Pod Save America - "Trumper Tantrum."

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

The president “storms” out of another meeting with Democrats in the Oval Office. The House inches closer to an impeachment inquiry. And a new analysis of the 2018 midterms sheds light on the challenges up ahead in 2020. Then Rebecca Traister, author and writer at-large for New York Magazine and The Cut, joins Jon F. to talk about the recent wave of state laws threatening reproductive rights and what’s at stake in next year’s elections. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, I talk to the great Rebecca Traister about the Republican attack on reproductive rights and what's at stake in the 2020 elections. Before that, we're going to run through a lot of other news. We've got Trump's latest tantrum, House Democrats inching towards impeachment, and a new analysis of the 2018 midterms that may tell us quite a bit about 2020. On Pod Save the World this week, Tommy and Ben check in on our on-again, off-again war with Iran, explain why Fox News loves war crimes, and explore Bernie Sanders' foreign policy record from his time as mayor of Burlington.

Do you have a foreign policy record as mayor of Burlington? I guess you do. Also, in case you missed it, check out our Fuck Jerry Mandering Fund at votesaveamerica.com slash donate. We've teamed up with our friends at Data for Progress to target 10 winnable down ballot races in Virginia this year that could help Democrats flip the state legislature and draw the congressional districts for the next 10 years. Very important. Check that out. check that out. Also, a reminder, Tuesday, May 28th is going to be the premiere of the Running with Beto documentary on HBO that we at Crooked Media helped produce. It's a fantastic documentary. It's not just about Beto himself, but it's about all of the volunteers and activists that took part

in this Texas Senate campaign. People who, after Donald Trump was elected, wanted to get involved, and they found this race, and we got involved with it way back before anyone had ever heard of Beto O'Rourke, and we're really proud of it, so check it out on HBO, Tuesday, May 28th. Finally, big news! Crooked Media is launching a brand new podcast on June 3rd called This Land. It's hosted by Rebecca Nagel, a Cherokee journalist and advocate based in Oklahoma. And at the very end of today's show, for the very first time, we're going to play the official trailer. It's a really cool story about a pair of murders and a Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of half the land in Oklahoma.

So subscribe to This Land and listen to the trailer now at thislandpodcast.com and wherever you get your podcasts. First episode drops June 3rd. It sounds great. It's, yeah, it's very, very cool. I got a question for you before we get started. Sure. Do you know where you were one year ago today? Sure.

Do you know where you were one year ago today? One year ago today. It is Thursday, May 23rd, 2018. No, where was I, Dan? You were in New York City preparing for your Radio City Music Hall show. You know what I was doing? What were you doing? I was in the hospital.

That's right. Because one year ago today was the day Kyla was born. She is one years old today. Happy birthday, Kyla. We've been celebrating since 6.30 this morning. I've already made Mickey Mouse pancakes. We are rolling through the day. Do you guys have a, you and Holly have a big first birthday party planned? We have a very large first birthday party Saturday.

Today is like actual birthday and Saturday is quite first birthday party saturday today today is like actual birthday and saturday is quite rager party rager uh well that's exciting that's very very exciting wow so happy birthday kyla i can't believe it's been a whole year that is amazing i know i know you're telling me okay to the news uh on wednesday the president of the united states stormed out of an oval office meeting with congressional leaders after only three minutes. And through a temper tantrum in the Rose Garden, Trump said that he refuses to work with Congress on infrastructure, prescription drug prices or basically any legislation at all unless the Democrats allow him to obstruct justice and commit his crimes in peace. Dan, later after the tantrum, he tweeted, You can't investigate and legislate simultaneously.

It just doesn't work that way. So Trump's meeting with Pelosi and Schumer was supposed to be about working together on this $2 trillion infrastructure bill that had previously interested the president. The White House spin is that Trump blew up the meeting because Pelosi accused him of committing a cover up. Is that really what did it? Do you think that's a believable spin? I am going to guess that it's a little more complicated or maybe even more stunningly simple than that. But, you know, I before this, I Googled Trump storms out Pelosi to read the latest coverage on this.

And the thing you realize is it was only five months ago that he did the exact same thing during a shutdown meeting. The exact same thing. This is a he does not have a very thick playbook, but this is one of the plays in it. So so you think this was perhaps a setup that had been planned in advance? Well, I wouldn't say that I am an ace detective, but the fact that there was a fully printed sign hanging on the podium in the Oval Office as the temper tantrum was happening suggests to me, based on my own personal knowledge of the printing time in the print shop in the EEOB basement in the White House that they knew this in advance. Yeah. I mean, it also seemed like,

to me, this infrastructure bill never really stood a chance. After the first meeting about an infrastructure bill, it was shortly after that that Republican leaders in Congress and people in the White House like Mick Mulvaney, Trump's chief of staff, basically said, yeah, no, there's absolutely no way Republicans are going to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure, particularly if it requires raising taxes on rich people, which, you know, they're not down to do. They're not down to do. And then right before the meeting on Wednesday, the night before the meeting, Trump sent a letter to Democratic leaders saying there would be no infrastructure bill until Congress passes his revised new, whatever you want to call it, NAFTA agreement. You know, this this whole idea that it's it's the investigations that are preventing legislation from happening on infrastructure. Well, the investigations were going on three weeks ago when Trump met with Schumer and Pelosi for the first time and said he wanted an infrastructure bill.

So it really wasn't the investigations because they didn't seem to be a problem three weeks ago. And then, you know, like you said, the sign was already printed. Is there a strategy, Dan, behind this whole no legislating until you stop investigating threat? What's Trump trying to do here? I mean, it's always, that's always such the question, right? Which is, like, is there a plan? And the truth with Trump is he kind of stumbles into a strategy. There's like no whiteboard with an actual plan on it. He just – he like operates by gut. of a two-year-old after eating Fun Dip, but is that every incumbent president serving that time of divided government

wants to run against Congress. Congress is less popular than Trump, which is fucking unbelievable because pond scum is near Trump in the polls. And so you want a foil, right? You want to run against something to change the conversation, at least until the moment when you have an actual opponent, change the conversation between a referendum on you to a choice between two visions. And before Bob Dole was even nominated in 96 by running against Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the House, Barack Obama had real success laying some of the blame for lack of economic progress at the feet of the Republicans who were blocking his initiatives in the fall of 2011.

So there is a world in which there is a strategy where Trump wants to run against the investigate everything, do nothing Congress. Like that is a foil. And the question of whether that works or not is going to depend on how Democrats respond to this attack. And how do you think they should respond to that attack and not get sucked into looking like the do nothing, investigate, not legislate type Congress? Investigate, not legislate type Congress. I think that they should respond. There are several paths to respond to. I listed a couple.

One is you could stop investigating. The other one is you could investigate and legislate. And that's the path I think the Democrats should take. You can easily walk and chew gum at the same time, and they should do that. You can easily walk and chew gum at the same time, and they should do that. They should aggressively investigate every ounce of corruption that's coming out of this administration. They should do the duty of oversight, even on things that are not corrupt in the sense that it's like the usual Trump grift, but it is incompetence like what happened in Puerto Rico during the hurricane a couple years ago. They should do oversight because it is their job. But that doesn't mean you can't also legislate. If I was in the Democratic leadership, the way I would respond to this is I would get an infrastructure bill. It doesn't have to be a trillion dollars or two trillion dollars,

but a significant investment infrastructure paid for by the least popular Trump tax breaks, put it on the floor, pass it, and then be able to go out and tell the world that we've done infrastructure, Trump hasn't, and move the onus to him. And you can do that on a whole host of things. Bills to shore up the Affordable Care Act. They've already done some stuff around electoral reform and other things. But pass bills to show that you can legislate and investigate at the same time. Yeah. I mean, look, Trump and the Republicans

had complete control over Washington for the first two years. And what we got from that complete control was a tax bill that gave tax cuts to the wealthiest that, you know, the majority of Americans don't approve of, an attempt to rip away health care from 20 million Americans, probably more, and now a trade war that's hurting farmers in the Midwest and all kinds of people and consumers everywhere. And a criminal justice reform bill that the Trump administration is now dragging their feet in implementing. And so that's what we got. That's what we got from, you know, complete Republican control of Washington. And since Democrats have been in the House, they have passed a slew of bills, whether it's the Equality Act, whether it's gun control, whether it's voting reform, whether it's health care reform, that, you know, a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate

would sign into law, would pass and sign into law tomorrow if you gave them the chance. And the reason Republicans aren't doing anything right now is not because of investigation. It's because they want to protect their rich friends. They don't want to raise taxes on rich people. And they want to gut all kinds of popular programs like, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and the rest. That's why nothing's getting done because Republicans have this ideology and they refuse to work with Democrats on that. I mean, it seems fairly simple to sort of get around. Sort of what they're doing, right? They're already passing these bills and they're doing the investigations. We will talk about the right context for doing those investigations and how successful or unsuccessful they have been. But people will hear this and say, yeah, that's great,

you passed bills, but no one knows what they are. The press won't cover them. They get no attention. You're getting drowned out by tweets and Trumpism and absurdity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's all true. And that's not a fixable problem in the interim. And it's not even, it's even hard to yell at the press and say, you should cover this more because even when Republicans were in charge of the house and they were passing absurd bills that were going nowhere, which is the opposite of our sensible bills that are currently going nowhere, they didn't get covered because there's no chant, like a quote unquote message vote has never gotten a lot of coverage, at least in my time in politics. But when it comes time for these members to campaign

for reelection, they have things they can point to. They have things they can talk about on the stump. They have things that their door knockers can tell voters, and they have things they can advertise on. And that's why it's important to do that. And it gives you a response in the immediate discourse about what's happening in Washington. Say, yeah, no, it's not us that's not legislating. We passed this bill. We passed this bill. We passed this bill. Trump has done nothing, right? On the infrastructure proposal specifically, did Schumer and Pelosi walk into a trap here with this in A, trying to negotiate with Trump on this in the first place, and B, walking into the Oval yesterday when Trump had already decided that he was going to storm out and complain about investigations? Or do you think they got the better of this exchange?

I think that the original sin here was going to the White House three weeks ago for that meeting and then walking out of the White House and trumpeting your quote-unquote infrastructure agreement with the president. I think that was a mistake. Is it a fatal mistake? No. Is it the end of the world? No. But ultimately, what I think – Schumer and Pelosi are very smart. They didn't think – not for one second did they think they were going to get an actual $2 trillion infrastructure bill. They'd all go to the signing ceremony and they got ribbon cuttings together and we'd have better roads and bridges and airports. That's not what they thought. It was sort of a both sides were trying to manage the end game. This is not going to work. How can we set this up so that we look like we wanted to do the right thing and the other side is responsible for why it went down.

And I think in Schumer and Pelosi's head, their goal was, and some of their aides even said this, and I think Schumer himself may have said it publicly, after a lot of people criticized them for it, which was sort of laying out that we're going to show we're for it. Republicans are going to show what you mentioned, that they won't do this because of their affinity for tax cuts for the wealthy, and we'll come out on the high side of the polarity. But the problem was Trump dumped them before they could dump Trump. And he has first move for advantage here, and he got to blame them, or at least wrap them into the blame of the death of this idea that was never going to happen, and blaming

it on a totally factual and normal statement that Nancy Pelosi had. And then the press in their general both sides, faux balance, terribleness aided and abetted in that effort. Yeah, that was, I was going to say the most surprising, but it should not be surprising at this point. It was certainly the more infuriating part of yesterday's back and forth that somehow, you know, this is another both sides issue when, you know, because Nancy Pelosi said that Donald Trump was engaged in a cover up. It's like, well, yeah, Robert Mueller wrote a 400 page report laying out 10 instances where the president obstructed justice with complete with lots of

evidence. And part of what he was covering up was a crime, as you pointed out on Twitter yesterday, Dan, a crime committed by his lawyer, who is now sitting in jail, that Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in. So yeah, of course he's fucking engaged in a cover-up. And that crime was covering up. What are you talking about? Yes. I mean, he is literally, like, I'm using literally correctly in this situation. He is literally mentioned in a court document for being involved in an actual cover up like that is the crime.

The crime is actually the cover up here. Trump is was involved in paying hush money to prevent information about his relationship with Stormy Daniels coming out. Like there's an actual cover up. What Nancy Pelosi said is totally accurate. And the fact that the press treated it as some sort of breach of decorum, like how dare she say this factual thing, go to the White House. Trump has repeatedly, repeatedly tweeted that Nancy Pelosi is pro-crime. Right.

And no one cares about that. Like we're holding her and Democrats to a different standard. And there's a larger lesson about how absolutely fucked up the media is and how it gives a structural advantage to the people who make bad faith arguments because the media is incapable of calling out bad faith without somehow feeling like they've lost their sense of faux balance. Yeah. And look, and the Republicans and Donald Trump understand this and their political strategy reflects their knowledge that the media is always going to, no matter how much they lie, no matter how many crazy conspiracy theories they throw out there, the media is always

going to cover their side and give it equal time and equal consideration as they do people who are acting in good faith. And so they can work the refs and it works. I think this is like the 10 millionth time that we've had the opportunity to learn this lesson. But I think as we think about the role the media plays in American politics, there is a very important role in the sense that their job is to uncover information and show it to the public. They're very good at that, whether it's investigative pieces about Trump or this amazing series in the New York Times about taxi medallions. There are a million very important things they have. But the role that we have assigned to the press in American politics is referee. It is your job to adjudicate disputes, to show who is right, who is wrong,

what is factual, what is a lie. And that is a role in which they have proven themselves over the last two decades incapable of playing. And we as Democrats have to adjust our strategies to reflect that A, we believe that the media has an important role to play. B, they have a constitutional right to play that role. C, it is the wrong thing to do. It is counterproductive to try to emulate Trump's anti-media strategy. But D, we can't rely on the media to make our argument for us. We have to make it ourselves. And we cannot just say that if we say this, the New York Times will call it right. And then the voters will know the difference. That's not how it works anymore.

And we're getting our ass kicked up and down the political road because of it. Yeah. I mean, we're not like so many thoughts on this. And I'm so worked up about it. No, I mean, we do this, too, when we're on Twitter. No, I mean, we do this too when we're on Twitter, but we are not like one piece where the New York Times finally calls a lie a lie away from getting rid of Donald Trump. That's right. It's fine to argue about it.

It's fine to get upset about it. It's fine to yell at whoever the social media editor is at these papers who are sending out these absurd tweets that frame the debate wrong. And then we get them to change it. And then we all have a little celebration on Twitter, RT if you agree. But that's not changing the fundamental dynamic. And the media is not on our team. I've said this before. Their job is not to help get Democrats elected. Their job is to tell the truth and prize truth over balance, which as we say often they fail to do because they prize balance over almost anything else for some fucked up reason and so but like yeah but we you know that we just we got to focus our energy elsewhere at least the bulk of

our energy um yeah like if you were to do a sports metaphor of this like our side is one team their side is the other team. The media is not the referees. They're the commentators, right? They're the ones who were just, as part of a business, commentating on what is happening, not trying to decide who wins or loses or call balls and strikes, right? Like that, we have thought we have for too long thought of the fourth estate as an adjudicator of disputes in American politics. And that is a, if it ever played that role, it no longer does. Yeah, there are no referees anymore. Okay, let's talk about the debate over impeachment proceedings, which this week,

it seemed like the House was inching towards after the White House continued to defy subpoenas, tamper with witnesses, and obstruct all congressional oversight. Dan, probably the biggest development this week was when former White House counsel Don McGahn, who was Robert Mueller's star witness, refused to testify before Congress after Trump told him not to. What else has pushed quite a few more prominent House Democrats towards impeachment over this last week? I think McGahn is the latest example, but whether it's the refusal to turn over the tax returns, it's the fact that here we are, what, six, seven weeks since the Mueller report, and Mueller hasn't testified. Bill Barr has refused to go to the House. There's been discussion of contempt, but there's no actual contempt citation that is being voted on. There's just this feeling that at every turn, Trump is refusing to cooperate.

And it's not happening in this world where we're having an actual back and forth about which – you're going to get documents. We're going to negotiate over which ones or how you get them and it's not about like debating about whether a witness is coming in open or closed testimony or whether they're going to testify for three hours or seven hours or whatever it is trump has made the argument that congress does not have the power of oversight he has said he. He has said that he has disagreed with the interpretation of the Constitution that has existed for committed impeachable offenses, but are nervous about the act of starting an impeachment inquiry. And by the way, that's not just Trump's view that he is, you know, expressing in angry tweets. His lawyers, when they went to court over Democrats requesting some of these documents, basically laid out as a legal argument that Congress has no authority to investigate the president. The lawyers were even basically admitted under questioning from the judge

that they believe the Watergate impeachment inquiry wasn't the correct use of Congress's oversight authority, correct use of Congress's oversight authority, which is stunning. And the judge was rightly stunned because the judge ruled against the Trump White House. I mean, do you think, by the way, that these, you know, we've had a couple, two legal rulings this week that basically the judges ruled against Donald Trump and said, yes, you do actually have to cooperate with Congress. You do have to turn documents over. Do you think that changes the dynamic at all now that, you know, I think for a while we thought, oh, the problem is going to be that we, you know, take these fights to the courts, but then they get tied up in the courts for years and years and years. And so basically Trump is able to stonewall until after reelection. But now that the courts

are moving quickly and siding against Trump, do you think that changes anything? Now that the courts are moving quickly and siding against Trump, do you think that changes anything? It definitely gave Nancy Pelosi an argument to push back against sort of this growing wave of members who were publicly calling for impeachment, which, as you point out, has increased significantly in the last week or so. And they had – today is Thursday. They had a meeting I think yesterday where she basically made this argument, which is we don't need to go. We don't need to start impeachment inquiry to win the court cases because we're winning the court cases. Now, that that is proven true thus far. But we got a couple more steps to go and we still don't have documents. It's not like these court cases are adjudicated.

Documents come there. They get appealed. They go that they go the appellate court and then they're going to go to the Supreme Court. And so we are talking a very long time. Now, I think Nancy Pelosi is also correct. And there's another argument I read somewhere that she made, which is that timeline is not going to get – she does not believe the timeline will get significantly sped up if there is an impeachment inquiry. We'll still be operating on this timeline. So to her, it's not clear, at least as long as we're winning cases that

you need to take this step. And that was apparently persuasive for some, at least temporarily in the Democratic caucus meeting this week. Yeah. I mean, so as you point out, there's, you know, there's more Democrats are in favor of impeachment now. Multiple judiciary committee members, that would be the committee that would open an impeachment inquiry, have said they're now in favor of opening such an inquiry. At least five people on Nancy Pelosi's leadership team, five Democrats on the leadership team, pushed her this week to support an impeachment inquiry. She is still against the move. Why is that? And how does she see the politics right now? does she see the politics right now? This is something that I've really tried to think a lot about because, you know, Nancy Pelosi is one of the smartest, toughest strategists, not just in the party right now, but in all of politics. She's probably the best speaker who has ever lived.

And, you know, it's like we had this world where after the like the last Trump meeting, every every Democrat changed their Twitter avatar to a picture Nancy Pelosi and sunglasses in that coat. And then everyone uses 17 times a day the gif of Nancy Pelosi clapping at the State of the Union. And we say Nancy Pelosi is the best. And then she makes a decision or makes an argument. And then everyone is like, why is she so weak and dumb? And she has more than earned the benefit of the doubt to try to understand what her strategy is. Now, I have disagreed with a lot of the public argument she has made for – against impeachment, which is – it will motivate his base, which everything motivates his base. Like we are –

They are pretty motivated. That is not – we'll talk about this a little bit later. But like that is not something – that is not an argument against impeachment, right? That is just stating a fact if something is already going to happen. But she obviously has a very real political concern. And my guess is that there is a significant portion of her caucus – I don't know whether it's a majority or a very large minority, who believes impeachment should not happen or should – it would be a mistake to do for whatever reasons, right?

Almost certainly political and that she is taking the arrows for them, right? She is going to be the – she's going to stand in the way so that she gets the blame and the members – the freshmen who won in purple and red districts are not out there doing it. They can say, well, Nancy Pelosi says we're not doing it. So I think that is what she's doing. Does Nancy Pelosi think Trump committed impeachable offenses? A hundred percent. Yeah, she said that.

That's not even a question. She said that today. And so I do think that as we – if you believe Trump should be impeached, we should push the House Democrats to do that. We should push Pelosi. But I think we just have to put her decisions here in the context of all the other decisions that she has done. And one last thing on this, which is do people think that she is someone who just like reads the polls and does whatever is politically popular in the moment, right? That this is some sign of overt political calculation. I would just note that you and I worked in the White House when

the Affordable Care Act was hanging on by a string. And many, many of our members, like almost the entire Blue Dog Coalition, the moderates in the House, a lot of other people who were facing incredibly tough reelections in 2010 2010 wanted us to walk away. And Nancy Pelosi knew that this was the last best chance to massively expand access to health care in this country. And she worked a slow and arduous and at sometimes frustrating process to people on the outside, but she got it done. And so she did the thing that was politically risky because it was the right thing to do. And I'm not convinced she's not going to do that here in the end. And yeah, she did that on the Affordable Care Act. The House also voted for a pretty significant

back then in 2009 climate change legislation where the Senate Democrats, because a lot of them were from red states and pretty conservative at the time, sort of hung them out to dry, hung the house out to dry. And so you have all these House Democrats in 2009 taking a vote on a nearly trillion dollar recovery package, the Affordable Care Act, which at the time was seen as, you know, was depicted as this extreme government takeover of health care by the Republicans, still is um and then climate change legislation and they took the votes on all three of those things and pelosi you know must have known that it could cost her her speakership and cost democrats the house in 2010 and she did it anyway you know so she deserves a lot of credit for that um i do think it doesn't mean she's right here but no i

mean i don't agree we should indict her right no I mean, I do think this is a question of what the politics of impeachment are. And for how much we've talked about it, I still feel like we don't really know that much. You know, I saw some private polling a couple of weeks ago where they tested, you know, ex-Democratic candidate is running on a platform of impeachment. And how do you feel about that? And it decreased support for the Democratic candidate versus the Republican candidate by five points. Um, but that to me was a sort of silly question too, because no one's running on the fucking platform of impeachment. That's insane. You know, like if you're going to go, if you're going to go run a race and you're like, my main platform is impeachment. Like, yeah,

well, good luck to you. You're, you're not going to do that well. Like, I haven't seen any polling that asked people the question, would you be more or less likely to vote for X candidate if X candidate voted to open impeachment proceedings against the president? I'd be interested to see that polling. to see that polling specifically in swing districts, because I do think, like you said, a lot of the reticence to move forward on impeachment is coming from some of these new members who won seats in pretty red, Trumpy districts, you know. Although I should say, Katie Hill, who, you know, won right here in north of Los Angeles, she was on Chris Hayes the other day. And she said that calls to her office have flipped from being two to one against impeachment to now being three or four to one for impeachment. So again, we can't treat the politics of impeachment as static. As Democrats

make the case, as Trump continues to obstruct almost every effort by Congress to conduct oversight, public opinion can change. And that's something the Democrats have to keep in mind too. It's not static. So there's a Pew poll out today, I think, which asked Democrats how concerned you are about investigation of the Trump administration. Are you concerned that Democrats will focus too much on investigations? 51%. Concerned they won't focus enough on investigations? 47%. Conservative, moderate Democrats, 55, 43. Too much first, not enough.

And liberals, 46, 52. Too much, not enough. And what that tells me is that we are a nation of pundits and people are just reading and projecting what they think the politics are and so people are like when you have nancy pelosi basically saying that we're in big political trouble if we investigate too much or overreach or impeach then you have that is reflected in voter sentiment my get like to your point that the politics of impeachment are totally unknown, we just don't know. If I were to just guess right now, not predict, but guess, I think there's a real chance that the politics of impeachment are dramatically overstated both directions. I tend to agree with

that as well. Voters care about it less than, voters writ large care about it much less than the Twitterverse and people who are highly engaged in politics. I do think there is an element of this which is causing me to change a little bit of my political calculus on it, which is I think the politics of impeachment is an unknown question, but the politics of weakness have a centuries-long record. And if Democrats look weak, like they are walking away from an obvious duty to impeach, or they keep getting rebuffed by Trump, who's refusing to give them witnesses and documents, et cetera, and they don't respond to that, I think there is a danger in that sort of politics, right? If the message to the people who turned out, who turned 2018 into a presidential election year size turnout, as opposed to a traditional midterm one, if the message to them is, we are not going to be the Chuck on Trump that we said we were, that could be deflating for 2020. Yeah. I mean, is getting dragged into impeachment sort of the worst of all worlds? You would think on its face, yes,

because in the outline, I wrote the term dragged, which getting dragged anywhere is not great. Not a positive connotation. There's another way to look at it, which is, is reluctance helpful politically here, which is like is reluctance helpful politically here? Which is like, you're not frothing at the mouth to do this. You can say Trump forced your hand. We wanted to proceed through the normal course of business, through the normal oversight, the traditional way Congress is played. Trump has taken this extraordinary approach, this above the Constitution, above the law

approach, and that has forced our hand to do this. Maybe, there's a way of thinking about where that could be a better argument. What won't work would be if it just looks like you got beaten into it by your own voters, which is essentially what happened to the Republicans in 1998 against Bill Clinton. They tried to walk away. Their voters wouldn't let him do it. And then they sort of look like they were being, that they were the, that the base was the tail that wagged the dog. Yeah. I worry about, you know, Democrats in disarray and Democrats divided over impeachment is not a great storyline. And I do worry about that being the storyline heading into impeachment.

And I think more and more you're seeing Democrats able to make the case, which is the case you just made. Like I didn't come here to impeach the president. I didn't think I wanted to impeach the president. I want to talk about jobs. I want to talk about health care. I want to talk about wages. And we're going to legislate on those things and we're going to fight for those things. But, you know, this is a question of separation of powers. This is about a president who's acting like he's above the law. And this is about making sure that, you know, we, that the one branch of government is able to hold the other branch of government accountable when the president is acting lawless, like an autocrat. And that's very important. And so I

regret that I have to do this, but I have to do this. And I think Elizabeth Warren, when she came out for impeachment, said something like that. I saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made that made that argument. I saw Beto O'Rourke make that argument during his CNN town hall the other night. And I do think starting by saying, look, this is not something I wanted. This is not something we wanted to do as Democrats. We're not frothing at the mouth to impeach this president. But at some point, we have to confront this lawlessness because it's the right thing to do and because he could abuse his power even more if we do nothing. And that's dangerous. That's dangerous to people's lives. That's dangerous to the country. That's dangerous

to the world. And so I do think you can make that reluctant argument in a pretty powerful way. And the other part, if we go down this path as Democrats, this is where we end up. And I think it is getting more likely every day that that is where we end up because these things tend to gain momentum and it sort of snowballs. But if it is, I think it's important to make the subject of the inquiry much broader than just the findings of the Mueller report. The Mueller people have sort of just made their opinions on what happened in 2016. in the Mueller report. The Mueller people have sort of just made their opinions

on what happened in 2016. Obstruction is wrapped up with collusion. But there is a broader issue with Trump, a set of, you know, there's corruption, there's criminality, there's abuse of power. And not that this should be

this like broad giant fishing expedition, but it should, the subject of the inquiry should be broader. And the benefit of that is it allows you to make a broader argument than an argument over something that happened three years ago. I know that's not really how it is, but that's how it'll be framed by the media. But also the ability to discover new information, because we should be clear that it seems unlikely that, you know, while an impeachment inquiry may allow us to have like an actual person say the things that were in Mueller's report, which is powerful.

Don't get me wrong. A person is more politically powerful than a PDF. But it seems unlikely that the investigators in the Judiciary Committee are going to find huge pieces of information that Bob Mueller and his team did not. But if there's a broader scope of inquiry, it does mean that there may be some new information that could be uncovered that would be persuasive to people. Yeah, the guy is pardoning war criminals, or at least talking about pardoning war criminals, pardoning his friends and benefactors. The guy is using the Department of Justice and law enforcement to now target his political enemies. He's at a fucking rally this week where he accused Democrats of treason and said the attorney general is going to look at that. And they all started cheering, lock them up. I mean, this is much, much bigger than merely the crimes he committed with regards to obstructing justice.

These are serious abuses of power. And now he's telling Congress, fuck off. You can't check my behavior. You can't conduct oversight. I'm all powerful and Congress can't do anything. And by the way, I'm not even going to work on compromising with you and legislating on behalf of the American people to try to improve their lives because I'm pissed off that you're investigating me.

I mean, this is this is a president who is now completely out of control. And I think you're right. Like, I don't think the impeachment inquiry should have everything we disagree with Donald Trump about, like policy differences, even if they're serious policy differences, because that's not those aren't impeachable necessarily. But I do think you're right that they should have all of the ways that he has seriously abused his power and, you know, and committed all kinds of crimes. So we shall see. Oh, one last thing. Robert Mueller, Robert Mueller still hasn't scheduled

an appearance before Congress. And this week, CNN said that Mueller's team doesn't really want him to testify at all, that the special counsel, quote, does not want to appear political after staying behind the scenes for two years. I'm sorry. It's like, again, dude, you wrote a 400-page report laying out all of this evidence that the president of the United States obstructed justice. You didn't think it was going to get political at some point? Oh, Bob Mueller. Tough shit. You got to do it.

You knew this was going to happen when you took on this job shit you got to do it this what you knew this was going to happen when you took on this job you got to do it you have a duty to the country to say whatever it is you believe but you say it in public regardless of whether you're going to be called partisan one way or the other so you just have to do it and you should do it soon because you're you're not doing yourself or the country any favors by dilly-dallying here. Yeah, it does make me think that we should tamp down our expectations on what Mueller's testimony may reveal. If you're still willing to have high expectations for anything in entering year three of the Trump administration, that's your own fault. All right. Let's talk about 2020.

with a brand new analysis of 2018. Catalyst, which is a data firm that operates a huge voter database, just did a very detailed analysis of the midterms. They collected precinct-level results, matched them up with individual vote history records from every state. So this is very specific. This is like the most detailed analysis we're going to get of 2018. And what they learned is that, one, something we already knew, which is turnout was up dramatically, but it was up dramatically, especially among young voters

and voters of color, particularly Latinx voters. And two, and this is a quote from the analysis, a big piece of the Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018. The report concludes, quote, It is reasonable to expect another historic level of turnout, perhaps approaching 160 million voters or more in 2020. It is not safe, however, to assume that Democratic gains from 2016 to 2018 will hold. Dan, what were some of the most interesting findings to you? And was anything surprising to you? Yeah, a couple things. Well, first, the main takeaway from this report to me is great

fucking job, people. The American people really crushed in 2018. And specifically, the grassroots activists, the people who got involved after the 2016 disaster, who knocked door – like we basically had two years of intense grassroots-driven volunteer voter contact and it paid off. And it's truly unbelievable what was achieved in terms of turnout. That is really amazing. And so everyone's got to pat themselves on the back and get working for 2020 because we need to be doing all of that voter contact that we did, the door knocking, the phone calls registration that we were doing in 2017 to win in 2018. We need to be doing 2019 to win in 2020. So that's takeaway one. The second takeaway was it's a validation of the stupidity of the false choice presented by pundits about base mobilization versus persuasion.

What it makes very clear here is our success in 2018 was based on both, that we were able to turn out more Democratic-based voters, but we also were able to flip votes. And we're going to have to do that again in 2020 to win. And I think the other thing that I think is the unwritten story is we've talked so much about the suburban revolt against Trump. And I think the reason we talk about that is because there's definitely merit to it, but also reporters and political pundits often live in the suburbs. And so they see it happening. But the rural areas, which moved dramatically for Trump from 2012 to 2016, moved in large way towards the Democrats

in 2018. There were big Democratic gains in the rural areas. Now, that often wasn't enough to flip rural seats or to hold on to Senate seats in very Republican, very rural states like North Dakota, but it will have impact in important presidential swing states with large rural areas like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin as examples that may be important in 2020. Who knows? change between 2016 and 2018, the swing towards the Democrats, the deepest blue is in places like Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, some of these very Midwestern states. And by the way, some of the sort of the Southwestern Sunbelt states in Arizona and Texas and Georgia, where, you know, there was like pretty rural areas, some pretty Republican leaning areas. I was surprised by how much the margin depended on Trump voters, people who had voted for Trump

in 2016, switching to Democrats. Like I knew that was the case, but I think partly because we have made the argument against the deluge of pieces about, you know, the Obama Trump voter or the, you know, white guy at the bar in Pennsylvania who voted for Trump and what's he going to do. And there have been way too many of these pieces and way too much focus on these voters. And yet the Democrats would not have a House majority today were it not for a lot of people who cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016 coming out in 2018 and deciding, no, we're going to vote for a Democratic candidate. Now, it also, as you pointed out, it wouldn't have happened, the majority wouldn't have happened if it were not for young voters, voters of color, new voters, people voting for the very first time,

coming out, knocking on doors and voting for these candidates. But we have to acknowledge the reality that both things are necessary and that we need to keep some of these voters, or actually most of these voters, who voted for Trump in 2016 and then voted for Democrats in 2018 in order to win in 2020. That is the scary part of this, which it is one thing to convince a Republican-leading independent or a Obama-Trump voter or someone that there should be a check against Trump. That's a very important argument, but it is a much easier one than to pick a Democrat over Trump in the White House to replace Trump. And so we got to finish that argument. You got

to take it the next step, which is challenging. Just because someone voted for a Democrat for Congress in 2018 does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that they are, as of right now, prepared to vote for a Democrat, certainly one who will have spent months, if not years, Certainly one who has been under the, who will have spent months, if not years, under the sort of caricature-making lens of Trump's Twitter feed and his propaganda machine, right? So, like, there's a lot of work to do to get across the finish line here. Yeah, and I would love to, and may do some exploring on this, I would love to know more about who these voters are, what they believe, what they want, what gets them involved in politics. I do think at this point, the people who voted for Obama in 8 and 12, then voted for Trump in 16, and then voted for a Republican in 18 are probably fairly lost to Democrats. And we shouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about those. But the people who switched back, who voted for

a Democrat, even though they voted for Trump in 16, and then had voted for Obama in the past, those people, I do think we need to spend some time thinking about learning about talking to and wondering sort of what drives their vote and what would make them finally say, OK, I voted for a Democrat in 2018. And now I'm also, you know, I'm fed up with Trump and I'm willing to walk away from him and vote for a Democrat in 2020. I think it would do Democrats good to figure out what's on those people's minds. Yeah, I really wish, like there is an ungodly amount of very limited media budgets being spent on horse race polling for a national, you know, sort of national horse race polling on the Democratic primary that is relatively irrelevant

to anything since we don't, since we pick our nominees based on states in a very particular and somewhat bizarre order of states. But I would love it if one of these, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, someone who spends a lot of money on polling to dig deep into the following groups of voters, right? And this would be a large survey followed by focus groups, so qualitative and quantitative research. One, like, let's learn a lot about the 4 million Obama 12 voters who sat out 16, right? How many of them came back in 18? Why did they come back? What made them come back? Who are the people who didn't come back in 18? How do we get those people? That is a hugely important group.

Another group of people are the Obama-Trump voters, right? And then you can cut that across how they voted in 18. So Obama-Trump, Democrat 18, let's find out what made them make those decisions and what they care about in 20. And another group are this other group that doesn't get talked about as much, which are Romney Clinton voters, right? They are people who voted for Mitt Romney. They pick Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. So that tells you something. Who then picked Trump, Clinton over Trump.

And I'd love to know if some of those people sort of decided they're Republicans and they're just going to stick with the Republican president or some of them available to Democrats. And then the other group would be third party voters, the Johnson Stein voters of 16. Like, let's let's understand what those people think, what they care about. Let's have that information impact not just campaign strategies, but also media coverage about what these people want? Like, this is a very doable thing, but per usual, the general political commentary sphere is focused on the wrong thing, not the most valuable pieces of information. And again, specifically the third party voters, the Johnsonstein voters who turned around and then cast a ballot for Democrats in 18, you know, because they think everyone's first reaction to both the Obama Trump voters and some of these third party voters is fuck these people. You know, they made their vote. They took, they voted for Trump or they voted for

third party. Now look what you now look at the mess we're in. Like we can't count on those people. We shouldn't expend energy on those people. Um, and maybe that's true for the people who either sat out in 18 or voted for Republican again in 18. There's a whole bunch of people who either voted third party in 16 or voted for Donald Trump in 16 who said, you know what, I'm voting for a Democrat in 18. And we need to keep those people. Democrats need to keep those people in 2020 if we are to win, as well as, by the way, like you said, figure out how to bring back some of the four million people who voted for Barack Obama, who just decided to sit out in 16. Because we know those people have voted for Democrats in the past. Where are they? What are they thinking? So I do think that those people are important.

One thing that we should all just internalize is that telling any group of voters or non-voters to fuck off is not a good strategy to get them to vote for your candidate, right? To just yell at them for not voting. And I think all the time about the conversation that I had during one of our HBO's Patsy of America specials last year with Latasha Brown, who has been organizing non-voters, primarily African-American in the South. And what she said is that non-voters are not ambivalent they make a decision not to vote and it is up to politicians to understand why they made that decision and tailor their arguments and their agendas to changing their mind and just simply

saying like you you know yeah it's like we have to every time trump does something we have to yell at susan sarandon like yes like that seems but it's not – doing that across the country to everyone who voted either for – who didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or whatever else is not a good way to win the 2020 election. There's a way to understand why people made their decisions and then understand if you can, within the context of your agenda and your policies and your beliefs, can bring those people back into our democracy. Yeah. And look, I see this a lot on Twitter when people talk about a lot of these farmers now in the Midwest who were hurt by Trump's trade wars and say, I voted for Donald Trump and now I'm struggling because of this trade war and I'm not going to vote for him again. And the response to that from a lot of people is, I don't care about these people. They voted for Donald Trump. They deserve it. And I don't believe they deserve it. But even if you do believe they deserve it,

it is in your own political self-interest as someone who wants to see Donald Trump leave this office in 2020 to say, we want to bring those people, we want to bring those people in. We want their votes. Maybe we don't agree with them on everything. Maybe they have a lot of views that we strongly disagree with. But if we're trying to build a majority, then we need their votes. And we want them to vote Democrat in 2020 because we want to fucking get rid of this guy. And we want to get rid of all the Republicans in Congress who are obstructing everything and have been for the last 10 years. You know, so I do think that's that's important. And it's equally important to go out there and find people who didn't want to participate, who haven't been paid attention to, who have been or voters who've been taken for granted over the last several years.

And to go to those places and try to get those people to vote for Democrats too. So both are important. That's sort of what I took from this analysis. Okay, when we return, we will have my interview with Rebecca Traister. On the pod today, the author of Good and Mad, the Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, Rebecca Traister. Rebecca, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. You wrote a powerful piece in The Cut last week about the latest wave of attacks on reproductive rights. And you noted that even in conservative states, 7 in 10 Americans want abortion to remain legal.

I saw a poll on the other day that said even a third of those who self-identify as pro-life believe abortion should be legal. So with that kind of public support, what do you think are the political failings that led us to this point? Well, I think that the political failings in the Democratic Party have been in play for years. There has been a resistance to making a vociferous defense of reproductive rights that has persisted, really, if you think about it, the Hyde Amendment, which is the legislative rider that prohibits the use of federal insurance programs to pay for abortion, which makes abortion inaccessible to low-income women, the most vulnerable populations in this country, predominantly women of color.

That rider was first passed in 1976, just three years after Roe was decided. So essentially, just three years after Roe was decided. So essentially, since abortion became legal, and there were Democrats who voted for Hyde, including, as I note in the piece, Joe Biden, who is a current candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. So basically, since abortion became legal, there have been a massive aggressive movement to roll back access to abortion. And Democrats have not been on the front lines willing to aggressively and energetically defend reproductive rights and autonomy. And that polling that you note and that I note in the piece, the sort of seven out of 10 Americans want abortion to remain legal, those new numbers, they've been around for a few years, and they stem from a change in how pollsters ask questions about abortion. Because for decades, pollsters, many of whom,

you know, a lot of them were men, older white men, the question was are you for abortion or against abortion and for decades what you got in those polls was a 50-50 split which led to this narrative that America was irrevocably torn on the subject of abortion

and it was really only recently when a new generation of pollsters began to ask the question differently and first say, personally, do you believe in abortion? And then you get the more even split. And then as a follow up say, do you think it should remain legal? Which of course is the political and legal question at hand when you talk about policy and where a party should stand. And then you got those seven in 10 numbers that said, actually, whether or not they, as you point out, whether or not they personally oppose abortion, they support Roe, they support its legality. But Democrats, even though those

numbers have been around for a while, Democrats have refused to sort of absorb the reality that what that means is that defense of abortion's legality and the right to reproductive autonomy is one of the most popular issues that they stand for. Yeah, I mean, how much of the support for even limited restrictions on reproductive rights comes from sort of this political miscalculation, political cowardice, if you will? Or do you think it comes from sort of a fundamental misunderstanding of how reproduction works in the first place? Or both? I think both. I think both. I think there is, we can tell when we listen to the lawmakers who are making these laws, you know, how pitiful our education is about how bodies work, how reproduction works, healthy sex education for everybody, which is that a lot of people we're talking about, lawmakers and voters, don't actually have the correct medical information about the very process

and the bodies that they're working to legislate and police, right? So that's one of the big problems. Secondary, yes, I would say that the fact that the party that has officially, nominally, been on the side of reproductive rights and autonomy, the fact that it has been unwilling over decades to make a vociferous moral argument and make it chief among their concerns, and we can hear this in all kinds of ways, you know, the constant calls to have a big tent that, you know, and it's always with regard to anti-abortion Democrats that those calls are made. And they were made in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel said, no, we're going to get a Democratic majority in the House by, in part, by inviting in anti-abortion Democrats who we think can win in these areas. And you know what? He did get a Democratic majority, but it was one that then stood in the way of healthcare reform because

of some of their opposition to abortion, which is what happened during the healthcare reform debate. So you may have your majority, but it's not one that's willing to defend reproductive autonomy and rights. But those calls for a big tent were echoed just in 2017 by Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Claire McCaskill. This argument that we have to be able to bring in people who oppose reproductive rights into the Democratic Party means that there is not a strong and fervent moral framework that gives voters the idea that this is something that their party is invested in fighting for. And it perhaps permits this idea that, oh, this is an area where we should be making compromises because there hasn't been the moral argument put forth with the kind of ferocity that I believe it should be making compromises because there hasn't been the moral argument put forth with the kind of ferocity that I believe it should be. It does seem like in some ways this is a political problem that Democrats often create for themselves. I mean, I remember talking to Elise Hogue of NARAL

on this pod about this last year when we were talking about Perez going to the mayor in Nebraska that was... Heath Mello. Heath Mello, thank you, who was personally opposed to abortion. And Elise was saying, we have Democrats in the party who are maybe personally opposed to abortion, but they don't legislate those views. Harry Reid was an example of that. Or even Tim Kaine went on a, you know, sort of he's evolved his views over time as well, I think she mentioned.

And so it's like we have a party that is a big tent in the sense that, you know, if you have a personal viewpoint, that's fine. Just please don't legislate those views and stand up for reproductive rights as they should be codified into law. Exactly, exactly. And that's, you know, and you've seen, there are several other, I actually write in my piece about growing up in Pennsylvania where the governor, Bob Casey, was Democrat, virulently anti-abortion. And his son, Bob Casey Jr., who's the senior senator from Pennsylvania now, has, I mean, I'm always told, and it's true, he has gotten better, like Tim

Kaine, perhaps. He has evolved on abortion and is officially better on issues of reproductive autonomy. But last year, he was one of the Democrats who voted for the 20 week abortion ban, right, federally. So, I mean, you know, you actually, I agree with Elise, part of what we're part of what is patently obvious is that what matters in politics and legislation is not whether not how you feel personally and the choices that you might make or not make personally. It's about the policy you want to apply to the people you're representing. Right. And it's how you want to legislate and their bodies, police, their bodies and their healthcare. And so what we need is a commitment, a proven commitment to standing up on behalf of the ability of people to control when, if, and under what circumstances

they reproduce. And of course, also, as the reproductive justice movement tells us, it's about the whole spate of other policies that we too often disconnect from the question of abortion, everything from wages and paid leave and education, housing policy, that, I mean, this is part of what a democratic party needs to stand up for and make the very clear moral argument that all of this, protection around all of these policies, determines how Americans, if, when, and under what circumstances, they can have families and raise them and make sure they have housing, food, health care. make sure they have housing, food, health care. And I think that there is a huge opportunity for the party to begin to make that argument with a moral conviction and a kind of clarity about how all of these policies are interconnected that it has not effectively done over the past decades since abortion has officially been legal, but for far too many people, inaccessible. Yeah. Well, I mean, you make the point in the piece that abortion is an economic issue. It's

always talked about in the Democratic Party as one of the social issues, but it is an economic issue. And as you point out, it's been an economic issue since the very beginning, precisely because of the debate around the Hyde Amendment, because that's about economic inequality. I mean, you know, wealthy Republicans who, and wealthy Democrats, for that matter, who oppose abortion are always going to have access to abortion, if you're wealthy enough. Of course. Of course. It's a massive class issue and always has been, and will continue to be. But it's also simply in terms of, I think because it is imaginatively tied to women, there is a way in which you hear it termed a social issue

rather than an economic one. You hear it brushed off as part of the so-called culture wars, as if the question of reproductive autonomy comes down to like culture, social conversations around sex or God or whatever. But in fact, questions around reproduction, in addition to being about like who gets access to this healthcare to begin with, the questions around whether or not to continue a pregnancy are profoundly economic in nature for the people who can become pregnant, right? These are questions about being able to afford to feed or whether or not a future child, whether or not, you know, how it's going to shape your professional life

and your economic stability moving forward, whether or not you're going to be able to afford childcare or to take any leave, whether there's healthcare accessible for the family you may or may not have. All of these, whether you're going to have access yourself to the kind of obstetric care that you need, all of these are economic issues. And we make a real error and have for a long time in sort of writing them off, I think, in feminized terms, you know, with words like social and culture and not acknowledging that women's lives are also economic lives. Well, the other thing I found interesting sort of going through the polling on this, which sort of surprised me, is there's actually very little difference between

male and female views on whether abortion should be legal. And yet there's a 35 point gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue. And so the fundamental divide is partisan and not gendered. What do you make of that? That's always been true. And there the fundamental divide is partisan and not gendered. What do you make of that? That's always been true. And there are a lot of people who have worked on trying to explain why. In some cases, I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of the opposition to abortion is rooted in evangelical communities. And, you know, women tend to be more religious than men. Um, you know, we also know obviously that there are a lot of women in partisan politics, um, you know, white women, the majority of them vote Republican, right. Um, you know, in, in ways that still

miraculously come as a surprise, even though this has been the pattern, you know, as long as we've been keeping track and certainly before that. It is interesting, though, one of the things, it's absolutely true that it's split along partisan lines, not gender lines. reproductive on reproductive rights and justice movements over the years is that the activists on behalf of reproductive rights and justice and this is observed but i think if there were a study of it you'd find it to be true yeah are so much more likely to be um female um or non-gender normative yeah and i think i keep I think about that all the time. It is absolutely true that opinion is pretty evenly divided gender-wise, and it's something we need to think about.

I hope that progressive men think about this, that those who've been out there, because I think, I haven't done this study, in the anti-abortion community, there are a lot of very prominent men and prominent women, right? And I haven't done the numbers, but from the outside, it seems to me that the anti-abortion movement is pretty gender equal in terms of men and women who are its sort of leading activists. But I find too often in the reproductive rights and justice world that the people doing the work of this hard work of opposition, hard this this crucial moral argument on behalf of reproductive autonomy and justice are too often the women without the men doing the work. What do you think that progressive men who want to, you know, who believe in reproductive

rights, what role should they play? What should they be doing right now? Well, pressuring the party to take it more seriously. I mean, this is where, and progressive men in general can be doing more of this, of doing the actual work of making the phone calls and writing the postcards. I mean, so many of the polls over the past couple of years where you've seen this uptick in activism and engagement between people and their representatives, so many of those calls have been made and postcards written by women, you know, as study after study shows. So men, A, can get more engaged to begin with by contacting their representatives, going to the town halls, writing the letters, specifically on behalf of reproductive rights, too. an issue that affects women or people with uteruses, that questions of reproduction are

issues that shape the lives of men as well. I mean, I think there can be a lot more clarity about that. There can also, on a more personal level, be a lot more questioning and education and reading and listening, right? That's a sort of more quotidian thing to do. But in activism around abortion and reproductive rights, there are so many women who have of late told their stories of abortion. And I'm also want to hear men telling their stories of abortion because they have them too. And one of the things that we have to do is make publicly clearer that these are all of our stories and all of our lives and our familial, economic, political lives are shaped by the question of who has access to health care, who has autonomy over their bodies. healthcare, who has autonomy over their bodies. Yeah. I mean, so a few of the presidential candidates have come out and called on Congress to pass new federal laws. Are they on the right track? And what more do you want to see from the people who are running for president on the

Democratic side in terms of standing up for reproductive rights? Right off the bat, I was very impressed by Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom came out with an aggressive set of ideas and energy. critique of the party itself, that we can't just keep doing what we've been doing, which is treating the issue as sort of icky and not something that we can, you know, for years, the anti-abortion movement used the language of morality, life, family, love, and, you know, love. And the left was far too hesitant about applying that language when they obviously can and should have. And so I am going to be impressed by any politician in the Democratic Party who comes at this with clear commitment, unequivocal support, and new fresh ideas about how to tackle this. And I think Gillibrand and Warren did that. I liked very much the collaborative video made along with Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams and Amy Klobuchar. Great, right? I actually think,

I think Pete Buttigieg gave a terrific answer on, on abortion. And that Foxtown Hall. I can't remember what the, yes, it was in the Foxtown Hall. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. It was one of the stronger, you know, especially you see a lot of Democratic politicians, there are a series of traps that tend to be laid as soon as you go into a public forum and start talking about your support for access to abortion. Somebody will say, oh, but what about gender selective abortion, which isn't an issue in the United States, and try to trap you there. Somebody will say, but what about the late

abortions? And Buttigieg, that's one of the other favorite ones. And we saw Trump do that in the third presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, if you remember. And Hillary Clinton, and I was shocked because that is one of the traps that is historically laid for anybody coming out And I loved it. And much to my surprise, it was Pete Buttigieg who gave a really astoundingly good answer just in this past couple of weeks. So I think that, I think Democrats need to prepare better. Do your homework. Learn about the traps that are going to be laid for you. Learn about the actual questions of healthcare that are, you know, talk to doctors and advocates. You know, they all need to learn better how this actually happens, what's at stake, what it means, and be better able to navigate the traps that are going to be set. I can guarantee

you, it has been clear long before these bans, the way that Trump has been talking about abortion and talking, his bananas lie about infanticide. I don't know that he uses all the time where the doctors wrap up the baby in the blanket. Every stump speech now. It's a lie in the stump speech. A, it is a foul and poisonous fiction based in nothing. And B, it is clearly what he is going to be talking about for the next year and a half. and B, it is clearly what he is going to be talking about for the next year and a half. And everybody who wants to oppose him in the general election needs to learn everything they can learn about medical reality, about people who have had experiences of abortion

and termination at every stage. They need to be prepared to have this conversation. Because if there are candidates, and I may or may not be looking directly at Joe Biden, who have lived their political life either opposing abortion and reproductive autonomy, or being squicked out about it and just taking some kind of paternalistic, like distant stand about wanting to protect these vulnerable young women. And they walk into a debate with a man who's going to start talking about spinning these insane, horrifying fantasies about infanticide. Like, this is going to be a disaster.

No, I mean, I think it's not enough to just hear Trump say that and say like, oh, obviously that's a crazy lie and everyone understands that's a crazy lie. And by the way, you know, I'm for reproductive rights and I stand with women. Like, I think that seems very insufficient. Like you actually have to realize that when Trump says shit like that,

it's going to stick with some people and you have to figure out a way to sort of reframe the argument. And in a way that I think Pete did in that town hall, reframe the argument so that people really understand just how vile and poisonous that lie is and why. And I would strongly urge, truly, anybody who wants to, you know, representatives who want to be better at representing these issues, to think about the morality of women's lives and those who have babies. It's not just women, right?

family the value of life as attached to the people who are having the babies, the human beings who may find themselves pregnant, who may find themselves in need of healthcare. And I mean, we have been, the anti-abortion movement made the fetus the center of a moral conversation and took away any sense of morality or value that was attached to the people who might find themselves pregnant. And what those who want to advocate on behalf of comprehensive healthcare need to start doing without apologizing or without feeling strange about it is remembering that women and people with uteruses are moral beings themselves and being clear about stating that alongside their right to legal health care. So just turning to the presidential race, you know, a couple of years after Hillary Clinton was the first female nominee of any major party, we have six women running for president in a 23.

I think that was the last count. Twenty three person field. Two of those women, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, are currently polling ahead of all but two or maybe three of the men. What do you make of the gender dynamics at play in this race and in the media coverage right now? Do you think they've improved since 2016, or have we learned nothing? I think we learn a little bit each time. I don't want to say we've learned nothing.

It's baby steps. I also think the dynamics are so different because you have six women in the race and we, the thing that we do is we try to tell this flattering lie about ourselves, which is that we're cool. We're cool. Right. We got this, like, we know how to, you know, we learned everything we needed to learn. Um, and I don't think that we're being honest about the fact that this is unprecedented. I mean, without precedent to have multiple women in a primary race. And we want to behave, we're constantly wanting to behave like gender is not an issue. And it's, but of course it is. It's in how, it's in the fact that three, consistently two and often three

white men are polling above any of these very strong female candidates. And some of the candidates are very strong, right? Right. That's operating for a variety of reasons, in part because of name recognition and fundraising networks that were in place that meant that they brought in a lot of money at first, but it's also operating because political media institutions are simply more comfortable covering white men in presidential races. They know how to do it. And as a result, you know, the people who are tracking this, Joe Biden's getting more coverage by like some massive factor than really any other candidates, but especially the women. Just because it's a comfortable, everybody knows Joe, right? People still know

Bernie from 2016, right? People still know Bernie from 2016, right? They know the stories. They know how to tell the stories around these people. You're seeing, you know, you're seeing all kinds of questions being asked about some of the female candidates, about their likability and relatability and authenticity that we know get asked about female candidates in ways that they're not asked about male candidates. So of course gender is shaping how this has happened. That said, if I thought that the gender dynamics in this race were going to be unchangeable, I would sort of go to bed and not wake up again for a couple of years. I mean, I actually, I can't move forward if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to move forward if I didn't have hope that we could learn more and faster. And that in fact the changing faces of who we're seeing we're going to be seeing in some

screwy bananas debate situation whatever that that hearing multiple multiple all kinds and it's not just women of course it's it's p Buttigieg is gay, and Julian Castro is running, and we have Jews, right? There are Jews. And we're looking at a wildly diverse slate of candidates. And what I have to believe is that the diversity itself alters our models for who can be presidential, who our candidates can be, how they can express themselves, how we change, how we receive them. And so I cannot move forward if I believe that all the errors of the past would simply predict the future. I have to believe that the process that we're in the midst of is about changing the way we receive these candidates. And so for that, even though

there are all kinds of daunting and possibly scary things about how we continue to treat male candidates versus female candidates, I want to believe that the process that we're in the midst of is about redressing those past errors. Well, I want to believe that too process that we're in the midst of is about redressing those past errors. Well, I want to believe that too. And so we will end on that very hopeful note because there's too much bad news out there to not end on that hopeful note. I'm nothing if not hopeful. That's right. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.

And please come on again soon. Thanks so much, John. and please come on again soon. Thanks so much, John. Now, the official trailer for the brand new Crooked Media pod that will be out on June 3rd. This Land, hosted by Rebecca Nagel, a Cherokee journalist and advocate

based in Oklahoma. Here's the trailer. Enjoy. This summer, the Supreme Court will decide the future of half the land in Oklahoma. Their decision could result in the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history. Every tribe has sovereignty, and this is not given to us. It's within us. In this podcast, we're going to go way back. to the Trail of Tears, to the story of my family, the treaty they signed, and why they were killed for our land. This case has involved

mistakes. And the agent that was in charge of it somehow just got the location wrong. And the Trump administration. I really do think that there was pressure from oil and gas interests in Oklahoma that encouraged them to intervene quickly. But for the people of my tribe and the four other tribes in Oklahoma, this case has never been about any of that. It's about our survival. We're still here. What our ancestors went through to get us from the homeland back east to here is just, it's incredible that any of us are here today. My name is Rebecca Nagel, and I'm a citizen of Cherokee Nation. You're listening to This Land from Crooked Media.

Subscribe to This Land wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks to Rebecca Tracer for joining us, and everyone have a great Memorial Day weekend. We will be off on Monday, and we will be recording the pod Tuesday morning. And so it'll be, uh, it'll be on your phones Tuesday afternoon. And we'll know from your tweets, which of you listened all the way to the end of this podcast.

Bye everyone. Bye. I'll see you next time.