Pod Save America - "The Masked Fascist." with Stacey Abrams!

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Donald Trump goes from fascist curious to fascist enthusiast, Stacey Abrams stops by to talk about her run for Georgia governor and how to save democracy, and Dan and guest host Alyssa Mastromonaco answer some mailbag questions.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco. Jon Pfeiffer was on vacation this week. Alyssa, thanks for filling in. I mean, could you stop me if you wanted to? I wouldn't want to, so I don't even know how to answer that question. On today's show, Donald Trump goes from fascist curious to fascist enthusiast. We'll discuss the latest evidence about the steps he took to keep power after losing in 2020.

Stacey Abrams comes by to talk about her run for Georgia governor and how to save democracy. And later on, Alyssa and I will answer some of your questions from the mailbag. But first, there is brand new Crooked merch. Check out the new work from home sweatshirts, tees, and mugs at the Crooked store. They will look great in any home office. I personally would encourage you to wear them ironically to your actual office if that's what you do. But you can figure that out yourselves. Shop all the new arrivals now at crooked.com slash store. All right, Alyssa, let's get to the news. All right. He's back. Donald Trump is having himself quite a week. After a year of relative absence from

the political scene, the twice impeached former president is everywhere. First, the New York Times reported that Trump personally instructed Rudy Giuliani, the Masked Singer himself, to see if the Department of Homeland Security could seize voting machines and swing states. Yesterday, it came out that Trump associates wrote two memos right after the election, laying out a plot to keep him in power by using alternate electors. And if that wasn't enough, Trump spent the week releasing unhinged statements, recording ads, and being generally dumb and dangerous. All right, Alyssa, let's start with the most cooey of these revelations.

I guess we should be glad these efforts went nowhere, but what's your reaction to finding out now that Trump or his associates try to get not one, not two, but three federal agencies to seize voting machines? I mean, buddy, look, it's been a long time since I've really engaged in any Trump news for the most part. But when I first started reading this, I was like, did Shonda Rhimes reject this script for scandal? Because it is so fantastical and outrageous. It's not like unexpected. Like we know he very seriously and clearly wanted to overturn the election. But I mean, I guess my reaction was good for Barr, good for Cuccinelli for saying, no, DOJ is not going to do this. No, DHS is not going to do this. But at the same time,

I want to make sure that we don't think either of them are heroes because up until that point, they had been enabling him mightily. And I mean, Flynn and Sidney Powell being like, let's, could you just imagine if, if, I mean, the fact that they're, that Flynn and Sidney Powell were so insane that they're like, let's have the military take the voting machines that even Trump was like, man, maybe a bridge too far. So he chose the Department of Homeland Security instead. Totally. It's like the military is a bridge too far, but the Department of Homeland Security,

that makes more sense because the voting machines are in the homeland, right? Yes. Great. I wish I could remember the name of the principle that prevents the military from operating the United States, but I'm glad that Trump could adhere to that. I mean, my take on this is it is a stupid plan put together by stupid people with no chance of success. Like, what were they going to do when they had the voting machines?

I mean, let's be honest. What was going to happen next, right? They were just going to hold them? These are people who are building a bridge one brick at a time. There is no end game for these people. Well, overturning the election was the end game. But I mean, buddy, if they had gotten the voting machines, there just would have been like a group grope in the Oval Office. It's like, now what do we do? Well, I think there is something that about this that I think is relevant to sort of think about, which is the voting machine being seized is insane, and it's stupid, and it was never going to work under any scenarios. And it's scary that people

in power thought that they could do that, that they were so anti-democratic or brazen that they thought they should do that or they had the power to do that. And so stupid to think that that could work. But I think the danger in all of these things, whenever Trump does something that is basically fascist cosplay, is it distracts from the actual real threats, right? When he says, I'm going to seize voting machines, or I'm going to get the military to intervene, or we're going to shut down the press,

or we're going to cancel election day. Those are things he can't do. Right. But there's a whole bunch of things he can do and is doing. And there's this danger that we'll be like, see, voting machines weren't seized. System worked. When that's not the case, right?

The actual, it's the distraction from the actual plan to steal the next election is what's happening at the local level with these governor's races, secretary of state races, the laws being put in place that make it easy for state legislators to throw, all of that stuff is happening. We can't lose sight of that because, you know,

as you say, there was like this Shonda Rhimes scandal plot happening before our eyes. Yeah, I mean, I just feel like, I guess, I mean, I still think that he's, you know, like, because he's not on Twitter, because we don't see him as much, I think that for me, I will speak for myself personally, it is easy to lose sight of how dangerous and stupid he is. So I'm like, super glad he's reminding us slowly, but surely going into 2024. Yeah, I mean, that is – it is – when I say – like when I led this and said he's been largely absent from the political scene, there are a lot of people listening to the show who think he hasn't

been absent at all because we talk about him. If you are deeply engaged in politics, you see the clips from his rallies or the clips from his insane interviews on networks that may not even be available in your cable package. So for the vast majority of the public, Donald Trump is as far from the public front of mind as possible. But for his base, he's communicating with them on a very regular and I think pretty effective basis as we'll get into. So the reason we know about the voting machines and the memos is that the January 6th committee is working in the background. They're interviewing witnesses, they're issuing subpoenas, they're collecting documents. And Trump seems a little bit rattled by

this, I think. We saw this in the rally he held last weekend that John and Ben talked about. This week, Trump was workshopping some new defenses. Here's the first one. Let's take a listen from an interview he did with Newsmax. Did you authorize calling up the guard? And then it became the chain of command went to Nancy Pelosi and to the mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser. Did you, as required by law, authorize that? One hundred percent and attested to by many people. And they turned it down. Nancy Pelosi turned it down. I guess they both did. But Nancy Pelosi turned it down. I guess they both did, but Nancy Pelosi turned it down, and she's in charge of the Capitol. So they run the Capitol, the security of the Capitol. If you had 10,000 or 20,000, but if you had 10,000, if you had 5,000 soldiers wrapped

around the Capitol, you would have had no January 6th as we know it. There would have been no problem whatsoever. So, Alyssa, are you convinced? Do you think this will work? Is it Nancy Pelosi's fault? Oh, my God. Let me just tell you, for those 187 minutes he was sitting there doing absolutely nothing. No, I have a hard time believing that this is Nancy Pelosi's fault, who was, you know, screaming at the top of her lungs from the Capitol for people to send help. And no one did. Hearing that clip is just such, you know, to the point we were just making, you just don't hear Trump speak that often anymore. Right. And when you do, you just realize that he says a lot of words that are technically English.

But when strung together, it means nothing. Like nothing, almost nothing he said there was true. There's like six non sequiturs. I mean, it's truly wild. He is the actual king of word salad. Like there may be no one else who is better at word salad than he is. You know, once again, it's like, are people going to believe that Nancy Pelosi is responsible for a group of Trump supporters leaving a rally that Trump invited them to, that Trump spoke emblematic of how Republicans operate, Trump operates, and the right-wing media ecosystem operates, which is there was this quote that Steve Bannon gave back when Trump was impeached the first time where he said, the reporters were sort of pushing him, like, are you worried?

As you can understand, Trump was on tape committing the crime. And he was like, no. He said, basically, our enemy is not the Democrats. It's the media. And what we're going to do is flood the zone with shit. And that is the – what you have to understand about all right-wing messaging is that phrase, flood the zone with shit. And so you just say things, right? It's Nancy Pelosi's fault.

It's these people's fault. It's these people's fault. And what you're doing and what right-wing propaganda disinformation depends on is cynicism and skepticism. Cynicism about politics and skepticism about the media that tells you about politics. And so people throw up their arms. They're like, I don't know. Who am I supposed to believe? Donald Trump? That guy seems like a liar. The New York Times? Those guys seem in the tank for someone. I don't know. And that's what authoritarians want. They want you to give up, right? To think you have no power in this. And so like, we are laughing about it. We should

laugh about it because laughing is always better than crying. But this, you know, they, this is the strategy Trump used to get out of both of his impeachments. It is to just throw, I mean, if you remember during the first impeachment, he blamed Ukraine for interfering in the election. Right. Right. I mean, it's like, it's just a bunch of completely insane, mind blowing things. Sometimes like the most effective lies are ones that are so insane, they can't possibly be believed. And you're just like, fuck, I don't know. You know? And so it's, I don't think he's not's not going to convince a lot of people that matters that's Nancy Pelosi's fault, but he can convince some people to just give up and tune out. Right. He can continue to convince his do or die base that they've been right all along, that she's crooked, that the system's rigged against them.

And it just keeps them sort of, I think, frothing at the mouth, right? It's like he feeds them. It's the care and feeding needed to keep the 20% of America or whatever. Do you think it's as much as 20 who like really love him? I mean, it's of America. Of America, right? Yes. Of voters. It's, you know, the guy has an 85% approval rating among Republicans. About 30-some percent of Americans is self-advised Republicans. So it's a little higher. I'm not going to do math in this situation for safety.

No, I mean, rounding. We're just rounding. You know, it definitely is his base, right? In some ways, I think we trick ourselves. Like, he's just like, what do we care what he tells his base? They're going to vote for him no matter what. That's it. But there is this other group of people who we as Democrats are trying to either get involved

in politics for the first time or keep them involved in politics. And this sort of stuff can, particularly at times when people are down or depressed or frustrated with people in power who happen to be Democrats, just sort of sowing cynicism helps a minority party trying to hold power in a country that is very quickly leaving them ideologically and demographically. Right. I mean, this kind of chitchat, you know, his blaming Pelosi and things like that, it really just helps foment this idea that like, it's all fucked. You know, why engage? Because maybe she is corrupt and maybe, you know, maybe he's fucked up. Maybe he's not as fucked up as we think he is.

So, yeah, I mean, like what he's saying, definitely, definitely. We're laughing, but it's definitely not funny. This part's a little funnier to me, but. OK. This is the other defense Trump trotted out this week was he released a statement calling on the one sixth committee to investigate Mike Pence for the crime of certifying the election. So we expect Trump will run for president again. We expect he's likely the Republican nominee. If he does, if he is, he's going to have to find another vice president. I presume Mike Pence is not going to be invited back.

Alyssa, you are, I think everyone would agree, the foremost expert on the vice presidential selection process on the planet. You helped run it for John Kerry. Thank you so much. You helped run it for Barack Obama. You were involved in a very important Pod Save America miniseries called That's the Ticket with yours truly. So thinking about what Donald Trump's interviews with potential vice presidents will be next time, what do you think the first question he's going to ask is? Oh, oh, Pfeiffer, how could you try to trip me up with such a tough one? I know. I know.

Look, it's like sometimes like we know that everything Trump does in some way, shape or form is influenced by television, right? Like he's always, he's always when he's, when any, he's considering any move, he's always like, what does this person look like? Do they look the part? What would this look like on the news when it's reported? Blah, blah, blah. And when I saw this question, I was just like, he's like watching Taken.

He's watching Liam Neeson. And like when these VP folks are coming in for their interviews, he's going to be like, you're about to be taken. Like you will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc. And if you're not down for that, like keep on moving. I mean, it's like, I feel like his interviews will be like succession level blood oath type, you know, blood oath type expressions of loyalty.

I mean, it is, I mean, he's, are you willing to overturn the election to use this power that I think you have, but no one else agrees to overturn the election? Like that, that is the test that it like nothing else matters. You can be registered Democrat. You could be, you know, have every scandal under the book, disagree with Trump on every policy issue. But if you are willing to overturn the election, you will do it. And my suspicion is that every Republican politician with any ounce of national ambitions would say yes to that question.

It's not just that. I feel like there's an added level. Bring your plan for overturning the government. It's like a writing exercise. He puts him in a room with Steve Miller, a piece of paper and a pen. It is like, you have 30 minutes to give me a thousand words on how to steal the election. Go, because that's all the time we may have IRL. So show me what you're made of. So in thinking about this, I think there's a couple parts of it. One is, I got to be honest with you, I don't like Mike Pence. No. I mean, was there ever a question? I just want to preface what I'm going to say right now by saying I'm very anti-Mike Pence. I hated Mike Pence before he was Donald Trump's running mate. Mike Pence was a terrible human being before he was governor of Indiana. His terribleness dates back to when he

was a schlocky right-wing radio host writing columns about the dangers of Disney princesses like Mulan. I mean, he's a terrible person. And I think he should spend the rest of his time on this planet doing a Game of Thrones-style walk of shame for everything that he has done in his life. In his life. So I'm enjoying the focus of the Republicans and Trump on Mike Pence's role here. But I think it's worth stating that much a little bit like the voting machines. Yeah. The power of the vice president to overturn the election is another giant destruction.

First and foremost, for the most important reason, which is in 2024, the next time this plan will be put in place, Kamala Harris is the vice president. So it's like it's the one thing of all the ways in which the Republicans are going to steal the next election, the role of the vice president is the only one we don't have to worry about. So all this stuff about fixing the Electoral Counts Act and how they clarified that role, that's fine, but that's going to do nothing to stop them from stealing. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that's happening at the state level with a Republican House, Republican Senate to do alternate states of electors or reject electors from states. So the vice president thing is this, I think, giant distraction. But I don't want anyone to

stop attacking from either right want anyone to stop attacking. For me, there's right or left to stop attacking Mike Pence. Does that make sense? I mean, it does. It does. And he does fall into the same category as the cooch and Bill Barr, which is like, look, you enabled him up to the point it became something that world governments, you know, foreign governments might have to mobilize to help save America.

Like that is the point at which you were like, uncle, too much. So, you know, there is there is no taking the foot off the gas of going after Pence on this because he literally just did the right thing after they threatened to hang him. I mean, did he just failed to do the wrong thing? Like he basically just showed up. That was the one thing he did. Good point. Good point. He stood like what goes for brave in the Republican Party now is standing silently for 15 minutes before running out of the room. Is Cooch the official designated nickname for Ken Cuccinelli? Honestly, I came up with it right now and I thought it was kind of fun.

Yeah. I mean, great. If he ever becomes relevant or doesn't end up in jail, we can resurrect it. Okay. I get credit, though. So we've been talking a lot about what Trump did in the past. But right now, he is also exerting his control over the party, trying to ensure that people who believe the big lie and are willing to sell the next election are in power. This week, Trump endorsed David Perdue, who is challenging Brian Kemp as governor of Georgia. Trump even cut an ad. Let's listen to a part of the ad here. A message from President Trump. The Democrats walked all over Brian Kemp.

He was afraid of Stacey the Hoax Abrams. Brian Kemp let us down. We can't let it happen again. David Perdue is an outstanding man. He's tough. He's smart. He has my complete and total endorsement. And if you want to actually watch the Donald Trump ad for David Perdue, check out the video version of this podcast on YouTube. Alyssa is a multi-time guest on the hit YouTube series Campaign Experts React. What do you think of this ad?

And what impact do you think it'll have on the Republicans beyond Georgia? So what do I think about this ad and what impact do you think it'll have on the Republicans beyond Georgia? So what do I think about this ad? I think that if Stacey Abrams wanted to become a UFC fighter, Stacey the Hoax Abrams is a pretty good name. Look, it's like watching this ad at first blush, to me, it looks like an SNL skit, right? It's super low budget. It is the voiceover, but it's basically, it says what his base wants to hear, right? If the people he's trying to get to vote for David Perdue think that, you know, Brian Kemp is some, you know, Democratic sympathizer. I mean, it's effective, I guess, right? Yeah, I mean, Brian Kemp is as conservative as the day is long. Donald Trump

endorsed him in 2018, which is the primary reason why Brian Kemp won that primary and eventually won the governorship. He is someone who engaged in outrageous voter suppression to defeat Stacey Abrams in 2018, including massive purges of the rolls that disproportionately affected black voters. He is a COVID truther, been anti-mask. I mean, just terrible in every way, shape, or form. His only sin, his only sin in the eyes of Donald Trump is that he was unwilling to break the law to overturn the election. And that's the message, right? The audience is obviously Georgia voters. That's what David Perdue put in an ad being shown to Georgia voters, but the real audience here is the rest of the

Republican Party, which is either you help me steal elections, you help support the big lie the election was stolen from me, or I'm going to turn my political organization and my power and my brand against you, and you're going to lose. And if you look at Donald Trump's record in primaries at least before 2020, if Donald Trump came out against you, in almost every single situation, you lost in some MAGA enthusiast one. Right. Whether that was Adam Putnam losing in Florida, who was long expected – the Agriculture Commissioner, I believe, who was long expected to be the next governor. We end up with Ron DeSantis. Donald Trump may end up regretting that. If Ron DeSantis runs against him, be careful what you wish for Donald Trump. Same thing with Brian Kemp. And so, like, there is, you know, is this going to work with Republican voters in Georgia? Sure. Like,

what? Probably. Right. Is it? But the, Right. But the real thing is, what is it going to mean for the candidates who are going to run against Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, or Tony Evers in Wisconsin, or are going to run for the Arizona governance race? The message is, if you want the help of Trump. And Trump's political organization just announced it had, I think, And Trump's political organization just announced it had 120 – I think $123 million in the bank. So they have – I mean – Who knows? It's a super PAC. It's a super PAC.

But it is – that's a lot of muscle that – and we sort of know – ask Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger where the prevailing political winds are blowing. And you end up with a party that by definition, that the only way to win a Republican primary is to support the big lie and express a willingness to steal the next election. And that is where, and that's, and that is to me, the scary part of this. Do you think though that it ever works against them? Right? If you always have to steal the election, but you win, then is it only fair when you win? You mean heads I win, tails you lose sort of situation? Yeah. I mean, this is the signature question in American politics is, can you run against democracy? Can you flagrantly and blatantly stick your nose in the eye of everything

that America likes to think it is? Can you essentially run an anti-American campaign? Right. And win. And the answer to that is going to be determined by what we do. Can they get away with it? It's like, are we going to let them? And we doesn't mean, in my mind, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer. No. Nancy Pelosi. It means. Everybody. Everyone.

Is the coalition that came together to defeat Donald Trump, that won the House in 2018, won the White House in 2020, and then took the Senate in 2021, is that coalition going to come back again and defeat Trumpism without Trump on the ballot? Like, that's the question. That's the only way it's going to work. Like, we know that they're not going to be persuaded by good sense, by guilt, by shame. And they're probably going to, because of the way the courts are rigged, get away. The law is not going to be a barrier to them. Right.

Accountability in politics is delivered at the ballot box. And that is the opportunity and responsibility that we have in 2022. And obviously, these are, as we sit here today, suboptimal political conditions. The history is against us. The structure is against us. The mood of the country is currently against us. But can we rise above that and push back against this to send a message that it does not work? That is what we're going to have to figure out in the coming months.

Wow. It sounds like a lot of fun. It is. That's the like, can you imagine? This is the thing, right? Lovett told a story on Tuesday's pod about he was writing when he worked for then Senator Clinton, he wrote a climate change piece, I think it was, and that he got edits from Bill Clinton. And one of the edits that Bill Clinton made was he had to make it seem like the battle against climate change would be a joyful exercise, right?

That it would be a big thing that we could all do together, you know, not drudgery, right? Now that we're gonna have to slog through it. And I think that's gonna be, you know, and it's hard to do for all of us, you know, we're stuck in this pandemic and everything else is going on

to reinforce the joy of us, you know, we're stuck in this pandemic and everything else is going on, to reinforce the joy of politics, the joy of being in democracy. You know, think about the, you know, Donald Trump's, the look on Donald Trump's face if we not only hold the Senate, but expand our majority, right? If his can't, if Stacey, think, like, this is what I would think about, which is and we're going to talk to her in a few minutes here. But. Think about what it'll meet, you know, Donald Trump's reaction to Stacey Abrams being elected governor on election night. That is something to be fucking excited about. I hope Crooked Crooked's merchandising marketing team is listening because I think sweatshirts that say joyful democracy are what we all need. Because if I watching Stacey Abrams become governor, I mean, that is joy to the polls,

if I ever. Well, that was a perfect segue. Up next, I talk to Stacey Abrams about her run for governor and what we all can do to save democracy. to save democracy. Joining us now is longtime Pod Save America favorite and the next governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams. Welcome back to Pod Save America. Thank you for having me. So you last ran for governor four years ago, which seems like not that long ago, but it was one pandemic, one insurrection, a whole raft of voter suppression laws ago. The world has changed. Georgia has changed. How are you approaching this campaign in 2022 differently than you did in 2018? I begin by recognizing that while we have to speak about a vision for the future and the opportunities we want to create where we have a thoughtful conversation about what we can do together, we have to acknowledge

the real pain people are feeling. And that unlike other moments in history where it was an economic crisis or social crisis or healthcare crisis, we are facing all three at the same time. crisis or healthcare crisis, we are facing all three at the same time. And we've got to give people permission to be worried and to be unhappy, but to also know that that pain is being met with real plans for their success and that we're not going to be stuck here. One of the challenges I see with the current governor is this sense that if we just close our eyes and don't pay attention, it'll disappear. It's like playing hide and seek with a kid. They think if they close their eyes, you can't see them. Well, we need someone, a leader who actually sees the problems and is willing to do something about it.

And this campaign is going to be about showing in the way we campaign, in the conversations we have, in the work we do, in the way we campaign, in the conversations we have, in the work we do, showing that we actually see what Georgians are facing and that no matter who you are and how you vote, that my mission is to serve you and to serve the whole state. When you're out talking to Georgians, what are you hearing most? Is it the pandemic? Is it inflation? Is it the assault on democracy we're facing? What is top of mind for the people whose votes you're seeking? It's a combination, and it depends on where you find yourself. If you're in one of the parts of Georgia where not only is the pandemic ravaging your community, but your hospitals have shut down, then you're worried about survival.

But you're also worried about the fact that you can't take time off of your job because you are worried that it may not be there when you get back. And so there is, yes, there's this labor conversation that's happening, but for a lot of Georgians, that's not their reality. They're still trying to meet these schedules and these obligations that are putting a lot of pressure. You've got others who are absolutely concerned about the assault on democracy because they have seen in real time what it means to have leaders who actually care about you. And for everyone, the economic pressures in Georgia are real. There are some who've done really well during the pandemic, but so many more people know that their wages were already far behind before this hit. And because Georgia still

has a $5.15 minimum wage, and because we are a state that has not spent the resources coming our way on the people who deserve it, and we've got millions of dollars in eviction money that we are sending back or reallocating because the job wasn't done. That's what people care about. They want to know that there's a match between the resources that are available and someone being willing to help them just get through this. When you – sort of the national narrative, right? And we've seen this in some recent polls in Georgia is that people are in a funk, right? They're upset about inflation. They're worn out by the pandemic. Your strategy in 2018, which got you the most votes of any Democrat in that state in history at that point, and then the work you did from 2018 to 2020 was about getting people to believe in the political process, to take agency for

themselves. What's your message to someone who maybe got involved in politics that worked for you in 2018, turned around, elected Joe Biden in 2020, got right back up off the mat and elected John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock just a few months later in 2021, but who may feel discouraged or disenchanted about either the state of the world or how politics, what maybe hasn't been done yet in Washington? How do you keep them hopeful and engaged? The first job is to be honest and to acknowledge the legitimacy of the funk. This has been a hard four years, a hard three years. This has been difficult because not only to your earlier question, there's an economic crisis that is not

what we thought it would be, but it's still maddening and it's hard and it's making you worry. There is a political crisis that's not just about politicians, but about who we intend to be and whether we even like each other. And there is absolutely this health crisis that feels permanent, but also feels like it could go away if we just did one more thing. And so part of the conversation is to talk about the efficacy of politics, but not talk about it as politics. People care about their lives and they want to know that you understand their life. You may not have the same one, but they want to know that you understand it and that you're willing to help. And the ethos that I want everyone who works with me to carry

into the field is this conversation of how can I help? Because people want to tell you what their problem is. They want you to listen. Then they want you to give them opportunities to make it better. It's not just about pouring out your soul. It's about knowing that someone's there to receive your concerns and to be your partner. And that's why our theme is One Georgia. And for me, that comes from my own family. I'm the second of six children. We are incredibly different. And we do not always get along, but we are always there for one another. And when there are challenges, we rally for each other, knowing that our challenges are different, but together, if we do this, we get better. And that's the conversation we have to have in Georgia, that we've got different challenges depending on where you are. And those challenges are real. challenges are real. They are not a figment of your imagination and you shouldn't just, you know,

shoulder through, but that you should have a partner in your leadership and your government to help you get there and help you navigate it. And when we have that honest conversation, it takes a little longer, but the reality is then people are willing to trust a little bit longer and do a little bit more. It's why they came back for Warnock and Ossoff. It's why they voted for Biden despite the 2018 debacle. And it's why in 22, we can win, because we're not going to be dishonest about what we face, but we're also not going to be hopeless about what's possible. You've brought up health crisis a couple of times in this conversation. And I'm interpreting that to mean that there is a longstanding health crisis that has been massively exacerbated by this pandemic.

What would Governor Abrams do differently, both to address that longer health care crisis, but also in how the pandemic is managed in Georgia? Expand Medicaid, which sounds like an overly simplistic answer, but it is one of the most densely effective solutions to these challenges. It is billions of dollars to hire and staff medical facilities throughout the state. It is 66,000 jobs across an array of skill sets that can pay livable wages. It is the investment in communities because when you do this, when you expand Medicaid, you're suddenly going to increase property taxes, which means your schools get better. You're going to have access to revenue for the things that your communities need to be resilient and to respond. And for communities that have no hospitals,

we've got a county in Georgia that has no hospital and where someone died because it took them two hours to get to Alabama because they had a heart condition. We've got another county that has medical facilities, but not many, where one in every 100 citizens has died from COVID. And so Medicaid expansion is an infusion of capital that is focused on the public health infrastructure of the state, but it's also an opportunity to address the socioeconomic issues that often exacerbate, to your point, a crisis like the pandemic. And there has been this sort of debate among all sorts of people, political people, medical people, about whether how we think about the pandemic is either something we have to learn to live with or an emergency we continue to combat. How do you think about that? I think we're going to move from pandemic to endemic, meaning that like the flu, there's going to be some version of SARS-19, of COVID-19 that remains with us. This is a worldwide phenomenon and it is not

suddenly going to evaporate and disappear. But what living with it looks like is the difference between are we trying to live with Omicron and Delta or are we trying to live with a really bad strain of the flu where yes, we have to be serious and intentional, but where we also acknowledge that if we do the things that we need to do, we can minimize the risk and the harm. I think we cannot speed through this. There is no on or off switch, but that we have to be thoughtful about where we are when we're addressing it. Georgia's in a terrible place because we have one of the

lowest vaccination rates and we have remarkable disdain for responsibility from our governor who has announced with pride that he has no plan other than just, you know, being, just being governor while it's happening. And so depending on where you live, it can get better. I know that, you know, Governor Polis in Colorado has done a really good job of balancing expectation and delivery of services. We need leaders who actually see that the challenges are going to be with us, but so are the solutions. And we've got to do more to make the solutions accessible, sustainable, and repeatable. This has been a big week in the Georgia gubernatorial race.

Donald Trump has waded in. He endorsed the opponent of Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor, and ran an ad. He not only endorsed him, he ran a, he appeared in an ad. It's one of the first times we've seen Donald Trump on TV in a long time that wasn't Fox News or Newsmax. And you're a star in that ad, because from what I can tell, Donald Trump's primary reason, his two reasons for wanting to endorse David Perdue over Brian Kemp, One is he thought Brian Kemp was insufficiently involved in overturning the election, although maybe Kemp is pledged to be more involved next time, and that he doesn't think that Brian Kemp can stop you. The ad ends with, stop, Stacey. What was your reaction to that? Do you take it as a compliment that you're already living rent-free in their heads? There are alliterative attempts to demean me notwithstanding. I am a uniquely unifying force because I was part of doing something they didn't think could happen, which is shifting the balance of power in the state. But I also recognize that the fight is not just about me. I'm an avatar for the changes that are happening in the state. And I happen to have a name people know. And I'm not going anywhere.

And I'm not going anywhere. But, you know, look, I don't see it as a compliment or an insult. I think it's their intention to try to ignore their own internal failings by, you know, using prestidigitation and saying focus on her. My job is to focus on Georgia and make sure that's what I talk about, that's what I do, and let them fight it out. As you think about your race, right? There is obviously everything that you want to do for Georgia, healthcare, dealing with the economy, all of that. But also what happens in this Georgia governance race is going to have a tremendous impact in whether the votes of Georgians will potentially be counted in 2024. How are you thinking about that responsibility? Is that something that you're hearing from voters or as part of your message?

Well, we are ground zero both for voter suppression, but we are also a proof point that you can push back and you can push through. What we were able to do in 2020 and 2021 is a direct result of the efforts that were put in in 2018 and in 2019. And so we know that there is a way to navigate and circumvent and to overwhelm voter suppression, but that doesn't diminish the illegitimacy of its existence. And what is so maddening to me is this idea that just because you can fight it, that means you shouldn't have to worry about it. No, we shouldn't have to fight this hard. And that's going to be a focus that I continue to have. What it also means is that we

have to focus on more than the top of the ticket. I am proud to be running with Raphael Warnock, who is an extraordinary senator. But we have to make certain we have an extraordinary attorney general and an extraordinary secretary of state. We have to have county commissioners and city council members and people up and down the ballot who believe in protecting democracy. Small d, not protecting Democrats, but protecting democracy. And that's where Georgia can be instrumental. but protecting democracy. And that's where Georgia can be instrumental. We can show that we believe that we are responsible for doing better by the American people and by our people, by proving that voting works, and then using the power of that vote to then continue to build a narrative that we all have the patriotic responsibility to defend democracy.

After Georgia passed the law, the voter suppression laws last year, there was a, you know, a very obviously deserved and loud outcry about how they were trying to steal elections that they were going to, you know, this was the response to what happened in 20 and 21. And that if we did, if we, the Democrats in the House and the Senate and the president did not fix this problem, Republicans were to steal elections. Because of that outcry, which I think was correct, there are a lot of people who think because of the failure, at least thus far, of the Senate to pass a federal voting rights law, that we are screwed. How do you convince people that we can win even when the game is rigged against us as much as we believe it is in Georgia and elsewhere?

I said recently, you fight for what you want, but you work with what you have. We have to fight for a system that actually respects voters of all stripes, that does not create artificial barriers, that does not leverage the might of state legislatures to thwart the will of the people that does not suborn the insurrection played out in legislative action. That's what we have to fight. And the best way to fight it is to have federal legislation that says that no matter where you live, your geography does not determine the quality of your democracy. That's what we fight for. But we got to work with what we have. And I come from a long line of people and community that we've faced voter suppression. And so we know that the one antidote to voter suppression is overwhelming the polls,

because suppression is like putting up barrier. It's putting up a dam. But sometimes when the water is pushing hard enough, it breaks through and it goes over. And some things get lost and some folks are not going to be heard. But if there are enough of us, we will force our way past those barriers. And that's the mission we have to have. I think it is ill-advised to try to out-organize something that is fundamentally wrong, but it is sometimes necessary to try to defeat it in multiple ways. And that's what we have to do. And it can be done. We saw it happen. We've seen it happen before, but it is harder than it should be. And it is wrong that we must, but that doesn't eliminate the responsibility to do so because those who rely on us need us to do this work.

It's not just voter suppression the Republicans are doing. They're also suppressing history. This is happening all across the country. The books are being banned. Curriculum is being regulated. The Republican, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor just went and visited a library that had put in place a book ban and censored books from that library. How do you – I mean, this is the sort of thing that I think a lot of people thought would not happen in this country in this time, or maybe that that was hopefully behind us.

How do you talk about this to people that makes it resonant to them and understand what the true threat is? this to people that makes it resonant to them and understand what the true threat is? We have to talk about honest education. And the whole point of education is building resilient young people who can be leaders, ones who can navigate and be successful. And you can't be successful when you're educated on the lie. You cannot be successful when you don't have the whole story because ultimately, eventually the vacuum in your knowledge is going to come back and cause you harm. And so our responsibility is an honest, whole education.

And that means telling the hard parts. Being dishonest with our kids now means that we are growing a generation of children who are not ready to be leaders, who are not equipped to be the full adults we should want them to be. And I don't have children myself, but I have a 15-year-old niece who I've spent a lot of time with, and she and my parents are living with me temporarily. And I've been involved in her education. I now know more about the Kansas-Nebraska Act than I remembered. And the conversations about David Wilmot and his proviso, I completely forgot about that. But my point is, I want her to know the hard stuff,

because she also has to navigate being a 15-year-old Black girl in America. But her friends come from different backgrounds, and they should also know what it means to be resilient, what it means to be better as Americans, that when we have faced challenges and made terrible decisions and done things that we should be ashamed of, here's how we got better. Here's how we identified what we did wrong, and here's how we made ourselves a better nation. That's a story we should always want to tell. It should be age appropriate and it should be complete and thorough, but it can never be dishonest and it can never be incomplete because we do them a disservice.

And that's how we have to talk about this. This is about the kind of children we are raising in this moment. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck out there. We're all counting on you. Thank you so much, Dan. And I just encourage folks, as always, to go to StaceyAbrams.com and learn more about what we're doing.

Before we go, we thought we'd open up the Pod Save America mailbag. We told you to ask us anything, and boy, did you deliver. All right, let's get started. The first question comes from at Duncan Bronuts, which I am 95% sure is Jon Favreau's burner account, because I know this is a question he also has. Should we expect there to be delays for the Supreme Court nominee given Senator Lujan's stroke and surgery? Some background for folks who may not be aware, Senator Lujan of New Mexico suffered a stroke last week, and he is in the hospital recovering. It has been said he's going to have a full recovery, but he is absent from the Senate. With denying Democrats the 50 votes they would need to

move forward any legislation, this has led to a lot of tremendous concern about our ability to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Breyer's retirement. Do you want to take this one, Alyssa, or do you want me to do it? I mean, buddy, well, you may have to because I'm not super concerned about this. I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something. But Senator Lujan had a stroke. Everything that his office has said is that he is going to make a full recovery. They expect him back in the Senate in four to six weeks. President Biden has said that he will likely nominate somebody by the end of February, which is four weeks. And so I feel like we're going to be fine.

Am I crazy? No, I think that's right. Obviously, our thoughts go out to Senator Lujan and his family. Totally, 100%. The most important thing here is that he has a full recovery. If it proceeds as he has said and his doctors expect, it should not cause any delay in the process. It does highlight, I think, the fragility of our majority and that we should move forward

very quickly on all things because there are 12, I think it's 12 Democratic senators in states with Republican governors. And in almost all of those cases, if that Democratic senator were to pass away or become incapacitated for some reason, a Republican governor would appoint a Republican to that seat and make Mitch McConnell majority leader. And we would not confirm the Supreme Court seat or any other judges or basically anything else. And so that is sort of where we are. I would note that if I understand my reading of the sort of Capitol Hill rags correctly, Mitt Romney is out for the foreseeable future because of COVID. And so therefore you could actually confirm anyone and everyone with

49 plus the vice president because the number. So I think let's make that nomination today. Let's get it up and get it out. But we get it out by Friday. I think we can solve this problem. Buddy, that's good news you can use. Just making use of that punch bowl subscription. Okay. Alyssa, this question's for you. At Obscurement asks, we live in a super red district near Alyssa. My wife ran for town justice and got blown out on the water. Any advice for what we need to do for the next few years to help her the next time she runs? Any advice for a new Dem group in a small town red area? Yes, I live in my area is actually quite red too. And I was engaged in our local elections this past cycle. And I think that the most effective thing that folks running for local office can do is really, really just

ditch any sort of national political language, like to just make everything as local as humanly possible. And the person who represents us, Congressman Antonio Delgado, who is a Democrat, won a close race in my district. And he's done like a really great job of doing everything he can to stay as local as humanly possible. So that means that people of all political stripes came to the opening of the Klovrick Free Library a couple months ago. So I would just say keep it as local as you can and don't give into the stuff you read on Twitter and repeat it in local settings because 95% of the people you need to vote for you do not have Twitter on their phones.

Okay. At kramirez13 asks, realistically, what do you see happening with BBB, Build Back Better, especially the climate pieces? Do you have any guesses or thoughts about where this is headed next? I'd say that my thoughts are hacky, so I'd like to hear what you have to think about this. They're hacky? Oh, now I really want to hear them. The truth is there is a deal to be had there if Joe Manchin will let us have the deal. Right? Obviously, he put forward a much smaller proposal that was about $1.7 trillion before

the holidays. That then blew up for a whole bunch of really stupid reasons. He has walked away from that. But there is a bunch of things that people agree on. And you can see, I think it was Congressman Ro Khanna suggested that we just give Joe Manchin the pen, write whatever it is you want, and then we will, as long as it's within reason, take that. And particularly around the the climate piece because this is our last chance. And so there is still an opportunity for that. I think that the prospects of success for that are going to be greater if this all happens quietly. Let's just – I think the White House should stop talking about it.

The president should do events on it. There's – I mean, people want to keep tweeting at Joe Manchin. They should feel free. I don't think it's going to have an impact, but just let them go. Like, I think less spotlight is good here for legislation to maybe a deal to be cut and then just surprise us one day

by coming out with, here's the deal. It's not going to be everything we want. Far from it. Even the most optimistic and biggest, boldest, you know, possible thing that was talked about last year,

what, you know, was obviously short on climate and a few other things. But I still believe that there is a chance for progress. I'm not making predictions. I'm not optimistic. But there is a path there if Manchin is willing to do it. And that's just hard to say. Tactically, do you think it is better to keep Build Back Better intact or to break it into smaller bills? You can't break it into smaller bills because of the budget reconciliation process. I think what I would do is, so Manchin came out the other day and said, Build Back Better is dead. And everyone's like, oh my God, what does that mean? And it's

like, you know what? My view tactically is we should accept that fate. We should say that bill is dead. Joe Manchin, you have won. If you want to mount the draft bill above your coal-burning fireplace in your office, you should feel free to do that. You have killed Build Back Better. But here's a new bill, right, which can be a bill centered on dealing with inflation and climate change. And it's a new bill. It's different.

It's got some of the aspects, the old ones, but some new ones. It is focused. It's obviously more narrow because management will assist it. But I would just start fresh, right? And just give it a new gloss of paint, new name, new everything else. I think that will be helpful as opposed to like we have been working backwards off the same document for well over a year now. And that has not worked. So let's get a fresh piece of paper, a blank whiteboard, whatever, and sort of rebuild it from there.

At the nail salon, we'd call that a buff and shine. Okay. Okay then. Great. All right. We got time for a couple of fun ones. Okay. At Sonia is, I think the name of Sonia, but there's a lot of S's, a lot of O's, several A's wants to know, and this is the question that everyone in America is asking, is Below Deck or 90 Day Fiance the superior reality TV program? Buddy, you know how I feel about 90 Day Fiance. Don't make the case. I watch a couple things. So here's the thing.

We're both, because you don't watch 90 Day Fiance, right? All I know about it is from your tweets. I'm glad they're breaking through. So 90 Day Fiance won so many iterations of it. There's 90 Day before the 90 Days. There's 90 Days happily ever after. There's 90 Day the other way. There is 90 Day pillow talk associated for each one of those shows. I love it. The characters

are dynamic. There's always like a good split of the couples that you hope don't make it and then the couples that you're rooting for. There's like geographic diversity. We're in the foothills of Virginia. We're down in Florida. We're everywhere. I fucking love the show. Not as much as Sister Wives, which is my be all end all TLC fame. But 90 Day, listen, Christine got away from Cody and it is feminism at its finest. But 90 Day to me, it's escapism. I will give them credit. I don't know how they did a show that is essentially about immigration that avoided Donald Trump for five seasons, but more power to them. I mean, this sounds like a ridiculous

question, but can you just give us like 15 seconds on the premise of 90 Day Fiancé? Oh, you think it seems like it's in the title, but your listeners are so high minded they couldn't possibly know about my program. So anyway, it's about people who meet online. Sometimes there's catfishing, sometimes there's not. Who meet online and have 90 days in either the US or the other person's home country to decide if they want to get married and apply for their K-1 visa and try to live happily ever after. And hilarity and drama ensues. I mean, you've made a compelling case. It'll- Thanks.

Why don't you tell me about Below Deck, the sex romp on Bravo? I want to at least address one thing at the top here, which is as a general rule, I reject questions that confuse subjective opinion and objective reality. You can find 90 Day Fiance superior to Below Deck. I can find Below Deck superior. Someone else can like Summer House or Real Housewives or the Sister Wives show that you have disturbingly talked

about. And that's fine, right? You can like ketchup, you can like mustard. One is not necessarily better than the other. That recurring fight over those things is one of the reasons, I guess, why the internet exists today. Below Deck, like 90 Day Fiance, has several iterations. There is Below Deck, the flagship enterprise. There is Below Deck Med. And there is Below Deck Sailing Out. Below Deck Sailing Out is coming back in a couple months. Short version.

It is a reality show that follows the crew on a super yacht and a sailing yacht in the sailing yacht version for obvious reasons. And when it first started, it was like real world 90s because most of the people who had been on the show had never seen reality television or had any idea what they were getting into. There's been some self-awareness in recent years, I think may have detracted from the true benefit of the show, but it is escapism and particularly good escapism in during the pandemic because, you know, they're off the coast of Croatia or Italy or they're in the Turks and

Caicos or wherever else. And so it's like a, it's a chance to go like see really pretty places that we haven't all seen in a long time. So I would encourage anyone who likes reality TV, mega yachts and beaches that blow decks pretty great. All right, Alyssa, our last question is for you.

I'm going to just clear out per the request of this listener and let you work because at silk crest rights no question just please let alissa rant about the supposed rudy appearance on mass singer you may have to give some listeners who are not readers of deadline uh some context for what this is all about okay so i am not a devotee of mass singer but I have watched it and I know what it is. And basically, they have some judges and people who come dressed in costumes and they sing and they try to guess who the famous person is in the costume. And it is reported in Deadline that – I mean, buddy, I don't even know where to go

with this because there are so – it is problematic at every level. But it turns out that according to Deadline, one of the mask singers was Rudy Giuliani. And when he took his mask off, I mean, I know I wrote a book by the title, but who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Like took the mask off and Ken DeJong and Robin Thicke walked off stage. Now, I get why they did it. One, I too would walk off stage if I thought that the ghost of Christmas past had just appeared in front of me, because that's kind of what this is. But also, like, I just don't know what the network was thinking. Like, why would you

engage with someone so polarized? I mean, it is, he is not just a, it's not like they shouldn't have Republicans on. Have all the Republicans you want. I don't know, have Lindsey Graham, fine, I don't care. But like, Rudy Giuliani, who we spoke about previously as the person who went to the Department of Homeland Security and asked them to seize the voting machines on your masked singer show, seems like a prohibitively, fundamentally terrible idea. And I'm glad that, oh my God, what's her name? What's her name? She is Jenny. She was on MTV. Jenny McCarthy?

Yeah. She stayed to talk to Rudy. I'm like, okay, girl, you do you, anti-vaxxer. I was going to say, she was, they probably had a lot to talk about. Common cause. But that is, it was, there were some people online who were like, you know, uh, Ken and, and Robin Thicke were wrong. And like, I don't think they were wrong.

I think they were startled as shit. And it is better to remove yourself from a situation than say something you can't take back. So good for them. Also, it's a fake fucking celebrity game show with music. Like, like what rules of etiquette did Robin Thicke break? Also, can we just- He ruined the spirit of competition.

Do you wonder what Rudy was singing? I mean, look, I will end this just because I think it's a great, this is maybe all you need to know about how we got into this fucked up situation in politics is we started this podcast talking about Rudy Giuliani trying to seize voting machines, and it ends with him having an appearance on a reality TV show. Like it is all of the problems of treating politics as infotainment all manifest themselves in this podcast. So on that high-minded note, thank you, Alyssa, for being here.

Thank you to Stacey Abrams. We'll talk to everyone next week. Okay, bye, everybody. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos

at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.