Pod Save America - Stormy's Steamy Testimony

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Jon and veteran Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz discuss the graphic Stormy Daniels testimony in Trump's hush money case, Biden's trip to Wisconsin, and whether the campaign's new health care ad push could help unstick a very close race. Then, Rebecca dives into what she's seeing on the ground in Arizona, where she's working with Senate candidate Ruben Gallego to fend off Kari Lake and secure a majority for Democrats. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. And my co-host today is one of the smartest and most successful Democratic strategists around. She's currently working with Ruben Gallego on the Arizona Senate race. But we've known each other for a long time since she was working for Senator Harry Reid and I was working for then-Senator Barack Obama. Rebecca Katz, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you. So good to be here. God, remember those days of hope? It was nice. Also, that was a long time ago. I was like, have I known Rebecca for 20 years now? I know. We've been doing this for a while. How can we be 25 when we've been, yeah, exactly.

Okay, lots of news today. We're going to talk about Biden's trip to Wisconsin and the split screen contrast his campaign is hoping for. And we'll dig into the Senate races in two states near and dear to Rebecca's heart, Arizona and Pennsylvania. But first, we got to talk about the big developments with the Republican Party's criminal defendant nominee for president. So Trump's having some luck with three of his four trials. The January 6th trial is on hold until the Supreme Court rules on his immunity appeal. Federal Judge Trump appointed in Florida, Eileen Cannon, just postponed the classified documents trial indefinitely. And today, a Georgia appellate court agreed to take up Trump's attempt to disqualify DA Fannie Willis.

So that trial could also get pushed until after the election. Looks like it probably will. But, Rebecca, we still have Manhattan. And, boy, did we get some excitement in that trial on Tuesday. If what excites you are details about Donald Trump's sex life. Stormy Daniels testified for the prosecution for about five hours, during which time she told the story of her sexual encounter with Trump at a 2006 golf event in Lake Tahoe. She accepted what she thought was a dinner invite. He opened the door in his

pajamas. At one point, Trump really set the mood by telling Daniel she reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka. And when Stormy... I mean, we need some time on Freud's couch for that one. I don't know what's going on there. That is rough. That is rough. And when Stormy asked about his wife, Melania, Trump said not to worry. They sleep in separate bedrooms. Then Daniel said that when she got back from using the bathroom, Trump had taken his clothes off, was basically blocking the exit and initiated what she testified was brief, unprotected sex that she said was consensual, but still left her shaking and desperate to leave. Understandable. As you can imagine, Trump was not thrilled to sit through this testimony.

At one point, he was rebuked by the judge for angrily whispering and mouthing the word bullshit. But the judge also had to rein in Stormy Daniels for giving a little too much detail about Trump's sex life, for which we're all grateful that the judge rebuked her for that. Those objections sustained by me as well. We could have gone our whole lives without knowing what a sexual encounter with Donald Trump is like. And yet here we are. And it's just, you know, we've avoided it for so long. And here it is. So all this, the judge rebuking Stormy and telling the prosecution to sort of keep it to the issues they're discussing. This caused Trump's lawyers to ask for a mistrial. They argued the testimony was extraordinarily prejudicial and had nothing to do with the records falsification at issue in the case. Prosecution argued that the testimony helps prove Trump's motive for trying to bury the story before the election.

Mershon agreed and refused to declare a mistrial. So that's a lot. Rebecca, what are your thoughts on Stormy's testimony and just the Manhattan trial so far? You're in New York. Have you been camped out in front of the courthouse every morning? I've been trying to get as far away from it as possible. There's a few things going on here. I thought yesterday seemed like a day that was designed to try and embarrass Trump a little bit, to set it all up. And the thing about it is you can't embarrass Donald Trump. We know far too much about him. He's put far too much out there. And nothing sticks to him. Nothing embarrasses him. But the bigger point is we're not trying to embarrass him. We're trying

to defeat him. And he gets to sit there and it's like this clown show a little bit. And that's good for him. You know what I mean? Like every day that he is not taken seriously is good for him. Right? Like there's all these real trials out there that are about, you know, January 6th and democracy and election denial and all these things that are horrendous. And most people just look at this as the hush money trial and they don't, they're like, how does this affect me? And so he can sit there and just like say what he wants to say and then, you know, go out to the reporters and literally make up whatever. And that is better than if he for him that if then if he is on the campaign trail, actually talking about what he would do in a second Trump term, which is absolutely terrifying. Yeah, I guess. I guess. I mean,

at first I sort of viewed the hush money trial in the same way, probably because it was called the hush money trial. Right, which is another problem. I do wonder, like, you know, and look, this all is predicated on you being someone who pays close attention to the trial, which most voters, as we know, are not. But if the story is, we all remember when the Access Hollywood tape came out, and if the story is, like, they were so worried, which Hope Hicks testified, once the Access Hollywood tape came out, And if the story is like they were so worried, which Hope Hicks

testified once the Access Hollywood tape came out that he was going to lose, that he desperately tried to bury this story and committed campaign finance violations while doing so. You know, when you think about like Hillary Clinton probably lost because James Comey popped up in the last week, too. So like any of these things could have made a difference. So it's a little more weighty for me than I think it was originally. But I totally take your point that most voters are probably like, what? Sex, Trump, whatever. You and I, we worked on campaigns and we worked in government.

And one of the first things you do when you sign up for either is you sit down with the lawyers and they tell you all the things you're not allowed to do and they scare you shitless, right? And what we're learning from Trump is like, he was never scared. The people around him never took any of this seriously. So my point is that there are a million crimes against him. This guy is a crook. And of that, this is the lowest level of crime. But basically, the issue here is everyone believes it and they don't care. Right. And that, to me, is a little bit worrisome. I think they'll care if he's in prison, but I don't think they care about if he's cheating on his wife, which is how it's coming across.

It's the shorthand of it. So if you're on the Biden campaign, would you rather have voters see Donald Trump ranting and raving about his criminal trial or out there talking about the border or inflation or Gaza? If I were them, I would want him out on the trail talking about what he's going to do with his Justice Department in a Trump term and how he will have no regard for the law and that he basically wants to be a dictator. Yeah. I would have him talking about all the things he wants to do as president, because I think that is helpful for them. Those are the scariest things. I mean, I do think that's at some point you're you're you're struggling with the challenge of delivering new information to voters, which is the only kind of information that breaks through about someone who everyone has formed an opinion of pretty much because he was president for four years and has been in our lives interminably for since 2016. Right. But the biggest problem that I have with the trial is like him being a joke again. right? And I don't want him to be a joke.

I want people to understand exactly who he is. And that to me is the biggest issue. He's in the courtroom, his base is getting stronger. And like, we're losing focus on what he'd actually do in a second trial. He's entertaining, He's playing for the cameras. He's, you know, he's said he can't intimidate witnesses. So he's going to post something quickly on Truth Social and then take it right down. But then it's out in the world. You know, like there's just.

Yeah. I keep going back and forth on this because when I read about his plans for a second term and especially like what he's going to do with the Justice Department, you know, invoking the Insurrection Act, immigration raids, like all over the country using the national guard all this kind of shit like i'm like okay we gotta define him as a very scary threat to democracy because that's what he

is and then you know you hear some voters and they're like what they the people who maybe back trump and then switch to biden or undecided. What they don't like about Trump is they're like, it's just a lot of drama and chaos and narcissism and he cares about himself. So then I'm like, do we want to make him like maybe the joke thing is what people don't like about the four years that Trump was there in the chaos. I go back and forth. I'm like, is it do we do we make him this like scary threat to democracy or do you make him this like narcissistic kook who just like brings chaos and drama wherever he goes? Right. People don't want chaos. That is for sure. Right.

But they also I mean, when Biden was running in 2020 against Trump, people remembered what Trump was like because he was actually president. Yeah. Right. And now the issue is that there's there's some confusion, I think, or misremembering about what actually was happening. And a lot of Biden's accomplishments, people give Trump credit for, you know, there's some issues here. I just, I think Trump is a master entertainer. I think he's very good at it. And there's some people who enjoy it. And instead of just having the fun, like, you know, celebrity apprentice guy, I think we need to go back to President Donald Trump and what that looks like. His favorability ratings are like the worst they've been since December.

And then I guess his net favorability is now like worse than Biden's for the first time since last August. Do you think that's just noise? Because this is all within a margin. Or do you think it's like you think it's trial? Do you think it's just trumping in the news? Or do you think it's like, you know, the Biden campaign has been spending a ton of money on ads in a lot of these states right now? And maybe maybe just the campaign ramping up is doing this.

I believe Trump was the most unpopular person ever to be like nominated. And then he was the most unpopular person to ever become president, right? So like, he is very unpopular. It's true, but I don't know if that's enough. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's so many reasons why he's doing it as poorly as he's doing. I do think Biden's campaign is starting to get in motion a little bit and their message is coming out. But by and large, I think the people who will decide this election have not tuned in yet. I think they are completely in denial about who the choices will be and might not tune in until way after Labor Day.

Like all of this is just background noise. I know it's hard to I often forget that this is like the longest general election campaign we can remember in our lifetimes. And it's because both nominations wrapped up so quickly. And it's a repeat. It's a rematch. And we've never had that in our lifetimes. So you can see why people would be sick of it

and not want to tune in yet. So per usual. We get it. Yeah, right. So per usual, after the trial was out yesterday, Trump complained to the press about how accountability for his crimes is keeping him from campaigning.

Let's listen to that clip. I'm stuck. I'm here. Instead of being in Georgia, instead of being in New Hampshire, instead of being in Wisconsin, and all the different states that we wanted to be in, we're not able to be there because we're stuck in this trial,

which everyone knows is a hoax. So Wednesday's are Trump's day off from court. What's he up to today? Dinner at Mar-a-Lago with people who bought NFTs of his mugshot in Georgia. You couldn't make it up. You couldn't make it up. If you type it into the caricature generating, what could it be? And it's like, oh, here's what he's doing tonight.

I mean, it's the same reason he said he was going to be missing his kids graduation how terrible and then he's like actually you missed all of your children's graduations you know he just he's a liar yeah well it's also it's just and it's all i do think there's like it's all a scam right he is he has such little respect not only for most voters, but like his own supporters. He's just scamming everyone all the time. One of the offers, in addition to the NFT, was you could get a you could get a swatch of Trump's suit, physical swatch of his suit from the mugshot when he was in Georgia. I mean, but this is I think he, I think he's a master at this. Like, I'll be honest, like who, like he has turned himself into this like hero with these followers and he just, he communicates better. He goes out there and he just says, it's all, you know, it's all terrible.

Their case is falling apart. And then his followers just say that, oh, the case is falling apart. You know what I mean? And if, if, you know, if they win, it's like the Soros-backed Democrats or whatever. You know, it's just, it's, he's very good at key phrases to get his audience, like, all riled up. Like, he, I just think we underestimate him to our own peril. Yeah. Well, and he also, I mean, he sort of owns the scams.

Like, he kind of knows, he's like, yeah, no, I'm profiting off all this and I'm selling the t-shirts and that's my whole shtick. I mean, he might as well wink after he does it. Right. It's like, he's in on, you know, like it's like he, and, and his people love him for it. Yeah. So, um, the, the, the Biden campaign, uh, reportedly sees Wednesdays as a chance to counter program, whatever Trump's up to so that, um, his NFT dinners don't steal all the headlines. I guess the president and vice president are on the campaign trail today. Kamala Harris is in Pennsylvania hitting Trump on abortion while Joe Biden is in Wisconsin, highlighting Microsoft's decision to create 2000 union construction jobs and 2000 permanent jobs at an AI data center,

which happens to be the very same spot that Trump promised 10,000 jobs from a new manufacturing facility that was very well done. Never built. Never built. Yes. Foxconn never happened. Biden campaign also announced today that they're spending 14 million dollars on a new ad push in the key states in May and hiring more campaign staff in the ad also focused on Trump's pledge to destroy Obamacare and Biden's promise to protect it. Here's the ad. Obamacare is a disaster. We want to terminate it.

That would mean over 100 million Americans will lose protections for pre-existing conditions. President Biden has protected the Affordable Care Act and lowered health care costs for millions by $800 a year. Now he'll make those savings permanent. Health care should be a basic right, folks. He's coming for your health care and we're not going to let it happen. I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message. So let's start that ad. What do you think of the ad? And do you think hitting Trump on wanting to terminate the ACA still has the potential to move voters? First of all, I love it. I love that he's out on

the stump talking about jobs and he's up on the air talking about health care, like more of this, it's good. On health care, that was Trump's signature, like mission and failure was trying to overturn Obamacare however many times. I mean, I would love to even get more specific on health care like you have, you know, zero cost for your contraception. Thanks, Obama. Right. Like we did all of these things under the Obama Biden administration and Trump tried to systematically dismantle all of it. And if you go back to Trump, he's going to try and take it away again. Right. And I think that's I hope people believe it because it's true. Do you think that there needs to be sort of a forward-leaning message on this too?

Because there is like re-litigating the past and also reminding people of like what Biden has done in his presidency, what Obama-Biden did when Obama was president. But then there's also like, you know, if you're worried about your health care or your health care is still too expensive, it's like, yeah, I don't want Donald Trump to take away the ACA, but like, what are you guys going to do for me? Right. I mean, I just, I think we should always be on offense on healthcare. Absolutely. Like we, everything we wanted to do, Democrats, you know, it was all because of Democrats. Republicans, every step of the way, made everything come down. I do imagine at some point in the campaign, it is still early, they will come out with like a proactive economic agenda

on what's more detailed. I know he talks about a bunch of stuff in the State of the Union, but that's more detailed on each issue. Well, I also think we have to get better at branding, right? Like, why are things the way they are? It's because, you know, the Obama Biden administration pushed it through. And I don't, you know, Trump, remember, signed all the checks. It was all him. But when you go, going back to contraception, when you go each month to refill your birth control pills and it's zero dollars, that's Obama Biden, right? And people don't know that. They didn't know that it used to cost money eight years ago or whatever. So I just I do think there needs to be a little bit more out there on what he's actually done. So I welcome this. Did you see that Politico poll this morning that showed they asked people about like Biden's four major legislative accomplishments, right? The American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, which, of course, no one knew what it was um the infrastructure bill which some more people knew and then still mad that we caught it the bipartisan infrastructure we should say like brought to you by democrats right i know and then

of course the inflation reduction act and it's like the biden campaign and the biden white house has been just touting these projects for a couple years now they've made a really good push they've been doing events. They do the ribbon cuttings. The outside groups probably spent like millions of dollars over the last couple of years to get that out there. And then you just have voters who are like, eh, no idea. No idea who did this.

No idea. Some people are crediting Trump for the infrastructure bill. Or worse, the members of Congress who voted against it are touting like all the successes in their district. I mean, it's like, it's maddening, but it's, I mean, it's also harder with the, like news doesn't resonate the way it once did. Like you could have, you can have a big event, but it's like a tree, sometimes it's a tree falling in the forest. And that's, that's another challenge for him. Yeah, it does seem like this is a communication challenge. And look, we faced it with the Recovery Act back in 2009. And like the

media environment is so much worse, so much more difficult. And like, you know, even if the New York Times or the Washington Post write a big story or the local or like in Wisconsin right now, I'm sure this will get great. I'm sure the president will get great coverage in Wisconsin. But like how many voters are actually tuning in and understand that he was there? Do people watch the news? Yeah. Who reads the paper? I mean, this goes back to like, how do you and if you are working on a campaign,

how do you make your news pop? Because it's not like it's not like everyday voters are going or getting the paper delivered and then going to the political news and saying what's what's happening they're they have no actually they're tuning out news more than ever before or they're getting little snippets of it so how do campaigns do that now what are what's the like is it relational organizing and talking to people is it just like spending on ads on every medium you can think of, right? Television, digital, everywhere else. What are some of the good strategies? I mean, you know, the expression you got to meet voters where they are. And I think

that is that is more true now than ever before. And voters are on all different social media platforms. They're on YouTube there. I mean, they're they're not paying attention to any political news. And, you know, we'll we'll get into it, I think, a little later about Ruben Gallego, Senate candidate I'm working for. But one of the things he did this weekend is there was the big Canelo fight, which, as you know, is a big moment. The fight in Latino households getting together with friends and family to watch the fight. And instead of what Ruben would usually do is watch it with his own friends and family. He's like, let's have it as a campaign event. And then we

had this huge event with like a bunch of folks came out and they had fun and they got to talk to their Senate candidate about the fight, which he had a lot of opinions on and actually like connect with him. And I think that's something that a lot of politicians are struggling to do, is to connect to actual voters and be normal. And I'm sure that's like, I mean, even in the best circumstances, that's so much harder when you are president because you have to do it on a national level. And also you're stuck in the White House and it's harder to be nimble with campaign events. Well, yeah. And with Biden, I mean, he's so good in a room, right? Bill Clinton, you remember how he would say, I feel your pain. I don't think anyone

feels pain better than Joe Biden, right? He is a deeply empathetic individual when it comes to personal loss and one-on-one and all of these things. However, in a bigger climate, it doesn't work the same way. It's tougher for him. And his personality doesn't come across the same way. And things are pretty scripted and tight right now, as they are with most presidents. And I know they're trying to do more of these events where instead of a big event or a big rally,

they just have him in a with like 10, 15 people. And, you know, even the coverage of that is even probably better for him than the big rally coverage. Let's talk about the state of the race more generally. Obviously, extremely close nationally. Polling average has shown like a one to two point race since March. Trump has a slightly larger lead in the battleground states that add up to 270. When these two ran against each other in 2020, Biden led by more,

both nationally and the battleground states the entire time. And that was before Trump attempted a coup and cited an insurrection, was charged with 88 felony counts and became responsible for overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. He's also barely campaigning, not really running ads yet.

That's going to change. What is your overall read on why this thing is so tight right now? I mean, this goes back to the fact that voters are looking at the two candidates and they're like, is that all there is? Right. Like they're not they want a little bit more. They're they're not happy with their circumstance. They feel like they're drowning. They feel like no one understands what they're going through. And some of this is, you know, the age problem, right? Like the candidates are so old. They're like, how do they know what I'm going through?

But a lot of it is just feeling that like they want something different and new and they're just unhappy with what's out there. I think Trump has really succeeded at saying we can do more than what we're doing. And I think the Biden campaign is going to end much stronger because they'll be on TV and have like a bigger paid budget than the Trump campaign will, just in terms of touting their successes and also explaining the choice right now, because the choice is pretty stark. Yeah. I mean, the Trump trials, as we said, have been dominating the headlines. The war in Gaza has, too, for good reason. What do you see is that is the top issue for or top issues for most voters right now? Like that are going to there's what people say is important. Yeah, I was going to say there's people people says are like

important to the country. And then there's like what people say is this is probably an issue that could decide my vote. Right. I think the economy, inflation, absolutely a top issue. It is something that everyone is thinking about, like what they're bringing home, what they're spending. It is what is keeping most American families up at night. I wouldn't underestimate the border and its relevance in a lot of voters' minds in terms of being tough on the border and having a clear plan there. And absolutely, I would say the biggest issue I'm hearing from voters is about abortion, right? Like in a post-Dobbs world, this is not an issue that is going away, right? Like every year you have some pundit on TV saying, well, this isn't going to be the issue.

Women, like this already happened, whatever. And it's like absolutely no fucking way. Like this is the issue. And I do think it's this weird world because of what happened in 2016 where many people thought we would win and then we lost. There is this like PTSD, especially among Democrats, like, oh my God, we're going to lose. We're going to lose. Right. But in every election,

2018, 2020, 2022, Democrats have held on. Right. And I, and I do think that on abortion in particular, it will be very hard for Republicans to win on this issue because they have shown us what they will do when they're in power. Yeah. This is this is another one where obviously there's this debate like should Democrats and Biden focus on economic issues and the economic contrast with Trump. Biden campaign is, you know, it's reported that they have said like they think that the election will come down to Dobbs and democracy. Right. Abortion is an issue. Democracy is an issue. come down to Dobbs and democracy, right? Abortion is an issue. Democracy is an issue. And, you know, I mean, I've been I've been doing campaigns and politics as long as you and we've seen all the polling for decades. It's like the economic issues and the economic contrast are always the best for Democrats. But I'm trying to like I'm trying to imagine persuading an undecided voter who's pissed

about inflation and thinks that the Trump economy was better for them, even though they don't really like Trump. And it's like, what do you say to that voter? And I wonder if it's harder to convince that voter that Biden and the Democrats are right because actually the Trump economy wasn't as good and Trump's going to do bad economic things and we're going to actually pass an agenda that that, you know, tangibly improves your lives? Or is it like, well, maybe you're pissed about the economy, but also Donald Trump is going to restrict abortion across the country if he is president and he's going to terminate the ACA and he's going to, you know, go after his enemies and call up the military, all the

scary things about Trump. Like, I'm just trying to figure out like what. Well, I guess the first thing you should not do is to tell voters you're fine. You're doing so well. Trust me. Look at the numbers. You're doing great. You're great. Because that is that is something especially some members of Congress have really, I think, failed at by just like discounting what people actually feel and saying, this is great. Look at it as a whole. Because you got to talk to people about like what they're actually going through. But I do think it's important to remind people of what a Trump presidency was like and how much good has happened since Biden has become president. You know, there's still a lot of work to do, but I don't, I think we absolutely need

to have some empathy for voters feeling like we're not doing enough and to communicate as effectively as possible, but also explain what the choice is. Yeah. I keep wanting to hear more like present tense verbs. You know, it's like like we're fighting for you. And we went through this like terrible pandemic and it set off inflation. And since then, inflation has been coming down. But we are not done. And because

prices are still too high and we're going to keep fighting to lower costs. And that's our number one. You know, like I haven't heard that enough. Like I haven't heard that empathy. It doesn't it's and voters want it or they will blame the Democrats. Right. Because if if Democrats are out there saying you're fine, then that's they're going to they're going to lose. Right. And and you need a villain. Right. And you need to talk about like corporate price gouging and how Republicans would, you know, pass and Trump would pass another huge tax cut for those corporations that are price gouging. Like, you got to put the story together. How are you feeling about the race to control Congress, House and Senate?

Well, I will tell you something. I feel a little bullish here. And I have a lot of friends, I feel like we all do, who stay up late at night, every night, just worried that Biden's going to lose reelection. Everything is going to be terrible. It's terrible. It's just doomsday all the way. Right. Yeah.

And first of all, I think it'll be tight, but I do think Biden's going to win. But secondly, I think if you're really worried that Biden's going to lose, then you need to do everything you can to make sure we win back the House of Representatives and make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House. Like that is, there are races out there that we lost by a very close margin last cycle. We can now win and we should be focused on these states where these races are. And they are in blue areas. They are in New York. They are in California.

You know, like it is, it used to be, I've done so many races in Pennsylvania, there would always be a carload of, or busload of New Yorkers coming down, you know, to come to the Philly suburbs or something. Now, just get on the train and go to the suburbs of New York and you can help Mondaire Jones get back to Congress. You know, and I think you have in suburban L.A., you have someone who thinks that the war on wokeism is worse than like the perils we felt in World War II.

I think that's Congressman Garcia. Like there are a lot of folks out there that we should send home and we can win. So I just I feel absolutely 100 percent convinced that if we can focus on the House and not just the White House, we can at least have a check on power if all hell breaks loose. No, I think the House is very doable. It's probably the most I mean, you know, it's either it's probably either the same or better chances as Biden has in the House. I mean, the House is very, very gettable. The Senate is, as you know, is obviously tougher because we got to win. Sherrod see not impossible. Not impossible. Sherrod's got to win. Tester's got to win. Right. And then your guys got to win. Yes, we have to win. And then maybe there'll be a surprise.

I mean, you remember back in our day, we were in the Senate. There was this race in 2006 and nobody thought we would win back the Senate. And then out of nowhere, Virginia became in play and we won back the Senate. So sometimes when it goes, it goes.

So who knows? Maybe there will be a sweep. We're spending so much time worried about what could go wrong. We haven't really spent any time thinking, hey, what if things go right? As is our nature. As is our nature, of course. But to your point, this is a great time for me to make this plug. We launched this week, Vote Save America launched this week, Organize or Else, which is our big organizing effort uh ahead of the election and

if you go to votesaveamerica.com slash 2024 you can choose a team it's east versus west rebecca so i am uh me and love it are the captains of team west and then dan and tommy are east but um so but you can sign up and then we have like 71 races that we picked um which are just like places where you can have the most impact, volunteer your time, money. They're down ballot. So it's like it's not just the big federal races. It's all over. I love this because we forget about state legislatures. And it's like conservatives have been focused on state legislatures for years. And, you know, Democrats are just really basically post January 6th.

They're like, oh, this is important. Yeah. So I hope that we can focus some of our attention on that, too. So one of the one of the reasons I'm happy about being a captain of Team West is I want to talk specifically about a state that I've been bullish on that I know you are to state of Arizona. So Biden won Arizona in 2020 by just point three percent, a bit more than 10,000 votes. I think you could make the case that it's not just one of the most important states. It might be the most important state this time around. It could because Arizona certainly thinks that I mean, it could once again decide the presidency, particularly if Biden loses Wisconsin. Say right then, Arizona would still give him the 270 if he gets the rest.

It could decide control the House. There's a couple competitive house races there and of course the senate uh where you're working for democratic candidate ruben gallego who's running against the certifiable glock enthusiast carrie lake um there's also likely to be a ballot measure uh that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and thereby eliminate the current 15-week ban. So first I wanted to ask just what has changed in Arizona since 2020? Is the environment different than what Democrats faced four years ago or is it basically the same terrain? Has anything shifted? Well, so what has not shifted is that Arizonans continue to be very independently minded.

They like their candidates not super crazy. They like them with an independent streak and someone who will fight for them. What has changed is dobs. We are in, you know, Roe was overturned. And in Arizona, they've had an even more extreme example of that in terms of the 1864 ban. A ban, you know, that law, Carrie Lake, our opponent, a few years ago was on the trail

where she referred to that law as a great law. And so, you know, Arizona, like women in Arizona have been a political football here. Like they're just messing with what's happening. And I think that a lot of voters are pissed about it. Are you guys hearing that from voters at events and stuff? Has that become a... I mean, remember the law keep first... First there was like Dobbs, right?

And then there was the law in Arizona. Then there's the 1864 ban. It's just... It is... women have had enough of this. They they they want abortion to be safe and legal. They want to be able to access it and make it a choice between them and their doctor. Do you guys see Carrie Lake as a stronger or weaker candidate than she was in 2022? She's reportedly been trying to position herself as less kooky MAGA and more mainstream MAGA. You think she's having any luck with that? I mean, where to begin? Here's like Carrie Lake, you know, was this trusted TV anchor for years in the Phoenix media markets on TV. People liked her very much. And then she blew it all up with her 2022 election campaign for governor.

she went fully off the deep end in terms of election denial. People look at her as power hungry. They don't trust her. And they think she'll say anything to get elected because they have seen it happen. Not just like as like the friendly neighborhood election denier, but also as someone who has gone on and on about how pro-life they are. Then the 1864 ban happens. Then they say they don't want to, you know, they're not really for that. Then they say it's a choice and they take off abortion from their

website. You know, there's a lot going out there, but she has not moderated her positions. Like, I just want to be clear, like she is exactly where she was. She might say different things to different audiences. She is still as extreme as ever. And it's hard for her because you have Ruben Gallego, who's like, I will say I'm biased. He's a pretty great guy. Okay. And he will go anywhere in Arizona. He'll talk to anyone. He'll be, you know, have a conversation. She is talking specifically to her base, sometimes her base of one, Donald Trump, but then, you know, just to her folks. And she is saying, you know, crazy things. And if she can't even get to the independents and the Democrats, she's still dealing with the McCain Republicans, who she told to like,

get the hell out of the party. And when she's talking about, McCain said, like, Arizona's delivered some losers, you know, And then winds up like tweeting to Meghan McCain, like, can we be friends, you know? And she, of course, had choice worse for her back. But the point here is like, it is, she is an election denier. She has denied it again and again and again. And I think she lost a lot of credibility,

what little she had after the 22 election when she just didn't believe it and kept going out there what uh what i really like about your guy ruben gallego is like great democrat progressive great story great like you know and but he's also just normal sounding he talks he talks like a normal person like we had we had him i think dan and i talked to him on psa like a couple years ago when he was a met before way before he ran for senate and i was like oh he could be like a guest host he's just like he's just like talking normally he's like he doesn't talk like doesn't do the talking point thing politicians you and i've talked about this

before i do think that that goes a long way uh especially if you're running against someone like carrie lake well right who's you know so you, can just say whatever you say to her, she's like, you know, election denial, like, you know, she just, she's very on message. But what is her message, right? Whereas Ruben, I mean, he is, Ruben Gallego is just, for those of your listeners who don't know, he, working class kid,, grew up raised by a single mom with a bunch of sisters, got himself into Harvard, even though his guidance counselor said no one from here goes to places like that, went out to serve his country, served was in one of the most

deadliest units in the war, and came back and decided to serve his country in a different way in the U.S. Congress. And he is a good human being. And I think we need those in the Senate. I think he's someone who has dealt with his own, who has a family who understands like a lot of the challenges that many American families are going through. And, and he's, he's, he's, he,

he gets it going back to what I was saying about the Canelo fight the other day. This was all his idea. Like we should do this. This is what normal people do. And you have a bunch of campaign advisors being like, tell me more about what normal people do. You know?

Yeah. No, that is familiar. It is refreshing and he's young and energetic. And I think this is good for all of the Democrats to have candidates who are exciting. It's been a minute, you know? And I think we are, you know,

we do this thing where we look at each race and we're like, here's one candidate and we can get this win, razor sharp, you know, this and that. But we haven't had a moment where we think about, hey, are there candidates out there that we can inspire some folks with? Because the stakes are so high, we don't have time to dream. You know, we just kind of say, okay, here's a Democrat, maybe they can win. And I think with Ruben Gallego, there's something exciting for the future there. Before we go, I wanted to ask you about the Pennsylvania Senate race between Democratic

Senator Bob Casey and Connecticut hedge fund manager Dave McCormick. You helped run John Fetterman's race against Dr. Oz. So I know you have experience running against out of touch rich guys from out of state. How much do you think Bob Casey can borrow from the playbook you guys used against Dr. Oz? I mean, it's it's pretty amazing, right, that two cycles in a row they can they can nominate someone who doesn't live there, is rich and out of touch, doesn't get it. I mean, what's interesting about McCormick is he keeps doing these these interviews. I think he even did one today where he'll say something like when I moved back to Pennsylvania last year or something like, you know, like it's always, he lives in Connecticut. His kids go to school in Connecticut.

Like it is, that's who he is. He just looked at Pennsylvania and was like, oh, maybe I could win there because I'm not going to win in Connecticut, which is exactly what happened with Dr. Oz. He knew he couldn't win in New Jersey. But the problem is with the Pennsylvania Republican Party, because they have so many extreme candidates like Doug Mastriano, who ran for governor last year, that they're literally like outsourcing to other states like to come in to help them try and win. But no, I don't think it's going to work. Bob Casey is a good man. He's got high Pennsylvania name ID. He's got high Pennsylvania name ID.

That Casey brand is strong. And I think if he just keeps his head down, does the work, I think he will go right back to the Senate. Yeah. Seems like one where Dave McCormick could just kind of sink himself. Obviously, Biden needs to win Pennsylvania. What are you hearing from folks on the ground about that? I mean, listen, I think every battleground state is going to be close. I don't take anything for granted. about that? I mean, listen, I think every battleground state is going to be close. Like,

I don't take anything for granted. I think, you know, anyone who thinks that this election doesn't matter or that they're all the same, like that's where we get into real problems. We have to explain to people what the stakes of this election are in very clear terms. I think that, you know, Biden gets hit a lot for what he's doing wrong. What he's doing right is he's raised a lot of money and he's kind of saving a lot of it to communicate late to voters because I think that's when we'll be tuning in. And hopefully everyone knows the stakes of this election because we can't sit on the sidelines. I know. I saw that. I just saw in the long Vanity Fair piece about the Biden campaign. They were saying, like, we don't worry. We know exactly who the voters are that we need to talk to, that we need to get, and we have the money to talk to them. Right. Like who knows, hopefully it works. Right. It may not, but like they know, they know where the voters are and they're going to have the resources to talk to them. So that,

that part, there are some, there's some smart people at the top over there. And I think they're going to make some, some really good decisions. I just think we all are so scared of losing that it's hard to just feel, to take a minute to feel okay about where we are. Because it is, if you look at just where Biden and the Democrats are, it does look really tricky. But then if you go to the other side and look at where the Republicans and Trump are, it's a little harder for them. Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Rebecca Katz, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America today and giving us your insight on all the day's news and Arizona and Pennsylvania. Appreciate it. Well, thanks so much for having me. Really enjoyed it. Good to see you.

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