Pod Save America - “The Jackson Pollock of racism.”

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Trump doubles down on his racist attack, the Administration proposes further restrictions on refugees and asylum-seekers, and the President heads into 2020 with an electoral college advantage. Then Adam Serwer of the Atlantic talks to Jon L. about Trumpism and the battle for a multiracial democracy.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, Lovett talks to Adam Serwer of The Atlantic about Trumpism and the fight for multiracial democracy. Before that, we're going to talk about the president doubling down on his racist attacks, the administration's latest restrictions on immigration, and whether or not Trump has an electoral college advantage heading into 2020. A few programming notes.

Today we're releasing the final episode of This Land, where you can hear about the next battleground and the fight for Native rights. So check out that, and be sure to binge the entire series at thislandpodcast.com. Binge it. Very compelling, exciting story. Just check it out. Funny what we've done to the word binge.

Binge. Yeah, we made it a good thing and it wasn't for a very long time. Now it's great. Yeah. Just take all those pods at once. Also, big news about our LA Pod Save America show at the Greek Theater on August 17th.

In addition to being joined by Jamel Hill, Amanda Seals, Best Coast, and Jim James, Maggie Rogers will be performing.

Huge update. Huge. What a show. Another benefit, I think my mom's going to come out. Whoa. Just know that you'll be in the presence of the person that led to this.

Wow, we got Tommy's mom and Maggie Rogers. Louise, see you there. The show starts at 7.30 and proceeds will be donated to organizations at the forefront of the fight to protect the vote across America. So it's a good cause. It'll be a great show. Get your tickets now at crooked.com slash the Greek. All right, let's get to the news. Over the weekend, the president made clear that he meant it when he told four congresswomen of color to leave America.

On Saturday, he tweeted that he doesn't believe the women are, quote, capable of loving our country. And today he called them, quote, a very racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart. And just days after the president said he wasn't happy with the sender back chance at his rally in North Carolina, he reversed himself on Friday and said the following to a reporter who asked if he was unhappy with the crowd's chant. Quote, those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots. All this comes as the Washington Post confirms that Trump's original attack on the squad was not the carefully planned strategy of a political mastermind, but the gut reaction of a dotty old racist to a segment on Fox and Friends.

Guys, what do you think of the Post story? It says that White House aides didn't think that Trump fully understood that his tweets were racist and said that, quote, he thought he was interjecting himself into Democratic politics in a good way. So, yeah. I thought you guys wanted me to do this. Well, one thing that comes across in the piece is it clearly was a strategy and a discussion they had to go after the squad. Yes. That is something that they've been talking about, trying to insert, thinking about how to insert himself into that to elevate those members.

insert himself into that to elevate those members. It does seem as though his way of doing it was something that was more of a kind of Jackson Pollock-esque kind of exploration of form. So I think both things are true. And once again, a segment on Fox and Friends sets the national debate. The Democratic Party had its worst news days in a long time when that fight was ongoing. And he just was like, I got it, guys. Jumps in, tweets the worst thing possible, and unites us behind our reminding that we hate him. A couple of things on what he said over the weekend. One, it's just he's always projecting, right?

Like he's a man who's incapable of loving anything but himself, and he's accusing them of not being able to love their country. I don't think anyone should be surprised by the pattern we saw. This is exactly what happened in Charlottesville. He was rebuked for saying shameful, disgusting things, and he walked it back a few weeks later because he cares more about looking weak than he does about actually treating people with decency and humanity. But what's unfortunately depressing and still the case is that Republicans in Washington don't view racism as immoral or antithetical to our values as a country, at least not publicly. They talk about it as bad politics. And the media often

adopts this framing and the discussion that should be about right and wrong and moral and immoral becomes laundered through the prism of a political strategy discussion, whether this will turn out as base or, you know, fire up people on Twitter. And it sucks. And then the final Republican move is always to play the victim and say that Democrats are really the racists and the squad. They're actually racist and they hate their country and that they the the good people at the Trump rallies are the ones being victimized. So it's the same bullshit we've seen for years. Yeah. I mean, last and last week also, we were told by various pundits and strategists that calling out Trump's racism might actually help Trump and the Republicans.

But it's clear from the Washington Post piece that a bunch of Republican politicians and White House aides didn't agree. Oh, yes. It begins, of course, with a obviously very personal account from a White House insider who cares only for the country explaining how Kellyanne Conway was very upset. Very upset and was like, hey, you went too far. And Trump was like, I don't understand. What did I say? Yeah. Which is like, which just goes to show you how racist Trump really is, is that it's not, he doesn't even know when it's racism. He's just like, oh, well, that's my belief that they should go back to their country. Is that a problem? Again, projecting, it's in his bones.

The racism was grown inside of him. It's a part of him. It's who he is. And you've got this whole Washington Post piece, too, with all these Republicans, strategists, donors, who are like, you know, they privately disagree. No one wanted to touch it, one of the advisors said. No one wanted to go to him and talk about how this was bad. Lindsey Graham says, is quoted as saying, he realized that part of it was not playing well, which is to your point that we're going to skip

the moral part of this and go right to the political strategy. And then this was a quote from one of the donors who were all upset, Republican donors, quote, you put your head up and you get it cut off, this person said, and then everyone remembers you weren't loyal when this blows over. Yeah. Which just says so much about the entire fucking useless Republican Party at this point is that like there's a bunch of people who know how wrong this is, but they don't want to be the one to say it's bad because Trump will punish them.

Like this is this is what happens in authoritarian regimes. Well, right. It's a tragedy of the commons. You know, no one wants to be the first one to pop their head up because, you know, they're afraid they're going to get their heads taken off. And actually, they're correct. They are correct because so few Republicans have been willing to stand up to Trump. Whenever anyone does it, Trump directs the full force of his antipathy at them.

And yet that is not an excuse because, first of of all when they have decided to say something together it has in the past mattered we have been through these cycles before the washington post and the new york times have run many of these stories after trump crosses a new line of the internal deliberations about how upset they were about trump crossing this new line and none of them knowing how to convince him that he made a mistake yeah i mean if you dare to speak out uh he makes you chief of staff for six months and tortures you like ryan's premise you know you can tell the writers are getting bored in season three though because we're also seeing the emergence a re-emergence of the ivanka as savior narrative oh yeah which you know thank god for ivanka which is why we're still in the paris climate accords the women's

right to choose protected you know lgbt rights are being respected. You know, she is like delivering on this getting rappers out of jail in Sweden platform from the convention. Maybe. Yeah, right. Or they fucked it up. But I want to talk about where Trump and the Republicans plan to go from here. So the Post story says, quote, like others, Lindsey Graham urged Trump to reframe away from the racist notion at the core of the tweets that only European immigrants or their descendants are entitled to criticize the country. Advisors wrote new talking points and handed him reams of opposition research on the four congresswomen. Pivot to patriotism. Focus on their ideas and behavior, not identity.

Some would still see a racist agenda, the argument went, but at least it would not be so explicit. So basically, their strategy is, don't say that these women of color should leave the country, just say that they hate the country. Is that what we're expected to believe that the Republican Party's strategy is here? And I presume that that subtlety will not be lost on the chanting hordes of Trump rally attendees. Yeah, no, they will definitely. I mean, it's just the idea that pivoting to questioning people's patriotism is the good strategy, is the more mild criticism now when, you know, for a long time in politics, when

you started saying that someone hated the country or didn't love the country, that in itself would be seen as completely outside the bounds of normal political behavior is somewhat troubling. I agree. I agree. It is troubling, John. That's a good way to describe it. Demand to see their birth certificate next. But it is clear that this is how they want to, this is how the Republicans want to frame the 2020 election if they can.

They know it's not popular to go as far as Trump went, but they like the idea of elevating these four Congresswomen and making this election about, are you a real American or are you not? But I don't even know if it's that. Lindsey Graham explicitly said, he said, quote, I don't think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would be asked to go back in, end quote. So they're not asking if you're an American or not, they're asking if you're a Republican or not. And if you're a Republican, then you're on their team and you're okay. And then anyone else can't say what they think or believe. And like, well, what they're trying to, what they're trying to say is,

yes, you have to be a Republican to be, you have to be a Republican to be a real American. Exactly. And this is where I get a little frustrated with the press because this Craven strategy to pivot away from and pretend he didn't say something racist has been laid bare in the Washington Post and is obvious from all the tweets and all the comments from his supporters. And the reporting will fall into this frame and become bloodless again and immoral and be like, well, how's it playing in Wisconsin or whatever state? And it drives me crazy. Right. Well, because like you say, in the Washington Post story, we're basically being told that we are being lied to all the time by these people. Like this whole this whole veneer that all the Republicans have have put up about how like, oh, it's not really racist.

And it's about all the bad comments these congresswomen made. We know that's a lie because we see these stories and we see Trump's tweets like they are bullshitting us. Yeah, we know they didn't introduce the idea of, oh, the real reason that they're so upset is because of several old comments by Elon Omar from months ago. That is actually what has been driving this entire thing. It's just a lie. It's just a lie. It's just a lie. It's retconning to explain what he did before.

And there's too many people willing to go on with it because either they want to because it's better for them or because they have their own equities and see a lot of value in attacking Ilhan Omar themselves. Yeah, and you know that they're not feeling great about their argument when they send out their two biggest bootlickers to the Sunday shows. So you had Stephen Miller and then Mercedes Schlapp who would just say or do anything Donald Trump told them. Rudy Giuliani is still in his cage somewhere. We haven't seen him emerge.

He's in Ukraine trying to take that vibe. Yeah, he's got a magnifying glass and a fingerprint duster. He's in Kiev. Oh, I thought when you said two biggest bootlickers, Tommy, I thought you were going to say Mike Pence, too, who was also on the Sunday shows and was asked, or he was interviewed over the weekend and asked about the chance at the rally. And he's like, I think if it happened again, he may say something. Yeah, that was incredible. That's the other thing,

too, is, you know, we're about to have, he's going to do another rally. I find it very hard to believe that Trump supporters who are just as aware as us as to what Trump really cares about and wants wants them to do. I do not believe that they have taken the message of the past two weeks to stop shouting, shouting center. No, that's right. So let's talk about the Democratic response over the weekend. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, quote, The president's policies are not about immigration. They're about ethnicity and racism. And this sentiment was reflected in a great piece by Greg Sargent at The Washington Post over the weekend who wrote, quote, It's now inarguable that Trump's overall immigration agenda is shaped around the broader goal of preventing as many people as possible from getting asylum and refugee status here, even if they qualify for it on the merits. It's also inarguable that underlying that is the goal of dramatically reducing the number of immigrants admitted to this country.

that is the goal of dramatically reducing the number of immigrants admitted to this country. And as Trump's own rhetoric has repeatedly confirmed, this is inescapably about reducing the number of non-white immigrants here. So how should this link between Trump's racist statements and his broader policy goals shape the democratic response? Is this a fight that we need to have, or do we think that, you know, like a lot of pundits have suggested, we have to sort of pivot away from this to talk about broader economic issues and health care and all the like? I agree with everything Greg wrote. And I think it's indisputable that the ultimate goal is to have no refugees, no asylum seekers, no anyone that isn't currently living here or of white European descent coming to this country. I think the democratic strategy here should be to pivot to impeachment immediately.

There is no zeal like the zeal of the converted. I'm a recently converted impeachment advocate, but I just think that we, I don't want to have a fight where the media is relitigating, like whether this is racist or not, or whether, you know, some comment that was made by a democratic member of Congress 10 years ago,

I want to start litigating his crimes, all the things he's done and said, and his corruption, also knowing that it drives him fucking crazy and that he'll continue to lash out and make it about himself. And I think that's the terrain where we end up winning. Yeah. Lovett, what do you think? Well, so AOC also, I think, put it in broader context about, you know, this is what he believes about immigration. This is his agenda. Here's our agenda. Right. It's a more human.

It's a humanitarian and reasonable immigration system. But it's also action on health care. It's action on all these on this host of other issues. I just look, we've said this a million times. you know, you cannot abandon an argument about Trump's moral unfitness, his racism, his undermining of our basic tenets as Americans. But you also cannot abandon a larger argument about how this fits into the policy debates we're having. You just, we have to do both. It's the most, you know, it's a bromide. It's obvious, but it has been true. It will continue to be true. And no matter what these things, no matter how these fights unfold, we will always have to do both. Be honest and fight him on the ways he's dividing and attacking the basic ideas of what it means to be an American, while not losing the bigger argument that that fits into about why he is dividing people around immigration is because he has no answers,

not just for white Americans, but for black Americans, for brown Americans. He has no answers for anyone in this country. Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's important to understand that Trump's racist tweets, his racist comments, they are not taking place in isolation, right? There's this broader policy agenda attached to it. And I think that because there's a broader policy agenda attached to it, specifically around immigration, which this is mostly about. I don't think Democrats have the luxury of running from that fight. And we've talked about this too. I mean, while we've been talking about these tweets over the last couple of weeks, they announced that the Trump administration wants to accept zero refugees next year, zero.

We saw that they tried to end asylum for anyone coming in through Mexico seeking asylum. Just today it was announced that they want to have expedited removal expanded to everywhere in the United States, not just 100 you know the 100 mile zone actually includes huge portions of america already but this idea of you get stopped on the street and you need to prove immediately yeah through documentation documentation two years two years uh or you could be just removed from the country without uh without the intervention of a court is terrifying to me yeah and i just want to be clear one thing i want to fight those policies to the greatest extent possible oh you don't think we should ever be silent in the face of his nativism or racism or nationalism. I think, though, that for the national media narrative, we need to go on offense and start taking it back to who he is as a human being, the corruption, the crimes, the policies, and just create a narrative of our own or else we will just be whipped around.

I completely agree with that. I think in the short term, that's absolutely right. This is partly a question about for the long term for the for the Democratic candidates in 2020. Right. Like Trump is going to do this a million times between now and the election in November. And I still I am still concerned that and love it. You've talked about this a long time for a long time now. The Democrats don't have a positive, forward looking message of their own on immigration and that it's always either we want to end trump's inhumane immigration policies and when they attack us say oh no we're not for open borders but we don't exactly say what we are for you know and i think on you know

in the last democratic debate there was a lot of talk about like decriminalizing the border and health care for undocumented immigrants both of which are extremely unpopular policies um there's a new poll out today about that and yet that same poll shows that citizenship for undocumented immigrants which is where you know which is what democrats have been pushing for a long time would make a huge difference in the lives of undocumented immigrants in this country is it 64 approval people think it's one of the best new ideas. So, like, I do think Democrats have to be able to have a message on immigration that says we want to end Trump's humane policies. We want to make sure we give citizenship to the people who have been in this country for a long time who are undocumented immigrants.

But by the way, yes, we do want, if you come here and you come here by crossing the border as an unauthorized immigrant crossing the border, we will send you back. Yeah. You know? After we've already legalized 11 million people here. Like, we do need to – people are like, oh, well, you don't need to do all this stuff just to please Republicans. It's not about pleasing Republicans. It's about letting Americans know exactly what our immigration agenda is. Yeah, that's right.

All right, let's talk about 2020. Over the last few days, the New York Times and NBC have both published pieces by Nate Cohn and Dave Wasserman arguing that Trump could have an even greater electoral college advantage than he did in 2016. arguing that Trump could have an even greater electoral college advantage than he did in 2016. Last time, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1 percent, but walked away with 306 electoral votes. And this time, Cohn argues that Trump could win reelection while losing the popular vote by as much as 5 percent. He also says that the president's advantage could grow even further in a high turnout election, which could increase the Democratic candidates margin in states like California, or get us closer than ever in a state like Texas, while doing almost nothing to help us in must win states that are

dominated by non college educated white voters like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Guys, what was your takeaway from these cheery pieces? It's the worst thing I've read in a long time. I didn't like it. Thank you for making me read it even more in depth and talk about it today. No, it's seriously, intensely scary. I mean, I think maybe we need like a swear jar for polling where we and all our listeners,

every time you like go deep on a poll or read an article about it, you donate $1 to the Unifier Diaset Fund so that we feel some agency in like our ability to shape things. We can win this election. We can shape these events. But there are some structural disadvantages we have in terms of demographics, in terms

of the Electoral College, and all the states where they have put in place the toughest voter suppression tactics possible. Yeah. Go ahead, Levin. Yeah. You know, it's a reminder. You know, if you ask people, was Trump a fluke, a black swan event that no one could have ultimately seen coming?

Or was Trump's victory, though perhaps unlikely, the culmination of a huge number of forces in our politics, cultural, social, political, electoral? I think most people would obviously agree with the latter phrasing of that. And then you say, well, how many of those dynamics have fundamentally shifted since 2016? I don't think we'd save very money. And I think these kinds of polls are a reminder that the dynamics we saw play out before are still in play today. Well, in the economy, at least your view of how the economy is doing has gotten better. Right. In fact, he's benefiting. And so the reason these studies are particularly worrisome is so the new york

times estimated trump's approval rating among people who voted in the 2018 midterm so we do have an election to look at right and this approval rating that they estimated is more accurate than your average poll because they matched it with actual election results right so this is a very accurate view of trump's approval rating in these states, at least for the people who actually went to the polls and voted in 2018. And we also know that from all the other polls since 2018, that the approval rating hasn't really changed much since then. So it's pretty static. So the good news is that according to these approval ratings, Trump is currently underwater. He's under 50 in states that total 310 electoral votes. So that's good news. It's possible, like you said, Tommy. But in many states that we need, it's really close. So

in Wisconsin, his approval is 47%. And a reminder that we won the governor's race there by a point in 2018. And in Arizona, it was 48.9%. And we won the Senate race there by about two points. And the reason that I mentioned Arizona and Wisconsin is basically, if you look at the map, if we take back Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2020, which is somewhat likely because in Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2018, we won, Democrats won by a really good margin, and Trump's approval rating is at like 44, 45, 46. So it is, there's a good, not definite, but there's a good chance we take back Michigan and Pennsylvania. No, you guaranteed it. I heard John Favreau says we will win. So you put, you get, you do Hillary states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and that is not enough to win the electoral college, which means that you definitely need Wisconsin. If you lose Wisconsin, the next most likely state is Arizona. And maybe also just

another way to put what you're saying is if we've won Wisconsin, it seems quite likely we will have also won Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, based on what we're seeing now, it is possible to win Pennsylvania and Michigan while losing Wisconsin. That's right. And I think the important thing here is look at your national polls and you can look at them for responses on issues to understand how the whole country views something. And look at them for responses on issues, to understand how the whole country views something.

But in terms of horse race for the electoral college for 2020, just fucking throw away your national polls because they are garbage. Throw in the trash. Remember that there's 50 million people in California that are kind of tipping the balance here. And then convince some friends to move to the Midwest. I mean, really, this thing is going to probably come down to Arizona and Wisconsin. the Midwest. I mean, really, this thing is going to probably come down to Arizona and Wisconsin. And their two states are very interesting, too, because in Wisconsin, you have a little bit of a lower approval rating for Trump. But as Nate suggests in the article, boosting turnout in Wisconsin may also boost the turnout of non-college educated white voters, of which there are too many in that state compared to Pennsylvania and Michigan. And so when everyone says, oh, our coalition can just be people of color,

boost turnout among African-Americans and Latinos, and then college-educated white voters, and that should carry us through. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, there are probably enough of those voters to do that. In Wisconsin, it's really tough, right? Like Tammy Baldwin, right, very progressive senator, LGBT, one of the few LGBT senators, very progressive, for Medicare for All. She won Wisconsin by 11 points in 2018. And that means that she won a fuckload of Obama-Trump voters, a lot of non-college-educated white voters.

So this idea that the only way to win over those voters is to somehow trim our sails and, like, change our positions and moderate ourselves is not necessarily true. But it also means that we can't write those voters off. We can't just sit here and say, oh, no, no, no, we can have a coalition of people of color, college-educated white voters and young people and then non-voters and that's it. That math is not correct in the state of Wisconsin. It's correct if you want to win the popular vote. It is not correct if you want to win the popular vote and the White House. We've said this a million times. You've said this a million times. It is a combination of inspiration and persuasion. We have to do both. One thing that

I've just been thinking about as I looked at a lot of these polls, there was one poll that aggregated a ton of data, and it looked at a subset of people. They were more evenly divided between Trump and Clinton, and actually a lot went to third party candidates in 2016. They voted 58% for Democrats in the midterms. And these are people that give Trump a slight approval on the economy, but are somewhat disapproving of his conduct as president. And in part, they point to his conduct, his tweets, his childishness, the way he's undermined our reputation in the world. And what I thought when I saw that is I think sometimes we combine two kinds of moderates and I think it might actually be helpful to split them in half.

We talk a lot about people that are culturally pro-Trump, right? And that are being hurt by his economic policies. But there's another group of people that actually find Trump repellent, but actually find some of his policies appealing. And I think sometimes around the economy, around the economy, or at least his stewardship of the economy, they don't like his tax cut and they don't like the health care, his health care position. They think those are awful. But in the economy overall, they're like, OK. Yes. And they are sympathetic around trade and they largely view the economy in part because of what Democrats and Republicans have said for decades, as something the president is responsible for. All that is a way of saying the job for Democrats is really, really hard. And it's both about showing people who might be sympathetic to Trump that actually he's hurting them every single day,

while also making the case that we're making all the time about how reprehensible and unfit Trump is for office. It's a really, really difficult task. That conduct response in that poll is why, again, I do think that impeachment proceeding is a hell of a lot better time than passing a bunch of message bills out of the House that no one will ever hear of, care about, find relevant in their own lives, because it will highlight all the things they like least about him and very likely lead him to do a whole bunch more stuff that they will also find unsavory and frustrating and unpresidential. That said, we as Democrats who aren't serving in the House of Representatives, I wonder why we aren't or the National Party isn't spending all its time registering voters in Milwaukee, Madison, and then the entire state of Arizona, because that feels

like the whole ballgame. Like Florida might be lost. And that's not just demographic changes. I don't think like Trump has been running a very Miami-Dade focused presidency, right? He is he's doing all this outreach to Jewish voters. He's done this huge Cuba, Venezuela play. They're running tons of digital ads that are targeted on these issues down there. Like, I think we need to step up our game a little bit as a party. Big time in Florida. And we're lucky that Andrew Gillum is working his ass off to register a bunch of voters there. But Florida demographically, you're right, Tommy, has been very close and it should be moving towards us, but it's not. So something is very weird about Florida. In Wisconsin, you know, Tom Perez, since he's became chair of the DNC, has been obsessively focused on Wisconsin.

Yeah, he's focused on Milwaukee. And they've been investing a lot of resources there, and we've got the convention there. And our friend Ben Wickler, previously of MoveOn, is now the party chair in Wisconsin. And Ben, if you look on Twitter, Ben's been trying to raise money for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which would be a good use of your money to donate there because of how important Wisconsin is. And hopefully similar efforts are underway in Arizona. But I do think those two states, Lovett, actually represent the two different types of swing voters that you're talking about, right? And this is the difference between the northern battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, of which there are many Obama Trump

voters, non-college educated white voters, and demographic change is not really hitting those states as fast as it is some of these Sunbelt states like Arizona, Texas, and Georgia, which are moving towards us. But we're in a weird moment where the Sunbelt states have not moved towards the Democrats faster than the Midwestern battleground states in the North are starting to move away from the Democrats. So we're in this tough spot, right? Like Texas, and maybe four or eight years from now, very well, because of demographic change, increased Latino turnout, could very well be a Democratic state, and then that changes the ballgame.

But do we still have an America then? Yeah, do we still have elections? I was about to say, like, man, right when Texas turns blue, that's right when we're going to think elections aren't worth having anymore. Also, this exact same conversation was being had about Texas 10 years ago. Yeah, I know. And we've been waiting on this for a while. Lucy with the football.

But the really tough part for Democrats is straddling the line between these voters who are, you know, mostly located in these Sunbelt states, who are a little bit more moderate on economic issues, very culturally progressive. So open to Democrats. These are some of like, they were never Trump Republicans. They used to be independents. They used to be part of the Republican party. They have been driven out by Trump's behavior and corruption, all that kind of stuff. And they're open to Democrats. So that's one group. But then you have another group in Wisconsin who are, you know, economically populist and probably like Medicare for all and infrastructure and all these things Democrats are talking about, but are more culturally conservative on immigration. And they did vote for Obama.

So it's not like they are racist beyond belief here. And we shouldn't say that. But like they are open to Democrats, some of them, some of them. And they are not as persuaded by the arguments around Trump's moral unfitness and are too sympathetic to the, to the immigration arguments that he's been leveling against Democrats for a long time. And we need, and we need both of those voters. We don't need all of both groups of them, but we need some of both groups. And, and by the way, that does not mean, you know, and we've also said that you have to do that. This is why it's so hard. You have to do that while also inspiring the millions of young

people and college educated voters and voters of color who need a champion and deserve a champion at a time in which the president is an avowed racist, in which our institutions are under threat, in which the president is exacerbating systemic injustice in every way that he possibly can. So, you know, I think we are focusing on these voters you need to persuade. But what we've also talked about for such a long time is you have to do that while also not presuming your coalition will be there for you for even one second, because that's also a mistake that was made in 2016. You got that, Democratic candidates. Next nominee, you got a cakewalk. You got to get more voters than them in the right place. And a bunch of fucking states that add up to 270.

This is basically what we're describing is the part of the film Entrapment where Catherine Zeta-Jones has to move through the laser beams to get to the fucking safe or painting. I don't remember. What movie? Entrapment? Entrapment, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. What?

I remember the crawling through the lasers. Yeah. I do. And you know me. I don't watch any movies. All right. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Adam Serwer of The Atlantic. He's smart.

Joining us on the pod, he is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where he covers politics. His most recent piece is titled What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever. And everybody should go read it. Adam Serwer, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. So you spent the last few years trying to explain the historical and ideological precedents that made a Trump presidency possible. But in taking stock of a crowd encouraged by the president's own words, chanting send her back, you said America has not been here before. What in your mind makes this moment different? I don't think that we've ever seen a president, an incumbent president, use their moral authority to hold up as an object of hate a particular person, a woman of color, a refugee, a religious minority as an object of hate in this way and in a way that encourages the American people to

view other Americans who share those traits as somehow a danger to the republic. It's certainly something that the president would hear a lot on Fox News, in particular from Tucker Carlson's show. But it's it's not something I don't think we've ever seen a president do before. That's in part because we didn't really have a multiracial democracy in the United States until about 1965. But it's also pretty unprecedented. It seems traditionally presidents have sought to, I mean, politicians have sought to benefit from that idea without personally directing it, right? I mean, what makes it such a dangerous

escalation that what we have is not just, say, a president benefiting from a Southern strategy from sort of race baiting and whisper campaigns and smear campaigns and and attack ads that use racial grievance and a president saying it out loud in front of millions of people, whether on Twitter or in front of a crowd. Well, I think what makes this particularly dangerous is, you know, the cornerstone of multiracial democracy is that, you know, we're all as American as everybody else. Being white doesn't make you more American than someone who is Hispanic or black or and being Christian doesn't make you more American than someone who's Jewish. And the president is actually saying with these attacks that actually the only way to be authentically American is to be a white person who supports Donald Trump. And I think that that is particularly dangerous because, again, it encourages white Americans

to view their countrymen as people who are fundamentally conditionally American and don't and don't have a legitimate claim to the polity. And that can lead to all sorts of other things, all sorts of other both ideological and policy conclusions are danger that are dangerous. For example, we saw recently the president attempted to lie to the Supreme Court in order to provide cover for a census question that was ultimately, we learned, designed to diminish the political influence of voters of color and enhance the voting power of white voters for the purpose of allowing Republicans to maintain their hold on power,

even if they're not winning a majority of the actual votes. So what do you make of Trump's back and forth over the past few days about whether or not to embrace or reject the chant? It seems as though there was some pressure from Republicans. There was a Washington Post piece in which it seemed like a lot of people inside the White House wanted to make clear that they didn't like what Trump said, whether or not that's true remains to be seen. But Trump did at first seem to want to disavow parts of it. And then he walked that back. What do you make of the pressure? It's clearly not shame. So it's some form of pressure that's causing him to want to sort of straddle the line between embracing it and not embracing it. Well, I'll say a couple of things. One is that the chant was based on his own words.

So there's no actual way for him to disavow it. his own words. So there's no actual way for him to disavow it. The other thing is, is that Republicans have quietly, you know, run to reporters to tell everybody how brilliant the president's racially divisive strategy is, which is essentially, you know, to call to call this strategy shrewd is to give him full moral responsibility for waging a racist campaign against four legislators in the hopes of winning over white people or more white voters. The other thing I would say is that, you know, historically, people who want to exclude non white people from the polity or discriminate against non white people typically frame their decisions as in a way so as to make them the real victims of prejudice or the real victims of an abuse of power. So, you know, after the Civil War,

the vice president of the Confederacy, who gave a long speech about how the institution of slavery and the fact that the white man was superior to the black man was the cornerstone of their society after the civil war. He's, you know, he's locked up in jail. He's writing his diary and he says, you know, that was totally fake news. Uh, the reporter made it up. Uh, you know, I don't have anything wrong. I don't have anything against black people in this war was not about slavery. Uh, similarly, theemers who overthrew the Reconstruction governments, they claim to be fighting the tyranny of Negro and carpetbagger rule. You know, in the 1950s and 60s, when Jim Crow was being dismantled, you know, white people who supported segregation

cast the federal government as a fascist force, much like Nazi Germany. So this inversion of who is actually being discriminated against is a fairly common reaction from people whose ultimate policy goal is to exclude non-white people from the privileges of American citizenship that they have a right to. So let's talk about the response from the press, from Democrats to what Trump did. In your piece, you had criticism for both. Let's take each. You mentioned this weekend that you agreed with Crooked's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler, that it's the job of reporters to bear witness faithfully.

What does that look like to you? I mean, in my view, it means telling the truth about what's happening, even when power is trying to convince you otherwise. You know, something that there was a dispute towards the end of the Bush administration over whether to call waterboarding torture because that was essentially not about whether or not waterboarding was actually torture. It was about the fact that the Bush administration was contesting the definition of waterboarding as torture

because they didn't want to admit that they were torturing people. Now, with the racist chant, you see something similar. Like, go back is literally textbook racism. It's referred to by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission as like a textbook version of racism. So to say, well, we don't know if this is racist or to call it racially charged or racially tinged is to concede to power this ability to create controversy around facts when there actually is no controversy. So when I'm echoing Brian's admonition to bear witness faithfully, what I'm referring to is not concede to power the ability to create controversy where none should exist.

And then on the Democrats, you know, everyone should read the piece, but I do want to read one passage because I think it was particularly devastating. Democrats now hold the House and they are not holding Trump back. The president has abetted a foreign attack on American democracy. He has obstructed justice. He has vowed to turn federal law enforcement on his political enemies. There are squalid camps at the border where families are being separated and children are being sexually assaulted. Their existence justified as a necessary response to a foreign invasion. Trump has sought to rig American democracy in favor of white voters and refused to recognize the oversight authority of Congress and now assails

the cornerstone principle of multiracial democracy that none of us is more American than any other. If the Democrats convince themselves that anything they do to attack the president risk alienating white voters who believe the country belongs only to them, and they will be partially responsible for the path the country is taking. What in your mind would Democratic leadership that meets this moment, what actions would that entail? I think it would entail more rigorously fighting the administration in terms of calling witnesses and turning in terms of subpoenaing documents in terms of pursuing investigations. But it would also entail a more rigorous defense of the principles of multiracial democracy against the president. I believe Pelosi's response after that all these tweets was, you know, I've said what I'm going to say and I'm not going to say anything else. I mean,

that is the Marco Rubio approach to presidential tweets. It's insufficient. The United States is facing someone who simply does not believe in the principles of multiracial democracy that have guided this country since 1965. That is an existential threat to those of us whose American-ness might reasonably be questioned under a regime that states that only white Christians are real Americans. under a regime that states that only white Christians are real Americans. And the Democratic Party cannot exist without those constituents and should be doing a much more forceful job of defending them. So it seems that, you know, when you pull back from specific moments, specific moments to offer a rebuke, to speak more forcefully against the president, it seems that

there is a kind of feeling that Democrats in Congress are not fulfilling the mission that voters sent them on in 2018. That seems to be informing a lot of the internal Democratic fights between the squad, as we now call them, and the leadership. That seems to be informing a lot of the criticism of the way leaders like Pelosi and Schumer and people like Jerry Nadler have responded to Trump's laughing at the face of efforts to hold him accountable. Do you believe that there is pressure that could be brought to bear that could get Democrats in the House kind of to step up to this fight in a bigger way to kind of to kind of rise to this moment? up to this fight in a bigger way to kind of to kind of rise to this moment? Do you believe that there are steps that people listening could take to help push these leaders to kind of meet the moment? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that if Democrats, Democrats seem to be convinced that they're going to lose a big middle if they confront the president more forcefully. But if people want to persuade

them that that is not the case, they can certainly do so through time tested ways of persuading legislators with just writing letters, calling in, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not advocating that people do that. But if people want to do that, then that is, you know, I mean, Congress people talk all the time about the way that influences their decisions. But I think in general, what the Democrats have to worry about is the idea that if they're not actually going to do anything with the power that people give them, that, you know, their voters might decide that it's not really worth it to keep them in office. So we've also seen, though, you know, Democrats have now held members of the administration in contempt. Their subpoenas are being scoffed at. We only control one house. There's a concern that if we were to, say,

pursue impeachment, that ultimately it would lead to nothing and therefore is not worth doing. Is part of this just a natural consequence of Democrats just not having enough power? How much of this is Democrats not stepping up? And how much of it is just the limitations of the power Democrats currently have? Well, I'll say a couple things. It is only now that they are beginning to hold people in contempt that they're really stepping up this legal fight over the subpoenas. This is stuff that could have been done a long time ago and would have been done a long time ago if the parties were reversed. The second thing is that opening an impeachment inquiry doesn't actually compel you to pursue

impeachment. It does put the House on greater legal footing with certain things. It does create an inability to rest the media narrative from a president whose stated political strategy is to flood the zone with shit, as one of his strategists put it. So, you know, these Democrats are passing these messaging bills in the hopes that they can show the country, you know, the work that they're doing. But the country isn't hearing about it because all they're hearing about every day is the Trump show. And that suffocation of the president taking all the oxygen is something that I don't think Democrats really appreciate the

extent to which it blocks out the positive message that they are trying to build as an alternative to the president. They have to, you know, it's one thing to be an alternative party. It's another thing to be an opposition party. And I don't think that the Democratic Party has been doing a very good job of the latter. So just today, there was news that it seems the president is looking to change immigration enforcement so that those who have been in the country for less than two years can be more easily deported and not just if they're within 100 miles of the border, but anywhere in the country. You know, the president is matching his rhetoric with actions, whether it's the treatment of people crossing the border or interior enforcement. Are Democrats and is the media doing enough to connect the rhetoric, which manages to captivate

our attention more than the policies ever do with the actual implementation of the of the kind of right of the of the of the white nationalist agenda? Yeah, look, I mean, I think that the president's rhetoric, I mean, one of the one of the problems is that people have sort of been conditioned to think of racism as naughty words. And so while the president offers a lot of naughty words, people, you know, might not see the ways in which that plays out in the implementation of the president's policy agenda. But you can see it in his approach to immigration. You know, his canceling of temporary status for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children, his treatment of his treatment of Puerto Rico

in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the family separation policy, which is a policy of systemic child abuse designed to deter illegal immigration. You can see it in the conditions of the border facilities, which are directly the result of Trump decisions made that caused people to be held longer than they're supposed to be held. You can see it in the president's approach to police brutality, the lack of enforcement of Americans' constitutional rights from the Justice Department, particularly the Civil Rights Division. I mean, if there is one consistent moral and ideological principle that the president has upheld throughout his time in office, it's the idea that white people are more American than other people and have an entitlement both to political and cultural power that the rest of us simply do not have.

that the rest of us simply do not have. So one last question, and I want to make a crass, I want to make a crass political argument that you that you often hear that you see, that you see in response to this conversation about Trump on race. And I'm just curious what your response is to and the argument would go something like, I agree with everything you're saying. I believe Donald Trump is a fundamental threat to American values and American democracy. That's why the single most important thing we can do as a country is defeat him in 2020. I am worried that focusing on Trump's racial grievances is going to cause a replay of 2016. And we will run up the score in the cosmopolitan, diverse, educated parts of America while once again falling behind in the whiter Rust Belt states and other states where Trump overperformed. And these conversations ultimately don't help us,

that immigration conversations redound to his benefit. And as much as I agree with you, as much as I am terrified by Trump's fanning of racial animus and hatred and his dividing the country and his attacks on the rule of law, this is a mistake because it may ultimately help him be reelected. What is your response to that? Well, I'm not a political strategist. I can't tell anybody how to win elections. But I do understand something about morality. And if your voters, your constituencies, the people who put you in office are under attack and their fundamental rights are under attack in a direct way by a president. And you refuse to stand up to them. What you are

communicating to those very same Trump voters is that Trump is correct. You are essentially seeding the argument that the president is making. And, you know, it's one thing to say we shouldn't take unpopular positions on immigration. it's one thing to say we shouldn't take unpopular positions on immigration. It's another thing to say we should not speak out at all when the president makes these kinds of white nationalist arguments because some people might like it. That's fundamentally political cowardice. Adam Serwer, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks to Adam Serwer for joining us today.

And, you know, we'll talk to you later in the week. You got anything, Leavitt? I feel like you want to say one last thing. Bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, gay news. All right, we're going to talk about Big Little Lies at... Spoilers. Spoilers. Love it or leave it, but I just want you to say that I watched the finale with you. And let's all just face facts.

Big Little Lies transition to Ally McBeal is now complete. I report it is complete. It is now just Ally McBeal. It's happened. I've never seen an episode. I don't know what he's talking about. No, that's why it's called Gay News, Tommy. And that's Gay News. Bye.