This Is Your Debate on Drugs

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welcome to pod save america i'm john favreau i'm john lovett i'm tommy vitor on today's show grab your xanax and say your prayers because we are just days away from one of the biggest moments of the 2024 campaign uh we'll get into how joe biden and donald trump are thinking about the presidential debate, which for the convicted felon candidate includes publicly accusing his opponent of drug use and murder while polling his supporters on whether he should be nice at the debate. It's also the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, and we'll talk about how President Biden and Democrats are launching a big push to make sure everyone knows what's at stake.
But first, we are here in New York again

at the Sirius XM Studios again

because it's book launch week.

And as of right now,

right now,

right now,

you can finally get a copy of Democracy or Else,

How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps.

I don't know where I'm on camera.

At long last, the book is out.

It's out.

How about that, guys?

Oh, man.

Congrats.

How are you feeling?

The same as before.

Oh, did you not want an honest answer?

You know what?

We're going to be doing a lot of interviews where we don't give an audience, but this

is good.

Let's be honest here.

Here's what I'll say.

We've been obviously flogging this book for you for a long time, but it all-

For you, America.

For you, America.

This is a book for America.

For you, the listener. And today's the day it finally comes out.
If you haven't bought it, fine, fine. You haven't bought it.
Just pause your, the podcast for two seconds. Just do us a favor.
All the proceeds go to vote, save America. Right.
So it's like, you're not even like, Oh, can I spend money on this book? You want to contribute to the election? This is like a don't. Yeah.
It's a donation to the election and campaigns all across the country are going to benefit from your purchase of democracy or else you know we look we we bleed for you three days a week now in this podcast jesus christ it is it is about us but look here's the most important thing is we do need to get on onto the top of the We really do bestseller list and um you're gonna if you buy this you'll help us get past at least one fox and friends host yeah uh to we don't want what's going on right now fauci sitting up there at the top of the charts oh honestly that guy's yeah he's got it coming yeah yeah did you like did you like the pandemic yeah no mask in the picture no mask in the picture what kind of message fauci Did you see him pandemic? Yeah. No mask in the picture.
No mask in the picture. What kind of message, Fauci? Did you see him throw that ball out at the Nationals game, at the baseball game when he threw that first pitch? How did he do? Terrible.
Oh, man. This was like years ago.
I'm just trying to go down the road of attacking him. Anyway, I thought you were going to bring out the Wuhan thing.
Right, he did. Anyway, our book did anyway we don't talk about any none of that is part of our book our book is just about uh it's like it's how to get involved in politics in a way that's fun that's not scary that's not confusing and uh you know a lot of the lessons we learned over the last uh seven years of pod save america we finally put on paper as well as a lot of the advice we got from some really smart people and organizers and activists but it's not homework I did an interview about the book where someone said he appreciated that it was short and also appreciated that the font was large that is such a high school paper yeah I would say I would say this the the length reads like people uh that had a deadline and that's a beautiful thing I thought thought you were saying reads like people.
No, no, no. No, it's for people who just read tweets all day, you know, which is me.
All right. Anyway, you can buy the book now.
Go to your local bookstore. Go to Target.
Go to Barnes and Noble or head to crooked.com slash books now. Okay.
Still get a pit in my stomach every time I say this. But the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is Thursday.
As of now, it's actually happening. Joe Biden's prepping with his advisors at Camp David.
Donald Trump is prepping in public with his fans. On Saturday, Trump spoke at a rally in Philly, where he attacked the debate moderators and polled the audience on whether or not he should be civil to Biden at the debate.
I'll let you guess what they preferred. He also trotted out the Biden will be on drugs attack again.
Only this time he added that Biden will be getting a, quote, shot in the ass. And in case that image isn't enough for you, Trump also talked about taking off his own shirt at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual conference in D.C., where he cast himself as a martyr for all of the, quote, wounds he's received and also said a bunch of other crazy shit.
Let's listen. If I took this shirt off, you'd see a beautiful, beautiful person.
But you'd see wounds all over, all over me. I've taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you.
More than I suspect any president ever. Who likes the Ten Commandments, by the way, going up in the schools? They think it's such a bad thing.
I said, has anyone read the thou shalt not steal? Thou shalt... I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It's just incredible.
They don't want it to go up. So you got to get out and vote just this time.
I don't care. In four years, you don't have to vote, okay? In four years, don't vote it to go up so you got to get out of vote just this time i don't care in four years you don't have to vote okay in four years don't vote i don't care but but we'll have it all straightened out so it'll be much different you guys realize there's a non-zero chance he just read the ten commandments before that before that event well i think this is some great stuff have you seen this i i also think that he could only a lot of vows a lot of vows what's going on there I think that he- This is some great stuff.
Have you seen this?

I also think that he could only-

A lot of vows.

A lot of vows.

What's going on there?

I actually think he didn't read any of them.

I think he could realize

that the only other one he could remember

is thou shalt not commit adultery.

And so he's like,

thou shalt not steal,

thou shalt not-

Yeah, he's really gone Ofer on those.

He's, of course,

talking about the Ten Commandments

because the governor of Louisiana just signed a law requiring every public school to display them in the classroom, which is something the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional when Kentucky tried it back in 1980. But, of course, new Supreme Court, new state trying it.
So who knows? Why do you guys think Trump's still pandering to Christian nationalists now that we're in the general election? It seems like's already got their votes. Really leaning into the Jesus comparison there.
The martyr and the wounds. He's going, really embracing that.
I do think it's worth pointing out that five presidents were shot while in office. That's a good point.
So they probably had it worse and more wounds. A horse fell on top of Ulysses S.
Grant. I'm reading his personal i'm reading i'm reading i'm reading his memoir guys he's been talking about it non-stop all i feel like i know the whole book hey um listen ulysses s grant great writer huge fan also 10 is a lot like our book where it could have been nine chapters you know what i mean yeah like i mean by the way two of them are about coveting and then acting on the coveting right right don't commit adultery but also don't lust after your neighbor's wife that's everyone's broken that one i hear who lives down the blackberry uh what are we talking about anyway what do you guys what do you guys think about the pandemic what is he doing what does he do with the faith and freedom conference in dc do you think advance? They thought maybe the primary would still be happening? No, well, he says at the top of it that they tried to cancel it, but I told him, I'm too afraid to not go to the Faith and Freedom Conference.
So they moved it to during the day so he could do the rally at night. Is he afraid he might go to hell? Yeah, I think so.
I think so. But I just view it as he's gone every year because I think that we forget because it feels like another era.
But at the beginning, these were the people that went with Ted Cruz. These are the people that he had to kind of shore up.
And so I think he views it as like keeping these people happy is just a useful thing to do. Yeah.
At the end of the day, I think every campaign he's run is just a base turnout election. And I think that there was a 2021 Pew poll about kind of like religion and public life.
And in that poll, 54% said the federal government should enforce the separation of church and state. And you would imagine that putting the 10 commandments in public schools undercuts that.
But 30% want public school teachers to be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers. 46% do not.
So I think the general population generally opposes what he's offering there, the policy he's putting forward. But I think he knows that his base is animated by right-wing Christian nationalism.
And they're more likely to hear what he's saying here than kind of your average voter who might be offended by this. Yeah.
No, I think that's right. I think that the vulnerability for Trump in the general election is this Christian nationalist project 2025 stuff.

I think people are, even some people who've probably voted for him in the past are a little creeped out by some of the Mike Johnson wing of the party, the Mike Johnson wing of the party. and you know i do think the country is more religious than some liberals might believe but But I don't think people want the Ten Commandments in your kid's school.
I don't want to, like, even if you, you know, like, I grew up Catholic. I wouldn't want the Ten Commandments posted in the school, separation of church.
It's pretty foundational to the country. Well, there's a funny moment at the Faith and Freedom Summit where he says, you may got he says, you may got, you, you, you, like, he's getting tons of applause.
They're,

they're loving every second of it. And then he goes, now this crowd may not care as much about

this, but they're also going after Catholics. And it was a little bit of a, it's like, hey man,

long history there. Long history.
You're wading into some, some, some troubled waters.

He's not up to speed on the Huguenots. Yeah.
The, the Huguenots. I was just in North Carolina for a couple of days and I was with a few different local candidates and abortion is a huge issue.
The extremism of the Republicans on democracy is a huge issue. But the other really big issue that a lot of these candidates were talking about was the Republican legislature taking money from public schools and giving them to private and religious schools.
And it's just a really big issue down there. And I feel like this is all part of that sort of right word, Christian nationalist thing.
I think a lot of people don't like. This was at the end of what, a 90 minute or nearly 90 minute speech.
So just at the very end of the speech, he gets into education and he's hitting all the, he's hitting the 10 commandments. He's talking about money for homeschooling, to help pay for supplies for homeschooling.
But then in a run, he basically says this. And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.
And I will shut down the federal Department of Education and we will move everything back to the states. And you know what we'll do? We'll give them about half the money that we send them now.
And for half the money, they'll have a lot of money left over. We'll cut our budget in half, and we'll spend less than half the money on education.
We're going to save a fortune. Look, I know we're a nerd to Trump.
That has to be one of the most unpopular things a mainstream candidate has said in a very long time. We're going to half education funding.
We're going to get rid of all vaccine mandates. That's measles and mumps.
That's a bunch of childhood illnesses. That's whooping cough.
Let me tell you what happened there. At Camp David, where Joe Biden is prepping debate, I can imagine, I will bet you that someone saw that tweet, that Trump just said that, maybe our pal Ben LeBolt, and alerted Mike Donilon and Ron Klain and everyone else, and Anita Dunn, everyone else at debate prep, and they instantly said, this has to be a moment of debate.
Because you're right, cutting education in half, some people don't understand the like, we're going to take it from the federal government and give it to the the states because it sounds like, oh, then the states can control it. But actually admitting that you're going to cut it in half.
You put that you so those are two. I mean, honestly, those are two ads.
You do the vaccine ads, by the way, side by side with outbreaks of preventable childhood illnesses. We've seen them in Florida.
We've seen them elsewhere because of this anti-vax fervor. That's one thing.
The fact that he has already told corporations he wants to cut their taxes again, you put that side by side with we're going to cut education funding in half and we're going to save a fortune. That is terrible politics.
And, you know, Trump goes in front of these crowds and he's just used to the fact that most of what he says in these speeches just basically goes unnoticed by anyone who wasn't in the room. But that was very bad.
That is very bad. So, yeah, one of the things that overshadowed that comment was Trump continuing to accuse Biden of taking debate performance enhancing drugs.
His surrogates are getting in on the game, too. Dr.
Ronnie Jackson, congressman from Texas, is apparently sending a letter to the White House

demanding a drug test before the debate.

Ooh, a letter.

Are these people fucking serious?

Love it.

You got any funny ideas for one-liners

if this comes up in the debate?

I had one pitch.

I had one pitch.

And here's my pitch.

You know, Donald,

I am on a performance-enhancing drug.

And I'll tell you right now what it is.

Right before I come out on stage,

Jill and I find a very private place

where no one can see and she tells me she loves me and to have that kind of love that true love which you and I both know so well that's all I need to come out here which you and I both know so well just hit That's funny. Just hit him.
Just like, because, you know, look,

I've had,

I've had the love of my life

by my side at every debate,

every big decision.

And that,

and that kind of love,

you know it,

Donald.

I think you should just say,

yeah,

I am.

What's it to you,

narc?

What are the ethics of PEDs?

What are we doing here?

Barry Bonds being in the Hall of Fame.

What are we even talking about?

Yeah.

It's none of your business, Donald. You take your own shit.
Take Donald you take your own shit take whatever you need now we're dodging now we're dodging the question I hope he does get a fucking shot I hope they give him whatever they give Secretariat yeah I don't care take whatever you need whatever you need to do buddy it's actually very controversial to say that Secretariat was using performance enhancing well I think all the horses were at that time they all were on a certain kind of steroids but everyone's, when he died, his heart was four times the size of a normal horse's heart. It's like,

why do you think that? Because he loved too deeply.

Yeah, that's right. Anyway, Dr.
Ronnie, keep sending your fucking letters, dude.

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Trump's also been telling a news story on the campaign trail about how he told Dana White, who runs the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that he should set up a, quote, migrant league of fighters who would compete against UFC fighters. Here he is over the weekend saying this.
And I said, Dana, I have an idea. Why don't you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters? And then you have the champion of your these are the greatest fighters in the world fight the champion of the migrants i think the migrant guy might win that's how tough they are he didn't like that idea too much but actually not the worst idea i've ever had that that that's true that's true he's had worse ideas give me your huddled masses and i will put them in a cage fighting league uh as public spectacle we're just doing gladiators right that's it's just bringing back gladiators just gladiator gladiators 2 is coming out soon this could be some sort of sponsored content opportunity i mean on brand for the xenophobic game show host i guess right but yeah he's just you know he's finding a silly way to say that that uh there are superhuman monsters yeah so these what he likes to do is dehumanize people who aren't american right that's his stick it's always interesting when you road test these lines for the first time and you can hear the audience being like oh no no no no no like they're they're kind of like offended by that not they're shocked by it at least.
Well, I'm not surprised that Dana White didn't think it was a good idea

and he's no lib. No, he is not.
He is not. So Trump's talking a lot about migrants in the run

up to the debate and he's been hinting at how he might attack Biden on the issue Thursday night.

Spoiler, he's not going to challenge him to the Migrant League. But Greg Sargent over at the New

Republic wrote a piece about how Trump posted the news of the gruesome murder of a girl in Texas, allegedly by two men with records of violating immigration law, called it, quote, a new Biden migrant killing, and said, quote, I look forward to seeing him at the fake debate on Thursday. Let him explain why he has allowed millions of people to come into our country illegally.
In other news, Trump also said on the All In podcast last week that he would automatically issue green cards to immigrant students as soon as they graduate college, but that was a statement his campaign immediately walked back by saying the policy would apply only to extremely skilled graduates and that eligibility would, quote, exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America

haters, and so on. First of all, what do you guys make of Trump and his campaign trying to tie Biden to any bad crime committed by an undocumented immigrant? I mean, it's a continuation of what he's been doing.
And we remember back around the State of the Union, Republicans are very focused on the murder of a woman named Lakin Riley in Georgia, who was allegedly killed by someone who was in the U.S. illegally.
So I'm not at all surprised you can do this. I mean, the challenge here for Biden is stories like the ones he's trying to tell that are kind of lurid and, you know, specific and emotional are powerful and memorable.
And you have to figure out a way to push back that isn't just with statistics, lest you look kind of like Mike Dukakis at a debate in the past when he was asked about capital punishment and whether he would be in favor of capital punishment if someone were to murder his wife and respond in sort of a robotic way. I think that's like kind of the test case that reporters are always thinking about in the back of their head.
So he's got to figure out a way to push back, but also go on offense on this and talk about the reality of crime under the Trump administration when statistics went way up. Yeah.
Love it. How do you think Biden should respond? Yeah.
So here's sort of what I, how I sort of responded to it. And, you know, there was a Greg Sargent wrote a piece and he asked James Carville.
He asked Dan Pfeiffer. He asked you, John, Me.
You, John, are in that piece. I brought this to my attention.
I feel like there was, you know, I think there's a few different points to make, but I think it is worth saying some version of these are horrible crimes. And some of these folks have been in and out of the country for years, even while you were president.
Of course. And we have to solve this problem.
And I got a group of people together to solve it, Democrats and Republicans. And you know who killed that? You killed it.
Why? Because you were worried about the politics of actually solving this problem because you want the chaos and you care more about you than you care about what happens on the border. Now, I know Joe Biden is never going to say something like this, but it would be something like, and so if you want to find out who has blood on their hands, look in the mirror.

But that's not the Joe Biden I know. Well, the other thing is, I think that's all right.
And

then Trump's going to, Fox News and the right-wing media have been linking these murders also to Joe

Biden's new policy that he announced last week that we talked about where he is granting a pathway

to citizenship to spouses,

undocumented spouses

of American citizens

who've been here for 10 years.

And they're somehow saying

that that's going to cause

more migrant murders,

which is fucking preposterous.

And so, you know,

if you're Biden, you say,

look, my plan is about

keeping families together

who've been here for years,

who are law-abiding citizens

and their undocumented spouses

and children.

Your plan is about

ripping families apart,

which is what you did

Thank you. families together who've been here for years, who are law-abiding citizens and their undocumented spouses and children.
Your plan is about ripping families apart, which is what you did when you were here as president. And by the way, crime rate is now lower than it was when you were president.
So maybe you should explain why, maybe you won't say blood on your hands, but you can say, maybe you should explain why the crime rate spiked when you were president, when you left office, and now it's lower. And by the way, of course we should go after anyone who commits murder, undocumented or not, like as hard as we can, right? Yeah, I think there's a simple way to say too, like there was a crisis at the border the day I walked into office.
There was a crisis in the border on day one. This is because you didn't solve it.
You talked about it. You scapegoated people.
You yelled about it. You talked about a wall.
You didn't build it. And we're going to try to solve it because you can't solve it.
You want to yell about it. Because you don't really care.
You're using the, in a typical disgusting manner, you are using these murders to make a political point about the border because you don't really care about the border. You don't really care about immigration.
You just care about the politics. You think it wins you votes.
Yeah. That's it.
We'll see. What do you guys think about the green card, the old green card to the diploma? Love it.
I'm sure you remember this because how many times do we write the line for Barack Obama? It's a very old proposal. The second I saw it, the second I saw that Trump had said this, I didn't look at an article.
Before I even saw any news about it, I was like, he talked to a rich person. Exactly.
He talked to a rich person, a Silicon Valley type person who says this kind of thing. And he just repeated it because he was talking to other people that he thought might like it.
And so then the campaign had to walk about it. Yeah.
This is part of a little sales pitch that he gives to get money from naive idiots in the business world or in Silicon Valley. By the way.
And he found a few at the All In Podcast. He sure did.
He found a whole bunch. And by the way, he's absolutely never going to go through with this proposal if elected.
His entire base wants to limit immigration. There's no way.
Well, how do we know he won't? Because he was president for four years, didn't do it, didn't want to do it, opposed it. But this is part of this broader wishlist, which is like tax cuts.
Now he's flip-flopped on cryptocurrency. Now he's the crypto guy.
He's going to cut regulations. But yeah, these Silicon Valley types are basically desperate for software engineers to come into the country.
But in practice, what this would do would be to give green cards to lots and lots of students from China and India. More than half of foreign students in 2022 and 2023 were from India and China.
But on the stump, Trump talks about migrants from China as enemies, literally an army. He talks about military aged males coming to the country.

What's a college student? I also think this is another,

the details of the actual issue aside, it is a signal to a certain class of,

like, kind of, they think they're non-ideological, they think they're apolitical, but they're kind of like anti-woke rich people who just think the left has gone crazy and this is a permission structure to say see he's not yeah he says this stuff but look look he'll do h1b visas he's okay it's not so scary it's also for the shrinking almost non-existent wall street journal editorial reading uh section of the republican party that's almost gone now like see i'm gonna be a going to be a little Paul Ryan's of the world, even though, again, the reason this policy is not real because, you know, Barack Obama proposed it. Hillary Clinton proposed it in 2016 is because you just can't find enough Republicans in Congress to go along with it.
Could have passed this legislation at any time in the last two decades. Republicans wouldn't do it.
Yeah. I mean, you have this sort of interesting thing that came away from that long, terrible interview was Trump is clearly doing debate prep, but lying and saying he's not because he's like, I don't need debate prep.
I don't do it. Why would I even bother? And he's like, I was reviewing a video of Joe Biden debating Paul Ryan.
You're like, oh, that sounds like homework, sir. That was very funny, by the way.
Yes. They're like, what do you the island hosts were like give me give us debate predictions and he's like well people keep saying joe biden's you know not great but he didn't i watched him debate paul ryan he demolished paul ryan it's like you also watched him debate someone else you though maybe you don't remember because you were like so fucked up from covid when you were like just spraying everyone in the debate room

with your germs in the first debate.

But you did debate Joe Biden twice.

Yeah, I rewatched the first debate on the flight last night.

You did?

Why?

That's cool.

Way better than I remembered.

I had a great time.

Now, he does look so beet red.

He looks like he's like in a sauna.

He's so angry.

Can you give us some highlights?

What was your favorite part of that? What was my favorite? What was your least favorite part? Let me pull up my notes. Okay.
One really important thing. I mean, we'll get to this in the abortion section, but Biden says abortion is on the ballot and Trump's like, abortion's not on the ballot.
How do you know that? You don't know what Amy Coney Barrett thinks about abortion. That's so funny.
So I'm sure that will come back. Yeah, I hope so.
That's good. Trump apparently, when he was in Philly, talked to a reporter and said that he has picked the VP in his mind.
He hasn't told anyone. And that person will be at the debate, which is I'm so curious.
Like, do you think that means that he invited all the candidates to the debate? And it's like an awkward. They all show up or is it just because otherwise it's just everyone's going to know.
Like if just Doug Burgum comes to the debate, we know it's Doug. But maybe like Doug, Marco and JD will all be there.
Who knows? Interesting. Interesting.
Yeah. I mean.
Or maybe he's just lying, which he always does anyway. Right.
If he doesn't care that they feel uncomfortable or that it's weird, he just wants them to come and be there and to see who comes. Yeah.
It's the apprentice. It would be funny to make them all share like a hold room or even a hotel room.
Put them all in the same suite. And there's a camera there.
Yeah. Yeah.
And Bergam's like, Marco, can you pass the Diet Cokes? Something like that. I like that.
Sure. Why not? Yeah.
And that kind of like, that kind of back and forth. Kind of repartee.
Yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah. Like, can I, I'm going to, no, you, okay.
JD, can you pass the Daily Stormer? No. Okay.
Replace the toilet paper next time. Mark Ruber's like, you guys mind if I put on white noise and he presses it and it just screams? Just, I can't fall asleep without something really to distract me.
One other thing of note Trump mentioned over the weekend, he talked about the third party candidates on the ballot and praised two of them in particular. Here's a clip.
Cornel West, he's one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West. And I like her also, Jill Stein.
I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them.
He takes 100%. Just reading the stage directions right there.
By the way, this happened to be the same day that Cornel West announced that he's collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot in Michigan. Yikes.
You guys think Trump's own words here could be an effective argument to third party voters? I know we've talked a lot about, you know, telling someone who's thinking about voting third party, hey, you're just going to elect Trump is not always effective. But when you have Trump out there saying, hey, this is going to help me, I don't know.
I think so. I think it's helpful.
I really like it. I think it's a good thing to get out there.
You know, look, this thing potentially comes down to so few votes. And I do think that there's, you know, that subset of people that when they're told that they're voting for Trump have a kind of obstinate and like, well, you know, I didn't choose these candidates.
And, you know, Biden has to persuade me, all the kind of stuff you'll hear from the kind of group of people that are most amenable to someone like Cornel West. And I think having Trump to say directly is pretty hard to argue with.
How worried are you about Cornel West, Tommy? Quite, quite. He's on the ballot in Michigan.
And then there's a bunch of Republican operatives who have been working to get signatures to get him on the ballot in North Carolina. So were North Carolina to become like a real swing state, it could be a challenge there too.
I mean, I think for anyone who has like third party curious people in their lives, I do think when you're trying to dissuade them from that vote, you have to be careful not to just immediately go to shouting at them and saying, you're just voting for Donald Trump. Because a lot of these third party voters are what they call double haters, which is they really dislike either candidate.
And they're thinking about staying home or third party. Or if you just sort of like if your only appeal to them is you might elect Donald Trump, that's not necessarily something that animates them the way it does us.
I do think, though, highlighting the cynicism of of Trump's comment and his staff's efforts to get these candidates on the ballot just to harm Trump, maybe that will feel insulting to them. I was just going to say it is.
That's what it feels like Trump is insulting them. And that might piss them off when you I've been listening to focus groups of these third party voters.
And there are some who are like, honestly, it's just it's a moral thing. I can't look at myself in the mirror.
I know that I'm throwing away my vote. I know that I don't like Donald Trump, but I'm just going to do it anyway.
Those people, those people you're probably not going to get, but there are, there have been a lot of people in these groups who are, they don't pay a lot of attention to politics, but they pay enough attention to know that they're like, you know, I'm considering third party, but I just don't want to throw away my vote. Like they know that it's throwing away their vote.
So I think letting people know that it's like a mathematical impossibility for some of these candidates, just about all of them, except maybe RFK Jr., to win because they're not on the ballot in enough states, which will certainly be the case for Cornel West. He won't be on the ballot in enough states to get to 270.
Jill Stein, because she's Green Party, she'll come closer. RFK Jr.
could come closer. But it's still, I think one step is telling people that it's a mathematical impossibility for your candidate to win.
Yeah. I also, I think there's people out there that say like, I, you know, you, every four years you come to me and you say, vote for the lesser of two evils, vote for the lesser of two evils.
And I don't want to do it anymore. I just can't do it anymore.
And I do think that there's an argument to be made to that kind of person in this moment that is about putting a vote for Joe Biden in the broader context of building power and how, as much as this may not be the candidate you wanted, a vote for Joe Biden helps you to be in a position to make the change inside of the Democratic Party in a bigger way over the next several years. and that we, that no, you may not be happy with your choices, but you know, a world where Joe Biden

is president is a world where the change you want is possible. A world where Donald Trump is president is a world where it's not.
And you can just go to a couple of core issues. Like, hey, have you noticed that it's the hottest year on record every year? Do you believe climate change is real? Okay, well, one person did something about climate change, which is Joe Biden.
The other doesn't believe it's man-made the other thinks it's cool because it'll mean more beachfront property is right do you think that women should be able to make their own health care decisions okay well joe biden does too donald trump is going to restrict women's health care as much as humanly possible especially abortion access i i mean i would just go to like issue areas and try not to make it entirely personal i had a friend tell me who's like very unhappy with joe biden and been at protests uh over gaza to say like you know what you're protesting joe biden right now voting for joe biden uh gives you the opportunity to keep protesting how did i know i had to be you i knew i had to be you oh you saw roads in new york The chance to keep protesting.

There it is whatever it takes guys whatever it takes um we haven't heard a lot from biden lately because he's been holed up in debate prep at camp david uh but campaign aides did talk to the new york times for a piece about how the sides are preparing and what they hope to get out of it one thing i thought was pretty interesting in the piece is that the campaign doesn't think the debate, even if it goes very well, is going to immediately change things in terms of polling, but that it will be, as the piece says, quote, the starting bell for the general election. What do you guys think? Are they trying to lower expectations there in case it doesn't go well? Or do you think they're right about how much it will move numbers? It feels like both.
And great. I was like, oh, that does make sense to me.
And like, why does it make sense to me? And I think it's in part because one thing we've talked about is that these Senate candidates like a Bob Casey or Ruben Gallego are running a little bit ahead of Biden. Like, are those people that are right now saying they're either Gallego Trump or Gallego undecided? Is that real? What does it mean to bring them home? And so a lot of

what Biden is trying to do is get people who right now are frustrated by the choice, maybe less

engaged, to go from saying they're undecided or saying they're for Trump, but on some fundamental

level understand the stakes to finally say, yes, even though they're not super happy about the

state of things, they're going to do the right thing. That's a sort of unusual kind of persuasion

that might not show up because of one debate. It's going to happen over time, especially as we get closer and closer to the election.
Yeah. What do you think, Tommy? I asked chat GPT to make up some Trump style nicknames for the moderators that I'd like to read to you now.
Oh, okay. Wow.
So he just, he just didn't want to. I did it as expectations.
No, I love it. Let that pitch go by.
I'll answer the question. I mean, I talked about this with Dan last week, too.
I think four months is a lifetime in politics. We memory hole literally everything.
So they can, of course, come back from something that's not good. I think.
If you can come back from an insurrection, you can come back from a bad debate from a senior moment. There is, I think, though, like.
Dark. Dan argued that.
I mean, I agree with Dan's point, which is like, I do think that Joe Biden's age is a threshold question for a lot of voters and what they want to see Thursday night is something that gives them confidence in his ability to do the job for another four years. I think they feel like the state of the union was one of those moments where he looked like sharp and on it and was punchy and giving it back to the Republicans when they're heckling him.
And so hopefully we'll see a similar version of Joe Biden.

Now, like he will likely stutter.

He will likely mumble through an answer.

There'll be moments where all will cringe.

Whether those will be kind of deal breakers for voters,

like it would probably take something pretty significant.

You know what the truthful spin is?

I don't care if Joe Biden forgets his name and falls off the stage,

still voting for him over Donald Trump.

That's where it's coming. I mean, it's just like, well, sure.
And at some point they are. But we lose our credibility.
When we say that. But like that.
So I disagree. I think what the at the core of what the Biden campaign is trying to do here and all of their spin that is not quite like that.
But is it's like they are trying to get the focus on Donald Trump. Right.
And the threat that Donald Trump poses. And I think what probably frustrates that campaign to no end, and you're right, it is a threshold.
The age is a threshold question for most voters. And the campaign acknowledges that for sure.
But I think what frustrates them is like, however, Joe Biden performs Thursday night, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. He has still done all the things Donald Trump did.
He still wants to do all the things Donald Trump will do. And that will mean fucking disaster for the entire country.
So whether it's Joe Biden or any candidate up there, like we've got to like suck it up and and go make sure that Donald Trump doesn't win. Well, sure.
Yeah, no, totally. I'm not arguing against it.
No, no, no. I think that kind of points to what a what a good outcome versus a bad outcome of the debate is.
And a good outcome of the debate is a debate in which Donald Trump is saying Joe Biden's on drugs. the conversation is about how extreme and dangerous.
Yeah, sure. Exactly.
Well, hair, he can't agree to hair. Yeah.
I mean, I think what you're getting at is the fact that debates are stupid and irrelevant and have no bearing on the job of president. Right.
I mean, obviously, like the sort of these two individuals are completely different. And one has a set of policy views that would be good for the country and one is a disaster.
But for some reason, we've decided that two old men standing at a podium yelling at each other for 90 minutes gives us some sort of insight. Well, and unfortunately, it is valuable and relevant just for the reason that you just mentioned, which is we memory hole everything.
So just to refresh everyone's memory about who

these two men are and what they stand for is probably important. And I'm just going to spare

both of you. The fact that the reason I think we have debates is an important form for making

political decisions. Ulysses S.
Grant is masculinity. That's why.
Sure. That's cool.

That's part of it. Jake.
A lot of time on Hillary Clinton's campaign. Jake Flapper.

Tap dance Jake. Jabbering Jake.
These are Chad GPT, not me. Have you written these by Jake? Dana Smash.
Rethink that one, Microsoft. Bashful Dana Blabber Bash.
These aren't very good. It's not there yet.
Jakey Tappy. That's funny.
I still think Trump's fake tapper is probably the... Yeah, fake tapper is just sitting there.
Dana the Scoop Bash. dana the scoop bash honestly you know if if chad gpt can't beat out trump on a nickname for jake tapper then i'm not as worried about artificial intelligence yeah i do believe donald trump has technically passed the turing test tappy mcflappy is the latest okay that's right you know that's that's fine now we're just sort of bash-o-matic.
Okay, sorry, we can move on. Anyway.
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The day we're recording this, Monday the 24th is the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

It's a hugely important day for the campaign to get its message out, since media outlets will all be covering the anniversary. And with President Biden at debate camp, they had to turn to their surrogate operation to get the job done for them.
Here is a sample. It's about freedom.
And every person of whatever gender should understand that if such a fundamental freedom, such as the right to make decisions about your own body can be taken, be aware of what other freedoms may be at stake. Donald Trump, he ran on a platform of overturning Roe v.
Wade. And as president promised to appoint Supreme Court justices that would do that, they did that, and now these rights are being taken away.
This is how it works, that elections matter, that who's president, who's in the Senate dictates who's on the Supreme Court, and it has such a massive impact on your lives. We cannot let him win.
We cannot sit by while our freedoms slip away. We're going to walk every block and knock on every door.
We're going to organize phone banks and register voters. We are going to fight like hell and we are going to win.
Thank you. So you might have recognized that first voice was Vice President Kamala Harris.
Last voice was the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden.
And the guy in the middle, that was Doug Emhoff at a strict scrutiny live show in D.C. on Saturday night.
Kate was telling us there was going to be a surprise guest last time we were recording here. It was Doug.
Doug. Doug.
Doug. Apparently the second gentleman arrived with a cheering section that included none other than Kamala Harris herself in the front row.
Do you guys think she bought her tickets on the Crooked website? Oh good question. We probably gave her a freebie no? Whose seat did she take? Get out of there.
Get out of your fucking seat. That's Kamala Harris.
I hope was as soon as i heard she was there everyone was slacking that she was there i was like i hope we gave her a good seat nobody found a handheld mic and just kind of chucked it down there yeah and what do you think about this again vice president harris anytime you would like to be on a cricket podcast you don't just have to attend you can you can be on we'll we'll we'll talk right in this case for example any scheduling problem is couldn't have been the case you were there you were very much present so it seems like you i mean technically you were available i don't know how much more personally we can take this white house yeah what what do we have to do what we're sitting here other media outlets do you have to? We're out here on the front lines day after day

talking about how young Joe Biden is.

Put him on here.

Put him on the fuck in this White House.

Get him.

Oh, sorry.

Never mind.

Just kidding.

Just kidding.

Where else are you going to send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

before Pod Save America?

Where?

Anyway.

The all-in pod.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Any YouTuber.

Any YouTuber.

Anyone on there. We got invited to a Biden influencer event in los angeles that's true we did barack obama stopped by and he was like oh some of you have likes and follows he looked at the through i was like what the fuck are you guys doing here it's what are you influencers we've been sorted into the influencer slash creator category i find that troubling it's digital content creators that's what that we are.
It's accurate. Yeah, I guess.
Fine. Whatever.
Anyway, back to abortion. The campaign says it's going to be holding more than 50 events to mark the day.
That's the Joe Biden slogan. Right.
It's true. That includes everything from more standard stuff like Elizabeth Warren holding an event in Wisconsin to celebrity appearances.
Padma Lakshmi will be doing something in Atlanta. The campaign is also holding storytelling trainings to help people tell their own personal stories about abortion and reproductive care, including some of the women who've already told their stories in ads.
One of those women, Caitlin Joshua from Louisiana, is featured in a new ad that the Biden campaign just released today. I was right around 11 weeks when I had a miscarriage.
The pain that I was feeling was excruciating. I was turned away from two emergency rooms.
That was a direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade.
He's now a convicted felon. Trump thinks he should not be held accountable for his own criminal actions, but he will let women and doctors be punished.
We want to support someone that does have our best interests at heart, and that's why I'm so adamant about supporting President Biden. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.
So let's talk about how this will come up at the debate. Trump's been bragging about overturning Roe.
He's been using Kellyanne Conway's presumably poll-tested argument that this is just all up to the states now, and the states states get to decide and people get to decide. He's also been lying about Democrats wanting live birth abortions, which isn't a thing.
How do you guys think Biden should handle this exchange when it comes up at the debate? Tommy, you want to you started with the what happened at the last debate? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, he can certainly build on the back and forth they had in the 2020

debate when Biden was saying abortion is on the ballot. I mean, I think it's a complicated

argument because Roe was then overturned despite Joe Biden winning. But the point he was making

was about the Supreme Court justices that the next president will get to pick. And if Trump

is president, what will he end up with? Like an 8-1 majority probably by the end? I mean,

he could name a lot. He could go to 7-2.
Just2. So, I mean, I thought that ad was incredibly powerful.
Republicans want to talk about abortion like it's just another form of birth control. It's something people do, you know, willy-nilly.
It's not something that's painful or thought about deeply. I mean, I think that ad shows the- tells the truth about what abortion is like and why women need it in this country and the dangerous health situations that the new reality has put them in.
Love it. Yeah.
I think Joe Biden has to basically just say Donald Trump is the reason abortion was overturned in this country. I want to protect access to abortion.
He wants to make it a crime to have an abortion. He's already talking about what he's going to do in his next term, and he's going to make it impossible, not just in red states, but in blue states, for women to access reproductive care.
That is the threat. The last time Donald Trump and I debated, I said he was going to overturn Roe v.
Wade. He said he wouldn't, or he said it wasn't true.
Guess what? It was true. You can't believe Donald Trump because he knows how unpopular this is but but you know reproductive rights are on the ballot yeah he's bragging about overturning roe v wade this is what he's bragging about uh women who have been turned away from er's who are bleeding out women who have been turned away who have gone into septic shock a couple in alabama who couldn't who was just wanted a baby so bad and went through ivf and couldn't continue because of the alabama state supreme court and what they decided he says that it's left to the states but like the fundamental truth is no one knows the path that a pregnancy will take and women deserve care when they need it and no one knows when they'll need the care or or where they'll need the care and donald term doesn't think you should have the right to that care and that's what it is and and we are seeing his politicians his loyalists pass the most extreme bans and onerous restrictions all across the country he thinks it's okay to monitor women's pregnancies as long as some republican legislature in some state decides to do it people haven't had a at a chance to vote on this when they have, by the way, they've enshrined the right to abortion in their constitution.
But some people are sitting in states with Donald Trump's followers in the legislature. And now if they need care and they're bleeding out, they could be turned away for an emergency room.
That's what he's bragging about. And they're not done.
They want to pass a federal abortion ban. They want to criminalize medication abortion.
And by the way, his coalition is just made up with a bunch of creepy fucking weirdos who want to be a part of every decision you make in your life in your bedroom, whether it's IVF, whether it's contraception, whether it's the birth control pill, like these guys are not done. And now where Trump will go, because because i know because this is where kellyanne keeps wanting him to go is he'll say why joe tell me tell me what week you would have the restriction at tell me how many weeks how many weeks would you do pick pick a number you can't you think you think right up until the the day of birth and you know by and then he wants biden to say no it's like well then what the week before two weeks before you can't you can't come to some kind of compromise on a week and blah blah blah and i think that at that point biden is like what i want is the fundamental right that we've had in this country for the last several decades yeah you can't that's what i want you can't take the bait and respond to trump you need to say these are decisions that are being made by women and they're doctors not by you donald yes and that is the and that has been the problem since dobbs is is that doctors aren't making these decisions.
These aren't medical decisions. These are decisions by- Yeah, by Greg Abbott.
Yeah, by Greg Abbott. A bunch of Republicans.
You want Donald Trump making decisions. Yeah.
You wouldn't trust Donald Trump to watch your laptop at a fucking, at a Starbucks. No, I would not.
No, absolutely not. I couldn't imagine Donald Trump being at a Starbucks.
Does he drink coffee? No, because he's on drugs. Which one? ProVigil? I don't know.
We're going to see. He's going to submit to Dr.
Ronnie's test, and then we will find out. As always, Donald Trump is projecting.
Yes. You're not really supposed to.
You don't do Ozempic in the ass, but I do think that's probably what he's thinking about. Well, you can do it in the thigh or in the stomach or the back of the arm is what they recommend.
I mean, it probably would work in the ass. I don't know why it's not listed as an option.
I don't know either. Anyway, I think this is our show for today.
I think Trump has taken Pro Vigil or some sort of upper on foreign troops. Of course he has.
Of course. Of course he is.
He's a sleepy old man. This guy.
again you know if he wants to if joe biden wants to the debate god bless him we don't trump's brain stopped the the elasticity of his brain locked up in the late 80s and that was an uppers era oh yeah that was an uppers era but he didn't drink if you take an x-ray of his brain it's just diet Diet Coke. Yeah.
And cocaine? Allegedly. All right, everyone.
That's our show for today. We will have a show for you Thursday morning because Wednesday night we're going to have a live show in Brooklyn.
And that'll be out Thursday morning. So Thursday morning live show, post-debate show, Friday night show.
Friday night show in Boston. night show it'll come out after that

some of you might be thinking that's too many shows

you know what I say to you?

just download it and delete it

I don't care, just download it

and buy the book, Democracy or Else

Crooked.com slash book

you can buy it right now

alright, thanks everyone

we'll talk to you soon. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.
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Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari.

Reed Cherlin is our executive producer.

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer,

with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Tolles,

Kirill Pellaviv, and Molly Lobel.

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