Pod Save America - “Your President of Lawlessness and Disorder.”

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

The nationwide protest against racism and injustice shows early signs of progress, Trump’s presidency reaches a dangerous new low, and Joe Biden and Barack Obama remind us what a real president sounds like. Then LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, talks to Dan about organizing and mobilizing black voters ahead of November.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to LaTosha Brown, an organizer and co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. Before that, we'll talk about the latest developments in the national uprising against racism and injustice, what may have been the darkest moment of the Trump presidency and Joe Biden's big speech about race in Philadelphia. But first, you should always listen to Pod Save the People, but especially this week, DeRay, Brittany, Clint, and Sam recorded a very powerful episode that's worth every minute of your time. Later in the pod, we'll also be talking about the 8 Can't Wait campaign, which was created by DeRay, Brittany, and Sam. It's about pushing cities to adopt eight policies that can decrease police violence.

You can check that out at 8can'twait.org, the number 8can'twait.org. You can also support organizations working to combat police violence and systemic racism by going to crooked.com slash bail funds and crooked.com slash change funds. Dan, I also see something on here about a state that you have adopted.

You're in lack of enthusiasm for winning the critical battleground state of North Carolina, which is important to winning the white house, taking back the Senate and preserving democracy is noted, I would think. And so here on team North Carolina, which includes myself, Elijah,

Shaniqua, Yale, and a lot of really, it's a real, you got a lot of, you got a lot of the cricket staff on your team. Yeah. You should probably take note of that and for a second. And so we have to be particularly creative and team North Carolina.

We had, we did not have some big podcasts like the wilderness pushing us for years. We didn't have, we don't have a Monday pod that's consistently pushing us like team Arizona, which has two podcasts a week to push for itself. So what we're going to do here is we got a little creative, hopefully creative, uh, contests we're doing where if you sign up at the link, I'm going to tweet out, which is go.crooked.com slash adopt NC. If you sign up to adopt North Carolina at that state, you'll be entered to win one of 10 signed copies of my book that are sitting,

taking up space in the house I cannot leave. Because the reason I've got North Carolina, other than just my book, which I don't think is a sufficient reason, but if it puts you over the top, who am I to argue, is North Carolina is the state that will determine not just the White House, but whether we take the Senate back. We have to elect Kyle Cunningham. We can flip the House there. And as I've said before, North Carolina Republicans are some of the worst in the country, and they deserve to be defeated. So go to go.crooked.com slash adopt NC, sign up, enter to win, and help us save democracy. What do you got, Team Arizona?

All right, well, now I have to think of some fucking bribe to get people to sign up for Arizona, so I'm going to sleep on that. I would, I mean, go for it. Do me a favor. Look, a quid pro quo to save democracy is much better than a quid pro quo to destroy it. That is a good rule of thumb.

All right, let's get to the news. The nationwide protests that erupted after the police murder of George Floyd has now spread to all 50 states and countries around the world. They have been met in many instances with more police brutality. There are videos all over the Internet of peaceful protesters and journalists being tear gassed, shot at with rubber bullets, and physically attacked as they're arrested by police officers. Dozens of cities were still under curfew as of Wednesday night, which mayors say they imposed to stop the looting and destruction committed by different groups of people who had nothing to do with the protests. And now there are more National Guard soldiers deployed in American cities than active duty soldiers deployed in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But despite all this, the men and women in the streets have already seen signs of progress. On Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison increased the charge against the police officer who killed Floyd to second degree murder. And he also charged the other three officers involved with aiding and abetting murder. Dan, I think the last time we recorded the protest hadn't begun. What has been your reaction watching this moment unfold over the last week? This has been a moment that I've really this country where police violence like this, both what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others, can happen in this country and the violence that we're then seeing from the police against peaceful protesters around the country. Yet at the same time, you turn on the TV and you see millions, millions of Americans of all ages, all races, all backgrounds marching in the streets peacefully, nobly adhering

to the principles of civil disobedience. In doing so, putting their literal lives at risk the principles of civil disobedience, in doing so, putting their literal lives at risk, not just because we're living in the middle of a pandemic, but because we have a president and other authorities who are advocating for state-sponsored violence against these protesters, who are calling them Antifa and domestic terrorists, talking about them as if they were foreign terrorists trying to destroy the homeland. And you're right, the progress has been nowhere near what we need to address systemic racism in this country to deal with police brutality. But progress is happening. And so it is a set of mixed emotions every time I turn on TV,

every time I turn on Twitter, every time I see what's happening in communities around this country. And so I think that, I hope that, I don't know if that's the most articulate way of saying it, but I think that maybe the impression a lot of people are having is this sort of yin and yang between sort of fear and despair. And the thing I keep thinking about is this moment is going to mean one of two things, right? It's either going to end up being the beginning of the end of the set of politics and policies that led to the situation involving the murder of George Floyd, white supremacy in the White House, or it's the end of the beginning of that process. And what happens in this election and the next several months and in these protests is going to determine the answer to that question. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've had this sort of odd experience where over the weekend, um, you know, I experienced what's been happening largely through, uh, what I saw on TV. And of course I'm someone who just supports protests in principle. And so I had that feeling. I also had the feeling of sort of living in Los Angeles and hearing helicopters Garcetti's house, outside Mayor Garcetti's house, and he lives close by. So I decided to head down to the protest before curfew, because we have curfew here now.

before curfew, because we have curfew here now. And, you know, the experience of being at a protest is so much different than the experience of just seeing it or supporting it. And, you know, it was incredibly peaceful. And it was incredibly diverse, both in terms of race and in terms of age. There were young people. There were people who took their kids. There were older people who looked like they had been involved in protests forever. There were people who looked like it was their very first time going to a protest.

And, you know, in this protest, the cops were all there and they were sort of positioned throughout the crowd. But at one point, the police officer in charge sort of called on them to all fall back towards Garcetti's house and everyone cheered and a number of speakers ended up speaking. And I didn't know at the time Tommy was also there. He was like across the street. And, you know, he could hear lot of people talking about their first experience with police violence at very young ages when they were, you know, 11, 12, 13 years old. And, you know, it was like I said, it was peaceful and constructive. The way that the police handled that protest, which is they allowed the protesters to speak and to protest and to be there, has been the exception and not the rule in too many places. And like we have a lot of times the police aren't anywhere near the people who are stealing and destroying shit. Like we saw this was going on in Santa Monica over the weekend that there was like looting and destruction in Santa Monica. And the police were being aggressive on the protesters who were peaceful. And how many different videos have we all seen now? You know, and the thing is the police, they know the cameras are on. They know people's cell phones are on. They know body

cameras are on. They know that the mayors have told them not to use excessive force in many instances. And sometimes they know even their chiefs have told them not to. And they do it anyway. And, you know, what that tells you is for all of the videos we've seen and examples of police officers taking a knee with the protesters. And there have been some really moving videos of police officers hugging protesters and listening. But there is clearly, clearly a systemic issue with policing and the culture and the laws around what police can do with regard to force. Huge problems that we are seeing unfold on our screens every single day.

And black Americans in this country very rightly will say like, yeah, it's about time everyone noticed. We've been dealing with this for a very long time. But to your point about progress, I think what might make this time different is the fact that so many Americans are not just seeing images of fires and looting and vandalism on their screen. They are seeing police brutality against peaceful protesters all over the country. And I do think that has the potential to change things much in the way that, you know, in the civil rights movement, That, you know, in the civil rights movement, like one of the big turning points was most Americans watching, you know, John Lewis and the people on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma get beaten to within an inch of their lives. And that was actually the strategy of King in the civil rights movement to, it was a strategy of nonviolence, but they knew that through nonviolence, they might sort of attract violence on themselves. And when the country saw that, there was change. And I think at least we're beginning to see signs of progress. And I, you know, I think the other signs of progress I've been seeing have to do with changes in public opinion. What have you seen on that front that

sort of made you more optimistic? I mean, we've seen just a fundamental change in views of police interactions with communities of color, particularly African Americans, even as recently as after Ferguson, where now you have majorities of Americans who believe that African Americans are treated differently by the police and suffer at the hands of the police in ways that they are more likely to be the subject of police violence. And awareness is obviously the beginning of solving the problem, right? But we have a long way to go. And I just want to say one more thing about this, which is, you know, watching this over the last several days here is – it is this reminder that even if you are as a white American, that you can understand that systemic racism exists. You can be involved in trying to address it through pushing for policies to do it or helping elect politicians who will do it. You can, you know, believe you're, you know, you can be as woke as you can possibly be, but you still, this is the reminders that even if we, we intellectually understand that systemic racism

is something that exists, we don't have to confront it every single day. Right. And like, every single day. Right. And like, that is a level of exhaustion and anxiety that comes from worrying about your family walking out the door just could end up, you know, it could end up in a confrontation with the police that could end their lives or change their lives. And we don't have to deal with that. And I think one of the things I think a lot of people have been struggling with is figuring out what's the constructive thing to do here, right? What can we do that is more than what we've been doing? And I don't have any good answer to that. And there's a lot, we'll talk aboutist, right? Like there's been a lot, you know, you get children's books, there's a whole genre of books that try to address diversity and the existence of racism and all of that. And most of them sort of abide by sort of this antiquated,

colorblind notion of race, right? And what like Howley and I've been focusing a lot on is thinking, you know, about, you know, what's the right way to talk to your children about this, right? Because even, you know, we have a two-year-old who still this is happening in a time in which she lives and it's, you know, we're talking about it around her and it's on TV sometimes when she's around and, you know, well, you know, I just want to recommend like one resource to parents who are having that same thing, which is a organization called the conscious kid, which, uh, will give you, which has a whole line of children's books

to deal with this and gives people, uh, guidance on how to talk to your kids about it. And it's been, you know, as people who think that we are on the enlightened side of these conversations, been a completely eye-opening experience about how to handle this with children. That's good. I'll be needing that soon enough. I do want to talk a little bit about, this goes to your point of how sort of attitudes are slowly changing on the public opinion front. I think just to give people an idea of sort of the contours of the political debate and the public opinion around police reform. I think traditionally one of the biggest challenges with police reform has been that the police are the third most

trusted institution in America. You know, Gallup found recently that they're far more trusted than the press or Congress. They're basically as trusted as almost as trusted as the military. It's also true that even in 2019, majorities of white and black Americans favor hiring more cops for their communities. their communities. And so there is this challenge of like policing as sort of a popular trusted institution among people. And yet, I do think it's worth pointing out, like specifically some of the changes we're seeing just in the last couple weeks. Civics just did a poll showing that support for Black Lives Matter is the highest it's been in three years of polling, with 49 percent of people supporting the movement, 24 percent opposed. Majority of Americans have expressed support for the protesters this week. The percentage of people who think we don't take racism seriously enough has jumped 10 points just since last year.

The percentage of people who think racism is a big problem is now 76 percent, up from 51 percent in 2015. 78 percent said the anger sparked by the protest was justified. And I thought this was notable. Even after being reminded that some of these protests involved property destruction, 54 percent of people said the actions were at least partially justified. And again, you would rightly look at those numbers and say, those are not good enough, and they're not. But I think witnessing the change from even a couple years ago to now should tell us that those other numbers on policing that are challenging can be changed. And that's the work that's happening right now. And I do

think that like, you know, the point of highlighting progress is not to make you satisfied. It's to make you determined that the work you're doing actually matters and that it can it can actually make a difference as exhausting as it may be. OK, So let's talk about the lowest moment of Trump's presidency, which is saying a lot. Have we decided that this is the lowest? I am deciding that it is the lowest moment of his presidency so far, possibly even any presidency. I think like it is certainly up at the top of the list. We could have a separate debate on that. No, I think I'd agree with you. I think, I mean, it would be as like, I think most people would have said the previous lowest moment was Charlottesville. And it would be as if after Trump saying the Nazi would verify and people dispatched the U.S. military to go put down the people protesting against the Nazis.

I guess that. Yeah. Like, I mean, just I don't. I mean, you can go through history of like bad moments from different presidencies, and it feels like he combined so many of them into one. Into one bad moment. There is not a right answer to this question. No, no, there's not.

The term of Japanese Americans or World War II is not on that list. That's up there. But the fact that it is in the conversation is what says everything. Yeah, the fact that it's up there. On Monday, a group of peaceful protesters across from the White House in Lafayette Park

were cleared away with tear gas so that Donald Trump could walk across the street to St. John's Church, pull a Bible out of Ivanka's $1,500 handbag and pose for a fucking picture. The photo op came after Trump gave a speech in the Rose Garden where he announced the deployment of elements of the 82nd Airborne Division to Washington and threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807, a rarely used law which allows the president to deploy the armed forces on American soil in order to keep civil order. Here's a clip from the Trump speech. But in recent days, our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others.

These are not acts of peaceful protest. looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others. These are not acts of peaceful protest. These are acts of domestic terror. The destruction of innocent life and the spilling of innocent blood is an offense to humanity and a crime against God. If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of

their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. I want the organizers of this terror to be on notice that you will face severe criminal penalties and lengthy sentences in jail. I am your president of law and order. What was going through your mind as you watched this thing unfold on Monday evening?

That it's almost hard to believe it's real. Because it's not just Trump's remarks, right? If you're watching this in real time on cable television, it began with US federal law enforcement tear gassing and shooting projectiles at peaceful protesters immediately prior to a national address. And that is a space that you and I know well. They were in Lafayette Park directly across the street from the White House, which is a place that is famous for hosting many, many protests over the years. It is where citizens often gather to send messages to their president from protests around environmental policies. I remember very clearly during the

Obama administration when the president was giving a set of remarks in the Rose Garden about Syria, hearing the protesters who were arguing against military action in Syria while standing in the Rose Garden listening to the president. It is where people gathered to celebrate after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. And to see that space be pushed, that that was no longer a place where peaceful American citizens could express their opinion on the government seems something that was so contrary to what we at least try to tell ourselves this country is, that it was incredibly disturbing and sort of hard to believe it was real. It was sort of some of the worst nightmares about what a Trump presidency would look like becoming real before our eyes. Yeah. That last thing was my thought exactly, is that we were, first of all, it was just like, what the fuck is happening right

now what is he doing like what is this speech you know and so there's like a lot of confusion around it but as it is as it started to unfold and you're right like that clip you just hear trump but when you watch it on tv there's a split screen of the protesters getting gassed and cleared and and then you hear him speaking and you can sort of hear the commotion in the background and it's this very sort of like eerie um scene that that i thought the same thing i'm like this is this is the worst nightmare of what people imagined would happen if this man became president and and now it's come true. So I think the best reporting on how this all came to be came from the New York Times.

They had a really sort of long piece on this the other day. And it sort of revealed, like, as with everything Donald Trump does, it's like one part dictator, two parts dipshit. You know? That's great alliterations, Mr parts dipshit. You know, like, like, and so like. That's great alliterations, Mr. Speechwriter. That is excellent. No, like that's what, everything is like that. And I, you know, like the further we get out from it,

you look back on it and you hear all this reporting about how like incompetent these fucking buffoons are. But this all started apparently with Trump getting angry about stories over the weekend that accurately portrayed him as hiding in the White House over the weekend and noted that he was even taking to the secret presidential bunker on Friday because they were worried about the protests. And he was so angry about this.

John, that's deeply unfair. Donald Trump told us, award-winning objective journalist Brian Kilmeade, that it just happened to be that a previously scheduled tour of the bunker was happening at the exact moment of the protests. So what a coincidence. As we all know, every president must inspect the bunker. That is part of their job. That is when they take the oath.

Part of the oath is to inspect the presidential bunker on the fourth year of their presidency at a certain hour. It's right there in the Constitution. So that's what he was doing. I mean, like, what was your reaction to the fact that, like like the guy was pissed about media coverage? And so as a result, that's how he ended up tear gassing his own citizens and threatening to turn their military against them. I mean, it it's like we previously said, this is perhaps the natural end result of having a president like Trump. And when you you know, you point out that it's, you know, some part dipshit and that should be give comfort to no one, right? The history

of fascism in the world is driven by a bunch of clowns, like countries fall into authoritarianism, not by virtue of oftentimes some massive strategic plan. It's they stumble ass backwards into it. And that's what we're looking at right now. And we should say this as clear as possible. The Trump administration tear gassed thousands of peaceful protesters so the president could have a brief photo op. That is what happened. that is what happened. And I just think sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the absurdity of the Trump administration, the fact that he walked there and Ivanka Trump kept the Bible in her

$1,500 handbag. And we'll talk maybe about this a little bit, but Secretary of Defense thought he was going to visit a broken toilet. And for some reason, the church government joint chief was wearing his military uniform as if he was on the battle front in Iraq. And it all seems so absurd and so poorly thought out. And it's a bunch of just absolute morons at heart here. But you have to say what actually happened because it should shock the conscience, should absolutely shock the conscience. Well, there's I mean, I think it's helpful to separate this into two parts. Right. There is the planned photo op at the church in their cities under control, that Donald Trump will use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against American citizens, which I think

is, you know, in some ways that threat was almost overshadowed by the absurdity of and violence that went along with the photo op, you know? Yeah. I mean, like per usual, and I have been guilty of this for the last few days, is it's easy to chase the shiny, absurd part of Trumpism and ignore the true threat. And obviously real people were injured and there was a real violation of the First Amendment and basic democratic principles and what Trump did. But we should not be distracted by him holding the Bible potentially upside down and all the other absurdities of that story. But they should not allow that to distract us from what is actually at play here, which is the president threatening to deploy the military to put down peaceful protests in this country that he does not like.

And like, you know, a couple of things to point out here. We later find out that it's or at least the reports are that it was Bill Barr, the attorney general who ordered the protesters cleared away. And apparently there was a plan to expand the security perimeter around the White House that hadn't been carried out yet. And Barr realized this and knew that the president wanted to go make the photo op. So he ordered law enforcement officers on the ground to complete the expansion of, that's what they're calling it, of the security perimeter, which meant dispersing protesters. But because there wasn't enough time to do so before the president's planned statement,

they had the split screen. So you got built first of all and you know a friend of ours um nick shapiro who worked in the white house with us and worked on a lot of national security issues he was like my big question is what the hell is the attorney general of the united states doing in charge of the park police um all these cops like that that what is he doing in charge of all of these troops yeah it's like and now and to this day in washington dc right now there are soldiers deployed in dc with no nameplate you don't know what organization they're from they don't tell you when reporters asked where they're from what branch they're from. They don't tell you when reporters asked where they're from, what branch they're from. So it is basically like Bill Barr's standing private army that he is

controlling right now is the attorney general of the United States, which is the stuff of fucking dictatorships. I mean, we should note that the attorney general is in charge of the Department of Justice. He has no authority over the park police, no authority over the Secret Service. He is just essentially operating as the president's henchmen ordering law enforcement about law enforcement, which he has no authority, statutory, constitutional or anything else. Like the wheels are off the fucking bus here, people. They are. I also loved officials privately conceded that little thought was given to what Mr. Trump would do once he actually got to the church. That was just, you know, as usual with these fucking assholes.

It's like, so he has this plan. You know, he wants to he wants to use the Insurrection Act. Basically, he is persuaded by some to not use that, to just threaten to use the insurrection act basically he is persuaded by some to not use that to just threaten to use it and so they're like well what else you're going to do and then around lunchtime some combination we don't know of ivanka hope hicks jared uh trump himself come up with this harebrained scheme to go to saint john's and the reason they wanted to go saying so saint john's church people the reason they wanted to go, so St. John's Church, people should know, like every president has been there. Usually there's some kind of a service

there on Inauguration Day that presidents attend. It is like a very famous church in D.C. The basement of it was briefly on fire on Sunday night because of some of the looting. And so Trump thought they would go there and say like, you know, this is a sacred church and it was burned by Antifa and all that bullshit and get this photo op out of it. And they thought nothing beyond that. There is no thought beyond that. The thing I mean, my first read of that story and we were texting about it when it came out the other night, was laughter because what a bunch of fucking clownsy people are. And just from a point of consumers of journalism, it's an incredible story filled with amazing tidbits like the price of Ivanka Trump's handbag. Ivanka Trump, Orthodox Jew who happened to be carrying a Bible in her handbag just as Trump arrived is one example.

Then all the Yahoos in the Trump administration insisted on being the photo op. I've never seen a photo op with the White House press secretary before, but Kelly McEnany put herself right in it with the Secretary of Defense and a bunch of other no-named white people. But the thing that is just infuriating to me, as someone who has worked in that building as you have, is we are governed by the dumbest people possible. It is the family of a dumb man. It is the people who would have been cut from the JV team of the Republican Party in charge of the government. And the problem is they live in this bubble of ignorance and insecurity that is so tight that they think they're smart. They thought this was a

brilliant fucking idea. They were actually competing for who would get credit for this idea when they didn't even, it's like they were trying to do the alphabet and they tripped at sea. Like it was just so frustrating with how dumb they are. And like, and it like in this case, it has consequences, but it's also directly related to why one in four working Americans is out of work. And we've been in quarantine for months because

we have dumb people, not just in charge of photo ops, but in charge of pandemic response. So let's talk about the reaction, which was not quite what the White House had hoped. So we had a handful of Republican senators criticize Trump. The rest defended him or gave reporters the old I didn't see it answer. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper have said they didn't really know the photo op was happening. You mentioned Esper thought he was going to inspect a vandalized bathroom, which is an all-time-

It's an important part of the duties of the Secretary of Defense. Again, again, laid out in the Constitution. And then Esper announced the next day at a press conference that he's now opposed to using the military against American citizens right now. He's opposed to the Insurrection Act, which reportedly, of course, because he said that, got him in some hot water with Trump. Military leaders like former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and General John Allen have criticized Trump.

And then yesterday, General Jim Mattis, who served as Donald Trump's secretary of defense, released a statement saying that he was, quote, angry and appalled, accused Trump of being the first president who purposely tries to divide Americans and wrote, quote, under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief with military leadership standing alongside. What is your what is your reaction to the reaction, Ben? I think there is like, I don't really care about the Republican senators who had, you know, like Susan Collins, who had brief, sad comments about this. Like, you know what? You have constitutional powers. Fucking do something about it. Subpoena someone, have a hearing. Like you have real authority. You had your chance. You had your chance. One of you voted for impeachment and one former Republican voted for impeachment in the House.

That was it. Y'all had your chance. Even if you didn't want to impeach him, which is basically absurd proposition right now now you could do something about this. You could use your powers to get – you have checks and you have balances and you have done neither at any point over the last three and a half years. I think the military criticism is powerful. I think it certainly influenced Mark Esper to very briefly try to undo the damage that he was a part of. try to undo the damage that he was a part of. Look, I think General Mattis has been tripping over the bar of low expectations for being a important figure and a heroic figure in the Trump era. But his comments are powerful. They are relatively unequivocal. And I think they could have real impact, not just on other Republicans

who may have private concerns about Trump, who may be able to develop the physical ability to express them publicly, but also on voters who are souring on Trump. So I think that like the Mattis moment is significant. Yeah, I would say that I felt mildly better over the last couple of days watching some people come out and speak their mind about this. And I'd say, again, we are tripping over the bar of low expectations here. But Trump has clearly done enormous damage to our institutions, and he's threatening to do even more damage right now and by trying to sort of polarize the military and and send the military into american cities by treating uh the art you know the military and treating the police as like his own private

security force all the shit he's been doing is very scary. His attacks on the press and the institutions of the media. But I think that over the last couple of days, you've seen that like while our institutions have been damaged and remain threatened, they are still holding up and in some cases pushing back. But I don't know. I think there's there's a real fear that I still have. I mean, fucking Hogan Gidley, the white house, one of the white house press spokesman this morning said, uh, all options are on the table with the military, which is something you'd say about fucking Iraq or Afghanistan or some other country that we might be in conflict

with and not about sending troops into American cities. and not about sending troops into American cities. So, you know, there's still, I have a lot of alarm that, like you said, we could sort of stumble into something very dark and scary here. We already have. But seeing, and again, like, thanks, Mattis, for speaking up now. You had like a couple years. But whatever, anyone who can speak up now speak up now whatever whoever is in a position of power or influence an elected office or not elected office

like this is the fucking time say something and if you've been late in the past and you haven't been in the past like that's fine we can talk about that later for now now you gotta step up i mean yes we should encourage people to speak on. But do you think Mattis has been looking for the phone number for the Atlantic for two and a half years now? I was just, I mean, it is like. It's like open your DMs, Jeff Goldberg. We have people who want to talk to you. There is just such, again, back into the absurdity of like Washington culture, you know, and like sort of like the everything is so insular. And like people don't understand the way like media and communication work.

Like, all right, like I'm going to like call up Jeff Gold and look, we love the Atlantic. Great. I'm going to call up Jeff Goldberg and land my statement there. You know, like there's like platforms that can like, you know, like fucking Candace Owens is on Facebook with like 27 million views saying horrible things about George Floyd, because that's how fucking information travels now. But we've got like a, we landed an op-ed at the Atlantic to speak out against our authoritarian decline. Yes. It's like,

put yourself on video. Let's put some money behind it. Let's put it on TV as an advertisement. That'll get people to hear it. Certainly all the people we're talking about have a phone with a camera in their pocket with access to the internet. You don't need the Atlantic. Take a video, send it out yeah you don't need this is not like the days of like going to katherine graham's house and hoping she'll write an op-ed in the sunday's

paper you know like well as it turns out he could have written just about anything about anything with full of lies and conspiracy theories and the new york times would have printed it so he probably right yeah we haven't even talked about fucking Tom Cotton. I don't even, I mean, that is just, we'll save that for another time. I mean, to your point, like, I think over the course of the last three and a half years, you know, there are people on Twitter, people we work with, people in our lives who often have a reaction that may seem hyperbolic to what Trump does. And it usually falls in this narrative of some master plan that Trump has, right? Where he is like stealing and he's going to move the election date or he's doing all these

things. And when it turns out, as you point out, it's a blend of incompetence and malice always. And Trump's not a mastermind, right? But as we've said before, he's a he's a criminal. He's not a criminal mastermind. But I do think that it's easy to miss the threat because of Trump's stupidity. And so if you do like an authoritarian blind taste test of what's happened the last few weeks, like imagine you turn on your computer, you click on a new site and you read something says something like. on a news site and you read something that says something like, in a country where a quarter of the working population had lost their job in the last few months, in large part to government mismanagement, the president who rose to power on national sentiment despite receiving fewer votes than his opponent, today branded the millions of peaceful protesters to be violent terrorists and dispatched his secret police to put down the unrest.

Like, if you read that, you would cancel your plans to travel that country. You would ask your family who lived there, you would say, leave quickly. The UN would be working on a resolution. The United States Department, under a normal secretary of state, would be writing a letter about it. Maybe the president of the United States would call that person, that leader, to try to tone them down. would call that person, that leader to try to tone them down. And so there is this risk that we, by trying to not be the people who overreact, we are, we do sort of become the frog in the water that's being heated slowly. The other thing I noticed was like, while they were clearing

Lafayette park, one of the police punched a cameraman in the face and it turned out to be like an australian crew so like australia is doing the story about how their journalists were in america and were like beaten by the police like this is can you just fucking imagine what the rest of the world is thinking about us right now like we seem like an authoritarian country right now. It's very, very scary. And we may be. On the other hand, we should talk about the political fallout for Trump. So the Times said that the president's advisors believe that the photo op would, quote, resonate with many middle Americans turned off by scenes of urban riots and looting that have accompanied nonviolent protests. It has not

worked out like that so far. Trump's disapproval rating is now higher than any president at this point in his first term. The number of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track has reached record levels. Joe Biden is now leading Trump by nearly eight points nationally and by about three to four points in swing states like Wisconsin and Arizona. And last night, the Times ran a piece saying that in the Trump campaign's private polling, he's well behind Biden, and they're now starting to worry about states like Ohio, Iowa, and Georgia. Dan, there were some concerns when the protest began that Trump would recycle Nixon's law and order strategy from 1968 to scare off a bunch of suburbanites,

particularly white suburban women. Last night's Fox poll of Wisconsin showed that suburban women are now going for Joe Biden 64 to 29 percent. Why do you think this isn't working for him, at least so far? Obviously, it's early. This is a snapshot in time. We could get a lot more data as time goes on. It is the 1968 parallel is such an imperfect one on a set of very obvious levels. I mean, most importantly, Nixon was the challenger. So when he was saying that law and order had crumbled, he was saying that the Democrats in charge of the government had lost control. Donald Trump is not the challenger. He's the incumbent. He is announcing he's a law and order president and saying that law and order has crumbled.

So he has never adjusted to being the person in charge. He doesn't know how to make a case for things that he is doing. So that's step one. Step two is the electorate is very different. Consolidating a, like the silent majority was another way of saying the white majority in America in 1968. The numbers are very different.

Consolidating the white vote does not deliver you the election in the way it did back then. It's just that the politics are very different. And Donald Trump is, he's basically doing Nixonian mad libs. He's just spouting out out like he's tweeting out in all caps, silent majority, law and order. Like there is a there's a world in which a more deft demagogue could use this as political advantage. But Donald Trump is not deft enough to do that thus far. You can't run as the candidate of law and order when you're the incumbent who has shown no respect for the law and no ability to maintain order. Like it is just, you know, I do think it is impossible to overstate the difference between Nixon as the challenger and Trump as the incumbent, which seems pretty simple. But it's just when people in the country who were seeing unrest, he's the guy in charge. Not only is he not fixed it, he's made it worse. And everyone's

seen that he's made it worse. And to your point about the suburbs, the changing demographics, too, like the suburbs look different than they did in 1968. The suburbs today are much more diverse than they were back then. And in addition, the views on race among white college-educated Democrats who populate the suburbs have also liberalized considerably since the late 60s. So you have suburbs that are much more diverse, that are much more liberal, at least especially on their views on race and social issues, than they ever were in the late 60s, which is maybe one reason why this has not worked so well for Donald Trump.

I mean, the other part of this that's important is social media matters here in two ways. One, like there's a whole conversation about how people who get their news primarily from Facebook are getting completely incorrect information about what's happening. But more broadly, people are able to see, even if for a period of time, I think it's less true now, cable and local news were covering the looting and, you know, sort of the other sorts of behavior disproportionate to the small percentage of activity was compared to the millions of peaceful protesters, you now have thousands of other ways to get that message out. People are able to see the peaceful protesters are able to put it in a context they would not before and that and that is very helpful. You're sort of not know you're no longer held captive to the television news axiom that if it bleeds, it leads right, there's still an opportunity to get a full or 360 degree picture if they choose to do so. What are your thoughts on just sort of the size of Biden's lead right now, you know, driven largely by sort of worse approval for

Trump? Do you think that is, I mean, obviously, it's too early to say we have five months to go Do you think that is I mean, obviously, it's too early to say we have five months to go until November, which is a fucking lifetime. I was thinking about like it's probably as much time between now and the election as it was between impeachment and now, which seems terrifying. It's big. So here's one way to think about it that I saw someone on Twitter say yesterday, which is it's five months. The election in the Iowa caucus was four months ago. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. But, you know, I mean, Dave Weigel pointed out the other day on Twitter that like, you know, the eight point lead that Biden has right now is is much bigger than Clinton's lead at this point, even Obama's lead in eight and twelve. Now, I know you were pointing out that they were still in the middle of a primary. So that's one reason that their leads were narrow. But obviously, this isn't something we should get too excited about. But what are your thoughts on

it? I mean, Biden has certainly greatly strengthened his position politically since the pandemic began. Right? And like that, like the polling average is very clear. The swing state average is very clear. I think the question we do not know the answer to is,

is this going to revert to the mean? Right? If it reverted to the mean means people, we're going to sort of resort ourselves in our partisan identities

where we were, which what I think means is that Biden maintains a popular vote lead larger than Hillary Clinton's, and we remain in a very narrow electoral college situation, right? Where maybe Biden's a slight favorite, but it's very close. Even, it does not seem likely to me that Biden is going to win the national vote by nine points and he's going to win Wisconsin by nine points or, you know, when, you know, he's ahead, you know, tied in Texas and ahead in Georgia and ahead in Ohio and some of these

states like that. That seems unlikely to me. Like someone asked me the other day if I thought that this was the breaking moment for sort of the partisan lock that we've had on this country since, you know, go back to 2012, frankly. And it seems very similar to the conversations that we had right when the Access Hollywood tape came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, like, I think these are very different elections. I think Biden has some strengths that Hillary Clinton did not have available to her because this is essentially a two person race by, you know, and a whole bunch of other things happening. But like these

Republicans tend to be very disturbed by things and then go right back to where they were before. Down the memory hole. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I do want to get to Joe Biden's reactions to Trump and the protest this week. But before that, let's take a minute to talk about the reaction of his old boss and ours, Barack Obama. The former president participated in an online town hall on Wednesday hosted by the My Brother's Keeper Alliance. In his remarks, Obama called for police reform and expressed support for the people who've been participating in the protests. Let's take a listen. I want to speak directly to the young men and women of color in this country, who, as Playon just so eloquently described, have witnessed too much violence and too much death. And too often, some of that

violence has come from folks who were supposed to be serving and protecting you. I want you to know that you matter. I want you to know that your lives matter, that your dreams matter. And when I go home and I look at the faces of my daughters, Sasha and Malia, and I look at my nephews and nieces, I see limitless potential that deserves to flourish and thrive. And you should be able to learn and make mistakes and live a life of joy without having to worry about what's going to happen when you walk to the store or go for a jog or are driving down the street

or looking at some birds in a park. And so I hope that you also feel hopeful, even as you may feel angry, because you have the power to make things better. And you have helped to make the entire country feel as if this is something that's got to change. You've communicated a sense of urgency that is as powerful and as transformative as anything that I've seen in recent years. What do you think of that? as anything that I've seen in recent years.

What'd you think of that? You know, people always say to us, like, why doesn't Obama speak out more? We need Obama right now. And our response usually is that, like, we're not one Obama speech away from Trump folding up tent and returning to Moralago, right? But having said that, it was great to hear from Barack Obama in this moment.

Yeah, it always is. I mean, I'm, I've always been a fan of him coming out and speaking, knowing that it's not going to be the thing that destroys Trump. But I think it just, I think it also helps remind people what a good leader can sound like. Even a leader that, and you know, you hear Republicans say this all the time. They were not very nice to him when he was president. But they'll say like, wow, it's really nice to hear just a normal president who is caring and thinks about people and is articulate and can speak, you know, can speak in full sentences and doesn't sound like he's unstable all the time, you know, like all of these things that we have been missing for the last several years.

You know, and I just, I'm very happy he also focused on, you know, for all the pain that's out there, trying to sort of instill that sense of hope in the young people who are who are out there working so hard, which, you know, we talked about earlier, because I think it can be very easy to sort of slip into cynicism and despair at a time like this, even if you are doing the work. And he's always very good at reminding us that the whole story of America has been sort of two steps forward, one steps back, you know, and and that there's there's plenty to be hopeful about and to continue fighting for. So it was it was it was good to hear him. It was good to hear him. It was what did you think? You know, I think in his endorsement of Biden and in those commencements, people sort of, you know, saw a lot of contrast with Trump. And he really didn't. I think some people probably expected him to say something yesterday and he didn't. I thought it was fine. Like, I didn't think he needed the contrast with Trump yesterday because I think that the moment was so much bigger and more important than that. But I don't know

what you thought. I mean, you know, this better probably than any other person walking the planet with possible exceptions of Cody and Ben is Obama has a purpose when he speaks. Yeah, right. And his purpose here was to speak to the young people who are out there protesting to the organizers because he sees himself in them. Right. And he like he wanted to put what they were doing into the arc of historical societal change in America. And he wanted to, you know, speak to them as someone who, you know, when he was a very famous United States Senator, would be followed around when he went into stores, because he was a black man in America. You know, and he has spoken about that in the context of these incidents of racial violence in this country. And but the thing that I also took from it that was really important, which is reminded me of something

our friend Alyssa tweeted yesterday, which is, give me a community organizer as president every time, which is, as a community organizer organizer as president every time, which is, as a community organizer, he knows that progress is hard to come by and you take it where you can get it, which is why he had very specific things that he wanted mayors to do and he wanted the protesters to ask mayors to do. And I thought that was very notable. We have a lot of work to do to deal with the systemic racism that is driving everything that has happened here. But there are some things we can do right now that will make things better. And we should take those now and keep fighting for the other stuff.

Yeah. I mean, and one of the people who joined him on that live stream was Brittany Packnett and talked about eight can't wait, which is sort of eight sets of reforms that mayors can implement right now regarding the use of force that can reduce violence by up to 72 percent. And he is just, you know, he is always inspiring, but he's also the organizer in him also makes him pragmatic. And he knows that organizing requires strategy and discipline, as much as it requires passion and energy. And, you know, at one point, he sort of took on the like, here's some people saying, voting doesn't matter as much as activism or activism is more important. And it's not an either or, it's a both and, right, you need to be on the streets. And

then you need to translate that energy and that passion into laws and reforms and people that you elect into office. And the activism doesn't end on election day, right? Right. You have to keep pushing after that. Right. All right. Let's talk about Biden. On Tuesday, he delivered a major speech in Philadelphia where he attacked Donald Trump's response to the protest and proposed a number of policing reforms. Let's take a listen. The president held up the Bible at St. John's Church yesterday. I just wish he opened it once in a while instead of brandishing it. If he opened it, he could have learned something.

They're all called to love one another as we love ourselves. It's really hard work, but it's the work of America. Donald Trump is interested in doing that work. Instead, he's preening and sweeping away all the guardrails that have long protected our democracy, guardrails that have helped make possible this nation's path to a more perfect union, a union that constantly requires reform and rededication. And yes, the protest from voices that are mistreated, ignored, left out or left behind. But it is a union, a union worth fighting for. And that's why I'm running for president.

In addition to the Bible, the president might also want to open the U.S. Constitution once in a while. If he did, he'd find a thing called the First Amendment. And what it says in the beginning, it says the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition their government for redress of grievances. and to petition their government for redress of grievances. That's kind of an essential notion built into this country. Mr. President, that's America. That's America.

No horses rising up on their hind legs to push back peaceful protest. Not using the American military to move against the American people. This is a nation of values. Our freedom to speak is a cherished knowledge that lives inside every American almost from the time you're a kid. What did you think of the speech? It was a real reminder that for the last three and a half years,

we haven't had a president, right? Yeah. There is someone who sleeps in the president's bed, somebody who flies on the president's plane, someone who sits at the desk of the president's office, but is not president. That is the speech the president should have given after all of this happened. And Trump did not do that, right? He did the exact opposite of that. And the visuals were really interesting because we've had, we've had to, since the day Biden

became our nominee, we have essentially been looking at him in front of the same bookshelves in this very conscribed environment. And when he's standing there, you know, with the flags and with the imagery and the podium, you could see him as the president that we need right at this moment. Yeah, that was just from a a like a speech visuals perspective. That was my first reaction. It was it was so good to see him out of the house. You know, and just see him at a podium and see, you know, and like, I do think, and you know, we'll talk about this in a second. But I think that's sort of going to be the strategy going forward for that campaign.

strategy going forward for that campaign. I thought in terms of the content of the speech, he really met the moment. And there is, you know, I've noticed a bit of a transformation going on in the Biden campaign and with Biden for quite some time now, which is, and you saw it in the speech, he wasn't just taking on Trump, he was taking on Trumpism altogether. And, you know, he named sort of the selfishness and fear that have loomed over national life for the last three years as two of the enemies we're facing, bigger than Trump. He's also, in that speech, framing the election as a definitional battle over what kind of America we want to be and sort of wrapping history into that, as Obama always used to do as well and as the best presidents do. And so basically saying to people, yes, we are the country of slavery and racism and Bull Connor and George Wallace.

That's part of who we are also. But we're also Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. And he listed all these sort of people throughout American history. And that is a much truer and bigger framing of the election that significantly raises the stakes for people and the urgency. And it gets to, I think, something you've been saying, which is, yes, voters may end up seeing this as a referendum on Donald Trump's presidency, but to sort of meet the moment and the enormity of the challenges we're facing, Biden has to paint a vision of two different kinds of countries for people to get them to go out and vote so that it's not just Donald Trump is bad, but what Donald Trump stands for and what Donald Trump is the logical conclusion of is what we're fighting against in this election. And that our version of America, the best of America that you can sort of see throughout different moments in history is what this election is about, is what we're fighting for in this election. And I think he did that incredibly well. And it's tied to who he authentically is as a person and his personal experiences, right? He is a person who authentically understands

pain and tragedy and how you recover from it. And that came through. I thought it was one of the best speeches I've ever seen Biden give. I thought it met the moment from a view of the presidential leadership we're lacking, but also had a very specific narrative about Trump. It really leaned into the Trump first America last message that we've been talking about. And that's sort of the first time I've seen him make that case in such an explicit way. And I was moved by the speech. And I was, you know, maybe you're exactly right. For a lot of the primary, the stakes of the election were just like, who can beat Trump? I mean, whoever was doing the best in the polls could

be Trump. And I think sometimes the Biden campaign leaned too far into that argument. But this, this, this made, this was a speech that raised the stakes and met the moment of what we're facing as a country. And I thought it was great. I mean, later in the speech, you know, he says, I wish I could say this hate began with Donald Trump and will end with him. It didn't and it won't. American history isn't a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending. The presidency is a big job. Nobody will get everything right.

I won't either. But I promise you this. I won't traffic and fear and division. I won't blame others. I'll never forget that the job isn't about me. It's about you. It's about us. I mean, he comes close to basically Bernie Sanders slogan at the end of that.

And at the beginning, saying that hate didn't begin and won't end with Donald Trump is almost a refutation of his earlier sort of campaign message. But I think it is it is the right one for the moment. And I think he can sort of fill that role very well. I mean, we should talk about sort of like the policy transformation that may or may not come with it. The Washington Post wrote about this after the speech, quote, Biden has pointed towards a transformational era in which government would play a bigger role in carrying the country's public health, economic and racial woes. Far from the incremental administration he promised on the primary campaign trail, Biden now offers Franklin Delano Roosevelt, architect of the

post Great Depression New Deal as a role model for tackling the damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans and put millions out of work, as well as the enduring effects of systemic racism being changed by a newly energized protest movement. And of course, in this speech this week, he talked about some police reforms like banning police from using chokeholds, the demilitarization of police forces and creating model use of force standards. He said in the first hundred days of his presidency, he'd create a national oversight commission for policing and called on every police department in the country to review their hiring, training and de-escalation practices. What do you think of sort of the policy angle in this? How do you how do you read this transformation or is it a transformation?

I think it is certainly a transformation of necessity, right? I think Biden is, I'm not saying he's being, he's putting the cart before the horse here. But I think as someone who has been in government his whole life and worked in the White House for eight years, he spends a lot of time thinking about what he would do as president, how to have a successful presidency, how to actually deal with the set of challenges that he's going to face. And like Obama, Biden is going to enter the White House as the president of a country that looks very different than the one he hoped to lead when he started his campaign. And I think what has always been true about Biden, it is the point that Elizabeth Warren made about him and her

endorsement, which is he is someone who was always willing to revisit his prior beliefs. And he had one view about how to do things prior to the situation we're in, and now he's adjusting that. And what that's going to mean in terms of policy is something that we're going to, I think everyone should stay tuned for. People should be realistic that it doesn't mean that he's all of a sudden going to adopt all of Bernie Sanders' policies. But I think you can expect that he's going to take a different and more aggressive approach. And if and when this election is won, it's going to be incumbent upon everyone involved and all the activists out there to hold him accountable for pushing for those things that they believe we need, that sort of FDR-like presidency.

need, that sort of FDR-like presidency. Yeah. And it is, you know, this entire sort of episode is a lesson for activists and organizers that, you know, one of the big reasons that Joe Biden will adopt some of these police reforms and criminal justice reforms is because you pushed because you were in the streets. And it works, right? Like it doesn't, it's not going to work on Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump, a second term of Donald Trump doesn't matter. You know, you're going to be in the streets. He's going to tear gas you. Joe Biden as president, when you push and you go into the streets and you protest and you meet with him and you push him and like, it's going to work. It won't work as much as you might like, but it will work and you will see progress. And I think it's a good lesson for everyone.

Where does Biden go from here? How does he keep getting attention? How does he sort of broaden and sharpen his argument against Trump and for himself on sort of the whole range of issues? This is a huge challenge for anyone taking on an incumbent president. And it's particularly a challenge taking on Trump, who has the world's largest media platform, cable TV, the entire digital ads economy, all on his side here. And Biden suffered from this. Here you have the person that polls say is most likely to be the next president of the United States, has a town hall event on Monday on the very issue that is dominating news coverage, and none of the cable networks took him live. They took his speech to the next day live, but they did not take that one. Because everyone yelled at them.

Yes. If Donald Trump had been the challenger against an incumbent Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in that situation, they 100% would have taken him live. And so that is the challenge for Biden. And it's going to require developing strategies that we've talked about 1000 times that go beyond just simply relying on the benevolence of CNN and MSNBC to carry his events live. But it's also about making news, right? There was real news in that speech. And he's going to have some big opportunities coming up. Most notably, Friday is jobs day, where the job numbers will come out, it'll probably be the worst unemployment report in American history. And it's an opportunity to talk about where we go from here and how that would be different. And he will certainly benefit from being out of his house. But he now has a wave

of momentum. He has a press narrative based on the polls, which says that he is likely to be the next president, therefore deserves coverage. And so they're going to have to keep building on that. But it's going to have to give people, Donald Trump can show up and get coverage because there's always a chance Donald Trump will stumble into making news by saying something insane. People don't think that about Joe Biden. Newsmakers do not. So he has to have something to say, tell people what he's going to say in advance and sort of work the system to ensure that he's quote unquote making news, which is a hard thing to do because inventing news to talk about every day is quite challenging, as we know better than most. Yeah, it is. I mean, you can always react to whatever crazy

thing Donald Trump is doing, which will get you news and get you covered. But you're right, short of like new policy announcements, which at some point in the campaign run out, you know, you have to figure out ways, more creative ways to make news. I do think, you know, as the race is joined, he'll become the nominee, he'll select his VP. Like it gets a little easier as the race heats up to sort of get covered because they'll just cover every day as what Trump said, what Biden said. But he has handled the response to this latest crisis, like, you know, exactly as I hoped he would, you know, I don't, I think they did a very, very good job.

Yeah, there's gonna be some, there's gonna be some empty spots in the New York Times op ed page for unsolicited advice for the Biden campaign right now, because they have had a very, very, a very strong week. And for all of the hand wringing that everyone and source included have done, we should, they should also get a pat on the back for meeting the moment. Yeah. And look, there will be other times that'll be much tougher, right? The media narrative does not stay, Donald Trump is screwed and look at Joe Biden surging from fucking June till November. Impossible. It'll change 40 times until then. And so, you know, the real test of the campaign will be how you meet the tougher moments when the narrative turns against you.

I can already hear myself screaming about when the Quinnipiac poll goes from Biden plus 10 to Biden plus five and all the stories turn to Trump comeback narrative using the skills garnered from a career in reality television. Donald Trump has turned this campaign on its head. There's going to be a Peter Baker story that makes us really mad. A couple of Axios headlines, you know. All right. When we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with Latasha Brown. I'm joined now by organizer and a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, Latasha Brown.

Latasha, it's great to talk to you again. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. This has been such a challenging time from coronavirus to police brutality to the changes in the economy. I just wanted to get your reaction to the moment we're in and what you're hearing from the voters and folks out there that you were talking to on a daily basis. You know, there's a lot going on right now. We've got to pause. There's a, you know, there's a multiple set of crises that are going on right now. You know, and with great pain, though, comes great possibility. So I think what we're seeing right now is that people are frustrated.

We're seeing this frustration that while, you know, there was a George Floyd murder that we all witnessed in real time, you know, it actually taps into something deeper, a deeper pain of how we've gone years without really dealing with structural racism in this country, police brutality, and all those things that we're, that country seems to not deal with. And so I think in this moment, I think there is a, while it's really uncomfortable for all of us, that that's part of, that is pointing to a real possibility for us to get this country on the right road. That fundamentally, we just kind of keep trudging along like things are okay and they're not okay. And what we're seeing now is the evidence

of them not being okay. And so this week, you know, I've really been, it's been hard to sleep. You know, we've been getting a, just personally, just as a black woman in America, it's been very difficult and hard for me. And also being a mother of a 26 year old black male has been very difficult for me, but also being an organizer. And I'm hearing,

I'm hearing folks on the ground be intensified. Like they're up to here. You know, it's one thing that we're dealing with two major crises. So you've got one crisis dealing with COVID-19. And now we've got this whole other crisis that we're dealing where we feel like we are under attack, with COVID-19 and now we've got this whole other crisis that we're dealing with where we feel like we are under attack, that essentially the American government has declared war on its citizens. We can fix it up however we want to, right? But when you're doing a peaceful protest that is actually guaranteed in the constitution and the president of this country actually sit tear gas just so he

can make a photo op. That's in countries, that's a dictatorship, that's fascism. And for us to normalize that really speaks to how far we've fallen. And so I think in the midst of that, diamonds are cold under extreme pressure. We know that. And we know that the way that glass is made is glass is sand that's been fired. And so I think at the end of the day, what we are seeing, we're seeing this moment. It's a crystallizing moment in American history that we will either go backwards tremendously like backwards right far or we will go forward. And so I think there's a couple of, you know, a couple of key pieces. One, what is giving me so much hope is I'm looking at, I'm talking to folks, I'm looking at the protest lines. It is multicultural, it's multiracial, multigenerational. So it is, it's not just black people, but they're the citizens of this country are acknowledging that there is something fundamentally wrong in this country, and that we've got to fix it. And that gives me hope. The focus of your work over the last many years has been about trying to get African American voters engaged in the political process. And you said something to me when we spoke before the 2018 election that has stuck with me, and I think about all the time, which is that

non-voters are not apathetic. They are making a conscious decision that the politics does not work for them, the system does not work for them. Do you think this moment has the potential to show people the importance of getting involved in politics or could have the opposite effect? No, I absolutely think so. I think the protests and the demonstrations are actually evidence that people are not apathetic. People who are apathetic don't care, don't go to the streets in the middle of a pandemic and put themselves at risk. So what we're seeing, right, the uprisings that we're seeing all over this country, there were protests in all 50 states. There are protests that have gone on, we're like on day nine, if I'm not

mistaken, that in itself is evidence and is primarily led by young people. You know, and there's always this conversation around young people are apathetic, they're not engaged. The bottom line is that is evidence of young people do care. And so the question is, how do we take this moment and really take that energy and direct some of that energy in a way that it is around electoral politics? Because the bottom line is many people are just turned off from this damn process. They don't think it's fair. They don't think that their voices are being heard. They don't see the kind of candidates that they want to see.

And so what we see, we saw that in the AOC race. We saw that in the Ayanna Pressley race. We even saw that in Georgia and Stacey Abrams race, where you had more voters to come out and young voters in a cross section of racial diversity and gender diversity, and also age diversity, people are looking for something different. And so I think that this is the opportune time for us to like, literally hold the parties accountable, both parties, political parties, that we've got to hold them accountable that the people are screaming for something different. And so young folks, I think this is the opportune time. This is how people are getting activated. There are folks getting activated. I can just

tell you, even from Black Voters Matter, in the last three days, we've gotten so many volunteer requests that we've literally got to expand into a whole nother program of our volunteers. Folks are trying to look for how can they be engaged. And there's moments like this that actually activate generations. We know that there was a generation of folks that were activated in the civil rights movement, young people. We know that there were a generation of people who were activated in Vietnam in the 70s around the Vietnam War. This is one of those quintessential moments that people are being activated. It is up to us as organizers and organizations that are doing civic engagement and power building work to really be able to tap into that energy and allow this process to be real for

people so that we're not leading and being tone deaf and just saying, oh, you just got to vote because it's going to fix it because nobody that, because it's not true, right? But what we can say is that we know that voting can make a difference, because voting can make a decision on who the DA is, and this is how it can be connected. Voting can make a difference in terms of who the police chief, who the people who are making these decisions. And so I think it's the connection of taking this conversation out of participation and making this conversation be in the context of power. That's what young people want to hear about, not just the participation part. They're literally looking at how does my participation lend itself for me

and my community having more power and more agency so that the people in office feel responsive to us and our needs. What would your message be to Democratic leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden, about the right way to speak to voters in this moment? I think the writing is on the wall. I mean, I think it's three things. One that I just said, I think part of what we've been hearing this message, just think about it, this message is, just vote, like vote, vote, you're gonna take care of everything, just vote for me and I'm gonna take care of everything.

That is not how government works, right? We're not like, and let me say that I think that there's been a paradigm shift, that at one point it was about getting this charismatic leader that could just get on the white horse and take us on into a political glory land. Nobody believes that. Let's just be honest. Nobody believes that it hasn't happened. It's

impossible for happy, right? Even when you look at, and I know in the Obama campaign, one of the things that I want to lift up that was interesting is while he was a popular charismatic leader, his campaign message was, yes, we can. It wasn't, yes, I can. Right. And I'm quite sure that was intentional. I know you got the inside on that. Right. It was a way of engaging people that it was a collective, us tapping and using our collective power. I think what we've got to see, even from the Biden campaign, is it's not about having the perfect candidate. It's not about this is what Biden can do. He can just beat Trump. But literally, we've got to tap into people want to be a part of the governance process,

that there has to be a campaign that as he goes forward, there are three things that I think you do. One, I think the campaign should be centered around a message that is really about inclusive of the power of we, of the citizens, not just I or the best candidate, and I'm going to save y'all, but ultimately, literally about we. The second thing is I think it's really important that now with all that is going on, particularly since he has been attached to his work around the crime bill, and we have not forgotten about that, and people will continue to raise that, that this is the opportunity for him to lead now. Not saying what I'm going to do when I'm in office, but that in this vacuum of leadership that we're seeing, and I think we saw a start of that. I thought his speech the other day, I think, was the beginning of that. But really to be able to take bold steps and recommendations of what he's going to do to

address the critical cry of citizens around criminal justice reform. I mean, we've got to have some bold steps. It's not going to be enough. Let me say, it is not going to be enough to arrest the officers and think that people are going to go back to their respective corners and we're going to be okay. Because we've seen that play itself out over and over again. The reason why the protests continue to go is because people are saying, that's not enough. That's just a start.

What we wanna see is a complete rehaul of the criminal justice system. We want a complete realignment and we're re-imagining around the police. Their folks are asking for the police to be defunded right now, because we're not gonna use our tax money to actually support folks to kill and traumatize

and harass us. So I think that there's also, from the Democratic part and the leadership, they've got to step into the void of leadership that the day is over of politics as usual. That's over with. That paradigm has been shifted. What we have seen, all the energy is that there is, they can ignore the progressive wing of the party if they want to, but regardless of what do you think about the candidates, what we saw in the Bernie Sanders campaign is there was a lot of energy, a lot of young

folks, a lot of the progressive. You cannot ignore that wing of the party. And ultimately there is a bold, young, committed group of progressive voters that are saying it is not good enough for the Democratic Party to continue to chase after the mythical white moderate voter that has not showed up in 20 years. And so what we've got to do is actually really respond to the future. I think part of that too is we've got to have a party that is reflective of the base of the party. The fact that we are, I just want to just note this, the fact that Black women have been the base of the party and literally the most responsive and engaged base of the party

for the last 50 years and we have not had a Black woman on the Supreme Court as a pick or nominee or a black woman in one of those offices, let's just flip it for a second. What world would white men be the absolute base of any political, any party, any institution or anything for 50 years and there was no representation of their leadership? It would be unconscionable. So my point is, at some point, we're at a reckoning moment. That in this moment, it's not even about saying representation or like one of the things that I've been asking for is a Biden campaign to consider a Black woman as VP. It's not in a context of saying that it hurt. We actually think it brings value, that people are looking for a

party that is going to be representative, that has a depth of understanding, that can bring a broad base of people together. That's where we are right now. And so what I think we're not seeing is, in some ways, you know, I always love to bring the Blockbuster Netflix mode. Blockbuster Netflix did the same thing. Both of them brought theater, home theater, to their customers. Same thing. Blockbuster was in position. They had, they had it on lock, right? They were on the stock market. They had physical places everywhere, brick and mortar space. I mean, you couldn't go down the street without seeing a big blue Blockbuster piece, right? Here comes the law. They had the

opportunity. They had a, they had an advantage, but they were so caught up. Now, of course, this is my assessment, right? They were so caught up and continuing to do business the way that they had been doing business that they couldn't see that on the horizon, that there was this, Netflix was saying, we're not going to have any of that. Like what we're going to do is be able to provide the same service in a different kind of way. It's going to be distinctively different and change the culture, but we're going to provide and who exists right now. Netflix is flourishing.

Blockbuster is gone. My point is we can't do blockbuster politics. The politics of yesterday around let's find this, this, this super candidate that can beat Trump and let's just get behind this message that is going to be a safe message, that is not going to cut it. We're in a new era. We're in a new paradigm. And so if the Democrats are really trying to solidify, and it's not just about winning this election, it's really about shaping the politics of this country going forward

so that it is inclusive and that it is just and it is equitable. And they have the prime, they're in a position that Blockbuster was. They got ahead, they got advantage because people are with them and they can actually make that transition. But it's going to be up to the leadership to see what they do. Latasha, before I let you go on with your very busy day, and then I go explain to our very young producers what Blockbuster is, I know a lot of our listeners will want to get involved and see how they can help you and your organization. What's the best way for someone

who's listening to this today to help Black Voters Matter in your work? So the best way to do that is where you can reach out to us on our website, Black Voters, that's V-O-T-E-R-S, Matter, M-A-T-T-E-R, fund, F-U-N-D.org. We're very active on social media, on Twitter, Black Voters MTR. On Facebook, we actually have weekly town halls throughout all the 11 states that we're working in. We're working in all the states in the South, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and we're doing some work, some target work in other communities. So please, we're actually recruiting volunteers. We've been raising money. We've got a fund set up to help bail some of the peaceful protesters out. We also are doing some COVID-19, but we're literally on the ground doing the work.

We are committed to turning this not into a space around participation, but power. Like even in the Constitution, it says that when government no longer serves you, you ought to replace it or to abolish it. What we're saying is the government is supposed to be other people for the people and by the people. This is our moment. This is our time to take all of this energy right now and really turn it into a vision. Let's reimagine America and really think about how do we build America that we all deserve. And so I just encourage people to please follow us, Black Voters Matter. You can also follow me, Ms. LaTosha Brown, Ms. LaTosha Brown. I'm very active as well. And so we will literally,

we're building troops. We're taking this energy right now. We're trying to take this energy and really transform this energy in something that is going to be for the best of all of us in this country. LaTosha, thank you so much for joining us. And we'll be sure to talk to you again as this election proceeds. Sounds great. Thank you for having me. Thank you to Latasha Brown for joining us today. And everyone, try your best to have a good weekend. Yeah. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.