Pod Save America - "The Special Master Baits Trump."

Episode Date: September 22, 2022

Donald Trump has an absolutely brutal day of legal news, Republicans pivot to attacking Democrats on crime, and Carlos Odio from Equis Research joins to talk about some new research on the Latino vote in the midterms. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

If you're the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Just by thinking about it. Wait, wait. It declassified. Reclassified. Reclassified.

No. Declassified another one. Oftentimes, when things go around on Twitter and you just see the commentary on it, the reality does not live up to the commentary. This is one of those cases where it absolutely did. Just perfection. No notes.

Brilliant legal strategy. I watched it so many times last night. We're going to get to that and a whole bunch of other stuff later. On today's show, Donald Trump has an absolutely brutal day of legal news. Republicans pivot to attacking Democrats on crime, and Carlos Odio of Eckies Research joins to talk about some new research on the Latino vote in the midterms.

Before we start, if you didn't already know, Love It or Leave It is recorded live at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles every week. Did you know that, Dan? I did know that. Okay, good, good. Plus, tickets are now available for the Love It or Leave It live or else fall tour dates for tickets to shows live in la or to see if love it is coming to your state i'm looking at you baltimore is what it tells me to say here but i don't know why

uh head to crooked.com slash events now i mean it seems like there's a couple cities i don't know why we're specifically looking at baltimore i'm guessing that's coming up soon. But anyway, go buy tickets. Go see Lovett on tour. He's getting out of the office and hitting the road. I love it when you encounter the housekeeping for the first time as you read it. It's very Donald Trump giving a speech. And sometimes Barack Obama, let's be honest. Oh, yeah, for sure.

For sure. If it's the weekly radio address, you know, what is this? That used to be a thing. Anyway, let's get to the news. We got a lot of it. America's most notorious crime family has just been accused of breaking a few more laws. Nothing too fancy like stealing nuclear secrets or a presidential election. Just good old-fashioned financial fraud.

On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a.k.a. Tish from Brooklyn, a.k.a. a friend of the pod, announced a lawsuit against Donald Trump, Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric, big week for Tiffany, for stealing a quarter of a billion dollars from banks and insurers by lying about the true value of their company's assets. Here's a clip from the Attorney General's press conference. The pattern of fraud and deception that was used by Mr. Trump and the Trump organization for their own financial benefit is astounding. We believe the conduct alleged in this action also violates federal criminal law, including issuing false statements to financial institutions and bank fraud. And we are referring those criminal violations that we've uncovered to

the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service. Dan, is this it? Did we finally get them? Is Tish James the Bob Mueller we always wanted? A couple of thoughts here. One, I know there are lots of people who are just like, you guys got all excited with Mueller and Russia and the first impeachment, second impeachment. You know what? We never got excited about that. Come on.

John, all of these podcasts are on the internet. Every single one of them. Everyone knows what happened. But let us just have this one moment. Just enjoy it. It was pleasurable to watch. It's good to see Donald Trump being called out for the crimes we all know he is committing. What happens next? Who knows? Second, I don't know what we have done, but the news guys have begun to smile on us. Right? many things happened. Important things happened from when we started working on this podcast on Tuesday evening to today. And that's the opposite of the way things happen. So that is good. And finally, if Tish James was truly a friend of the pod, she would have done this press conference

in merch. Just saying. That would have been fun. That would have been, yeah. Then we would have, okay. Just lays out the crimes take us takes a sip from her it's not great dan tumbler and puts it down and gets back to it just gulps down some crooked coffee um okay what do we know about uh what prosecutors actually need to prove here and what the consequences would be for not just Donald Trump, but the Trumps. Again, kids are involved, too, which Bill Barr is very upset about. He said on Fox News, why are you dragging the kids into this? Because they're, you know, grown adults.

Yes, those vulnerable 40-somethings. All they want is their privacy when they're not on Fox News or on Instagram. I think we have to put this in the context of the fact that the New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg investigated these crimes and for reasons that really confuse everyone decided not to bring charges. But what we have to understand is this is a civil case, not a criminal case, which means a couple of things. It means Donald Trump's not going to be marched off to jail. But it also means that the standard of evidence that Letitia James needs to prove is lower in this case. In a criminal case, you need beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, you only need a preponderance of evidence.

And so what she simply has to prove is that Donald Trump, his family, his business, inflated or deflated their financial statements in order to achieve some sort of benefit. They don't even have to prove that they actually achieved those benefits, just that they tried to do it, that they attempted to defraud here. And the consequences of this are what she is seeking is $250 million in damages, a permanent ban on Donald Trump and his family running a business in the state of New York, and a five-year ban on them selling commercial real estate or receiving loans for that purpose. And so this would cripple their business in the state of New York at least and be obviously a huge black mark as well as a huge chunk of money that they may or may not actually have access to. junk of money that they may or may not actually have access to um and so this is a uh you know would be a very very damaging result were it to come to that uh you heard in that clip that james is also making a criminal referral to the feds uh you think merrick garland sees this

referral and it's like get in line pal i got i got a lot got a lot of potential charges on this guy to figure out. He's inciting an insurrection. He's overturning the election. He's stealing nuke secrets and hiding it in his beach house. And now he's committing financial fraud. Like, it's just a long list. It's a long list. How do you choose?

I mean, really, it's really hard if you're Merrick Garland to ever get the bottom of your Trump inbox here. It's like every time you get through one crime, another one shows up. That seemed a lot trickier for him to just decide that no charges will be brought on any of these potential criminal violations. I mean, you would think, you would hope. I mean, like these are obvious. But who knows? Who knows? I think it is important to understand that each of these will happen separately, right? There's one group of people who are investigating the Mar-a-Lago nuclear secrets in the pool house case,

who will make a recommendation to seek an indictment from the active grand jury. who will make a recommendation to seek an indictment from the active grand jury. There is a second group of people, totally separate from that one, who will make a recommendation to Merrick Garland on whether to seek an indictment on something related to January 6th, right? Trying to interfere with the congressional proceeding, inciting violence, all of those things. And then here, this one we have to imagine would just be at the, we don't know that the federal government has of yet started investigating Donald Trump for financial crimes. They may have, but if they have not, this is the very beginning of what we know is always an overly long process. And so I don't know how many, like they're not, they are connected in the political narrative. They're not necessarily connected in the legal narrative, but in terms of

political pressure on the Department of Justice, which should not actually exist, it does – the consequences of not seeking in any of those cases in terms of the broader sense that Donald Trump can get away with anything is much greater every single time another case lands on Garland's desk, I think. Yeah. You know, Trump, per usual, handling this like a champ. He sat down with his pal Sean Hannity Wednesday night to chat about his respect for the law and American law enforcement and also his powers of declassification. Let's let's hear a few moments from that interview. If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified. Even by thinking about it, they've demeaned me for years with this stuff. And now they find out I have very little debt, very, very little, a lot of cash.

We have a great company and we have among the best assets anywhere in the world. You mentioned the word prosecute. I don't think prosecute. I don't think this is prosecutable the fbi coming and raiding mar-a-lago were they looking for the hillary clinton emails that were deleted but they are around someplace were they looking for the spy you had it no no they may be saying they may have thought that it was in there that's it that's it connect the fucking dots dan they went to mar-a-lago looking for hillary's emails i mean that server could be anywhere anywhere they weren't these

weren't my classified dog look i declassified everything just by blinking my eyes blink blink declassified everything so it couldn't have been my shit. It had to have been Hillary's emails, which I don't know how they got in the boxes. Who put them in the boxes? Someone put them in the boxes. It wasn't me. I don't know. Many people are saying other people.

At one point, he calls the people at the National Archives radical leftists. I know. Which he doesn't even say National Archives. He just says NARA, right? NARA, yeah. He's like, everyone knows they're radical leftists. And then he also accused the FBI of planting. he just says nera right yeah he's like oh they're everyone knows they're radical leftists and then he also accused the fbi of planting uh we're back to the planting evidence uh excuse because

declassification isn't working and hannity's like well if they did if they did plant this evidence it's got to be on tape right because he said there's surveillance footage and he goes uh no no it's in another room the best part in my view and there are no bad answers for the question of what's the best part, because it is all great. But when he's like, prosecute, you said prosecute. I didn't say prosecute. Who said prosecute? Did someone say prosecute to you? I haven't heard anything about prosecute.

Just so very clearly, just a wee bit apprehensive about where this whole thing may be headed guilty i'm guilty who said that who said i'm guilty i didn't say did you hear that from somebody you've been talking to garland all right um i want you to know that i'm screaming inside as i ask this question but do you think there will be any political consequences for the republican front runner uh potentially committing bank fraud or, or stealing nuclear secrets or obstructing the investigation into his theft of nuclear secrets or overturning the election or inciting a violent insurrection. Any of it,

any of it. Do you want me to give you the answer you want to hear or the answer you need to hear? I'm a, I'm a need to hear kind of guy, Dan. I mean, no, I don't need-to-hear kind of guy, Dan. I mean, no. I don't need to be affirmed.

I don't need to live in my fantasy world here with my bobblehead dolls and my Fauci votive candle. Yeah, just download your latest episode of Pod Save America and get back on Twitter. and get back on Twitter. Now, look, in all seriousness, we have to understand that political accountability in a highly polarized country happens on the margins. There's not a world where we're just like one guilty verdict, one new story, one new allegation, one new embarrassing Trump gaffe from a bunch of people taking off their MAGA hats and burning them, right? Like that's not just what is going to happen. We are seeing political accountability for Trump happen over the course of time here. It has happened as Trump has reemerged on the political scene. It's happened with all of the allegations and revelations about January 6th

and his role in it. It's happening with the Mar-a-Lago case. This is going to contribute. You're seeing Donald Trump's favorable ratings among Republican voters are down. Are they down as much as common sense, logic, and morality would suggest they should be? Of course not. But with every passing day, there are more and more people who have previously supported Trump who are less on board with him running for president again. And the longer he stays in the news, the greater opportunity Democrats have to deliver accountability. Because ultimately, it's not going to be, we said this back in 2018, we said in 2020, it's not going to be Bob Mueller or Mitt Romney or Letitia James who makes Trump pay a political

price for his legal wrongdoing. It's going to be all of us. If we volunteer, vote, turn out, organize like we did in 2017, 2018, 2020, and upend historical trends, that will deliver potentially, potentially a devastating political blow to Trump's chance to ever lead the Republican Party or run for president again. Counterpoint from Politico headline today. Why Trump's legal woes only make him stronger. I know. I know we're not playing take appreciator today, but there's just this, you this you know look we named we named our rating

system after this publication so of course they would offer us a take that is just the garbage take of all takes from from politico full playbook we've been actually that's like it's a it's a west wing playbook it's even worse than a full playbook. When Politico first emerged on the scene back in 2007, I think, is when they decided, when the devil spawned this publication. Before it was purchased and controlled by a right-wing German? Yes, it was only owned and controlled by... The Innovation Party, the head of the Innovation Party. Yes. controlled by the innovation party, the head of the innovation party. Yes.

Yes. The campaign manager to the Zuckerberg Mattis ticket of 2020. That is jokes for like 10 people. And seven of them are either in the studio or hosting this podcast right now. But like, there was a truth about Politico that people who worked there would tell you, which is they wrote a lot – oftentimes, not always, and there was good journalism that happened periodically. But a lot of times they wrote their headlines in the attempt to try to get Matt Drudge to link them because that would be a massive traffic driver. More traffic equals more money.

It was a startup. They needed to show relevance and business success really quickly. The 2022 version of that are trolly headlines like this that engender liberal rage on Twitter and, frankly, even mentions on this podcast. So in some ways, we are – Mission accomplished. We are – Mission accomplished, political. You did it.

You did it. We are cathartically raging about stupidity, but we are also somehow perversely enriching the right wing billionaire who owns Politico. I'll make a serious point. Please do. Please do. In terms of the political effect of all of this, I do think that your average voter doesn't think highly of Donald Trump anyway. His approval ratings, like you said, are shit. Does the Republican base love him? Yes. Do Republican voters love him as much as they used to? There's evidence that maybe not as much, but he's still got his base, of course. But how are you going to get an average voter to care

about any of this stuff? And I think it is, you know, to the extent that Trump's crimes is to the extent that Trump's crimes somehow affect people's lives, that's sort of the narrative that you've got to weave together. And you heard Tish James do that during the press conference. At one point she said, Trump's crimes are not victimless. When the well-connected and powerful break the law to get more money than they're entitled to, it reduces resources available to working people, small businesses, and taxpayers. Basically making the argument that like, because Trump's's saying oh oh we care about these banks these banks gave me the loans anyway and then they got paid back so it's the why are you so upset about

these banks you know they're the banks and insurers and what the point she's making is no actually when you steal half a quarter of a billion dollars from from banks and insurance companies that means that like average people end up paying the price and i do think as we talk about trump's potential crimes whether it's overturning the election whether it's this whether it's jeopardizing our national security because he's stashing secrets in his pool house we have to talk about the effect that this this criminality has on either the security of the country or average people. That's my best go at trying to get average people to care about Trump's lawbreaking. Yeah, I think that it's always about him. And this validates that case. And that's an easier case to make post-2020 when his entire existence seems

to be about re-litigating an election that happened two years ago than it was in 2016. But this is one more example of pure, selfish, narcissistic grift. He cares about himself, he cares about his rich friends, he doesn't care about you. So as we mentioned, Donald Trump is facing multiple criminal investigations, none of which seem to be going all that well for him right now. Hours after Trump was accused of financial fraud, a three-judge federal appeals court that included two Trump appointees ruled unanimously that he can't actually keep the classified secrets the FBI retrieved from his beach house and that the government may continue to use those documents as evidence in their criminal investigation of

the former president. This came after the special master that Trump's crack legal team nominated to review the Mar-a-Lago documents, Judge Raymond Deary, accused Trump's lawyers of wanting to, quote, have their cake and eat it during a hearing where you might say the special masturbated the former president's legal team. Oh, come on. What are we doing? I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'm a 15-year-old. I couldn't help myself. I'm a, I'm a 15 year old.

I mean, not, not even, I was wondering if you, I was, I was wondering when I wrote it, I'm like, I wonder if he'll notice it or if I can just go right through. I, but you noticed, you noticed it. Yeah. I mean, I do. Oftentimes at least listen to you. Um, I'm not holding my phone when we do this. So it's like, it's really, this is about as focused as I am when I hit any given hour and a half of a week but yeah that's great i assume we're keeping that in right oh yeah i mean have to is it gonna be in the title well it remains to be seen remains

to be seen okay um baited the former president's legal team into admitting they have no evidence that donald trump ever declassified any of the state secrets he stole. Whereas the government provided evidence of classification by marking the documents classified. Turns out that's all you needed to do. Deary then said, as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Again, it was a panel of three judges two of them appointed by trump they said uh the classified documents cannot be part of the special master's

review the government can use them to continue their criminal investigation they basically just ran roughshod over judge eileen cannon's original opinion, slapped it down, and then Cannon today updated her order. And now the classified documents can be part of the criminal investigation and the criminal investigation moves on. Dan, what do you make of the fact that Trump's handpicked special master and two Trump appointed judges chose the law over Donald Trump? Two points. One, this shows the peril of pre-recording an interview because Trump did that Hannity interview earlier in the day. And in it, he had a very long – his defense of himself in this case was an attack on the original judge who signed the search warrant and talked about him as a Trump hater, said that the judge signed the search warrant and talked about him as a Trump hater, said that the judge

signed the search warrant because he hates lower taxes and good education. That's what he said. And then, but that interview aired after two Trump judges who are presumably not Trump haters and probably lovers of lower taxes and good education, I guess, like the fucking rest of us, had just eviscerated the decision from Judge Cannon. So that was just sort of fun to watch in real time. It's one of the rare times when watching Hannity is fun. Second, I think this is just a very – like it's so obvious. It's like good to know that we can return to some sense of common sense logic you know basic jurisprudence here where it's like of course if you cannot even dare try to offer a defense that they are

declassified those those have to go back and the original thing made no sense we're like we're back to normal course of business here and that's great i realize this is not the legal podcast uh at crooked media and we are not lawyers um but it is worth reading the uh the 11th circuit's ruling because it's just like like plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was president but the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified and before the special master plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents. In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal, which is basically like, yeah, the declassification argument is fucked. But that aside, you still don't get to keep the fucking documents, man.

You don't get to keep them. They're not yours. It is not a souvenir box of White House M&Ms that you walk out the door with. It's state secrets. I would just like to update something. While you were talking, I imagined myself going to law school and passing the bar. So I am now, I'm a liar. Yeah. You can do it with your mind. Just like declassifying. I just classified something.

Why do you think they picked Deary in the first place? Like he was on the Trump list. This is so good. It's so good because Trump has, it's important. You sort of have to take a step back because Trump's legal strategy is being spearheaded by a guy named Boris Epstein who was fired from the Trump White House for incompetence in like 60 days into the administration. Which is a really – it's a high bar. Yeah, he is just a moron. He's an absolute moron. But he's just – he's so dumb that he is willing to entertain Trump's insanity here. But they did actually hire a real attorney to handle this, a guy who was the Solicitor General of Florida. I think – I read somewhere on Twitter, so it's definitely true that they basically had to give him $3 million in a down payment to do it, which is probably going in his bail fund, his future bail fund.

I'd make sure I'd get paid up front there. That's right. I'm sure he didn't get paid up front there. That's right. I'm sure he didn't get a check. It's probably in cash, right? So they had to find someone who was, because of this real attorney, who was quasi-credible, who would not be embarrassing to offer to the court, who could possibly get chosen. They couldn't offer former Judge Jeanine Pirro. That was not a legitimate offer, although I'm sure Trump pushed for that for three consecutive hours in a meeting. And so they eventually landed on this guy,

Deary. And the logic is so Fox News brainworms is that the reason they thought he would be pro-Trump was that he sat on the FISA court. And this is like one of the great talking points of Trump defense in the Russia investigation is that there was an instance where an FBI agent may not have been honest with a FISA judge in order to get the Carter Page warrant. And therefore, because this guy, he was not the FISA judge, he was just a FISA judge, would therefore be anti-FBI and therefore take a tough stance against the FBI. That is how they ended up with this guy.

Can't see how this plan did not work. It's just like, it's so, it is so Fox News brain worms because like Trump's trying to explain it to Hannity last night. And I'm listening to it. I was like, I can't. There's no like even Hannity couldn't follow the logic of the argument, which is how you know it's really bad. So it seems like Trump could be in some trouble now. Look, the only option he has now is to appeal it to the Supreme Court. Of course, we don't know what the Supreme Court is going to do.

But like, you know what? You had two Trump judges on the appeals court. Like, I'm sure Trump could get himself a Clarence Thomas to go along with Eileen Cannon's argument. Maybe he gets himself an Alito. I just don't think he's getting a majority at the Supreme Court on this one. Okay, just... I'm going to predict that. I'm predicting it. Elijah, if you're listening right now, the headline on the tweet about this clip is John puts his trust in Brett Kavanaugh.

That's it. Yes. So just... Me and squee. So that's it. But anyway, so the government moves forward in their criminal investigation for now we shall see um all right dan as we all know the best segues are the ones that you have to

announce so here goes with less than two months until election day the party whose presidential front runner has been accused of breaking multiple laws is now trying to portray democratic candidates as soft on crime how's that i would say that there are times when we do this podcast, when I'm reminded of the fact that you are one of the great speech writers of your generation, because I suggested landing on that one. You a hundred percent did. We, I suggested we do this segment with an awkward segue. And then I wrote an awkward segue joke, and then you just crushed it. I just punched it up. You just punched it up a little bit. I mean, it's just like, I know that I had stumbled ass backwards into a career in writing. I wrote books.

Subscribe to messagebox.substack.com. But you were like our true writer. And that was evident in that segue. Look, I write a couple segues a week. And that's it. You write message boxes and books. I write a couple segues a week. That's all you get from me. A few tweets. Maybe a few tweets. A few emails.

Just a few. Very few emails. A couple texts. According to CNN, Republicans have so far spent $9 million on negative ads about crime. Here's one that they're running in Wisconsin against Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes. What kind of Democrat is Mandela

Barnes? He's a defund the police Democrat. It's about reallocating funds. Catch that. He's talking about defunding the police. Now murder is up in Milwaukee 40 percent. Mandela Barnes, a dangerous Democrat. All right. So Mandela Barnes especially has had a ton of money dumped on this race against him by Republicans. He was he had sort of a narrow lead in the polls. Some of the most recent polls show Ron Johnson, America's dumbest senator, retaking that lead. Potentially, these ads have had an effect. How do you think Democrats should handle ads like these and more broadly the crime attack from Republicans now that they've gone from gas prices to inflation to immigration to crime now they've landed on crime? It always, always ends on crime.

Every time. And the power of that, of the crime attack, is always somewhat dependent on the salience of crime as an issue in people's real lives. And it is higher now than it has been in a long time. This ad scares the shit out of me. There is a similar one running against John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. They're popping up everywhere. And what's happening here is Democrats have used, successfully and correctly, abortion to define Republicans as out of the mainstream of American values, as too extreme to be trusted with power. Because if you are someone who supports these extreme positions on abortion, you are also someone who can't be trusted not just on abortion, but on Social Security, Medicare, peaceful transition

of power, everything else. And Republicans are responding by trying to use crime to do the same thing. And the reason why crime is powerful is abortion as an issue has been very effective for Democrats because it unites our base and divides theirs. Crime unites their base and divides ours. And they're trying to shift the tone there. And so it's very, very worrisome. And I think as Democrats think about how to respond to it, it's very challenging, right? You have to respond to these ads without repeating the attack by just going out and saying, I don't support defund the police. Who said defund the police? Like just repeating the attack, as our friend Anat Shankar always says, is a huge mistake. You don't want to validate the

legitimacy of the argument. You also have to recognize what this is. It is not about crime. Not that crime isn't a real issue a lot of voters care about. In Republican advertising, more often than not, crime is a proxy for race. It is a way, just as immigration and border caravans and terrorism was under Bush, it is a way to scare the living shit out of white people, to try to get some of those Biden Republicans, more conservative or moderate-leaning independents who are almost all white to stick with Republicans. And that's why you have to understand that's what's happening because you have to define your response in a way that understands what the underlying strategic objective of the other side is. And so I think the way to respond to this is first – and this is something we've said on this podcast a number of times. It's a lesson that Obama always taught us is when Republicans do things like this, they're trying to bait you into their issues.

As you don't play their game, you call out their game. So the response here I think is to – you have to defend yourself. You have to state your record, your support for well-trained, accountable policing, for crime prevention programs, and then pivot to calling out why Republicans are making this attack. What are they trying to distract from? What are they trying to achieve? Why are they trying to divide us?

It's going to be slightly different for each candidate. We should be just perfectly honest that because race is the undertones here, black and brown candidates across the country are always more vulnerable to these attacks. We saw them on Gillum in Florida. We've seen them on Abrams. There's a reason they're doing this so explicitly on Mandela Barnes. But that is sort of the basic approach I think we need to take. But you have to hit back fast and you have to hit back hard. Yeah. Look, I think you can argue whether the salience of crime as an issue is due to an actual rise in violent crime in many places across the country or some combination of the media and republicans scaring the shit out of people about crime um because that's sort of what happens you

can argue back and forth it's both it's both it's both right but but the reality is there's a there's a good number of people in this country who are now worried that crime is on the rise. That's just the truth. So I did all these focus groups for the wilderness, and I start off by asking people, unlike a poll where you give them a list of issues, just like, what are the issues affecting you and your community? And in every single group, across demographics, every place I went, inflation, inflation, housing, cost of living is top of the list. What was interesting is my last focus group was in Atlanta.

It was with young black voters in their 20s and 30s who had all voted for Joe Biden and are now sort of not sure what they're going to do, whether they're going to vote, who they're going to vote for. And I asked about what issues matter most to you. And housing did come up. Atlanta's too expensive. Atlanta's too expensive. And then almost, I don't know, half the group, a little more than half the group said crime, gun violence. And in fact, then when I asked about Brian Kemp, they all think Brian Kemp sucked. When I asked about Stacey Abrams, they're like, I want to hear more about her plans. And a couple people said i i heard she was for i heard she was for defunding the police i don't uh i can't i can't be for that so and she's not she's not for the record and she's not and she's not of

course but you know you are absolutely correct that republicans racialize this issue, and it has been for decades in this country. But it is also true that right now in cities across the country, people are worried about crime across racial lines. And I do think that's why, you know, Data for Progress did a bunch of message testing that you sent me this morning. And they tested all kinds of messages about crime and a whole bunch of other topics as well.

And that's the most popular message for Dems is we need to be tough on crime, but we also need to be smart about it. We need to invest in programs proven to reduce crime like community policing and after school programs. There's even a message about the root causes of crime that was very popular and worked for Dems. There's even a message about the root causes of crime that was very popular and worked for Dems. We need to address the root causes of crime if we want to make communities safer. Investing in education, good jobs, social services, affordable housing will help reduce crime. Talking about well-trained, accountable policing works. And then, of course, there was a message about defund that they tested that was, we need to defund the police and make sure that money goes back into the communities that need it. We have to end the militarization of police and stop racial profiling.

Throwing money at the problem will not solve it. That message performed in the bottom 1% of all 3,000 plus messages tested on every single topic. Just to level set on the efficacy of the defund message. So that's the reality that's out there. One other thing, one addendum to what I said before, in the response, Democrats should not shy away from pressing the case on popular gun safety laws like assault weapon bans and universal background checks in this case. Too often, we sort of think, we overthink guns as a powerful political issue. And we're sort of like, what about the people in the rural areas here?

But on those issues, even in those parts of the state, there is large majority support for them. And so in the counterpunch, we should be hitting Republicans for, among other things, not doing anything to take guns out of the hands of criminals or keep guns off the street or ban weapons of war in our schools or things like that. That absolutely has to be part of it. And it undergirds the larger argument that Republicans are incredibly extreme. Yes. And I don't think Democrats should shy away from demanding accountability in policing, right? People want accountable police officers. People want well-trained police officers. They're going to actually focus on violent crime and not police officers who abuse their power.

Right. Like that is a popular position. But they do want they do want public safety. They do want community safety. And they're willing to say that to get community safety, you don't just need policing. You need mental health services. You need social services. They're totally willing to believe that that's what people want. You need mental health services. You need social services. They're totally willing to believe that that's what people want. But you need to get a anti filibuster pro-choice majority in the Senate. And so Democrats really need to fight back. So for the next week, our Senate fund at Vote Save America will be dedicated to flipping Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The VSA community has already stepped up big and helped raise over one hundred thousand dollars each for the Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, as well as a bunch of other competitive

races. But just right for right now, we're going to focus on helping Mandela Barnes and John Fetterman finish strong. So if you head to votesaveamerica.com slash Senate and chip in today, you can support those two campaigns so they can fight back against a lot of these ads. And they could be our path to, again, a filibuster-proof Senate majority. All right. When we come back, Dan will talk to Carlos Odio from Eckie's Research. This week, Eckie's Research issued a new memo about Latino voters left in limbo. Here to talk about the memo and how Democrats can persuade Latino voters is Eki's Research co-founder, Carlos Odeo. Carlos, great to see you. Dan, thanks for having me on. Good to see you too.

Absolutely. So tell us about your memo, what you found and what the status of Latino vote is right now as we are, whatever it is, 50 days away from the midterms? Sure. Well, look, as you know, there was actually a shift in Latino vote from 2016 to 2020, where, you know, if Trump got three in 10 Latino voters in 2016, he got closer to four in 10 in 2020. And the question everyone had was, will that trend continue? Would it get worse for Democrats? Would it return to kind of pre-2016 levels? Or would it kind of stay the same? And the real kind of unsatisfactory answer is that we don't quite know yet. What our polling suggests, and I was looking at a lot of different data, including, you know, our own polling and 16,000 interviews in 10 states, is things haven't gotten worse for Democrats among Latinos, but they haven't also gotten better. And there's just a lot of uncertainty at this point, lots of voters on the fence in key states and kind of signs pointing in different directions. When you say voters on the fence, are these people who have decided to vote in our choosing between Democrats and Republicans, or is it

Democrats, Republicans, or not engaging in the process this time around? Yeah, that's a great question, right? We've got a big column of undecided. Many of those are folks who previously probably would have voted for Democrats. Some of them previously voted for Republicans, but I think it's a bigger chunk who are, for example, Biden voters, but kind of had moved into this more persuadable space. And the reality is we have a big chunk of voters were at this point kind of undecided. Many of those had previously voted for Democrats, had even voted for Biden in 2020. And now I think the question is, do they defect from Democrats essentially, or do they defect to the couch, right? Many of them might just not vote

at all. They don't find Republicans to be an appealing alternative, and so they might not participate at all. But we are still seeing a chunk who are folks who look like likely voters, who tell us they're likely to vote, who at this point are just not sure who they are going to vote for. That column is somewhat narrowed as the year has gone on, and yet it's still a larger segment than I think either political party would be comfortable with at this point. And that's sort of a double whammy for Democrats,

because obviously we can, particularly given where this election is taking place, right? Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Texas, all kinds of places where the Latino vote is incredibly consequential. And even in states that we don't commonly think of as having large Latino populations, Latino vote can be swing like Wisconsin and North Carolina, Pennsylvania, for instance. But so we have two challenges. One is how do we maintain the margin or improve upon the margin in 2020? And how do we get sufficient turnout? Because in a world where the margin doesn't change, but the overall number

changes, we probably lose in that scenario too. Is that correct? Yeah, essentially, I think that's right. And I'd say kind of two interesting quirks there, which is to some extent, the voters with whom Trump made gains in 2020 were kind of a low propensity voter. It was not the likeliest. In fact, I was just looking at a Florida poll and it is the least likely voters will actually look the most Republican at this point. And so this assumption that all non-voting Latinos are democratic has been seriously offended. I don't think they're Republican either. It's actually, they're just very swing. They're not hard partisans. They're

making a decision on a case by case basis. And we're going to have, you tell me, but I think we're going to have high turnout all around. I think both sides are going to see historically high turnout for a midterm election, certainly higher than we were expecting at the beginning of this cycle. And so the folks who are coming in, they still need information, education from Democrats to keep that margin up. Your point about it mattering everywhere. In Wisconsin, we ran a bunch of scenarios about what levels of Latino support you would need in order for a Democrat to win statewide, whether we're talking about Barnes or talking about Evers. And the Latino vote is critical in Wisconsin in a very narrow range of

scenarios. And yet, Wisconsin has found itself in that very narrow range of scenarios in two of the last three major elections. So you kind of have to bet on the Latino vote being important and you need the margin, you know, you need support above 60%, which it's not quite there yet. So in your memo, you offer some advice to Democrats on how they can improve our process of Latino voters between now and the fall. What is that advice? Yeah. The number one thing I think we learned is we were treating this as a purely persuadable vote. And I would say that's not quite right in the sense that we are talking about a lot of voters who are more democratically inclined. They're like I said, many of the ones that I would be most worried about actually voted for Biden in 2020. And so it's helpful to understand, OK, then why are they at this point uncertain? And so it's helpful to understand, OK, then why are they at this point uncertain? Republicans have not done a good sales job. They have not sold them. They're like, I've looked at that as an alternative and it ain't going to work for me, but they're not sold on Democrats.

So what is holding them back? And what's holding them back is the economy, its concerns about the economy. It is a concern that Democrats perhaps don't share the same priorities when it comes to the economy or the same values when it comes to the economy. Like, do Democrats actually prioritize what I am going through and how I think about my economic struggles? Or are Democrats going to get distracted by the topic of the day and the thousand things that, as a big tent, Democrats end up having to talk about? Are Democrats going to be kind of ruthless in the way that they need to in terms of upgrading and handling the economy? And do they value hard work? And those are kind of like the concerns we heard in the 2020 election. But in some ways, this makes it, I always dare say this word, but like easier for Democrats, because the task is just reassure people on the economy.

It is reassure people on the economy and kind of overcome some of our worst instincts that as progressives we can kind of get into and get a little bit back to basics, like lean into our strengths. They believe Democrats care more. Then there's like a bridge, though, from just care to care, fight and deliver. And there's plenty of proof points for that. There's plenty to show. Now it's actually like communicating on that. It is making like the voters themselves the heroes of their own story. It is acknowledging the role that Latinos and other hardworking people have in the economy. And it's talking about the things that we have done, not in terms of handouts, but as opportunity that is created. Are there any Democrats out there who you think are doing that well, who are, as you say in your memo, centering middle-class hardworking Latino families at the center of the messaging?

Yeah. First of all, whatever Mark Kelly is doing is phenomenal, like bordering on miraculous, because if you look at Mark Kelly's numbers from when we first ever pulled him in the summer of 2019, among Latinos, they've never budged. Everything else around him swirls, other democratic fundamentals go up and down. And among Latinos, Mark Kelly's numbers are incredibly resilient. And so I think there is a model there, both in terms, by the way, like there's a lot of spending that is bolstering him. But I think there's a way that he's talking about that. I've heard it a lot coming from Senator Warnock. I think Senator Warnock has understood, as does, by the way, Stacey Abrams, you know, talking about this kind of hardworking Latino and centering that message. So there's a lot of that that I think has coming up. Some of it more newly, people who come around to it. But I think you have in some of these key races, Democrats have been a good model of that kind of messaging. in this election cycle, you know, there was some hope that Democrats might get something done on immigration. There was fears about what would happen in the community if they did not. How central is immigration, you know, defined as broadly as possible? You know, what's happening

at the border, Republican responses to immigration, including what DeSantis is doing, the fact that another, you know, obviously, this legislation isn't over yet, but I think we could probably safely say yet another period of time in which Democrats controlled how Senate and White House have ended without passing comprehensive immigration reform? This is a much longer one, but I'm going to give you like the shortest version of this that is possible because it is so complicated. It is so fraught because as you understand, you know, Latinos, there's a reason that many Latinos who are actually pretty conservative have held back from Republicans. And it's that over a 10-year period that started in the 2006, 2007 immigration

fights, there was a perception created of Republicans as being anti-immigrant, but it extended to be anti-Latino. And it wasn't just about a set of policies. It was the rhetoric. It was an understanding of, I'm not invited in that coalition. That's not the party for me. And that hardened pretty well. And then what you see in the Trump era is immigration kind of being moved a little bit to the side, which is, I know, ironic because Trump was doing all these atrocities. But toward the end of the cycle, he stopped talking about immigration because he understood he had an opportunity with Latinos. The economy was top of mind for everybody. And then after the election, Democrats didn't really want to talk about it either. And so it just kind of became this like neglected issue. And the only

ones talking about it were Fox News. And all we were talking about was the border. And so we see in our polling is some of Biden's worst, some of the president's worst approval numbers are on his handling of immigration among Latinos. And it's like all kinds of Latinos, like wherever you are and how you think about immigration, like disapprove of Biden. And, and what you see is like these persuadable Latinos who are the ones that we're focused on right now, they believe that something needs to be done about the border. They see the border as kind of a public safety concern, just like order. You know, it's like when you go on the border in Texas, people are like, this is about homelessness in downtown Brownsville. You know, this is not about like federal immigration policy in the way that we all think of it. Those same people will

tell you, I of course believe in a pathway to citizenship. I of course believe in taking care of those who are here. I clearly believe in like a humane and orderly process. And so it's complicated. I think DeSantis has kind of walked into the wrong end of the spectrum, frankly, on what he's done, because it has moved it from the order and security framework to this like framework of humanity. Like how are we treating people where you actually have much higher levels of rejection? Of course, there's got to be people to capitalize on it and take advantage of that moment and message around what Dan Santis is doing. Fox is kind of owning it at this point. But it is to say, I think that's actually an

example of a Republican weakness on immigration. So, you know, you talk a little bit, you talked earlier about Democrats, you know, getting their economic messaging, we're talking about what they're for, who they're going to fight for, how hard they're going to fight, what they have delivered, what, you know, I assume a continued Democratic majority could deliver. How should Democrats talk about Republicans if they want to get to that group that, you know, surprisingly large group of persuadable voters that you talk about? Yeah. Well, like I said, you know, the advantage Democrats have is that Latinos tend to believe that they care more. And then, of course, the concern is that do they actually then fight and deliver? For Republicans, probably their greatest strength is a perception that they really prioritize the economy and that they're business obsessed and that they're ruthless in handling the economy. The downside of that is that they're ruthless, like the sense of, okay, they don't actually give a shit about me. And so anything that they do that reinforces the extent to which they put an extreme agenda ahead of taking care of people,

that they have the wrong priorities, that they're out of touch. And so it is, you have that in terms of the votes they've taken on economic measures, drug pricing, out-of-pocket health care costs are such a good issue here for Democrats among Latinos. The fact that Republicans have been on the wrong side of that, along with the fact that they are on the wrong side of abortion rights, that they are taking away rights. What we have found is support for a Democrat proactively talking about their position on abortion, like let's expand abortion access. You get kind of mixed numbers among Latinos, but when it's the frame of Republicans are going to take this away from you,

it is outright rejection. The trick for Democrats is to paint these Republicans as extreme and out of touch and have the wrong priorities and then use that as a pivot to the economic argument. It is not about, let's just have an argument about abortion. Let's just have a debate about gun safety. It's, let's use that to illustrate the ways in which Republicans don't actually care about you. So we can talk about the ways in which Democrats are actually working on the things that you care about. John, right before we did this interview, John Favreau and I had a discussion about messaging and basically, not Latino specific, broader to the entire universe of persuadable voters. And I use persuadable to include quote unquote swing voters and people who are swinging between not voting and voting.

And it's basically that exact advice, right? That abortion is a gateway to have a conversation about extremism and all the ways in which Republicans cannot be trusted, will not fight for you, et cetera. Is it sort of fair to say that Democrats could actually have one narrative that could reach all of our target voters here? And it's not like, obviously you're going to center, you know, you're going to show the diversity of our coalition and all the various different people affected by it. But it's like, the advice you're giving is very, very good advice. And I think it's probably the same advice if I was doing a similar conversation about how we do slightly better with rural voters or how do we get young voters.

It's going to be a very similar set of guidance. Is that correct? Yeah, I think you kind of caught on to our Trojan horse at Equis, which is we often talk about things that you need to do to be better with Latinos. And it's actually just a way to talk about what needs to get done more broadly with the American electorate. But people will listen to us on the Latino piece. But that's exactly right. I mean, it's broadly true across all Americans that that is the approach that, yeah, your poll might be showing that you should be just talking about abortion all the time because it's your top testing hit. But don't forget, the voters you most need are going to go into the ballot box with their economic anxieties

on their mind. Abortion and other issues along those lines are already kind of baked in to their assessment of Democrats. They get that Democrats are better on this. They just need reassurance on the pieces that they have maybe some questions, maybe some outstanding questions about. That said, Latinos also need to feel invited to the party. And that's where it's a little bit different, where identity does come into play and feeling like Democrats get it, right? I think the weakness has been a sense that Democrats neglect Latinos, take them for granted. And so there has to be some explicit invitation kind of in the mix, but the core messaging is the same thing. Carlos, thank you so much.

This was incredibly helpful and insightful. Everyone should check out your memo and follow all of your work. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Dan. All right. Thanks to Carlos Odeo for joining us today and everyone have a great weekend.

We'll talk to you next week. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and Hayley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineer the show.

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