Pod Save America - “Whistle while you spy.”

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Trump promises a foreign leader something so alarming that an intelligence staffer becomes a whistleblower, Corey Lewandowski launches his Senate campaign during an impeachment hearing, and the President wages war on California. Then Obama campaign manager David Plouffe joins Jon and Dan to talk about the 2020 election and his new podcast, Campaign HQ.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Right here in studio. Here in Los Angeles. Unbelievable. So great. In just a bit, we're going to talk to our old pal David Plouffe, Barack Obama's legendary campaign manager about all things 2020. He will also be to the studio. Now that you said it. Joe Biden. Tom Carper? Yeah. Chris Coons, not welcome.

First, we've got news to talk about. Lots of news to talk about from an explosive story about a whistleblower and the president to Congress's first impeachment hearing to Trump's war on California. Before that, a few housekeeping notes. If you want to understand what the hell happened with that attack on Saudi Arabia over the weekend to Trump's war on California. Before that, a few housekeeping notes. If you want to understand what the hell happened with that attack on Saudi Arabia over the weekend and the ensuing risk of war with Iran, don't miss Pod Save the World this week. Tommy and Ben also discuss the Israeli elections and whether Bibi Netanyahu's career might be over. Fingers crossed.

They also discuss Adam Schiff's explosive letter to the director of national intelligence about this whistleblower. And they're joined by Senator Chris Murphy, who's leading the fight to end our involvement in the disastrous civil war in Yemen and to prevent war with Iran. Next week, we'll be on the last leg of our 2019 tour. And there are still a few tickets left for our San Jose show on September 26th and our Portland show on September 27th. So head to Crooked.com slash events for tickets. and our Portland show on September 27th, so head to crooked.com slash events for tickets. Our friend Adi Barkin released his interviews this week with Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro as part of his Uncovered video series about health care in America.

Head to crooked.com slash be a hero to watch his interviews, and don't forget to order his brand new memoir, Eyes to the Wind. As some of you know, because you follow him on Twitter, Adi was in the hospital for a fairly major procedure this week, earlier this week. He is out of the hospital. He is recovering. So that is good news. When he's fully recovered and goes online again, it would be great if his book was just selling like crazy. So please go pick up a copy of Adi's book.

It is fantastic. I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Finally, as you all know, Crooked Media is partnering with Stacey Abrams on Fair Fight 2020, her plan to fight voter suppression by hiring full-time voter protection teams in 20 battleground states next year. We launched on Friday night with the goal of raising $1 million. And Shaniqua, our political director, is here with an update on how much we've raised. Where are we at, Shaniqua? $475,000.

$475,000. So what you can't see if you're listening is Shaniqua has a giant bottle on the table filled with jelly beans. And she is filling it up with more jelly beans to indicate how much money we've raised this is fucking riveting this is this is what you call a stunt a visual stunt visual for an audio medium there'll be a video of this out that you'll all enjoy of shaniqua filling up a bottle with jelly beans which I'm sure is why she went to college. I mean, this is the viral content the internet thirsts for. One person smiling very broadly is Elijah.

He's going to make us do this over again. Came up with this idea. We think it's great. I actually love the bottle. This is great. Anyway, the important point here is we've already raised $475,000. We're almost halfway there, but that's still only halfway there.

We need to get to a million by November 5th, I believe. And look, this is maybe the most important thing we can do between now and 2020, aside from pick a nominee, is to make sure there are teams on the ground in these battleground states to fight voter suppression. We know this works. We have seen it work before. But this is still right now the biggest hole in the Democratic Party's strategy in 2020. And Stacey Abrams is doing everything she can to make sure that we can fight voter suppression. So go to votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight, donate, share, tell your friends. We need all the help we can get. Thanks, Shaniqua.

Thank you. Great job. Great job, Elijah. Great job, Jelly Beans. Okay, let's get to the news. Dan, we have to start today with the Washington Post story that broke late last night. I'm just going to read the lead on this one. The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump's communications with a foreign leader, which included a promise that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The sourcing here is two former u.s officials familiar with the matter the story has been confirmed by nbc and the new york times nbc also confirmed the fact

that the communication in question was a phone call uh dan i'm no expert on the inner workings of the intelligence community but uh this sounds could have fooled me just on twitter i am yeah this sounds like a big deal how how unusual is this what the fuck is going on here we don't know what the fuck is going on but it's you know i think one of the reporters last i think kendall anion of nbc i think said we're going to need to find a new word other than unprecedented to describe this yeah because we should be very clear is that a intelligence official who by some reports worked for some period of time at the national security council right that's true filed a whistleblower

complaint to the trump appointed inspector general in the intelligence community we should and we should tell people i was thinking this this morning like what an inspector general does what what are inspector generals why are they in these departments what's going on they're the independent watchdogs they're supposed to look investigate malfeasance, corruption, other problems. We know about inspector generals because there have been a lot of inspector generals working in the Justice Department investigating the various things that went on around the Comey firing, Andrew McCabe. That's how we hear about them. It's always a little bit of a fishy situation because they're appointed by the president and then investigate that president's department. And Trump has not been known to appoint people with straight shooters, respected on either side.

And so the fact that this Trump appointed inspector general read this complaint, deemed it to be, and these are legal terms, urgent and credible, which means by law they are required to immediately send it to the congressional committees of oversight so that Congress can be aware of it and look into it. That has not happened. And by determining that it's credible and urgent, that is also, that's a legal determination. That means you have to have, the whistleblower has to have witnessed something that either breaks the law, involves serious abuse of power or endangers national security in some way. So it's not just like I heard Trump say something on the phone with a foreign leader and it made me uncomfortable because I disagree with his policy position. Couldn't be that. And this person would know, and the inspector general would also know, that Donald Trump and any president has very wide latitude to declassify, classify information whenever the president would like,

to make decisions, negotiate with foreign leaders in private, on his own. The president has a lot of latitude when it comes to talking to foreign leaders, negotiating national security, declassifying intelligence. So the fact that the inspector general and the whistleblower would know all this and still find this complaint urgent and credible tells you it might be something pretty big.

In fact, it likely is. On its face, it is something very significant. It has to be to reach this level. It's important to also understand that the Trump administration is essentially in violation of the law by refusing to send this to Congress. So it is something that the whistleblower thought was so alarming. The inspector general found met this incredibly high bar of urgent, urgent, incredible. And the Trump administration, the acting director of national intelligence, is so worried about the impact it'll have on Trump that they are keeping this whistleblower complaint from Congress in violation of the law.

Which is making Congress, Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee and other leaders in Congress very, very angry, as they should be. The other thing to note here is that before the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, chose to keep the substance of the complaint from Congress, he consulted, wait for it, people at the Department of Justice. Department of Justice. And as we know, Attorney General Bill Barr has basically been, his role has been covering up for Trump and not acting as an independent attorney general like the attorney general should since he's been appointed. So that sort of raises a bunch of red flags that DOJ got involved and told them to withhold it from Congress. I mean, this whole thing is very concerning. We don't know enough enough yet the acting director of national intelligence was was actually was it the whistleblower who was in congress today uh no it was the ig it was the

inspector right the inspector general excuse me michael atkinson michael atkinson was in front in closed session with the intelligence committee and refused to uh at least as of the recording of this podcast convey the substance of the complaint to Congress. In violation of the law. Like, that is the most important point. Yeah. This is not, you don't, the Director of National Intelligence doesn't get to decide that a whistleblower complaint that is deemed urgent and credible can be withheld from Congress. That's not in the law.

In fact, it's a violation of the law right now. So that's where we are yet again. Someone is breaking the law to cover up the breaking of the law of someone higher up on the food chain. Of course, Donald Trump has tweeted about this this morning. Quote, another fake news story out there. It never ends. Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various U.S. agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself. No problem. Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader

while on such a potentially heavily populated call? Yes, I am that dumb. I am dumb enough to believe that. It's a pretty telling tweet since Trump never argues, I don't commit the crimes. No. He just argues,

I'm better at committing the crimes than you think I am. He's offended that we think he's bad at committing crimes, not that he commits crimes. It's, yeah. So without engaging in completely wild speculation. That's what Brian's for. You can check out Brian's Twitter feed.

Look, he may be correct, in which case I'll say, see, I always knew Brian was right. What do we know so far? We know it involved a phone call with a foreign leader we're aware of a handful of phone calls that happened in the general period around when this complaint was filed so it was filed in early august and uh on july 31st the president had a phone call with one vladimir putin yes and what is there there's also, he talked to the Dutch foreign leader, so I'm sure he was promising all kinds of things to him. It's almost certainly going to be the Dutch foreign leader. He traded Eric for like a pallet of wooden shoes or something. What a bust that would be.

Around the Putin call, there was a lot of suspicion. Our friend, former Obama administration ambassador to Russia, Mike McFaul, was struck by this call because the Trump administration described it as cooperation on fighting the wildfires in Russia. In Siberia. That's what they talked about. Donald Trump offering his assistance to help with the Siberian wildfires. This was while California was burning, by the way. And he was just like, no, no, I want to concentrate on Siberia's wildfires with my friend Vladimir Putin. And the Russians described it as measures that can improve bilateral relations, which often means sanctions, which was McFaul's interpretation. That's the same interpretation our friends Tommy and Ben had. I do. I did believe at the time it was possible that Trump called Putin just because he saw there was wildfires.

It's sort of this is like a dated reference for when people used actual phones. But it's sort of like being in middle school and calling the person you have the crush on to find the biology homework. Hey, I just I just wanted to talk about the fires. The fires. That's right. While I have you. About the fires. Yeah, I mean, definitely uh reminds me of this meeting was about adoptions a little bit but who knows we don't know we don't know we will

hopefully find out soon i think one reason why the sanctions thing is relevant is like you talked about how presidents have this broad authority from derived from article 2 of the constitution to conduct foreign policy and what they deem to be the best interest of the United States. Congress does have the power to limit that, to very specifically limit it. And Russian sanctions were in way early on the Trump administration where Congress passed a law because they did not trust Trump to act in America's best interests on Russia. So they limited his power. The best example of how a president can overstep their bounds historically is Iran-Contra, where in the 80s, the Reagan administration believed they wanted to help the Contras overthrow the government in Nicaragua. Congress did not want them to do that. They passed

the law called the Boland Amendment to say that no funds could be spent to help the Contras. Reagan administration decided they didn't like that. They sold weapons to Iran and then gave that money to the Contras, which led to a huge, massive scandal and could have put a lot of people in jail if they hadn't been pardoned. Right. So this is like there are parallels. We don't know what this is, but there are parallels between the Boland Amendment in Nicaragua and the sanctions law and Russia in this situation. Not to say that Trump has a point because, of course, he never really does. russia in this situation not to say that trump has a point because of course he never really does but you do wonder like on these calls with foreign leaders there are a bunch of people listening

and so i kind of wonder what would so alarm a u.s intelligence official who worked for a time on the national security council but not potentially alarm everyone else who heard the phone call on both sides i mean potentially potentially the answer is they're all just a bunch of lackeys who didn't think it was a big problem yeah i mean it's the fact that then putin and his goons also kept it secret is sort of curious well putin and his goons if it was putin and we do not know that's right we don't know if it was they hinted at something in their readout without the concerns that the U.S. would have for the politics or the law of sanctions relief. But you're right.

Now, Trump early on circumscribed the circle of people who listened to his calls directly because the transcripts were getting around and leaking because he was saying insane shit. So it's a smaller group than would be for an Obama call, for instance. But there would have been other people on that call. Now, worth noting, in the Brian potential conspiracy theory area here, Bolton resigned. There are two former officials who are quoted as the sources here, which is very interesting. Also resigning were Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Sue Gordon, who was the deputy director who was going to take over as acting. But Trump did not trust her and so needed to push her out in order to elevate this McGuire fellow who seems to be doing exactly what Trump wants, which is rampant lawbreaking for the purposes of protecting Trump. And another person who resigned in August was John Huntsman, ambassador to Russia.

Oh, that is an interesting point. Yeah. So it's just a lot of, I mean, again, we can, we got the red string. We could go all day. By the time you listen to this, you'll probably know all the answers. Yeah. But look, at least we know that this Congress and these Democrats are going to do whatever it takes to hold this administration accountable.

Right, Dan? Someone is drafting a letter right now. Segway to our next topic. So the House Democrats haven't been super successful in using their power to hold the administration accountable for its wrongdoing. On Tuesday, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski confirmed during the House Democrats'

first official impeachment hearing that he is a frequent and public liar. And he also confirmed that the Mueller report was correct in stating that Trump asked Lewandowski to help him obstruct justice by threatening the attorney general to stop investigating the president. But Lewandowski also turned the hearing into a circus by refusing to answer even the most basic questions and generally being a huge asshole to Democrats on the committee. How much of the hearing did you watch?

And what were your initial impressions? I watched none of the hearing in real time. Same. I did not. I lived my life and I'm happy about it. Sometimes you roll the dice and you say, maybe other things will happen. We won't have to discuss this.

And I rolled the dice and lost because here we are. Snake eyes. What I did was I went to Aaron Ruppar from Vox, and he is a journalist who uses video to capture what's happening in real time at Trump events, but he also did the Lewandowski hearing. So he's like the red zone of the Trump era. And so I watched all the highlights from that. So I feel prepared for this conversation. So what are your initial impressions of the hearing like what do you i mean because so i was watching i was not watching the hearing i was watching the coverage of the hearing on twitter as it was going and so the first however many hours was what a circus what a disaster you got a lot of reporters both sides in this like oh

it's a it's a partisan circus and this is something this is why people hate washington both parties are crazy blah blah so i'm like oh fuck and then suddenly at the end it got a little bit better once they had an actual lawyer questioning uh cory lewandowski instead of people just who just wish they played lawyers on tv which are politicians i think there are there are probably three takeaways and we can we can maybe probably talk about each of these individually. One, there is Corey Lewandowski's performance and what that says about modern conservatism. Yeah, we should start there. The second is the ways in which the hearing did not go well for Democrats is directly tied to a larger conversation about the impeachment purgatory in which they're currently living. And then the third part is, if we were in an actual legal proceeding,

the information in that hearing was incredibly damning to an obstruction of justice charge against Trump. Yeah. And so let's start with the first one. Yeah, let's start with Corey. Corey Lewandowski is an absurd figure. He's like a, he's not even a JV player. He's a freshman team Republican operative

who just happened to be the only guy who would go work for Trump. He didn't even get Trump elected. He got fired for being bad at his job and abusing, physically abusing a reporter and just generally terrible human being. But his performance here today, I think is about more than just Corey Lewandowski being a terrible human being. I think it sort of speaks to the asshole-ification of Republicans, which is the best way to succeed in Republican politics right now, either as an influence peddler in Washington or a candidate out in the country, is get the support of Trump. And the best way to get the support of Trump is to act like as big an asshole to as many people as possible. And Donald Trump, who theoretically has a job, like there are tasks that come with the presidency. There are these meetings at which you were supposed to attend. He tweeted out.

He thanked Corey for his opening statement. He tweeted out the video of Corey's statement. And so Corey got what he wanted, which is. It was a campaign launch. He did not treat it as, you know, a hearing where he was under oath to talk about potential crimes committed by the president. He treated it as his campaign launch for running for Senate in New Hampshire. We know this because, you know, aside from the fact that he acted like a huge asshole and said all kinds of ridiculous bullshit he asked for a break halfway through the hearing and then went outside and tweeted a website that was potentially his campaign senate website so the whole thing was about trying to and then he figured he would defend donald trump and be loyal because the way to for a republican to win in 2019 is to get the blessing of their mob leader, Donald Trump.

I mean, it really did look like a TV mob trial with a witness who is essentially agreeing to serve time for the boss, yelling at the prosecutors and the jury. Like, that is what goes for loyalty is pleading the fifth for Donald Trump. Yeah. I mean, you know, the memorable line from Corey Lewandowski that he said towards the end is I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they're just as dishonest as anyone else. So one would think that for someone who is contemplating running for the U.S. Senate, admitting in public that they lie all the time like he just did, would be a campaign ending move. Not in today's Republican party. No, it's a net positive. For Corey Lewandowski, the only thing he needed out of this hearing is for Donald Trump to shower praise on him. Donald Trump, who once fired him, so that wasn't necessarily a done deal,

but he wanted Donald Trump to shower praise on him so he can go to people in New Hampshire, Republicans in New Hampshire, and say, it doesn't matter if I lie. It doesn't matter if I don't have the experience. It doesn't matter if I'm a fucking buffoon. All you need to know about me is I got the Donald Trump seal of approval stamped on me. That's it. That's all you need to know. Vote for me. And it might work. And it might work. In the primary. In the primary. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully it'll be a little different in the general.

So what a value actually came out of the hearing for Democrats who are looking to conduct these impeachment hearings? I think one of the goals of Nadler et al. was to, Nadler has made the point, and I think he's 100% correct, that obstructing the Mueller investigation is an impeachable offense. Yeah. But also obstructing Congress's oversight into the president is also an impeachable offense. We know this because it was one of the articles of impeachment filed against Richard Nixon. And this was a demonstration of the effort of the Trump administration to obstruct Congress's constitutional obligation to do checks and balances. And Corey Lewandowski refused to answer questions because the White House had told him not to. He was asserting privilege.

Corey Lewandowski has never worked in the federal government. He is just a outside advisor to Trump. There is no such thing as executive privilege when it comes to someone who's never worked in the White House. People should just know that. You can't Trump. There is no such thing as executive privilege when it comes to someone who's never worked in the White House. No. You just know that. You can't spend, there's no such thing. It's made up.

It's fucking crazy. And he was operating under the explicit and public instructions of the White House to do this, which is the White House basically putting up a sign that says impeach me on the front of the White House. And so that part of it was important. The other important part that we cannot forget that gets lost in all of the internal Democratic debate

about impeachment is Corey Lewandowski was forced to tell Congress, as he did Mueller, that Donald Trump asked his political henchmen to pressure the attorney general into ending a criminal investigation into the president, his campaign, and his family. That is significant.

That happened. The other thing that we take from that is Corey Lewandowski is loyal to Donald Trump like no one else. He would swim through a sewer with an open mouth for Donald Trump, and he refused to do this. It was an order so crazily illegal that he did not do it. But that does not exculpate Trump. Asking Corey Lewin to ask you to do that is a crime. And we discussed a major crime from the president in Congress on live TV. You wouldn't know that it was it's like buried in the like 10th paragraph of some of the story.

Look, you got to get through nine to 10 paragraphs of optics before you can get to the facts. That is a rule of modern journalism. I will say when I woke up the day after the hearing some media outlets handled this right like the top of playbook talked about what we actually got out of the hearing of value which i thought was great i thought the new york times did it well too um you know some other outlets didn't do as well you know who you are you know who you are that talked all about the fucking optics before you talked about the fact that the president's political henchman confirmed the special counsel's belief that the president obstructed justice

there you go that's the hearing uh he also by the way uh we found out that he that cory lewandowski demanded immunity before he would talk to bob mauler so maybe cory lewandowski uh you know had might be done something wrong possible but he demanded we found out that he so he admitted that he lied to the media Possible. But he demanded, we found out that he, so he admitted that he lied to the media, demanded immunity from the special counsel. We found out that Trump asked him to obstruct justice and that Trump asked him to obstruct Congress's investigation by refusing to answer questions.

Seems significant. But look, we should talk about the Democrats and sort of like how this hearing went, right? Because while we learned all these things from Corey Lewandowski, we learned them at the end when Barry Burke, a lawyer for the Democratic staff, questioned Corey Lewandowski. Before that, it was a bit of a shit show. So what does this sort of say about the Democratic strategy around impeachment? Well, let's deal with the lawyer versus member questioning first. A lawyer should always do it, right? A staff lawyer or if you're in a situation where you have someone who is on the committee as a member who is a trained litigator and interrogator like Kamala Harris on the Senate Judiciary Committee. to waste two of your minutes in preamble is never enough time to actually get to the truth of anything. Because as soon as you get going, they hand it to some Republican who's just going to

throw gorilla dust in the air, and then we start all over again. And so having an attorney do it, whether it's a staff attorney or one person over a sustained period of time, is a much better approach. That is never going to happen. It just will not because members of Congress look in the mirror and they see Daniel Caffey. That is just how it is. We had this conversation. We had it after Bill Barr. We had it after Michael Cohen. We had it after

Mark Zuckerberg. It's like, get a subject matter expert to ask questions. There's a couple people in Congress who are good at this. Adam Schiff is very good at it. He was great in the Mueller people in Congress who are good at this. Adam Schiff is very good at it, right? He was great in the Mueller hearing. Nadler is good at it. Nadler is good at it.

Freshman members, AOC, very good at it. A lot of you just aren't so great. And this isn't like a fucking participation trophy exercise where, like, everyone just needs to get there a couple minutes to feel good about themselves. feel good about themselves. Like, is that more important than making sure these hearings come off well and achieve their goal of bringing public opinion around to why the president needs impeaching? Or even just finding the truth. Forget public opinion. Right. Yeah. Actually, like, even like, so you take AOC, who is great at this, but it's still five minutes, and then you hand it off. And so a better approach is start with a Democrat, one Democrat doing it for some extended period of

time, and then the Republican staff attorney or member can do it for the same amount of time. But the public will be better informed by that, for sure. And I will say, and this gives me pause, we should talk about this, it gives me pause about the broader Democratic strategy or any strategy around impeachment hearings is the Republican strategy here is very simple, and it tracks with Trump's overall strategy, I think, in the election in 2020, during his presidency, which is, like, when they can make things seem like a fucking circus, like everyone's yelling, like we're all focused on, like, small minutiae of, you know, who's insulting who, they win, right? Like, they know how to play the

media. Republicans know that if they scream and insult and yell at people, then the media won't report that as Republicans are screaming and yelling and insulting people and turning into circus. The media will report it as both sides are at fault. And partly they do that because they know they're going to get a rise out of the Democrats on the committee as well. And the Democrats will return the insults. Right. And so they can lure Democrats into the vortex of bullshit so that everyone's yelling at each other. This is going to be their strategy through impeachment. This is going to be Donald Trump's strategy in the 2020 election. It's how he won. It's how he won in 2016. Let's focus on small bullshit controversies and let's forget the big things at stake here.

And let's forget the big things at stake here. And so my question is, do the House Democrats have the capacity to focus on the big, urgent stakes and the truth and not get drawn into the bullshit they got drawn into during even an indictment of the Democrats individually or collectively. Right. It is the way the system works advantages the Republicans. It is the the way punditry works. The way media works is we live in a both sides world and Republic. It is to Republican advantage to pull this into a contest of the lesser of two evils. Yeah. And that is going to

happen now the whole frame in the election i think it can theoretic like in a presidential race you can change that dynamic like in a one-on-one person against trump takes a lot of a lot of discipline a lot of messages to plan but you can do it and you can and you do not depend as a presidential candidate on the filter to be the primary source of exactly to the American people. You can run ads. You speak directly. You have that ability. It's much harder in Congress. So it's just it's very challenging. But you give yourself the best advantage to do that is if you have a clear plan and a strategy that is obvious to the voters, to the media, and you tell them where you are going, right?

Like, this is really important that in these confusing situations like these, you have to, like, we always yell about people, quote, unquote, signaling the play and say what you're going to be doing. In a situation like this, you have to lay out a timeline, a process, and a goal and say, we're going to do this first. Our next step is this and then this. And you sort of tell them the story in advance so they can follow along. Yeah. And not just say it once, say it, oh, you have to hit people in the media over the head with this kind of stuff over and over and over because there's so much going on out there and

you just have to keep repeating the message. Now, in fairness, one of the big problems, one of the reasons that Democrats can't do this, can't have a very clear strategy that they communicate about impeachment is because they're divided on impeachment. Right. So Politico published a story Wednesday night about the tensions between Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi, who, quote, criticized the panel's handling of impeachment in harsh terms, complaining committee aides have advanced the push for ousting President Donald Trump far beyond where the House Democratic caucus stands. Democrats simply don't have the votes on the floor to impeach Trump, Pelosi said, and you can feel free to leak this. The story came out in the heels of Nadler telling WNYC, quote, personally, I think the president ought to be impeached and that he believes the House should act on impeachment, even if the senate will not remove the president because congress has to quote vindicate the constitution meanwhile pelosi then said of cory lewandowski that she quote would

have held him in contempt right then and there which many people are interpreting as a swipe at nadler dan what the fuck is going on here what I don't know. I feel bad for Nadler because Nadler is doing what he should be doing, doing what the Constitution requires, doing what is not only morally right, but what we have argued is politically astute, which is pushing forward on a number of hearings that will result in hopefully an impeachment, you know, bringing articles of impeachment against the president of the United States. What is Nancy Pelosi doing? Here's what I think Nancy Pelosi is trying to do, which is she has made the political assessment and it is informed by her members. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We, it is, it is important. We say Nancy Pelosi is shorthand here

and you can also make the argument that if Nancy Pelosi really wants something, she gets it and she could convince all these more moderate members or, or swing district members to go along with impeachment. And I think there's a good argument for that and she could, but this is not just Nancy Pelosi. This is a lot of the people that we all elected in 2018. Yeah. We campaigned for them. We gave to them. And it is they they've made the political assessment that Trump committed impeachable offenses. But because there will be no actual accountability for that other than a vote in the House and because public opinion is so so on impeachment. Therefore, it is overly politically risky to do it, because I think it would be different if there was a belief the Senate could if you could actually remove Trump. I think people would have a different approach to this, but it is interpreted by some. I don't agree with this interpreted by some to be a show vote.

And are you willing to put your race on the line for a show vote? Now, I would argue you're putting your race on the line, period. You are in a contested. Yeah, it's not like your Republican opponent is just gonna drop off the ballot if they're nrcc can't hide from the news yeah so you can't you can't hide from politics it's happening but so like they are incredibly divided on this and like we often make fun of the press for their heat-seeking missile-like look for Dems in disarray memes. We are actually in disarray here. Like, that is a fact.

You have... Dems are in disarray. You have Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi, two leaders in Congress, the two most important people for this conversation about impeachment, completely on different pages. And this Speaker of the House

feeling like the Judiciary Committee has pulled her in a place her caucus does not want to go. And you have the Judiciary Committee and a lot of the house feeling like the judiciary committee has pulled her in a place her caucus does not want to go and you have the judiciary committee and a lot of the members feeling that the speaker is keeping them from where they want to go and they're telling everyone about it and what's what's bizarre here is you know in the political story says this nancy pelosi has signed off on every move that jerry nadler has made she signed off on the court documents that state that this is an impeachment inquiry so and then you then, you know, Pramila Jayapal said this in the story too. She doesn't want to say the word impeachment, but she signed off on all the documents, which again, like if Nancy Pelosi just wanted to go out and say, look, I know that he should be impeached.

I think it's bad politics. I'm never going to be for it. I'm against this. It's just a bad idea. And that's that. I would seriously disagree with her. But I might respect that more and might respect it as a strategy more than what she's trying to do right now, which is have it both ways, which is, you know, okay, we're going to let Jerry Nadler go forward a little bit, but then I'm going to pull him back and then I'm going to take swipes at him in caucus meetings. And then I'm going to say things like, you should have held Corey Lewandowski in contempt when I'm against impeachment. Like, what are you doing? I feel like this strategy of trying to have it both ways and straddle this is the worst of all worlds. One of the most important lessons that I learned from our time in the White House was most of the time, no decision is worse than a bad decision. And we are living in the no decision one, particularly in a situation where this is a 5149 proposition. And reasonable people can be on either side of that, whether everyone agrees it's the right thing to do. What people are disagreeing about is the politics of it.

And it is a fair political question to ask since the only thing the House will be doing is putting a scarlet eye on Trump. Right. We are not going to remove him from office. So it is fair to debate the politics of that. And people are coming down either sides of it. We think it's the right politics, although the last few weeks have caused me

some concern on that. Me too. No, I mean, look, the reason that we think it's good politics, the reason we're for impeachment, aside from that it's the morally right thing to do and that he deserves to be impeached, is that we've argued that the Democrats can put on essentially a show and and hold public trials and public hearings where there's enough media attention on that that uh people and you know american people who are not yet on board watch these hearings and say yeah this guy does deserve to be impeached yeah he's committed a lot of crimes yeah he's really corrupt and maybe if i'm on the fence maybe i'm not gonna you know i do

need to come out and vote against him and make sure that the news is filled with stories about Donald Trump's corruption and his wrongdoing so that the news is not filled with all kinds of stories about the Democrats and the Democratic nominee. That's that. That's our calculation. But that depends on the Democrats running a good impeachment hearing and running a tight ship and not falling into their traps. And I'm not sure they can do it. Matt, everything to date has been concerning. I just want to say one more point about Nancy Pelosi because I think we should be fair to her in this. And I think people can make, like we disagree with what has happened to date. We disagree with her position on impeachment.

And people have every right to do that. I think the criticism Nancy Pelosi has to be rooted, though, in the reality of her position, which is she could not tomorrow say we are going to impeach Trump and just do it. Right. The speaker of the House is more is not a dictator. They really like this idea that everyone's like Frank Underwood or Lyndon Johnson and like twisting arms. That's not how Congress works. At most, she is a shepherd. She is moving a bunch of sheep, trying to get them to go in the right direction. And they are not doing that now. She could say, so I don't think she could say you're, we're definitely impeaching and I'm

going to make sure that happens. She could say, we're definitely not impeaching. That was the thing she could say. And so that is the choice that I think lies before her and her Congress is at some point. Do you just pull the bandaid off? And the sooner you do that, either the sooner you say now there's going to set something on the floor and we're going to deal with it or we're not going to do it. Then at least there is strategic clarity and we can figure out what we're doing. But right now, it is a swamp of terribleness. And it is concerning. No one is benefiting by what's happening right now.

Not the people who want to do impeachment, not the people who don't want impeachment. It is actually helping Trump because it is distracting from... It is like the impeachment... Because we're talking about the impeachment process and we're not talking about the impeachable offenses. Yeah.

That's what it comes down to. That was the cloud over yesterday's hearing or Monday's or whatever day that hearing was. It's all process. That's what we're talking about the impeachment process and we're not talking about the impeachable offenses. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. That was the cloud over yesterday's hearing or Monday's or whatever day that hearing was. It's all process. That's what we're talking about because that's all that's happening and we cannot get enough media coverage of the substance. So that's where we did start today. That's not what's driving. The divisions within the Democratic Party are what's driving the narrative, which is unfortunate to say the least. Okay. Let's move on. President Trump's been in California this week where he announced that he

will use the power of the federal government to prevent our state from setting higher emission standards for our cars to go further on a gallon of gas and not contribute as much to human extinction. This past summer, four of the major auto companies made a deal with California to meet the state's fuel economy standard instead of just satisfying the federal rules, which are lower. But even though some of the biggest automakers themselves support California's position, Trump said that he's getting rid of the waiver that allows California to do this. California officials have already announced plans to sue once the administration has officially taken the action. So much for the state's rights party, huh? So much for that.

Big, scary federal government coming in to trample on your rights. Donald Trump wants to make it more expensive for you to drive your car. That's it. That's it. Auto companies, the people who are profiting from all this bullshit, are saying, yeah, we'll make cars that go further on a gallon of gas we will agree to do that here in california more so than other cars uh they're made across the country and yet and yet donald trump doesn't want that to happen now he's saying oh this is

about cheaper cars but that is bullshit yeah this is about oil company profits what is that so why is trump's justification so bullshit here what is he well because it is cheaper for consumers in the long run to have more fuel efficient cars right yeah like whatever you whatever you save in the shirt like and also we're in this world now where all of these automakers because of the market are realizing that the market demands here what the few what people want is cars that consume less gasoline because they can pay less for gas. Right. It's not just it's chiefly about making sure that, you know, one of the biggest emitters of carbon, which are cars and transportation sector in general, you know, emit less carbon.

Of course, that's going to help save the planet. But it's also going to save people in the long run if you have to fill up less. And Donald Trump's just coming in here. And by the way, what happens in California affects the rest of the country because California is such a big market, right? That now, if Donald Trump has his way, you know, there'll be more gas closures. That's basically what he's fighting for right now. And oil companies will be richer. Like that. That's what it is.

So that's one attack that Trump has launched on California. He's also become obsessed with homelessness in cities like L.A. and San Francisco. Last week, the Washington Post broke the story that the administration is actively considering plans to crack down on homeless camps here in California and possibly move people into facilities run by the federal government. Federal officials have apparently looked at a historic building over by LAX as a potential site for such a shelter. When traveling on Air Force One on his way out here, Trump said that, quote, we can't let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what's happening and lamented that homelessness issues are ruining, quote, the prestige of these cities. He also said that he's personally heard complaints from people like foreign real estate investors who are deeply concerned about how tents and homeless people are affecting their property values.

So why is Trump obsessed with this issue? Why did he suddenly decide to care about homelessness in our cities here in California? Because deep in his dark soul, there was a glimmer of empathy. No. There was a glimmer of empathy. No. It is Trump. No.

It is important to Trump's political narrative to tell a story of cities which are a proxy for places inhabited by liberal elites and people of color. Right. As hellhole. The two least favorite groups of people. Yes. As threatening hellholes. Right. That are. Overrun with immigrants.

That are encroaching upon. They're going to hate it there so much they're're gonna move to your suburb or your rural town and so it is that like the exact thing that a 70 plus year old white guy from queens right whose brain was pickled in the 80s thinks right like it's a very simplistic racist view of cities yeah there, there's a political benefit here, as there is with everything that Donald Trump does. And you can see it in the electoral results, even since 2016, where American politics today can be, one way you can look at it is this deepening divide between urban areas in this country and rural areas in this country, deepening divide between urban areas in this country and rural areas in this country,

urban and suburban areas and rural and ex-urban areas. And Donald Trump wins with grievance politics and he wins with fear. And he is trying to make his America in the rural areas and ex-urban areas afraid of the cities and angry about the cities because he wants to continue deepening that divide. So he isolates people who live in the cities as bad, whether it's people of color, whether it's immigrants, whether it's liberals. Those people are bad. They are taking all of our money. They are draining our resources. They are filled with dangerous people. They are a blight on America. I am fighting the war against the cities and the liberals and the immigrants on your behalf. That is his message.

He's also angry because he's unpopular in those places. Yeah, that's part of it, too. I mean, we should also just it is important to acknowledge that homelessness is a huge problem in the cities in which we live. It is. It's a huge problem. And it's a huge problem that, you know, the Democrats haven't come up, you know, failed. Enough Democrats haven't come up you know failed enough democrats haven't come up with a solution or at least a workable solution there's plenty of great policies out there not a lot of workable solutions yet and there is this issue and the reason that people are

homeless is multi-variable right there it is it can be there are there are regulations in california that are making it incredibly hard to housing Housing costs. Housing costs. Changes in the economy. Rent. Opioid crisis. There's a whole set of things that- Massive inequality, economic inequality. So people don't have the, there's not a silver bullet solution. I know the silver bullet solution is not, however, the federal government rounding up

the homeless people and putting them in a camp, which is what Donald Trump proposed. And we all just went, it was like in the ninth paragraph of a story. Like, we haven't even talked about it since then. It is one of the most fucking craziest things anyone's said in a long time. It's incredibly scary. It's incredibly dehumanizing. It's like fucking, you know, years and years on HBO come to life here. The way that Trump, I mean, I know that homelessness is a problem. It is a crisis.

This is how Donald Trump talks about it, though. Quote, we have people living in our best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings, and pay tremendous taxes where they went to those locations because of the prestige. In many cases, they come from other countries and they move to Los Angeles or they move to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city. And all of a sudden they have tents, hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building and they want to leave. In Donald Trump's mind, the problem is not the thousands and thousands of people who have fallen on hard times, who probably worked, you know, probably had homes at one point, lost their job, lost their homes, can't afford the cost of living with their families.

They take that, you know, they have children, they are in and out of homeless shelters. Like that's not the problem. The problem is that those people are a blight on the city. It is the most dehumanizing thing you could say. It is, it is scary to listen to a leader dehumanize people like he has done. Like, I think the way to think about it is Donald Trump does not care about the person who has to sleep in the street. His concern about homelessness is about the person who has to step over the person sleeping in the street. Yeah. And it's very, and it's very scary, you know, that like he's already, you know, he's already has this war on immigrants, specifically immigrants of color, right? Not the ones from Norway, of course. And, you know, now he's moving from that to homelessness,

right? He's trying to sort of siphon off parts of the population that he deems either dangerous or a blight on the cities or whatever. It's really, really bad. This is very Giuliani-era New York City-type politics. On steroids. Yeah. With the power of the federal government. With the power of the federal government and I think the language, too government. And I think the language, too, is is is really amped up. What kind of you know, what are Democrats doing about this? What kind of plans of Democrats had?

I saw that Bernie has a housing for all plan, which I think is is great. It's you know, I think it's two and a half trillion dollars over 10 years. And, you know, he aims to end homelessness and enact a national cap on rent, on rent hikes. We saw, you know, Beto O'Rourke was out here this week. He toured Skid Row in Los Angeles and talked to homeless people and homeless advocates. So that's good. But I don't know. Have you seen any?

How do you think Democrats should handle this? I think you're going to need a whole series of approaches, right? Medicare for all, like some element of this is mental health, right? Medicare for all or some of these other universal health care plans to expand access to health care would give people more access to mental health services. We have to deal with substance abuse issues. Yeah, our drug policy. It is exactly right that we have to make housing more affordable in this country.

It is unaffordable in these cities, and it's pushing people out and onto the streets and elsewhere. And so it's like— Some of this is a NIMBY problem, right? Not in my backyard, right? There's a lot of, like, wealthy liberals who say that they want to care about homelessness, but when you start building affordable housing in their neighborhood, say absolutely not. Yeah, to get the shelter somewhere else. Right, so that's a huge problem, too. So there are a lot of problems here, but, like, Donald Trump isn't serious about any of these problems.

This is a political wedge issue for him. And, you know, he seems to be obsessed with California for a very specific reason. Yeah, California doesn't love him. Right. And it's liberal. And it's a caricature of everything that Donald Trump wants to talk about in this campaign. So he comes out here to make sure that our cars are more expensive, scapegoats homeless people, and then he spends the night in Beverly Hills raising $15 million for his campaign

from the richest people. Just in case you were wondering what's going on behind the scenes while Donald Trump is engaging in his culture war, he is trying to steal as many of the, make himself richer, win his campaign, take as much of the nation's resources as he can for himself. Destroying the planet to own the libs. That's it. That's it. Okay, when we come back, we will be talking to Obama campaign manager, David Plouffe.

On the pod today, the host of the brand new podcast, Campaign HQ, that drops today. And the author of the forthcoming book, A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump, Obama campaign manager and White House senior advisor, David Plouffe. Plouffe, good to have you here in studio. It's so great to be here in studio. Check out the Crooked Empire. This is exciting. We haven't had you here yet. Remember that meeting in early 2007 where we all talked about our future career as podcasters this is it this is where we all landed win iowa

we can win the presidency and we can start change america and then change podcasting better than being on dancing with the stars i guess maybe just barely it is an improvement it is an improvement i'm pretty proud of us that we did not talk about that today. Michael did ask if we wanted it in the outline, and we refused because we're bigger than that, right? Not really. All right, I want to talk about your podcast and your book, but let's talk about 2020 first. We're almost a year out from the election. How would you assess the political environment right now heading into 2020, sort of the overall fundamentals? For the general election? Yeah, let's do the general. Well...

Knowing that obviously we don't have a nominee yet, and that's a big piece of the puzzle. Yeah, I mean, so let's start there. The big things that will determine the state of the economy, are we at war in the Middle East, strength of the Democratic nominee, strength of the campaign Trump runs. So those are the big things. And on the plus side of the ledger, if you want to get rid of the sociopath in office, bad approval numbers across the board, hard reelect numbers quite low, most of the head-to-heads with some of the potential Democratic candidates in most battleground states, not great. But this time, if I remember in 11, we were given about a 20% chance to win. So a lot can change. And what concerns me is I think Trump's going to get astronomically high turnout.

So you look at Florida in 16, a million more people voted there. Some went for Hillary, but Trump got about a half million more votes than Romney. You look at 04, what Bush did in Ohio. I think that's what we need to prepare for. So if you're modeling what does it take to win Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, you better give Trump massive turnout. And we see what he's trying to do. He's trying to drive up the third party vote. Last time it kind of just happened. But infanticide, you won't be able to eat hamburgers, you won't be able to fly, you won't be able to use your car. There's a smart strategy behind that.

So I'd still rather be the Democrat than him. But I think we also know he's going to overperform his national poll numbers in most battleground states. So we better prepare for an epic battle that's going to come down to a point or two. Now, if we really do slide into recession, then I think this could break open. But absent that, I think it's going to be super tight. And I don't even know who I'm going to vote for yet, much who I think is the strongest candidate. I think that'll come into clarity in January or February. But I know we need a candidate. So let's think about Wisconsin, who can get a 58 or 60-year-old iron worker who might have voted for Trump back and get the kids on the college campuses and the young African-American community in Milwaukee fired up. Have to do both. This isn't a base or persuasion question. It's both.

In the list of states you just gave, you included Arizona and North Carolina. You did not include Ohio, Iowa, and Florida. Do you think, are Ohio and Iowa unlikely to be in play this time? And what do you think the state of Florida is? Well, my sense is the six core battlegrounds will be Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida. Now, Florida, Trump's going to get massive turnout. But we just lost, you know, Gillum almost won, great candidate, but was also under investigation. That hurt him. Turns out that's a problem in elections. Problem in election. You know, I think Nelson wasn't the strongest candidate in that race against Scott. We won it twice narrowly. So I think Florida is going to be, and we know if

you register enough voters down there and do a good job on turnout, and given that it's 29 electoral votes, so it's those six. I think whether Ohio and Iowa, Texas and Georgia are in play, those are going to be the tough decisions made by our nominees' campaign. And it probably depends on who they are and their appeal. Trump is going to look at Minnesota closely, obviously. I think that will be a battleground. Now, I don't think there's a scenario where Trump loses Michigan and Pennsylvania and wins Minnesota. It's not a tipping point, but he'll put pressure there. I don't know why he's going to New Mexico. But, you know, I'll probably look again at Nevada and New Hampshire would be my guess.

But I think the six are those three upper Midwest states, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida. And listen, it's not crazy to have a scenario where the Democrat wins Pennsylvania and Michigan back, loses Wisconsin, but gets Arizona. Same number of electoral votes as Wisconsin. So you got to play there, I think. With the caveat that obviously the nominee should have a message that speaks to all voters, who are the groups of voters that you would be spending most time and resources talking to as the nominee? Well, let's look at Wisconsin as just an example. Look at the numbers. So in 16, Hillary got, I think, 29 or 30,000 votes less than Obama in Milwaukee. Now, Trump won by 23,000. So you could say, let's just take care of the turnout thing. We win. Do we really want to go into the

margin of error of 7,000 votes? But she got 250,000 less votes in Obama in all the exorbitant rural areas, 600,000 less in Ohio. So you've got to look at it. What are the cohorts? One, we've got to do a ton of registration. We've got a massive turnout problem. So that's all base. We've got to keep people off third parties because if Trump has to get to 50% or even 49.5% in these battlegrounds, I don't think he can do it. He's going to want to win again at 47 or 48. And then there are persuadable voters. And who are they?

Well, those Trump-Obama voters, as we know, do exist. There's also people who voted for Clinton in the suburbs, particularly some women suburban voters who may be open to Trump this time. Still don't like his personal behavior, but the economy is working well for them. So our campaign, our nominee will have a very good sense of that. But you've got to look at it as you've got to get enough from each of those buckets, particularly when you, I think, model out Trump's turnout. I think you need to assume it's going to be higher than you can imagine. And if it's not, great. But I think the folks in the MAGA hats are coming out, and I think they're going to come out with huge strength.

And so we need to have a candidate that's able to drive registration and turnout, keep particularly young voters off third party candidates, and then get enough turnout and persuasion. So look at Wisconsin. You're not going to get 250,000 of those votes back that flip from Obama to Trump, but maybe you get 50 or 100 grand. So I think that's where the focus has to be. And we know that Trump is vulnerable with these voters on corruption, on trade and tariffs, on healthcare, on taxes. Do you think that where he's vulnerable with those voters are the same places he's vulnerable with some of these Obama drop-off voters, third-party voters? Basically, do you think that there is a message that can sort of stitch all of these Obama drop-off voters, third-party voters? Basically, do you think that there is a message

that can sort of stitch all of these constituencies together? Yeah, what I'm not suggesting is we have different messages for different cohorts. I mean, the challenge here and the necessity is a candidate who can say the same thing in a rural area, in an urban area, college campus, a retirement home, and have that work. So fighting for an economy that works for everybody,

ending corruption, getting works for everybody, ending corruption, getting health care for everybody, rebuilding our alliances, and not fighting dumb wars. All of these things can work with everybody. And so one thing is the messaging, but I think you need hopefully a candidate in a campaign that's got the mixture of inspiration and organization to capitalize on that. There's been a lot of concern as these debates have gone forward that the Democrats are moving

too far left to win the exact set of voters that you're talking about in the excerpts of Wisconsin or wherever else. Do you share that concern? Well, I think most people in this country are locked into how they're going to perform. And I think that I'm not overly concerned about it because I think once you get to the general election, it's not just going to be what our nominee says about health care, but it's compared to the destruction Trump has brought onto the health care system. I am concerned about the healthcare debate because I do think that Sanders and Warren and Harris, they're all doing a good job of talking about, you're still going to be able to have your doctor and we're just basically changing the way that healthcare gets administered. But I think a lot of people out there, even a lot of Democrats probably are concerned about losing private insurance overnight. So I am concerned about that issue. But let's look at Trump. I mean, so you want to

have a debate about health care. We're talking about how to get everybody covered, and he's doing everything he can to deny coverage, pre-existing conditions, attacking women on health care. So I think there's a lot of weaponry there. But whoever, listen, I don't see anybody on the stage last week who can't win. It's also possible any of them could lose. Like, I think we ought to just plan accordingly that this is going to be a coin flip election. Which candidates do you think are running particularly smart campaigns? Honestly, for me, I won't answer that question when people start voting because that's what matters. Did they do what they need to in Iowa and South Carolina and Super Tuesday? Then there's no bullshit. It's just like, did they run the kind of campaign they

needed? I'd say that Warren's probably the most consistent from a message standpoint. I think she's the crispest candidate. I'm not in Iowa these days as much as I'd like to be, but you hear that most of them are putting together pretty good organizations in Iowa. Now that's one state. And so I think one of the interesting things is who's able to do it in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and begin to plan accordingly for the March states. Because almost most of the country and most of the delegates are going to be awarded in

March. Yeah. So you've got to be prepared not just to do well and execute a good organization in the early states. But I think Warren's probably been the most impressive so far in just terms of like, she seems to have, I think the clearest sense of why she's running. I think she communicates it in an effective way. But she's also now, you know, there's a chance in a couple of weeks here, she's going to be the front runner. And so we'll see how she deals with those spotlights. And that's the thing about this process is, I think it really won't be till

middle of June, maybe even the third week of June, to begin to have some sense of how this may unfold. And part of that's how do candidates deal with this? Of June? Of, sorry, of January. Oh, I was like- Yeah, right. Plouffe drops the bomb of the brokered convention right here. Well, I did have Greg Schultz on my first podcast, Biden's campaign manager, and they're not assessing the odds. It's huge, but they're planning for a scenario. I mean, if you have three candidates emerge into March, we may not, maybe it'll be two. And none of them are getting more than 40% of the vote. You could end up with

somebody, maybe there'll be a clear leader in terms of pledged delegates from a plurality standpoint, maybe not majority. But I think January, the race, we are literally like, candidates are still stretching. I mean, it is so early. I mean, you look what John Kerry did, John, you were on that race. Yeah. We were left for dead at this point in 2003 in September. We were kind of left for dead at this point back in 07. Oh, yeah, that's right. Massive lead by Hillary Clinton. Jimmy Carter.

Like on the Democratic side, our stuff tends to break a little bit late. So right now it looks like, well, it's got to be Biden, Sanders, or Warren. There's no room for anybody else. But history suggests that there probably will be an opening for one or two of these candidates. And do you think that opening is likely to be someone from a different generation, given the fact that you have three candidates around the age of 70 who've been on the political stage for Biden and Sanders, obviously, for decades, and Warren has been a well-known political figure for a decade? Well, I think the rest of the contenders are younger than they are. They span kind of mid-30s to, I guess, mid-50s. But I think you're

already seeing in Iowa. So I don't want to talk too much about polls because I didn't conduct them. I don't know if they're right. But you see the polling even over the last week that's come out both in Iowa nationally. You're starting to see that delta between the polls nationally in Iowa because in Iowa, it's where the campaign's happening. And so you see Mayor Pete's higher in Iowa than he is nationally. I think Harris might be a little bit higher. And they're both on TV now. They're both on TV, which still matters in Iowa and everywhere. So I think that what's fascinating about Iowa is if Biden or Warren, and you could maybe argue Sanders,

don't come in first in Iowa, maybe they'll be able to recover, but it's a setback. But if a Mayor Pete or a Kamala or a Beto or a Klobuchar come in third, that's a massive victory. And so, so much of what happens in this primary will depend on how the chips fall. So let's say we come out of South Carolina and Biden's still doing well, or at least at strong enough position to win. And he doesn't have like Harris or Booker in the final three, let's say. Well, he's probably going to be the candidate that's going to do best for the African-American voters. But if it's him and Warren or Sanders and a Harris or a Booker, so much of this depends on how the chips fall in

terms of who the semifinalists and finalists are. And the candidates really don't have any control over that. So I think that's an important thing to pay attention to is because, again, after South Carolina, this thing's going to happen with such velocity. Now, in 07 and 08, Hillary was obviously leading Obama among African-American voters until we won Iowa. And then it changed almost overnight. And Barack Obama goes on to win South Carolina. I've seen a lot of people saying, OK, well, yeah, Biden's got this massive lead with African-American voters right now. If Elizabeth Warren wins Iowa, all bets are off. Do you think that's sort of an automatic thing that happens in every case? Or was it unique to us? Or what are your thoughts on that? Well, we were an African-American candidate. So I think that that's where like if Kamala Harris

were able to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire and get some momentum in South Carolina, I think she's going to eat into Biden's African-American numbers. Whether like a Warren or Sanders can, you know, I think it depends first of all on, you know, who's really strong heading into South Carolina. So if it really is Warren, Sanders, and Biden, let's say, that scenario, Biden probably still should be considered the favorite both in that state when the African-American voters. But if Biden were to come in third in Iowa and come in fourth in New Hampshire is really struggling, momentum is a powerful, powerful thing in politics and not having momentum is a powerful thing. So that's where when I had Greg

on, he was very clear that they're not expecting to win all the early states, but you have to do well enough to keep the momentum in the balloon. I'd love you to unpack that a little bit because I thought that was fascinating when I was listening to Campaign HQ and Greg Schultz, who's Biden's campaign manager, is he did start talking like, okay, we may not win a couple of these early states, but the media needs to pay attention to the delegates. Could you sort of explain his argument and delegates in general for people who might not understand this? Yeah. So thank you for the plug, by the way. Subscribe or download Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. You guys do better than everyone. Thank you,, five-star reviews. Campaign HQ. Thank you, Pfeiffer. Talking.

So I think that ultimately most people realize that the presidential election is about one number, 270 electoral votes. It's all that matters. We'd like to change it into a popular system, not going to happen. So the only thing that matters really in a primary race is 1,990 delegates. So that's the number of pledged delegates you need. And we changed our rules. So superdelegates won't vote on the first ballot. And I believe that whoever leads the pledge delegates, the superdelegates are not going to overturn that will of the voters. So whoever leads is probably going to win.

every congressional district in the country so that they lose a state, they win a state, they're going to be getting delegates. And I think that- Because the delegates are proportionally- Proportional by state, by CD. So there's no doubt that Biden's not going to go overnight from where he is today to 5%. But if you start losing, particularly when front runners lose, if they keep losing, so if Biden were to lose Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina, no matter what organization he has, no matter what demographic strength he had before Iowa, he'll begin to lose it. So Biden has to do enough, I think, in the early states. So yeah, I think from a potential standpoint, you see how they could run all the way till June

and be acquiring delegates, but that's only if he looks like he could win. Right. And if he's not meeting sort of the standard he needs to hit in the early states. So that's really, and they all have different standards. Again, for Mayor Peter Kamala, it's not winning Iowa. It's surprising people with a two or three finish or maybe a close fourth. I think for Biden and Warren, it's probably going to be they need to win enough early. Yeah. forth. I think for Biden and Warren, it's probably going to be they need to win enough early.

Yeah. Like in the past, like Bill Clinton famously was the one candidate who won the nomination without winning Iowa, New Hampshire. Iowa was not contested that year because Harkin was running for Iowa Senator. Tom Harkin was running for president. He was the comeback kid by coming in a surprise second in Iowa. And the national media was able to carry that narrative to give him momentum in the subsequent primaries. Do you think in our current media environment, you could still get away with that sort of with a narrative victory as opposed to an actual victory? Well, if you look at so Iowa was, you know, because of Harkin, a non-event. So really, New Hampshire was the only event. And he did come in second.

So a surprise second in New Hampshire heading the rest of the calendar in any scenario is not bad. And then, you know, he ended up facing off really in the first part of that prime with Paul Tsongas, who great senator, not a great presidential candidate, strong, and then Jerry Brown. So I think in this scenario, it's harder because, you know, if somebody is supposed to win Iowa or come in second and doesn't do that, they're going to get pulverized, not just by pundits, but by voters. And it's going to be, you're a stone cold loser. How can you recover from that? I mean, imagine if we had lost New Hampshire in 08 in today's social media environment. It was hard enough to dig out from that. I still think we would have, but I think it would have been really, really hard. So I think it is harder. And so that's why I think you need to have a campaign that says we are focused on delegates. We're focused all the way

till June. But if you don't go through those first gates with enough strength, your plans are, I think, going to be more on paper than reality. So you got to hit the mark. Can you talk a little bit about how a campaign deals with the absolute necessity to do incredibly well in Iowa, but also be prepared in the next three early states and the general, because like, for example, it was reported in Politico last night that Kamala Harris is putting all of her chips in Iowa. And she even told Senator Mazie Hirono

that she's quote, fucking moving to Iowa. But like in a world, like these campaigns are raising less money than we raised in 2008. And so how can you run a serious Iowa campaign and ensure that you have built a surfboard to catch whatever wave you have in the following states? terms of fundraising, recruiting volunteers, because we obviously were an internet first campaign, but there's so many more tools to do that now. So that's your main, I think, device to do that. So the candidate's time is going to be mostly in Iowa, but that doesn't mean you're not hiring organizers and staff in South Carolina, in Nevada, certainly in New Hampshire, and in some of, at least in the caucus states in March,

and have enough money to run a vote by mail program in California and Florida and some of the big states that come in March. So it's super complicated. So if you are strapped and basically you're not hiring staff in all those states and you're really naked on March and you bet it all on Iowa and you do what you need to do in Iowa, you're definitely behind the eight ball. So the good thing is you get the card that says you can move on in the race, but you probably won't be able to fully capitalize. But I think for some people that's their only option. But if you're going to be the nominee, you've got to have the organization in the other three early states, and you've got to have a theory of the case in March

and April, and the money, and I would even argue in some states, boots on the ground to begin organizing. And again, a lot of that can be distributed. You don't have to have a huge staff, but you've got to be getting voter lists out to your supporters and asking them to call and say, in Minnesota and in Colorado and in Georgia, you got to be working it. I mean, that's one of the benefits we had back in 08 is we had such active, passionate volunteers. They were organizing even before we had staff on the ground. So it's a great question, Dan. And the other thing, just the race, it's hard to describe the difference between the first four than the rest of the calendar. It's in a way like almost peaceful and calm because you're like in Iowa and you're in

New Hampshire. And then it's like, holy shit. Suddenly there's like a whole bunch of states in a week. Right. And a bunch have early voting. And so it's almost like a completely different event. So the Democrats' strategy around digital media communication is of great concern to us here on Posse of America. You just joined the board of ACRONYM, which is a digital media startup. Can you talk about why you did that, why you see this as such an urgent matter and sort of the work that they're doing? Well, ACRONYM, led by Tara McGowan, just a great leader, is doing great work in a few ways. They did a lot of digital work in the 18 elections. They have started in Virginia and intend to expand this to other states, progressive media companies, so that we're producing more localized content,

which I think we have a huge deficit in our party. But we've also decided to do what we can to try and raise some money and do some smart messaging work in the battleground states because the presidential election has started. There's only one side on the field, it's Trump. And we need to be with voters we've talked about on this program in those six battleground states, communicating to them. Every day, we have to know who they are and the best way to motivate them and feed them content because the Trump campaign is doing it and they're going to intensify it. So I don't want to overstate that importance like who our nominee is, state of the economy, all that matters more.

This election, we better assume it will be decided on the margins. So things like that matter. And if Trump has nine to 10 months on his own to be run messaging and get more sophisticated about these things- And these are like Facebook ads ads and mostly Facebook ads, some Instagram ads. You know, I think you need to let the data drive that decision. Some people still primarily get information from from radio and television, but for the most part, it's digital. And so every day, Dan's great about tweeting these out.

You see these amazing stories about the trade war or the corruption or how farmers are getting hurt or health care. We see them and we're like, well, how can anybody vote for Trump? The voters we need to reach aren't seeing them. So we need kind of a last mile to get those to those voters in a consistent way. I almost think we need, we want to do our part at Acronym, but all of these outside groups need to take on responsibility. Basically, you're the democratic nominee from an advertising standpoint till we have a nominee. It can't just be episodic because the Trump campaign, we had such an advantage in 12 as an incumbent. We had time to prepare for that race, know the voters in those states from a general election standpoint better than Romney, as did George W. Bush, added Reagan, added Clinton.

added Clinton. So the Trump campaign is going to be much more ready for the general election than our side is. We've never seen a president disobsessed with reelection. It's fair to say Barack Obama had more than a passing interest in serving a second term, but as did, I'm sure, George Bush and Reagan, but this is all Trump cares about, his haranguing- He's not running the country. No. So they're going to be ready and they're spending money now, not just to build their list and their volunteer and donor base, but they're spending money in battleground states. So I want us to get to the point where every week we're seeing at least several hundred thousand dollars spent in these battlegrounds and eventually more than that. So that we're basically providing what bridge we can until we have a nominee, particularly as Trump's trying to define the Democrats as, again, they want to kill babies, they want to take your food away, you won't be able to travel.

And we can laugh at this stuff. There are some voters out there who will say, I'm not sure I can do that. So I may not vote for Trump, but I may vote third party. This is incredibly important. I think for our listeners who may not have been as dialed into the 2012 campaign as obviously we were, for all intents and purposes, Obama won re-election in the next six months of this cycle. It was basically, we were written off for dead in August of 2011. And I think our RCP polling average was like 42. And we were at 49 by Christmas,

which was our number on election day. And so because we were doing it, the Republicans were lighting themselves on fire and their outside apparatus, which was spending money against us, but just doing it in fortunately for us a piss poor ass backwards way. But outside groups were investing more in defeating Obama at this point in 2011 than the outside groups are investing in defeating, the Democratic outside groups are investing in defeating Trump thus far. Yes. It's kind of a barren field.

So I'm hoping, you know, actually, actually Acronym puts out a list every week of the digital spend. It's the most depressing email I get. Every week it's the most depressing email. But, you know, my hope is over the next three to four months, we see more and more progressive. And what really matters to me is less the overall spend than what's being spent in the battleground states.

Right. Can you tell us a little bit about why you have decided to become a podcast host and what Campaign HQ is all about? And I also want to hear a little bit about your book, A Citizen's Guide to Defeating Donald Trump, which I believe is out in March. March. Okay, great. March 3rd. Well, first the book. So, you know, probably the question I've gotten most often in my very long, unfortunately, political life is from people out in the country or in states is what can I do? What more can I do? So I'm simply saying, first of all, from someone who's run presidential campaigns, why volunteer work is important, the difference it can make, how you registering five voters in Michigan may not seem like a lot.

if just 2,000 other people in Michigan did the same thing. That's like the win margin in Michigan. So it matters. Sharing content. I think a lot of us, I know I've made this mistake, we get on social media and share a lot of content about Donald Trump, but we need to basically be a distributed army for our nominee. Their health care plans, their tax plans, their foreign policy plans.

Just get that out there. And so traveling to battleground states, making a list of everybody in your life and make sure they're registered, voting early. Part of the message of my book is you actually need to take more responsibility than you may be comfortable with. We can't assume that our nominee is going to be the savior. We can't assume the presidential campaign will do everything right and Trump will do everything wrong. What can you control? That's different for everybody, but I lay out a set of ideas for, and again, it's not all the ideas, but creating your own content. So if you've got a neighbor who voted for Trump, was voting for Obama, take your phone out, film them, put it on your social

media channels. You've got to like every day think through what can I do? And so I think that the ownership, I'd say the ownership we all have to take over this election is even greater than we saw in our organization in the Obama races. I really do. Podcast, well, first of all, the question is, what can I say that you guys aren't saying? You guys kind of have a lot of things covered. No, no. I mean, the wilderness and your notes. So for me, giving my background as a manager, I just wanted to kind of go a little bit deeper on the race. In the primary, a lot of that's about the race for delegates and the operation you're putting together to your question, Dan, to go the distance. So I'm going to talk to managers and digital directors and state directors so that we go a little bit deeper

on the race. And then when we get to the general election, go deep in the battlegrounds. And really, so less about what was said that, and more about really looking at a pathway to victories, both in the Democratic primary and the general election. So in over the years, since you left the White House, you and I have been in a lot of meetings together with political people, and you have always introduced yourself as David Plouffe, I'm retired from politics. Does this indicate a temporary unretirement from politics? Well, it's not like working in a campaign HQ 20 hours a day. But for me, I felt like on the podcast, I think there is a market out there of people who are following these races closely who maybe I can bring a little bit perspective and more importantly, have conversations with guests to fill that. But my work on acronym definitely is coming out of retirement a little bit. I mean, I think that first of all, the digital,

unfortunately, I don't want to overstate this because, you know, and you guys were a big part of helping this. We had a great 2018 election victory. So let's not overstate the Republican, you know, advantage on digital and messaging, but they're testing a lot more content than we are. I think they are more digital first than we are. So that's a gap. But this election may be one of the most important days in American history, not just election history. We got to win. Eight years of this guy versus four. So again, I think for all of us who aren't running these campaigns, aren't the candidate, we got to think through what can we do? And most of that's going to be on the margins, but margins matter.

So, you know, but I also think we ought to be mindful that you don't want in politics kind of, you know, a version of space cowboys. All of us who've done this before are coming back in and saying in the good old days of like 08 or 96, how it happened, like things are changing out there. Things we used to say. So, right, right. When we were in 08. So one of the things I'm excited about in my podcast is I'll get to, you know, obviously have on people like Greg Schultz from Biden, who I know, but also some people who are, you know, weren't even around in the 08 campaign who are new to this and I'll learn from them. So that sort of fresh blood, I think, is needed.

Well, you coming out of retirement is a very huge mark in the pro column for as we head into 2020. Everyone, please go subscribe to Campaign HQ with David Plouffe. It's a fantastic podcast. And can we pre-order the book yet? Not yet. You can pre-order the book on Amazon. You can pre-order the book on Amazon. Yes, thank you, Favreau.

Oh, fantastic. We sell books here. It's a side company. Well, I'm excited. I benefited from it. Yeah. We haven't flushed out the entire tour when it comes out,

but I'm going to go to all the battlegrounds and not just the coast and do some workshops. And I'm really looking forward to it. Well, you said it's the question you get all the time when we go on the road for our shows. Number one question, what can I do? What more can I do? I'm in a battleground state. I'm in a red state. I'm in a blue state. What more can I do to help beat Trump? So I think it's a great question that you're answering in the book. Everyone go pre-order it. David Plouffe, thank you for joining us. fellas for having me and uh we will see you all uh next week actually sunday night we are doing

a show in las vegas as part of the life is beautiful opening for post malone we are opening for post malone sunday night um so that show will be monday's podcast um and we'll also have an interview with samantha power former UN ambassador, and our pal Samantha Power will be that interview on Monday's podcast. And then we'll be on the road later next week. Also buy Samantha Power's book. It's excellent. It's fantastic, yes.

Go buy Education of an Idealist. Okay, we'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior 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 Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nara Malconian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.