All Tied up Before the Debate

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 6 I'm John Lovett and Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 2 On today's show, with just hours until the first and maybe only presidential debate, Kamala Harris is out with a new interview, a new policy section on her website, and a new ad designed to troll Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Trump, meanwhile, is out with new threats to arrest his political opponents and incite violence.

Speaker 2 Then later, you'll hear Tommy's interview with Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Angela Olsobrooks, who's facing a close race against popular Republican governor Larry Hogan that could decide control of the Senate.

Speaker 4 Yeah, this one's going to sneak up on people. You should listen to it because it's a much closer race than we want it to be in Maryland.

Speaker 4 And if we do not win that seat, there is no chance of taking the Senate.

Speaker 2 Too many classes.

Speaker 2 Too many close races everywhere. But first, speaking of close races,

Speaker 2 you know what was fun to wake up to after our live show in Phoenix on Saturday night? A 5.40 a.m.

Speaker 2 message from Tommy that included a link to the latest New York Times Sienna poll showing Trump ahead of Kamala by 1.48 to 47%.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I was up early. 5.40.
5.40.

Speaker 7 It's too early. It's too early to be talking about politics.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's never too early.

Speaker 2 That's our motto here. The vice president is still up two points in the Times polling average, 49 to 47, and up 2.8 points in the 538 average, 47 to 44.

Speaker 2 We also got new battleground polls from CBS News/slash YouGov showing Harris and Trump tied at 50% in Pennsylvania, Harris up one in Michigan, 50-49, and up two in Wisconsin, 51.49, which is also in line with the averages.

Speaker 2 Since then, right before we started recording, there's two new polls out of North Carolina that show her up 49.46 in both polls, Survey USA and Quinnipiac.

Speaker 2 There's another Quinnipiac that has Trump up 49.45 in Georgia. There's a morning consult national poll that has Harris up 49.46.
It's close. It's a tide race.
Yeah, it's by all accounts. Right.

Speaker 4 Everywhere. Everywhere.
That's a lot of money on polling.

Speaker 2 A lot of money on polling, and it's all coming. And it's also a lot of polling that

Speaker 2 could have kind of a short expiration date on it since the biggest event of the campaign is going to happen tonight.

Speaker 4 We all set the table for the debate, knowing the debate is going to change it. I don't know why we do this with polling.

Speaker 2 Is this what I'm going to talk about? Right.

Speaker 2 I think in the case of the Times, they do a national poll before the debate so they can go back and re-interview the respondents after the debate, which is a nice thing to do to see if there's actual movement.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 4 Check in with a friend. Check in with a friend, right?

Speaker 2 Who are you guys, really?

Speaker 2 Any insights from the... We talk about the Times poll here because, you know, it is the A-plus-rated poll.

Speaker 4 It's very good.

Speaker 2 By the way, so is Survey USA. Did you guys know that?

Speaker 4 And what's funny is I remember them being made fun of as the worst in 2004. I think they've changed their

Speaker 2 quite a bit, yeah. But anyway, Times is the, you know, it's one of the top polls, so it gets a lot of discussion.
It drives a lot of coverage, much to the consternation of some.

Speaker 2 But for us, we like to talk about it. What did you guys take from that poll?

Speaker 7 My first sort of overall reaction was I was surprised by how many people were either A, caught off guard or B, like rendered scared because of it.

Speaker 7 I really was because I honestly, I just sort of dismissed the national polling average. I don't really care about it.

Speaker 7 And that number looked a little bit off from what other people have and off against their own poll of the swing states because the swing state numbers are more aligned with other polls that have showed Kamala Harris with a couple point edge in the national electorate.

Speaker 7 The odds that we're tied in all of these battlegrounds and down a point nationally makes me wonder what's going on in New York, California, that kind of thing.

Speaker 7 So like, I kind of just put that aside and then dug into the battleground polls, which looked like what you would expect them to look like, a terrifyingly close race.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just so the polls that you were referring to from the New York Times and Sienna, a couple weeks after the switch,

Speaker 2 I'm still calling it the Switch. Yeah, yeah.
They did the Blue Wall states, and Harris was up on Trump 50-46 and all of those. And then just a couple weeks ago, they did the Sunbelt states,

Speaker 2 and they were all tied at 48-48 across the average. They were different state to state, but across the average of all states, they were tied at 48.
That was just a few weeks ago.

Speaker 7 And I just don't believe this, like the electorate is ricocheting like this.

Speaker 2 Right. But that's why there's margins of error in all these polls, and that's why you do averages and you throw them in the averages, and you know, it's a fucking close race.

Speaker 2 Tommy, I just whispered like Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 I know. It's a close race.
I'm just noodling on a horrible world of jokes. Sun Belt and Road polling.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy. Woof.
So this time,

Speaker 4 we've been podcasting since Saturday at 9 p.m.

Speaker 7 Never stops.

Speaker 2 Give us a day off, someone.

Speaker 4 I've been talking to a lot of smart people who look at polling data all the time, public and private. And someone said to me recently, he thinks this race could be tighter than 2020 ended up being.

Speaker 4 So that's sort of the lay of the land for people.

Speaker 2 It would not surprise me.

Speaker 4 And the bad news in this latest Times poll is that people do not think the economy is doing well.

Speaker 4 The Pew poll John mentioned found that only 25% of voters think the economy is in excellent or good shape. The rest do not.

Speaker 4 And Trump is a double-digit lead, basically, on Harris when it comes to to the economy. So that's a problem.

Speaker 4 Trump's approval rating is annoyingly high. 60% of voters want a big change from Biden, so that's a real challenge.

Speaker 4 And significantly more voters think Kamala Harris is too liberal than think Trump is too conservative.

Speaker 2 So that's the bad news in the poll.

Speaker 4 The good news is voters want more information about Kamala Harris, especially swing voters and voters where Biden was struggling the most.

Speaker 4 And Trump is basically getting all of his 2020 voters, while Harris is getting about nine out of every 10 Biden 2020 voters, a little more than

Speaker 4 92%. So those should be gettable.
So she's got some room to run is basically the takeaway.

Speaker 2 On the too liberal, too conservative, one thing I thought about, because I was digging into the CBS battleground states, they asked the questions, who's more mainstream and who's more extreme?

Speaker 2 And Trump was much more extreme to people than Kamala Harris was. She was much more mainstream.
I do wonder, because

Speaker 2 when you dig into the crosstabs in New York Times, Times, Siena, like some of the people,

Speaker 2 like a third to a fourth of Kamala Harris's voters said that Donald Trump's not too conservative.

Speaker 2 Because I do wonder if just in this era, we've like sort of gone beyond liberal and conservative, or at least when it comes to Donald Trump and that Republican Party.

Speaker 2 And you don't necessarily think of them all as conservative these days. You do think of them as extreme, right? Because it's like not like they have traditional conservative positions.

Speaker 2 The Republican Party is totally different now. So that could be one thing there.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I was digging into the CBS poll of Pennsylvania for a bit. I just was sort of like, let's see what's going on in there.
And let's look under the hood a little bit.

Speaker 7 And one thing that really struck me. So first of all, on this sort of mainstream versus extreme question, it's young versus old.
Young people view Trump as more extreme than older voters do.

Speaker 7 But it's interesting that millennials view Trump as being more extreme than even younger voters do. And

Speaker 7 we're crushing it. Yeah, The second greatest generation, as Tom Brokow will one day call us.

Speaker 7 But there was something that jumped out at me that I hadn't seen before, which is if you ask people if Trump is insulting or respectful towards Kamala Harris, overall, everybody says 75% insulting.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 7 But that is true among 30 to 44 year olds, 45 to 64 year olds, and 65 plus, it's about 78, 79, 81. Under 30s, it's 45, 55.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because they don't think anyone's insulting to anyone.

Speaker 7 They just, but that's, but that's really interesting. That's like interesting.

Speaker 2 But everyone deserves to be insulted.

Speaker 7 But like, it just, I just think that like the effect of having grown up with Donald Trump in your face since you were a kid

Speaker 7 is having a real impact on that generation that I just thought was interesting. And one other thing that I was also struck by, too, is

Speaker 7 if you ask Pennsylvania voters, most people do not think Trump would help the interest of women, but 84% said he would help the interest of men, which is a really sort of strange result that's sort of hard to explain when at the same time, 85% think he'll help the wealthy.

Speaker 7 And most, it's like 50-50 on the middle class, which is way too high, and worse on union members, which means that there's a bunch of people telling pollsters that Trump will be bad for the middle class, bad for unions, bad for the working class, but good for men, which is just a way of kind of saying that you think.

Speaker 7 It's an abortion proxy question?

Speaker 7 Well, yes, and also just a kind of natural, like instinctive zero-sum game that if women are more for for Harris and if we all instinctively including men think that Trump is worse for women than Harris and like well he must be better for men or like there's something about the way he's appealing to men that's resonating with people wouldn't it just be that people who don't like Trump think that he's for men and men who like Trump also think that he's for men but I think both of those things are kind of interesting and there's something about like

Speaker 7 speaking like we're so you look at this poll and there's this big gender gap it's in every state it's in this poll especially true among non-college men And there's this way in which Trump is going around with this bravado and this bluster that's meant to appeal to men and young men.

Speaker 7 And I feel like we're missing something around reminding men that one way you be strong is by standing up for women. There's a collective understanding that Trump is worse for women.

Speaker 7 That is translating it to some sense in which he is better for men. It's not true.

Speaker 7 And we should be speaking to men about how Trump would be worse for them, but also that like standing up for women in this election is a manly and masculine thing to do.

Speaker 2 Wow. That's a lot.

Speaker 2 That's a lot from one crosstab. Yeah, that is complicated.

Speaker 7 I dug into it. You did?

Speaker 7 But like, there's something, there is just something about that that jumped out at me. Like, oh, he's better for, where is that coming from? It's not coming from the policies.

Speaker 7 It's just coming from vibes.

Speaker 2 Total vibes. It's total vibes.
I think,

Speaker 2 so look,

Speaker 2 New York Times Sienna poll, if it had just been 48, 47 Harris, which is like a couple voters going the other way in Williams. Martin Harris three

Speaker 2 percent.

Speaker 2 No one would have like celebrated the poll, but everyone would have just sort of like shrugged and moved on. So that's just something to keep in mind.

Speaker 2 You know, it is in line with what a lot of the polling in the last couple of weeks has been telling us, I think, which is, and Tommy, you mentioned this, she's got room to grow, probably more than Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 She's also got more room to fall because she's just not as well known.

Speaker 2 A question, we're going to dig into this in a second, but

Speaker 2 they said, do you want to know more? about do you think you need to know more about the candidate and many more voters said that they needed to know more about Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 I think it was like one in three voters said that. But disproportionate, those numbers were even higher among 18 to 29 year olds, black voters, Latino voters, and crucially, 2020 non-voters.

Speaker 2 So people who did not vote in 2020 all want to know more. That to me is a big opportunity for Kamala Harris.
And for the debate.

Speaker 2 And especially because those are voters that, you know, traditional Democratic constituencies, now maybe they're probably much more moderate and less engaged than your typical black, Latino, young Democratic voter.

Speaker 2 But that does give her an opportunity. Whereas I do think that Trump support is more calcified, but it's also, you know, that's good and bad.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And also, a lot of voters in this poll have heard about Project 2025, and they do not like it.

Speaker 4 So those messaging efforts by Biden and by all the TikTokers who were surfacing this stuff early on have worked. Yeah,

Speaker 7 the other piece of this, too, I think people have been like, well, does that mean the Harris campaign made a mistake by not having a policy platform on their website sooner?

Speaker 7 Like, I find that all pretty ridiculous. Like, if you go back and look at old polls of previous elections, it takes a while for people to stop telling vote pollsters that they need to know more.

Speaker 7 We're just, this campaign is abbreviated. This is the cost of having it abbreviated.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I almost went back and then I realized I wasn't going to go do this.

Speaker 2 But if you did the amount of time between the candidate announcing their campaign and when they had a full policy page up, I'm sure this broke records for being quick in terms of the Harrison.

Speaker 4 This is why this conversation about why doesn't Kamala done interviews is so stupid. Think about like she hasn't been a candidate for more than

Speaker 4 it's been less than two months. She had to plan a convention, pick a VP,

Speaker 4 do debate prep, think, you know, layout, decide on her policy platform. Like she's going to do a bunch of interviews.

Speaker 4 I'm sure she'll do a ton of them after the debate prep, which, by the way, is going to serve as interview prep as well.

Speaker 4 So it's just like we're kind of fast forwarding getting mad about something when she's barely been in the race.

Speaker 2 Like if we are having this conversation at the end of September and she still hasn't done a bunch of interviews, I'll be right there criticizing that. Right.

Speaker 2 You know, it's just, it's just, it's silly to do it now. There's just, there hasn't been time.
And she's got to prepare. The debate is the most important thing.

Speaker 2 Prepping for the debate is the most important thing. By far.
That should take precedence over any kind of interview request at this point.

Speaker 2 Right. No, she is doing interviews.

Speaker 4 It's just, for some reason, the national media doesn't count like black radio interviews as counting in their little ledger of

Speaker 4 which national reporter will ask about

Speaker 2 the narrative of the day yeah all right if you want to hear more about the times poll from a true junkie uh dan did a special quick reaction episode of polar coaster that's out right now and if you're not a subscriber

Speaker 2 you can fix that through apple podcasts or at crooket.com slash friends go be a subscriber if you get dan's polar coaster and all kinds of other great benefits So we mentioned that one of the big findings of the Times CNN poll is how a lot of voters say they need to know more about Harris and her plans.

Speaker 2 Seems like the Harris campaign knows that.

Speaker 2 In addition to the issues page that they just put up on our website, they released a new Battleground ad on Monday focused on the VP's plans to make housing more affordable, ban price gouging, and pass a middle-class tax cut for 100 million Americans.

Speaker 2 But she hasn't forgotten about Trump.

Speaker 2 The campaign is also out with a new ad that's running on Fox News, the Palm Beach media market, where Trump lives, and the Philadelphia media market, where Trump will be for the debate.

Speaker 2 It features the voices of former Trump officials Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley. Take a listen.

Speaker 3 In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again.

Speaker 7 Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.

Speaker 2 Do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation's secrets ever again?

Speaker 9 No. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk.

Speaker 10 Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage.

Speaker 11 We don't take an oath to a king, or a queen, queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator.

Speaker 2 I had never heard that last one was Mark Milley. I hadn't either.
I had read it a million times. I never heard it.
He sounded a little like Joe Biden yelling there.

Speaker 7 Joe Biden's in the room.

Speaker 7 I love a menacing string section.

Speaker 7 I didn't know if it was like, sometimes I was like, is that cello?

Speaker 2 Are we dealing with Viola here? That LEO guy is getting so much work in this campaign. I know, he's great.
He's in every single Harris ad. And I think he was in the Biden ads, too.

Speaker 2 What do you make of the Trump ad and the new policy focus? Seems like two different things there.

Speaker 4 I mean, this ad that we just heard, it's what you call a showby. This is more about driving a media narrative than actually persuading voters in Battleground states.

Speaker 4 The Battleground ads are about economic issues that you hear about in the polling, the cost of living, lowering grocery prices, lowering housing. They take a victory lap on insulin, et cetera.
So

Speaker 4 I like the ad highlighting all the national security figures and Mike Pence hating Trump. I think it might annoy him if he sees it, but mostly it's just to get people to talk about it.

Speaker 2 Tommy, you and I were talking about this.

Speaker 2 I was a little surprised that that's not a bigger buy because that seems to me like it would be a persuasive ad, not just for like decided people like us who don't need to be persuaded, but like, you know, some right-leaning, independents, college-educated, maybe undecided bulwark listeners.

Speaker 2 Like, I feel like that would be a good ad for you. Are there undecided bulwark listeners? Oh, yeah.
No, I don't know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think about it this way. If someone says to you,

Speaker 4 what do you think about Eric? Should I date Eric? And you're like, no, all of Eric's ex hate his guts.

Speaker 2 And when you're playing, then you play an ad with the string section and all the

Speaker 2 scissors.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's

Speaker 7 when we were playing it in the office and it felt I was like, oh, that's like a little bit, like between that ad and the other ad about lies.

Speaker 7 Like they wrote a little bit sort of outside of what we've been seeing

Speaker 7 and feel more about like political narratives than anything. But then it is very persuasive.
And I just find myself just a little bit sort of confused.

Speaker 7 Like, are there people out there that are undecided because they haven't fully like internalized how they felt about Trump when he was president, the menace he felt?

Speaker 7 Or are there people that like get this, understand this, but they've made a decision that he's better for the economy?

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 7 but so it's like, what is the value of this? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Well, we also didn't talk about this number in the Times Xenopo, but they asked, do you want to know more, not just about Kamala Harris, but Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 And the people who wanted to know more about Donald Trump, which was a smaller number than Harris, but the overwhelming majority of those voters said that they wanted specifically to know more about his plans and policies, which I think points to another goal in this debate is to the extent that she talks about Donald Trump, she's got to talk more about the Project 2025 of it all, what he's going to do in the future, because you need to get people to think, yeah, maybe he'll be better on the economy, at least in their opinion, but he's too risky a choice because he might do X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's a lot of people with fond, gauzy memories of Trump's economic record that feel soft to me. Like that just feels like people that can be reminded and gettable.

Speaker 7 And there's just a lot of them. There's just a lot of them in Pennsylvania.
There are a lot of them in Wisconsin.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, I think you have to tell people, hey, in 2017,

Speaker 4 the only thing he got done through Congress was this gigantic tax cut for the richest people in the country.

Speaker 4 And then back in April, he had a fundraiser where he raised $50 million from the richest people he knew, and he promised them that he would extend that tax cut.

Speaker 4 That is the Trump record, and that is what he will do in a second term. Yeah.
Tax cuts for billionaires.

Speaker 2 And I think as opposed to relitigating the Trump term and people's memories of it, you do what Tommy just did, which is the reason you think we know he's going to pass another tax cut for the rich is because he did it before.

Speaker 2 The reason we think he's going to pass a national abortion ban is because he's the one who's appointed the three justices to do it and said he was proud of it.

Speaker 2 So, Kamala also did some radio ahead of the debate. Here she is getting asked about how she'll handle Trump's craziness on the Ricky Smiley Morning Show, which is a syndicated drive-time talk show.

Speaker 12 How do you plan to handle him, his attacks, his temperament, being on a stage with him?

Speaker 12 We have no idea what he might say. How are you prepared for that?

Speaker 13 Well, you're right. I mean,

Speaker 13 he plays from this really old and tired playbook, right? Where he, there's no floor for him in terms of how low he will go. And

Speaker 13 we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.
He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people.

Speaker 2 That's it. Those are the messages right there.
What did you guys think of the answer?

Speaker 4 Not burdened by what has been?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it's probably honest.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think she's probably getting a lot of advice that says no matter what happens, you have to stay calm and collected and let him look like he's the angry one.

Speaker 4 In part because I think as a woman, as a woman of color, she gets less leeway to be a huge asshole on stage and everyone's expecting it from him. So maybe it will bother them, maybe not.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I mean, I think it's good advice.

Speaker 4 I mean, the press loves to cover like the optics and the body language and sighing or saying lockbox too much, or was that made up by SNL?

Speaker 7 I mean, he said lockbox.

Speaker 4 We were there. Maybe it was only once.
Anyway.

Speaker 2 I also think, even if she was a white guy, that's not the political necessity to be tough.

Speaker 2 It is to like, she needs to let people know about herself. This is tough because I heard, I was listening to the Daily today and they had Nate Cohn on to talk about the poll.

Speaker 2 And Nate Cohn said, if after the debate we're talking about Kamala Harris and the debate was about Kamala Harris, then that is a win for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And if after the debate, we're talking about Donald Trump and what Donald Trump did, that's a win for Kamala Harris. And I'm not sure I agree with that.

Speaker 4 That's too simplistic.

Speaker 2 Because I think that, like,

Speaker 2 I get where I agree is that if she spends a lot of time talking about herself, which she should, and she spends a lot of time constantly defending herself from his attacks, then it could get a little messier and be about her.

Speaker 2 And then the coverage is about her, and there's no like Donald Trump moments to talk about. So I get much like the last debate was all about Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 But I think if it's all about just one zinger and put-down after another, but you know, where Kamala Harris takes on Trump and says, Don't interrupt me while I'm speaking and all this kind of stuff, and that gets like everyone on Twitter excited.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's a necessarily a huge win for her either.

Speaker 4 No, you have to go and lay a trap.

Speaker 4 You have a line where you're going to make some attack, maybe about his record, something he's done or said, or some policy, and you have in the can a whole, you know, a TV ad, a social media campaign, a bunch of social, like

Speaker 4 your surrogates, like ready to drive that message the next day. That's where I disagree with Nate.

Speaker 4 If the next day we're talking about something really terrible that Donald Trump did, I think that's beneficial for cum lairy.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, I think what I like about those three lines, tired old playbook, has no floor, not burdened by the truth.

Speaker 7 They're actually all sentences you could deploy a version of after Trump rambles and launches several attacks and then just say whatever you were going going to say anyway, right?

Speaker 7 Like those are all lines that take you from an attack into a positive message.

Speaker 4 There he goes again. Right.

Speaker 7 Right. And like, you know, Trump goes on some meandering, rambling thing that nonetheless has a few awful lines that are untrue about immigration, about whatever issue.
She could take that, say that.

Speaker 7 That is the contrast that comes out of the debate. Great.
If that's about how Kamala Harris responded to Trump's attacks, great.

Speaker 2 I think that if I was her team and if I was Kamala Harris, I'd want to keep in mind contrast, contrast, contrast all the time so that every single thing he says, like your borders are, it's the worst border in history.

Speaker 2 All the, you know, it's an invasion. They killed a bunch of Americans.
He'd be like, okay, here's what you need to know.

Speaker 2 Joe Biden and I took an action to shut down the border, and now we want to pass this plan that would be the best border security ever. And what do you want to do? You killed the plan, right?

Speaker 2 Because it's an issue for your campaign, right? And when I'm president, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. You just wanted this as a political issue, right?

Speaker 2 And you do this on every single issue, no matter what he says.

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Speaker 2 So, no surprise here, but Trump's rolling into the debate without driving any particular message other than whatever grievance happens to be floating through his addled mind at a given moment.

Speaker 2 On Saturday night, he truthed a long screed promising, quote, long-term prison sentences for the many people he says are already at at work trying to cheat on the election which he specified includes quote lawyers political operatives donors illegal voters and corrupt election officials those involved in unscrupulous behavior he added will be sought out caught and prosecuted at levels unfortunately never seen before in our country it is unfortunate then at a rally in wisconsin on saturday he brought up colorado for some reason saying this about immigration They are radicals headed up by a radical governor in Colorado that has no clue how to solve this influx of crime into his state.

Speaker 19 And by the way, Colorado is one state. It's much worse in other states.
But in Colorado, they've taken over. I mean, in Colorado, they're so brazen they're taking over sections of the state.

Speaker 19 And, you know, getting them out will be a bloody

Speaker 19 story.

Speaker 2 Bloody story. So, Tommy, you wanted to talk about what's going on with the Colorado thing?

Speaker 4 So, you have to speak right-wing media to understand what he's talking about there. So, this is about a story happening a Royal

Speaker 2 film host for Steve Banner.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, he's doing his time. I know.

Speaker 4 As he should. So there's a landlord in Aurora, Colorado.
They claimed that a Venezuelan gang called Trende Aragua had taken over apartment buildings in the city.

Speaker 4 They said they chased off the management and they started shaking down renters for money.

Speaker 4 There's also some videos online of like heavily armed guys at a door, which is allegedly in this apartment building. So there is some truth to like violent people being in this building.

Speaker 4 The story was kind of like being talked about in local press in Colorado, but then it blew up in the national news when the New York Post covered it, and they said they framed it as sleepy suburb overtaken by gangs.

Speaker 4 Now, Aurora is basically part of like the Denver area, but whatever. And so the truth is Aurora police say they've identified 10 gang members and arrested six of them.

Speaker 4 And the mayor of Denver says that Trende Aragua has a much smaller presence in the city than like the Crips and the Bloods and other American gangs.

Speaker 4 And then also, you know, a bunch of local news outlets went to these buildings. They talked to people there.
They went in and out. The cops are going in and out.

Speaker 4 They're clearly not like whatever controlled by gangs means. These apartment buildings are not controlled by gangs.
What residents are really worried about is these, they're rented by slumlords.

Speaker 4 The utilities don't work.

Speaker 4 No one's picking up the trash. Like the residents are worried about the people who own the buildings, not these gangs.
So that's where this is coming from.

Speaker 4 And then the reason this has become a thing for Trump is remember the Lake and Riley case, the woman who was murdered in Georgia?

Speaker 4 Her killer was apparently connected to this gang somehow, which is based out of Venezuela.

Speaker 4 So Trump and these right-wing figures are folding this random pair of apartment buildings in Colorado into their broader immigration and crime narrative to make it one big thing.

Speaker 4 And so again, like, it's just another reminder that there's this rolling conversation in right-wing media that we're not really always aware of, but Trump will probably bring it to the debate.

Speaker 4 And this story, as dishonest and sort of confusing as it is, is just like the latest example of how immigration is not just something that's getting talked about all the time in border communities.

Speaker 4 It is popping up all over the country in communities like Aurora, Colorado, because of stories like this and, you know, allegations about Venezuelan gangs.

Speaker 2 Or the conspiracy that was all over the news today that there are Haitian immigrants in

Speaker 2 Ohio town that are eating cats. Yeah.
Not true.

Speaker 4 Elon Musk question that one.

Speaker 2 Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Vance, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan.

Speaker 2 I would not be surprised if that gets brought up at Tuesday Nights Debate.

Speaker 7 I think you two are in denial, and the Rocky Mountains have fallen under South American Sharia law. That is where we're at.

Speaker 4 Aurora has fallen.

Speaker 7 I found out about the... So I

Speaker 4 was

Speaker 7 scrolling on TikTok as one does, and someone pushing this conspiracy just popped up in my feed like normally.

Speaker 7 It was somebody saying, you know, the mainstream media is not talking about what's going on in Aurora, Colorado. It took me like half an hour to untangle what this was.

Speaker 2 I mean, the political strategy here from Trump is he wants his deportation plans to be associated with, like, I'm deporting people who are all violent criminals and they're overtaking our country, stuff like that, and not the idea that a real mass deportation effort with the fact that there are 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants here would necessarily involve like like a massive police force that, as Trump has said, would be broader than police, would be National Guard, military, knocking on doors, raiding workplaces, offices, and people, undocumented people who've been here for decades would be ripped apart from their families and deported to countries where many of them haven't been for decades, if not ever.

Speaker 2 And the entire operation would be just like terrifying and unbelievably destabilizing to the whole country. And I think that, you know, if it comes up, hopefully Kamala Harris will do that.

Speaker 2 The reason he talks about a bloody story, too, is because there is this history of Trump talking about immigration and whether it's using law enforcement, National Guard, whether it's immigration, whether it's crime, is it always necessarily has to be violent, right?

Speaker 2 And so he's just like bringing up this violence again.

Speaker 7 Do you think there's

Speaker 7 a pitch? Do you think there's value to in the debate, Kamala Harris saying there is a bipartisan border bill. We can sign it today.

Speaker 7 A bunch of Republicans support it, a bunch of Democrats support it.

Speaker 7 You talk about the board all the time. Will you join me in saying we ought to pass this bipartisan border bill? You told some of your friends to hold it up.
That's a crap.

Speaker 2 That's a crap bill. That's not going to do anything.
That's a fake bill. So you won't support it.
You're Republican.

Speaker 2 As soon as I get back in there, I'll shut down the border. I had the border shut down when I was there, too.
I'll do it again. Everyone knows that I'm going to be stronger on the border than you.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because I think their argument with the bill was it allowed X number of asylum candidates per day at a cross, and he wants that number to be zero.

Speaker 2 I think she's just going to say, like, this is my plan. We would have, we had, you know, James Lankford, we had to do that anyway, really conservative Republican senators.

Speaker 7 All your Republican friends are against the border. I wouldn't mind a little bit of a fight about that.

Speaker 2 No, I don't know. I wouldn't either.

Speaker 2 So there was a lot of Twitter consternation that the long prison sentence threat for his political adversaries and the bloody story comments didn't get more coverage, though I read about them in just about every major media outlet.

Speaker 2 But, you know, the essence of the criticism was if only more voters knew about these things, the race wouldn't be as close. What do you guys think?

Speaker 7 I just

Speaker 7 I feel like we have been through a decade of Donald Trump saying dangerous, unhinged, violent, vile, anti-democratic, un-American things.

Speaker 7 And here we are with his ceiling and his floor right where they've been. And maybe there's some truth to it, right?

Speaker 7 Maybe there is some truth that there are people that aren't paying close enough attention, that are undecided, that if they knew about this, maybe it would help sway them. I don't know.

Speaker 7 But I just know that it's very hard to reach those people.

Speaker 7 And what a lot of those undecided voters are telling pollsters is not, oh, I need to know more about where Trump stands on prosecuting his enemies. It's about inflation.
It's about the economy.

Speaker 7 Like you pointed out these numbers. The numbers from Pennsylvania are bleak.
70% of people say the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Speaker 7 70% of independents talk about the national and Pennsylvania economy as being very or somewhat bad. Like, that is what is driving this election.
That is where our problem is.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, yeah, I think she had like the

Speaker 4 first priority of the debate is tell an economic story, talk about what you're going to do to help people. I do think she can find some time to lay a trap and

Speaker 4 maybe highlight some of this violent stuff. Something he said on true social, have an ad ready, you know, backstop it with the big messaging push.
I mean, that's less about the night of debate.

Speaker 4 Like it's sort of what people see than the next day spin and and coverage and just making sure it's bad for him. You can kind of do both.

Speaker 2 I also think you got to make it, I mean, I hate to say this, but I don't think most voters are going to be like, oh, Trump's going to prosecute some Democratic officials he doesn't like.

Speaker 2 I think there's a lot of people who don't think that's a good idea, right? Right. But you got to make it personal for people.

Speaker 2 And I do, if she does bring it up, I think it's more like, would you like to see army tanks in the streets of your community and the American military arresting people that Donald Trump just happens not to like?

Speaker 2 Is that the kind of country you want? Like there's a, there's painting a picture for people that I don't think Democrats have necessarily done yet.

Speaker 7 I also think like it goes to the point we've been making over and over again, which is like, look at what Donald Trump focuses on. Look at what he cares about.
He's going to talk about

Speaker 7 spend all his time talking about his enemies, going after his opponents, people that have insulted him, hurt his feelings. Revenge.

Speaker 7 When I'm president, you never have to worry about my feelings.

Speaker 7 You have to worry about his feelings. You'll never have to worry about mine.
I'll just be fighting for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree with that. Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard did a call with reporters on Monday.
Wild sentence to say,

Speaker 2 where they said that Trump's debate strategy, because they've both been prepping him for the debate, Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, they said that Trump's debate strategy is to make Harris, quote, own every Biden policy decision as well as her earlier policy stances.

Speaker 2 Jonathan Chait wrote a piece today titled, Kamala Harris Should Cut Joe Biden Loose, where he basically argues that, yes, that is going to be the debate strategy, and so she should just unburden herself

Speaker 2 from Joe Biden. Do you guys think she can or should do that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, come on, pot save America.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 7 we've been unburdened here for quite some time.

Speaker 7 So, first of all, two points about this. One, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gates prepping Trump for the debate really reminds me of the hyenas in a strategy session with Scar from the Lion King.

Speaker 2 It's like, look,

Speaker 7 what a vulgar and awful group of people.

Speaker 4 How desperate is Tulsi to just be in the news still, to do this?

Speaker 4 Democratic Congresswoman to this.

Speaker 2 My second point and more important point is

Speaker 7 what's funny is I was thinking about it. It's like, what does Kamala say,

Speaker 7 you know, substantively about Joe Biden? Like, how do you strike that balance? And you see a lot of people making the same point, which is we've made a lot of progress. There's more to do.

Speaker 7 Here's forward. Here's the contrast.
I think that's like the obvious frame everybody kind of recognizes is sort of where you're headed. But I was thinking about this.

Speaker 7 It's like, well, what do you get from going a little further? And what you get is a debate about whether or not Kamala Harris has done enough to distance herself from Joe Biden.

Speaker 7 And I just don't think that that's the kind of conversation you want to have coming out of the debate.

Speaker 2 Even before you get to what do you get from it, my question is,

Speaker 2 where do you actually distance yourself from a decision that he has made, right? We have been obviously critical of Joe Biden here, but

Speaker 2 people's main problems with Joe Biden, voters' main problems with Joe Biden is number one, his age, which, of course.

Speaker 2 Number two, that the economy and inflation has not come down as quickly.

Speaker 2 We would also say that that is an unfair criticism of Joe Biden because he doesn't control this and the steps that he has taken have been quite good for people, middle class people, working class people, poor people.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 if she's asked about inflation in the economy, what decision that Joe Biden made does she point to to say that she didn't agree with it? And I think the same is true on the border.

Speaker 2 So I don't.

Speaker 7 I don't actually agree with that in part because I actually think that we've made progress. There's more to do.

Speaker 7 Like, I do not think saying something like this is a good idea, but like Joe Biden couldn't get it done. I will.
There are steps to get what done.

Speaker 7 Bringing down costs or passing a child tax credit or a host of other things. I don't think it's a good thing to say.
I don't think it's a good rhetorical argument to make.

Speaker 7 Just saying, like, if you wanted to say, you could be, you could be critical of the Biden administration for not getting some of the steps done that you would do in the next few years.

Speaker 2 Oh, I don't think you can do that. I don't either.

Speaker 2 No, that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't think you, but, like, she couldn't, she can't say that Joe Biden couldn't pass this.

Speaker 7 I know. I don't think she can.
I don't think she should. I'm saying if you wanted to create distance from Joe Biden, I think that's what it would look like.
I don't think it's a good thing to do.

Speaker 4 I think she's already doing it, though.

Speaker 4 Because, I mean, I think when pressed on the economy, what you would get from Biden is sort of a litany of all the things he's done and his accomplishments and how he deserves more credit for them.

Speaker 4 She is already not doing that and saying we've done X, but obviously there's much more work to do on costs, on housing, on this. And look, 60% of voters want to change from Biden.

Speaker 4 I think, you know, like, you're right. She can't, she's not going to be like, Joe was wrong to get out of Afghanistan.
I would have kept us there. Like, that's never going to happen.

Speaker 4 But it is like tonal kind of emphasis thing where she, I think, has just to be willing to be like, yeah, well, we, we didn't, we didn't accomplish that as much as I would have liked to, and we're going to do more.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Afghanistan was the one that I was actually wondering about is that it's not, it was obviously like a bungled exit.

Speaker 2 And he is the, and on basically on any foreign policy thing, he is the commander in chief, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I think on some of the legislative legislative stuff, it's just not believable that she could create distance from herself on domestic policy because like she was in the room and she was like negotiating out of that stuff.

Speaker 2 I'm wondering on the foreign policy stuff, is there any way to create more room on some of this stuff?

Speaker 2 Or when she gets tagged with when he goes after her on Afghanistan, which he probably will, like, what do you even say to that?

Speaker 4 I mean, I just think saying I disagreed with Joe in Afghanistan is just a bad answer when there's a really good one sitting in front of you, which is, hey, Donald Trump, you negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan and your plan that you agreed to with the Taliban, who you fucking invited to Camp David on 9-11, would have gotten us out earlier.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think, honestly, I think the way to create distance is just to not be defensive like Biden would be, because he just came at all of these criticisms just from an extreme stance, extreme posture of defensiveness.

Speaker 2 And she, at least on the economy so far, has not had that same stance.

Speaker 7 I do think that there's like some version of like, I'm proud to serve with Joe Biden. I'm proud of the progress we've made under Joe Biden.

Speaker 7 And I know sometimes you forget you're not debating Joe Biden, but I'm Kamal Harris. You know, I think something like that

Speaker 2 would do it. That would do it.
All right, before we go to break, the three of us did go back and dissect hours of Kamala Harris' debate footage in preparation for Tuesday night.

Speaker 2 And we have decided the most critical moment in the VP's political career took place during her 2016 Senate primary debate against Loretta Sanchez. Here it is.

Speaker 10 Ms. Harris,

Speaker 10 you have a minute and a half.

Speaker 10 You have a minute and a half, Ms. Harris.

Speaker 20 So there's a clear difference between the candidates in this race.

Speaker 3 There definitely is.

Speaker 5 And I think the voters will make that decision.

Speaker 2 Now, for those of you who are just listening, highly recommend you check out the YouTube version of the show where you will see that Loretta Sanchez in that pause inexplicably was dabbing.

Speaker 2 for no good reason. Remember, dabbing? Why did she do that? Why did she?

Speaker 7 She went and, like, she, she, like, like, it was sort of a mic drop?

Speaker 2 It was crazy.

Speaker 4 Do you want to know why? Why? According to a 2016 report by the Sacramento B, Sanchez got the dabbing idea from her makeup artist's nine-year-old daughter.

Speaker 2 I was not prepared for that.

Speaker 4 This little girl comes with her mom, the makeup artist, to Loretta Sanchez's house. She's doing her homework.
They start chatting. Somehow, her dance class had come up.

Speaker 4 I guess the little girl had just come from dance class. She shows Loretta Sanchez how to dab.

Speaker 2 Love it, could you dab for us for the YouTube server on the other side? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Nice try.

Speaker 4 And Loretta Sanchez said to the little girl, I am going to use that at my debate. So they practiced a couple times.
She refined her dab. The rest is history.

Speaker 2 That's kind of sweet. But in what context?

Speaker 2 Why do you use a dab like that? Here's the context. I think we're all forgetting

Speaker 4 what a big deal the dab was in 2015. Because it started in Atlanta, it came out of a hip-hop scene there.
But then Cam Newton.

Speaker 7 History of fucking dabbing now.

Speaker 4 Cam Newton, who is

Speaker 4 Google things before the show.

Speaker 2 Give it a shot.

Speaker 7 Now we're on serial colon dabbing.

Speaker 2 The Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, who went to the Super Bowl that year, he's NFL MVP.

Speaker 4 He was dabbing all the time. Guys, you don't remember Hillary Clinton dabbed on Ellen?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do. Remember that? How did that go

Speaker 2 to Trap Queen? That's the song they were listening to. That's right, right.

Speaker 7 Kiss of Death, the dab.

Speaker 2 Pokemon go to the polls. Yeah, after she did.

Speaker 4 Charlemagne tweeted,

Speaker 4 shaking my head, that's it. I'm going with Bernie Sanders.
That's how that went over.

Speaker 2 So don't dab. You know what, though?

Speaker 2 On a more serious note, Kamala Harris's reaction to the dab there, perfect. Yes.

Speaker 2 That could be a reaction that she gives to a lot of what Donald Trump does. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 2 Loretta Sanchez dabbing there, it's not that much crazier than some of the shit Donald Trump does. Not most of it, but not some of it.

Speaker 7 You're a normal person.

Speaker 7 What would a normal person do in response to being in a room with Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 Not just be like, what the fuck? Yeah, you wouldn't wind up and unleash some zinger, right, that puts him in his place. You'd just be like, what the fuck?

Speaker 7 I'm going to call you dapping duck

Speaker 2 just a dab will do you donald jesus man what else we got glad we're not in debate prep when we come back from the break you'll hear tommy's conversation from last thursday with angela ulserbrooks our senate nominee in maryland about why the democrats' senate hopes make him down to a blue state yikes but before we get to the interview two quick things first speaking of the debate our friends at the pod discord community is going to be holding a subscriber live chat where you can process your debate feelings and anxieties with fellow cricket listeners in real time isn't that fun head to crooked.com slash friends to sign up for access and other subscriber exclusive content.

Speaker 2 Also, the first two episodes of Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD, are out now.

Speaker 2 From Wondry, Crooked Media, and Push Black, Empire City digs into the hidden history of the country's largest police force, from its roots in slavery to the everyday people who resisted every step of the way.

Speaker 2 It's hosted by Peabody, award winner, Chenjirai Kuminika, and it's a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the true origins of the badge and to contextualize the power it holds today.

Speaker 2 Just last week, the FBI raided the NYPD Commissioner's home as part of a corruption investigation, so this story couldn't be more relevant as we continue to grapple with the issue of policing.

Speaker 2 New episodes drop every Monday. Follow Empire City on the Wonder app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 When we come back, Angela also brooks.

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Speaker 4 Joining us today in studio in Los Angeles here is Prince George's County Executive and Democratic nominee for Senate in Maryland, Angela Alsselbrooks.

Speaker 22 Great to meet you. Thank you.
So great to meet you. And thank you so much for having me on on the show.

Speaker 4 Honestly, it is truly our pleasure. And this is a very important race.
And I just want to sort of set the stage for why.

Speaker 4 So I bet listeners think Maryland, Blue State, they think Democrats win Senate seats there handily. And I want to make sure they understand that this year, this is a dogfight.

Speaker 4 This is a really tight race. I think the AARP poll in late August said it was a dead heat.
And Democrats need this seat.

Speaker 4 to have any hope of controlling the Senate. So folks have to pay attention and frankly, do what you can to help out to make sure that we win your race.

Speaker 4 Your opponent is Maryland governor, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan. He's got high name ID.
He has worked hard to distance himself from Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 I think we can talk about whether you think that's been successful or not. Yeah.
But he's getting a big chunk of Democratic crossover voters.

Speaker 4 He's currently getting a bunch of independent voters in these polls. And the first question is just, you know, how do you think we can win these Democrats and independents back?

Speaker 22 Well, I want to level seg go back to what you you said in the beginning, and that is to emphasize again that the stakes in this election are so high.

Speaker 22 And unlike what we've seen in past years, Maryland is now like the center of this race.

Speaker 22 It is a race that Mitch McConnell said Maryland, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were the states that he thought he had the best chance of flipping red. And so he picked this state.

Speaker 22 He recruited my opponent, who is a governor, two-term governor, who left office with an above 70% approval rating for the time.

Speaker 22 And well, you know what, it is, and we can talk about that a bit. He had a Democratic legislature that basically kept him in line.
We had a veto-proof majority in the legislature.

Speaker 22 And so the case is that this is a very competitive race. As you mentioned, just a couple of weeks ago, we were in a dead heat in the race.

Speaker 22 And it is one that will control the Senate, that will determine who controls the Senate at a time where we understand that the two views of America couldn't be any more different.

Speaker 22 First of all, when we think about gun violence or reproductive freedom, when we think about so many issues, we couldn't be any different.

Speaker 22 And we are going to elect Kamala Harris as the president of the United States, and we absolutely must give her a majority in the Senate so that she can get things done, appoint Supreme Court justices.

Speaker 22 So this is a really, really important race.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a huge, huge race. And so, you know, I've heard you talk about how

Speaker 4 Larry Hogan, you just mentioned he was kept in check by the legislature, Democratic legislature, but you said he wanted to do things to limit reproductive freedom, that he wanted to make it easier to get guns, long guns in particular.

Speaker 4 Can you just explain his record on those two issues?

Speaker 22 Yeah, let's talk about what he's already done. As governor, just two years ago, I think that's important.

Speaker 22 In 2022, he vetoed abortion care legislation in the state of Maryland that would have expanded abortion access across the state.

Speaker 22 And when he was overridden, he withheld the funding until he went out of office and Governor Moore came into office.

Speaker 22 He's a person who at the beginning of this race in his primary election refused to say that he would codify in federal law women's right to choose.

Speaker 22 When he was questioned very directly this year about this issue, he said, quote, I refuse to speculate on any piece of legislation.

Speaker 22 He has since then, you know, conveniently after the primary, said that he would, he proclaimed himself, bless his heart, pro-choice now.

Speaker 22 But we already know what he's done.

Speaker 22 And we know that no matter what he says in this moment you know i can't do it whatever he says we know that he would empower a majority that has already declared war on a woman's right to choose that he would be empowering mitch mccono and ted cruz and and you know they say lindsey graham would be over the judiciary so we know yeah it's terrible great

Speaker 4 sounds like the future i want so you had a primary opponent who spent what 60 million dollars against you 65 million dollars yes

Speaker 4 yes just lit it on fire that must have been fun for him. I saw Larry Hogan has reserved nearly $8 million of campaign ads already, presumably to run against you.

Speaker 4 You've reserved, your campaign has reserved less than half a million so far. This is very in the weeds, but I'm just wondering, like, is that something you expect to ramp up soon?

Speaker 4 Is this because people are not focused enough on this race and not donating? Like, what should we make of this?

Speaker 22 So, two things. One is the Republicans are motivated.

Speaker 22 They are dumping millions of dollars into this race. He has a super PAC, a $10 million super PAC.
And we see the Republicans are are really spending a lot of money.

Speaker 22 John Bolton just put up an ad for Larry Hogan, so we see that the Republicans are really investing. We are increasing our ad buys.
We are on the air now

Speaker 22 and we are going to continue to increase the amount of visibility of the campaign and communications of the campaign.

Speaker 22 And that's going to be really important to be able to not only talk about his record so that people understand what his record is, as I mentioned, vetoing abortion care legislation.

Speaker 22 He also vetoed legislation that would have implemented simple waiting periods for long guns. He refused to sign legislation banning ghost guns.

Speaker 22 So he's a person who vetoed legislation that would have allowed for paid and family medical leave. He vetoed the legislation for $15 an hour.

Speaker 22 So this is a person whose policies are very in line with the Republicans. And so that's going to be important to show his record.
But it's also the most important thing people must know.

Speaker 22 is that his election would give a majority to a Senate caucus that is at this this point led by Donald Trump.

Speaker 22 That's what people need to understand is that handing over the majority to the Republicans now puts all of these people in charge of the Senate, people who want to take our country backwards. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's so weird to me that Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, a man who seems to want to bomb or invade pretty much every country, I think, in the world, is running super PAC ads in Maryland.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 22 They all have something in common, whether it's John Bolton, Larry Hogan, Donald Trump endorsed Larry Hogan, Mitch McConnell recruited him. They want to have control of the Senate.

Speaker 22 They understand that whoever has control controls the agenda. That's what this is about.

Speaker 22 It's not that these guys are all necessarily friends, but they definitely are on the same team and they share the same goal, and that is to control the Senate and to have a majority there.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Let's talk about criminal justice reform.
There's been kind of a, the country, I think the Democratic Party has had kind of a winding journey over the last, you know, four or five years.

Speaker 4 There was, you know, the horror of watching George Floyd be brutally murdered by police, followed by protests and calls for reform.

Speaker 4 That was then followed by, I think, increased concern about crime during the pandemic. Then President Biden has actually pushed for more police funding.
So it's a bit head spinning.

Speaker 4 And I know this, you know, the debate over policing did not start in 2020, especially in Maryland, where there's been a long conversation.

Speaker 4 But many of the fundamental problems that emerged, you know, in the public, like national discourse after George Floyd's killing, they've not gone away. There's still racial bias.

Speaker 4 There's still too much police brutality. You have actually prosecuted criminals as PG County state's attorney in the Senate.
You'd have a chance to write federal law.

Speaker 4 What changes to policing do you think still need to be accomplished? And how much of that do you think it's driven by local decision-making versus federal law that you would work on in the Senate?

Speaker 22 Well, you know, I started my career because I believe that everybody deserves to live in a safe community.

Speaker 22 I still believe this is a basic civil right to be able to walk the streets safely, to sit on your front porch.

Speaker 22 I think that my mother should be able to go to the grocery store without fear of being knocked over the head.

Speaker 22 And so I started my career in 1997 as the first full-time domestic violence prosecutor to work in the office. I was the elected prosecutor in my county as well.

Speaker 22 And what I can tell you is that there have been two choices given that I think are kind of false choices. The choice is whether we should have justice or freedom.

Speaker 22 I would say we have to have both.

Speaker 22 A system that is just means that a system where the laws apply equally to everyone, where we are policed with the humanity and dignity that we deserve, but that we also should have a system where you should be free.

Speaker 22 You should be free

Speaker 22 to not be concerned. about carjackings and assaults.
And I think it's possible to do both. We have the George Floyd and Policing Act in the Senate that I will be supportive of.

Speaker 22 We also have to do the work of getting the assault weapons off the streets. We just now saw yet another heartbreaking incident.

Speaker 22 I'm the mother of a 19-year-old daughter, and I have to tell you, I am horrified, and I think everyone felt horrified at watching yet again, you send your kids to school, you expect them to be safe, not hiding up under the desk or some kind of drill they have to do.

Speaker 22 The teachers should be safe. So we have a lot of work to do.
It is to make sure that our system is just.

Speaker 22 to make sure that we're holding people accountable who break the law, no matter who they are, police officers or civilians, but making sure as well that we should have the right as Americans to be safe where we live.

Speaker 22 And that means we got to get these guns off the street.

Speaker 22 The number one way that children die in this country, and it's absolutely unconscionable that we have done nothing about it, is through gun violence, not by car accident or by illness.

Speaker 22 But it is just, it just makes me enraged to think. I just, I was thinking today about the families.

Speaker 22 Can you imagine the young kids who are in school and they are killed because we have not removed these assault weapons, the kind that was used again in this school in Georgia.

Speaker 22 We have the ghost guns that are on the street and these Republicans, again, when we talk about having the majority in the Senate, they have not only appointed these Supreme Court justices, the same ones who overturned the bump stock decision, but they have no interest whatsoever in even doing what's sensible.

Speaker 22 And you know what? And my opponent, again, is a person who, you know, he got an A- from the NRA. So that would be putting the NRA in charge.

Speaker 22 If we give over this Senate to the Republicans, it's like putting the NRA in charge.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, someone who's tried to project as a moderate to get an A- from the NRA is pretty extreme.

Speaker 4 And yeah, I mean, that I think like there's no more frustrating issue than the issue of gun violence, especially these mass shootings in schools.

Speaker 4 I mean, yesterday it was a 14-year-old who I believe shot, you know, other 14-year-olds and teachers were hurt and just a horrific incident.

Speaker 4 I mean, I have a 21-month-old daughter, and she started preschool this week.

Speaker 4 And even I've been thinking about it because of Sandy Hook and because of, you know, nothing, no horror seems off off the table in the United States when it comes to gun violence.

Speaker 4 But also, I never feel more cynical than I do when hearing

Speaker 4 about efforts in Congress to deal with gun violence because I know Republicans seem to block everything. And I guess the, which leads me to a question, which is, usually they use the filibuster.

Speaker 4 Republicans do, to block all meaningful legislation in the U.S. Senate.
Would you support getting rid of or reforming the filibuster to try to make it so Kamala Harris can enact her agenda?

Speaker 22 Oh, absolutely. You know, we think about the filibuster.

Speaker 22 I believe the numbers go something like 1964 to say 2008. The filibuster was used maybe fewer than 60 times.

Speaker 22 And then from 2008 until now, it's been used over 600 times, mostly to block civil rights legislation. Yeah, we want the John Lewis for the People Act.
We want the For the People Act.

Speaker 22 We want a number of pieces of legislation that all have been blocked using this filibuster. So I think we absolutely are going to have to reform the filibuster.

Speaker 22 And I think we're also going to have to do something about the Supreme Court.

Speaker 22 You know, I mean,

Speaker 22 it is outrageous. And I agree with reforming the Supreme Court as well.
Love that.

Speaker 4 A few months ago, I saw an interview you did with WJLA, which is a Sinclair-owned local TV station in Washington. You were asked about the situation in Gaza.

Speaker 4 You talked about the need to get more aid into Gaza, to get a ceasefire deal that brings back the hostages, and ultimately to achieve a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Speaker 4 But you also added that you do not believe that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Nyahoo is the right partner for achieving a two-state solution.

Speaker 4 And I just want to put my cards on the table and say I could not agree more. And I'm wondering how that belief might translate into policy.
If you're a U.S.

Speaker 4 senator, does that mean you're open to withholding or conditioning U.S.

Speaker 8 military aid to Israel as a tool to pressure the government into talks around a two-state solution?

Speaker 4 Or how are you thinking about this?

Speaker 22 You know, I think, first of all, let me just say that I think everyone agrees in this moment.

Speaker 22 The number one thing that has to happen as we looked at the people who were killed just last week is we got to get the hostages home.

Speaker 22 We got to get the hostages home. We have to get to a ceasefire.

Speaker 22 And as I've mentioned before, I think that the United States and everyone around the world has an affirmative obligation to make sure that we are eliminating the suffering that is happening with the Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaker 22 And a two-state solution is where I believe we should be focused.

Speaker 22 That's what tomorrow should look like, is we should be working to have peace and security in Israel and peace, security, and self-determination for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaker 22 I believe I support the U.S.-Israeli relationship

Speaker 22 and I support Israel's right to not only defend itself, but I think they ought to have the means to defend itself as well.

Speaker 22 And, you know, and I, again, believe that that is not in conflict with the idea that ultimately the aim and the hope is for peace. That is what I believe we ought to be working toward,

Speaker 22 is de-escalating conflict and making sure, again, that we have peace and security in Israel, and we should have peace, security, and self-determination for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaker 4 But I mean, if you think, you know, if Net Yahoo has been an impediment to that, I mean, I guess is our only chance just to kind of wait for the government to collapse in a new election?

Speaker 4 Is it sort of out of our hands? Is that...

Speaker 22 Well, you know what? I think we are seeing now. that the people of Israel are also saying that they're very concerned about the form of leadership.

Speaker 22 I think think that, you know, they have a democracy and they make a decision about their leaders. I agree with that.
But I think we do need leaders who believe we need a good partner.

Speaker 22 If we are to go to a two-state solution, I absolutely believe that. But, you know, Israel is a democracy.
They get to choose their own leaders.

Speaker 22 And I understand that. And I believe that, again, it appears to me that there is growing discontentment.
with the form of leadership that he has demonstrated.

Speaker 22 And again, we have to focus first on getting those hostages hostages home. And we got to get to a ceasefire.

Speaker 4 You've known Kamala Harris for 14 years, I believe.

Speaker 2 I have.

Speaker 4 Can you tell the story of like how you guys became friends?

Speaker 4 And then is there something you know about her that you feel like is just not talked about or doesn't get coverage that the rest of the country should know?

Speaker 22 Well, I met her in two, well, I learned about her in 2009.

Speaker 22 So I was reading a magazine and they were talking about this incredible woman who was a DA who was using all of these new ideas to keep her community safe.

Speaker 22 Specifically, I was reading about Back on Track in her Smart on Crime book. And I was so impressed with it that I was running for state's attorney at the time.

Speaker 22 I was talking to my constituents all about it, about how I thought we could replicate some of her plans and projects.

Speaker 22 And when I won the election two days later, I got a call and the person said, hi, it's Kamala Harris. Really?

Speaker 22 So she said, tell me what I can do to help. And I told her I wanted to come out to California, study her program, and came out here and she put all the stakeholders together for me.

Speaker 22 She had one, Attorney General, went by and met with her. But I met with the stakeholders, the judges, and everyone.
I did replicate that program. And since then, she's really been a friend.

Speaker 22 I was there. I came to California when she ran for Senate.
She said, you should come out and ride the bus with me the weekend before my primary and do some surrogate speaking. So I did that.

Speaker 22 I came out to California, rode the bus with her and Doug. And Mayor Bass was on the bus at the time.

Speaker 22 And then, you know, was there the day she was sworn in and she came over to help me when I ran for county executive.

Speaker 22 She endorsed me and she met me to go point by point on the legal pad over some of what we would discuss in the campaign. And she's just been a friend since then.

Speaker 22 She's endorsed me in this race. She gives really excellent advice.

Speaker 22 I guess the thing I'd say about her that always stands out, when I was on that bus the weekend before her primary for Senate, It occurs to me that she was not talking about herself, not once.

Speaker 22 I don't think I've ever been in a conversation with her where she goes. it.

Speaker 22 Most people may be talking about their race, talking about themselves. She's always talking about others.

Speaker 22 Tell me about your program. Do you have the right people in place? What are you doing?

Speaker 22 She is the consummate leader. She's the consummate leader.

Speaker 4 Why do you think she cold called you like that, right? I mean, you're not, look, the political cynic.

Speaker 4 If you were like an Iowa state rep, people would say, aha, this was the long game to run for president. You know, you're, you're in Maryland.
Like, she just picked up the phone and called you?

Speaker 22 Yeah, as it turns out, there are a whole lot of us who she mentors in the same way. I think she is a natural leader, and she is a person who very sincerely cares about other people.

Speaker 22 She called me, and, you know, no one would have ever known. No one has known the other times that she's called and reached out to say, I'm just checking on you.
Tell me how you're doing.

Speaker 22 Tell me what's going on. I mean, she has done that.
And as it turns out, I've now learned others. You know, you saw.

Speaker 22 Congresswoman Jasmine, who came out and said that the vice president wiped her tears at a meeting.

Speaker 22 This is a person who is not only compassionate, and maybe that's the thing that people don't get to see as often.

Speaker 22 She's compassionate, but she's also a deeply principled person, a deeply principled person.

Speaker 22 But she not for fanfare, but she is a person who is always mentoring, always guiding. And, you know, I think that's what's going to make her a really great president.

Speaker 22 She's a very, very thoughtful person, but also just deeply principled person. And I think, think about that.

Speaker 22 A leader who, you know, and we've had a wonderful president in Joe Biden, but I think our country deserves to continue to have leaders who have integrity, you know, leaders who are decent.

Speaker 22 We can never return to the other guy, but I think Kamala's going to make a really, really, really excellent president.

Speaker 4 Does she ever cook for you?

Speaker 2 No. Sounds like Quetta.

Speaker 22 She never cooked for me. I've got to tell you a funny story.
He's speaking about cooking. So she invited me to her home for the holidays.
And, you know. What year was this? This was...

Speaker 22 This was two years, listen, not this past year, the year before I took my daughter to the vice president's residence. Cool.
And

Speaker 22 she, my daughter, now remember that part, teenager. So we go and they have it so that you come around, you take the photo.
Yeah.

Speaker 22 And I'm thinking this girl, meaning my daughter, is going to stand up there and take the photo, right?

Speaker 22 And she jumps back instead and says, oh my goodness, do you know what they're saying about you on TikTok? And I'm thinking, oh. Oh my God, like, really?

Speaker 22 Whoa, where are we going here, lady? And she said, they said your hair looks amazing.

Speaker 22 But your silk press is right on. And I'm like, so embarrassed.
I'm like, oh my God. But the vice president sprung to action.
She loves kids. She right away said, oh my gosh, really?

Speaker 22 Is this what they're saying? Maybe I should have you on my comms team. Then she tells me, move aside so she can take pictures with Alex and they're posing and the whole.

Speaker 22 But I'm like horrified thinking, this is not what we discussed. We're not going to come up here and talk.
When she said the words TikTok and what they're saying, I'm thinking, oh no.

Speaker 2 That's not going to be good.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 I love that. I love that.
You hear a lot of stories like that. Okay, some lighter stuff.
So I'm from Massachusetts. I married a woman from Maryland.

Speaker 2 So her parents live.

Speaker 2 Here. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So they live out east. They're in Easton.
And whenever I visit, we end up picking crabs. And I just want to start by saying, like, I hit the in-law lottery.
They're like the best people ever.

Speaker 4 Hannah's sisters are the best.

Speaker 7 But I don't get the crab thing.

Speaker 4 Like, maybe I'm not good at it, but I feel like you start with this huge pile of crabs in front front of you, like a stack of corpses, and you end up hungry unless you eat them.

Speaker 6 Ah, you know what?

Speaker 22 I understand the misunderstanding here. You know what? You think crabs are about eating.
Right.

Speaker 2 No. What's it about? It's like,

Speaker 2 it's a thing.

Speaker 22 It's like a sport almost. You know, it's like

Speaker 22 it is an activity that we do together as families. That's what binds us.
Now, I like the taste of crabs. The whole bag.
But if you come to it expecting that it is, you're there because it's a meal.

Speaker 2 No. Yeah.
Oh. She's got to do the corn.

Speaker 22 When you go back to the family, you have to tell them now. You know, I get it.
We're like here bonding. It's a bonding experience.
You, you know, you pick the crabs and you talk.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 22 That's what it is.

Speaker 4 That's true. But it's real.

Speaker 4 My daughter loved it. She kept saying,

Speaker 4 crappy time. She was yelling, crappy time, crappy time.
She was very excited. She's our girl.
She's 21 months old. She's our girl.
Pick up the mallet.

Speaker 2 Whacking away.

Speaker 4 It was fun. Okay.
It was a good lesson. Last question: Baltimore Ravens or Washington Commanders?

Speaker 22 I I have to tell you, the Washington Commanders are in Prince George's County where I live. I do support the Ravens as well.
And we want the Commanders to stay in Maryland.

Speaker 22 And I've been a Commanders fan like my whole life.

Speaker 4 Dan Snyder's gone, though, right? Is there a risk of them leaving now?

Speaker 22 You know what? We've done a lot of work. We've invested about, we have $400 million that we're investing in the areas around

Speaker 22 the field there. And

Speaker 22 we expect that they may stay there. We think that we are offering a lot.
Governor Moore says he's also really committed to keeping the team. We want the two teams to be in Maryland.

Speaker 22 So we're committed to it. And we're feeling good.

Speaker 22 My very good friend is Mario Bowser. She's making plans on the other side, but we're planning to keep them in Maryland.

Speaker 6 Keep them in Maryland.

Speaker 4 Yes. I saw Governor Moore.
put on actual pads in practice with the Maryland football team.

Speaker 7 Is that something he does a lot?

Speaker 22 Well, we say to that, Governor Youncin over in Virginia, eat your heart out. Like Maryland, we're lucky, right?

Speaker 22 We have a really great governor

Speaker 22 who, you know, loves people and, you know, and it shows.

Speaker 4 Doesn't skip Arm Day.

Speaker 4 You could tell that.

Speaker 2 He's looking

Speaker 22 stacked. But you know what he also did? He was there side by side with us and we wrestled away the FBI headquarters from Virginia.

Speaker 6 That's a big one. That's a huge fight, right?

Speaker 22 It's a huge fight that we won and we're going to fight to continue to keep the FBI national headquarters plans in Maryland.

Speaker 4 I really like the trash talk between Maryland and Virginia where D.C. is just stuck in the middle, but you guys, you battle it out.

Speaker 22 Well, Virginians said we had an unfair advantage because we had Governor Moore and they have Youngkin. You know, we need more Democrats.
I mean, I think that's just the way this goes.

Speaker 22 We make things happen.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's not your problem.

Speaker 4 County Executive Also Brooks, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 22 How can people support your race if they want to get Angela alsobrooks.com? And thank you so much for having me. Everybody, please go out.
This is a really important race. It's one we can't phone in.

Speaker 22 We have to win this. We have to win it.
We have to have to win it. We have to win it.

Speaker 4 So if you're thinking about donating, and brooks.com.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 4 Do it soon.

Speaker 22 Yes. Thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. The debate is tonight.

Speaker 2 Who's ready?

Speaker 4 I don't think I am.

Speaker 2 Me neither.

Speaker 7 I'm excited. Hey, we're going to.
I feel better about this one than the last one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's all.

Speaker 2 I was going to say. Knock on on wood.
It's hard not to. Don't forget to check out the subscriber live chat and then the three of us and Dan.
You know it's a big night when Dan's here. Dan's in town.

Speaker 2 We'll record the Wednesday pod right afterward. That'll be in your feed Wednesday morning.

Speaker 2 Fingers crossed.

Speaker 3 Prayers up.

Speaker 2 Do your dabs.

Speaker 3 Talk to everybody soon.

Speaker 2 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at cricket.com slash friends.

Speaker 2 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 2 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review to help boost this episode or spice up the group chat by sharing it with friends, family, or randos you want in on this conversation.

Speaker 2 Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.

Speaker 2 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 2 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 2 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 2 Thanks to our digital team: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

Speaker 3 What's poppin' listeners?

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