Pod Save America - “Trump’s secret Chinese bank account.”

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Trump whines about the rules, moderator, and topics in advance of the final presidential debate. Democrats inch closer to a Senate majority. Dan and Jon discuss what you can do about tightening polls, and answer some of your questions. Then disinformation expert Jiore Craig talks to Dan about how to handle right-wing smears in the final weeks of this election.

with covid is there anything that you think you could have done differently if you had a mulligan or a do-over on one aspect of of the way you handle it what would it be not much welcome to pod save america i'm john favreau i'm dan pfeiffer on today's pod dan talks with disinformation expert Jory Craig about how you can handle all the bullshit that Trump and the Republicans will throw at us in the final two weeks of the election. Before that, we'll talk about the strategy heading into the final presidential debate, the fight for the Senate, and what's keeping the two of us up at night besides everything.

It's all keeping us up at night. Speaking of the debate, come watch with us on our Crooked Media group thread at crooked.com slash debate. The fun starts at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific on Thursday night, October 22nd. Last group thread. Also,

check out the latest Pod Save the World where Tommy and Ben break down what we know about the connection between foreign disinformation and the New York Post reporting about Hunter Biden, Russia's proposal to extend the New START treaty, Sudan getting taken off the state-sponsored terrorism list, and their conversation with a journalist who's been

covering the political unrest in Belarus. Finally, at Vote Save America, we've made it super easy to find remote and in-person volunteer opportunities with our new volunteer hub. You can find it at votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer. You can find everything you need from your usual phone and text banks to roles delivering yard signs or staffing voter protection hotlines. We got it all. So go to votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer to find all your options to get involved between now and election day. Do not wake up the day after election day

and wish you did more. Do it all in these last two weeks. Less than two weeks now. All right, let's get to the news. The second and final presidential debate, thank God, will take place tomorrow night in Nashville. NBC's Kristen Welker, the moderator,

has chosen the following topics. Fighting COVID-19, American families, race inker, the moderator, has chosen the following topics. Fighting COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security, and leadership. After President Trump spent the last debate yelling like a maniac for 90 minutes, the debate commission has decided to mute the microphone of the candidate who isn't speaking for the first two minutes at the beginning of each new segment. The rest of the time, they can do whatever they want. Both campaigns agreed to the new rules, though Donald Trump and his campaign have spent the entire week whining

about the debate commission, the moderator, the rules, and the topics. They wanted this debate to be focused exclusively on foreign policy. So, Dan, both campaigns agreed long ago that each moderator would be free to pick the topics. What do you think of the topics that Kristen Welker selected? And why did the Trump campaign want a foreign policy debate so badly? Well, I mean, in fairness to Trump, he's a world, though. There's a lot of really world, though. There's a lot of really detailed foreign policy issues from around the world.

Some things that like you and I are talking about, but Tommy and Ben are constantly texting about that Trump would like an opportunity to speak about. And these topics focusing on the I don't know, the pandemic, the racial reckoning, the melting of the planet don't allow him the opportunity to talk about, I don't know, the Abraham Accords or whatever they're called as much as he would please. He knows all about the unrest in Belarus. Yes. Keeps him up at night. Yeah. These are the kind of topics that he wants to cover.

No, it's about fucking Ukraine and China and Hunter Biden. That's why he wanted a foreign policy debate. And he does not want to talk about his failure to control the pandemic. He doesn't want to talk about the fact that he doesn't believe in climate change as the planet is on fire. that he doesn't believe in climate change as the planet is on fire. He doesn't want to talk about race because the last time he did that, he endorsed white supremacy and told the Proud Boys to stand by or stand up or whatever. So these are not, the problem for Trump is both in this conversation about the debate in the entire election is that the issues that are most relevant to voters right now are the ones he feels least comfortable talking about. And that, you know, he could

possibly could have hidden it a very like intricate, in-depth, esoteric foreign policy debate. But that's not what he's going to get. Well, he's also he is a right wing nationalist demagogue. And for right wing nationals, demagogues, foreign policy is a great subject area to demagogue other countries. Right. Like Donald Trump would love nothing more than to get up there for 90 minutes and say, the rest of the world hates me because I stood up to all the countries that are taking advantage of us. Joe Biden is a globalist, right? He doesn't care about the US. He cares about the rest of the world. Just look at his son and Ukraine and China. And oh, by the way, he voted for the war in Iraq. And I've always been, I've been against everything in foreign

policy that the American people don't like and for everything that you do like. I mean, it's like the perfect opportunity for Trump to act like a demagogue on foreign policy. And clearly the campaign knows this. And so they complain because they want to protect the president from getting questions about COVID-19, which is just so funny. He needs a safe space. You know, he's a snowflake who needs a safe space. It does sort of speak to how difficult a political position he's in, which is Trump doesn't know shit about foreign policy. Like he could need to save space. It does sort of speak to how difficult a political position he's in, which is Trump doesn't know shit about foreign policy. Like he could, right. He knows less about foreign policy than any other topic,

but he would rather talk about that because it feels more disconnected from his bigger political problems. Right. Like in a normal world, this like Joe Biden knows a ton about foreign policy. He, that was a huge part of his job as vice president. He was chair of the foreign affairs committee. He knows a ton about foreign policy. That was a huge part of his job as vice president. He was chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He knows a lot about it. Trump knows almost nothing. And that would, in a normal world, feel very threatening to the yahoo who doesn't know very much.

But because he's so vulnerable on the other stuff, that is a safer place to be. It really is a frying pan, fire sort of situation. Except, after all this, it may not be a safer place for him. And, you know, one of the topics is national security. And so surely, you know, Trump's plan, the Trump campaign's plan, they've telegraphed this, the MAGA media is all over this. They want to talk about China. Right. And so they want to the story on China is that apparently Hunter Biden had business dealings in China. Right. They want to somehow connect it to Joe Biden, even though we know that Joe Biden has never made any money off China or had any business dealings with China because Joe Biden has released all of his tax returns. Right. But anyway, so they want to draw connections anyway, muddy up the waters.

The problem is New York Times last night comes out with the story. Guess who has a secret bank account in China? Donald Trump. The guy has made he is president United States as president. He has maintained a secret Chinese bank account and he has paid more in taxes to China to the Chinese communist government than he has to the United States government. That is where Donald Trump is right now compared to Joe Biden's son who had some business dealings in China.

Oh, and by the way, his daughter, his entire family are making money off China and have continued to make money off China while they're in the White House. Yeah. I mean, the Chinese bank account thing is a big deal, right? I mean, obviously he is, it's a secret Chinese bank account of which he withdrew an unusually large sum of money in 2017 after becoming president.

I was going to say, 2017, right? That's a president of the United States, not a private citizen. He was president of the United States, withdrawing huge sums of money from his secret Chinese bank account. Just want to make sure we're clear on that. But we don't even need the secret Chinese bank account because the Chinese government has been handing out business favors to Ivanka Trump like they are Oprah at the holidays for four years now. Every time they want something, like trademark to you, trademark to you.

And so he's more vulnerable in this because of this most recent story. We obviously have recency bias and secrecy, because it's a secret bank account that we discovered is more politically impactful in the media than the public information we've known for many years about how China has gained favor with the Trump family in violation of a whole bunch of laws and codes of ethics. But yeah, this is not a super safe space. You are correct. So Trump has called Kristen Welker a terrible, unfair, radical Democrat who's been, quote, screaming questions at me for a long time. This is literally just a few weeks after Trump adviser Jason Miller told Fox News that he has a, quote, very high opinion of Wilker and thought, quote, she's going to do an excellent job as the moderator. What changed, Dan? Why is Trump attacking the moderator now after his campaign thought that she would be a great moderator? Well, it is much of what Trump says and does,

particularly in this election, is reverse engineering reasons for failure. Like he knows he's probably going to do poorly. And so he's got to start out in the beginning by saying it's everyone's against me, right? It's not my fault. I'm a fucking moron. It's everyone else's fault. And this is about mail balloting it's about problems with the pandemic it is this it's all part of the same strategy which is he just wants to explain why he's about to do poorly so he can feel better about himself and his supporters can feel better about supporting him i also think it's about working the refs right because now like you know he has spent and the campaign has spent and the MAGA media has spent the last two weeks saying Kristen Welker is going to be unfair.

Those fucking assholes at the New York Post who shouldn't even call themselves journalists. One of them was, you know, tweeting a picture of the fact that Kristen Welker, like, got a picture with President Obama at the White House holiday party, which, like, so did Rupert Murdoch and so did a bunch of other right wing journalists, which I can't believe, by the way, Barack Obama took a picture with Rupert Murdoch. I saw that. I was like, what? Why did he even do that? But anyway, that's what happens. But anyway, so the right wing media is like pushing this storyline about her. And I think their hope is that it gets in her head. So she feels like, you know, maybe she'll still be tough on Trump, but she has to be tough on Joe Biden, too. Now, I don't know if that will work. I think Kristen Welker is an outstanding journalist and she'll be a great moderator. But that's they're trying to work the refs and sometimes working the refs works with journalists because it gets in their head.

Yeah, I think like I said, I have no idea how Kristen personally will respond to that. I am skeptical that they're going to be able to convince other journalists and sort of political commentators more broadly that somehow Kristen Welker is a radical Democrat who's biased against Trump. He has played that card one million times too many. How it affects her, only sort of she knows the answer to that. But in terms of framing the coverage, I don't think he's successfully framing the coverage of a poor performance this way. I don't think that is going to work this time. What do you think about the new rules about muting the mics? Will that change anything?

Like everything else the debate commission did, it's fucking stupid. It's just like... I appreciate your personal jihad against the... I appreciate it. As you've known me for many years, I tend to become obsessed, disproportionately angry at very strange things. And the debate

commission is one that just makes me so mad because they could have killed Joe Biden for being so stupid, right? Yeah, they were very stupid. Donald Trump, you've never lied. Just put your hand up. Scout's oath. Did you get a test? Don't no need to prove it. Don't prove it. Just just say you did it right. What are you going to do in 2024 when paul ryan is named to the debate commission probably fucking will be so no he'll be all your worlds combined he'll be running for senate against tammy baldwin in wisconsin and i will be in wisconsin living on ben wickler's couch doing everything my fucking power to defeat him that's what i'll be doing uh sorry anyway back to the rules the rules are dumb right it's? It's the worst

of all worlds, which is, as you point out, there are six 15-minute sections in this debate that is most certainly 30 minutes too long. At the beginning of each 15-minute section, each candidate has two minutes to talk about. I guess it's sort of an opening statement or a general framing of the issue. The mute button only works in those first two-minute segments. So for 11 of the 15 minutes, so for more than two-thirds of this 90-minute debate, you can just do what you did before. So I don't fully understand what the point of that was. Why are they more likely to interrupt in the two minutes than in the short version? It's either do it or don't do it. Now you've given Trump a reason to complain, but you haven't actually

empowered the moderator to have any real power to do anything to control him for the vast majority of the debate. And also, we said this after the first debate, Trump can still interrupt all he wants during that two minutes. He's just his mic will be off so he can still he can still be yapping over there and getting Biden's head. Biden will hear him. Yeah, the moderate Chris and Welker will hear him. We won't hear, you know, it will be muted because the mic's off, but Trump could still

interrupt a lot. You know, the other thing it does is the Trump campaign has been telling everyone who'll listen that they're advising the president to interrupt Biden less and to, quote,

be more likable. And Trump himself has laid out this strategy Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends. Here's a clip. Ari Fleischer, last night on Handy said the president should interrupt less. Will you change your strategy in this last debate from your first debate? Well, I may do that. Actually, the interesting thing, they said if you let him talk, he'll lose his chain of thought because he's gonzo.

And I understand that. he'll lose his chain of thought because he's gonzo. And I understand that. But I also understand that as he's going down the line and issuing lies, you know, generally it's okay to, you know, really attack that. But there is a chain of thought that, you know, there are a lot of people that say let him talk because he loses his train. He loses his train.

He loses his mind, frankly. Yeah, no, I mean, that guy certainly sounds pretty sharp. Loses his chain of thought because he loses, there's a chain of thought that says he loses his chain, his train. He's not all mentally there. Nailed it. Nailed it, Donald Trump. I laughed so hard when you sent that clip around last night. I had to. There was no real reason for a clip there, but I just saw it yesterday morning and I was just like, what the fuck?

I mean, he calls it a chain of thought first, which is just so funny. But then he sort of knows that's where he's trained. He loses his quote unquote chain of thought three times in a clip about Biden losing his train of thought in an answer. And that clip is shorter than the answers in the debate. So I think it's possible he might be vulnerable to exactly what he thinks Biden is vulnerable to. Now, we're laughing, but this is sort of the source of my fear heading into this debate, that somehow if Donald Trump can just take it down a few notches, which, you know, I mean, like if Donald Trump can give two minute answers, allow Joe Biden to give two minute answers, be somewhat more coherent, you know, he'll still, of course, attack Joe Biden on,

you know, he'll do the Hunter hit, he'll do everything else, he'll call him corrupt. But if he can do it just a touch less crazy than he did in the first debate, that the media has set such a low bar for Donald Trump to clear that when he clears it, if he does that and he even like, you know, draws blood on Biden by like battling him to a draw, you know, if he says you're corrupt on China and Biden says you're corrupt on China, too, you know, you could see a debate where people say, well, Trump was a little more likable. He was he was toned down a little bit more. Maybe maybe this is the night he became president. And then, you know, they score it as a big win. That's that's sort of my, you know, worry about everything fear. But I don't know. What do you

think? I think it is easy to imagine a world in which Trump is slightly less of an obvious asshole than he was last time. And the press points that out. And maybe, and this is sort of what the Trump campaign has said, is that they want a performance that gives permission to some people who are on the fence to come back to Trump, you know, people who supported him previously, who maybe even were supporting him just a few months ago, pre-pandemic to come back. And maybe that is possible. I am skeptical, and I have been wrong before, but I am skeptical that Trump's going to be able to put together some sort of performance that would be seen as a big win, right? It's just he's never put together a coherent, non-asshole-y seven minutes in his life, let

alone 90 minutes. And so I just, I didn't like, yes, Biden could make a mistake and that mistake could become the focus of attention that would drive coverage. And really, when you think and we talk about this in the context of what we're worried about. But the last two weeks or so of a campaign is basically like an incredibly high stakes advent calendar where you like wake up every morning and you open it up and it's like either going to be good for you or bad for you. And you want as many of those days to be good for you at the end. And so, yeah, if Biden makes a mistake or Trump gets slightly better coverage, that is to his advantage. I just don't know that there's a game changer performance from like in the cards for Trump. Yeah. I mean, Axios reported that the Trump campaign is looking to the 2016 third debate for inspiration.

Do you remember anything that happened in the third debate in 2016? Oh, I mean, this is how bad my recollection of 2016 debates is. Before the first debate, a reporter called me and was like, you know, I'm doing a preview piece for the first debate in 2020. called me and was like, you know, I'm doing a preview piece for the first debate in 2020. Chris Wallace was a moderator in 16, and he received really high marks, except from you, who was really critical of him. And I was like, no recollection of being critical of Chris Wallace. Also, no recollection that Chris Wallace moderated debate in 2016. And I think the one he moderated was that third debate. I went back and looked at it this morning, and it doesn't seem like Trump did any better than any other debates.

And Hillary Clinton won the post-debate polls by double digits in all of them. And so I think she won by a little less than she did the first two. I remember I remember being at the ringer sitting next to Tim Miller did our debate show with us. I remember thinking that like, oh, it's the third debate. She like crushed it again. What a joke. And he's like, I think she didn't do quite as well as the first two. And I think Trump did a little bit better.

He's like, but that's just my gut. And then, you know, then she lost. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think the polls did show that she won that debate. Yeah. I don't think the reason she lost was because of that debate. Right.

It's everything that happened between that debate and election day. So basically between tomorrow night and election day is when the whole thing fell apart and changed. So just something to think about. Yeah. The difference now is, of course, I think as of this morning, 30% of people have voted at this point. So how should Biden respond to all this? Like, do you think he's prepping for a Trump who interrupts less and one who interrupts just as much? What's Biden's strategy here at this debate? I imagine they are prepping primarily for the interrupt less version because they've already done the prep for the first version. And I think he knows and they know the key thing there is just don't lose your cool, right? That was the goal. And I think he did it

other than calling the president a clown, which I think was the understatement of the century in that first debate. He held held his cool under an incredible amount of fire from Trump. And if that's a Trump we see, he's got to do the same thing. You know, this time he's going to probably need if Trump is going to be better behaved than he's going to need to have in his pocket and then execute. Well, a few more moments. Right. Where he has like a set piece to draw out the contrast or hit Trump for COVID or something like that. If Trump's going to take less of the attention, Biden's going to have to do more with the time he has. And I think he had

to do in that first debate. Yeah, I mean, I've always been a huge proponent of Biden just spending the time telling people what he's for and what he'll do and what he stands for. And I still think that's incredibly important. But I do think Biden needs the story coming out of the debate to be about Trump again and not about Biden, what people focus on. And so he needs to keep Trump off balance. He needs to sort of needle Trump so that he snaps, but in a way that doesn't look like Biden is hitting him too hard. I mean, I would take if I was Joe Biden, I would just practice be practicing three moments, right? Like his message about Trump is that Trump is an asshole. Trump has fucked up COVID. And Trump is for rich people and not the middle class, right? I would practice three moments, drawing out those three contrasts, something about him being an asshole, something

about COVID, something about the economic contrast, and just practice those and make sure that I deliver those. And then beyond that, just like make sure that I'm talking to folks at home and telling them what I'm going to do as president. That would be what I, and then also, of course, be prepared for, you know, all of Trump's crazy attacks, Hunter, China, Ukraine, all that bullshit. I mean, it's so funny because this is such like a giant macro event that's going to be seen by 70 million people or something like that. But as you point out, 30% of people who are going to vote have already voted. The overwhelming people who have not voted have already decided who they're going to vote for. And there's a small sliver. It's a big enough sliver to alter the election

in these close battleground states. But of people who were deciding between Biden and Trump, people were deciding between voting and not voting. And so how you think about how you reach those people sort of, I think, fits in three buckets. There are the people who are watching it in real time, which I think is a pretty small sliver of the 70 million people watching, right? Because if you are undecided, you're probably like you are historically less engaged in politics on a day-to-day basis and therefore probably not watching this debate live there. So that's part one is people watch it live. Part two is people who will read the coverage of it. And that's where

you're exactly right. Biden definitely wants more coverage that just talks about how bad Trump is, like that will help him as opposed to something because there's not going to be a bunch of stories. It's like Biden gave a great answer on the economy. That's just not how it's covered. It's winners, losers, gladiator, right? And the third is, what are the moments that happen in that debate that then the Biden campaign and other Democrat Democratic actors will take out and then pay to put in front of people through promotions on social media, digital advertising, etc. And that's where I do think that's where Biden has to find this balance of a couple of moments where he outlines his climate plan, he outlines his economic plan, he talks about his COVID plan in like a one, two, three, four, five

point plan. Because we know from all the research we've seen that the best way to get the less enthusiastic Biden voters, the folks who are still undecided, is going to be teaching them more about Biden and less about Trump. And I think the mic muting thing is a gift to Biden for those first two minutes in each of the segments. And I would use not the full two minutes if I was Biden, right? Because the Trump campaign is hoping that, you know, Biden will lose his train of thought or fumble or go on too long or whatever else. I would practice one minute answers, one minute and 20 second answers on each of those topics and give my rest of my time back to the moderator, right?

Like, here's what I'm going to do about COVID. Boom, boom, boom. Here's what I'm going to do about the economy. Boom, boom, boom. Like, I would not do a lot of rhetoric on that. I would sort of like, now that you know, you get two minutes to yourself and you know what the six topics are you just practice the answers right you just say what you mean that's that's what that's what usually what happens in debate prep that's usually what we did with obama all right speaking of things to about, let's take a ride on the polar coaster.

On Tuesday, Nate Cohn of The New York Times wrote that President Trump, quote, had his best day of polling since the first presidential debate in late September. There were a few high quality polls that showed relatively better results for Trump. A Washington Post ABC poll that showed Biden a point or two up in North Carolina. A University of North Florida poll that showed Biden up only a point in Florida. There's this Investors Business Daily national tracking poll that has Biden with only a three point lead. I think today is a two point lead. Of course, overall, 538 has the average right now still around 10.

Do you think the race has tightened? Why or why not? I don't know. And it's like choose your own adventure, right? Like you can look at some polls from Iowa that show Biden doing very well, which makes you think this thing is really good. You can look at other polls. We don't know. And it probably doesn't really matter. Right. And I mean that just as like, what are we like, what would you do with that information? What can we do? Right. Like you were going, we like, we are going to encourage people to do the same thing, whether Biden's lead is expanding or shrinking. Right. Like, what can you do? You can call voters, you can text voters, you can volunteer, you can go to the volunteer hub you guys just put out today. Like, that's what you're going to do. And knowing what the polling average is or whether it's up a point or down a point, that's really about managing your own anxiety. But what I think we tell people is the best way to manage your anxiety is not to find a poll that makes you feel better about yourself.

It's to do some things that give you agency over the outcome. That is true. I will say it is not unusual in the final weeks of a race for some partisans to come back home, as they call it, which is so like some Republicans who were wavering on Trump, who were undecided, who didn't like Trump, but maybe think he did a good job in the economy. Maybe they're coming home a little bit.

So you might see some tightening, like even in the 538 model and some of the other models, like they expect, you know, their projection is a Biden seven or eight point win. And, you know, right now the polling average there is a 10. So maybe it tightens a little bit. But like you said, we don't know. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Like Trump is polling in the national polling average in some of these battleground states at a number that's more than a few points below his 2016 vote number. And you just have to assume he's going to get back to that number. Now, the problem for him is in a race with very, very little third party vote share,

that's not enough to win. Just in some cases, it's pretty clear that the bulk of the undecided universe, as small as it is, are people who are more likely to be Trump voters than Biden voters. And so some of those people will come home to him before this is all over. It's just like, that's not really the concern. The question is, is there a broader shift or something else that could change the outcome of the race. Now, a lot of people are talking about complacency and avoiding complacency. I know you wrote a great message box about this. I have not met any Democrats that are complacent,

and no one should look at the polls and feel like, oh, well, you still got a 10-point national lead. Everything's fine. I do think that when Jen O'Malley Dillon, Biden's campaign manager, said the race is much closer than the public poll suggests, I don't think all of it was just trying to avoid complacency. Right. Like what I'll tell you what worries me is Florida and Pennsylvania. Right. Because Florida is really, really tight and it's been tight for quite a while now. And it's and like the public polling in Florida does not have a great history. We've talked before about how in 2012, like I think Suffolk said they were going to stop polling Florida because Romney had it in the bag.

And then we won in 2018. Gillum was up three and a half points in the final averages and lost. So the public polling isn't great in Florida. It's always very tight. One point on either side for the last however many races. And then if Biden loses Florida, then he's really dependent on making sure that he wins Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And, you know, he's doing fairly well in Wisconsin and Michigan. Pennsylvania, it's getting a little closer.

And the worst part about Pennsylvania is you have to fucking wait a couple days for all the mail-in ballots and there's court cases and there's kind of things and so like you quickly get into a scenario where if you could see an election night where trump narrowly wins florida and then now we're waiting a couple days to see what happens in pennsylvania to see if biden wins and then you know trump's declaring victory and we're off to the races so that's what keeps me up at night. That's why you should keep fucking making phone calls. Yeah. I mean,

keep doing all that stuff because that is, it is real that it is, you know, that it could get close. I mean, we're like, this, this conversation makes me hate myself because it's,

we tell people all the time, ignore the national polls. They do not matter. It's not a national election. It even matters even less ever with every passing year that the gap between the popular vote and the electoral college grows or sustains, I guess. What does 538 say it is? Is it 10 points or it's seven? Who gives a fuck, right? What is true is that the races in the battleground states are close. The races in the battleground states are close.

Biden has had a sustained, steady lead, but it is close. And you were just a few point shift or a polling error away from it being very, very close. And you play around with the electoral college calculator for a little bit. You quickly see how it can get scary. That doesn't mean, I'm not saying that to panic anyone to freak anyone out. It's just like like Jen is right. Like this. Like maybe it breaks our way at the end. And, you know, it looks more like 08 or 12. Maybe it doesn't. We do not know what happens over the next two weeks. Both what Biden does and what we all do will help determine which outcome we get. we can't do anything about what polls come out when and what they say. But Trump is certainly trying to do everything he can to tighten up the race, including abusing his office. He's openly demanding that his attorney general investigate his political opponent after already being impeached once for demanding that a foreign government investigate his

political opponent. He's got House Republicans demanding a special counsel to investigate the Bidens. He's got his intelligence director denying the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into whether the Hunter Biden story is part of a Russian operation, even though the FBI publicly refused to agree with them. Like how much of this stuff, the Trump investigate your opponent, Bill Barr, all that kind of stuff, how much of that worries you in the final homestretch? You know, I think as we say, we worry about everything, but we don't worry about everything equally. And when I, I am not, I'm not very worried for the context of the election about all of a sudden Bill Barr announcing an investigation of Hunter Biden or Joe Biden, right? This is, we all like our natural instinct is based on Comey PTSD to think like, this is the thing that shifts the

election because in the world of absolutely devastating butterfly effects, the Comey letter is probably why Trump is president. And everything that has happened since is Jim Comey's fault, to be completely clear. But 2020 is not 2016. Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. And this seems like a crazy thing to say, but Bill Barr is not Jim Comey. Like now, Jim Comey has generated some animosity for many people on both sides of the aisle. But in the moment when he did that, Jim Comey was someone with a towering bipartisan

reputation for the absolute highest standards of integrity, right? He is the person who famously, while working for a Republican president, stood up against that Republican president at John Ashcroft's sickbed to prevent that president from putting in place what he believed to be an illegal wiretapping program, you know, pointed to the FBI by President Obama. Like Bill Barr is not that, right? Bill Barr is someone who has a completely damaged historical reputation. And it's just hard to imagine. I just do not believe that if Donald Trump goes on Fox & Friends and orders Bill Barr to investigate Hunter Biden for reasons that Donald Trump cannot articulate, and then a few days later, Bill Barr were to do that, that that would have a lot of sway with either

the press or voters. I think that actually that would be much more damaging for Trump than it would ever possibly be to Biden. There's a little bit of fool me once with all of this, too. Like it's clear that Trump is trying to, you know, recycle the hits from from 2016. And it's sort of obvious, right? Like, oh, look, it's another email scandal about my opponent. Oh, look, I want I want another investigation of my opponent who did something corrupt. Like, what a coincidence, right? In the final weeks of an election, Donald Trump wants to investigate his opponent for corruption because he's losing. Like, oh, wow, I haven't seen that one before. Like, it's a little bit obvious what he's doing right

now. And I do think, like, look, what I worry about is sort of low information voters, people who aren't engaged in the news, who don't like Donald Trump, but aren't sure if they're going to vote yet. Just starting to hear, you know, through their own social networks on Facebook, wherever else, like, is there something about Joe Biden being corrupt, too? Maybe both of them are bad. Maybe I won't vote at all. Maybe I'll vote for Joe Jorgensen. Right. Like, I do have a little concern about that.

And I do think, again, back to your point of like, what can we do about it? And I know that you talked about this with with Jory in the interview, but like I do wonder how volunteers on the phones and the Biden campaign should sort of handle these last minute tactics by Trump around the whole, you know, my opponent is corrupt and should be investigated storyline? I think the biggest thing there is we have to attribute motive to what Trump is doing. Right. You know, it explained why he's doing things right. He is he is making these false attacks because he is losing. Right. Like you like that is a thing that we you know, Jory talks about this in the interview that we previously recorded, you'll hear at the end of this podcast, that that's one of the most important things you can do in disinformation. It can explain why people are doing things.

These bad actors have agendas. What is that agenda? And you tell that to voters, voters are more likely to then believe it's disinformation if they understand why the person is spreading disinformation. I share your concern that people will, there's just a lot of noise. It, you know, it's a really hard story to uncover. Like you and I are professional newsreaders and it's hard to know like what part, you know, like what part has been officially debunked, what part has been denied by the Biden campaign. It's just like, it's just, this is a very, very challenging news environment. And as we know, just from like

getting basic information about what the latest information on COVID is, it's just very hard to do to get something straight. And it gets even harder when you get into a highly polarized political situation like this story. So, yeah, like that, that is definitely a concern. There are reasons to be less concerned about it this time than in 2016. But, yeah, like it's on the worry list, like everything else. Is there anything else high on your worry list that we can actually do something about versus things that we just have to worry about quietly

while we're up in three o'clock in the morning in the middle of the night? Well, I mean, I think we're doing and we're continuing to encourage people to do the things we need to do to fight back. Like whatever the worry is, the answer is volunteering, right? Well, it's voting first and volunteering. I always try to encourage people to do the things we need to do to fight back. Like whatever the worry is, the answer is volunteering, right? Well, it's voting first and volunteering.

I always try to encourage people. It's not just the volunteering you do when you sign up at the volunteer hub and you're going to do an hour of calling and all of a sudden it's like, also organize your life, right? Who are the people that you know? We all know them, who we love them. We're friends with them. We went to college with them.

We worked with them, went to college with them, we worked with them, they're our cousin, who we think, you know, when push comes to shove, they just might forget to turn in their ballot or not do it. Who are those people and what can we do to make sure that they have a plan to vote, right? You know, it's your friend who will always show up late to everything or might forget to, you know, send in money for your March Madness poll or whatever. It's like, that person, go find those people and go talk to them now. My worry is not, I'm actually not highly worried about anything that Trump is going to say or do in terms of the election. I'm worried about what Trump or say or could do that could make the pandemic worse, could

make the economy for hopefully President Biden worse, just further damage the moral fabric of this country. But my biggest concern about the election is that we have a really shitty electoral system in this country. It is underfunded, is filled with arcane rules. It has a presumption of making voting harder, not easier. Republicans have strained that system through, you know, malicious voter suppression laws, sort of undermining the infrastructure for the purposes of winning elections with a minority of voters. That system works poorly in the best of circumstances. I don't know how closely you've been following the news, but these are not the

best of circumstances. This is an election that's happening in a pandemic. It's going to happen largely vote by mail. It's going to have what we think to be massive turnout. And it's going to strain that system. And that's what I worry about is something where some set of votes aren't counted. Some people don't get a chance to vote. These crazy things with signature matches in various places or envelopes you have to include. I have a friend of mine who texted me after listening to my interview with John Fetterman about, I asked Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, what are you telling people about

voting by mail or voting in person? And the Lieutenant Governor said, trust the Postal Service. Send your ballot in early. But because of Pennsylvania laws, if you requested a mail ballot and you want to vote in person, you have to bring all of the mail ballot with you to do it. If you don't, you're filling out a provisional. And my friend was like, is that true everywhere? Because I would, you know, I got a mail ballot, like as a backup. Right. And I, so I was going to vote it, but that was going to go vote in person. And I was like, go to vote, save America, Yahoo. That's what worries me too. A, a huge percentage of Americans are going to be voting for the first time using a different method of voting. And an enormous percentage of Democrats specifically are going to do that. So

like 70 plus percent of our vote, the Democratic vote could come through the mail. And that's a lot of people that are going to use it for the very first time. So that's what freaks me out. And we can do something about that, like you said, which is to encourage everyone in our life to make sure they have a plan to vote, to know exactly what they need to do to make sure their ballot counts wherever they live, and to fucking get those ballots in. Like everyone, send in your ballot. Fill out your ballot. Send it in today. And like I know that most of the people listening to this probably have already done that. Like you said, pick five people in your life to go say that to to just send your mail ballot in today. Because like I worry about people like waking up on Election Day and some of these states don't count ballots that are delivered after Election Day. Some of these swing states and some do. These are what the court battles are for. But like forget about all that. Just send it in today. Send it in tomorrow. Right. Like do it now.

Forget about all that. Just send it in today. Send it in tomorrow. Right. Like do it now, because I think the earlier you send it in, the earlier everyone else sends their ballots in, the lower the chances are that there's going to be all kinds of shenanigans at the end. I think that's exactly that. That is exactly right. And it is like if and when we win this election, one of the things that has to be an absolute priority is fixing voting in America. And that is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, where we're going to do automatic voter registration, all these other things. But it's also funding our elections and changing the presumption because really, our brain is so broken voting, and really broken by Republicans, that all these signature match laws, these naked envelope thing, all of that is based on this idea that we are so concerned about a tiny fraction of possibly but unlikely fraudulent votes that we're going to throw out a bunch of clearly legitimate votes, right? And that is completely the opposite way of thinking about it. And it's very problematic. And it's the thing that worries me about this

election. Let's talk about the Senate map, where Democrats are currently favored to win a majority. The party, which currently has 47 seats, is trying to protect incumbent senators Gary Peters in Michigan and Doug Jones in Alabama, and then flip Republican seats in Colorado, Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Montana, Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, maybe even Alaska. We only need a net gain of three seats if Biden wins the presidency, which would mean that a vice president, Kamala Harris, can break any 50-50 tie. Currently, polls have Democratic candidates ahead by pretty healthy margins in Arizona and Colorado, a decent margin in Maine, smaller margins in North Carolina and Iowa,

and either tied or slightly behind everywhere else. Dan, which of these races do you feel best about? Colorado. Yeah, it seems like the Republicans sort of stopped spending money in Colorado. They're leaving Cory Gardner out to hang out to dry there. It seems that way. Yes, which is exactly what Cory Gardner deserves and more. But it's the bluest of those states.

It is also one where the concerns that I have about how the election machinery are least relevant because they've been a vote by mail state since 2014. So they're doing this. People in Colorado are voting exactly like they voted two years ago and two years before that, et cetera. But it seems like he's probably contacting lobbying firms on LinkedIn right now trying to figure out what his next move is. Or the debate commission. Or the debate commission, yes. Actually, one of the rules of the debate commission is you have to have not worked in politics for at least three decades. So he has to wait 20 some years. What's the latest with North Carolina? It appears that Cal Cunningham's very boring texts with a woman that wasn't his wife haven't changed his small lead over Tom Tellos, but still a tight race.

I did a fundraiser for Cal earlier this week. North Carolina is my state. I've adopted. I've done a bunch of things for them. And they asked if I would do it on the fundraiser. And it was right after he had raised $38 million, whatever it was. And so I was like, is that like, I'm happy to do something,

but is there like something other than money? And they pointed out to me that it's gonna, North Carolina is gonna be the most expensive Senate race in history. A quarter of a billion dollars is gonna be spent in that race. Quarter of a billion dollars. Yes.

Jesus Christ. It seems like this is gonna be, I think it's gonna be very close. Tillis has mostly been underperforming Trump throughout this process. And I think that's a trend we've seen among some of the other vulnerable Republican senators that we can talk about. But it's going to be very close. Cal has been well positioned since then.

The big issue is the pandemic and health care. And Tillis is sort of the worst of all worlds. This is a story Cal tells on the campaign trail that I think is fascinating is that remember when Trump did the emergency declaration and he was going to take money to pay for the wall? Tillis wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that calling on Trump not to do it. And it was big because it's a big deal. It was to come from the military budget. North Carolina has a bunch of military bases. They were going to suffer mightily.

Trump called Tillis and then Tillis voted for it. So it's like, and you know, Tillis is on the judiciary committee helping in North Carolina state that has not approved Medicaid expansion. Healthcare is a huge issue that has been hit pretty hard by the pandemic. And Tillis is right now helping put someone on the Supreme Court who will kick hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians off their health care and deny millions of North Carolinians pre-existing conditions coverage. So that seems like there is there's a there's a lot to talk about to drive the conversation. You just got to finish it out. Yeah, I guess my question on that race is if Trump ekes it out in North Carolina, it will be because he sort of juiced Republican turnout in a lot of rural areas. And if he gets people out to vote who wouldn't have otherwise come out for Tillis, do they just check, check, check off the box for Tillis along with Trump, even though they didn't really like Tillis that much just because he's a Republican?

us that much just because he's a Republican. Yeah, I mean, that's the question. It's interesting because you also have Rory Cooper running for reelection there and he is polling well above 50 in a strong place. And so it's going to be there's going to be some ticket splitting happening there. So it'll be interesting. And, you know, as of this far, Cal has been doing better with Republican voters than even Biden in cases. So, you know, we'll have to see if that holds to the end. And how about Iowa? It seems that in the last few weeks, Teresa Greenfield has opened up a three to five point lead over Joni Ernst after a debate in which the Republican didn't know the price of soybeans in Iowa, even as Greenfield nailed the price of corn. What do you think about that? I mean, it was an amazing debate moment. And I so I worked a number of campaigns in South Dakota

over the years. And it is the one thing you do before you walk into the debate is you check the price of corn and soybeans and hogs and cattle, and you make sure you're getting it. It's like the most standard, basic blocking and tackling debate prep, because it is for the upper Midwest. It's the equivalent of what's the price of a carton of milk? And people have failed that before. So the fact that Joni Ernst did not know that and seemed flummoxed to even get the question is such a perfectly awesome failure on her part. Iowa is interesting because Donald Trump won Iowa by nine points in 2016. And I don't think many people thought about it as sort of a

competitive state this time around. There was a Monmouth poll out this morning, which is a very high quality poll that showed Biden with a lead in Iowa's very small lead, Greenfield with a lead. I think it's interesting wondering why Iowa may be shifting. Like this is this is a state where COVID has hit really hard recently. And there's a lot of older voters. And the Monmouth Poll shows Biden with a big lead among older voters in Iowa. And I do wonder if in states like Iowa and Wisconsin, where the outbreak is really bad right now, if that is sort of driving some of the shift towards Biden among the electorate, specifically among seniors. Yeah, I think that's very, very possible.

That is one of the things that has tied some of these Midwestern states together is older voters hit hard by the pandemic. And that is Trump's greatest weakness, right? That is, and you see that repeatedly that the greatest concern these older voters have is his failure to handle the pandemic. And so I think that is, you know, a problem for maybe why these states that we thought would be more firmly in his column or not. Questions. So we got a listener question about the Georgia Senate special election. Autumn asks, can someone explain why there are still two Republican candidates discussed in that race? Just so you all know, there are two Senate races in

Georgia. The first is the regularly scheduled race in which Democrat John Ossoff is running tied or slightly behind incumbent Republican David Perdue. The second is a special to fill the remainder of Johnny Isakson's term, who retired early and was replaced by Republican Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by the governor. Loeffler is now facing two strong challenges, one from Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and another from Republican Congressman Doug Collins. If no candidate gets over 50 percent of the vote, the top two go to a runoff that's held sometime this fall or winter after the election. Currently, Warnock is leading both Loeffler and Collins, who are splitting the Republican vote. So what do you think about this race, Dan? Can Warnock get over 50 on Election Day? And if he doesn't, how are his chances in a runoff? The answer is yes. I would have thought the answer was very,

very close to no. A few weeks ago, we've had these conversations, you know, within Crooked Media, as we've talked about, you know, where to focus on Senate races. And there is this sort of sense that maybe like, let's deal with the Georgia runoff after election day. But Warnock has consolidated the vote. He's proved to be stronger. And if there is a very strong performance at the top of the ticket in Georgia, he very well could eke it out.

And if he does that, that would be great. I wouldn't have thought that was possible a few weeks ago, but he has consolidated support from other candidates and he's within striking distance. And what is the, what's the difference between an electorate and a runoff versus now? Do you think that would be harder? Yes, I think it would be harder. It's not

impossible. Because you don't get the turnout that you get in a presidential. Yes. I mean, higher turnout in a state like Georgia is better for Democrats. And you're not going to get anywhere near as high a turnout, of course, in a runoff that happens a few weeks after the most important election in history. Now, you just don't know, like, what is the mood of voters, right? Does Biden win and Republicans are depressed and don't turn out, right? Like, that's also a possibility. We don't really know what it is, but I would say your best chance is to win it right now. It's still, I think it's still a possibility and Georgia's moving in the right direction,

but there's just a lot of unknowns in what the political environment looks like. Other than we know it'll be lower turnout. And that is generally less good for us statewide in Georgia. Okay. Got a couple more listener questions. Jenna asks, hi guys.

The other day you were hyping up Doug Jones. What does Jones's race mean for other races in Alabama? I wouldn't think that Alabama would be in play for Biden and it's never talked about as a swing state. So for Jones to win, are you saying that people will go into the voting booth and vote for Trump and Jones? Are there example of similar situations in other states in the past when this kind of thing has happened? Yes, I'll give you an example would be Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota in 2012. Romney ran away with that state and Heidi Heitkamp won a very close race, as an example.

It does happen. Doug Jones has a very clear appeal to a broad ideological coalition of voters. As we said when we talked about this, it is not easy for a Democrat to win in Alabama at any time, let alone in a presidential year. But if someone can do it, I think Doug Jones has the profile because he is someone who has appealed to independent, moderate and some Republican voters, but also really excites the black community in Alabama. Right. That is a very unique political resume. And a lot of times you get one or the other and he has capacity to do both, which is how he won in 2017 and why he could possibly pull this off again. how he won in 2017 and why he could possibly pull this off again.

My favorite example of this is in Wisconsin in 2018, where Tony Evers, the governor there, sort of like eked out a little over one point win against Scott Walker. Tammy Baldwin, who is a very progressive senator, beat her opponent by double digits in the same year, which means that there are a bunch of people, a bunch of Wisconsinites who pulled the lever for Scott Walker and Tammy Baldwin. Like it happens all the time. And I think if you pay close attention to politics, sometimes you think that voters are either like Democratic partisans, Republican partisans or like independents split right down the middle. And that's just not the case. Like voters are complex. They have different preferences. Sometimes they like a Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate in the same year who are completely on opposite sides of the spectrum. But maybe they like the I mean, like you just voters are very complex. Their motivations are complex. And it's it is bad for all of us to just assume that people are going to be split evenly between as partisans. Right. Like if Joe Biden wins this election, it will be because a bunch of people who voted for Donald Trump decided to change their mind and vote for Joe Biden.

It happens. You know, last question, Amelia asks, I'm a voter in North Carolina and I have a question about general election ads. asks, I'm a voter in North Carolina and I have a question about general election ads. Who makes voting decisions based on ads? If you're not voting on policy alone, i.e. if you do not strictly adhere to a particular party platform, then how do these ads change your mind? All ads are going to portray their candidate in a positive biased way and voters in swing states are going to see ads from both campaigns. So how does one or the other convince an undecided voter? I'm going to ask the star of campaign experts react to answer this question. It's so embarrassed by everything that just said. And then I'm going to tell everyone to smash that subscribe button.

Yes, do smash the subscribe button. I don't think we should think about, particularly in a presidential campaign, one individual ad winning or losing election or one individual ad persuading a voter. Voters are often sort of surfing political news and conversation, right? They're seeing their Facebook feed. They're hearing it from their friends. They're flipping through the channels of the news and they see them and they see things on TV. And it is all a piece that creates an impression of who the candidate is, what they stand for, and what they would do. of who the candidate is, what they stand for, and what they would do.

Presidential elections, when we had Axelrod, David Axelrod, the hack on tap on Campaign Experts React, he made the point that I think is really important, which is, in races, they get very little political coverage and attention. Ads are incredibly consequential. The only thing you may ever know about your congressional candidate is something you saw on a television ad. You may not ever see a news story about them. You've never met them. You don't see an interview with them. Presidential election is, it's sort of icing on the cake. And the cake has to work for the icing to work. And so it matters. And the reason why you end up in these

ever ascending arms races of spending is you don't ever want to see to your opponent the ability to shape that conversation without some sort of response. And so it keeps going and going. Like it's definitely on the margins and it seems strange to spend several billion dollars on something that's going to matter on the margins, but the stakes are so high that you're not going to see that territory. Also, the psychology of advertising can be really subtle, right? There's a reason that companies all over the world have spent billions and billions of dollars on advertising and marketing since the dawn of time, right? Like you could be just like you could be one of these sort of less engaged voters, not sure if you're going to vote, still undecided. And like, you know, there's something in the background

where there's a Joe Biden ad with sort of some nice music and makes you have a good feeling. And you're like, yeah, I sort of do like that, right? Like you don't even admit this to yourself, but like subconsciously advertising can work on you. It has worked on consumers for decades, for centuries. So like you do, you know, and I do think like as we close, just to make, I mean, the ads from the Biden campaign and Democratic groups or progressive groups in general, I think, you know, win or lose this race have been some of the best I've seen in years. Yeah, I think that's definitely right. There's been some really, really, really good at the Biden campaign has done a really great job with it. I think the way to think about advertising that's a like sort of nerd out about it is some advertising is like what you would think of as direct response, right? Like, I'm going to tell you about a product and I want you to go get that product in the next time you leave your home or the next time you pick up your phone, right? That's like often what fast food advertising is, right? Like, man, I would love a pizza right now.

Let me order it. And then there's the juicy burger. Go get it. Yeah. Right. And then there's brand advertising, right? Which make you try to change how you feel about a company or a product. And it's a product that you may buy once every three years, like a car or an iPhone. This is really what Apple does, right? And political advertising, in particular, presidential news is really sort of brand advertising, right? It's shaping your impression along with all the other information you have about that candidate. And, you know, I think, like I said, I think it does not matter as much as people who host YouTube shows probably say it does, but it does matter. And if you don't execute it well, you could be in a really troubling situation. And I do think to your point about the brand, I think the brand that sort of all the Biden ads and the other group ads are shaping is one of calm, competence, unity versus chaos with Donald Trump. That seems to be what all the ads are sort of pointing to, what they're trying to make people feel, this sense of like, we can have a more unified,

calmer country than this shit. And usually the negative ads are about Trump saying crazy stuff and, you know, mishandling the pandemic and the economy and all this other stuff. So it is, you do get a theme from all of the advertising we've seen so far. And it's a theme consistent with Biden, right? Like a Biden interview, a Biden debate performance seems consistent to the ads. This is one of Trump's problems is his ads about Biden don't seem at all connected to the person who is Biden. And Trump's ads about himself don't seem at all connected to the Trump we see, right? You cannot, if you tell everyone that you were selling a great phone and it is a shitty phone, the ads aren't going to work.

They're eventually going to get the phone. And that's been the problem for Trump. And the Biden campaign, like you said, win or lose, these have been some very, very good ads. Well, when we come back, we'll have Dan's interview with disinformation expert, Jory Craig. Jory Craig is the vice president of GQR, a political research firm and an expert on voter disinformation, digital infrastructure, and public opinion research. Thanks for coming on

Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. I want to start at the most basic level. We've been talking about disinformation, misinformation, foreign interference, all of this for the last four years here. What is disinformation and how is it used in a campaign and who's using it? Sure. So disinformation is information that's used to harm or confuse or mislead. Usually it's false, made up information. Sometimes it has a kernel of truth. But the point is the intent behind it is to confuse, mislead, distract. It's different from misinformation, which is just misinformation that's false, but you didn't mean for it to be false. So right now, some people might share information trying to help people vote. It might be slightly off because their state's different than someone else's state.

That's misinformation. That's a different ballgame. Thinking about disinformation, I like to think of it as influence campaigns. These are influence campaigns. Their disinformation is one tactic that they use. In every case, they're trying to influence us to do something offline, take some sort of offline action. And so what are you seeing in this cycle right here in 2020 that is concerning in the realm of disinformation? And the answer may be everything. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on. I mean, my, you know, one of the things I specialize in is because my background is in international work, I was sort of brought in to talk about the threat

of foreign state actor disinformation. Upon looking at looking around, the far bigger problem is the domestic disinformation that we're seeing being pushed by bad actors at home. And I think one of the most concerning things I see and that I deal with is that one of the goals bad actors have, no matter what they're pushing, is to try to get us to share their message, to try to bypass credible sourcing. So we are the ones moving their message around. And so one thing that's concerning to me sometimes is that our space, sometimes in a reaction and trying to say, hey, that's false. We're moving those messages for them. And so that's one thing that I think is really important in these final days and weeks leading up to the election that we're mindful of when we see something that we think is not true or that we're concerned about that we don't accidentally make it worse.

How do we end up making it worse and how do we what's the right step to take that doesn't make it worse. How do we end up making it worse? And how do we, what's the right step to take that doesn't make it worse? Like on an individual level, I'm a person who is on Facebook or Twitter, and I see something that appears to be disinformation of some kind. What should I do to handle that in a way that actually makes things better, not worse? Sure. So first things first, take a deep breath, slow down. I think, you know, Twitter especially makes us want to act, retweet, you know, ask questions really quick, slow down. I think, you know, Twitter especially makes us want to act, retweet, you know, ask questions really quick. Slow down, make sure your reaction isn't actually going to move that into more feeds before you know anything about it. Next step, if you see something that you know is false, that you know is problematic, it should trigger something in your mind. I've come up with

the ratio five to one. For every one time you see something that you think is problematic, think, okay, that's five more times I need to get what is true out there to the people that matter. And to the people that matter is really important. There's about 24% of Americans on Twitter. A lot of us are more informed. We're paying attention. We're moving quickly. A lot of the people who are susceptible to the attacks are in different spaces online. They're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, they're on WhatsApp threads. And so for every one time you see something false, think to yourself, that's five times I need to reach out to those people who are actually susceptible to this attack with what's true.

Consider what sources they would believe. So not the sources I believe, but the sources that I think would be attractive to them. So maybe a local source, maybe AP. And instead of repeating the lie when you're communicating to them, say, hey, did you hear this lie? Well, it's not true. Instead, start with the truth. Start with the information you want to get out there. Question the motive of the messenger, because remember, this is all a con. The victim of disinformation is the voter. And so all of these bad actors, whoever they are, they're misleading the voter. And so talk about the motives they have for

distracting with whatever narrative they're putting out there. And then reaffirm with empathy why you think it's not true, how you check your sources, and how you can help them together get through all the noise that's going to be put out there on election day. What are you seeing from the social media platforms in terms of the efforts that they are taking to deal with this information? So the social media companies have taken a lot of action recently, really in the final hour. However, we've really spent the whole year begging them, asking them to do more. You know, they allowed medical disinformation to flourish in the year we had a pandemic. They, Facebook failed their civil rights audit in the year that we had one of the biggest movements to try to fight for criminal justice reform and justice.

And so it shouldn't be forgotten that even though they took these dramatic actions really close to the election, they're not enough. They have a very long history of inconsistent policy enforcement. And so we have to work with them. They have a huge audience. There are a lot of people on their platform. So we work closely with them to try to do the best we can. But we don't have a lot of faith that they will enact their policies as quickly as they should. And even as they're outlined as written on their websites. Are some of the steps they're taking making things worse, not better? Yes, in some cases. I mean, it's a double edged sword. So in some, you know, a big one is they

said that they were going to no longer allow new political ads to come from anyone in the final week leading up to the election. That disproportionately hurts Democrats. That disproportionately hurts groups with smaller budgets. We know that bad actors on the right in particular have a huge ability to get massive organic reach on Facebook, even though those same publishers have been docked and broken Facebook rules and they should be getting penalized for that. They're not. And so what actions we take in that final week, it's more than just, you know, liking and sharing because that's a good idea. It's really going to make up for that deficit where we won't be spending money on paid ads. We won't be spending money on new GOTV ads.

Of course, ads will still be running, but there won't be anything new should something come up, should a narrative change. And so our efforts, our organic efforts are really going to make the difference there. One of the things the platforms have done is to try to disable sharing of disinformation. And this sort of came to the forefront last, I guess it's last week, but time has no meaning anymore, when the New York Post published this story that many people believe is part of a disinformation plot about a laptop that may or may not belong to Hunter Biden. And both Facebook and Twitter disabled the sharing of that story. What was your view of how they

handled that? And was that productive, counterproductive? What does it tell you about what's going to happen over the next two weeks? Well, we don't know what's going to happen over the next two weeks. We know that the right is going to continue to throw things out there, try to get mainstream sources, try to get Twitter, try to get those folks to pick up their story and move it for them. I think that the platforms actioned things that were false. They're lies. They break the policies. They violate those things. That's things we've been asking for, not from a partisan standpoint all year, really from a this is

affecting voters. This hurts voters ability to make decisions. I think some people talk about, hey, well, was there backlash because then people couldn't share it. Really, the primary thing that my work deals with is people spending too much sharing the bad, too much sharing and trying to debunk and actually moving that information around. Remember, a lot of the bad actors, including a lot of the conspiracy work that's already been done this year, is to create distrust in the messengers who are trying to debunk. And so in a way, even though efforts are really well-intentioned, a lot of times some of those messengers who are debunking, that's all part of their hope. And so, you know, I think it's great that the platforms enforced their rules and they should have been doing this all along. It was very stark for people because they haven't been doing it all

along, but I wish this would have been happening all year. And, you know, this becomes more challenging in situations where, you know, it's not just a quasi-major media outlet in the New York Post, but also a lot of disinformation comes directly from the mouth and the Twitter feed of the President of the United States. And I think we as Democrats have done exactly what you were telling us not to do, which is, you know, we spread it by yelling about it, right? And are there specific different strategies that you think we should use in dealing with misinformation coming directly from the president of the United States or a major political figure like that? Yeah. So the president of the United States, we know he lies. He lies. And because

he's the president of the United States, he's going to cross that tipping point threshold. We know we tell people, hey, look at reach and impact. Who has it reached and what impact is it having before you determine whether it's appropriate to respond? He's got a lot of reach and he's got a lot of, I guess, impact. And so it is okay to acknowledge the fact that he's lying all the time. But when you do so, instead of leading with what he said, instead of sharing what he said, share and lead with and have the thing that you want people moving around the internet to be the true information or the call out on his motives for pushing the lie he's pushing at any given moment. You know, remembering they really do rely on our pickup. They think about what will get us riled up, what will get us moving things around. And so

when you see something, repeat, double down for every one time Trump lies, you've got to get what's real out there five times as much. You've got to go to the spaces where the susceptible voters are. If that's Facebook, if that's, you know, DMing folks, whatever you have to do, it really should trigger that kind of response instead of, hey, I'm going to retweet this to my Twitter followers and we're all going to talk about how horrible it is. hey, I'm going to retweet this to my Twitter followers, and we're all going to talk about how horrible it is. And then unfortunately, one thing that's problematic with the fact that there are 24% of people on Twitter, and those people are disproportionately people who are politically engaged, is that sometimes the conversation moves on there, and they forget to go do the work with

the people in the other platforms on the other spaces, because that's not their preferred area of, you know, prophesizing. But it's really important that we turn our megaphones to the voters who need it most in these final two weeks. You know, we, I think people probably who know a lot less than you do about disinformation, were very worried just about how this election would play itself out. Has it gone better or worse than you expected in terms of disinformation, both in the amount of it out there and then how all the various players, social media platforms, mainstream media outlets, other politicians have responded to that? The volume is about what I would expect.

The grotesque content that's pushed by bad actors is as I'd expect it. They've not done anything that has surprised me. They've not done anything that I'm saying, wow, they've really upped their game. This is pretty much playbook, you know, looking at countries around the world and how disinformation affects them. They certainly are sophisticated in cross-channel attempts to push their message across all different channels where we're not paying attention. But that hasn't surprised me. I have been encouraged by the ecosystem's reaction to some of this, no longer just amplifying it. You know, you're seeing fewer bad headlines covering either characterist attacks on Senator Harris or just false narratives in general. But we're still seeing mistakes, too.

And I will say, you know, I think that people cannot resist the urge to talk about the sexy story and how bad it is and how wrong it is and how false it is. And, you know, that's that's takes up oxygen. And so then what you're not getting out there is what's right, what's true, what information do voters need, what information should they be considering when they're in the ballot box? And our accidental attempt to debunk sometimes ends up making it worse, as you're noticing as a theme in what I say. It's sort of the whole, it's the whole deal. Because when we look at what reactions people have and how they take their narratives and move them into mainstream minds, it can't be done without our help. And so when it's moving in, it's always with our assistance.

Like we think we're doing the right thing and we're just making it worse basically. Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, and another thing is like, remember, you know, I think that for example, the space just started talking about conspiracies over the past few months. So that maybe gives the impression that those conspiracies have just arrived in the past few months. They haven't. And so a lot of the work we think we're like, okay, great. We're going to debunk out. We're going to get the word out. A lot of the impact of the conspiracies was was already done before we arrived to the final month out.

And of course, you want to get information out there. You want to make sure people understand what's true and that these conspiracies are just a distraction from both important issues and the election. and the election, it also sort of the whole conversation is out of sync with where a lot of Americans are in terms of when they heard this information, what they've thought about it. And sometimes that can be problematic when there's only so much oxygen to take up ahead of the election. You've done a lot of work, as you said, the bulk of your work is overseas. Do we handle this worse, as badly or better than other countries around the world? And if it's worse, is there a reason why you think that is? Other countries handle this in a different way. And I would say that I think some of the systems we have set up where we have a lot of our campaign lanes really siloed from one another. You know, we've got a lot of consultants doing fundraising,

a lot of consultants suing media. We have comms separate from finance, separate from field. And on the campaigns abroad, everything is a little bit more integrated. And so everybody's on board with understanding, hey, when something appears, we're all going to be measuring reach and impact in the same way. And therefore, things don't raise blood pressure as quickly. I think here, because of the disconnect, because different lanes aren't talking to one another, it's easier for someone to say, hey, this is going on, and other lanes not know how to interpret it and overreact. So I think more integration between departments would be really helpful. I think the amount of money we have in our system does not help because there's so much

money for there to be so many specific lanes. we have in our system does not help because there's so much money for there to be so many specific lanes. But if we can integrate that a little bit better, I think it would be useful. The other thing that countries abroad do differently is here, we're a really big country. We've got a lot of states. We have a lot of interested parties in the elections. And everybody kind of does their own thing. The internet has no border. Social media has no border. And so if you're not looking at the narratives and networks and how they interact with one another, you can miss things. And so establishing what those baselines are up front for the different categories of disinformation topics, the different bad actors is really helpful. So you can very

quickly understand what you're up against. Thank you. That's fascinating. And how does our media handle it better or the same? Yeah. So the media around the world is struggling with this. I think that I've thought more about media and journalism than I thought I would in my career because of the relationship it has with disinformation. I'd say that the media is better in some ways because it's a little bit less sensational. I think our media has become, you know, everything's breaking news no matter what. I think there's a little bit more discernment around the world, but they're having the same problems. Bad actors everywhere are trying to break down trust in media. And so that's a playbook that's being run everywhere. You know, you're seeing in the Philippines, people are losing their media license.

They're being destroyed on social media. That's breaking down. And then the people, the bad actors, the dictators who are doing that still have a really high approval rating. So this is certainly a challenge media groups are facing all over the world. I think that ours have more money and, you know, more of a stage and, you know, more of a willingness or pressure to have the breaking news. So we might be a little bit worse on how bad we're making the problem.

Interesting. Well, Jory, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about this. It's fascinating, equal parts alarming and maybe hopeful because you offer us some real strategies on what we can do about it, both in these next couple of weeks, but this problem is not going away even after this election. So thank you so much and good luck with everything. Thank you so much. Thanks to Jory for joining us today. We will see you guys tomorrow night, Thursday night for the debate. We'll be on group thread. Go to cricket.com slash debate to hang out with us. And then Friday morning, all four of us will be doing our post-debate pod. So check it out.

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