Pod Save America - “Trump’s imaginary enemy.”

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Trump responds to falling poll numbers with a temporary ban on some forms of immigration, Mitch McConnell wants to hit pause on economic relief, and we answer some questions from listeners. Then former White House Chief Technology Officer Jason Goldman talks to Dan about how Joe Biden and Democrats can get creative with their digital strategy ahead of November.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to Jason Goldman, former White House chief digital officer who also worked on the founding team at Twitter, about how Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates can get more creative with their digital strategy ahead of November. Before that, we'll talk through Trump's immigration order, the coming fight over economic stimulus, and we will take a few of your questions. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World to find out what's going on with all those rumors that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is gravely ill.

And here's some wild speculation about what comes next. Tommy and Ben also talk about how the price of oil can be negative. Israel finally probably forming a government. And then they take a walk on the albright side with former secretary of state madeline albright what does does tommy right just tell me right these i think he does i think he does the walk on the albright side is that a thing it is now i thought it was a walk on the wild side anyway great you should listen to the episode. We also want to thank the more than 3,000 of you who've used votesaveamerica.com slash call to tell Congress that they need to include funding to make elections safe and accessible as part of their next coronavirus package.

It's amazing. Keep the calls coming. But we also want to hear directly from you. Why do you need safer voting options? Whether you have a pre-existing condition that puts you at risk or just don't feel safe volunteering at the polls, we want to hear your story. Send us a video at 323-405-9944 so we can share your story and send a message to every elected official about how important this is and why we need them to take action. Again, that number is 323-405-9944. Send us a video. Tell us why you want to make sure this election is safe to vote in. All right, let's get some news. Donald Trump's approval rating is back in the low 40s, Dan. Fox News polls have him down eight points to Joe Biden in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Quinnipiac has him down four points in Florida. His internal polls are showing similar problems, which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with why he tweeted this on Monday night. Quote, of the attack from the invisible enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our great American citizens, I will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States. Dan, it turns out the order he actually signed was not quite as sweeping as the tweet. What does it do and what doesn't it do? I know people should probably sit down because it turned out that this one singular time Donald Trump said something that was not true. So just be prepared, people. Anything is possible.

What it does is effective today, I believe. For 60 days, the United States will suspend entry to foreigners who do not have an immigrant visa already in hand. It doesn't affect immigrants already in the United States. It does not affect the families of U.S. citizens who are trying to get United States. It does not affect the families of U.S. citizens who are trying to get immigrant visas. It does not affect migrant workers. It is a very limited prescribed thing that was primarily, it's a press release masquerading as an executive order. Yeah. Also, a carve out for medical professionals, anyone on a temporary visa.

So it's basically employment-based visas for people who haven't for people who are outside the country, which had basically been halted already because most people in the world already can't come to America right now because of coronavirus. so everyone has an idea, like about 200,000 people got these visas last year and the type that he suspended for 60 days. And so most of the people it affects wouldn't be able to come here anyway right now, though there's still a good amount of people who have been trying to come to the United States for quite a while and now will be held up because of this order. while and now will be held up because of this order. It's it's interesting. It was interesting to me that he didn't just make it about or he didn't even primarily make it about coronavirus and sort of protecting us from people from other countries with the virus coming here and affecting people. He made it about protecting American jobs. Will this actually protect American jobs, Dan? Will this actually protect American jobs, Dan?

No, it will not. I mean, every study shows that immigration is good for the U.S. economy. It helps us grow the economy, which helps create jobs. This is a right-wing racist myth that they have been peddling for decades now. And Trump is just, this is, he has been the chief peddler of this racist Republican myth for a long time. Yeah. Just to think about this, like 26 million people have filed for unemployment in this country. And as I just mentioned, 200000 people applied for these visas last year. You know what? A big tell here is that he made a carve out for guest workers and farm workers and medical professionals because even Donald Trump, or at least his government, realized that this country runs on immigrant labor and the parts of the economy that are currently running on a lot of immigrant labor. He has allowed that to continue because he knows. When you say parts

of the economy, do you mean Trump wineries, Trump hotels? Certainly those parts of the economy. Yeah. But just, you know, the Washington Post gave a good example. There was a, you know, Brazilian jujitsu expert who was about to start his own gym in the United States. How many people would that have hired? Right. Like there are people who are coming here every day to open businesses, to start businesses, to hire Americans, to grow the economy. The Wall Street Journal, the liberal left-wing Wall Street Journal had an editorial about this where they said, if immigrants steal American jobs, why were there millions of unfilled jobs before the pandemic? Good point. Wall Street Journal editorial board.

So clearly Trump did this because he thinks it's good politics. And there is unfortunately some evidence for that. A recent USA Today poll showed 80 percent of Americans support temporarily stopping immigration from all other countries during the pandemic. What do you think about the politics here? Well, I think, like, I'll start with some caveats here. The first is, just in general, as Democrats, we have to stop treating Trump as some sort of, like, political sorcerer who's figured out, who's cracked the code on how to win elections. Yeah. We can never get rid of that. I mean, I think it's partly because of the surprise of 2016, but it's like, look at 2018, look at all the other special elections. Like there's a lot of other evidence that has built up so far. Yeah. I mean, he stumbled ass backwards into the

presidency on a wave of voter suppression, third party voting, and a collection of Black Swan circumstances involving Jim Comey and the Russians and all of that, and an electoral college advantage. And the best piece of evidence that even in 2016, it was not some sort of political genius is he won Wisconsin with fewer votes than Mitt Romney got in 2012. Mitt Romney lost by seven points. He ran behind noted empty suit and conspiracy theorist peddling crank Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. And as you just pointed out, he has lost virtually every election in a blue or purple state that has

happened since he won. So he's not a political genius. Having said all of that, I think just because something did not, and I don't think immigration is why he won in 2016. I think it's why he won the Republican primary, but I don't think it's why he won the general election primarily. Having said all of that, we are living in a very different context right now. And when you get into tough economic times, voters look for someone to blame. And Republicans have had great success over the years blaming people who are, quote, not like their voters, right? So that is immigrants, poor people, you know, sort of it's the Anne Randian, Paul Ryan, maker, takers situation. And so there is like Trump's ability to use this argument is amplified in this new political environment where people are fighting for jobs.

And it was in a time of historic low unemployment five weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, you know, he signed the order Wednesday night. I think there was sort of less of an uproar than even I thought there would be. I think he wanted to provoke a political debate that he didn't really seem to provoke. And so we're all sort of moving on.

But I do think this is going to be a big part of the campaign. This is going to be a big part of the campaign. I mean, he you know, he's going to say to Joe Biden, there's 20 something million people out of work. Why do you think immigrants should start coming into this country again after the first 60 days is up? You know, your plan is to give citizenship to undocumented immigrants to have immigration to this country. Why do you think, you know, we should have immigrants coming to take jobs when we have 20 something million Americans out of work? And I think he's going to frame his economic plan as one where he's going to stop immigration and put American jobs first. And then, you know, when you look at polling numbers like that,

what is what does Joe Biden say? What do the Democrats say? When you look at polling numbers like that, what does Joe Biden say? What do the Democrats say? Yeah, I mean, immigration is such an interesting political issue on a whole host of reasons, on a host of vectors. But he tried this in 2017. Do you remember he made a bunch of MS-13 attack ads and tweets in Virginia against Northam? attack ads and tweets in Virginia against Northam. He obviously will never forget the caravan of seven-year-old MS-13 members who were moving quite slowly to the American border during 2018. He tweeted about it in the Kentucky governor's race. He's tried it and it's failed

in all these contexts. And immigration, in times of relatively good economy, immigration does work with Trump's base because it's not about jobs. It's about changing American identity. It's losing this MAGA America where political power and cultural power was in the hands of white Christians primarily, right? It's this fear of change. In a tougher economy, it becomes one of who gets the benefits of the economy. And like he could, like I said, he could have success there. What I thought was interesting about this was Trump is suffering a little bit from being the president who cried wolf, because we yell about the press all the time. I think overwhelmingly, the press were skeptical

when he said it. They nailed him for not doing what he was going to say. I think Democrats in Congress and others handled it appropriately and didn't take the bait. Now, it's one thing to respond to a Trump tweet and a Trump executive or it's another thing when Trump weaponizes Biden's immigration plan as his economic plan. And we're going to have, and there's some, I think a good conversation about how, how you navigate that situation. How do we navigate that situation? I hope you had the answer. Let's ask Joe Biden. Maybe he knows. I think that after 60 days, the first thing is, okay, Donald Trump, you said that you were going to protect American jobs with this immigration order, suspension of immigration. Is the unemployment rate better? Do more Americans have jobs? Clearly, it's not. I think you first point out that it's ineffective, that it's not going to work. It just didn't really protect American jobs. Then I think you have to hit him

for not having a real economic plan. And I think you have to say he wants to blame, he wants us to blame each other. He wants, he wants to divide us against each other. When the real source of the problem is Donald Trump and the Republican party want to protect their rich friends and the wealthiest corporations. And they don't want to do shit for most people in this country who are working in the middle of, or who are, who are out of work in the middle of this horrible recession. And I think that's, I think, you know, we're about to talk about sort of the economics of all this, but Donald Trump and the Republicans do not have any semblance of an economic plan to deal with what could be the greatest crisis we've faced since the Great Depression. They don't, because all they've

done so far is make it easier for their rich friends to get tax breaks and government funding while there's a ton of people who are out of work. And they're going to tell you that it's all about immigration. And they're lying because they've tried to suspend immigration, and it hasn't fucking worked. So I think that's exactly right. I mean, that what you're ultimately Democrats need to do, and I'm very encouraged by what we've seen in the first 48 hours since Trump did this, is you don't play Trump's game, you call it out, right? You explain why he's trying to divide Americans, what he's trying to distract from, as you said, the fact that he massively fumbled this response, which has put us in this situation, trying to distract from the fact that the benefits of the economic recovery package are often going to large corporations. He's trying to help his friends and punish his enemies in this situation. And so calling out what Trump is doing, explaining why he's lying, not just that he is lying or not just that he is dividing us racially, but why he's doing those things and what he's trying to distract from, gives us an opportunity to pivot back to the issues that motivate our voters and persuade the voters we need. Because that is always what, like this has been Trump's political superpower to date is he has the ability to move the political conversation onto the issues that excite his base and don't do

very much for our base. And we have to be able to pivot back to the issue set that matter for us, which is economic inequality, health care, fighting for working people in the middle class. Yeah. Immigrants aren't trying to kick you off your health insurance. Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to kick you off your health insurance by going to court to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Immigrants aren't trying to keep your wages low or keep you out of work. Donald Trump and the Republicans are by refusing to support a $15 minimum wage and refusing to extend unemployment insurance. You know, I think you just have to continue to bring it back to what Trump and the Republican Party is doing and reveal what he's doing on immigration as a tactic to divide us to avoid blame for what he has done. So let's talk

about the political fight over how to dig the economy out of this crisis. On Tuesday, the Senate passed by unanimous consent a $484 billion coronavirus relief bill that will help small businesses avoid layoffs, fund hospitals and expand testing. But with tens of millions of people out of work for God knows how long, almost everyone agrees we'll need at least another stimulus bill. Democrats in Congress, Democratic and Republican governors, mayors, economists, even Donald Trump, who tweeted about the need for relief to state and local governments, infrastructure, and then all kinds of tax cuts. The big exception here is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and some other Republicans in Congress. McConnell told reporters that he's concerned about the debt and that it's time to hit pause. So, Dan, the guy who added about two trillion dollars to the national debt with a tax cut that mostly

benefited the rich is now suddenly worried about the debt again. What's going on here? Worried about the debt again. What's going on here? Well, I'm sure that this is a principled political position for Mitch McConnell, a man known for his principles. I mean, just fuck off. I mean, it's just so absurd. And just the shameless cynicism that emanates from everything that man does is, it's truly galling. And it's just, we should always note that Mitch McConnell will go down in history as one of the worst, most dangerous people who've ever been involved in American politics. He is as responsible for Donald Trump being president as anyone else.

He's more responsible for Donald Trump being president than Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin or anyone else. It is Mitch McConnell, what he has done to rig our democracy, both in the short term and long term. So he is terrible, full stop. There are like, what he is doing here is he obviously doesn't give a shit about the deficit. He cares about Republican political power. Like that's obvious. You say that why. I think there are two things that drive the sentiment. One is for as bad as Mitch McConnell is, he's also quite savvy.

And what he tends to do is come out and publicly oppose things he privately supports so that he can then trade them and treat them as a concession and a negotiation. So obviously, it is very much in McConnell's interest to help the economy because he's trying to hold on to the Senate. And a bad economy means it's going to be harder for Senate incumbents to win. And so he obviously wants to put more money in the economy. But if he comes out against it, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the situation of getting the thing they also want, then McConnell treats it as a concession, and can trade it for something Democrats don't want. So it's savvy, and it's a negotiated point. The other thing that I think undermines it is politicians, particularly ones who've been around forever. And since Mitch McConnell is a vampire, he has most certainly been around forever.

They're always defined by their most devastating electoral experiences. Like Democrats who were around in 1994 have this sort of PTSD reaction to gun issues because of the, what I think, incorrect view that the assault weapons ban led to the Republicans taking Congress in 94. Like a lot of Republicans truly believe that one of the reasons they got clobbered in 06 and 08 is because of the huge amount of spending that Bush did on the Iraq war, on the tax cut, on the Medicare prescription drug benefit. And so I think McConnell does have some fear that being painted as big spenders is going to diminish Republican

turnout. I don't think he's necessarily correct about that, but I think that does drive some of his messaging. I mean, you think that would go out the window in the middle of a pandemic and near depression, you know? So the issue here is, is focused around money to state and local governments, which has been supported,

not just by Democrats, by, but by Republican governors. And McConnell said this the other day about sending money to state governments, quote, we all have governors, regardless of party, who would love to have free money. And that's why I said yesterday, we're going to push the pause button here, because I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments need to be thoroughly evaluated. McConnell instead suggested states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy, which they're currently prohibited from doing under federal law.

What's this all about? I think this is, as I was referencing, a negotiating tactic because Democrats are very much going to want to give these states aid. It was at the centerpiece of the battle this past week over phase three. Are we at three and a half? It was three and a half. We're about we're now talking about four. Okay. All right. So phase three and a half, part of the big battle that Democrats wanted was this aid to local governments because their budgets are being busted by this because they're spending all this money on helping hospitals and doctors and trying to get tests from all over the world because the Trump administration sucks. Their tax base, like everyone else's, is going way down because no one's working. And what that ultimately means

is, it's important to recognize this, is that the federal government can borrow money to pay for itself, which is exactly what we've been doing with these trillions of dollars. Hence the deficit. Hence the deficit. Almost every state has a state law that requires them to balance their budget. And so when expenses exceed revenue, they have to make cuts. And what that means oftentimes is that they are going to have to cut the pay or lay off state employees. Now, Republicans will pitch state employees as nameless, faceless, evil bureaucrats, but that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about public school teachers, firefighters, cops, many people who are on the front lines of fighting the

coronavirus are going to- Hospitals, healthcare workers, schools, like just millions more jobs here in an economy where people have already lost a lot of jobs. Yes. And it is just worth just putting a fine point on it that the Republican position is it is okay for the federal government to borrow money to give massive tax cuts to corporations that did nothing other than enrich the rich. But they are not okay with borrowing money to ensure that teachers, firefighters, and cops do not get laid off in the middle of a pandemic. That is their position. That is who they are fighting for. And they're also specifically going after pensions too. McConnell keeps saying this. We don't want to give money to state governments to help fund their pensions because the pensions are why they might have to declare bankruptcy so so basically the retirement

of all these people who teachers health care workers you know uh cops firefighters who've worked their whole lives and have earned this pension and now basically mcconnell's saying well no they should just because there was a pandemic they should have to be poor in retirement that's it that's that's so to be very clear, the position of the Republican Party is that they want to cut Medicare and Social Security and deny people their pensions. And again, like and it's I mean, it's the position of the Republican Party because it's McConnell and all these Republicans in Congress. But like you have people like Larry Hogan of Maryland, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, like there are a number of Republican governors throughout the country who are also asking for

this money, for this funding. And yet then there's Mr. Mitch McConnell, who, again, like you said, is using it as a negotiating chit. What should Democrats do about this? How should they talk about this? How should they approach negotiations with McConnell and the other congressional Republicans in this next round? I mean, I thought you guys had a very good conversation about this on Monday, and they should take a maximalist position and they should pass a Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats should pass a phase four. They should be the one to control the pen on this and force McConnell to react. And I think how they do it is very important. And I remember

Tommy making this point in a recent podcast that it's got to be big and bold and progressive, but not seem like a Christmas tree where there's a whole bunch of different little things on there. And because it is ultimately a negotiating and messaging document. And so you want to optimize it for those two factors as opposed to like, what is the absolute all-encompassing policy, right? Because all the things that were in the bill they almost passed in phase three were, you know, seemed like really good things, but they didn't necessarily help the politics of the bill. So we got to think about it from a political perspective. Would you if you were Pelosi, would you pass a bill out of the House before starting to just negotiate with Republicans over a bill? Yes. Yes. I think they should pass a bill out of the House for sure.

Because also you want something to run on. Yeah. I don't understand why they wouldn't do this. I do. I do understand why this is hard. And it's like this has always been the conversation that we have both externally and internally about how hard it is to be a Democratic leader is many of Pelosi's members are not going to want to vote for a bill with a very large price tag that is not going to become law. Like how many multi-trillion dollar votes do you want to take in one year, right? You want to save your vote for the things that are actually the bill that's going to deliver the trillions of dollars to people. And so I think there will be some resistance within her caucus to do that. Now, I don't agree with that political calculus that that is a mistake. I think you are better off offering voters a roadmap of what it would look like of unified democratic control than one line and one attack ad about what you voted for. Now you've already voted for

several trillion dollars. So what is one more trillion dollars or two more trillion dollars? I don't think that's going to make a substantive political difference. But that will be, my guess is that's the internal caucus pressure on Pelosi and leadership. I mean, I understand that in normal times, the fear about voting for something with a high price tag. and deficits are stupid, we have seen multiple focus groups, multiple polls, where most Americans don't quite get how deficits and debt work. And they think to themselves, I have a budget. Why doesn't Washington have a budget? Right. So like this is the sort of political calculus that goes on in normal times. I think that Democrats underestimate the pain and anger and rage and fury that is building in this country at their peril. And like Donald Trump is in charge right now.

Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Senate right now. And I think like even these frontline Democrats, like look at your districts, talk to the people in your districts who are out of work, who are worried about rent, who are worried that they're going to lose their job, who've already lost their job, who can't pay a mortgage. Like, I think that there, I don't think there is a price to pay as there is maybe in normal times about, you know, supporting a very big, ambitious bill that focuses on putting people back to work and taking care of people who are out of work and making sure that everyone has health care during this pandemic. Like, I just don't think there is a price to that like there may be in other times.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is most likely correct. But what the political reality of the moment is and what drives the inherent political fear in vulnerable politicians of either party are not always the same thing. Yeah, no, that is true. Let's talk about what Joe Biden should do here. So he's also been pushing for another big stimulus bill. He's agreed with what most of the Democratic leadership has called for, but he has been relatively quiet about the details. Do you think that's just to give Schumer and Pelosi room to negotiate this deal because, you know, he's not in office yet? And if so, is that the right play here? Well, I think it is the only play that Joe Biden would ever run. Like there is a world where if

someone was a different and I think less serious person than Biden, where you could run against everyone, right? This is not enough. Washington has failed you. I would do X, Y, and Z. And Joe Biden is an institutionalist, and so he would not do that. But he also knows how to get things done. And he knows, he is planning on winning this election. And he is planning on Chuck Schumer being the leader of the Senate, Nancy Pelosi being the Speaker of the House and working with them to fix the mess Trump left them. So he't think that costs him political in the short term, but it like he's willing to pass up some political opportunities because it doesn't help the party writ large. And I think he, I do believe that he wants to be, he does not want to have a lonely victory, right? He wants to bring everyone along with him. Yeah, I get that too. But I also, you know, Barack Obama was also an institutionalist

and he had to balance in 2008 during the financial crisis, appearing as a steady, competent leader who had a lot of experts around him who could get the country through the crisis and also channeling the rage and frustration that people felt towards Washington and Wall Street for what had happened to the economy. And I do think Biden should probably err a little bit more towards the side of channeling the populist anger. Like you said, Joe Biden's never going to be Bernie Sanders, right? Like we get that. anger. Like you said, Joe Biden's never going to be Bernie Sanders, right? Like we get that. But, you know, Joe Biden is like middle class Joe, the guy from Scranton. Like he does have it within his character to fight on behalf of working people who are upset, who are angry. Like we have seen

him do it before. And I do. And look, I looked on his website last night like he's got he's got a plan there. You know, he's he's talking about, you know, forgiving ten thousand dollars of student loans like Senator Warren has proposed, increasing Social Security checks by two hundred dollars a month. Senator Wyden's proposed emergency paid sick leave for everyone who needs it, making sure that no one has to pay a dollar out of pocket for COVID testing, treatment or a vaccine. He's got fiscal relief to states and local governments. So he's got a lot of the elements there on his website. I just wonder if he has to sort of do a little bit more to channel that anger. two separate but not inconsistent things, right? One is, can you channel the anger of the American people? Yes. And he, in the past, in the 08 campaign in 2012, he was very, very good at that. He is someone who both publicly and privately thinks about and fights for working class people, the people. And you hear him,. You and I have been in many economic meetings with

Joe Biden over the years. He always brings up and talks about it in terms of any idea that was being proposed invariably in a PowerPoint by the National Economic Council. He would bring it up in the context of whether it helped the people in the neighborhood he grew up in Scranton or the neighborhood of Claymont, Delaware, near where I grew up, where he lived after Scranton. So he thinks that way, right? And it is very hard in his defense to communicate that sitting in a chair in front of a bookshelf. I know. It's really hard. Like that is very challenging. But that is a separate conversation from whether he should get out ahead of congressional leaders on policy ideas. Yeah. I think continuing to do this is good, is realizing that the changed, massively changed economic circumstances of the last month give him some permission to adopt new, bolder, more populist economic ideas. That's all I'm saying.

That's all I'm saying. And I think he has that permission now. They sent out a campaign message memo the other day, the Biden campaign, where they said there was an unmistakable bias toward giant corporations in the CARES Act, which left out the smallest businesses that power so many American communities, blah, blah, blah. Trump also fired the inspector general who'd been charged with overseeing these funds, which is extremely alarming. He's letting hedge funds game the system on the Paycheck Protection Program. So you can see that they're starting to move there in the campaign. What do you think, in terms of the campaign, Biden's sort of most effective economic message and argument is? Well, I think just as we were talking about how in economic times, people look for someone to blame, and they either blame down or they blame

up. And just as the changed economic circumstances have potentially given Trump's immigration demagoguery more potency, I think the changed economic circumstances also give democratic populism more potency. And so the way I think this works for Biden is because Democrats helped pass all of these bills, it is hard to attack the bills themselves because Democrats have their hands all over them and have touted them, right? What you can do is focus on the implementation, right? Make Trump own all the big corporations who are getting loans, the small businesses who are being denied loans, the checks that didn't get through, the glitchy website. Every bit of implementation falls on Trump. And call them on it, do it in the context of a narrative that is 100% correct,

which is Trump fights for big corporations and rich people like himself at the expense of working people. And so I think that's refocused. And I think Biden should be very good at this because he was the person that Obama put in charge of managing the Recovery Act. So he knows how these things work. He saw how Republicans weaponize the inevitable mistakes that happen in the management of large government programs. And so he can do it. And I do think it is – I have begun to question whether Biden has access to time travel. Because just imagine this.

Like 35 years ago, I think, Biden hired Ron Klain out of law school. I know. To work for him. And then you flash forward that we are now in a pandemic, in a massive economic crisis. And the guy he hired out of law school 35 years ago is an expert in pandemics and economic recovery acts

because Ron Klain helped manage that for Biden. So it was like, did he, did he know, like, did he know that? That's some real luck there. That's really good.

Glad we have Ron around. Okay. We have time today to take some of your questions that that you've been asking on various social media platforms. So let's let's dig into a few of them before we before we get to your interview with Jason. Todd Flora on Twitter asks, where does Biden sit in terms of cash on hand? Nobody's talking about this, nor the uh money advantage that trump has in the general well todd we've been talking about it maybe not on the pod yet but but we've been you and i've been texting nervously about it so

uh trump's money advantage is massive yeah it is the most massive money advantage that anyone has ever had. And we haven't even begun to talk about the Republican super backs, the Koch brothers and everyone else who will be engaging in this election. He raised a quarter billion dollars last quarter, which is an ungodly amount of money. Biden had a very good fundraising quarter where he raised $46 million. But there's a very well-reported and quite disturbing New York Times article about Biden's fundraising, which shows that that money mostly dropped off a cliff once the pandemic hit, and people were

sheltered at home, and people became very concerned about the crisis. So Biden is a candidate who to date, to date, has been a primarily offline fundraiser through, you know, he raises more of his money than a bunch of the other primary candidates through high dollar fundraisers. And now he is locked in his house, unable to go to high dollar fundraisers. So it is a cause of immense concern. It is a cause of immense concern. Yeah. So if you're worried about Donald Trump winning a second term, you know, and if you can consider donating to Joe Biden, you know. And people will say just that Hillary Clinton had way more money than Donald Trump in 2016 and still lost. And that is true.

Joe Biden does not need Donald Trump's money to win. He doesn't need more money. He doesn't need as much money, but he does need enough. Right. He doesn't need to wipe away Donald Trump's cash advantage, and he probably never will, but he does need enough money to run a great campaign, right? No, that's right. Okay.

Ben Key via the PSA phone. Some pundits are floating the idea of Biden going ahead and announcing key members of his cabinet. Do you think this is a good strategy? and he still won't come on the pod i don't acknowledge his absence on the pod someday it is an available option for him he can take it if he wants if he we'd love if he does it we're still going to do everything we can do to help him so that's right yeah we don't care either way um all right what do you think about what do you think about the, uh, the Tom Friedman strategy there? We should say, we should say the Tom Friedman column, which went around to way too

many people that I know and came back to me was like, you know, Biden should announce this big unity cabinet with, you know, Republicans and AOC and everyone in between. And we should all sort of like come together and hug and sing Kumbaya and all that kind of stuff. But there, I think there is a separate idea of just announcing whatever cabinet he would announce after he becomes president. I would say that that time Friedman column came out when I was doing my book

tour back when we could travel. Oh wow. That was a long, that was five years ago, six years ago? Two months ago. And I got asked about this column at every stop I went to. And the first time I got asked was in a bookstore. And I reflexively laughed hysterically. But here's the thing I will tell you.

People who go to book events and bookstores really like Tom Friedman. I look, I'm sure my, you know, there's a lot of people I know and love and think is very smart who loved Tom Friedman too. We're just very fucking cynical adults, you know, pundits that have been around for too long. Yes. I, I'm going to hear those words in my brain every night before I go to sleep for a month. Thank you. I mean, I look, I think to be serious with that, I think it is a good idea. I think it is worth exploring naming some of them. You don't have to, you don't have to like roll out the SBA administrator now, but the, but I think maybe the SBA administrator

with all the small business stuff going on. Yeah, that was unfair to the SBA. I apologize. Um, but I, I think there's like, it, it's, it always sounds like one of those terrible ideas that, um, people suggest without any context of reality. And so I'm hesitant to endorse it myself. But so if he announced someone who, you know, he announced a Treasury Secretary designee or a Treasury John designee, that would give people an image, a view of what his government would look like. It may help with some constituencies who have some questions about whether, how progressive

he is going to be. You know, it's because you see all the time on Twitter, which is reality, people saying that Joe Biden is going to appoint Jamie Dimon to be. You know, it's because you see all the time on Twitter, which is reality, people saying that Joe Biden is going to appoint Jamie Dimon to be his treasury secretary, which he's obviously not going to do. And so like you could quell some of that. I think, you know, it's a, and it would give you just additional surrogates to do Zoom chats.

Right. No, I think the surrogate point is well taken. I also think my mind often goes to, you know, something Biden said towards the end of the primary where he told a crowd, you know, I see myself as a bridge to the younger generation. Right. Which is very self-aware thing to say that he knows he's going to know, it's going to be president at 77 years old, and that the Democratic Party is becoming younger and more progressive. He understands that. And I think he could show that by sort of announcing a cabinet that is that is part of the next

generation, right, that represents the next generation. And by the way, and I think, you know, Obama did this to an extent during the economic crisis when he talked to a lot of sort of economic experts. And obviously, there's a whole debate about who he chose that we don't have to go into right now. But I think particularly around the economic crisis, and this was a point that our good pals made on our show Hacks on Tap, David Axelrod and Mike Murray, that like announcing an economic team specifically would actually be helped because it would show sort of exude competence and that like you have a group of people who can help get the country through the crisis.

Now, I do think if you do that, there's a premium on selecting people who are not just like smart economy people, but also, you know, progressives and people who are going to send a signal to a lot of constituencies that Joe Biden is going to take sort of helping the middle working middle class and the poor seriously. So I think that would be a good idea. This is the hill I'm going to die on. Katie Porter for Treasury Secretary. I love it. I love it i love it great messenger consumer advocate bridge the next generation just it is such a no-brainer to me doesn't doesn't take elizabeth warren out of the senate right which is enough you know that because elizabeth warren for treasury secretary also great but you know neater senate seat okay some fun

stuff anthony orlando on twitter asks let's get to the important stuff what's in your quarantine binge watching rotation do you want to tell us john what you've been watching yeah we've been watching too much to handle here's my thing here's my thing in general in non-pandemic times, I tend to not watch content that will make me more anxious than the news already does. I do watch some of it, but it's usually a high bar because I feel anxious all day reading Twitter and reading the news. So I usually like to watch more mindless stuff or comedy. I have had an even tougher time with all of that in the pandemic. I can't focus on really good, high quality television.

So we've been looking for sort of sillier stuff to watch. And Emily and I came across Too Hot to Handle on Netflix, which is a reality show. Do you want to give everyone the plot? Yeah, I'm going to. I'm about to. It's a bunch of very attractive people that they put on an island from all over the world um who aren't allowed to have sex with each other or even kiss each other or else they like lose some prize money and that's that's it man that's

the plot and you just see what happens and it is um it is wild then they are some they are some fascinating people that's all i'll say about that uh i am sure that before this quarantine ends in mid 2023 we will have watched too hot to handle there it is i was gonna say it's right you and holly always watch the same garbage reality shows that but yes i watch yeah we have been we've actually been watching obviously below deck sailing out which is quite excellent see there you go so we're very we very much enjoyed that top chef is on um and i would tell anyone who was looking for something thoroughly enjoyable to binge is go watch old seasons of top chef okay uh i haven't watched all right i should right, I should do that. Top Chef is amazing. And you do, in this environment,

have to get past the fact that it's almost like a period piece because a lot of it involves people eating together in eating establishments, which is not something that we recall. Period piece. That's tough. It's like watching people have to use a payphone

in a movie from the 80s. It's very disconnecting from life. We have been watching Miss America on Hulu. Oh, I want to watch that. Which is great. It's really great. We've watched the first couple episodes. We also watched, also on Hulu, Little Fires Everywhere, to be surprised, even though you had told me in advance, a cameo from your brother.

That's right. Andy Favreau. In episode six, I think. That's right. Yeah. Episode six. me in advance a cameo from your brother that's right Andy Favreau in episode six I think that's right yeah episode six which you had definitely told me and I definitely forgot and I looked up for my phone and your brother was on my tv which has happened before but it was it was out of context there um and then I would to anyone who loves sports uh I finally got around to watching the first two episodes uh I gotta do that I really want to watch that. Yeah, it's really great.

And I mean, it's phenomenal. Like that is like my exact era of basketball because I like one of the first, my first basketball memory is being allowed to stay up to watch the North Carolina Georgetown game with my dad and that shot being made, that Jordan made. So like that's the beginning of my basketball experience through everything. And so it would be phenomenal in a world where sports was allowed to exist.

I was going to say, one of the questions from Lindsey Singer was a question for Dan. How are you coping without the NBA? Because I need tips. I'm guessing last dance fulfills some of that. Last dance fulfills that. I think our old friends at The Ring have been doing this very fun podcast series where

they redraft all the previous drafts. So if you're a basketball draft nerd, that's been very fun. Yeah. But I will also say that as a Sixers fan, this season has been so stressful that I don't think I could survive the pandemic with the Sixers not ever scoring out of the pick and roll. It would be more than I could possibly take and so there is this like weird sick relief that I don't have to be mad about I could never live in a world where I had to watch Trump's press conference for two hours and then turn on a Sixers road game in a row like that would be more than I could yeah that's that's rough um Carolyn Hicks asks can you can you guys chat about the Mark Warner tuna sandwich debacle from the Internet?

That was I had heard a lot of people talking about it. And I was like, what is everyone making a big deal out of? The guy's just making a tuna sandwich. And then I watched it. And I was just I mean, for those of you who haven't seen it, I don't know why Mark Warner decided he needed to do this and share this with the world. But he made a tuna sandwich. needed to do this and share this with the world um but he made a tuna sandwich like he he dumps the tuna out on some bread with all the water and from the can he squirts like 10 times too much fucking mayo on the sandwich he slaps it a piece of cheese on it and then he throws it in the microwave for just 30 seconds, which I don't, what was he doing? I did not know that was Mark

Warner. The first several times I watched it would also have this like weird, like sheen on it. Like it was from the eighties. Yeah, it was, I couldn't figure out what was going on. And I have to tell you that I couldn't finish the video. I could not get past the dumping of the tuna water. And this is me like anyone and people should enjoy the food they like, but there's nothing that I find more disgusting than a tuna sandwich. I lived in a group house in college once where, uh, one of my housemates cooked tuna helper and it took like literally six months for the smell to leave our home. And I'm like, if the choice was eat a tuna melt or vote for Paul Ryan,

I'd have to flip a coin. Like that's how I feel about tuna melts. I don't love tuna either or tuna sandwiches for some reason, like a well-made tuna melt I can do. And I, and I enjoy and which is why we should all be very grateful for Kamala Harris, who did an Instagram live last night where she she she did an Instagram live with Mark Warner, where she taught him the appropriate way to make a tuna melt.

And because she is such a great cook, it was like deluxe, you know, like she chopped up celery and red onion. And and, you know, she had her husband holding the camera the whole time. And it was very funny and very enjoyable. And it was a good piece of content to consume, especially after Mark Warner's troubled, troubled attempt at a tuna sandwich. I would love it if Mark Warner's staff, some of whom we know from previous political experiences, could reach out to us. Completely off the record. We'll never get you on the pod. But I want to know the origin. Me too. What was the discussion that led to that happening?

And I don't begrudge them. This is the most online attention that Mark Warner's gotten in a long time. I think it's actually a net benefit for him. He's the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. You know what? I am 100% for it. You have to try lots of things. He probably gained Twitter followers, which means more people.

There's going to be meetings in his office for months where some staffer says, how do we replicate the tuna video to get the boss more attention? We need a, like this will be, yeah, it'll be, we need a tuna video for stimulus oversight. We need a tuna video for stimulus oversight. We need a tuna video for Intel funding. And that wants to be his office. That'll be every Senate office. That's what's going to happen. All right.

So Trish Hayden asked us, first of all, I'm a huge fan. I want to thank you for providing me with some bits of wisdom and sanity in these crazy times. I unfortunately drink quite a bit of alcohol as a coping mechanism to deal with our current political and covet environment what do you personally do to cope might you recommend some healthier alternatives look trish we hear you i hear you um i would say this uh because i think when this first started, it sort of felt like, or at least I felt like, okay, yeah, you can drink a little more at dinner. You can not wear real clothes. Time has no meaning.

Watch TV at all hours, do whatever. I have found that a couple of weeks into this, maybe a month into this, maybe a month and a couple of weeks, I don't know what time it is, having some kind of routine has helped me a little bit more so like i can't go to the gym anymore but now i like wake up i have a time that i work out as opposed to just like sitting on twitter for an hour and a half wondering about the fucking state of the world and then i make myself breakfast and then i you

know actually put some real clothes on and then once work is done, Emily and I take a walk around the neighborhood and we cook dinner and I do the dishes. So it's like, I do think giving yourself some sort of routine can help calm you in these times. At least that's what I've found. I don't know. Have you found anything? No. I have been quarantined for six weeks with a very cute, very energetic two year old. And so it survived. I guess that's all out the window, huh?

Yeah. I, uh, I saw someone like tweet and some terrible human being tweet. Like if you exit this shelter in place without a new gay and like new skills, a second language or side hustle figured out that's on you. And I was like,

that person does not have children like that. That's a whole different world. Like, look, it's really, I don't have a good answer. It's really hard. I find I,

everyone's going to do it differently. We have reached a sort of like, you were right that in the beginning there was this sort of like the world's going to do it differently. We have reached a sort of like, you were right that in the beginning there was this sort of like the world's going to end philosophy for it's like drink what you want, eat what you want. And now it's like, you sort of have to make this fit into your something that resembles a daily life.

I would say if you don't want to watch Trump give a two hour press conference, don't do it. Yeah. I'm fine. This is, this is hard for us because our job is to cover the news and to read the news. But I'm finding that the hardest thing is like

the news was bad and makes you anxious always before the pandemic. And now it's just fucking it's miserable, especially because, you know, like every story always, you know, the most extreme examples of everything, the most pessimistic examples, the most pessimistic predictions of the future are all the headlines. Donald Trump's press conferences can make you insane every day. It's just bad, bad, bad. And that's partly because there's a lot of bad news out there, but partly because, you know, bad news always makes headlines. and I find that the trickiest part because when I, I find myself when I, especially late at night or early in the morning, when I'm reading the news or scrolling through Twitter, you just, you can go to dark places very fast. And so to sort of, um, uh, have your news diet be somewhat,

uh, you know, I don't know, less than, less than usual, or at least figure out when to read the news and when not to read the news. I think that helps a little bit. Yeah. Finding non COVID content in your life is also, I mean like your, your routine should be get up, shower, put on a belt, listen to pod, save America,

other crooked media podcasts, and then find non COVID content. Right. Which I think that like that is a recipe for perfect health. For sure. Like, but feel free to take a break. Like,

I mean, I think that's been true of the Trump era in general and everything is magnified in this shit show. Yeah. Last question that just came from Instagram real quick. Will there be a season three of The Wilderness? Fuck, I hope not. That's just my answer to that.

The whole point is to be out of The Wilderness after November. So as much as I loved making two seasons of The Wilderness, I really did. And everyone should, if you haven't listened to season two yet, please do. We now have a nominee. Obviously the world is much different, but I think a lot of the wilderness i really did and everyone should if you haven't listened to season two yet please do we now have a nominee obviously the world is much different but

i think a lot of the lessons still apply for november but no i fucking hope i'm not uh i'll probably be doing a a third season of the wilderness from somewhere that is wilderness like i will be hopping out somewhere if there is a third season of the wilderness you will where you will be if you're doing it you'll be doing it from your house yeah right or oh anyway yeah so i the answer to that is i hope not all right when we come back we will have dan's interview with jason goldman hi everyone i'm alex wagner journalist and co-host of Showtime's The Circus, and now host of the new Crooked Media podcast, Six Feet Apart. Each episode of Six Feet Apart will offer a window into the hidden worlds of this pandemic,

the chaos and fear, the resilience and innovation, all of which have been necessary parts of survival in this extraordinary moment. New episodes of Six Feet Apart drop every Thursday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. I'm joined now by the Chief Digital Officer for the Obama White House and a member of the founding team at Twitter, Jason Goldman. How are you, buddy? Hey, good to see you. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the campaign, how are you and your family dealing with quarantine? Are you enjoying sheltering in place with a small child? Yeah, I think we both have that in common, which is being trapped inside

with a slow-moving Tasmanian devil who seeks only to destroy. So it's at least it keeps you busy. I can say that much. I have not. I sometimes think about what the alternative life is where I'm quarantining without a two year old. It's basically that, as I heard someone put it, I would finish Netflix. Right. It would just be done.

Yeah. Yeah. You'd get that 100 percent complete. Yes. Like, like, is is there something at the end of Netflix? Is there some secret? Yes. Yeah, there's an Easter egg. It's amazing. All right. I want to start by asking you about this series of articles that have been out there recently about sort of the massive digital advantage that Trump has. There was a New York Times column or article from Kevin Roos about

Biden's losing the internet. What is your assessment of Trump's digital advantage? And what's your level of concern about it heading into the election? So I think let's start with good news, because why not? I think in recent times, it seems at least, according to acronyms reporting, that on the ad spend side, the Biden campaign is actually doing better than Trump in terms of spending money on online digital ads and spending money on Facebook. And that's important because that was a big gap in the 2016 election, where the tools that were made available to the campaigns were just taken more advantage of by Trump. And so specifically, the numbers are, in the last 30 days, Biden outspent Trump $8.3 million to $5.3 million, and that's including $5.5 million versus Trump's $2.9 million on Facebook. So it's a significant amount of overspend, which I do take as good news.

So that's because because it was ignored previously. The concern that you have is less about the dollars then and more how they think about digital strategy and how Democrats in general think about digital strategy. And in general, I think it still looks a little bit too much like it did when I joined the White House in 2015, which is that digital is this condiment that you sprinkle on top of an already baked communications and political strategy. You figure out what you want to say and to whom you want to say it, and then you turn it over to some young people to make it go viral. And that's sort of best illustrated by, I was having a conversation in my early days at the White House with someone who worked on national security issues. And they said, what we really need is an ice bucket challenge to defeat ISIS. And that, to me, is kind of where a lot of conversations about digital strategies still are in democratic politics. I mean, when we talk about Trump's digital advantage, to use a term of art,

his platform advantage, right? He has, I think, 75 million Twitter followers. Biden has five, I think. Right. Biden has 30,000 some, I think, as of last week. Subscribers to his YouTube channel, Trump has many X that. Obviously, Trump has an email list that is in the tens of millions. Biden has one that we assume is less than that. How would you advise Biden's campaign to catch up or negate that advantage as much as possible, given the time constraints we're under? So I think the real advantage that Trump has online has less to do with the metrics, and more to do with the fact that he has embraced something that you and others have talked about, which is that he is the chief communications officer for his campaign. And he understands that digital and his Twitter feed and his Facebook feed and the ads that he runs all over the place

are just different vectors of the same message. Now, I in no way want to see Joe Biden embrace Twitter or any digital platform in the same way that Donald Trump has. However, there is an idea there, which is that you have to have a holistic strategy in which the candidate is the center of that strategy, and all of these different platforms seek to amplify that central message. And they're all thought of as different vectors of the same strategy, as opposed to, well, we say the one thing to the New York Times because that's the thing that really matters, and then we'll just clip it out to these other platforms. You know, I think some, not necessarily folks in the Biden campaign,

but some Democrats would look at this and say, you know, in the primary, Bernie Sanders had a massive digital advantage over Biden. Along the metrics we're talking about, the strategy we're talking about, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg all had huge digital advantages over Biden. They had more digitally native campaigns, and yet he won pretty overwhelmingly. You can look at that two ways. One, which is he won because he was more focused on more traditional means of communications and less focused on retweets and going viral, which I think there is some truth to that. Or he won in spite of that digital disadvantage. What's your take? I just think that I think the first of all, I think the things that might have worked do to engage really, you know, really engage

voters during the primary may not be the same things that you need to get your message out during a pandemic in which you can't hold rallies or do any of the traditional things you would be doing in a general election across 50 states. And so, you know, that's that's one big part of it. I do think some of the things that Biden has prioritized actually make a lot of sense in for doing on digital and doing as the campaign ramps up, for example, focusing on talking to local papers and talking to local news outlets. We know that people trust their local news outlets a lot. And that was

something that in the digital shop in the White House, we really would push for because you'd get great clips from that conversation and you could do a lot with them online. So it doesn't need to be an either or. And I think that some of the things that actually they've prioritized so far might end up working out for them. Have you read these stories about this debate that's taking place within the Biden campaign about sort of building up their own digital shop for hiring Hawkfish, which for our listeners who do not know is a digital startup that came out of the Bloomberg campaign effort. Do you have any take on what the right thing to do there is or any sense of how Hawkfish works? So, I mean, first of all, I think, so with regards to Hawkfish and the Bloomberg campaign, I actually think the strategy that they had for Bloomberg was pretty good from a digital perspective. If your goal is to win Guam.

It didn't work from an electoral standpoint, but it worked up until the candidate had first contact with the public. It got people talking about a candidate who wasn't on the ballot in the races in which they were running these campaigns, and it was reminding people of his core value, which is that he's going to spend a shit ton on this election, and he's willing to put his money behind it and do all these unconventional things, which maybe is the right kind of electoral argument against Trump. It didn't work because he showed up and got completely dismantled by Elizabeth Warren, which underlies the key point, which is you can't have some genius, make it go viral on the ground digital strategy if it doesn't cohere in any way with who your candidate is and what that candidate is actually going to do out on the debate stage or on the campaign trail or on the stump or on TV interviews or anything. You're just going to have something that got a lot of people talking about it for a couple of days, and then it's going to be completely undermined. So I think that's my concern with the idea of looking at a third-party

digital consultancy as being the magic bullet one-stop shop for digital strategy, because the temptation will be that they come up with some really creative, interesting stuff, but it has absolutely no coherence with who Joe Biden is, the values that he's trying to express to the American people, or the type of campaign that he's going to run. So for that reason, I worry about the complete outsourcing of digital strategy. And I think instead, it needs to be more, you know, within, connected to their core mission. You know, there was this interesting quote in that story, one of the hawkfish stories, where an unnamed advisor to the Biden campaign said,

our current digital team packs a hell of a punch and we're looking forward to expanding for the general election. So I think that's interesting. First of all, I don't know why that quote had to be off the record. Second of all, I mean, you know, it seems like a fine quote. But second, the core of the quote is that we punch well. And that kind of pugilistic language makes sense coming from the Joe Biden campaign. That sort of reflects something that you think about when you think about Joe Biden. And it reveals the fact that the unnamed communications person who gave that quote understands that their communication to the press, even if unnamed, needs to cohere to who their candidate is. And you need to see that on the

digital side as well. And that's what I worry about if they just completely turn it over. I don't know who that quote was, so I'm not suggesting it's this person, but Rob Flaherty, who is their digital director, is very talented, very strategic guy. And so I do agree that they have punched above their weight, even if it doesn't seem that way from sort of the way we think about it. You know, we talk about platform advantage in the sense that Trump has more Facebook fans or more Instagram followers or Twitter followers, whatever else. But Trump also has what I try to describe sometimes as an algorithmic advantage, which is his message of outrage and fear is the one that is favored by the way the algorithms work, particularly on Facebook. And Biden cannot, would not, and should not run a campaign that is outrage-based. Like, that's not who he is.

It wouldn't necessarily work with his voters. How do you think, and this is, I mean, this is the question that you were tackling in the White House for Obama, which is how can a candidate who's trying to run on decency or hope or good policy ideas, how can they get traction online in a culture that is sort of dominated by trolls and outrage? I think this is a really important point because I don't think we should undersell the fact that the current algorithms and the current systems are set up to value outrage and reward outrage. And there's all these really weird feedback loops that are getting exposed even now during the pandemic that make it really bad.

As a concrete example, Willow Remus had an interesting post on OneZero, a medium about what happened with the fire Fauci and what's been going on with some of these protest campaigns where what's happening is people on the side of, you know, collective action and let's not open the country without a plan are reacting negatively when they see these images of people saying fire Fauci or, you know, including the president and protesting in front of state capitals and are amplifying those hashtags.

And so they end up trending more. You know, Rene Duresta in the article described it as kind of an autoimmune disease that's happening where there's this perverse amplification of the thing that you don't want to have happen. So even people who are against the thing that they're outraged by are fueling it and ending up affecting trending topics. And the platform should be thinking about how to fix that in a more concrete way than they have. However, that being said, we know that outrage isn't the only thing that works online. I mean, first of all, as you mentioned, you know, Barack Obama did not do outrage online. Barack Obama was elected twice and governed under a completely different emotional spectrum of hope and engagement and highlighting what was common among the American people. And

that's what his digital strategy reflected in and I think was successful. However, it isn't even true just within the realm of politics. You see folks like Steph Curry or Lin-Manuel Miranda who understand, or Jose Andres, who understand how to use their platform to reach people on an emotional level that is positive and that spurs them into action. All three of those are people who have used their platform to register people to vote or get people to donate meals. And I think that's the other side of the coin that actually does work. And Joe Biden's really well positioned for this moment where we're in need of someone showing us that there's a way for empathy and common understanding

to lead us out of the worst crisis of our lives. Did you see the video that he taped with Jill Biden and his granddaughter? Just yeah, doing this? Yeah. Like, I assume you think that's an example of the kind of thing that could work for him? Yeah. And I think the reason that works is because in this moment, people are looking for things that feel vulnerable. People are looking for things that feel intimate. And they're that's why, you know, people are hanging out on Zoom chats and hanging out in Instagram lives all night, because it gives you this feeling of something that's that's raw, that's intimate, that's in your bedroom. And, you know, that's that you can see and feel not as alone in a time that's very scary. And Donald Trump does not have that gear at all. It's exclusively, it's a lane that's

exclusively available to Joe Biden, even if he weren't the type of candidate and type of person that he is. And the fact that he is, in fact, very good at those type of things, I think will is something that he should lean into. The guidance I would give the campaign is just you have to do more of them. You just have to do more stuff. With digital, a lot of it is you just need more swings at the bat. You only get one chance to, you know, kind of interview with the editorial board of the New York Times, like they have a process for that. But you can do lots of different things online. And some of them are going to be duds. And sometimes the computers don't work. And you're trapped in a room with President Obama.

And he's wondering why he hired this guy is, you know, whose computer has crashed, that could happen to a theoretical person. But you you know, you just keep trying. You just keep trying things until you find stuff that works for the combination of what your message is and who your candidate is. The context of the conversation is we've been having is about how politics is conducted on the level, right? How does Trump get his message out? How does Biden get his message out?

But one of the elements that was so critical in 2016 was specific efforts at disinformation, right? Whether they're state-based from Russia, whether they are being fueled by domestic troll farms, international troll farms. What is your sense of how the Democratic Party, and let me, I'll give an example of this for folks who have flushed 2016 down their memory hole. You know, you look at articles with serious amounts of engagement on Facebook. Many of them from 2016 contained totally false pieces of propaganda. Hillary Clinton was endorsed by ISIS, FBI agent who worked on the, an email investigation found dead in apartment, Pope endorses Trump, which people believed, which seems crazy.

But that's going to come back now. It's going to be more sophisticated. I know Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps, but Democrats obviously have to have a plan to deal with disinformation. You referenced this article in Medium, which I think gets at this. But what's your take on where Democrats are on the battle against disinformation? And what do you think we need to be doing? I think, I think it's going to be, uh, as big a problem, if not worse. I really don't, I don't think that disinformation is going to be solved for this election cycle. And, and in some ways we just still don't have the right amount of tools, uh, to call

it out, particularly homegrown domestic. We do it to ourselves disinformation. I worry much more about that than the foreign kind of state actor variety. Because as the example with the FireFauji hashtag or the Liberate protest show, we're really doing it to ourselves. And one of the reasons we are is because the other side has this tremendous propaganda amplification machine in right-wing media. And I want to get back to the digital side of things, but I think it's worth emphasizing how big a part of the overall disinformation problem is really because of right-wing media. Yochai Bankler and other authors wrote this book called Network Propaganda,

and it came out in 2018. I think it's still as relevant now as it was then, in which they kind of do this multifactor analysis of all the things that happened in the 2016 cycle with regards to disinformation. What really was what were the biggest levers? And they find consistently that it's conservative media. And the reason for that is that, you know, the voters who are loyal to Trump are less likely, you know, less likely to be online. These stories existed online, but then got supercharged by right-wing media. And that's what allowed other electeds and other politicians to pick them up. And we don't really have any, as you know, and I've talked about, we don't really have the antibodies to that system yet. And we're seeing it just play out in a supercharged way during the

pandemic. So that's, I think, of real concern. On the digital side, I think that some of the platforms have taken more steps than they have previously, particularly with regards to political ads. And I think with the pandemic, you're seeing things change faster. For example, just this morning, like three hours ago, Google announced that they're going to start doing, you're going to be able to see transparency for who placed any ad on Google, not just political ads, which I think is a move in the right direction. And the types of things that all the platforms have done with various levels of success or seriousness to take down disinformation about the pandemic are also noteworthy because they violate the central tenet that the platforms have tried to hew to, which is that we do not have an editorial

role in this. With the pandemic, we found something that was so important that that excuse just wouldn't fly. And they would have to say, well, okay, we obviously have to do this because people are going to drink, you know, aquarium bleach, and we got to we got to try to, we got to try to protect people. And so I think we're going to see that the slope isn't that slippery, and that platforms can actually do more than heretofore they've been willing to do. Jason, last question for you. You know, there's obviously a very real possibility that if this is going to be the zoom election where just the typical means by which we campaign, rallies, door knocking, in-person communication with other human beings is not going to be on the table for Biden, Trump, or anyone involved in this election. Are you seeing or hearing anything

in digital world that are interesting tools or strategies for how we could successfully politic in that environment? Yeah, I mean, I think people are trying stuff, you know, I mean, unsurprisingly, folks like AOC are good in this environment and are doing stuff on Instagram, like answering questions from folks while doing stuff at home. I mean, it's really the same kind of stuff that she was doing before, but it just really works now where, you know, she's cooking in her kitchen. We're all cooking in our kitchen. She's answering questions like I have questions I need answered about what's going on. It's perfect for the moment. I don't know what the early results are in terms of I'd be interested in seeing some data in some of these telephone town halls.

I could see them being very successful, particularly with a demographic that's maybe less online and that's less interested in hanging out and watching an Instagram live. And so I'd be interested to know what the sort of reach is on those. But the one thing that we're definitely seeing is that people are spending a lot of time online. Like, you know, there's 500,000 people logging in, trying to get in, not able to get in to see, you know, a baby face battle on Instagram live. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, like, you know, you can't get in. It's so hot. You can't get in. There's a, you know, so I think I think, you know, the point is not that, you know, Joe Biden should go book a battle with baby face, but more that, you know, that there is a pent up demand for people to have communal experiences that connect

with other people to feel a sense of engagement or, you know, through while being at home, but using the tools that we already have. I don't think we need a special magic tool that doesn't exist. I just think folks need to try more things and do them more often. And don't be afraid if the first one doesn't work. Jason Goldman, thank you so much. Thanks for being here on Positive America and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much.

Thanks to Jason for joining us today. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Bye everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket 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.