white power like get, you know, stir the pot, you know, turn up the heat, add fuel

to this fire. And maybe just maybe there's a way he can win in that kind of divisive, toxic environment. Yeah, I mean, like, if you look at that piece that a steadherd wrote in the New York Times with some of that polling that Tommy mentioned, if you're looking for like bad news in those polls, you know, as Ed mentions in the piece, you know, 40% of white voters believe that discrimination against white people is almost as bad now as discrimination against black people, right? But 40% of white voters is not enough to get you a majority, not nationally, not even in the battleground states anymore, where Trump has an electoral college advantage. And you do get the sense that sort of the country is passing him by on these issues, finally, even though in 2016, you know, he just eked out that majority in the

battleground states. But I think the protests and just the passage of time over the last several years have really shifted something. I mean, on the day that Trump shares that video, the Mississippi legislature voted to change its state flag, which still included the Confederate battle emblem. Mississippi, by a very large margin in the state, you know, not a bunch of liberals down there in Mississippi in the legislature. And to me, that was just like having the president of the United States share that video on the same day that Mississippi does it is like, you know what? I don't know that he, like you said, love it. He thinks the world is sort of what's happening on Twitter and all the fights on Twitter and Fox and OAN. And that's really not an accurate reflection of the country anymore, or even a majority of voters in these states that he needs to win.

Yeah. I mean, 55% of Mississippians wanted to change the flag. The US military was ready to tee up a conversation about getting rid of Confederate names on US bases. And Trump's move was just to shut down that conversation. I do think it shows that he is completely out of step with the country, with institutions, with Southern states, with everybody. Yeah, I wonder too, like if we're sitting here on, you know, Wednesday, November 4th, and Donald Trump was reelected, and we look at how he could have shifted it, it would have had to involve the total kind of, you know, unleashing of a negative campaign about Joe Biden that was incredibly effective. But one of the things we've talked

about before and seen in these polls is Donald Trump's shocking underperformance amongst the seniors that used to be the people that were going to have to get him elected. And I wonder if there's some thought here, if you call it a thought, that if there's any hope for him to win, it's getting those white seniors scared again, getting them aggrieved again, getting them angry again, getting them back. And maybe they're all more scared of dying, you know, from the coronavirus. That is exactly right. And if we wake up and that's the result,

I think it will be less about the fact that he ran a white identity politics racial grievance campaign, which remember in 2018, he did this with the caravan in the last couple of months, also didn't work for him because it turned off a bunch of suburban, moderate, independent voters, even though it might have juiced some of his margins in the red states. If he pulled it together, it would be because those seniors are somehow no longer afraid

that he is sort of leaving them to fend for themselves in the middle of a pandemic and that he has done something to not only fix the virus, but fix the economy. And then, you know, the focus is taken off his response to this sort of racial reckoning right now, and it's back towards the economy. The hope is not sort of running the same play that he's been running for the last couple years on race. I don't think that works for him anymore. Yeah, you look at this reckoning we're having around racial injustice and the way it's sort of reshaping the dynamics, even amongst white voters on some of these issues. You look at the coronavirus, how it's alienated him from his base.

You look at the economic situation and the fact that it has totally obliterated his main argument for his reelection. And you start to see why he is reaching back to find arrows and there's no arrows back there for him to grab. Just playing the hits. So one story with enormous implications that broke late last week was when the Trump administration filed an 82 page brief that formally asked the Supreme Court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act, a move that would cause 23 million Americans to lose their health coverage and eliminate protections for 130 million Americans who have pre-existing conditions. The Supreme Court will probably hear oral arguments in the case this fall, but will likely not decide the case until after the election. On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was asked by Jake Tapper what Trump's Obamacare replacement plan is, and he said they don't have the exact details yet.

Joe Biden responded in a speech he delivered in Pennsylvania on Friday. Here is a clip. Perhaps most cruelly of all, if Donald Trump has his way, those who have complications from COVID-19 could become the new pre-existing conditions. Some survivors will experience lasting health impacts like lung scarring and heart damage. And if Donald Trump prevails in court, insurers would be allowed, once again, to strip away coverage, jack up premiums, simply because of the battle they survived fighting coronavirus.

Tommy, I want to know which geniuses in the White House thought it was a good idea to take away health care protections from a third of the country in the middle of a pandemic just a couple of months before the election. Yeah, it's like maybe this is a fool's errand, but I do sometimes try to imagine the staff meetings where these things get decided and what the logic might be. staff meetings where these things get decided and what the logic might be. And the only thing I could come up with is that we've known since day one that he had a long list of Obama era accomplishments and that the Affordable Care Act was like the big boss at the end, right? It's like Mike Tyson at the end. And he just wants to get to the, you know, he wants to win the game and just take down the ACA. But it is political insanity to do this in the midst of a pandemic.

I must this must pull 80 percent disapproval. I can't even imagine how bad the polling would be on the question of should we rip away health care from 23 million Americans in the midst of a pandemic? rip away health care from 23 million Americans in the midst of a pandemic. I love it. It does seem like he gave some sort of indication of how unpopular this is when he tweeted in all caps that he will, quote, always protect people with pre-existing conditions. Always, always, always! Three exclamation points. Yeah. I mean, look, here we are. We are 10 years into the repeal effort. 10 years of this, right? It was, you know, dozens. That is wild. I thought you were exactly, yeah, it has been. It's almost 10 years. 10 years. We've seen dozens of votes in the House, successful votes, to repeal it when it

was under Republican control. Obviously, it failed in the Senate once they actually had to do the political work of actually showing what that alternative could be. We're now years into this legal effort to undermine or undo Obamacare from states attorneys general and from now the Trump administration. We are also years into the sabotage effort by the Trump administration and by Republican governors and legislatures in states that refuse free money from the federal government to bring huge amounts of cash from the federal government into their states to provide health care through Medicaid. So we are now a decade into this effort. And still to this day, there is no alternative. There is no explanation for what happens because there is none. It is a

lie. If it is undone, that will be it. There is nothing to replace it. There's nothing for them to do. They have no plans. They have no ability to do that. So the only thing they're really going to do is lie about it because it is, they've been lying about Obamacare for a decade and a lie can make something unpopular for a while. But what it can't do is help you build the coalition you need to actually come up with an alternative. They don't have one. And so this will continue to be a, an albatross around their necks. And I don't know why they continue to do it, except to Tommy's point, it's something they said they would do.

And again, to our earlier conversation, their base of older white voters have Medicare and don't view this as something that will hurt them. Yeah. I mean, so Biden, let's talk about Biden for a second. He said in his speech that he's going to outline a new health care proposal in the next few weeks to guarantee that no one would have to spend more than eight and a half percent of their income on health insurance and that poor Americans would pay even less. He also reiterated his belief that a public option is more important

than ever now that so many people are losing their private insurance. It does seem highly unlikely he'll just embrace Medicare for all because he campaigned against it throughout most of the primary. But Lovett, do you think the current political climate allows him to move closer? And like, how far should he go? Can he go? I think so. Like, you know, the primary being fought on Medicare for all versus a public option and it becoming pretty acrimonious because that's politics and it's fine. But has I think made this debate a little bit confused to me, because I do think there ought to be a pretty big coalition of Democrats coming out in favor to help the tens of millions of people who may lose insurance because their insurance is with their job and we're in the

midst of an economic crisis to allow those people into a public program. Like there seems to be a real moment where because of this economic crisis, we can, we can debate the, the single payer versus a public option. Uh, we can, we should have that debate, but right now is a real moment where you could move millions and millions of people permanently into a public system. And that does seem to be a place where there should be some alignment between the single payer crowd and the public option crowd. I don't know. Tommy, what do you think? I mean, yeah, look, I think it's a pretty compelling argument in the middle of a pandemic to say, hey, maybe it's a bad idea to have your health care coverage tied to your employment. I think that that was a good argument before. It's a better argument now.

But let's let's just say, OK, Biden does come out in favor of Medicare for all tomorrow. I think people just need to recognize that the challenge will then be convincing a bunch of Democrats in the Senate because he would have to make calls to people like Gene Shaheen, Doug Jones, Gary Peters, who are incumbents, as well as challengers like Mark Kelly and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, who have, I think, come out for more moderate positions, more let's expand on the ACA, let's include a public option. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm not saying you shouldn't try. But I think your question is sort of about that political dynamic and what is possible right now.

And those would be the next steps that would have to come after Biden announcing his support for a bigger, more expansive plan. Yeah, I think one of the consequences of the primary debate was that it was sort of reduced to public option versus Medicare for all and all the different public option plans were treated the same when they were not. And Pete Buttigieg's public option plan was far more robust than Joe Biden's.

And the plan that Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke embraced was even more robust than the people judge plan or the Joe Biden plan. And, you know, the question with the public option is, and like sort of the hope of some of the more progressive proponents of a public option is, can a public option eventually crush the private insurance system on its own? Is more and more people join the public option because they think it's more efficient, that it's lower premiums, that it covers more

people. And so eventually sort of the insurance companies just sort of go away and die out on their own. And there's sort of different levers to pull and different ways to make it a more palatable choice. And I do think as Biden and the Unity Task Force, which has a lot of Sanders people on it, is considering this, I think there is a lot of Sanders people on it is considering this, I think there's, there is a lot of room for him to sort of lean towards some of the more robust public option plans that we saw in the primary, as opposed to sort of the one that he ran on. So hopefully that happens. If you are for Medicare for all, the more people we get into the public system, the easier that kind of transition will be in the long run.

And right now is, I think, a political moment where, to Tommy's point about how poorly undoing Obamacare right now must pull, making sure in this emergency that every single American has access to something like Medicare or Medicaid, I think is another issue where you will see incredibly broad, popular support. All right. When we come back, I will talk to Biden advisor, Ron Klain. I'm Patrick Radden Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine. On my new podcast, Wind of Change, I investigate a rumor I haven't been able to shake since I first heard it years ago. It came from someone inside the CIA, and the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the

world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify, a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media, and Spotify. I am now joined by the man who led the Obama response to the Ebola outbreak. He's a current advisor to Joe Biden's campaign, one of the smartest people I've worked with in politics, Ron Klain. Welcome back to the pod. John, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to be here. All right. I want to start with the pandemic. How bad is the situation right now? And more specifically, how does it compare to what we

went through in March and April? In what ways are we worse off? And are there any ways we're better off? So we're seeing about the same number of daily cases that we were seeing at the earlier peak in March and April, about 40,000 new cases a day. And, you know, and that continues to rise. So we may indeed hit new records for the numbers of cases. We are better off in two respects. First, the rate of death is down. That's in part because more and more of the cases are among younger people who can get quite sick but are less likely to die from the virus, and because, as with all epidemics, our medical capacity, our intelligence about how to treat the disease has improved.

We don't have necessarily new medicines extensively or whatnot, but just a little more sophistication around how to deal with people with these breathing problems. So there's some improvement in the way in which the disease plays out. Moving to a younger age cohort lowers the fatality rate. But, you know, we are seeing record numbers of cases, and that's still going up. Last thing, John, is we're starting to see it obviously more in places that didn't really have it the first time around, particularly in the South and in the Southwest. In those places, we're seeing the capacity of the healthcare system really strained to and perhaps beyond the breaking point,

particularly in Texas right now, also in Arizona. So, you know, we have some very rough times ahead. There's no question about it. So if by some miracle, you and a competent team of public health professionals were suddenly put in charge of the coronavirus response right now, what are the sort of initial set of steps you take a miracle you and a competent team of public health professionals were suddenly put in charge of the coronavirus response right now. What are the sort of initial set of steps you would take to start getting this back under control or get under control for the first time?

Yeah, well, there's things the government needs to do. There's things the public needs to do. You know, on the government side, we need to really test extensively. President Trump talks about how much he's ramped up testing. But we saw lines hours and hours long in Texas this weekend, people waiting literally all day to be tested and people getting close to each other, perhaps exposing each other while being tested. We still don't have testing where it needs to be. You know, the president promised on March 6th anyone who wants a test can get one. That's just not true. Okay. So we need to fix that. We then need to match it with contact tracing. That is, once we find out who has the virus, we need to identify who they've been in contact with and isolate those people. There's literally zero federal contact tracing program. None, none. And, you know And some states are doing better than others.

We need a national program on that. We need to really ramp up the work on therapeutics and vaccines. And the other thing the government needs to do is really make sure we're getting protective gear to the people who need it. We still have, particularly on these frontline hospitals, doctors, nurses using reusing gear, using unsafe gear. And as we're sending people back to work, we aren't really sending them back to work with masks and gloves and the things that they really need to be safe. So that's what the government needs to do. But what do we need to do? All of us need to wear masks when we're in public. We need to practice social distancing. And of course, you know, we need to wash our hands quite frequently. You know, I think that we've had kind of a failure on both sides, coupled with the fact

that Trump announced a plan for reopening the economy in April. And then as soon as he announced it, basically tweeted out that no one should pay attention to his plan and people should just open willy nilly. So we have states making their own decisions about when to reopen on different standards. States not even following their own standards. States having then to reverse themselves and reclose. It's complete chaos out there in terms of the things in the economy that are open, the things that are closed, and how those things are operating when they are open. There's just simply no consistent guidance, no help for people trying to figure this out. And in the end,

John, it comes down to a lot of small businesses that are being asked to figure out if they should be opened or closed, figure out what they should be doing to protect their workers, barely able to make the payroll if they can. And they're also supposed to then put up plexiglass barriers, maybe or maybe not. They're supposed to give people gloves, masks, whatever. Just a lot of confusion, a lack of help, a lack of direction from Washington. That's really crushing the effectiveness of our response. So I'm sitting here in Los Angeles where we have been under a shelter in place order since March 24th, a universal masking order since May 14th. And then yesterday, our public health director said that you know a sharp increase in cases

and hospitalizations here could overwhelm our health care system do you think Mayor Garcetti Governor Newsom moved too quickly to reopen things here and and what does that tell us what sort of the challenges we're facing even in a state like California tell us more broadly about sort of the challenge of controlling this pandemic, even when you do things like require masks? Yeah. So I think, John, I've said since the start of this, since really before the start of this back in March, I said my biggest concern was that we were going into this with like an Articles of Confederation response to a global threat. The Trump administration basically made a decision that each state was going to be on its own. We saw Vice President Pence over the weekend on

the Sunday shows selling this as the beauties of federalism. You can't have a state-by-state response to this. This is an interconnected country. People move from state to state. They travel from state to state. And you create pressures on states to open if the rules are different in different states, if there's no consistent standards or whatnot. You know, we've seen the spectacle here of in March, Florida putting limits on people from New York traveling to Florida. And in June, New York's putting limits on people from Florida traveling to New York. That's just not the way we can handle this as a country. Governor Newsom, I think, has done a very good job.

Other governors, Democrats, Republicans have done a very, very good job. But this is a viral threat that came from overseas that threatens our entire country that needs a national response. And asking each state to do it on its own will never, ever succeed. Let's talk about the campaign. So Pfeiffer and I have talked a lot about whether Joe Biden should primarily frame this race as a referendum on Donald Trump, or whether he should sort of lean into the idea that this is a choice between two visions for the future, even though that's also how Trump wants to frame the race. That's how most incumbents want to frame the race. What do you think about that, about how to sort of frame this race and how Biden should? Well, look, I think whenever you have an incumbent president, the

first choice the voters make is whether or not they want to retain the incumbent. He's got the job. If he's doing a good job, voters will almost always decide to keep him. That's what we've seen throughout our history. If they decide that he's not doing a good job, then the question becomes, well, would the other guy do a better job? And I think that's what the second part of this is about. So I think there's no getting around the fact that at one level, it is a referendum on Trump. People have to decide about his performance, about what he's doing. I think that the voters have, by and large, made a decision that Trump's done a lousy job. It's understandable that they've made that decision.

He has done a lousy job, COVID being an example of it, but not the only example of it. But then I think that shifts the dialogue into a different kind of conversation. If we don't want Trump, do we think this Biden guy can do better? Why do we think he can do better? How can he fix the problems? And so I think it's incumbent on us in the Biden campaign to lay out what he would do differently than Trump, how we would handle COVID differently than Trump, how we would handle this economic recovery we're going to have to get into differently than Trump, how we would handle the racial division and challenge of racism we face differently than Trump.

So I think it's kind of a two-step process. We're nearing the end of step one, and then we have to do our part on step two. So Biden won the primary without embracing some of the farther left policies that Bernie or Warren did, without paying too much attention to Twitter or certain podcasts. He said people weren't looking for a revolution. Since then, we've been hit by a once-in-a-century pandemic, recession, racial reckoning, all of which have fallen hardest on younger Americans, Black Americans, brown Americans. To what extent do you think the monumental events of 2020 have changed or reshaped Biden's thinking about what the country requires at this moment in time? And do you think that will be reflected in his agenda?

Well, I think it is reflected in his agenda, John. That is, without speaking ill of any of his Democratic opponents, who I all love and we've worked with and continue to work with, you know, Joe Biden entered this race in the summer, in the spring of 2019, and he said the race was about a battle for the soul of America. And at the time, I know a lot of people were skeptical about that. You know, I've heard Dan talk about how he was skeptical about that at the time. And I think the framing, that framing has proven to be incredibly prescient. And that's where we are right now. We understand, I think, understand better than we did when Joe Biden got into the race, that we are in a fight for the soul

of America, for what this country stands for, what this country believes in. And so I think that's the fundamental frame he's put on the race. and I think it's more applicable than ever. Obviously, some of the policy answers continue to evolve, have to evolve. The vice president announced last month that he will be putting forward before the convention a jobs plan to explain how we're going to get back a lot of the jobs that Donald Trump has lost. Trump really has no plan to get those jobs back, other than running around and yelling that everything should open hurly-burly with no real plan for that. And so, of course, we have a COVID plan that wasn't part of the launch of the campaign before the outbreak happened. We have iterations on that plan the vice president has made and continue to make, and we're going to have a jobs plan that recreate a lot of the jobs that have been lost because of Trump's mishandling of the economy. So bottom line is, I think the frame

he entered this thing on turns out to be incredibly spot on for what we need as a country now. And I think he has policy answers that address a lot of that and will continue to lay out more policy answers as the campaign progresses. I mean, I was sort of, I was happy to hear him. He was, I think on his podcast, he was talking to Andrew Yang and he said, I think some of our institutions need revolutionary change. And I was just wondering, you know, when he's talking about, he's talked in the last several months about how this economic crisis has sort of taken the blinders off. And do you think sort of his thinking has shifted at all just because of sort of the monumental events, even though he did have that frame about a battle for the soul of the nation right from the beginning?

Well, look, I think that the progressive nature of the vice President's agenda was always underappreciated during the primaries, in part because it was often compared, understandably, to the kinds of policy proposals that Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, and others were putting forward. But look, let's take one issue of particular importance to younger voters, should be to all voters, which is climate change. Joe Biden in in June of 2019, set forward a climate change plan that would have been the boldest plan of any candidate for president ever, other than some of the other candidates who are running this time. So, you know, I think that how far forward he was leaning on that plan was somewhat underappreciated when it was compared to other plans. But obviously,

it was a hell of a lot bolder and bigger and more revolutionary than anything we worked on in the Obama administration, for example. And, you know, so I think that it's not a question necessarily of him now deciding to do revolutionary things or bold things. I think it's hopefully a question of there being more focus on how progressive and how far reaching a lot of his ideas have always been and will continue to be. So there's plenty of public and private polling out there that shows Biden leading Trump both in the horse race and on almost every single issue and attribute, with the exception of who voters trust to manage the economy and the recovery. What do you think's going on there? And what do you think Biden does or doesn't need to do about that? Well, I think there are a couple of things going on there, John. I think, first of all, I think there's a little bit of a time lag in how voters process

these events we're going through. You will remember that back in March and April, events were going through. You will remember that back in March and April, voters were still giving Trump reasonably high marks for the COVID response. And I and others, I think you guys argued that that was going to change as voters appreciated just how much Trump had messed it up and how serious a problem we have. I think we're seeing a little bit of that on the economy right now. I think voters still are trying to process, is this economic setback we're in, is it temporary, is it permanent, how quickly will it bounce back? They're hearing the president promise them that the recovery will be like a rocket ship. That's what he said last month, that the jobs will come back soon, that everything will reopen and it'll all be okay. soon, that everything will reopen, it'll all be okay. And so I think this has to sort out a bit in terms of what people are going to see. And sadly, I think what people are going to see is that the economy has taken a hit, a big hit because of Trump's mismanagement of the virus.

That hit is going to have a long overhang on this economy. And simply running around and yelling, it's time for things to open up, is not a plan to solve that. So I think that's one thing. I think the second thing is, I think Vice President Biden needs to, and he has said, as I said, he's said he's going to, over the coming weeks, lay out a program to create more jobs, to fill some of the gaps that Trump has left. So I think it's both, John. I think voters have to gain a sharper appreciation for just how serious of an economic calamity we are experiencing and how it isn't just temporary. You know, Trump's trying to sell this as if there was like a bad blizzard and everything shut down for a couple days, and then we're going to wake up one day

and the snow will be gone and everything will reopen. That's not what this is. We have taken permanent damage to the economy because of Trump's mishandling of the virus. I think that's the first thing that has to really settle in with voters. And I think the second thing is they need to know Joe Biden's got a plan to fix it. He does. He'll be explaining that plan over the coming weeks. And I think that will also help close that gap on that issue. So if, God willing, Joe Biden wins and he steps into that Oval Office. He will step into a situation that is worse than we did when Obama took office back in 2009, which I did not think was possible. And let's say he has a Democratic Senate. Let's say we flip the Senate as well. He's not going to have 60 Democratic senators Like we did briefly In the Obama administration He's still going to have Mitch McConnell there

Trying to block every piece of his agenda I was pleasantly surprised The other day to see Chris Coons Of Delaware, of all people Who's fairly moderate Talk about how maybe it's time for the filibuster To go if Mitch McConnell Is sitting there blocking every single piece Of legislation that President Biden is trying to pass to rescue the economy.

I notice a bunch of the Democratic Senate candidates now share that view as well. Do you think that's a view that Joe Biden could come around out? Well, let's see. Let's see what happens here. We've got a long way to go before we get there. We've got to win the Senate back. We've got to see where things go. A lot of steps to go. win the Senate back. We got to see where things go. A lot of steps to go. Look, I think what we need to do is we need to focus right now on winning the election, winning the White House, winning the House, hanging on to the House and growing a majority

there, winning a majority in the Senate. You know, that's our focus. And obviously explaining what he would do as president if that all happened. So I'm going to take it as a maybe, Ron. I'm going to take it as a maybe. Well, I'm not going to get into Senate. You can take that as a, I'm not going to get into Senate institutional reforms right now. Okay. So Biden's given a number of speeches now. Everyone keeps saying, oh, he's hiding out in the basement. He's not. He's out there. He's speaking all the time. He was in Philadelphia. He was in Pennsylvania the other day giving a speech. Even cable networks like MSNBC and CNN are not covering some of these speeches. How does the campaign get Joe Biden's message in front of voters if the media refuses to cover

his speeches like they do Trump's? Do you guys have to rely solely on paid media? Are there ways to get creative? What's the thought process there? Well, John, I think that, one, we are trying to put pressure on the cable networks to carry his remarks as they carry Trump's. We're having some increasing success with that. I feel a little better about where we are now than we were a few weeks ago.

We're also talking about alternative means of distributing those remarks. For example, he gave an economic speech a few weeks ago that now this broadcasts nationally and streamed nationally. And I think that helps get his remarks out. We obviously have a really robust digital program to get our stuff out via social media platforms and our own platforms and distribute it as widely as we can. We're going to have to use all the tools of modern communicating to get our message out. And that's what we're determined to do. I hope, wish, expect that the mainstream media will give Biden the same coverage they give Trump. But, you know, if they don't, we're going to get our message out there and with every tool and means at our disposal.

Positive America, always an option. Always an option. Great option. It's a great option. One last question about debates, since you have expertly run debate prep for Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, a number of other Democrats through the years. The Trump people now seem to want more debates with Joe Biden, um, thinking that somehow the comparison will look good for them. Um, what did you learn about debating Trump from helping Hillary prep? Um, and, and do you think you guys will even be able to reach an agreement with the Trump campaign on number of debates, moderators, et cetera?

Well, so to take the second question first, the Biden campaign has made it clear that they are going to participate in the debate sponsored by the Presidential Debate Commission. That's three debates with moderators chosen by the neutral commission, formats chosen by the neutral commission, dates and places chosen by the neutral commission. That's what every Democratic nominee and Republican nominee for president has done since 1992. Joe Biden's gonna do the same thing. Donald Trump, I'm not really sure what his position is. His spokespeople say he wants more debates,

but when he was interviewed on Sean Hannity last week, he said he wasn't sure he wanted to debate at all. They still haven't accepted the debate commission's proposal. They say they wanna pick the moderators or some of the moderators. They say they want to change the dates. So the only thing we know for sure is that Joe Biden is going to show up on the dates at the places with the moderators, with the formats that the debate commission has set forth. We'll see if Donald Trump shows up or not. I expect that he will. Look, in terms of debating Trump himself, we know what the challenges are. The man lies. The man lies from the moment the opening gun goes off to the very last second of the very last debate. And I think the challenge

for his opponent is to balance calling out those lies with getting his, or in 2016's case, her, out those lies with getting his or 2016's case, her points across. I think that's one challenge in dealing with Trump. Trump also interrupts rudely and ruthlessly and does everything he can to knock his opponent off his game. I think 2020 will be different debates than 2016. So I think one advantage Trump had in the debates in 2016, and a candidate in 2016 was he kind of had it both ways. He kind of would do his base stirring, outrageous statements, and then occasionally kind of wink, wink that he's a reasonable guy. He's a kind of businessman. He's a quasi-establishment figure, so on and so forth. He was able to kind of appeal to some of the people in the suburbs, the disaffected people in the suburbs, along with his base, and had it a little bit both ways in this. I don't think that's going to be possible in 2020. He has a record now.

He has a record of failure. He has a record of failing to deliver on the things he said he would do in 2016. He could stand there in 2016 and say, I will give you a big, beautiful healthcare plan within 100 days if you elect me. I will give you a trillion dollar infrastructure plan within 100 days if you elect me. I will fix this. I will do this. Well, he's had four years and he's done exactly none of those things. So I think he's an incumbent now and he has a record now. And I think it'll be harder for him to kind of hide and duck and weave the way he did in 2016. He will be a handful

on the debate stage. He always is. But, you know, I think Joe Biden will also do very, will do well in those debates. I remember back in 2012, when John, you know, we had a rough first debate for President Obama, and Joe Biden was understating it, understating it, perhaps. And Joe Biden was up for the second round. And he was up against Paul Ryan, who many people thought was like the rising genius of the Republican Party. He was going to save the day. And Paul Ryan was this amazing star. Joe Biden went in there and held his own, and more so in that debate with Paul Ryan. So I think he'll do quite well against Donald Trump.

I think we'll have a very good set of debates against Donald Trump. You know, we're looking forward to it. I've been thinking lately about the advice you gave to Obama before that first debate, which was, you said, you always said, the bigger you are, the harder he falls, about Romney. Now, it turns out that because of very specific circumstances

that Obama ended up being too slow and he needed to hit harder, which he ended up doing in the second debate. But I was thinking that that seems like really great advice for Biden in this moment against Donald Trump, because it does seem like, and you always say this, that you can't fight the last battle. 2020 is different than 2016.

But the fact that we have pandemic raging and economic recession, a racial reckoning, Donald Trump going in there and trying to do his thing where he comes up with nicknames for Joe Biden and takes all these shots and talks about his son and does all this, it's going to seem really small. And it does feel like if Joe Biden sort of keeps it up here at like 30,000 feet about what people actually care about, he'll do better. But I don't know what your thinking is on that. Well, look, I think if Donald Trump takes swipes at Joe Biden, Joe Biden will defend himself. He'll take some shots at Donald Trump. I don't want anyone to think we're going to go into this

debate and kind of just be a punching bag or let Trump get away with stuff. That's not the case. But I do think what you're seeing playing out in public right now makes your point, John, which is that we have thousands of Americans dying every week from COVID. We have millions of Americans who don't have a job. We're losing Americans to COVID at the same rate now that we were losing people in World War II. We have a crisis of racism. You know, and you see Trump going out there every day with these ridiculous tweets and with a singular agenda of protecting Confederate statues, and he just seems like he is not up to this challenge, not up to this moment. Trump maybe was able to get away with that earlier in the presidency when these crises weren't on his doorstep. And the fact that he was filling the news with his nonsense, you know, I think got him attention at least. And the cost of that wasn't clear. I think the cost of the fact that this man constantly wants to distract and divide when we're dealing with really serious crises in this country is the fundamental thing

that has broken his position with the public right now. And I think if we can replicate that in the debates, I think that will present a really, really stunning contrast. I mean, the last thing I'll say on this is, I think in some ways, moments of crisis sharpen contrasts. You know, in 2000, I worked for Al Gore. Times were relatively good and people were going, well, what's the difference between Al Gore and George Bush anyway? You know, I don't know. It's not that big a difference, so on and so forth.

And to some extent, you had a little bit of that going around in 2016, a little bit of that. I don't think there's anyone out there today who says, I don't know the difference between what a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency would be. I don't know the difference between these two people. I don't know the difference between their agendas. I don't know the difference between their character. I think the crises we're facing now have made all those differences very, very sharply. And in some ways, the critical moment of this debate will be when they both stand on the stage side by side and voters are presented with that choice, with that

contrast that is so powerful in this moment, based on what they've both said and done to this moment before even the first word comes out of their mouths that night. I heard you tell Plouffe on his podcast that one thing that has stuck in your mind since the 2016 debates is Hillary Clinton in each one of those debates scored way more points than Donald Trump, won those debates, if you look at the polls following those debates, but that he was able to get something out of those debates, if you look at the polls following those debates, but that he was able to get something out of those debates too by calling her a crook, having one message that

she was a crook, and just driving that over and over and over again. Obviously, Donald Trump has been having a pretty difficult time trying to figure out what his critique of Joe Biden actually is. Is that something you guys are worrying about, planning for when it comes to the debates? How do you think about making sure that he doesn't get something like that out of these debates like he did in 2016? Well, I think that, you know, obviously trying to figure out what Trump will do in the debates, we're obviously talking about what we'll do in the debates. And, you know, look, I think that he was able to bring this attack on Clinton, a very unfair attack on Clinton, with repetition and with, you know, just a relentless pursuit of this unfair attack on her.

But again, I think that the times were different, and he was not an incumbent, and he was a much harder target to hit than he will be now in terms of having a record and us being at a crisis point in the country. So, you know, we'll let the debates play out. I'm obviously not going to sit here and explain our entire debate strategy on Podsafe. Nor should you. You know, have to leave something for the post-debate episode of Podsafe in October. But look, I think, but again, I think that this contrast between the two of them, how they've handled these crises, their respective characters, I think that really shines true. And I also think that in some ways, without at all underestimating Donald Trump, you know, a lot of the shtick has kind of worn thin at this point in

time. And, you know, a lot of the, you know, he uses the same stories over and over again, you know, we're still on the snake and the whole thing. And I just, I don't know that he can. I mean, the challenge really isn't what does Joe Biden do in some respects? It's does Donald Trump really have anything to do on the debate stage that's new and not just a repetition of all the old stuff? So we'll see.

Ron Klain, I'm glad you're running the show there. That makes me feel a lot better. Thank you so much for coming on and giving us the time and please come back. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me as always. Thanks to Ron for joining us today and we will talk to you

guys soon. Pod Save America is a Thanks to Ron for joining us today, and we will talk to you guys soon. Thank you.