Pod Save America - “The Chosen One.”

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Donald Trump has a meltdown for the ages that includes snubbing Denmark because they refused to sell him Greenland, accusing American Jews of stupidity and disloyalty, caving to the NRA, and blaming everyone else for an economy that Trump says is the greatest. Then Stacey Abrams talks to Dan about her new effort to fight voter suppression and expand democracy.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, Dan's interview with Stacey Abrams, who just launched a new effort to protect voting rights in the 2020 election. Before that, we will try to assess the damage from the president's latest meltdown, which, even by Donald Trump's standards, was one for the ages this week. Also check out Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben talk about how Trump bullied Netanyahu into blocking Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from visiting Israel. They speak with a China expert from Human Rights Watch about the massive protests in Hong Kong. Issue a call to action in defense of California wine. That's a very Tommy topic.

And explain why Al-Qaeda released a blooper reel. Wow. Check it out. Finally, in the latest episode of our... Tommy's promos for Pod Save the World are just fire, I have to say. Finally, in the latest episode of our Crooked miniseries, Rigging North Carolina, our political director, Shaniqua McClendon, examines the bonkers hearing the North Carolina State Board of Elections held earlier this year to get to the bottom of what happened in the congressional race for the ninth district all right let's get to the news so at one point

yesterday these are the four headlines that ran on the front page of the new york times new rule would let u.s hold trump urges unity against racism yeah right not that one not that one okay they've moved past that. Here they are. New rule would let U.S. hold migrant families indefinitely. NRA gets results in one phone call with the president. Trump accuses Jewish Democrats of disloyalty. And Trump canceled a meeting with Denmark over its refusal to sell Greenland. Michelle Goldberg, a columnist at the Times, posted a photo of the front page

and tweeted that it looked like one of those pre-election parodies about what a Trump administration would be like. And the worst part is, those headlines just scratched the surface of all the unhinged, nasty, destructive shit the president said and did last week. Dan, we're going to dig into these headlines one by one, but I want to start by asking you about a theory that I've been hearing from our old pal David Axelrod, which is that the voters that Trump needs to win are getting exhausted by waking up to this constant chaos and craziness day after day. And it is sort of damaging his political standing with probably some of the voters he would need to win in 2020. What do you think of that theory? I mean, there's definitely some merits to it. I'd like to see, you know, research that

suggests it. I know I saw Amy Chozik of the New York Times tweet this morning, when is a Democrat going to run on the platform of make America boring again? Yeah. And I get I get that idea. Like you like I think Michael Bennett also said this, which is, wouldn't it be great if you had a president you have to think about 24-7? I do think that Trump – I would actually take Axelrod's theory and take it in a less optimistic direction, which is the result of Trump exhausting the American electorate is not that people will vote against him. It is that some people won't vote. Right. It is that it is so loud, so annoying, so terrible, so miserable that they would rather check out than tune in. on folks who have never voted before or are less frequent voters to get the majorities we need to win the electoral college while Republicans have a smaller but more reliable voting base?

I think you have to connect the argument to what really matters in people's lives. Because if the argument is just, we have a crazy president, every time you turn the news, he's done something else, you know, batshit crazy, you know, then a lot of people could either, like you said, say, well, then I don't want to vote either way, or just turn off the news. But I think if you frame it as this country has enormous problems, climate change, your health care costs are going up, your wages have been stagnant. You're having a tough time sending your kids to college. And we have all these problems. And what is the president doing the whole time? He's just like spouting off every other day, pissing some people off, pissing off foreign leaders, inciting hate and violence. He's just making the country more divided. He's profiting off the White House.

He's doing all this bullshit while all of these problems that we have as a country are growing and no one is actually fighting for you. So I think you have to, I think if you connect it, it can be powerful, but I think it can't just be Donald Trump's, you know, annoying on Twitter. And that's why we should have a new president. Yeah. I think that there, you make a very important point here, which is you have to connect it to, there have to be consequences for his behavior in your life, like either things that have gone wrong or missed opportunities to make the country better. I do think that there is an opportunity for a Democrat not to run on being boring but to take – to basically connect the dots on everything that Trump is doing and saying is that it's about Trump. Yeah. Right. These are his grievances, his fights, his temper tantrums, his bottom line when it comes to his economic policies and his corruption. And to say, have a message that's something like,

wouldn't it be nice if we had a president who woke up every day thinking about you, not thinking about themselves, who was fighting for you, not fighting everyone for themselves, right? I think there's room for a candidate to do that. And I think that is the key to tie this all together. And I don't think Axe is suggesting this, but boring is not a way to win an election when your party depends on inspiring non-voters to vote. Yeah, I agree with that. So let's start with greenland a danish island that was minding its own business until donald trump offered to buy it for at least 600 million of our tax dollars per year uh when the prime minister of denmark called the president's offer absurd trump called her nasty and canceled his upcoming visit to denmark and attacked the country's nato

contributions on twitter successfully pissing off yet another close ally of the united states dan i never thought i'd be asking this question but why did president donald trump get in a fight with the danish prime minister over his offer to buy greenland it we have come to expect the unexpected in the trump era but i have to admit this one threw me for a loop didn't see this one insane i mean it's so crazy it's just like you just hear it and you're just like what the fuck to admit, this one threw me for a loop. Didn't see this one coming. It is so insane. I mean, it's so crazy. It's just like, you just hear it and you're just like, what the fuck? How did we get here? And it's not even like things are going superb all around the country right now. We're just like looking for new things to do. Trump has just checked everything off of his list and the

economy is humming. Congress is passing things. People aren't getting killed in mass shootings. And it's like, I just need a new project. So I'm going to take on the Greenland thing. And so it's even it's absurd in the best of times. It is incredibly absurd in the middle of this week, which is felt just from just on the events, I'd say this this summer, which has felt particularly chaotic and traumatic and scary, even by the scale of that in the Trump era. And so it's just like, I don't really know what to say other than Trump has an amazing ability to take the political conversation and

focus it on the stupidest part humanly possible. And I mean, we should talk for a second about why he wanted to buy Greenland. He's not the first president, believe it or not, to inquire about purchasing Greenland. I think Harry Truman did. A couple other presidents did in the past. You know, his, a legitimate reason could be, you know, there's a geostrategic reason for this. You know, that Greenland is by Russia and you could have have military bases there which by the way you could have military presence there uh through nato without actually buying the fucking island um but for trump we we know why trump wants to buy greenland right he considers himself like a real estate guy and a builder and if he could be the president that like you know added another uh added an entire island to america and say that he like

increased the size of the united states by 20 you can see him like being excited to brag about that because it's exactly this type of fucking thing that donald trump gets excited about did you have spencer's gifts stores growing up i did yeah i love spencer's gifts so for folks who may not have been around in those days spencer'sifts is like this classic 80s store in malls that sold posters and gag gifts and T-shirts from bands. And I remember at the Spencer's Gifts in the Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware, they always had this poster up that was like this dude. I think he was like in tennis shorts and he was surrounded by like a Ferrari and all this other stuff. I think he was in tennis shorts and he was surrounded by a Ferrari and all this other stuff. And it said at the bottom, in this most quintessentially 80s thing, which is, he who dies with the most toys wins.

And I've always thought that that is Trump, who is himself a man trapped in the 80s. That is his ethos. That is his reason for being. And so adding, buying stuff or getting more land land the united states is like direct is to him equal success without any thought of anything other like the purchase or the acquisition or possession of something is in and of itself a win regardless of what you're using it for what purpose it would serve yeah he's also one of these guys who's clearly only looked at mercator maps that make greenland look like five times bigger than it actually is, you know, and so he sees it on that fucking map and he's thinking to himself, holy shit, that's big. I want to buy that island. Now, the other, the bad reasons for

this, for trying to buy Greenland, which there are many, but one of the worst is he basically just wants to fucking drill. There's like plenty of oil and natural resources there. And you know, it's inhabited by about 50,000 people. A lot of them are, you know, they're indigenous people in Greenland. And he basically wants to go into their home and drill for a bunch of fucking oil and realize that, you know, with climate change happening, Greenland is also like the ice on Greenland is melting. So it's a perfect opportunity not to solve climate change, but to drill for more fucking oil there. Now, the most ridiculous thing of this whole offer is that he can't buy Greenland even if the Danes said yes, because they are not able to sell Greenland. There is something in the

constitution that says that if Greenland wants to separate from Denmark or go somewhere else or be on its own, it's the people of Greenland that decide in a referendum. They vote. So it is also so Trump to think that he can, it's so fucking colonial of him to think he can just pay some money for a territory that is able to, that if it ever wanted to leave Denmark in the constitution says that it can decide that on its own. What was it that Dinesh d'Souza or newt gingrich or some other right-wing nutjob said about obama that he had a colonial colonial

attitude yeah i think that they have it always comes full circle in the trump world where it's basically trump becomes the absurd thing that conservatives accused obama of being then they embrace it yeah and let's also not let slide here that the consequence of what happened this week is that we just pissed off another NATO ally, which Trump has been doing left and right, sucks up to every dictator all over the world and just pisses off our allies. You know, Denmark, small little country in Europe also, you know, sent troops to Afghanistan after 9-11 to support us because we invoked Article 5 in NATO, lost 43 soldiers in Afghanistan, which is the highest per capita death rate of any member of the coalition fighting in Afghanistan, Denmark. And Donald Trump said, fuck you,

because you wouldn't accept my offer to buy an island that I actually can't buy anyway. That's where we're at. Would you support the acquisition of Greenland if it became a state? Well, their politics are pretty left wing. So maybe we'd get another. Elijah likes it. Elijah's looking at me. This is where he's been going all week. Yeah, no, two senators from Greenland, two Democrats. Absolutely. Well, again, if the people of Greenland want to decide that for themselves, then it's up to them. Okay, next up on the crazy train. Multiple times this week, the president accused American Jews who support Democrats of being disloyal to Israel. Trump first made the anti-Semitic accusation as he was attacking Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar,

who the president successfully lobbied Bibi Netanyahu to ban from Israel of being anti-Semites. On top of that, Trump tweeted the following quote from right-wing conspiracy theorist Wayne Allen, who believes the mass shooting in Las Vegas was a Muslim plot. Quote, The Jewish people in Israel love Trump like he's the king of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God. But American Jews don't know him or like him. They don't even know what they're doing or saying anymore. This was a tweet thread from the president of the United States. Dan, should we go through all

the ways these comments aren't just stupid and offensive and anti-Semitic, but actually dangerous? but actually dangerous? Well, I mean, Trump using an anti-Semitic trope to call Democrats anti-Semitic is Trumpism in a nutshell. Peak Trump. It speaks to his stupidity. It also speaks of the willful stupidity of the Republican Party, who had a fucking hissy fit attacking Ilhan Omar for suggesting that her comments were about loyalty and that she was using this exact same anti-Semitic trope that Trump just used. And then all of the people who attacked Ilhan Omar all defended Trump for it. It's like the price of being in the Republican Party in the Trump era is that you have to make yourself look ridiculous three times a week. It's also very Trump in that the typical dual loyalty trope is that somehow American Jews aren't really loyal to America. They're loyal to Israel.

In Donald Trump's mind, American Jews should be loyal to Israel, which means he doesn't really see American Jews as Americans, right? It fits with his ethno-nationalist worldview, where he sees so many people in this country as not really truly being American. But if you're ethnic or you're Muslim or you're Latino, you know, you have a, you know, Judge Curiel, the judge that he said couldn't be fair because he was Mexican, even though it was just like he was born in the United States and he had Mexican heritage, right? Like Trump doesn't see people, he only sees like white Christians as fundamentally American. Everyone else, you know, maybe you're okay if you like Donald Trump. If you're not, you're disloyal not only to Trump but to America.

That's sort of – that's how he thinks. And it's an extremely dangerous worldview at a time where white nationalist domestic terrorism is on the rise and just happened a couple weeks ago. and just happened a couple weeks ago. And it's this, in 2016, 71, according to the exit poll, 71% of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton. That number was 79% in the 2018 midterms. It's been around that 70% number for a long time. So he's essentially saying that 7 in 10 American Jews are disloyal and dumb because the original comment was that they support that they are either disloyal or ignorant to explain their support of Democrats. And we're just like, we're just moving on.

Like we're just like this happened. It happened like 36 hours ago. We're onto the Greenland thing and everything else. And we're just going to move right past the president attacking with an anti-Semitic trope, the Jewish community in America. Yeah. And look, a bunch of people noted if Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden had said this, this would be the end of their campaigns. The media would never let it go. It would be, it would be covered as the biggest thing that ever happened it would not last a day or two it would go on and on and on but because donald trump does five of these things per day it was one of many headlines on the new york times yesterday that was completely bonkers

and trump benefits in the minds of the press from the fact that they think accurately that he's dumb. Right? So this is treated as a misstatement of someone who talks a lot and generally doesn't know what they're saying, as opposed to an actual window into anti-Semitism into his soul. And when you connect all the dots around this, right, you connect his very fine people comments about the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, the amount of times that he retweeted anti-Semitic memes during and after the campaign. And then you attach that to all the other examples of bigotry in his life and in his presidency. It paints a very clear picture. But instead, we treat this as just yet another thing Donald Trump said, because he talks a lot. It also shows like his political strategy here is based on a fundamental misunderstanding,

right? Which he thinks, and to be fair, a bunch of Republicans around him think that if they somehow cozy up to Bibi Netanyahu's government in Israel, then American Jews will say, oh, well, I don't want to vote for Democrats anymore because all I care about is what happens in Israel, which is anti-Semitic all on its own. As if Jews in this country wouldn't care about the fact that Donald Trump, after a rally where a bunch of people were marching with signs that said Jews will not replace us, said there are very fine people on both sides. And all the other instances of anti-Semitism in his life. They wouldn't care about that. They would care, by the way, about him being nice to Bibi Netanyahu. I mean, it's just, it's so fucking, it's crazy, man.

Not to mention caring about providing healthcare to people or saving the planet or protecting people from gun violence or all the other issues that matter to people. But I think, so I think in Trump's mind, he thinks this way because he is such a fucking one-dimensional thinker and the collection of numbskulls he has surrounded himself are the same way, which is to win election must win Florida. To win Florida must win Jews. There are lots of Jews in Florida.

Therefore, I will do this. So I think that's all Trump thinks because he's basically Homer Simpson as president. Like it's not – the complicated thoughts do not work through that brain. But I think the smarter Republicans out there, and there are some, and don't think about that. They think about the strategy in the following ways. Yes, I do think that part of this, to the extent there is strategy behind these rants, the painting Democrats as anti-Semitic is part of the same strategy as painting Democrats as pro-socialists.

It is about Florida. Republicans do much better among older Jewish voters than younger Jewish voters because they do better among older voters than younger voters. And there is a disproportionate concentration of that electorate in Florida. And so if you can either hold on to or peel off some of those voters, you're going to do better in Florida. So that's part one. Part two is most of the Israel, the painting Democrats anti-Israel, the butting up the Bibi Netanyahu is about the evangelical vote in the rest of the country more so than it is about the Jewish vote. Right. And then the third part about this is it is just yet another way to try to scare white people by trying to take two Muslim women and make them the

face of the Democratic Party, right? So it's about Florida. It's about holding on to the evangelical vote, who have many reasons to have questions about Trump's own personal morality. And then it is about this idea that he thinks if he makes the Democratic Party seem less white, he will win the election. Yeah. And just like everything else he does, it's not about them thinking they can win the Jewish vote in 2020, just like they don't think they can win the African-American vote or win the Latino vote. They just want to shave off some margins here for Democrats. And they don't care if you vote for Donald Trump or you stay home. Either one works for them. All they want to make sure is that the Democrat doesn't reach 50%

and the Democrat not reaching 50% or 50% plus one is because they didn't get high enough turnout among African-American voters or Latino voters or Jewish voters, right? Like they're just, they're trying to sort of peel off their constituencies just a little bit here so that Donald Trump can again, you know, probably lose the popular vote, but win the electoral college.

And you have just enough people staying home or voting for third parties. That's the whole strategy here, right? Yep. All right, let's talk about the end of Donald Trump's latest flirtation with gun control. Not even a month after two

of the worst mass shootings in recent history, all it took was one 30-minute phone call from the NRA to scare the president away from supporting legislation to expand background checks. Trump gave the following reasoning to reporters on Wednesday, quote, I have to tell you that it's a mental problem, and quote, you know they call it the slippery slope, and all of a sudden everything gets taken away which of course is a long time nra talking point dan uh are you even a bit surprised here john i think it's unlikely that dean mckay is going to let me write new york times headlines but you know what my headline for this would have been what's that no shit sherlock i mean we've seen this this has this is now the

third time this has happened in the less than three years that Trump has been president. We have a tragic mass shooting, first in Las Vegas, then at Parkland, and then earlier. This is the cycle we are in. It is because we are a country with a politics that was broken by a Republican Party who cares more about winning elections and stopping people from getting killed. What do you think this says about the NRA's influence, even as they're engulfed in multiple scandals, you know, we talked a couple pods ago about how they were outraged and out-organized in 2018 by gun safety groups for the first time. So, you know, it had seemed like maybe the NRA's influence was waning, and then something like this happens, and with one 30-minute phone call, they get, you know, an entire gun safety agenda killed.

Every time one of these shootings happens, a bunch of people on Twitter will tweet at every Republican member of Congress who blocks gun control, which is every Republican member of Congress. We'll tweet at them the amount of money they took from the NRA. And I think that's an important point to make and we should continue to make it. But I also think it has the danger of oversimplifying the politics of this. Because the NRA, what they have brought to the table is less about the money that they give candidates and more about the money they spend to win elections.

And I think that the politics of this are of being for, and we can talk about this as it relates to Trump in a minute. But the politics of this are – it's pretty easy. You could be for issues that have 60-some percent support among Republicans and 90 percent support around the country. Like that's easy. But what prevents it from happening is fear. It's fear of a primary challenge, right? It is fear of getting attacked from the right, because even though they are a minority, the pro-gun voters, the NRA voters, essentially, are very well organized, and they turn out to vote. And so these Republicans fear that if they

do the right thing, they will get primaried in their next election and lose. Because even if it's the right move for the general election, and even if the right move for their party writ large, in a more narrow primary universe, they could get killed for it. Yeah, if you're Donald Trump, you also want the NRA to be spending as much money as possible on 2020, whether it's organizing, whether it's ads. And by the way, some of these ads that the NRA runs, they're not about guns because you know they know that's not as popular they'll run ads about immigration they'll run ads about you know attacking the democratic candidate for all kinds of stuff they

don't give a shit they're just another interest group that's going to spend a fuckload of money on the election and trump doesn't want to piss them off you're absolutely right like it it is dangerously oversimplifying the politics to just say, so-and-so got a couple thousand dollars for the NRA, and that's why they vote the way they do, because that's not necessarily the case. You're right, it is fear. They have built an organization that has scared a bunch of politicians

because they have a lot of money to run ads, to organize on the ground, to disseminate propaganda, which they do very well. It's just another big, expensive, right-wing organization. And we should just point out exactly what the NRA is, because they brand themselves as this group of citizen hunters and sportsmen and hobbyists. That's not what they are. They are a lobbying group for gun manufacturers.

The reason their ads are about immigration is it is in their interest to scare people into thinking this country is dangerous and they need to protect themselves with a gun, even though all studies say that makes you less safe than if you were to not have a gun. And so that is what this is about. Everything that they do is about selling more guns so that they can get more money from the gun manufacturers. And the Republicans want the money from the gun manufacturers laundered through the NRA. And so this is about electoral preservation more than anything else. I will say, you know, looking at 2020, this may not have been the politically smartest move by Donald Trump. There was a new AP poll out this morning that says only seven in 10 Republicans approve of how he's handling gun policy, which is the lowest rating from his own party on any issue. Obviously, in Democrats and independents, by large majorities think he's not handling gun policy well.

We've talked a million times about, you know, the overwhelming majorities of people who are for background checks, assault weapons bans, all the rest of it. Trump, who is having particular trouble with women, suburban women, even, by the way, non-college educated women, white women, which is new this time around, having trouble with all these groups. And, you know, I actually would if he had if he had passed background checks, I'd be a little, you know, I think that would have helped him politically a little bit. Yeah, it would have been a home run for him on the following vectors. As you point out, suburban voters are his biggest problem. That's where the biggest drop off has been since the Republican Party in 2012. This is an issue that matters a ton in the suburbs. in 2012. This is an issue that matters a ton in the suburbs. His second issue is he's basically seen as ineffective, you know, because he's too busy engaging in Twitter wars to get things done.

And the third problem is that he ran as someone who was going to be an independent voice who was not captive to special interests. And he has been just live it. He's been the king of the swamp for the last three years. And so this would have dealt with all three things, dealt with something that matters to voters, would have been able to say, I brought Democrats and Republicans to pass background checks, something that Barack Obama could not do, right? That is a powerful message to a target group of voters from him. And the third, he would get to say that he bucked the NRA, that he stood up against strong voices in his own party. Like that is political gold. And he was just too dumb or too scared to take it on. Because if he were to do it, it would have helped him with voters, but hurt him

with his key advisors. And by his key advisors, I mean the people who are on Fox from 8 to 11. So what do Democrats do now? You know, on Wednesday, March for Our Lives released probably the most ambitious, comprehensive gun safety proposal we've seen in this race yet. You know, how do how do we get it passed? When? I mean, I think you're angry right now. You can give money or volunteer for March for Our Lives, Moms Demand, Gabby Giffords Group. Gabby Giffords group, do all of that to help them because that's also going to help organize voters for 2020, but also help pass these laws at the state level, which is incredibly important.

We have to win in 2020. And then, you know, we've said this before, but if we take the presidency, we take the Senate, the only way we're going to get common sense gun safety laws in this country is to eliminate the filibuster. Which Mitch McConnell knows, which is why he wrote an op-ed in today's New York Times about why the Democrats should be very careful about wanting to get rid of the filibuster. Because Mitch McConnell thinks the filibuster is very important, and he would never shake up the Senate or violate any norms and institutions and rules because Mitch McConnell, he's a defender of the Senate, Dan. Fuck. I mean, really, the person most responsible for the completely fucked up situation this country is in right now is Mitch McConnell.

It's also important to know that Mitch McConnell has basically gotten what he needs out of the Senate, in that he has eliminated the filibusteruster or the filibuster no longer exists for judicial nominations at all. And what the Republican, what the Republicans care about is cuts to benefits, tax cuts, and putting right-wing judges on the bench. And you now don't need the filibuster for any of those things. So there's, there's very few, there's some things, there's definitely some things that if there were no fil, there's some things, there's definitely some things that if there were no filibuster, Republicans would be able to do

if they had control of government, for sure. But the most important things to them, the things that get them up in the morning, cutting taxes, cutting benefits, and putting conservative judges on the bench, they can do that without the filibuster. If anyone thinks that

if Trump wins the White House and the Republicans keep the Senate, that Mitch McConnell is going to keep the filibuster. If anyone thinks that if Trump wins the White House and the Republicans keep the Senate, that Mitch McConnell is going to keep the filibuster, they are fucking clueless. Mitch McConnell held up Merrick Garland because of his long-held principles about allowing voters to pick Supreme Court justices, then basically was asked whether he would do the same thing with Trump as president, and he said no. He is not a man of his word, and I do not give a fuck what all the Capitol Hill reporters who and would do. The pressure, even if Mitch McConnell didn't want an unlimited filibuster, you think a newly reelected Trump,

that Mitch McConnell's going to be able to stand up to him and hold him back if there's something they want to do that they can't get done? Yeah. Fuck no. No way. And they'll all feel emboldened.

The Republicans win again. Trump wins again. They're not going to be scared, all these senators that are, come on. And the idea that this is Harry Reid's fault is so absurd. So Mitch McConnell was peace today said, well, Harry Reid did this. So I was forced to just take it to its natural

conclusion and eliminate the filibuster for the Supreme Court. Just let's just imagine for a second, Mitch McConnell has stolen the seat from Barack Obama, Trump wins. The filibuster is still in place for judicial nominations. Democrats filibuster Neil Gorsuch because Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat from the American people who selected Barack Obama. And you think Mitch McConnell should be like, you know, norms, just going to go with eight Supreme Court justices for now. Or you know what? I feel like it's so important to have nine. Let's just put Merrick Garland on the court. No, he would have eliminated the filibuster in two fucking seconds and put on Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, anyone else.

Yeah. Michael Bennett disagrees with us, but I just, I think Mitch McConnell would have blown that thing up. He doesn't even disagree with that. He sort of acknowledged that Mitch McConnell would do that when I talked to him about it. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, he did. He did. He just I bullied him into that position potentially or badgered him. I think it's probably a better word. But we love Michael Bennett. All right. So after Trump said no to gun safety, he said yes to indefinite detentions for families and children who are fleeing violence and seeking asylum. The administration unveiled a rule this week that, if it survives court challenges, would supersede an old court settlement known as the Flores Agreement that limits the detention of children to 20 days. This announcement came after Customs and Border Patrol said that families currently in detention centers will not be given the flu shot, despite the fact that three children have died of

the flu already. And on Wednesday, the president also told reporters that he's seriously considering eliminating birthright citizenship through an executive order, even though it's a right that's explicitly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. He first floated that in the towards the end of the 2018 midterms. Now it's back. Dan, let's start with the Fl.S. Constitution. He first floated that towards the end of the 2018 midterms. Now it's back. Dan, let's start with the Flores Agreement. Why does Trump want to get rid of this court settlement? And what's the administration's argument here? Whenever there's a question about Trump's immigration policy, it's always important to harken back to the comment from Atlantic columnist Adam Serwer, which is the cruelty is the point.

Right. That's why they want to do this, because it's cruel. They argue it's about deterrence, but it's not. The Trump administration argues for their immigration policy as deterrence the same way that death penalty advocates argue for the death penalty as a deterrent. It's not. The point is punishment. Right. Yeah, because look, you could try other ways to deter immigration that do not involve keeping people locked up indefinitely, children indefinitely, cutting legal immigration as they're doing, the public charge rule that we spoke about now you know not allowing anyone to seek asylum who hasn't already who's traveled through a third country from their home country that rule went into effect this week they fucking let's remember just a few weeks ago they held an 18 yearold American citizen for weeks because they suspected that he was undocumented in horrible, horrible conditions.

They held an American citizen, and it was not the first time that they did that either. So, yeah, I don't think you're telling us this is about fucking deterrence. And just a side note, it's not just cruel. Their policies are also stupid. They are not giving flu shots to the people in these detention centers. As if there was no history of large groups of people in temporary facilities infecting each other with diseases and then spreading out across the country. That's exactly how the fucking 1918 influenza epidemic happened. spreading out across the country.

That's exactly how the fucking 1918 influenza epidemic happened. It is just so stupid because that is somehow they see giving people flu shots as weakness, as if people are going to flee Central America, go on a dangerous march across Mexico, come to the U.S. border to get a fucking flu shot. Mexico come to the U.S. border to get a fucking flu shot? Yeah, it's, I mean, I do, it does seem like this is, you know, the cruelty is the point, but also this is a, this is a political strategy, right? Like they, they want these announcements. They have, it's clear they have a long list of things. And you could tell when the president was asked about birthright citizenship and he said, oh, how do you know we were considering that? That's very good. Yeah, we've been seriously looking at that. We're looking at all kinds of things like,

you just know that Stephen Miller has a long list right now of anti-immigrant xenophobic policies and rules they can take through executive action that they want to roll out from now until November of 2020. And I'm sure a bunch of them will happen in the fall of 2020 when everyone's paying attention to the election, because, again, Trump's whole bet here is that he can make this election about an invasion, about an immigrant invasion. And he wants to scare people. And he wants to say that Democrats care about undocumented immigrants. And I care about hardworking Americans, right? Who, by the way, happen to be white.

That is the political strategy. And he wants those headlines to crowd out all of the other headlines. Tommy made this point on Twitter, but I think it really explains everything about the mentality of the Trump administration and the message of the Republican Party in 2020, which is the reason the term indefinite detention sounds so familiar to people is because that is the policy that the Bush administration put in place to deal with members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And which is the reason why that matters is because it speaks to the fact that they believe the invasion rhetoric. They believe the infestation rhetoric, that this is ultimately a war for America's white soul.

And they want people to think that. And the more they can do things like use indefinite detention, send the military to the border, talk about walls, that's all about creating this idea that it is a war for American culture. And it is an important point that that is basically ripped from the manifesto of the El Paso shooter. It is the rhetoric that permeates 8chan and these other white supremacist sites. It is what it is, which is the Republican Party has become a white nationalist party. It is in degrees from Trump and Stephen Miller down to others, but ultimately when your electoral strategy is, you need to fire up as many white voters as possible and via laws and disinformation campaigns and other strategies disincentivize as many voters of color to participate, then you are a white nationalist party. Yeah, because again, there's a way to talk about the influx of asylum seekers

at the border in a way that doesn't sort of evoke this idea of an invasion, right? Like, you could imagine another administration, probably a Democratic administration, but even a Republican administration talking about and saying, look, we have this influx of asylum seekers at the border. We are a nation of immigrants. We do respect the asylum laws internationally in this country. Right now, our system is overwhelmed. We need more resources at the border so that we can deal with these claims. We want to make, you know, we want to make sure that people belong here that are granted asylum, get asylum. People who don't deserve asylum don't get it. We're going to do this.

We're going to secure our border in the meantime. There's a whole bunch of ways to talk about this as a problem that we have to deal with that doesn't use the invasion rhetoric. They're using the invasion rhetoric for political reasons. That's why it's in all their ads. That's why it's in all the Facebook ads. That's why it's in all their campaign ads. This is a political strategy right now so finally let's talk about what may be the real cause of trump's meltdown this week which is his intense anxiety over mounting signs that the economy may be headed towards a recession anxiety that has led him to

blame the federal reserve blame the media, blame the Democrats, acknowledge that he's postponing more Chinese tariffs because they'll hurt American consumers, and float that he's considering more tax cuts. At the same time, Trump is also telling us that the economy is the strongest it's ever been, that we don't really need any economic stimulus after all, and that he's winning his trade war, which he had to wage, because in the president's words, quote, I am the chosen one. I mean, this is an audio medium,

so you can't really get the beauty of it that he also pointed at the sky when he said that. He did. He did. Clearly a joke, but also maybe not a joke in his mind. So what's with the mixed messages on the economy here? What's going on with that? John, are you saying that a, you know, you yourself have written many an economic speech and you're an expert in messaging. Are you saying that a message that is the economy is working, the Fed has broken the economy, the economy is great, the media is destroying the economy, we're winning the China trade war, but we have to eliminate the tariffs so it doesn't

hurt people is not a coherent message. It would be tough to write a speech with all those messages. I will admit that. I don't know that if I'd get that all in one message box. Well, I mean, there is this sort of window into Trump's brain always because like the distance between his brain and his mouth is so short, which is we're watching him in real time wrestle with a serious political problem, which is he ran around touting his economic success as the reason why voters should support him, even if they are uncomfortable with his rhetoric or his other policies, right? Which is, the economy's going great. I didn't fuck it up. Stick with me. And so he sort of hung his hat on that. And now we're seeing that collapse around

him. And he's sort of trying to find the right way to explain it, deal with it, et cetera. And he doesn't have a strategy. He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have a team of smart people around him who can help him come up with one. So it's just sort of vomit things until he gets the right amount of applause and sort of thinks he's hit on something. I do think that what he ultimately – where there can be success in that completely convoluted, inconsistent message is he doesn't need to convince everyone about the state of the economy. What he needs to do is create permission structure for some group of voters to stick with him because he has successfully convinced them that it's someone else's fault, right? Like most people are not going to don't know who the Fed chair is. I don't know what the Fed chair does. Don't care. Most people think it's absurd that the New York Times or mainstream media in general, a business whose economics are shaky, to say the

least, have the power to control the economy. Because if they did, they would be doing much better. We'd have, I don't know, local newspapers. But he just needs to convince some people, a small group of people, that it's someone else's fault. And that is the sense where Trump really does have some natural political ability that if you, that where he understands identity politics, where there are people who want to be with Trump. And if he can just give them enough of a reason to hang on to that, to stick with their political tribe, that they will do that. And I think that's what this is about. Yeah. And I think, you know, he'll have some success convincing a small group of people that are his biggest supporters and fans in his base that that's the case. He could have a little more trouble with most other voters. problem he has is, you know, we've said this before, presidents tend to get credit for the

economy when the economy is doing well, get blame for the economy when the economy is doing poorly. And some of that credit and blame are both not really deserved because the president doesn't have a ton of control over the economy and economic cycles. But for this specific case, cycles. But for this specific case, it does seem like it is Trump's trade war that he started on his own that is contributing, at least contributing to a potential economic downturn. And Trump has also passed a giant tax cut, most of which went to the wealthiest corporations and Americans, very unpopular. And that, at the very least, hasn't done anything to help the economy long term, like they promised it would. So his only two economic policies, his tax cut and his trade war, have failed. And now we're in a recession. So I think that's sort of, that's an

added challenge for him, or there would be an added challenge for any president in his position. And it makes it, I will say it makes it harder to blame other people when you designate yourself the chosen one, or you said on the convention stage that I alone can fix it, right? He pitches himself as some sort of political messiah or savior, and therefore, he's going to, he potentially, we hope, will be held to account for that in a way that other people who make more nuanced arguments about the economy and politics would be. So he floated, well, the White House also floated a payroll tax cut. I think on Wednesday,

he said, no, we're not considering that anymore. What's a payroll tax cut? And why do you think he proposed it? Well, a payroll tax cut is a cut in your payroll taxes, which go to Social Security and Medicare. In 2010, when we were trying to help a struggling economy, we actually ended up working with Republicans to put in place a 2% payroll tax cut, which puts more, your paycheck is bigger, right? 2% bigger, essentially.

And it is a well-known way of stimulating the economy, which is put money in people's pockets, put more money in the economy, economy should grow, economy grows, more people hire. So the problem with it for Trump is Republicans, after initially agreeing to Obama's payroll tax cut as part of a deal, tried to tank it because they thought it would help his reelection. And every Republican is, or most Republicans are on record complaining about the damage it does to Social Security because that 2% comes out of your contributions to Social Security and Medicare, as I understand it.

Yeah, so Republicans are on record as opposing this in the past. Of course, that won't stop them from switching if Trump decides to go forward, I'm sure. But it does seem like there's no universe where Donald Trump and the Republican Party just put up a payroll tax cut on its own with nothing else. And already, it seems like they have other tax cuts in mind as well. One of them, a tax cut idea, is basically an executive order to cut capital gains taxes, which would basically cut capital gains taxes by $102 billion over the next decade. And it's a tax cut that would give the top one percent of americans 86 of that benefit because as we know the people who are truly suffering this economy

are the wealthiest and so we need a a potentially unconstitutional bailout of rich people it seems like a winning message if you ask me honestly i'm like please let them do this fucking go for it please try to unilaterally unilaterally without an act of congress cut taxes for the wealthiest americans as we're heading into a recession go for it it is i cannot imagine you've seen polling your whole life i have we just did a poll in wisconsin i cannot imagine a more politically damaging thing for Donald Trump to do than cut capital gains taxes as the economy looks like it's heading into a recession on his own through an executive order that will probably be overturned by the courts. Do you think he would use the much derided pen or the phone to do this unilateral executive action? Do you think he would use the much derided pen or the phone to do this unilateral executive action? I mean, it's just like so much for like Trump, the fucking working class nationalist hero, Trump, the economic populist.

The country is heading towards a recession. What does he do? Cut some taxes for the richest investors in the country. I couldn't even believe that I was reading it. Like, you got to know that, like, Kellyanne Conway, who is awful for a million reasons, but knows how to read a poll, thinks that's a good idea. I don't know. I feel like something in her has been broken somewhere over the years. So it's possible that she does not know that. That's possibly true.

possibly true. But I do think that, you know, this whole story about Trump and the economy is sort of, of all the things we've talked about today, maybe the most fertile ground for Democrats to make an argument. And again, the argument is not just let's watch the stock market and let's watch the economic indicators. And when they're bad, say Trump is bad. And when they're good, shy away from this, make an argument about Trump's economic policies and what they have done. And don't just rely on, you know, the headlines about the health of the economy. Rely on the statistics about how people are struggling in this economy with stagnant wages, with high health care costs, with high tuition costs, and all the rest. Because there's a good argument to be made, whether we head into a downturn or don't head into a downturn, because there's a good argument to be made, whether we head into a

downturn or don't head into a downturn, that Trump's economic policies have hurt the vast, vast majority of Americans, except for his rich friends and corporations. Yeah. Let's just try this one on for our size, Democrats. Under Donald Trump, corporations never made more money or paid less in taxes, but the cost of your healthcare, made more money or paid less in taxes, but the cost of your healthcare, college, food, retirement have all gone up. Amazon, you pay more for your Amazon Prime subscription than Amazon pays in federal taxes. If you think that's a good idea, vote for Donald Trump. If you want something different, vote for a Democrat. I realize this might be a boring argument to some people listening to this, but to a lot of people in this country, I think it would be very effective.

Very effective. All right. Let's end with a quick 2020 segment. This week, Julian Castro became the 10th Democrat to make the September debate stage. Jay Inslee dropped out of the race on Wednesday night. And John Hickenlooper decided to enter the Colorado Senate race. Beyond those developments, it's a pretty stable primary with about six months to go. Joe Biden has a small but persistent lead in all of the early state polls. Elizabeth Warren is gaining on him in Iowa and

New Hampshire. Bernie Sanders is close behind her or slightly ahead in some polls. And then Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke are in single digits behind them. Dan, why do you think the race is so stable? You know, we've had this conversation both on the pod and off the pod, and just it feels like a gazillion things have happened. Because in the Trump era, every day feels like a week and a week feels like a year. It feels like this race has been going on forever, but it is still incredibly early. And while I think Joe Biden has certainly shown strength and the race is very stable, I would like to read to you the CNN USA Today Gallup poll from basically exactly 16 years ago today. Joe Lieberman was winning the Democratic primary with 23% of the vote.

Dick Gephardt was coming in second with 13%. Howard Dean had just surged to third with 12%, and John Kerry had 10%. And so my point here is the fact that the race has not changed very much between when everyone got in early this year and August of the off year is actually not unusual. Right. And we don't remember that being a big deal because 2003 was back before Apple, Facebook and Google broke the American cortex with dopamine injections via the smartphone. And so it just felt like no one paid attention to the race yet. But now we see it, feel it, hear it all the time. But most voters haven't tuned in yet. That doesn't mean the race is going to change. I mean, it could stay exactly the same, but it's not a new the

stability is actually historically less unusual than I assumed until I went back and looked at the numbers. So the Biden campaign is, it's been out there this week um i mean they've been making an electability argument the whole time but they've really been driving it home this week you know uh biden went up with his first ad in iowa i believe maybe it was in some other early states but i know it was in iowa um and then uh dr jill biden um was out there and she said quote your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care than Joe is, but you've got to look at who's going to win this election. And maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, OK, I personally like so and so better.

But your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump just about as explicit as you can be on electability. What did you think about about the Biden campaign leaning so heavily on this? Well, there's no question that both from polling and just anecdotally, Democrats are obsessed with beating Trump for good reason. Trump is very bad. And so people want the person they think can best beat Trump. And polls show for a variety of unproven reasons right now that voters think Biden is that person. So that is his strongest argument. I do think the Biden campaign is selling Joe Biden short by making that the only reason. He is someone with a long career, a lot of accomplishments

in his career before, but also within the Obama administration he can talk about. He is a good person. He is a good politician. And I think electability should be subtext. And they have made it the text of the entire campaign. And maybe that could work. I mean, some strategists would say just lean into your strongest argument for as long as you possibly can. But I think if the answer is you may not like Joe Biden, but you should take him because he's the only one who can win, I think that that is going to be – that's a hard message to sell over a long, sustained period of time. at the bottom of the pack there, is in the fall, when Kerry was sort of written off for dead, the way that I was on that campaign, the way that we came back and beat Howard Dean, who was leading in the polls in the fall of 03 and into the winter of 03, was with an electability argument.

And the reason that John Kerry's electability argument was so powerful is that, like right now in 2004, sort of the emotion that pervaded the entire electorate was fear. Fear that George W. Bush, who people thought was the worst president in their lifetime at the time, would win again. And people and voters, again, were thinking like, you know, I'm happy to hear all these candidates. Howard Dean seems inspiring. But what we really need to do is beat George W. Bush. And John Kerry rode that electability argument all the way to the nomination. Now, I know, then he lost. But in Democratic primaries, especially at a time where there's an incumbent Republican president who a ton of Democrats, all Democrats, hate with a passion and are very afraid to see win again, electability is

a really strong argument. And the reason I bring this up is that I do think Joe Biden's opponents, if they want to beat him eventually, have to sort of respect voters' fears and voters' desire for someone who can beat Trump and make electability arguments of their own. I don't think you should lead with electability arguments. I don't think they should dominate the debate. I don't even think you need to have them right now as much. But subtly, slowly, I think each of these candidates has to tell voters why they're

the most, why they're going to be the most electable Democrat. You know, what do you think? I mean, I think, no, it's not, it's not crazy. I, I still believe electability is better shown, not told. Right. And you demonstrate electability by, by running a really good campaign, by having a message that people like, by turning out crowds, by demonstrating competence on the stage and in the debate. And yes, you were on that campaign. I was not. Kerry – voters picked Kerry for – in large part because they believed he was the most electable. But Dean also raised questions about his own electability down the stretch.

Yeah, he did. Basically, he had sort of existed in a different media environment without as much scrutiny. And when the scrutiny kicked in and he was the frontrunner, he didn't respond well to that scrutiny. He had some awkward exchanges and some tense exchanges at town halls. And then to the extent that he had a chance to bounce back in a state like New Hampshire. After so, to be clear, Kerry won Iowa, Dean did not. Dean had been very strong in New Hampshire in the polling to date, because he was from Vermont. I know Kerry was also from nearby Massachusetts, but Dean has shown strength. But Dean's had a meltdown on election caucus night, and that essentially

destroyed his campaign. And so the like the lesson from that, like you can take two lessons, right? One is, Kerry said he was most electable showed us and therefore one, Dean also gave people a reason to question his electability. And so, you know, for someone like Warren, who tops a lot of polls as people's favorite choice, it's the highest approval, or is seen as the most qualified or first choice for president or whatever, yet has been dogged, at least in the media, by questions of electability and doesn't poll as well on that measure. She can show she's electable by running a great campaign, which she has done to date in winning Iowa, right? Hillary Clinton also ran in a very different environment on electability message and then lost Iowa and the bottom fell out of her electability message.

And so just run a good campaign is the best way to be seen as electable. And I will say that even in that campaign, when she was seen as the electable one and Obama was the, you know, take a chance on what you really believe candidate, we started making sort of subtle electability arguments and trying to show electability. One with, like you said, showing the enthusiastic crowds, right? Like if Barack Obama is the nominee, these are the kind of crowds you're going to get in the general election. And I think that was powerful to people. And, you know, he would also, I remember in the Jefferson Jackson dinner, he said, you know, when I, if I'm the nominee, my opponent's not going to be able to say that I voted for George Bush's war in Iraq, using the fact that he opposed the war in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton supported it as a reason that he might be more electable because he has a contrast, right? So there's, there's a million different ways to sort of subtly make electability arguments to people that aren't just check out the polls i'm the one who's uh who's beating trump by the most right it's live by the

polls die by the polls is the problem right because polls yeah i would they change that to everyone what do you think could possibly shake up the race in the coming months? Got a couple of debates. You've got some people starting to run ads on television. What do you think? You know, the early state polls in Iowa in particular are leading indicators of where the race is going. Because that's where the voters have the greatest engagement with the candidates, where they see them in person. It's where they're going to start seeing ads. the voters have the greatest engagement with the candidates, where they see them in person,

it's where they're going to start seeing ads. It's where they consume local media that is less process-oriented than the national media. And so if we see a Des Moines Register poll, for instance, which is, I think, the only one, only Iowa poll, I think, can truly grab the political media by the throat and have it change a narrative. But if we see a Des Moines Register poll in September, October, whenever the next one comes out, and Elizabeth Warren is leading, I think that will change how everyone thinks about the race. It'll mean more scrutiny for her. It'll potentially undermine, at least temporarily, potentially undermine, at least temporarily, Joe Biden's primary argument for himself to date. And it'll change the general dynamics of the race. Because right now, we live in this world where Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris's staff fight 24-7 about Medicare for All, just like in some

sort of Twitter war. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris go after each other on the debate stage. Julian Castro and Cory Booker go after other people. And no one goes after Elizabeth Warren. She is not no one. I think it's fear because both that she is very good and very popular. But the candidate who has risen the fastest in the polls, who is seems the most likely to be the nominee if the nominee is not Joe Biden, is the person that no one wants to engage with. And if she takes the lead, that will change that dynamic, and then we'll have to see how that plays itself out. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It is interesting that no one has really engaged Elizabeth Warren on anything, on her policies, on anything else. And it seems unlikely

that she can go through the entire primary in that situation. She might be able to handle it really well, you know, but then that's the test, right? Can you handle the attacks when they're incoming? Okay, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Stacey Abrams. We are now excited to be joined by Stacey Abrams. She is the chair of Fair Fight Action, which is leading the Fair Fight 2020 initiative. She was the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia last year. Stacey Abrams, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thank you guys for having me yet again.

It's awesome. We are always happy to have you here. You are one of our all-time favorites. So you made a big announcement this week, and unlike perhaps some of the media, we're going to spend this interview talking about what you decided to do, not what you decided not to do. about what you decided to do, not what you decided not to do. So can you, I know that's crazy in this world, but can you tell us what Fair Fight 2020 is and what you're going to be spending the next many months of your life doing? Well, first of all, thank you for focusing on Fair Fight 2020, which can be found at fairfight2020.org. When I thought about how I could best serve the values I hold

dear and where I could best contribute to this primary process and certainly heading into the general election, I have an intimate awareness of voter suppression being one of the most existential crises facing us, not just in terms of winning elections, but really in terms of preserving our democracy. And what we decided to do is look at the 20 states that we consider battleground. That means battleground for the presidency, battleground for Senate seats, but also down ballot races, secretaries of state, state attorneys general, and legislative seats, races where if we have the right to vote made manifest and protected, we know that we could possibly flip those chambers and control redistricting in 2021.

And so what Fair Fight 2020 will do is three things. One, we are going to fund setting up voter protection teams in those states. That's going to mean having full-time staff, often for the very first time in those states, working with state parties, but making sure that no matter who the nominee is, that those apparatuses are in place. Number two, we're going to staff it. We're going to make sure that people are hired who know what voter protection needs to look like for their particular states. Because one of the most pervasive parts and the most insidious parts of voter suppression is that it looks different in each state. There's a lot of cross-contamination, but each state has found a way to make it work.

And third is we're going to train. We're going to make sure that folks are out there who know what can be done, have the resources to do it, and are doing it early because often voter protection waits until September before the election. But by then, the damage is done. The harm is ready to be wrought across the electorate. And it's too late to really stop it. We want to be there early.

And so we'll be there during the primaries in each of these states. We'll be able to test the muscle memory, figure out what the problems are. And by the time we get to the general election, no matter who the nominee is, we will be ready to protect the votes in the states. How do you combat the actual laws? Like, let's say we're, I'm sure many of the states that you are, you'll be working in have voter ID law, for instance. Like, what is the tactics or strategy you guys use to push back on that, or at least least make sure or is it push back on it legally? Is it educate voters about how the needs for an ID? Like, how do you push past the law? Well, we have to remember, you've got dozens of organizations across this country that are each

trying to tackle these concerns. The problem is they're disparate organizations that may or may not have a presence in each of these states. And you have volunteers who are ready to do the work. And so what we're going to do is, and what we've done is done the research on each of these states. We know what their laws say, and we know what the likely voter suppression tactics are going to be. And so we'll work with the state party. That means working with the county parties to find out if it's voter ID that's the problem. You're not going to be able to undo voter ID. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said that that's going to be permitted and they have created a pipeline for even stricter rules. Well, what we can do is make sure that the groups that want to come in and help have someone to talk to. Because as you know, Dan, sometimes

the hardest part in politics is not wanting to do the right thing. It's finding out who can help you get it done. And so by having these voter protection teams set up, they will have access to people who are full-time employees, and this is their only responsibility. But it's also going to be about alerting folks to what's happening. So we're going to be investing in digital communication and social media communication, making sure that voters know what their rights are, and that if they have a problem, they can call. There are a lot of voter protection hotlines. 866-OUR-VOTE is a great one that's operated by a consortium of organizations, but it's national. What we want are local hotlines that are staffed and sourced locally, that are multilingual, and that understand the contours of how bad actions happen. So when you are in Alabama

or in Wisconsin and something has happened in your precinct, you're not calling someone in DC to say, can you help me with this? You're calling someone who is in Sheboygan who can say, look, let me reach out to the person we know who has this answer and we can get back to you. Which is not to say we don't want to be in partnership with those national organizations, but we want to make sure we are creating as much local presence as possible to support what the national groups are doing. So you mentioned that one of the criteria you used for picking your 20 states was Secretary of State races. Now, probably more than any person walking the planet, you are familiar with how important the Secretary of State office can be in any state

when it comes to access to the ballot and free and fair elections. But could you help explain to our listeners just how important it is for Democrats to focus on winning Secretary of States all across the country? I think I share the distinction of having dealt with the Secretary of State and the outcome of an election. I think the only other person who's probably had a sharper experience would be Al Gore and what happened with Captain Aaron. But here's the thing. A Secretary of State is the election superintendent. That is the person who is responsible for the administration of elections in the state.

And in most states, that's an elected position that's also a partisan position. In my case, I had the unique experience of having the person responsible for the election, for the training, the resourcing, and the administration of the election happened to also be my opponent. So he got to be the man at bat and the umpire, as well as the guy posting the score. That did not work out well for me. But what we have to understand is that in most states, it's the Secretary of State who implements the laws that are passed by your legislature. So even the most innocuous law can become a weapon against voters if a policy is promulgated from that law that narrows how it works or applies it differentially.

And that's why it's so important to have secretaries of state who believe in our democracy and believe in our voters, because this is the person who usually has constitutional authority to decide how voters get access and how their challenges are actually adjudicated. There is no stronger and more important a job than the Secretary of State when it comes to administration of elections, because that's also the person responsible for training your county officials. You've got 3,100 different counties that are administering an election on any given national election day. But that person gets their resources, their training, and their direction from the Secretary of State. So, you know, one of the effects, and I think intense, of voter suppression law, I mean,

obviously, the main point is to stop people from voting in an immediate election, right? But it is also, there's, I've also found there's a larger pernicious effect, which is to convince people that it's not worth it to participate in the political process, that they are not wanted. And so cynicism is the outcome of these voter suppression laws. You've had a lot of success in your gubernatorial race, despite all of the barriers that your opponent put in front of people to vote, to convince people to vote, to get people to the polls for the first time to get off the sidelines? What do you think is the best way to, or what strategies do you recommend to people to accomplish that goal to get people to vote, to go from non-voters to voters? So one of, you're absolutely right. One of the most pernicious effects of voter suppression

is not just that it blocks people from voting, but it creates a sense of despair about the act of voting. And often that's made manifest by people saying, oh, my vote doesn't count. And they do it with bravado, but really it's despair. My voice doesn't matter. And so one of the ways we've always talked about voter suppression is not as a given that your vote is gone and you shouldn't worry about it or you'll never get it back. It's a call to arms. And during our campaign, what I said over and over again is, yes, voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia. But the best way for us to fight it is to overwhelm the system. They can't keep all of this out.

And you'll hear that one of the current tropes to push back against me and our very clear and evidentiarybased accusations of voter suppression is, well, you know, we had record turnout. She had the most Democrats ever vote. Well, that's like saying because more people get in the water, there are fewer sharks. No, there's still a lot of sharks, but the more people who are in the water, the harder, you know, more people can survive. And the reality is we have to treat voter suppression as what it is, and that's theft. And when someone takes something that's yours, you should take it back. And so we want people to talk about and engage this fight as a fight. It is a fight to take back our rights.

It's a fight to take back our voices. And that means you have to go to people you normally don't talk to so they know that their voices are real. We don't just go to the people who vote every cycle. We go to the people who haven't voted since the last time they heard a story about voter suppression. And we're going to spend time in those communities. And the most effective thing we can do is turn out as many people as possible and arm them with the right to vote. And it sounds ephemeral, but it's very basic. Talk to people, tell them it's theirs, tell them someone wants them to shut up. Because if they didn't want us to be quiet,

they wouldn't be working so hard to shut us up. Let's be louder than they are. We were fortunate enough last fall, right before your election, to interview Latasha Brown from Black Voters Matter Fund. And she said something incredibly interesting to us on stage, which was that non-voters are not apathetic, that they actually often make a very considered decision not to vote. Was that your experience as well? That's absolutely true. When we started the New Georgia Project in 2014, the first thing we did before we handed out a single voter registration form was hire Fred Yang from Garen Hart Yang to do focus groups and polling. And what we found is that non-voters, people who didn't register to vote for President Obama, these are people of color who did not participate. These are people of color who did not participate. They didn't participate because they actually understood the system, and they believed the systems were so rigged against them that there was no purpose in participating.

Or they were concerned that they were going to make the wrong choice, and they decided not to make a choice at all, because that's actually one of your options. What we try to do in our campaign and what we do through everything and all the work we do, both with Fair Fight and with my other organization, Fair Count, is we try to provide not only the information, but the motivation for why action is necessary. That when you choose not to vote, and that's a legitimate choice to make, you are still making a decision. And these aren't people who are deciding out of ignorance. They're deciding because they've been overwhelmed with how unwelcome they are in this process. And our responsibility is to not only welcome them, but to encourage them to be even more aggressive with their presence. Because it's not just about electing a president. I mean, that's critical. And as we've seen in the last three years, it's essential, but it's also about making sure that the school board member who represents your child actually cares about that child.

And that's what we saw in Quitman, Georgia, when Secretary of State Brian Kemp arrested these 10 people who had the temerity to use the voting system to elect people who looked like the children in the school. He had them arrested. He cost them their jobs. who looked like the children in the school. He had them arrested. He cost them their jobs. He made sure they were all removed from the school board. And not a single person was convicted. There's an amazing story on Yahoo News from John Ward. You should look it up about the equipment 10. And it's proof of not only how well informed these non-voters are, but how dangerous voter suppression can be. Because with that action, they didn't just stop these people from championing the needs of their children. They stopped an entire community from believing they should actually participate in

the process. And that wasn't ignorance. That was intention. I'm glad you brought up Fair Count, which as I understand it is an organization that's going to try to help to make sure that the census accurately counts Georgia's population. How are you going to go about doing that, especially given the tremendous amount of mistrust there is with the Trump administration across the country, but particularly in communities of color? So Fair Count, like Fair Fight, were both born of my 10 days of mourning after the election. And then I thought, if I become governor, what would I have done? And in lieu of having that job, what still needs to be done? One is election protection and electoral integrity and voter protection.

But the second was making sure that the mechanism that will decide the narrative of America for the next decade, mechanism that will decide the narrative of America for the next decade, that it does not get to erase people of color, immigrants, the poor, and children from that narrative. And so Fair Count, which you can find out about at faircount.org, faircount.org is designed to intervene and to say, these are communities we're not only going to aggressively count, we are going to build technologies to support them. And so just this week, they are testing the Black Men Count committees going around South Georgia, which are one of the hardest places to get people to participate in the census, and actually engaging churches and Black men's organizations to reach out to their community, and not waiting till next year, but doing it this year. This is the first year that 45% of the census will be done online,

even in communities that don't have access to the Internet. Well, we are testing out in, I think, 20 counties or 20 locations. We're testing out creating hotspots in community organizations so that they can be the venue where you can get your information and you can submit your census. But we also recognize that Georgia, while it's one of the largest states, we're the eighth largest state, and we have one of the highest undercount possibilities, we're not alone. And so Fair Count is also

traveling the country, working with the Congressional Black Caucus. We're going to be meeting with the Hispanic Caucus and others. We want to make certain anyone who represents communities that are hard to count, that they have access to what we're testing, to the models we're building, and to the information we have. There are, again, great organizations across the country that are focusing on the census, but we're one of the only ones in the country that do nothing but census work. And just for our listeners who don't know, help them understand why it's so important that we have an accurate census. What do people lose if the census is inaccurate or communities like the ones you're targeting do not respond?

Sure. Absolutely. So the census is how we count who is in America. And it is so important because the allocation of federal dollars are determined by the number of people who are here and the needs of those people. If you live in a community where you have an overcrowded school, it's likely because they did not count how many children lived in that community who would be apportioned to that school. If you think that your state has been gerrymandered, part of what happens with gerrymandering in the drawing of legislative districts is that the apportionment, the number of people who are divided up in that state is based entirely on the census, and it can only happen once every decade. You don't get to

do a do-over. It happens basically from February till, I think it's that the enumerators are on the ground until August. But that's it. Once it's done, if you haven't been counted, you do not count. In Georgia, for example, if black men are undercounted at the rate the Urban Institute estimates, that's $150 million a year that Georgia will not receive. We'll still have the same needs. We'll still need the same number of hospitals. We'll still have the number. We'll have all the same needs, but we won't get the money. And if you look at the states that

are represented by CBC members, by Congressional Black Caucus members, the aggregation of those 26 states, it's $2.5 billion a year that will be lost. And that's not money that just doesn't get spent. It's money that gets sent to somebody else. And so it's about making sure that you get the resources that you're entitled to. It's about making certain that you get the legislative representation you're entitled to. But the third is that they already know you exist. That's why they're sending you the form. The biggest fear I hear about with the census is that somehow the census will be used to profile you or track you. If you've ever paid a bill, they know how to find you.

to profile you or track you. If you've ever paid a bill, they know how to find you. What we want them to know is that you know where to find them and that you want to be counted so that you get the resources you're entitled to. And so a big part of what we're doing is demystifying the census, putting out good information and dispelling bad information. And the biggest victory was, of course, the fact that the citizenship question, which was designed to force people not to respond, that that is not going to be permitted in the census. If we do the thing right, then we will know how diverse and dynamic and multiracial and multiethnic this country is, but we will also get the resources we're entitled to so that we are a stronger nation overall. So I read, or I heard you say in an interview that you're not planning on making an endorsement in this presidential race.

So I'm not going to ask you about that. But I am going to ask you if you think Georgia can be won by a Democrat. And if so, what is the right profile of a candidate to do that? What's the right message or how do you go about doing that if you believe it can be put in the battleground column and maybe turn blue this cycle? Georgia is absolutely a battleground state. In a state where the Secretary of State controlled the outcome of the election, he still barely eked out a 1.4% victory. That's what makes the state a battleground state. Not that it's constantly blue, then we just put it in the blue column, we move on. What makes it a battleground state is that it's winnable, and Georgia is absolutely winnable. What we demonstrated is that the way to win is not necessarily having an African-American woman as a candidate, although that's a great option. The way to win is to actually talk to

the people of Georgia. We were the first campaign to actually invest in deep canvassing across the state. By comparison, my predecessors had spent maybe $15 million, and most of that was on TV. The presidential races, as you know, there hasn't been an investment in the presidential races in Georgia since the 90s. Our campaign spent $42 million, and we achieved the highest single turnout of Democrats in Georgia history. And that still was in a non-presidential year. You're going to have billions of dollars spent on this presidential campaign. Spending even a fraction of that in Georgia will win Georgia because Georgia is ripe.

We have a population that is one of the most diverse in the country. We have the highest percentage of African-American voters of any potential battleground state. And I've proven people will vote if we talk to them, if we invest in them. So to your question, the profile of the person who wins Georgia is the person who shows up, who has a clear narrative for why they are running and why they want to win, and who takes that narrative to every community. We win elections, as President Obama demonstrated, not through technology, but through organizing. Technology is a tool. It is not a strategy. The strategy is talking to people and letting them know that you see them and you understand them.

And that's why I also spend a lot of time talking about identity politics. We've allowed the Republicans to scare us away from what has always been our strength. Democrats win because we see each other, because we see the problems and the barriers that block you from achieving opportunity. And we understand that the barriers are different. If you're physically disabled, if you are Latino, if you are Asian Pacific Islander, if you're Native American, if you're LGBTQ, if you're black, we see your identity not as a dispositive of whether you are for us or against us, but we see it as a reason to find out what the barriers are for your success.

Yes, you all want health care, but let's understand why health care is harder for this community. Let's understand why economic security is more difficult for this community. Identity politics is how we win because it means we see the people who make up our party and we are willing to help them make up America. That is such great advice for whoever our 2020 nominee is going to be. And it's so important. Before I let you go, I do want to ask on behalf of our listeners, if they want to help you with Fair Fight Action 2020 or Fair Count, how can they do that? So first go to fairfight2020.org. You can sign up.

We will send you alerts. We are going to have someone in the 20 battleground states. You can find out which states those are. And even if you don't live in one of those states, you can help because a lot of the states are going to need volunteers coming in from places that are safely democratic. And we are going to be able to keep you apprised of all of the developments, all of the calls to action and all the charges. For the census, go to faircount.org. That is an extraordinary opportunity to make certain that the communities that are usually overlooked in your state get counted. They've got amazing resources. We're continuing to build new tools. And what they know is that they want everything they build to be replicable and exportable. So it doesn't, we are starting in Georgia, but this is a national

movement. And we're going to make sure that Donald Trump's attempt to defund the census and to erase communities of color and others from the narrative will not work in 2020. And so go to faircount.org or fairfight2020.org. Both those places you can help, and we'd love to have you. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us on Podsafe America again, and we hope to talk to you soon. Dan, you're always delightful. Thank you so much for giving us a chance to talk about great work. Thanks to Stacey Abrams for joining us. I'm headed out on vacation, so I'll be gone next week. Tommy's heading on vacation. He'll be gone next week. But I believe Dan and Lovett will be doing

Monday's pod. And then on Thursday, I think you're on vacation too. Yeah. So I'm sort of on vacation. So then, you know, then it's real trouble because then it's just John Lovett on his own. So hopefully we're going to have to get him some backup there because otherwise, otherwise we'll all come back from vacation and it'll just be pod safe America with John Lovett. Back in the world in which people still listen to sports radio, I always used to be amazed by the people like Colin Cowherd who could just speak for four hours by themselves. And if there were any one of the four of us who could do a solo pod, it would definitely be John Lovett. We could go on forever because there's no way he's listening until all the way to the end of this pod.

I don't know if he listens to the Thursday pods. I would guess not. Anyway, well, I'll see you guys in a couple weeks, and take care. Yeah, have a great vacation. You too. Bye. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media.

The show is produced by Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Caroline Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these bad boys every week.