Pod Save America - “Trump, unmasked.”

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Police kill Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta as Republicans in Congress balk at reform proposals, Trump moves the date of his Juneteenth MAGA rally even as some advisors suggest he attack the Black Lives Matter movement, and Covid cases rise in 22 states as the President pretends the pandemic is over. Then ACLU attorney Chase Strangio talks to Jon L. about the landmark Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ rights, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowrey discusses his reporting on the nationwide protests.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Lovett talks to Chase Strangio, one of the attorneys from the ACLU legal team that was part of today's 6-3 Supreme Court decision that prevents discrimination against LGBTQ Americans in the workplace. He also talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowry about his reporting on the nationwide protest that continued this weekend. Before that, we'll talk about the police killing of

Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, the status of the police reform debate in Congress, and how Trump is doing his best to put himself on the wrong side of the protests and the pandemic that is still on the rise in way too many states. First, Lovett, how was the show this weekend? Great, love it or leave it. Judd Apatow ridiculed the monologue. Melina Abdullah came back to talk about the protests. Rosemary Ketchum, who just became the first trans person ever elected in the state of West Virginia, came to talk about what it was like to be a first time candidate. It was a real barn burner. Wow, that's exciting.

Also exciting. We have a brand new podcast at Crooked Media. It's called Unholier Than Thou. Award winning journalist and editor Philip Picardy is on a quest to better understand his relationship with spirituality by learning how faith plays a role in other people's lives. First episode, conversation about miracles with Dr. Darian Sutton, an ER doctor who's been on the front lines of the pandemic, also Phil's fiance. The second episode is a conversation with the rector of St. John's Episcopal Church, who was there when Trump staged his photo op the other week. Guys, it's an outstanding podcast. It really is.

It's great. I love it. You'll really, really enjoy this. It is different. It is moving. Phil is an outstanding interviewer. It's just, it's really, really great. Subscribe to Unholier Than Thou on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Finally, it's not too late to adopt a swing state it is not too late uh we have already had two digital organizing trainings with about 15 16 000 people each but we have a few more coming up if you want to join sign up to adopt a state at votesaveamerica.com adopt we'll send you all the details you need. The next training is Thursday at 5 p.m. It's about vote by mail and special guest, John Lovett. Neither sleet nor hail shall keep me. It's a mail joke.

I'm so sorry. Yeah, no, I think you know. I'm really sorry, everybody. You stuck the land in. I'm really sorry. Okay, let's get to the news. On Friday night, Atlanta police shot and killed 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks outside of a Wendy's parking lot where he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car in the drive-thru line when the officers were called. He struggled as they tried to arrest him, grabbed one of the officer's tasers, and was shot twice in the back as he ran away. Atlanta's police chief stepped down following the incident,

and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is calling for the officer who shot Brooks to be fired. Guys, your reaction to the terrible news, and how do you think it affects the ongoing debate over how to fix the undeniably broken institution of policing in America? Love it? Yeah, I mean, look, what I took away from it, honestly, is even amidst this incredible national focus on police brutality, on excessive force, on racism in policing, that this situation could take place, that the police could escalate in this way, that this person could be shot twice in the back while running, that a person whose crime was falling asleep in a drive-through

could end in death, I think is a reminder that these protests were needed. It is a reminder that this is a systemic, deeply ingrained problem. And the focus on these events is the reason why you saw action take place really quickly, where in the past it took days, weeks, months. Sometimes it never takes place for there to be accountability for officers to be fired or officers to be charged. We saw in this case that there's a real understanding that in this moment it is unacceptable to not respond quickly, to not immediately address the concerns of protesters. Now, I don't think anybody believes

that what's happened so far in Atlanta is enough in response, including the resignation of the police chief. But that it could happen amidst all these protests, I think is a, you know, a really sad statement about the state of policing. Tommy? Yeah, I mean, look, it's just, it's horrifying. I mean, it I mean, like Levitt said, his offense was falling asleep. And you can watch on video as this escalates and escalates. And, you know, I do think this underscores why a lot of activists believe that more training or internal police department changes just can't possibly be enough, because we're so clearly at a moment of maximum attention and concern about

police brutality and police violence. And you would imagine, or at least I would, that mayors and police chiefs and others are advising police officers to be even more cautious than normal given the moment. And yet we watched this man clearly running away from the police, be murdered in cold blood, and it speaks to the need for drastic systemic reform immediately. There was no reason that that kind of force was necessary to stop someone who was running away. You had his license plate right there. You identified who the person was. I mean, the fact that within the Atlanta Police Department, two officers, multiple officers were fired just a few weeks ago for tasing a couple in their car for no reason. So these officers knew that had happened in their own police department.

They had clearly seen the protests, seen the incidences of police brutality all across the country. And still, the instinct was to draw a weapon, a deadly weapon, and shoot a suspect. That tells you that there is something deeply wrong with the institution of policing in this country that needs systemic reform. Let's talk about the debate over reform that's happening in Congress right now. Over the weekend, Republicans ruled out two significant reforms that have been pushed by activists, Democrats, and even a few Republicans, a national use of force standard and an end to qualified immunity, which is something that currently protects officers from lawsuits to hold them accountable for using excessive force. Senator Tim Scott, who the Republicans put in charge of police reform, called ending qualified immunity,

quote, a poison pill for this bill and said, quote, I think it's really difficult to establish a codified in law standard for use of force. So without these reforms, without doing something about qualified immunity, national use of force standard, Democrats are left with, hopefully, a ban on chokeholds, a federal law against lynching, better training, and more transparent reporting of police misconduct. So what should Democrats do? I mean, do they have any leverage here, Tommy? Yeah, I do think they have leverage. I mean, look, some experts I've read suggest that you want to do three big things at the federal level. One is get rid of qualified immunity.

One is get better data on the use of force by these police departments. And then, you know, three, set some policy standards and better resource departments and cut off funding if those standards aren't met. And, you know, I don't think this bill meets the moment. And the leverage, I believe, are that 82% of Americans want to ban police from using chokeholds. This is a recent Reuters poll. 92% want body cameras. 91% want to allow independent investigations of police departments that show patterns of misconduct. 75% want to allow people to sue for misconduct. So the American people are on the side of reform. This bill falls very far short. I mean, I struggle with this.

Normally, I'm someone who thinks that progress is incremental and sometimes you need to pocket things. But I think I personally would rather wait until after the election where we might have the Senate. We hopefully will have a new president, pray to God. And so, I don't know, this just feels like it's not even close to enough. Well but what do you think I mean are these are these reforms worth a big White House signing ceremony where Republicans and Donald Trump can say they did something on police reform? It's a it's a it's a good question I also think one of the things I want to understand better is how much of what we're seeing is where we're heading in terms of a final bill and how much of this is the kind of negotiation and back and forth. Right. You had Cory Booker saying that qualified immunity is on the table.

Then you have Senator Tim Scott saying that it's off the table. You have Tim Scott making an argument that isn't against qualified immunity. It's that he wants to make sure something won't get vetoed, that something is possible. that he wants to make sure something won't get vetoed, that something is possible. So at the same time, you've even seen, you know, Republicans in the House come out in favor of a number of the pieces of the Democratic bill while trying to decry the Democrats for writing a bill without them, which is pretty rich. So I actually don't know. I think it really depends on what actually comes out of Congress. And I don't totally understand yet if the fight over qualified immunity is truly over,

or if it is still being negotiated in some way. Yeah. I mean, I think that no matter what happens, Democrats in Congress need to make clear that they are on the side of systemic reform, that they're not just about getting something done to get something done. I think the most important number that Tommy just mentioned in terms of that Reuters poll was the 75% of people who support allowing victims of police misconduct to sue police departments for damages that would require changing qualified immunity. That's what's that about. So this, this reform that Republicans seem to be, you know,

balking at is something that's supported by 75% of the American people, including six of 10 Republicans. So no, look, I'm the same way, Tommy, I usually think about like, we just, you know, getting something done is important. We want progress. But it's very clear that Republicans have been scared by the protests politically. And they are dying to get something done before an election year to say that they did something. And I don't know if I'd give them that, because the momentum to do something on this, you know, it's hard for me to see that we do something now on this. And then after the election, we come back to this and pass extra reforms. I hope so. I trust that Joe Biden will do that. I hope that Joe Biden will do that. People should

put pressure on him to do that. But it does seem like if they're going to just do Band-Aid solutions, I mean, some of these use of force policies, they've been adopted in cities all across the country. There's no reason to not have a national use of force standard. It's like the least that Congress can do from a federal level. And in qualified immunity is the least that Congress can do on a federal level. A whole bunch of like extra reporting and training stuff is just not gonna do it this time around, you know? Yeah, I mean, the other one big number from that poll I should have mentioned was that 76% of the people

who responded said they support moving some money that's currently going to police budgets into better officer training or local programs for homelessness, mental health assistance and domestic violence. And those are really some of the big pieces that people are talking about when they talk about defund the police. It's sort of completely reimagining how we keep people safe in this country, including

different kind of responders for mental health crises, better investments in schools and other domestic priorities versus policing communities or over-policing communities. So I do think we need to think about this in a big holistic way. And I do worry about checking the box, saying we did something, and then five years from now, the same stuff is happening. You know, to Tommy's point also, you know, the polling is shifting so rapidly. Yeah. And I think that it is, if this is considered to be a moment where there's a consensus for action, there's a ton of attention, that consensus may fade or change. That would be the argument for doing whatever you can

right now. But we're in the midst of an incredible flux in opinion. In that same poll, these incredibly popular positions are really, it's surprising to see how much of a consensus there is around some of these reforms. But even the more aggressively framed defund position, which is to completely dismantle police departments and give more financial support to address homelessness, mental health, and domestic violence, even that being at 39%, almost 40% of the country, getting behind that aggressive a position tells you that something really historic is happening, something really big is happening. And it argues for not just getting this done quickly, but making sure that as this momentum builds, you end up with a

really significant piece of legislation. I will say something else on this that's different. You know, when we were debating immigration reform, and some activists were talking about abolishing ICE. Those reforms, reforms to immigration, largely happen on a federal level. You can have sanctuary city laws, of course, in localities, but mainly big changes have to happen on a federal level. They have to have Congress and they have to have a president. With police reform, especially for some of these calls to reimagine public safety, change the funding in police departments, that can happen at a local level. So absent action in Congress right now, because we're

waiting for more systemic reform and we need an election where we have more Democrats in power, activists can make a big difference on a local level. Over the weekend in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed announced that San Francisco will try replacing police officers with trained unarmed professionals to respond to calls about non-criminal matters involving mental health, the homeless, school discipline, and neighbor disputes. Of course, we talked about Minneapolis City Council voting to eventually disband that police department as well. So this is an issue where you can see a lot of change on the local level, absent what's happening in Washington, D.C., you know, which is hopeful.

Yeah, agreed. Okay, let's talk about Trump, who's handling all of this with his usual deft touch. On Thursday, we talked about how we plan to hold a huge MAGA rally in Tulsa, the site of one of the worst race massacres in history, and decided to do it on Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in America. As an encore, Trump sat down on Friday with Harris Faulkner of Fox News, who I'm pretty sure is the only black woman he's done a full interview with as president. And he said the following. I think I've done more for the black community than any other president. And let's take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good, although it's always questionable.

You know, in other words, the end result. We are free, Mr. President. But we are free. You understand what I mean. So I'm going to take a pass on Abe. And on police reforms, he said this. And I think the concept of chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect. And then you realize if it's a one on one now, if it's two on one, that's a little bit of a different

story, depending, depending on the toughness and strength. You know, we're talking about toughness and strength. We are talking there's a physical thing here also. So after the very predictable uproar that ensued to all of these statements and announcements. Trump tweeted on Friday night that, quote, after hearing from many of my African-American friends and supporters, he'd be moving the date of the rally to the day after Juneteenth out of, quote, respect for this holiday. Not sure that fixes all of the other racist buffoonery over the past several days. But Tommy, why do you think he did it? Why do you think he moved the rally? So Senator Tim Scott, who is the we're talking about earlier, is the only African-American

Republican in the Senate, said that President Trump was unfamiliar with the significance of that date of Juneteenth, June 19th. It is inexcusable if that is true, but frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if Trump personally was unaware of the significance. But his staff must have been, right? And members of his staff also undoubtedly know that Tulsa was the site of horrific white on black violence and terrorism in 1921 that led to at least 300 people being murdered, African Americans, the destruction of thousands of black owned businesses and homes and the forced internment of these families. And so I think that his staff scheduled this event on purpose, right? Like he does not need votes in Oklahoma. That's not what

this is about. This is giving the finger to people who care about social justice and decency. And like that is what the modern Republican Party is about. It's about trolling and intentionally hurting people they dismiss as social justice warriors. And so I'm glad he moved the event. He tried initially to say it was a celebration of Juneteenth, which is as stupid a thing as you can say. But I think there's a direct line between this event and the date of it and then announcing a bunch of policies we'll talk about later that attack LGBT people at the beginning

of Pride Month. I think that's all on purpose. So apparently this morning, Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press said that the staff did know that it was on Juneteenth. And they did know the significance of the holiday, but they weren't prepared for the blowback, is what he said, which is ridiculous. Lovett, what do you think about him making the decision to move it? Because like Tommy just said, you know, he did say, well, it's a celebration of Juneteenth. And then he walked it back, which is rare to have a Trump walk back. Yeah, it's always strange when normal politics works on Trump, you know, that that is that his staff thought they could get away with the dog whistle of going to Tulsa on this day. When, as Tommy points out, everyone would be like,

why are you going to Oklahoma? It is not a swing state. They thought they could maybe send that signal without it leading to an uproar. But that, of course, is not what happened. There is a long tradition of this in Republican politics, with Reagan giving a speech outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, around states' rights to send a signal to his racist Southern supporters. So now as to why he moved it, maybe like so many others, the Trump administration and Trump's campaign team has been caught off guard by the scale of these protests and the tenor of this moment, surprised by how much attention has come down on him over going to Tulsa, but also even though, you know, we'll talk about it, but the difficult position he's now put in between

wanting to go back to his comfort zone of lashing out at protesters, lashing out at the Black Lives Matter movement, and where the country is right now, which is a broad based consensus around reform. Yeah, I mean, you know, as Tommy just noted, they're sort of having this internal debate on a whole number of issues within the Trump campaign. Should you be like true MAGA or should you try to expand your coalition? Because that's usually how you win an election. coalition, because that's usually how you win an election. On the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule to remove protections that would have stopped health care providers from discriminating against transgender Americans. And, you know, then you've got Ivanka tweeting about pride and everything.

So this is this is clearly a divide that is within the administration. There's NBC's story from Friday about this internal debate. Basically, there's a debate over just how much racism will help the president win reelection. NBC has three sources that heard Trump dismiss the people in the streets protesting racism and police violence by saying, quote, these aren't my voters. And while one of his advisors said, quote, he should be leading on police reform because he doesn't have any room to write off sets of potential voters. Another said, we're losing the culture war because we're so scared to be called racist and that Trump should be taking on the Black Lives Matter movement by calling it, quote, a front organization for a lot of crazy leftist ideas that are unpopular. What do you think? Is Trump losing because he hasn't been racist enough, Tommy? I mean, no one, I guess, let me just step back. No one should be surprised

by a Republican presidential candidate using racism as a strategy, right? Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, they created and adopted the Southern strategy where they courted Southern white voters who had been Democrats by stoking racial fears. strategy where they courted Southern white voters who had been Democrats by stoking racial fears. Nixon went on to use euphemisms like silent majority or law and order to code his racial appeals. But even his entire war on drugs was an effort to go after the anti-war movement and the Black community. I mean, his former top domestic policy staffer, John Ehrlichman, said that on the record that they criminalized drugs to target and vilify black leaders. Ronald Reagan supported housing discrimination when he ran for

governor in 1966. One of his first events in 1980 was a speech about states' rights in Mississippi, which everyone interpreted as an attack on civil rights legislation. So we could go on and on here. This is in many ways a continuation of strategies we've seen from Republicans for a very long time. You know, while he did walk back this event, he also Trump quickly came out in favor of keeping Confederate monuments and keeping military bases named after Confederate generals, even after basically the entire military said they should be talking about getting rid of them. So, you know, look, his base, when they talk about his base, that is code for almost

exclusively white people in this country. And so, of course, that is who he thinks about in every move he makes as president, because everything he does as president is about getting reelected. Love it on the on the politics of this. It seems at least so far that this strategy of only playing to the base is not working in any way. And, you know, who knows what the future may hold, but it's been a couple weeks now. We're past sort of like the snap polls that were occurring in the immediate aftermath of the protests. And he is still sort of losing by a larger margin and has a worse approval rating than he has in a couple of years. You know, when he says those aren't my voters, he's right. That's true. The people out on the

streets are not his voters. They will not vote for him. They will not support him. That's absolutely right. I think the struggle here and, you know, you see him kind of whenever there is kind of dissensus inside of the Trump. I don't know. What would you call it? Evil, evil clockworks, whatever inside of this machine, there's things the gears are clusterfuck, whatever you want to call it. They just do everything right. So he's cautiously trying to figure out what he can support in terms of reform from Congress. He's still tweeting that, oh, you know, this protest movement wants to abolish the police. How crazy, right? They're trying both things at once. But what I think is

interesting to me is the original way Trump becomes president, which is about inflaming and exciting his core base around some of these racial issues or on some of these cultural issues while appealing to enough people who are not animated by that, maybe even turned off by that, but yet still are willing to kind of reluctantly pull the lever for him based on a bunch of other things, based on overlooking racism, what have you, that that coalition may be changing, right? That actually that appeal may still work for the base, but it's alienating enough people who have now had enough time with Donald Trump to see what it's actually like, and they don't care for it. That that basic way of campaigning doesn't work, and he doesn't have a lot of other arrows in his quiver. He doesn't have a lot of other tools, because he can't do

empathy. He can't do unity. He can't do any of the things a normal president might do. I mean, you know, there was this talk about him giving a race speech. Does anyone actually think that that race speech would have been aimed at anyone other than white people, especially his white base? I don't. Of course not. Right. So so he's sort of limited and they're dealing with this limited person. And I don't think they're totally sure what to do. Yeah, I mean, it's it seems to me that it's a pretty fundamental misreading of the broader electorate. You're right, Lovett, that he looks at the protesters in the streets and says, these aren't my voters. And yes, those aren't his voters.

And then you're talking about his base. There's a lot of other voters in the country besides his base and people who are on the streets, particularly people who have sort of made a big difference in the elections since Trump has become president, which are people who live in the suburbs. And I think the suburbs have changed. Their political views have changed over the last several decades, even more so in the last couple of years. And when you look at some of these polls, when you look at some of the support for police reform, support for the Black Lives Matter movement, support for the protesters in the streets,

we're talking 60, 70, 80 percent, right? We're not talking 51, 52. You look at how Joe Biden is doing among suburbanites in places like Wisconsin, winning suburban women by like, you know, 20, 30 points. Now, this might change, but like Yasha Monk from The Atlantic was tweeting last week that he sat in a focus group of 2016 Trump voters who were undecided. And he said that more than the pandemic, more than the economic crisis, what they most didn't like about Trump was his divisiveness over the last couple of weeks, how he has inflamed the divisions in this country, how he has poured gasoline on the fire of what's happening in this country. And I think what the Trump people don't quite get is if they want to get a majority, not a majority of the popular vote, but even a majority in the states that add up to 270, they're going to need to get a lot of suburban voters who do not like this style that Trump has.

And it reminds me of what happened sort of at the end of the 2018 midterms when we were all very worried about, you know, his fears about MS-13 and the caravan and immigration. And in a lot of very key states and key districts, it turned people off of Trump. I mean, look, this is what happens when your campaign team brings you a bunch of polls showing you getting creamed and you throw them

out of the office and commission a new poll that is more to your liking, right? I mean, he's not living in political reality. And look, I feel very burned like everybody else did by the 2016 predictions made by myself included in this. But there is a large volume of data that shows that Trump is really struggling in this moment because of the divisiveness that we've always known even Trump supporters don't like. They don't like the tweets. They don't like the misogyny. They don't like the overt racism. It bothers them. It makes them embarrassed to support him. And that has been supercharged this last month, basically. Yeah. And that, of course, is the difference. Like the Trump fans,

the people that are going to show up at the Tulsa rally, they love all that shit. But a lot of people who may have cast a ballot for Trump or didn't cast a ballot at all and are thinking about voting this time, it's it's much different. And again, this is where we are right now. Yeah. Five months ago. Who the hell knows? Right. I think it's just worth pointing out, like this may well be the the the conditions of this race till Election day. This also may be a nadir for Trump. And the conversation moves on and we have a short memory. I mean, there were incredible moments for Trump in 2016, which all of this was part of the conversation. But our ability to forget how awful Trump is, is pretty it's it's it's pretty strong. And so we just have

to remember that I think that this could be a nadir and it could get better for him. So Trump was somehow able to avoid overt racism during his West Point commencement address over the weekend. But he did have a few other issues. At one point, he had trouble lifting his right arm to take a sip of water and had to use his left hand to push the glass all the way up to his mouth. And then after the speech was over, Trump looked like he was struggling to walk down the ramp after the speech. So videos of these moments went viral. And I wasn't even going to maybe talk about them until Trump decided to tweet about this on Saturday night. He tweeted, quote,

The ramp that I descended after my West Point commencement was very long and steep, had no handrail, and most importantly, most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is fall, in quotations, for the fake news to have fun with. Final 10 feet, I ran down to level ground. Momentum. Momentum. Momentum is my favorite part. So the ramp wasn't steep, slippery, or something that he ran down in any way. But what do you guys make of this? Like, I did enjoy the New York Times headline, Trump's halting walk down ramp raises new health questions. I was, it was, it was such a surprising thing to see a story like that about a Republican in the Times. Yeah. Raising questions is what we do about Democrats. But

Tommy, I don't have anything insightful to say. No, look, I mean, I don't know what to make of those videos. I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of diagnosing people from afar. I think that a lot of people, including many on the left, disgraced themselves when they asserted that Joe Biden had some sort of cognitive issue based on heavily edited videos in an attempt to influence the primary when it was still going. That said, the health and wellness of candidates is a very legitimate discussion.

And Trump has refused to meet the basic standards that we've required of past presidents when it comes to transparency around his health. So first, it was everyone remembers our buddy, Dr. Harold Bornstein, right, who later admitted that the letter he released about Trump's fitness was dictated to him by the now president. Then there was this mysterious unannounced visit Trump took to Walter Reed last year, which has never been explained. It's also relevant in terms of the coronavirus and the continued peddling of hydroxychloroquine, even when Trump says he took it himself. But today the FDA said the drug is no longer authorized for use in treating COVID. And he's out there saying like there's something wrong with Joe Biden, right? So this White House

will lie about literally anything they drew on weather maps. I don't know how to interpret it. But what we do know politically is that this shit gets in his head real fast. Like the Lincoln Project and some other anti-Trump groups are going hard at his insecurities. They're calling him weak. They're calling him frail. They're calling him unhealthy. And it is leading him to lash out and respond in ways that are unhelpful to his own campaign. You know, there was a report that Trump's campaign spent $400,000 on TV ads in DC because they felt like they needed to show the boss that they were responding to the Lincoln project. So that is, you might as well light that money on fire. There's no voters in DC if that wasn't clear to folks listening. So it's in his head in a big way. I don't know what to make of it uh it was weird yeah i mean like call me bewildered

about what it all means and what what was going on there but the point is i'm bewildered uh the point is uh on saturday night as this country is in the midst of a pandemic that is still raging through the country an economic recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the depression, and a moment of racial and social upheaval that we haven't seen in decades. The president's tweeting about his fucking trip down a ramp and complaining about it. That's the president. And we know that what really bothers people about him is that he is ineffective, that he cannot seem to solve any of the problems we're facing because he's more focused on himself than he is focused on the American people.

And this fits right into that frame perfectly because he just gets so upset about this bullshit. And as you mentioned, Tommy, like they're they have previewed. They have said to reporters, Trump has said it. Kellyanne Conway has said it, that their whole a big part of their strategy in defining Joe Biden is that he is there's something wrong with them, that he's too old, that he's, you know. And if they're going to do that, if they're going to make inferences about Joe Biden's health and well-being, then, of course, this is fair game. And of course, Democrats are justified in running those videos as much as they want. If he's going to do this about Biden. Yeah, absolutely. It's a really strange way

to drink a glass from a glass. Like, it's just like... I don't know. I'm just trying to... It was like... And he was very ginger. Yeah. He's done it before, too.

The glass was weirder than the ramp to me. It looked like a shoulder problem to me. Like, I have screwed up shoulders, and sometimes they kind of, like, get off up here. But I don't know. Again. But he's grabbed the glass with his hands. I mean, look, there's also a question. You know, Ashley Feinberg wrote that piece about the fact that her theory is that he just can't fucking see that he's just too vain to wear glasses and doesn't want to be seen in

glasses. I like. I also just think like I see people making fun of them. I'm glad people are making fun of Trump whenever it happens. Generally, there are ads that are getting under his skin. Great. But like as Trump is a mortal threat, you know, he is a dangerous demagogue. He is a racist. He is horrible on all these axes that are so much more important and so much more salient to me than this. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. But throw everything, Adam, you got. Yeah. So so one last note about the West Point speech. You may remember that Trump basically forced the graduates to come back to campus for the speech after they had been sent home months earlier because of covid, which meant that to be at the speech, they had to be in

quarantine for two weeks just so Trump could get his photo op for the speech. He's also decided to hold this Saturday's possibly 20,000 person Tulsa rally indoors with no social distancing requirements, no mask requirements, though attendees will now receive apparently a mask, some hand sanitizer, and they will be required to sign a liability waiver where you agree to not sue the Trump campaign if you get COVID. So Trump seems to have forgotten about the virus, but the virus has not forgotten about us. Cases are now climbing in 22 states. And even though some of that is due to more testing, a few states are now seeing a record number of hospitalizations, including Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, North and South Carolina. Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, North and South Carolina. How much of this is Trump's fault,

Tommy? And how much is people and local officials, you know, who just refuse to deal with lockdowns anymore? You know, look, the answer is probably unknowable. I mean, certainly they botched the response from the very beginning and everything that has come after is associated with that botched early response, the lack of testing, the lack of modeling good behavior. So all of that started on day one. I do think that Trump has expedited the push to reopen states. He refuses to wear a mask in a mask factory. That's not a great way to model basic personal behaviors that might actually help us do better. I mean, I do think there are some states that have locked down that are still struggling. So I'm not sure. But holding a rally indoors when the health commissioner in Tulsa asked you not to is an insane escalation

of that irresponsible behavior that could lead to a bunch of people getting killed. So I think people will be closely watching the fallout from that event, if any, right? Because of all, for all the concern about protests, and there's this legitimate concern, I read today that we've seen at least 30 cases linked to protests, which actually seems to be pretty low given the scale of these protests, but maybe more better data will come out at some point. Love it. What did you think? Yeah, I mean, look, having been at a number of these protests now, the vast majority of people are wearing masks and they're outside. And that makes it a wholly

different thing than being and that doesn't mean that there's no risk. And I think that people denying that risk or not are being kind of defensive. But it's a wholly different thing than a massive indoor rally where people are potentially not wearing masks. You know, there's this debate about how culpable Trump is. Would Hillary Clinton have done better? I'm not particularly interested in it. You know, how late was Trump? How much faster should he have gotten to this? Well, here we are now. It is June. We were supposed to go into stay at home so that the government would have time to build a proper national response. Didn't happen.

There's still not enough masks. You know, we still don't have enough testing. We still don't have a proper plan for making sure that we can reopen while socially distancing and remaining safe. is that basic leadership from a president saying, hey, everybody, wear masks, especially because one of the things we've learned from experts in recent weeks is just how important masks can be. It is one of the most important things we have learned

that actually may be one of the mistakes we made early on was not pushing masks hard enough. And that masks themselves may allow us to have some amount of reopening and some amount of safety while being able to go back to our lives, maybe not, certainly not fully, not as much as before,

not in restaurants close to one another. And so if the fact that Donald Trump can't just say to everybody, hey, wear a mask, which would certainly save lives, save thousands of lives perhaps, save billions, trillions for the economy. We have no idea.

The fact that he won't do that when it is fucking free is outrageous. It's outrageous. It's outrageous. Here's the thing. Murderous. I do not. I do not think you can lay at Trump's feet the mixed messages on masks that we had at the beginning of this pandemic, I think.

And I don't even public health officials and epidemiologists didn't really know enough about the virus at first. And so we've learned more over time, right? But, you know, when you talked about the like, what if Hillary Clinton was president? Okay, what if anyone else was president, right? We now have studies, multiple studies, not just one, multiple studies that say even if 50% of the population wore masks in public, it could significantly reduce the spread of the virus by up to 80%. It would get it below R1,

which means the virus stops, eventually dies out. When you look to multiple Asian countries, Japan, Taiwan, there's a whole bunch of countries where people wear masks because they've had other pandemics like this that were respiratory diseases, and they wore masks, and so it's more of a tradition there and they have done so much better than us in tamping out tamping down this virus it's not just about if trump wore a

mask like i have imagined for a while if like obama had been president during this not only would he wear a mask we would have this entire public education campaign. We'd get celebrities to wear masks, artists, entertainers, like media people, influential people all across the country because we would make it a cultural norm. And if you could do that, you could open up the economy. Right. Like I understand people saying we can't be locked down forever. We can't keep the economy close forever. I get that, right? But I don't understand people not being able, not being willing to like fucking put a piece of cloth over your face. Yeah, cases are climbing on a daily basis

in 22 states right now. And as far as I can tell, the coronavirus task force is no longer meeting. They have given up on having a federal response to this pandemic. All of it has been pushed upon states or just individual citizens. And that's with 115,000 Americans dead. So like, yeah, it is just priced into the equation that they have completely given up. He is betting

and hoping that he can just bullshit his way through this like he's done everything else in life. Fake it till you make it. And then look, if things are really bad in the fall, he's probably thinking, well, I'm going to lose anyway. So I might as well predict that they're going to be better. And then if I guess right, I can tell all these, you know, lefty liberals that they were wrong. It's an insane political strategy. There's so much more you could be doing that seems pretty basic that would improve the economy. That would mean people died he just refuses to do it they want to move on it is it is it is unfathomable that this is where we are but that's what he chose yeah it's and like you said it's not just like he's like his actions are going to lead to more infections and more deaths which is you know the thing we should be most concerned about is awful

even from a pure political standpoint for him, right? Like, the economy would be better if everyone wore masks, right? Because more people go back to work. Fewer people would die. That's better for him, like, even politically. And there's also, there is no substitute for national leadership on this, right? Like, you know, we're in Los Angeles. You know, our public health director, Barbara Frere, and Eric Garcetti, our mayor, tell us every day in press conferences to like wear masks everywhere. There's a requirement. They're local officials. Officials who pays attention to that. Right. Like people pay attention to like they turn on the news. They see the president. They see national figures. It should be it should be a national effort in this country to get everyone to wear masks.

You cannot do it on a local level. You just can't. I also, you know, I think one of the things that I have just sort of really internalized just during these protests is the real connection between the callousness with which police departments, with our culture has treated whole swaths of the country, black people, people in our cities, people, you know, brown people, immigrants, what have you, and the callousness that Trump is using to respond to this crisis. It is the fact that there has been a right-wing propaganda outfit that has such disdain for its viewers and such disdain for the people who aren't watching that can dismiss whole swaths of the country, just dehumanize whole swaths of the country. It is not that big of a leap from that kind of disregard

for lives, for safety, for human beings, to disregarding the lives and safety of your own people, of your own supporters, to simply give up on caring about anybody. And so as we sort of, as we try to take on Trump, it is worth looking at just how quickly the Fox News mentality metastasized into not even caring about their own supporters, their own people who will show up, sign away their release. These are not healthy people, a lot of them, showing up at these Trump rallies. And these Fox personalities you're talking about, guess what they're doing? They're working from home.

Yeah, they're recording from home. You know, people who are super rich, they have access to testing. They're fine. They're going to stay indoors or they're going to go outside. You know, they're going to do it. Like, it's just you're right. They have disregard for the people that they claim to be their people. They only have regard for themselves.

OK, when we come back, we'll talk to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Wesley Lowry. Lowry. I'm now joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, correspondent for the new show 60 and 6 on Quibi and author of They Can't Kill Us All, Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement. Wesley Lowry, thanks for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having me, John. I want to start at 30,000 feet. Over the past few weeks, we've seen protest and conversation around reimagining policing, around racism in our society, that so many of the other stories, the killings, examples of police brutality did not ignite. What do you think happened that allowed for this kind of a moment to be unlocked where in the past it didn't happen?

So when I think about all of this, given both my own reporting on the ground and the history here, and we talk about policing and police violence, particularly as it relates to Black Americans, one of the key debates, one of the key grapples here is, is this a set of isolated incidents, bad police officers doing bad things, perhaps an individual officer who happens to be a racist or whatnot? Or is there something like systemically and structurally broken in policing? And is that brokenness a reflection of a broader inequity or inequality, right? So for years, literally going back to slavery, Black Americans and Black American activists

have said, the police are broken, they harm us, and they don't protect us. And they've had to fight and fight and fight and fight on this. And the white majority of the country has largely said, first, well, that's not true. And then eventually got to the point where they said, well, maybe there are some bad police, right? And so you see this as it progresses, right? And you see this even in this five or six year period that we've had recently, where at the very beginning, it was all about the hyper litigation of the specific cases. How far up were Michael Brown's hands? Were they kind of up? Were they not? I mean, Tamir Rice kind of had a toy gun, right? So didn't he deserve it? Well, Walter Scott had gotten a fight with that guy. And so

it's okay that he shot at me. Like it was these hyper situationally specific pieces of litigation, right? And what we see now, right? Cause again, black Americans have always argued, always that it's like a structural problem that like it's, it's bigger than, I'm not saying every cop is a racist. I'm not, it's like, it's bigger than, I'm not saying every cop is a racist. It's bigger than that, right? And white Americans have always said, hmm, I don't know about that. What we're seeing now is a plurality of white Americans. For the first time that we've ever polled, like, you know, I mean this in a real, it's not like my feelings, like the numbers show that for the first time ever, a majority of

white Americans say, perhaps there's actually something structurally wrong with policing. Now, what leads to that in this moment versus others? A big part of it is cell phone cameras and body cameras, right? That suddenly white Americans are seeing with their own eyes interactions that previously they would have had to believe black people to know existed, right? So black people are going like, the cops are beating us up. And the white people are like, I don't know about that. Maybe you guys deserved it. And now they're watching on their phone and going,

that guy didn't deserve to get beat up. That guy didn't need to be dead. And then they close their phone. And the next day, there's another video. And a month later, there's another video. And then two years later, there's another video. And they're like, I thought we solved that stuff back in 2014. And I think that has been the moment where, again,

in the type of democracy we have, right, you basically can't change anything unless you get a majority of white people to agree to it, right? It's just the way it works, like statistically. And on this issue, you finally have at least a plurality of white people who are willing to even engage the conversation that maybe there's something bigger or structurally broken about policing. Yeah, it's interesting. There was a poll that just came out and there's been lots of polling. And obviously, in an issue in flux like this, the wording really matters. But what I was really struck by is, you know, there's a huge majority, even a majority of

Republicans that are in favor of a version of defunding the police that is framed as shifting some resources from police departments to mental health services, social services, and other ways of handling disputes. But what was remarkable is that I believe it was 38 or 39 percent supported even the kind of more aggressive definition around defunding and abolition. Now, you're right. It does seem as though the conversation has shifted away from litigating every specific incident to prove which larger argument is correct. How much of that is it turning out that police departments weren't telling the truth versus how much of it was simply seeing things even as accurately described

allowed white people specifically to come to understand something deeper. So I think it was a combination of both of those things, right? I do think that, look, in a lot of these cases, the police were not telling the truth, right? And that should not surprise us. Like as humans, a lot of times we don't tell the truth or we bend the truth a little bit for our own means to protect ourselves. Right. That's human nature. The police are not especially vile or villainous because they do this. Now, one might argue because they're the police, they shouldn't. But that's a different discussion. Right. The that was part of it and questionably part of it. Right.

But what also these videos, what these videos allowed was it allowed for cases where and that's one of the things I've always been most interested in, cases where we otherwise would have written it off, even based on the police account, not even that the police are necessarily lying or misleading, right? But that even those of us in the media, right? Philando Castile is an armed black man who the officer says reached for his gun during a traffic stop. That's not a front page story, right? We don't care about that at all. Now that we watch that video, suddenly we go, wait a second. I mean, just because he had a gun. So suddenly all these nuances and complexities of human interactions are laid bare.

And again, black Americans always kind of understood that because it was their uncle who was getting killed by the cops. And so they were always interested in figuring out the nuances. Well, just because he was drunk and mouthing off to you doesn't mean he needs to be dead. Or just because he had his gun on him, does that mean that they always were aware of that while a lot of other people were disinterested in any type of nuanced litigation. More people now, and again, more white Americans, and I don't, like I said, I don't even, I don't mean that in any way, like derogatorily. I just mean that as a group of people who have a separate set of beliefs collectively

that Black Americans do, right? More white Americans are now willing to entertain the idea that perhaps not every word that the police say is gospel, that they, in fact, are political actors who bend narratives, who don't always tell the truth, who aren't always held accountable, who are defensive, right? I think that's a really big part of this. And I think that's really important in kind of this moment now. The other thing I'd say, though, kind of getting back to what you're talking about in terms of the polling around defunding, right,

is one of the things that's always been most interesting to me in this space is that the abolitionists and the police say a lot of the same things, right? If you talk to the cops, I spend a lot of time talking to cops, right? They will tell you, look, we have to deal with every part of society. You guys have underfunded the homelessness shelters and you've underfunded the mental health clinics and the drugs. And we're the ones who get the call and we have to show up. Right.

And they use this to make this argument about how overworked they are and how hard their jobs are, all of which is true. Right. And the abolitionists say the exact same thing. They're like, yes, I don't want the cops showing up to deal with homeless people. Yes, I don't want the cops showing up to deal with homeless people. Yes, I don't want the cops showing up to deal with mental illness. We should have a whole different number. This argument is basically that we've allowed our society, so much of the safety net of our society to get gutted. And so now the only number we have is 911 and a guy with

a gun shows up. Yeah. So I actually wanted to ask you about that. You know, the police associations seem like they're doing two functions here at part of these debates. One is about just protecting their members from accountability. OK. And the other is protecting resources and funding, because also this comes down to just jobs, just jobs and making sure that their members keep their jobs and keep their keep their employment, keep their pensions, what have you. But in a lot of ways, what's happening is showing that those two sides are in tension, because if the police are conceding that they're responding to things that aren't in their expertise, that actually escalate problems that shouldn't be escalated. In many ways, they're conceding that, yes, their jobs are impossible. And so they should not be doing these kinds of jobs. And yet, because we've built this system over decades that shifted all the resources to police, it puts them in a position of having to advocate to keep those jobs in place, which prevents the money from going to these services that would make it so that they were not needed in those areas. There's a contradiction there. Is there a way out of that paradox? Is there a way to shift resources and actually accept the argument made by both

sides that mental illness, drug abuse, sort of quotidian, nonviolent work that the police are forced to do, to shift it away from police without creating this incredibly divisive and difficult local political problem of police do not want to give up those resources? It's really difficult. And I don't know that I know of a place that has like fully handled that or navigated that. It's playing out in a lot of different places, right? One, the police unions are extremely locally politically powerful. They have a membership that shows up in votes. They give money. They, no one wants to be the politician who the cops are saying hates cops, right? It's a poison pill, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, right? No one wants to be the cop hating politician, right? And so that's, and many

of the police unions, not all of them, many of the police unions very willingly use such rhetoric, right? That like, wait, you want to cut our budget? You want dead cops. Well, like, all right. It makes it very difficult to now have any like nuanced conversation about what should be happening or what shouldn't be, right? And so it's really tough. I mean, and it's hard, you know, I think the union issue is very fascinating to me because it's an issue that perplexes and challenges are very often Democrats and Republicans understanding of politics, right? This is a case where Republicans love the police unions because the Republicans love the police and the Democrats are saying, what do you mean get rid of a public

sector union? What are you talking about? Like we love labor, right? It's like this, it's this position where everyone is subservient to the police union, no matter their politics, except for the black people are like, could you please stop killing us? This would be great. If like, we could not do this anymore. Right.

But all of our political structure is, like I said, it's deferential to police unions. What's also true. And again, I don't even mean this to villainize the police unions at all. Right. They are doing a job and they play a role in this.

Right. I do think their role looks different. No, look, I'm a member of a union as a writer. If I go down in some plagiarism scandal tomorrow, the union is not holding press conferences talking about, well, if you criticize him, you hate writers unless you want them dead.

Well, no, right? Right. But I don't know of an example. I don't know of an example where a cop has killed someone or been involved in one of these incidents and his union didn't hyperbolically stand by him. Not just saying we're going to represent him and give him a lawyer, but wasn't out there giving a press conference saying, screw you if you criticize him, right? That doesn't exist in

a lot of other unions, that level of support publicly. And beyond that, though, you know, we are coming out of a period of time, economic downturn, recession, I mean, going back decades, right, where municipal budgets were crunched. they were squeezed. And first, what the police unions did, I think wisely, right, was that they weren't receiving hiring, you know, additional positions, nor raises, right? And that was, by the way, the only thing that the local papers were covering in terms of union negotiations. Do the cops and firefighters get a raise or do they not, right? End of discussion. in terms of union negotiations. Do the cops and firefighters get a raise or do they not, right? End of discussion. Well, those union negotiations include all types of other negotiations,

including the policies that govern accountability. And so what police unions were able to do over the last 25 years was to write into the governing law all types of things that the average American would find absolutely insane, right? The way we handle what happens when a cop kills someone, your average person, no matter their politics, would go, this doesn't make sense. Why would we handle this this way? And the unions were able to get all these concessions and get them nationally. And if you didn't agree to them, you hated the cops, right? It was there. And so because of that, we have a system that is not constructed to hold police officers particularly accountable because the unions have been able to successfully wield their power and their weight to create a system that leans so far over in favor of their members. I want to turn to the way the media has been

covering some of these protests. There was a killing in Georgia. Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police, shot twice in the back. That led to mass protests, including a fire at that Wendy's. That image has been everywhere, right? The image of the burning Wendy's. How are images of destruction to your mind driving the way media outlets cover this? of destruction to your mind driving the way media outlets cover this? And what do you think the responsible coverage that takes into account that this fire takes place while putting it in larger context looks like? You know, I think that it's a hard question, right? I don't think there's like a clear and obvious, this is the answer. This is what works in every single scenario because it's tough, right? Each of these stories is a little bit different. Each story informs the next one, right? So a fire, a Wendy's burning in Atlanta yesterday comes in the context of the fires that

were in Minneapolis week before versus Minneapolis where that hadn't happened yet, right? And so there's some different, but what I will say is there are a few things, a few things I think about broadly, right? The first is that I do think all of our coverage has to be rooted in what it is downstream from, right? That Wendy's is burning because the police killed someone, right? It is not a story of a Wendy's that's on fire, right? It's a story of the police killing someone and the public being so upset that there's stuff on fire, right? And I think sometimes we, it's our kind of newness bias, right? It's like, but the thing that just happened five minutes ago is the story.

Well, but if the thing that happened five minutes ago is because of a thing that happened an hour ago, perhaps the thing that happened an hour ago remains the story, right? I think also there's a lot of difficulty in kind of our online up to the minute media coverage, as well as our live cable news coverage that can be really difficult because again,

it prioritizes the like literally what is happening in this moment. And by the nature of being there with all those cameras, we keep things going on for hours longer than perhaps they would have gone on. Right. And so I do think that that's something we have to think about. I, I, again, I don't know that there's like a perfect answer to this, but I'm always struck by, I think a lot about when I got back from Ferguson, I went back to home to Cleveland, uh, where my parents are from, where my parents live. And I was sitting in the living room and this is like December, 2014. I'd been in Ferguson for three months. Right. And my parents had read probably more coverage than basically anyone else. Cause they

read everything I wrote about it. Right. Like this. So they had, they were not just the average American who checked in and out. They were every single day they were following the story and yet their question still was so what's that place like because the only thing they'd ever seen was like the one gas station on fire on loop for three months right the average person consuming the coverage would have thought this entire town had burned to the ground and it was like two strip malls i mean i mean and again and that's not to i don't even mean that to diminish the real pain and loss of violence. There were some dangerous and scary nights out there. It was tough.

All that's real. And also, Ferguson is a suburb with a fountain in its town square and white people walking their dogs. Ferguson, Missouri was not burned to the ground at any point. Didn't happen, right? But the average viewer walks away from our coverage and thinks the entire city is that burned down gas station. I think that's a failing of us to the collective us in terms of that coverage. Yeah.

And especially with the context of Republicans, you know, you see Ted Cruz saying that, you know, the left, the left gets rid of Gone with the Wind and burns Atlanta. And it's like, well, first of all, I don't believe the HBO Max executives were in. It's like, what is this left? But it is an effort to exploit these kinds of things. I want to ask one final question on the role of the media, because you've talked about this. I do not want to add words to the Tom Cotton op-ed fracas, which the Times has been covering daily ever since.

It's the biggest story in all of America. But you said something that I think goes to a deeper question, which is on Twitter. You said, American view from nowhere, objectivity obsessed, both sides journalism is a failed experiment. We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity. What does that actually look like in practice to you? I think a big part of it, I've been thinking about this right now, and I'm actually thinking about people keep trying to talk me into writing something on this because everyone liked that tweet. And now a bunch of bad faith actors are telling me what that tweet meant. Right. But that's said, one of the things I think about in the most simplest sense, right, is that journalism in many ways is a field that skews very specifically to norms and standards

to avoid any creativity and any individualized decision-making, right? This is what we do, and this is how we do it. We never make a decision. We never have a discussion. We never think about it. This is how we do it. And I think that, which by the way, is very different than the process for most of the highest end journalism. If you're doing investigative work, if you're doing big, you're having all types of at the sentence level discussions of what's the right way to do this? What's the most considerate? It's never, well, but we did it this way before. No, no, no. What's the best thing for this story? But the vast majority of journalism doesn't go through a process like that at all. And so Tom Cotton ends up getting to publish a unquestionably, objectively inflammatory column that unquestionably and objectively had factual errors in it. And the reason and the rationale is,? That nothing we do, and again, and that is not to say that there is a singular set of moral decisions.

You and I can both be moral actors and considerate actors and come down with a different decision on whether or not that should be published, right? But what journalism of moral clarity requires is that we even have the discussion in the first place, and that perhaps that's a discussion that includes a bunch of different types of people at the table and not just a bunch of rich white guys, right? And so it speaks to like our ability, you know, we act as if journalism is not a series of decisions, but it is a series of subjective decisions. Whose stories we're telling, what source is credible, who we give an op-ed to. I don't remember any Antifa op-eds or any actually burn down the rest of the country op-eds, right? Those are opinions, right? Like a subjective decision was made over who gets that platform or not.

And all I'm suggesting is that we need to not fall back on this is because this is how we've always done it rationale, but rather be willing to say, let's create a journalism that's smart enough to like show that it's read a book. Let's create a journalism that's smart enough to like make deliberate decisions and then stand by those decisions. Not have people be able to poke holes in all these, well, we did this because of this. And then someone goes,

well, but what about all the errors in it? Oh, all right, maybe you have a point, right? We shouldn't be in that position. Well, at the very least also, it's not what was clear in the publishing of that op-ed, not to be on that one topic. But this happens all the time is not just a suspension of politics, but a suspension of intellectual honesty for the sake of achieving balance of

some kind. One last question, and thank you for your time this morning. I just want to come back to where we started, which is you've been covering this for years. You were arrested in Ferguson, and then it was noted widely that people were shocked to see reporters mistreated now. So there are many things that are surprising people who haven't been paying attention, myself included, right? But as someone who's been on the ground covering this, what has surprised you most over the last sort of three weeks? That's a really good question, you know, because it is. It's really tough.

I will say I am surprised genuinely by how much has shifted and changed so quickly. I became kind of a pretty hearted cynic and skeptic of this. I got arrested in a viral video and all of journalism told me how I deserved it and it was my own fault. And now it's like, how dare they arrest those reporters? This is insane. Things have shifted so drastically you have media companies that are putting out like black lives matter statements where like i had like i i was i had this one mini controversy in 2014 where i tweeted like a video of the protesters during live coverage and they were chanting black lives matter and i didn't use a quotation mark and so all these right-wing trolls were like look at him he's part

of the pro and i was like guys like it's clearly the caption of the video. And now like CBS Viacom is like, we would like to be clear. Black Lives Matter. And I'm like, what? Where'd this come from? Right. And so I can't, you know, I do as cynical as I can be. I am very struck by how much has shifted and how much has changed and how quickly that has happened. And again, I'm not sure that there's much explanation beyond the fact that like people can see this stuff with their own eyes now in a way they couldn't. And I think that that really has begun to weigh on people. And what I'll also say too, is the energy that we see the kind of the center left that's being absorbed into this moment is stuff that's been building for years during the

Trump presidency, right? You have people out in the streets who are out in the street for the Women's March. They're out in the street for the Kids in the Cages. They're out in the street after Parkland. They're out in the street for climate. You know, people are very fed up in general. And this is a moment and this is one of many things that people are very fed up about. And I think that has created more of a more of a impassioned multiracial coalition kind of among the progressive left that had existed previously. But before it was a bunch of kind of semi groups that were all theoretically allies of each other. But like the Women's March is all white and the Black Lives Matter March is all black. And like the and now there is, I think, a little bit of an overlap in a way that's different.

Well, Wesley Lowry, thank you so much for joining us. And everybody should check out 60 on 6. 6 on 60? Did I say 60 on 6? Something like, no one knows what it's called. Just open the Quibi app, which you also don't know what it is, but open it. But I will say, I watched the first episode and it's a really great, and because it is, it's only 10 minutes. It's a really quick and fast-paced look at the protest on the ground. I really recommend it. Wesley Lowry, thank you so much. Of course. Anytime, Joe. Thanks to Wesley Lowry. When we come back, I'm going to talk to Chase Strangio from the ACLU about this landmark ruling on LGBTQ rights. Joining us now, one of the attorneys from the ACLU's legal team that was part of today's landmark LGBTQ plus rights ruling and the ACLU's deputy director for transgender justice, Chase Strangio.

Welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. What a day. Yeah, what a day. I am in shock in a good way. So this morning, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that prevents discrimination against LGBTQ plus individuals in the workplace. Can you tell us a little bit about the ruling and how big a deal it is? Yeah, so, you know, we have been working

on these issues for so long and working on this case for so long and involved three individuals who were fired for being LGBTQ. And it was a really straightforward question before the court, which is just, under the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination, is it illegal to fire someone for being LGBTQ? And today, in a 6-3 opinion, the court unequivocally said it is illegal. LGBTQ people are unquestionably covered under the plain language of the statute. people are unquestionably covered under the plain language of the statute. And so in all 50 states, it is now illegal to discriminate against someone for being LGBTQ. And that will also have an impact on all of the federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination, including in education, in healthcare, in housing, and in credit. So this truly is an incredible, incredible victory for our communities.

Were you surprised to see a 6-3 ruling? And were you surprised to see the name Gorsuch as the author of that ruling? So what I will say is that, you know, the case was litigated for Gorsuch. You know, he was our target. He is the textualist. And every decision, you know, that we made in so many ways was just to make plain for him that his judicial philosophy aligns completely with the theory of the workers themselves. So to rule for the employees would be, you know, Gorsuch just applying his textual reading of the statute. And so that was less surprising than seeing Roberts, honestly. And so getting both of them, I think, just, and in such unequivocal terms, you know, with such clear language, to me, just really

shuts down some of the lower court hesitation that could come as a result of this. And then it completely shuts down the Trump administration's attempt to promulgate anti-LGBTQ regulations and other executive action through sub-regulatory action in every federal agency. So this is just a complete rebuke of so much of what the Trump administration has done. Yeah, I want to ask you about that. So last week, they rolled out their efforts to roll back Obama era rules around protecting LGBTQ access to healthcare. We've had anti-trans rules in the military being put forward. What does this mean for those rules? Yeah, so starting with the HHS rule, which is the healthcare rule implementing the non-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and the Obama administration

had put forth incredibly robust, affirmative interpretations of the federal prohibitions on sex discrimination, and the Trump administration rescinded those and put forth essentially a 340-page anti-trans screed on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern. They knew in doing that that the entire thing hinged on the outcome of this case from the Supreme Court. So they really wanted to beat the court to it, and they know, and they reference in the rule themselves that there really won't be legal authority to enforce that rule if the court doesn't adopt the position of the United States and the employers in the Title VII cases. So they didn't, but they did put forth the rule anyways, and it will essentially have no legal effect at this point as to the

anti-LGBTQ provisions. And just to be clear, there's also a ton of other horrible things in that rule around access to abortion care and other language access, other disability concerns. So there's a lot of terrible things in the rule. As to the anti-LGBTQ provisions, you know, many cases in the lower courts are dealing with these, but there's no way that they have any legal authority subsequent to this decision. The military rule is more complicated insofar as, you know, the executive has a lot more authority over the military and it wasn't enforcing any particular statute. But I think for that, a lot of the arguments that the administration made in support of the rule don't really stand in light of this interpretation of prohibitions on sex discrimination. So

certainly there's arguments to be made. I think that at the end of the day, getting rid of the anti-trans rule in the context of the military is going to come down to who wins the election and the presidency. I mean, there's litigation in court, but a new president could change that rule right away. But there are other things, you know, they rescinded student guidance for trans students under Title IX within the first few months of coming into office in 2017. They're about to publish in the Federal Register a rule that attempts to allow homeless shelters to turn away trans people. That is also premised on this same interpretation that they just lost before the Supreme Court. So there is,

you know, seriously no wind in their sails and actually no legal authority to justify these actions any further. So it really will be a decision that reaches into all aspects of, you know, federal legal protections will have huge consequences for people across areas of federal law. On the congressional front, there's been a long-term fight to pass an inclusive ENDA. How does this ruling affect that campaign? Is an inclusive ENDA still required, or has the Supreme Court made it unnecessary? You know, it's still absolutely required because, so the current bill is the Equality Act. It's already passed through the House. And it's absolutely essential for a few reasons. The first is, or the clearest, is that the Title II of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against discrimination in public accommodations, doesn't include sex at all. So that means that there are no protections for LGBTQ people or cisgender women or men. There are just no sex-based protections. So there needs to be a sort of comprehensive overhaul of the civil rights laws to make

them more expansive generally, particularly with respect to public accommodations. The other thing about Title II and public accommodations is that the definition of public accommodations under federal law currently is incredibly limited. So the Equality Act now would not only add explicit protections for sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity into Title II, but would also expand protections for everyone by expanding the definition of public accommodations and just fill in gaps in federal law that need to be updated to ensure comprehensive protections for everyone. Obviously, this is a critical step because the existing law is what it is, and we want to make sure we're covered as it is. But passing the Equality Act, which requires

a different Senate and a different president, is critical too. I also want to talk about what's next for the courts. So there's language in the ruling that is pretty vague around religious institutions, religious organizations. Clearly, in getting to this 6-3 women, whoever is going to seek to try to enforce this in religious schools elsewhere? What's next on the legal front? Yeah, I mean, so there's already the existing religious exemption within Title VII. And so that obviously still applies. I think the court has already taken the Fulton case, which is a case about sort of the scope of generally applicable non-discrimination laws when it comes to, and that's in the context of a child welfare case. But I think the next area where the Supreme Court is very likely to try to chip away at this ruling is in the context of

religious-based objections, and not just from religious institutions. I think we're likely to see, as we saw in Masterpiece, by businesses that are objecting on religious grounds. And so that, I think, is definitely going to be the next area of the fight and next term when we see the outcome of Fulton. It's very possible that we get this win and it's abrogated by, you know, some very broad interpretation of a constitutionally-based exemption. I also think that we're going to continue to have to litigate the meeting and application of this decision, though it is incredibly strong and will be incredibly important in the context of trans students and in restrooms,

there's cases pending in the lower courts, athletics, we're litigating several cases in the lower courts. So as to just the legal future itself, there is a lot more to resolve. And then I just, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the law, you know, the formal mechanisms of the law only protect people so far. And there are black and brown people dying every single day because they're LGBTQ and because they're black and because they're brown. And so I think two black trans women were murdered this week. You know, will this law stop that? You know, will this decision change that? Not on its own terms. I mean, you know, and so I think ultimately, you know, this, this is just a part of the fight. And, you know, the 15,000 people who showed up in

Brooklyn yesterday to rally for black trans lives. I mean, to me, that is, that is the future of justice. And that is the future of the work. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. You know, Amy Stevens, one of the plaintiffs in the case, she passed away about a month ago. She was fired from her job at a funeral home. And she said, and before she was fired, she sort of, she reached out to the people she worked with, and she said, what I must tell you is very difficult for me, and it has taken all the courage I could muster. I have felt imprisoned in a body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness. She extends this incredibly heartfelt note to the people in her life, and they fire her. They fire her.

Yes. We also saw protests across this country, as you mentioned. We've seen these deaths of black trans people. This ruling is a watershed, as you said, but we have to change the culture. What role do you think moments like this play in the broader fight for acceptance? How important is it that we have a conservative court affirming the rights and existence of trans people in this way? You know, I think that it is an incredibly important part of the broader, both discursive and norm-setting changes that are happening. I mean, this is an incredibly big deal, and it's the result. I think what makes it a big deal is naming the fact that it is the

result of people actually rising up and demanding to be seen and named. You know, on the day of the arguments, you know, Amy was there. You know, on the day of the arguments, you know, Amy was there, you know, as you mentioned, she tragically passed away before she could see the outcome of her seven-year fight for justice. But she was there, as she's going across the plaza, you have hundreds of trans people led by Black trans women who are organizing rallies, chanting, we love you, Amy. And that ultimately, we live in a moment where the discourse inside the courtroom is being complemented by the discourse outside the courtroom. And so I think it makes a difference so long as we tell the right story. And that story begins a long time ago with a lot of people fighting. And that, you know, we do have

this conservative court, and they're very likely to do a lot of terrible things in the coming weeks and we have to hold them to account for that. You know, DACA's before them, abortions before them, many other, lots of damage that could be done. I think what changes things and what sets the tone for transformation for our communities is actually leveraging this moment

and connecting it to the leadership of the people who have fought and died for so many trans people to live and for the entire LGBTQ community. And I think hopefully we can gain the momentum from today, from yesterday in LA and New York and people showing up for Black trans lives from the last several weeks for people, you know, fighting back against police murders. You know, to me, that is how we leverage both the sort of reform-based realities of legal work with the transformative realities of organizing and resistance. Jay Strangio, a lot of work still to go. I know you're not done, but

congratulations to you, to the ACLU. Thank you for all your hard work. I hope you can take a moment, even as this work is not done, even as there are still terrible obstacles to overcome, to celebrate what is a landmark, landmark achievement. Thanks, John. And we will. We'll celebrate and we'll honor that joy. Thanks. All right. Chase, thank you very much. Thanks so much. Thanks to Wesley Lowery and thanks to Wesley Lowry and thanks to Chase Strangio

and we will talk to you guys later oh and just one final note hey Ivanka how about you know fuck you thanks for the tweet you absolute monster

you don't think that did anything every gay person you have ever known fucking hates you they hate you and you know what pride's about pride's about you never knowing because some of them are nice to your face

because that's pride too. Okay? That's pride too. In case you're listening, Ivanka Trump. There's a chance. There's a chance. There's a chance. There's a chance.

Maybe that cousin who leaked the documents and is writing a tell-all or whatever she is. Text this to her. Maybe the good Kushner. Maybe the good Kushner. Oh, yeah. Which is only slightly better than the bad Kushner, let Text this to her. Maybe the good Kushner. Maybe the good Kushner. Oh, yeah. Which is only slightly better than the bad Kushner, let's face it. But maybe the good Kushner can help.

Bye. 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 Kemp, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.