Pod Save America - “Trump hits the Hydroxy.”

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

The President takes a dangerous drug to own the libs, Ted Cruz gets in a Twitter fight with the pod, our new Change Research poll shows Joe Biden with a small lead in Michigan, and Republicans are done with helping the economy. Then Dave Weigel of the Washington Post talks to Dan about the digital strategies shaping the Biden and Trump campaigns.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to The Washington Post's Dave Weigel about the digital strategy shaping the Biden and Trump campaigns. Before that, we'll talk about the results of a brand new Michigan poll we conducted with Change Research as part of our Polar Coaster series and what the poll means for the decision by Trump and the Republicans in Congress to put a hold on any additional economic relief. We'll also talk about the president's favorite new drug and why Ted Cruz is an asshole. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben talk about why the

media is barely covering the news that Al Qaeda pulled off its first successful terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9-11 and the many ways that Mike Pompeo is corrupting the State Department. Also, Annamarie Cox is back with a very cool new season of With Friends Like These. This season is focused exclusively on converts, people who have changed their minds and views and beliefs in very big ways. And she's going to explore why that happens by talking to some converts themselves. It's great. Go listen, subscribe with friends like these wherever you get your podcasts.

And one quick note from us, because of Memorial Day, we will be releasing the next episode of Pod Save America first thing on Tuesday morning. Big Memorial Day weekend, Dan. A lot of plans, right? Yeah, we're going to have a big barbecue with the three of us. It is, I will say, Kyla's birthday on Saturday.

She will be two. Oh, nice. If you thought trying to convince the American people that spending a bunch of money on health care actually reduced the deficit, try convincing a two-year-old that it is more fun to have your birthday on a computer than with your friends at your house. Oh, no. Every bit of communication skill and trick I have, like message repetition, spin, everything. Someday she'll be able to laugh at what happened on her second birthday.

Yes, yes. Won't we all? Someday. All right. Let's get to the news. So we have a lot of important stuff to talk about, but I do think it's worth mentioning that right after we finish Monday's recording, our favorite salesman announced that he's been using his own snake oil. Dan, the president of the United States tells us that in order to prevent COVID-19, he's been hitting the hydroxychloroquine pretty hard.

A drug that the medical establishment says is ineffective at best and deadly at worst. So I guess my question to you is, why is the Trump campaign trying to make this election about which candidate is mentally fit for the presidency? I have to say, I'm quite impressed. Did you write all of those jokes yourself? That's good. Because I wrote, you know, you're sitting around on a Wednesday night trying to prepare for the pod. There's not much.

I mean, that was great. And if I was if I was Travis, I'd be quite nervous. But Travis doesn't write my jokes. Oh, that's the other John. I'm sorry. I wrote in the outline, make joke about Trump drinking his own bleach. And I never got far enough to make a joke. So I appreciate you doing all of those. I mean, it, it, it actually like we're joking about it and we're laughing because that's better than crying. But is it really that funny? really that funny that the president i mean it happened on monday right as we right as of course right after the pod went out and like i was reading it on twitter in the office i hear emily like scream about it because she was watching tv and we're just both sitting there like is this

fucking serious right now like what i mean it the president is taking a drug against the recommendations of his own government to own the libs. That's right. I was just about to say that. I almost wrote that, actually, that he was taking the drug to own the libs. And the thing is, we don't know if he's taking it because we don't believe him. And we don't even believe his doctor, who sent a very vaguely worded note.

And so it's like kind of everything. It is a fair explanation of why we're in a giant mess in the middle of this pandemic, that the president's a liar. He thinks it's the best thing to do, the thing in his interest, the thing he decided to do in the moment is to tell people that he's taken an unproven drug

for a disease he doesn't have. Yeah, I mean, the reason it is not entirely funny at all is like, I don't give a shit. Trump can take whatever he wants. I don't care what happens to him. But you know, the first time he brought up hydroxychloroquine, a bunch of people did try to take it on their own.

They asked their doctors for it. That's dangerous to the people who could possibly be taking it. It's also, there's a lot of people with conditions who actually need hydroxychloroquine and there was a shortage of it because of donald trump and it also just fits like you said with his general demeanor throughout this entire crisis that there is some magical elixir some easy solution to get out of all this like he cannot comprehend that we might be going through something that requires shared national sacrifice

that might take a long time that we're gonna have to get through together. He is just searching every single day for the magic potion that's gonna end this right away. And in doing that, he does speak to a desire in all of us to like get the fuck out of our homes and like return to normal life. Right. So that's why it's still dangerous, because there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, I do want this magic drug. I do want this to be over early. But the danger is by constantly.

I mean, he said here, you know, I listen to my gut on this. Like I've been receiving some very good news about this. Right. Like I've been receiving some very good news about this, right? Like throughout the course of this pandemic, he has listened to Fox News hosts and his own fucking gut over public health officials and experts. And that's why I mean, there was a report in The New York Times last night. Thirty six thousand lives could have been saved if the federal government had acted just one week earlier to impose social distancing measures. Thirty six thousand lives. And we didn't because Trump thought it was all going to go away. And he was he was worried about upsetting the stock market. I mean, don't we have warehouses full of hydroxychloroquine in this country? Like,

didn't we spend a ton of effort trying to acquire all the worldwide doses of it just in case it turned out to be right? Yeah, now they're all for Trump, I guess. Yeah, I mean, great. Like Scro going to, like Scrooge McDuck, he's just going to go diving into the vault of hydroxychloroquine. Well, at least Jesse now has his guidance for what the graphic for the pod should look like. All I can tell you so far is I seem to be okay. That was his quote about it.

Well, they've taken the not believing in science thing really one step too far. Yeah, it's incredibly dangerous. And it's indeed and it's it's even more so because we are not out of like we're going to be dealing with this for a very long time. And you shudder to think how he's going to treat this crisis, particularly if there's a second wave in the fall and we're even deeper into the election, what the things that he's going to say. It's very scary. All right. One more quick loop to close before we move on to the real news.

And it is, of course, related to the greatest crime in the history of crimes. This week, the Twitter troll who Trump installed to run our intelligence agencies declassified an email where former National Security Advisor Susan Rice summarized an Oval Office meeting in January of 2017 between herself, Obama, Joe Biden, Jim Comey and Sally Yates, where the former president heard about Michael Flynn's secret conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Trump pundits had long believed that Rice's email would prove Obama to be the criminal mastermind behind a coup attempt against Donald Trump. And sure enough, Dan Rice was caught writing that Obama wanted to be sure that, quote, every aspect of this issue is handled by the intelligence and law enforcement communities by the book. They got him, Dan.

Isn't that exactly what you would write if you were committing a crime? I mean, people might hear you say that and laugh, but that is now the explanation by all of the Trump pundits that, of course, Susan Rice would write an email saying that Obama said to do it by the book because Susan Rice knew that years from now, Rick Grinnell would declassify the email and she wanted to keep the conspiracy going by letting everyone know that back in 2017, she wanted to make everyone believe that Barack Obama was doing things by the book. It all makes sense.

It's also just worth noting that Barack Obama warned Donald Trump to not hire Michael Flynn, which would have been a really dumb idea if your plan was to entrap Donald Trump by sticking him

with a compromised and investigated national security advisor. Yeah. No one read Obama into Obamagate. That is the problem. Yeah, everyone forgets now because, you know, Trump is like screaming about Obamagate

and all that bullshit. When the two of them met right after the election, like it was a fairly cordial meeting when Barack Obama was trying to be as helpful as possible and said, by the way, you've got this guy, Mike Flynn. I had fired him. He's bad news. Get yourself a better national security advisor.

Why would he say that? Why would he say that if he wanted to screw Trump over? I don't fucking understand. And everyone agrees with the account of that meeting. This is the problem with this, is you fucking go down a rabbit hole. It makes you go down a rabbit hole. And then you end up sounding crazy because you're talking about all these details of all these meetings that most people in the country probably don't know about and don't give a shit about. This is the problem.

Yeah, it is. We it like there's a larger conversation about the incentive structure within Republican politics in the Trump era that would lead them down a path of focusing an enormous amount of energy they don't need, which is injecting the much more popular president into the election when that president is much more popular than Trump, with the very voters that Trump needs to persuade in order to win. How you get into that position says so much about how conservatism is no longer some sort of political philosophy or political movement other than reflexive racism and general corporate greed. It's essentially an attention economy, right? Where the more shameless you are, the more willing you are to say that the grass is blue and the sky is green. That is seen as your commitment to the cause, right? And that's exactly where they took a – like they did, they're so dumb.

They decided that they were going to titillate people with this Susan Rice email that if only we could get it declassified, that would spark, that would open up the doors to Obamagate. So Susan Rice was like, cool, declassify my email. Do it, do it right now. And they're like, we got her. She must

be bluffing, so we're going to do it. And they do it, and it says the exact opposite of what they think. So one, under our normal rational group of people, would look at it and say, well, maybe we'll move on to another fake crime. But instead, they take a piece of clearly exculpatory evidence and treat it as evidence of the crime that didn't happen. And like they constantly get hoisted on their own baton, but they don't care because they have no shame. That's that's exactly right. And again, it's not just Trump. It's not just like the craziest Trump pundits. It's like the broader Republican Party.

Multiple senators are jumping on this, Republican senators saying, oh, this proves somehow that because Obama wanted to do it by the book, he's really a criminal. Here's what Ted Cruz tweeted, quote, wow, ongoing spying from an outgoing POTUS on the incoming POTUS directed by Obama himself is unprecedented in the 243 years of our nation's history. So, Dan, I will admit that in a moment of weakness, I replied to that tweet and I called Ted Cruz a fucking fraud. Tommy also replied, calling him a pathetic liar. And then Ted Cruz did respond with, quote, Obama bros are all simultaneously attacking this tweet using near identical

language vitor manages to avoid expletives which is really the first time someone has ever said that about tommy um it's curious running screaming away from the crime scene doesn't typically convey calm or innocence and that is reading ted cruz's tweet about us was like, this is why it's not worth it. Like, this is why it is just not worth engaging with these people ever because it's not on the level. There's no kind of exculpatory evidence

or facts or anything to change their minds. They're never going to back down. They're never going to be caught in a lie. So, like, there's no point. There is no aha moment. Like you said, they cannot be shamed.

And they actually are quite good at weaponizing our outrage to further their goals. Right? Like Ted Cruz sent this absurd tweet. He knew it was absurd. He's not a stupid person. That's the thing. No. Ted Cruz sent this absurd tweet. He knew it was absurd. He's not a stupid person. That's the thing. No, well, I always wonder, like, do these people believe the bullshit that they're spewing because they are so trapped in their information bubble and they just, they really do believe it? And Ted Cruz is smarter than that.

And so his tweets were proof to me, oh, this guy knows he's fucking lying. He knows it. And he's just doing it anyway. He just doesn't care. Yeah, I think that's right about Ted Cruz, just because he believes in nothing, right? Whatever. He's lying to Ted. Yeah, whatever. The best thing for Ted Cruz in that moment is what he will do. And his entire career has been that, going from George Bush's campaign attorney to a tea party for a tea party populist from Harvard Law with a wife who worked at Goldman Sachs to giving a speech about voting your conscience at the convention to slovenly endorsing Trump like at any moment like he just goes he just goes right for whatever is best for Ted Cruz. But I think your information bubble is exactly right for the overwhelming majority, not Republican voters, but Republican leaders from Trump on down. And we often think about Fox and sort of their affiliate Fox Juniors as this one-way propaganda machine, right, Where it's like, and I think that's how Roger Ailes thought of it, which is, I know what's true and what's not. And I'm going to use this to weaponize the anger of Republican voters.

I'm going to give them a steady diet of things. It's all part of my political strategy. But at some point the Republican propaganda machine became self-aware and now they all live inside the matrix. That is where they get all their information. They believe these things and they govern. Like you to get reelected is based entirely on the fact that they are listening to a bunch of fake economists on Fox say it's going to be a V-shaped recovery. Because saying it's a V-shaped recovery makes Donald Trump happy, which then gives them more ratings. And if you say the things that Donald Trump makes Donald Trump happy, then you're going to curry favor with his base. And it just moves on and on and on again. And the Republicans have already lost track with the reality a long time ago i think don't take cruises

as an attorney he knows what that email means but he also knows that if first he does the shameless tweet then he gets the donald trump retweet and then he can find a liberal blue check mark in this case you and tommy and and claim victimization and and be able and then a bunch of people will say ted cruz own the obama bros retweet hashtag maga hashtag no mask but also how sad is that that a u.s senator who ran for president is like spending his time he shouldn't even know who me and tommy are like what is he doing we're in the middle of a fucking pandemic like you know 90 plus thousand americans have died we've got more than like almost 40 million people unemployed and ted cruz is sitting there like vitor avoided expletives like what are you fucking doing help

the people of texas do something man you're a fucking senator. I mean, that's that's how they see their job now. It's also like you can tell that Ted Cruz was smart enough to know how crazy his about Flynn because they didn't trust that Flynn wasn't, you know, having some kind of connections with the government that just sabotaged our election, which seems completely understandable. Yeah, and was borne out to be a correct judgment had they gone down that path because like three weeks later, Trump invited that same Russian ambassador into the Oval Office and divulged a classified operation with the Israelis.

I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, this is this is the problem with and, you know, Rhodes said this the other day, but it's like this is the other problem with it's muller's fault too in a way like muller deciding not to reach a conclusion and yet still like muller lays out all these contacts between the trump campaign and the russians and basically says i can't prove a conspiracy legally but of course there was all this collusion and because of bill barr and every and donald trump and everyone else republican said no collusion. The whole thing, Mueller thing was fake. And therefore, if the whole Mueller thing is fake, then anything that came out of it was also fake. And therefore, it was a whole, it was a, you know, it was a coup against Donald Trump. And it was a phony investigation in the first place, right?

Like each conspiracy builds on the last. And so in their minds, it makes sense to say, well, this was all the Obama campaign setting them up anyway, even though the investigation was more than well-deserved and bore a lot of fruit. And we also just have to say again that the entire idea of Democrats trying to steal the election was a situation in which they got the FBI to investigate both Hillary Clinton and Trump, inform the public before the election about the investigation of Hillary Clinton and not tell them about Trump, which was a very poorly executed plan to steal an election.

And then again, and then once they couldn't steal the election, tried to stage the coup by the former president warning the new president that his national security advisor could have Russian ties. Yes. And they're very mad at Andrew McCabe, the FBI official who worked on this, because he leaked. But we now know that the leak he did was harmful to Hillary Clinton. Anyway. It's so fucking stupid. I can't believe we just spent time on this.

But these are talking points for those of you who have to do Zoom family reunions with your MAGA uncles. So run with it, people. And here's partly why i wanted to do it fucking joe rogan on his podcast which gets millions and millions of people to listen was out there the other day telling people oh obama definitely spied on trump it was a crime blah blah blah blah blah and there's a lot of fucking people who listen to that who just are not going to know any better and now he's like off to fucking spotify so like these things get filtered through very large channels and amplified and we can laugh at it all we want but you know when i sat there with focus groups and i was like why didn't you vote for hillary clinton in 2016 and a bunch of people didn't say

like it was her emails or it was this or it was that but they said oh well i i heard she had a kill list of people i heard she killed people like, oh, I wonder where that gets spread. I wonder where that gets started. Well, this is how it gets started. All right, let's get to our poll of Michigan that we conducted with Change Research. Between May 11th and 17th, they surveyed 3070 likely voters. Big set, including a particularly large number of persuadable swing voters and found that after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan by 47.5 percent to 47.3 percent in 2016, Joe Biden now holds a 49 to 46 percent lead over Trump with 5 percent undecided. On the plus side, half of Biden's lead comes from people who voted third party or not at all in 2016. He's got the support of 87 percent of Bernie Sanders voters, which is higher than Hillary had. And white women without a college degree moved more towards Biden than any other demographic

group. That's all on the plus side. But Biden's also only getting 30 percent of people who voted for Trump in 16 and then the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 18. 30 percent of those people. We also found in the poll that Democratic Senator Gary Peters leads Republican John James 48 to 43 percent in what it is a competitive Senate race that we don't talk about nearly enough. Dan, I will stop there. You wrote an outstanding memo based on this poll with some message advice for Democrats, which we'll get to in a second. But what were some of the other most interesting takeaways for you from this poll? Sure. I mean, the main takeaway is that the only thing holding Donald Trump up in Michigan, and I would assume in battleground states across the country, is he still is

outperforming reality on the economy. On every other issue, voters have soured on him. They do not like him personally. They think he is doing a bad job on coronavirus. I think they don't trust him to handle health care, reopening the country, just about any other issue. Voters are very skeptical of him. But he has economic strength. And we will talk about how to undermine that. I thought there like there was some very good news for Biden in this poll. One, he's winning. That's good.

And that really matters because Joe Biden has to win Michigan. There is no path to 270 without winning Michigan for Joe Biden. No credible path. I mean, you could put together some... It's just hard to imagine a scenario where he loses Michigan, but wins Wisconsin or loses Michigan and then wins like North Carolina and Georgia. It's just typically not how these things work. So it's very important to be winning there. Second, there are 5% undecided voters in this race. And what is very good news for Joe Biden there is while they don't know a lot about Biden yet and don't have really those voters have made firm opinions on him, they have assessed Donald Trump and they do not like him. Donald Trump's favorability ratings

among the 5% of undecided voters is 2763. I mean, it is abysmal. And so, you know, you know, some more research needs to be done to identify exactly who those voters are. But you can assume from those numbers that there are some a decent portion of that are people who fit into that 13 percent of Bernie voters who had not yet committed to Biden. Yeah. And so like that is very that's a very that's a great if you were winning and the undecided voters favor you, that's a good position to be in. The the second piece that I thought was a warning sign for Biden is. Voters are there isn't a enthusiasm challenge for Biden among Michigan voters. That is it. I don't mean that in the sense of like, are they committed to voting or not? I mean that in Biden's favorable ratings, which are thirty nine, forty two, which is low, certainly and lower than Trump's. He has a 43 percent very unfavorable number and only a 21% very favorable. So Republicans have decided to hate Biden before Democrats have decided to fall

in love with him. And he's got a lot of work to do there to define himself with those voters. You do not want your very favorable number to be essentially twice. I'm sorry, you don't want your very unfav number to be essentially twice your very fav number. The reaction I got from a lot of people when I tweeted this poll this morning, both privately and on Twitter, were just like, oh, this is much closer than I thought it would be in Michigan. Like, I almost wonder if expectations because of some of these national polls. There was a Quinnipiac poll out yesterday that has Biden in the lead by 11 nationally, 50-39, which seems crazy to me. You know, I mean, Donald Trump only won by what, you know, 0.5 percentage points, Michigan in 2016, like three points. I don't know. I mean, look, I know Gretchen Whitmer won by 10 points in 2018, but I don't think I think there's no universe that Biden wins by Whitmer's margin at 10 points.

Did you find three points like about right? Maybe a little on the low side? I also thought we should mention, by the way, you know, Trump's approval rating here is much higher than it is throughout the rest of the country. It was like 48-52, which is a little too high for me. His job approval rating, his favorability is much worse than that. It's at 43. I thought Whitmer's approval rating was lower in our poll than it has been in some of the other polls that we've seen. And although she's above water, you know, she's much she's doing better than Trump, but it's still like I think it was like 52 or 53. you know, she's much, she's doing better than Trump, but it's still like, I think it was like 52 or 53. So in general, this poll just seemed a little bit closer than I think some people

thought Michigan is right now. Did you think that, or what was your? Well, as you know, I tend to dance on the dark side of these things. And so I've always- I know, that's what, exactly. So three, if Joe Biden wins Michigan by three points, then that is a very strong result. And I think what it says is. Do you think that's a result that is consistent with him also winning Wisconsin since Wisconsin is usually closer than Michigan? Yeah, with a very narrow victory in Wisconsin. And for all of these, always the caveat of the last few months is that we're presuming some form of normal-ish turnout with normal-ish voting opportunities. That's the big question.

Voting opportunities, right? We're looking at a situation where you have the normal – you have enough voting access to people with a chance to vote and you're not doing what they did in Wisconsin, where you're putting five voting locations in Milwaukee, right? Like as Mark Elias said, being on some podcasts the other day, if you have five voting locations in Milwaukee, you're not winning Wisconsin. And so presuming that, I think a three-point win in Michigan seems something like a one-point in Wisconsin. Right. Like, so, and like that's, I've always been under the assumption that the sort of order of the blue

wall States that just based on demographics and partisan history is that Pennsylvania will be the easiest one for Biden to flip in part because of his ties there, um, spent his whole life in the Philadelphia media market, um, Michigan second and life in the Philadelphia media market. Michigan second and Wisconsin the hardest. And that just has to do with the percentage of the vote that is non-college white voters, which is Trump's base. We also tested a few different running mates to see how much the potential candidates might affect the race between Trump

and Biden. And it turns out they didn't have a statistically significant effect either way, any of them. And we tested Gretchen Whitmer too. And, you know, she's governor there. What did you think of that, the VP thing? I, it's not, I don't think it's super surprising. You know, Whitmer has only been governor for, you know, a little over a year now. So it's not like she is a incredibly well-known figure with a long history in the state. And so it's not surprising.

And just generally there hasn't always been a huge home state effect in picking folks. I think we'll have to – more research will have to be done on this both in battleground states and nationally to a sense is if there is a real political imperative behind one pick or the other. But right now, it sort of seems like a tie, at least in Michigan, among all of them. And then Biden has some room to pick among the people that we presume to be on a short list without tipping the race in the wrong direction. So there are also a series of questions about the pandemic. Trump's coronavirus approval is lower than his job approval. Voters are slightly more worried about opening up too soon than waiting too long. Forty eight. Forty three. Forty one percent say we should take all possible precautions regardless of what it means for the economy. Thirty two percent say we should go back to living normally and that people are making too much of the virus, with 27 percent sort of in the middle saying we should stay closed for a little while longer and then start opening up. And voters are slightly opposed to the protests at the Michigan state capitol, but only slightly.

Before we get to the economic stuff, how much do you think COVID has changed the political environment from this poll? Not much. To your credit, you said that at the beginning of this whole thing. You were like, partisan polarization, I don't know, even if this is a disaster, how much it's actually going to change things. Yeah, I think it definitely, there is a, you know, you talked about the persuadable voter universe. We talked about Trump's numbers among the undecideds. It has definitely made Trump's task of winning this election harder. I think it has shifted. I think if we had proceeded on the normal course where we

were still dealing with, you know, 4% unemployment, no pandemic, people could leave their homes, I would have said Trump was a slight favorite to win re-election, right? Lose a popular vote, win re-election, and narrow electoral college fiscal year 2016. As we sit here today, I would say that Biden is a strong favorite to win the popular vote and a slight, slight favorite to win the presidency, despite what national polls say. And that is certainly, in some measure, because of the tremendous attention that's been on Trump for the last 60 days, where he has performed miserably, right? In every element of the job, whether it's taking unregulated drugs, focusing on absurd issues like Obamacare, and just doing a terrible job at managing the pandemic, that has hurt him. But it's on the

margins. Everything is going to happen on the margins. I do not believe that Trump's coronavirus numbers can get much lower than they are, no matter what happens. Yeah, I mean, I noticed this in the last two weeks in a lot of the other national polls. He is like he is back down in the low 40s nationally, both his approval rating and his coronavirus numbers. And we should say, of course, this poll was May 11th to the 17th. But I think there's even been more erosion since the 17th from on Trump's numbers. You're seeing today, you know, there's he's now in the 40 or low 40s, which is, you know, he's been there before in his presidency. It's not like a new low. But I do think there's a big difference if we get into

November with Trump in the low 40s versus Trump in the mid 40s, which he was at the beginning of the crisis. So, you know, you said this at the beginning, but on just about every issue and attribute we tested, voters in Michigan trust Biden over Trump, except for two. One was managing the economic recovery where they trust Trump more and undecided voters trust him a lot more and helping small businesses recover. So what is your advice on how Democrats can change these numbers and win the economic argument? Well, ultimately, that's what it comes down to. The only thing keeping Trump in this race is his economic approval rating. And that comes from a couple of things. One is, and we have to remind ourselves of this all the time, which is Trump's history as a business person from outside of politics gives him an aura of economic credibility among a larger segment of voters than most Democratic pundits and strategists are

willing to admit, which is why- It's not just the MAGA people. Yeah. And they trust him, after everything he has done wrong, to manage economic recovery better than Biden. And that is concerning. And voters have not yet connected, although it can still happen, Trump's failure to prepare for and respond to the pandemic with the economic devastation we are now feeling. for and respond to the pandemic with the economic devastation we are now feeling. They're still being treated like the American people blame someone other than the sort of the I would say that's not the American people. The persuadable group within this electorate, which is a small group, mind you, blames someone or something other than Trump for the economic mess that we are currently in and are likely to be in through the fall.

economic mess that we are currently in and are likely to be in through the fall. And so the job, number one, the most important thing that Democrats can do is take down Trump on the economy. And there are a series of messages that we tested in this poll about how to do that. The first and most important one, which I will read to you, Joe Biden says that Donald Trump's response to the pandemic is more focused on helping big corporations and wealthy investors and small businesses and American families. The Trump administration has given hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to huge corporations and professional sports teams, while thousands of family-owned businesses got shut out. You'll notice I got an L.A. Lakers shot in there, which I could do because I wrote the question. That poll, undecided voters agreed, a net of 32% of undecided voters agreed with that statement. Huge numbers.

Huge number. The best of anything we tested. Yeah, it is tied with a Trump message we'll talk about in a second, but certainly the best message for Biden. And there is ample opportunity to do that. As the Paycheck Protection Program loans are given out, and you have a situation where tens of thousands of small businesses have been shut out. I'm not following this under the category of unsolicited advice for Joe Biden, which is an actual segment on the New York Times webpage right now. advertising, but also for all of our listeners and activists who are talking to voters all the time, right? Either as part of an organizing program or just in their day-to-day quarantine life where they're trying to convince their friends to get involved, trying to persuade their uncles and aunts or parents about who to vote for. So think of this as free, definitely unsolicited, but message guidance for everyone who's talking about politics. And so an economic message that focuses on how Donald Trump is putting corporations and wealthy people over the interests of middle and working class

people is an incredibly powerful message. People should do that. And there are a couple of ways to make that point. We tested the Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump proposal to ensure that corporations cannot be sued if their workers get sick or die from coronavirus after they return to work. Only 37% of voters support that position, and 42% strongly oppose it. It is incredibly unpopular, and Democrats should hammer Republicans every day for that. And then we should not forget the most important and effective political weapon we have had, which is both Donald Trump passing a huge massive tax cut for corporations, the wealthy, and paying for it by wanting to cut Medicare and kick people off their health insurance. You know, I sort of

thought about like, what, like, what is the manifestation of this? And I think it is important, this is I think is really important to tie this economic response to the Coronavirus. So we don't treat them as two separate things. And so you can see a series of ads of, in this case, Michigan small business owners who were unable to get PPP loans while all these corporations who donate to Republicans are friends of Trump's got them. And so seeing who has been helped and who has been hurt by the Trump economic recovery is a huge strategic imperative for Democrats because they can knock Trump's economic approval rating underwater. He will lose this election and he will lose it big. The other two messages that sort of were as effective for Biden as the one that you just read was Joe Biden says that President Trump should stop blocking aid that would help cities and states protect the jobs of teachers, firefighters, cops, and other essential workers. So this sort

of federal aid that has become a political issue because Trump has made it one because he makes everything political. And Joe Biden says that after a month in which we sacrificed by staying home and keeping businesses closed, Trump wasted all that time by failing to provide enough testing and protective gear that would allow us to safely leave our homes and go back to work. That was specifically effective among undecided voters. And it is to me, I added that statement in there because I was trying to think about how Democrats could be on the side of reopening, but reopening safely and point to Trump and say, the reason that we're still stuck in our homes is because he hasn't figured out a fucking plan to get us out of our homes in a safe way.

He just wants everyone to like go run free and let the virus run loose. And so I think you're right, though, that people we've somehow got to tie the economic case against Trump to his failures on managing the pandemic since that sort of pushing on an open door. I think that the challenge is, and I'm glad you say this, this isn't just advice for the Biden campaign. It's advice for all of us. Like Trump says something racist. Trump says something xenophobic, authoritarian. He talks about, you know, drinking bleach, downing hydroxychloroquine. You know, it goes viral. Everyone talks about it. It's easy to get reporters to care.

People on Twitter are tweeting about it. It gets shared, all that kind of stuff. All of these sort of economic arguments, Trump and Republicans proposing all of these policies that help corporations at the expense of average people, it is so hard to get them covered, to get people to care about it, to get people to share it. And like, I'm going to just say it, to get people to share it. And like,

I'm going to just say this now every fucking podcast that we do. It is so important that this gets through because we'll all remember that after 2016, we sat around being like, why didn't Hillary Clinton have a better economic argument? Why couldn't her economic argument break through? And we like blame the Clinton campaign. And sure, the Clinton campaign has some responsibility for that. But it's also it's all of our responsibility at this point to get that message out there when we're talking to friends, when we're talking to persuadable voters, when we're doing phone banking, when we're doing digital organizing, whatever we may do, like we have to make the economic argument. We have to get it out there because like you said,

that is the only thing, the only thing that's keeping Trump's approval ratings up. And by the way, as we get deeper into the fall, more people I think are going to be focused on the economy because the economic pain is going to continue and there's going to be a lot of people out of work and people are going to be wondering, you know, how do we improve the situation right now? You know, who's going to lead us out of this? And the answer has to be Joe Biden. That's right. So do you want to talk about you want to talk about Trump's best message and sort of what to do there? Sure. So the second in the memo, memo for three strategic imperatives, the first one is defining who Trump is fighting for and who binds. And I will say one of the most alarming results in the poll was that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are tied on the question of who do you trust to fight for

someone like you? The person who wins that question almost always wins the election. And Joe Biden's history, his policies suggest that he should win on that question going away. And he is not doing that yet. Now, it is early. And we should just stipulate another reason that Biden should feel good about this is he has never campaigned in Michigan. They didn't really run ads there. He this is a state that came after Super Tuesday. And so it is like he is in a very strong position without having to have spent any money or go there. And so that's always a good place to be. So the second strategic imperative is we have to neutralize the China issue. Trump's best message is about how China is responsible for the virus. Trump took the

quote unquote bold step of banning travel from China and that Joe Biden called him xenophobic for doing it. And this is a subject of tens of millions of dollars of ads happening right now on your television, on your screens, if you live in a battleground state. And Trump is doing the China thing, not just to shirk blame, not just out of reflexive racism, but because it is a message that works for him. It is as powerful in this poll as the populist message that we just read from Biden. And so Democrats have to neutralize it. populist message that we just read from Biden. And so Democrats have to neutralize it. And we tested two messages that are successful in that. One is one that undermines Trump's response to the coronavirus with China by talking about all the times he took China's word and praised them for

their response. That message tested very well. But we also tested a message that spoke to the cozy financial relationships between Trump and the Chinese government, specifically around the trademarks that the Chinese government has granted Ivanka Trump while she's serving in the White House, from which she has earned millions of dollars. That message also tested incredibly well. And some people may say, well, isn't that leading with your chin? Because the Trump campaign and others have tried to make a real issue of Hunter Biden's ties to China. We also tested the Hunter Biden message that Trump has been putting forward, and that message tested very poorly. to find him. Voters are instinctively more willing to believe that Trump and his family are corrupt and in it for themselves than they are Biden's. And so if you can neutralize the China issue, it is going to hurt Trump on a host of vectors. One, it's going to further undermine whatever

remaining strength he has on his coronavirus response. Two, it undermines his America First message, which is at its core an economic message for some segment of voters, at least. And it helps neutralize the attack on Biden that he has soft on China. So that is a big strategic imperative for Democrats. And that matters for everyone because in a presidential election year, what happens at the top of the ticket flows down. And then the third strategic imperative is we found a very large and growing

concern about the national debt. It was the issue that people were more concerned about, including more concerned about the national debt than their own health. Which is wild in this poll. That was the finding that I was most confused about and also a little nervous about. Well, so a couple of things about that. One, we need to see it in other polls, right? This needs to be validated as a research. But intuitively, it makes a little bit of sense. There has been a ton of coverage of trillions upon trillions of dollars being spent over the last two months. I mean, it's just like the combination of the trillions from Congress, the trillions from the Fed, it seems like a lot of money is going. We also know that concerns about national debt are not really about the balancing the budget

for the United States or the books or the long-term growth of entitlements. It's often about it flows from this idea that comes in tough economic times where someone else is getting help and I am not. And that someone else can be someone above you, like banks being bailed out, or it can be in as often in a way that is weaponized by Republicans, others, immigrants, people of color, the poor, all the you know, and this is a this is a play Republicans have run for a very long time. It is it is Ronald Reagan's racist welfare creed idea. It is Paul Ryan's more subtle but also racist makers takers idea. All of this is a Republican play. Now, Democrats have to be wary of this because Republicans have a natural advantage on these deficit issues, even though history is very clear that Democrats bring the deficit down and Republicans exploit it with tax cuts and unpaid for wars. So how should Democrats navigate this? One, do not

default to the language of austerity and start talking about curbing the spending of Medicare or Social Security. That is a political mistake, and it is a fatal governing mistake because if we win, we are going to be heading into an economy where we need to spend money to help the American people get out of it and grow the economy. And so if we lock ourselves in with austerity language, it would be a fatal error. Second, let's have a big debate about who has a better plan to deal with the deficit over the long term. Trump has explicitly and repeatedly said he wants to cut Medicare and Social Security to do that, while refusing to raise taxes one penny on the rich in corporations. Democrats want to protect Social Security and Medicare and ask the wealthy in the corporations to pay more in taxes.

That is a battle that we can win. It is the battle that we won in 2012 when Mitt Romney made the incredibly foolish decision to put Mr. Privatized Medicare on his ticket. And then the third thing is we should also, it's an opportunity to go back and remind people about the tax cut because trillions of dollars were spent to give a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. And we should remind people of that. And the last thing that I think is really important is policy wonks, reporters, to think about deficits and spending separately. Deficits are these big things that come from the state of the economy, to think about deficits and spending separately. Deficits are these big things that come from the state of the economy, the growth in Medicare and Social Security. They

happen over the long term. And discretionary spending, the spending that Congress votes on, is a tiny fraction of that, right? But voters don't think that way. And when they care about the deficit, what they really care about is spending. And so attacks on Trump for being an unwise steward of taxpayer dollars will potentially have much more impact in the situation. So you can see attacks that we've tested previously, which do quite well in battleground states, at least pre-pandemic, on millions of taxpayer dollars going into Trump's pocket through his hotels and resorts being even more powerful. Just evocative examples of bad spending. The one I think of recently is the report that the US federal government is going to spend $500 million to paint Trump's wall black

for no ostensible purpose. And so those like- That's the kind of stuff that's just that, that will, that will go viral. Yeah. And you can hold them like any misuse of economic recovery dollars, whether it is loans to companies who don't need them. People, you know, checks that went to people who shouldn't have gotten them, all of those things. If you hold Trump accountable for that, if we, that is our way to fight deficits, it's not to adopt vaguely sounding Republican talking points. No, and this is important also, because I think a lot of progressives and sort of liberal leaning media types believe that in the Obama years, we, you know, focused on deficits and budget deals, because, you know, some like neoliberal think

tank in D.C. told us to or because we wanted we thought we could get Republican votes and we thought we could reach out to Republican politicians. And really at the core of this is anyone who sat in a focus group with voters or looked at polls knows that the concern about the government spending too much money comes up all the time for the reasons that you pointed out. People say, I'm living within my budget. Why can't the government live within its budget? And that's as far as the understanding usually goes. People aren't sitting there worried about hyperinflation or, you know, the debt to GDP ratio. No one knows about any of that shit. They just hear that the government's spending money that it doesn't have in their minds. They know that they try to live within a budget. And

they also know that nothing the government has done has made any improvement on their own lives, at least that they can perceive. So they're like, why are my tax dollars getting spent on a bunch of shit that I don't end up seeing? And now we have this deficit like that. I'm just saying that's their mindset. And like you said, the answer is not to say, OK, well, then I'm going to talk about austerity like Republicans. The answer is to say these fuckers want to give tax breaks to big companies and fucking billionaires and run up the deficit and to pay for it. They're going to cut your health care, your Medicare, your Social Security. That's how they're running up the deficits. And you're not getting anything from it. That is a winning message. It was a winning message in 2012 against, you know,

Romney and Paul Ryan. And Democrats have to deliver that message now because otherwise you're going to get Donald Trump saying Democrats just want to Joe Biden. The Democrats are going to want to spend more money on people who aren't you. That's their plan. Like just because I will spend my life trying to correct the money on people who aren't you. That's their plan. Like just because I will spend my life trying to correct the record on the summer of 2011. The I think we and Barack Obama himself has stipulated that there's certainly some things we would have done differently. I think some of the language we used around some of the deficit issues bought into the premise that we didn't need to do so., we made mistakes. We definitely made mistakes.

But should we just be very clear on one important fucking point, which is the deal that we were trying to do with John Boehner and the Republicans was not cutting deficits for deficits' sake. American families and workers were hurting. And we were trying to trade short-term aid to families and workers were hurting. And we were trying to trade short-term aid to families and workers, infrastructure spending, payroll tax cut, those sorts of things in exchange for long-term deficit reduction. There are things that were in various versions of the deal that in hindsight should not have been in there. But ultimately, Barack Obama was trying to do what he can to

help workers in a suboptimal situation where a bunch of lunatic Tea Party members controlled one half of one branch of Congress. And by the way, the biggest portion of what we hope to achieve for deficit reduction long term was higher taxes on the wealthy. Yes. Tax reform that raised taxes on the wealthy and corporations, just so people know. OK, so I think the most immediate example of how Democrats can start hammering the economic message we've been talking about from this poll is the fight over

the next economic relief package. We have well over 30 million people out of work climbing to 40 million businesses closing all over the country. Expanded unemployment insurance is due to expire in July. The Paycheck Protection Program is due to run out around August. Chairman of the Fed, Jerome Powell, said that unemployment could hit 25 percent and that if Congress doesn't do more, the economy could be, quote, permanently damaged. But here's what Mitch McConnell said about Congress doing more, quote, I don't think we have yet felt the urgency of acting immediately. And here's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, quote, I don't see the need right now for another stimulus package.

And here's White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett, who said that Trump is going to, quote, wait and see. Do you think that they know that they're sabotaging the economy in a year where a Republican president is running for reelection? Like, what are they doing here? I honestly have no idea. It makes zero sense. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who are trying to do the right thing for their constituents and the country they serve,

are offering Republicans a lifeline. And they're like, get your lifeline away from me, you socialist liberals. I am going to go down with the ship. In this case, I think, actually, because... I mean, is it possible, though, that they sort of just are ideological extremists and they really believe that maybe they see those those debt numbers too you know people are worried about too much spending and they think the best thing for the economy is just more tax cuts and cutting regulation and you know all of this horrible government spending is going

to screw up the economy is it possible that they actually believe that no i. I mean, sure. They pretend like they, like they definitely believe with all of their hearts that helping poor people is bad, but they don't believe so that that is true. They also believe that helping corporations is good. That is the fundamental, like that, like everything in between that is pretty malleable. I think a couple of things are happening here. One is I do think it's a little bit of a negotiating tactic from McConnell, which is he – Nancy Pelosi made a move, which was to pass the Heroes Act. And she did that in order to have that be the text we started from. So McConnell is trying to create some space between when that happened and when it goes so that he

retains control of the pen the next time around. So I think that's part of it. I do think that they are somewhat reflecting Trump, who also always likes to convince himself that things are better than they are. So people tell Trump, Trump will get like 75 different economic forecasts, a range of things, CBO, OMB, his Yahoo economic advisors, his cable pundit turned NEC director, Charles Kudlow. And he will always pick the one that's most optimistic because that's just who he is. And so they reflect that. So once again, they are governing from a version of reality that does not exist. I think their position could change mightily when the next jobs numbers come out.

Yeah. Once again, today, another 2.4 million people file for unemployment claims. We know, given how shitty the UI system in this country, that the number is much larger than that. So we are at 40 million Americans, essentially, over the last six weeks or whatever it is, who have lost their jobs. That is a massive number. It's going to have a massive impact on the economy. And could they be shocked into action? Maybe. But they also think they are basically hurting themselves to own the libs guess I guess this is the policy equivalent of drinking hydroxychloroquine. I mean, I guess the next question is sort of how do the Democrats sort of use this to their political advantage and make the case that we start to talk about

with the Michigan poll? You know, in my view, I would run around just saying, like, here's the Republican plan right now to fix the economy and put you back to work uh number one um give companies the freedom to force you back to work and then if you get sick or customers get sick um they are absolved of accountability because there's no liability protections so force people back to work even if they get sick that's number one number two let insurance companies discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, which will now include having the coronavirus. And number three, more tax cuts for wealthy investors because they want a capital gains tax cut. And that's it. That's their three-pronged plan to fix the economy and they

don't want to do anything else. Lindsey Graham, the other day, said that Donald Trump agrees with him that extending unemployment insurance to people who have lost jobs through no fault of their own is, quote, hurting the recovery. It is hurting the recovery in Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump's estimation that we are making sure that people who are stuck at home not working are getting the salary that they had when they were working through no fault of their own. This is somehow hurting the economic recovery. If we can't prosecute this message, like fucking give it up. I mean, in some ways, they're trying to rerun their play of 2009, 2010, which is accused Democrats of spending too much money, running up deficits, which is accuse Democrats of spending too much money, running up deficits, accuse them of wanting to help people who are other, if you will, sort of in quotes, in whatever crypto and less crypto racist way you approach that.

But here's the problem. They're in fucking charge now. They're in charge of that. That's what it is. White House and the Senate. And I think they are struggling to, like, they're ultimately, the Republican Party since Barack Obama was elected has been entirely an oppositional party. And even gaining political power did not change that fact, right? They're still running against Obama, you know, three years after he left the office. And so they don't have,

like, they're not a governing party. They don't have capacity for governing. And that hurts them politically because the solution to their political problem is a governing response. It's not a tweet. It's not more Fox News stories. It's not distraction. It is solving a problem. And that's where they are absolutely fucking flummoxed.

So we talked about what Democrats should do from a message standpoint. next. So we talked about what Democrats should do from a message standpoint. I'm wondering what you think Pelosi and Schumer and the Democrats in Congress should do, because there's one scenario, like you said, where this is a negotiating tactic and we get to a place where, you know, and you already seen reporters talk about the outlines of this potential compromise where Democrats get, and it's funny that Democrats should get this, like federal aid to states and they get an extension of unemployment insurance in exchange for some limited protections for companies that are quote unquote doing the right thing and making sure that their workplaces are safe.

Pelosi seemed to say that she was open to that and so did Hakeem Jeffries and some kind of limited number of tax cuts. Do you think Democrats should pursue a deal like this? Or I mean, because in my view, anything that takes liability protection and tax cuts sort of off the table as a sort of political message for the fall is a mistake. But at the same time, we want to be responsible. And when unemployment insurance runs out, we want to make sure that people who are struggling have it. And we want to make sure that states get the money they need to protect a lot of jobs that

otherwise we lose. I mean, ultimately, Republicans are trying to once again, exploit the inherent responsibility gene and democratic leaders, which is Nancy Pelosi's from Nancy Pelosi's perspective, and frankly, the of her members from AOC to the most endangered frontline member is I have x number of people who lost their jobs in my district. And if I can get them extra money, I better fucking do that, because that's what they elected me to do. And even if I have to swallow a bitter political pill to do that, I'm going to do that. And we're not going to change that about Democrats. We should not and frankly cannot devolve into cruel McConnell-esque nihilism. That is not a tool that will ever be in our toolbox, which is why we belong in this party and not that one. But I think Democrats should, yeah, obviously you should be willing to have conversations,

but it better be a good fucking deal. Right. And they have, and they do have leverage and they should use it. And I think separate from that as part, like they, and they can increase their leverage by messaging on this. And I think the way this can work is we have now reached the point where we need a unified set of five to seven economic priorities for the recovery that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer agree on. It is a unified front. And all the surrogates and everyone from Barack Obama to Elizabeth Warren to Bernie Sanders is all out there talking about. Yeah. It sounds overly simple. And I totally get that. And I apologize. But we are trying to communicate a complicated set of policies in a pandemic with an absolutely fucked up media environment. So we're going to have to oversimplify some complicated things.

But we have those five things. I think the House should vote on those through whatever remote or actual means they do on a regular basis and send them over. And it'd be like Democrats should go to the floor of the Senate and demand this. And we should just really focus on, I think it's easier to say, here are the five things that we want Republicans to do that they're refusing to do than it is, please pass the HEROES Act. Right. Right. The five things can be from the HEROES Act, and we should still treat that as the first piece of the negotiating text. But from a messaging perspective, we need five easily understood things that we can focus on and can be part of both earned media strategy and

paid digital campaign ads. These are the five, these are the five things these candidates, these Republican incumbents are refusing, you know, any, and if you want to tie that to, they won't do these five things because they want liability protection for, um, for corporations, you can do that, but then you gotta know, you gotta play out where it's going to end. If it's going to end with you accepting liability protection, you probably can't do that. Yeah. I mean, to simplify it even more, our message is just millions of people are out of work. Millions of people are struggling. Like, why won't Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress do anything about it? Yeah.

Do something. Do something. You're in charge. You know, like. You just you can see the graphic, right? You know, the Biden Democratic plan. Here are the five things. The Trump Republican plan is nothing. Nothing. Their view is we have 40 million Americans have lost their job and we should do nothing else. Zero. That is a message that I think can be sold. And you can say that because they already gave nearly a trillion dollars in loans to companies. And by the way, that is a message that fits with everyone from Joe Biden to Joe Manchin to

AOC and everyone in between. They can all say that even if the Democrats don't necessarily all agree on the policies that we would implement if we were in charge, that's OK, too. Right now, Donald Trump runs the White House and is in the White House and Republicans run the Senate. And we have to make the case that when the country faced its greatest economic crisis since the Depression, they decided that the answer is to do nothing, to wait and see, to not act with urgency. This is what they've all said. We have all their quotes. You can put McConnell's quote and McCarthy's quote and Kevin Hassett's quote all in an ad, and you can show the unemployment rate go up and all the people losing their jobs. And these people are saying, do nothing. Pretty easy. Okay. When we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with Dave Weigel from The Washington Post. I'm Patrick Radden Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine.

On my new podcast, Wind of Change, I investigate a rumor I haven't been able to shake since I first heard it years ago. It came from someone inside the CIA, and the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there.

Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify, a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media, and Spotify. I'm joined now by Washington Post political correspondent and writer of the political newsletter, The Trailer, Dave Weigel. Dave, welcome back to Pod Save America. It's good to be back. You have more things in your

wall than I do. When quarantine started, there were no things on this wall. So we really, we live in fear of the room raider account in this house. I want to start with, you made a decision that I think was your own to live within the Trump and Biden app ecosystems for an extended period of time. I want to start by asking you why was quarantine going too well? What led you to do this? Well, I realized that so everything campaigns do is in some sense, prefab and like meant to advertise. So even when I was going to rallies, I was getting the, what the campaigns wanted, a presentation of what they wanted me to think.

Uh, the voters who were there were the self-selected, absolutely every election voters, not some voters. Still, I was missing something because I was not interacting with anyone outside of phone calls. And I wondered how the campaigns were communicating to the,

to the faithful. So I just said, let me, it wasn't like I consumed, I mean, some people have done, watched nothing but Fox for a week or take your every supplement sold by Alex Jones' website. This was just, I subscribed to what would be a normal amount of daily media and interruptions, which wasn't that much. It was, first, I used both the Biden and Trump campaign apps, you know,

just poked around without actually pretending to be somebody else and creating a fake event or something, just as if I was a interested person who might support them enough to sign up an app. And then I watched their broadcasts and got all their text messages. And in every way, the campaigns were just totally living up to the stereotype the the trump campaign had a ton of really in your face aggressive advertising at all times the texts are all advertising uh a deal that you must join at this moment or you're going to lose out on it a gold club a presidential club the biden ones are kind of long lackadaisical hey champ i'd love to see if you want to support this messages and the the biden ones are kind of long lackadaisical hey champ i'd love to see if you

want to support this messages and the the biden app is kind of directing you to go to the website to help the trump app has a game basically where you get more points by getting more people to sign up uh and so people disagree on which of the on whether the trump thing is as effective as it is busy but after actually kind of getting in the mindset and saying, okay, what if I'm a Trump fan? What if I'm a Biden fan? You definitely get more psyched up as a Trump fan consuming that stuff. It's definitely much more interesting. And you, after each hour long broadcast of a Trump thing, you understand why everything is packaged as the media being unfair and lying. The Biden videos, I think, take place in basically the normal CNN and NPR reality where,

you know, things are tough and the campaign has some ideas, but not everything is a conspiracy against Joe Biden, for example. Have you talked to, since your piece, the Biden campaign or maybe other Democrats about whether there's another version of the Biden app coming or some of these features, obviously not to the extent that Trump has them, but are there some new features coming that would sort of amplify the experience? Yeah, they've added more events and more features. I don't, if they're rolling a new version of the app, I don't know yet. If all they did was basically copy

what I think the Obama campaign did in 12 and the Hillary campaign did in 16, that would not be seen as bold and innovative, but it would give you more of a one-stop shop for campaign volunteering. I think that how far up is that on the agenda? Because people can't actually go out and knock on doors to volunteer right now. All you can do is donate and make phone calls. So I have not heard whether one is coming,

but having gone through both of them, a lot of the stuff being recommended was stuff you can't even do until people are able to move around semi-normally again. So I take it that you probably think that these apps are probably even more important in sort of our current environment where so much of politics is happening through screens and online. happening through screens and online? Oh, that obviously, but also it's not just the app. It is the amount of, and the tone of the stuff you get by watching their video content.

So the Trump campaign will put out every week. I'll kind of tell reporters first, but if you're a supporter, you get to learn too, who is going to be on their show every night, on the nightly show. People got paid a little more attention this this week the one we're living in right now because they rebranded a kind of women for trump show is the right view as in the view of the tv show um but that show had been going and it was the tone was very much the same it was there's a we're here we're having a great time everything was going to come back to normal soon and aren't you guys sick of the media

pretending that trump's doing a bad job or aren't you sick of the media not covering this or that Biden scandal? And the Biden content is much more of a preview, I think, of what the Biden presidency could be, which is, you know, fairly credentialed, familiar people holding government jobs and thinking about ways to improve things, which is not as exciting, even if you're covering them. I mean, look, I'm always kind of honest about what is necessarily irrelevant to governing, but exciting for campaigning. And they're just not doing much that's that hooky for campaigning. You have to be pretty motivated to pay full attention to the Biden content. You know, it's sort of interesting,

like there's always been this talk that, you know, had Trump lost in 2016, he was going to start Trump TV and that this is the future. And this is sort of what's happening within the app. But it seems on one level, it's like more, you know, from the perspective of Democrats like myself, it's like, oh, more Republican propaganda. But they also already have Fox, which I know Trump is not happy with all the time, but he gets all pretty good coverage there. OAN and all these other networks. Like what is the purpose of the content on the app? Is it to keep people there so that you can, they can monetize your presence there? Yeah, no, totally. I mean, if you're watching Fox or even OAN, you're not being told in the same window that you're watching that you can help give money. And

I think, you know, people, there is a limit, you can only give $2,800. But you can sign up for a monthly donation. There's just every way that the campaign pulls you into being a supporter. And they can tell you pretty directly how to help. Although it's interesting what they do and don't focus on. I mean, there, there was not much Trump TV content, for example, even mentioning there'd be a special election in California last week. There was a lot of content just kind of going through the various permutations of Obamagate, things like that. So it's not even saying here's the best thing you can do right now to help reelect the president. It's just kind of putting you in the mindset that makes you want to volunteer more, which I think is pretty, it's pretty effective. It's a, and if you go, if you're on the app,

you have a rundown of the various ways to help. And it's, it's everything from, you know, how to make calls to how to become a mega bundler for the campaign. One thing I'd add too, is they also, they have deliverables that aren't really delivered. I think the Daily Beast read about this months ago, but the Trump campaign has done what Obama did, what Hillary did, what Elizabeth Warren did, and what Biden has done, which is if you donate on this one particular fundraising drive, you have a chance to have dinner with the candidate, in this case, the president. And Trump has not actually fulfilled that part of the bargain. The bees looked into this and there've been events where just there's somebody from the campaign and some free food there, but there's not the president. People haven't really complained. So you do get the

sense from absorbing all this stuff that just you've got, and the polling backs it up, a base for Trump that is much more interested in supporting him, even if things aren't going very well, or even if they're not getting everything they were promised. Just the power of being able to be on the winning team, the one that makes liberals crazy, is really a good motivator in a way that there's just not an equivalent for the Biden side, even when they've had attempts. I mean, he just doesn't embrace the same approach that you should be frustrated and if you're uh and and angry all the time doesn't even kind of jump on uh some some trees for example the the trump people will jump on any kind of biden gaffer and gaff me to find out to him just being about to say the

word coronavirus and stopping and saying it a different way and then pretending he lost his mind and i'm like they'll raise money quicker off that, where the Biden campaign doesn't even push for everything that is a national story that day about Trump. You know, Democrats do not have a fox, you know, for whatever else you want to say about MSNBC. The daytime is all hosted by either former Republican members of Congress who are targets of Trump's tweets and journalists like Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell. Like, as you know, you've talked to a lot of activists, you travel the country all the time. Do you think there could be an appetite for a progressive Democratic version of the sort of programming that the Trump app is doing? Or is this just very specific to the cult of personality of

Trump? Well, it's a good question because there is that kind of programming, but not oriented towards Biden supporters. So if you want to do, so let's say MSNBC doesn't do it for you, you can watch the Young Turks, you can watch the Hills Rising show, you can watch Jimmy Dore, you can watch Secular Talk. There's actually a network of this stuff. It just so happens that it's all oriented, and I think it was built quite a lot during Bernie Sanders' campaign for president. And so it's not very morally reinforcing if you're just a mainstream liberal Democrat who voted for Biden in the primary. It does not give you lots of reasons why you should be supporting him. And I think this is a big psychological question, frankly.

What motivates one group of voters over the other? We've seen there's big differences in how, let's just stick to this, in how Democrats and Republicans view the media. Even when the media, 20 years ago, the stuff you mentioned, MSNBC was advocating for the Iraq war. Liberal trust in the media didn't dip as low as Republican trust for the media is now, just because it is not publishing positive things about the president. So I don't think people seek out information in the same way. I think it's honestly Facebook groups that don't have a ton of content, but have just

kind of positive reinforcement, chat rooms that are kind of walled off. I think that is the safest place for liberals at the moment. I don't know if a network that was just let's go team would be seen as very credible or succeed. It does on the left a bit, and that's just not where Biden is. That's not where the party is. I mean, the party is not all behind the agenda of overturning the governance of the country, replacing it with something European style. I mean, it moved more in that direction, but there's too much dissent in the party where there's very little dissent in the Republican party about content that is Trump's fixing everything. Yeah. It's like we, the progressives have done a pretty, very admirable job

of building up a media infrastructure that's just largely oppositional. Yeah. It's inter-party warfare, not inter-party warfare. You wrote last week about never-Trumpers wanting to have their own convention.

Why are they doing that? Is it just simply to go, or is it just to annoy Trump, trick him into tweeting? Like, what's the thinking there? Yeah, well, I think you mentioned two of the reasons. Another really is that we all we don't actually know what the world looks like in 2021 when and the premise of this convention is that Donald Trump will lose.

And so one thing that Evan McMullins and Bill Kristol, et cetera, want to do is get in the room early to change the direction of the party if Trump loses. I think there's a bit of less coherent planning for if he wins another term. And because there's an expectation by them that let's say he loses, let's leave aside the chatter about would he really step down or not, that sort of thing. He's going to be younger than Joe Biden, eligible to run for president again, have a big media network and a lot of supporters, you know, even in a loss, more votes cast for him than any Republican in the country. And so I think what they're trying to do, too, is create a beachhead so that if he loses, there's people arguing, okay, we lost because for this

reason. I mean, in some ways doing what they were planning to do in 2016. I mean, I think you're aware of Paul Ryan was completely ready once Trump lost to give a speech denouncing what Trump stood for and reorienting the party. I think they're trying to do that from a position of political weakness with a bit more influence in the press. And yeah, they, I wrote about it i think there's interested in it it's like the convention itself it's unclear how it will unfold if the convention has to be forced uh virtually but they're actually in a better position because there's going to be maybe a few hundred a few thousand people signing up for this thing and they'll come

out with a message you know they'll have a document of principles. They uphold on whether they support one candidate, the people who identify as women, support Biden, how many support Trump, which would be interesting, how many are going to vote for a third party. They're giving some stuff to cover, but I think it's largely about intervening and winning the argument in nine months. I'm very curious and somewhat skeptical that the people who put that convention together will be invited back in the room post-Trump for figuring that out. Yeah. I mean, we've seen what happens when people lose an argument and then the party they were part of wins. And the answer is they never ran by back. And when they lose,

and actually 2017 was kind of unique because Bernie Sanders lost the argument in the primary and had a lot of influence in what the party stood for after the election. I kind of refer to this all the time because my own political memorandum kind of starts and the stuff I lived through starts in 2003 and four. But it's very unusual that Democrats lose an election and don't say, time to move to the center, time to move to the right. And so they'd be in, I think, not a comparable position because, look, you know, Bill Weld got 5%, 6% of the vote in the primary. Bernie Sanders got 40-some percent. They wouldn't have the same role. uh but what's interesting about their politics is that the plan is largely to get trump out of office but not become democrats not begin supporting uh joe biden not begin supporting

democrats for congress it's a you know the tom nichols the kind of louder voices in this world will say just destroy the even david from every republican should be defeated until the trump the trump legacy is destroyed but the defeated until the Trump legacy is destroyed. But the assumption being after that legacy is destroyed, we'll want something back. And yeah, you're right. I'm not sure, even if it's a defeat bigger than the polls suggest at this second, that you're still going to have a Republican president who got 95% support from his own party. I think they'd face a real choice about whether they should try to influence,

again, I keep everything I'm saying is in their scenario where Trump did get beaten pretty badly, whether they want to influence the majority Democrats or whether they try to, Bolton, I think it's actually more of a question than they present it as. They might be completely homeless around the Republican Party in 2021. Would they

then be kind of bizarro neocons? You know, the neocons came out of the left and then became Republicans in the 70s. Would they be doing the opposite? Would they be trying to shape the Democratic Party, which even Joe Biden has moved to the left since winning the nomination? Would they be trying to correct that? Interesting. Last question for you, Dave. You probably have more frequent flyer miles than any political reporter out there. You really specialize in being on the ground and talking to voters and activists. We're in a situation where, like the rest of us, you've been trapped in your house for a couple of months now.

How has that affected your reporting? And how are you thinking about this fall? Even under the most optimistic scenarios, it's not going to be back to normal? Yeah, I don't know. I'm taking it as it comes. I mean, I wrote in the last week about basically the primaries coming up in House races, some in Senate races. And in normal circumstances, I'd go to those states and write about them. I'm not quite sure what the situation will be now. I mean, the story, you can't force the old story in the place of a new one. I mean, the story now is basically about how the elections conducted, how the parties adjust, not so much

people, you know, pounding the pavement. I mean, two years ago, not quite this month, maybe a couple weeks later, I was with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York as she was campaigning ahead of their primary, literally apartment building to apartment building. And I can't do that now because even she's not doing that. So I think it's a reason I, like many people, have not felt great is because there's no clear end point.

And then after the end point, it's not clear what will replace this. So I'm not making any assumptions that, oh, the day will come again when I'm getting back into my rental car and driving to campaign offices and talking to people at a cafe. I'm not sure. Maybe that happens in 2022, but it might not happen the rest of this year. Dave, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure we will have you back on, hopefully from somewhere other than your house

as this campaign progresses. And talk to you soon. Well, thanks a lot. Talk to you. Thanks to Dave Weigel for joining us today. And thanks again to our friends at Change Research for conducting that poll in Michigan with us. Everyone have a great Memorial Day weekend. Bye, everyone.

Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.