Biden Takes Action on the Border

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Let's get them over with. Welcome to Pod Save America.
I'm Tommy Vitor. I am Adisu Demissi.
Dan was supposed to be hosting today, and he was going to get to see Adisu in person up in the Bay Area. But unfortunately, Dan is feeling under the weather today, Adisu.
So I'm stepping in. Apologies in advance to Pfeiffer Nation.
I even repped the Golden State Valkyries. I was trying to really lean into the Bay Area takeover of Crooked.
I know. But alas, stomach bug.
I went to a Warriors game with Dan once. It was very fun.
But it was an old arena. Go Warriors.
I guess go Celtics if I have to. Thank you.
If I'm in mixed company here, I got to do it. Yeah, you are.
You are. We have a great show though.
On today's show, we're talking about Donald Trump who celebrated his New York Hush Money case verdict by going to a UFC fight. He joined TikTok and he raised a ton of money.
So we'll get into all of that. And then I talked with Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director, about the evolution of the Biden campaign's messaging on Trump's legal challenges.
My guy. How to reach voters.
You know that guy? Love me some Michael Tyler, man. One of my best friends.
A great dude. One of his buddies and colleague from the Booker days, among other campaigns, right? Indeed.
That's right. So I pressed him on, you know, how they figure out how to talk about these legal challenges

that Trump is facing, how to reach voters who are getting their information from non-traditional news sources, and then a little bit on how you're preparing President Biden for a debate against Donald Trump that is supposed to happen to Visu in 22 days. I know.
Let's see if it does. I hope it does.
But I hope it does. You never know, man.
I want it to happen. It'll be good to have it happen.
We'll see. I put nothing past the former president of the United States, especially given his, let's say, current problems.
Yeah, he's got some issues. And then we talked a little bit about progressive blowback to Biden's immigration executive order.
But first, let's talk about that. So yesterday, President Biden signed an executive order that prevents migrants from seeking

asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossing surge to above 2,500 a day.

Here's a clip from President Biden's remarks announcing the EO.

I've come here today to do what the Republicans in Congress refuse to do,

take the necessary steps to secure our border.

We came to a clear, clear bipartisan deal. It was the strongest border security agreement in decades.
But then Republicans in Congress, not all, but walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to.
So today, I'm moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president.

Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through a bipartisan legislation

because that's the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that's broken, fixed,

to hire more border patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges.

But Republicans have left me with no choice.

So I will never demonize immigrants. I'll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country.
And further, I'll never separate children from their families at the border. So President Biden, clearly pretty frustrated there that Trump forced Republicans in Congress to walk away from bipartisan legislation that would have done a lot more to address the challenges at the border.
Biden's executive order would be the most aggressive immigration enforcement action taken by a modern Democrat. Many moderate Democrats praised the bill.
It was criticized by a lot of progressives. So listeners should just know to set the table on this, that the fate of this executive order is uncertain, if not shaky.
It is not clear how the administration would be able to implement this EO without additional funding, without additional resources. And those resources are allocated by Congress.
It is also going to face immediate legal challenges and very well may not survive those challenges as a lot of Donald Trump's immigration efforts didn't. So really, this may amount to essentially a messaging effort by the Biden administration to show voters that he is concerned about immigration and that he's willing to shift his own policy views to address those concerns that he's hearing from voters.
So Adisu, let's start with the political environment in which President Biden took this action. Earlier this year, we saw concern about immigration skyrocket in a lot of polling.
How much does this border security and immigration generally matter to persuadable voters? It matters a lot, point blank, period. I think I wouldn't rank it as high as cost of living issues, economic issues, abortion rights probably, but it is in a top tier.
And that's true in the Democratic base, in the Republican base, and with swing voters, obviously, for different reasons and different ways.

But, you know, I think most voters across the political spectrum support the basic outline of what the president put forward earlier this year.

He actually proposed on his first day in office, which is comprehensive immigration reform.

That includes tough border security, you know, securing the border first and foremost, and then pathways of citizenship, pathways for folks who are already here, solving the problem of dreamers, et cetera. That's a plan that, as the president just said, mega Republicans killed in Congress.
And he, you're right, frustrated. I didn't realize until you just said it, that that was frustration, you know, in the president's voice, because he's pissed off basically that he tried to solve this the right way, the way that he, over years of experience, was taught to do these things.
And because of Donald Trump and politics, Republicans killed it. So anyway, bottom line is, it is an issue.
It is a real issue. And I think, putting aside for a moment, whether you specifics of the, of the policy, I think there's a clear political imperative here, right? The, the, it has been the democratic party position for as long as I've been in politics that securing the border is part of the, you know, a broader immigration reform strategy, but it's a part, it's not, it's not the whole thing.
And president Biden is trying to solve this as best he can potentially, you know, piecemeal here because he doesn't have a partner in congress to do so but you know i've said before on this podcast i think on this podcast with you the first time i was on earlier this year i don't think this is a change election i think this is a stability election and i think the situation at the border whether we like it or not the perception of it is that it is unstable. There is disorder.
And it is, and thus what President Biden, I think, politically is trying to do here is, to your point, send the message. He's going to do something to get control of the situation.
It is not the be on and end all of its policy. It is a piece of the policy, but I do think it's a prerequisite for most swing voters out there, border security, and then we can talk about the rest.
And that's true of, again, I don't think that's just true of your sort of white Republicans. I think that's true of moderate Democrats, swing Latinos, you name it.
Yeah. Remember that President Trump did really well in border communities in the 2016 and 2020 election.
I mean, I just think on the policy, I think the status quo is not working for anyone. I think your big picture, I want everyone who asks for an asylum screening to get one.
But at the moment, there are not enough asylum officers to conduct the interviews required to assess whether a migrant has what's called a credible fear of returning to their country of origin. So that means you have people with totally legitimate asylum claims who can't get an interview or get stuck in this Byzantine process and kind of lost for years and years and years.
And then on the flip side, you have bad actors, you have traffickers, you have cartels, you have others who are trying to exploit loopholes in the policy or in our laws. And in the process, they're putting people at risk who are trying to flee desperate circumstances.
So the status quo is very bad. And it's unbelievably frustrating that Congress won't act because you cannot solve this problem via an executive order.
You will need an action from Congress. And the president was extremely clear about that yesterday, right? He, you know, in every statement he made and everything that the White House put out, it was clear that he was not saying this is the solution or the only solution to the problem.
It was a part of the solution at best and done in the only way he could do it, which is by himself because he didn't have the cooperation of mega Republicans in Congress thanks to Donald Trump. Yeah.
So there has been reporting that this executive order was under consideration for months. Why do you think he did this now, sort of early June? Yeah, I was thinking about this last time.
I honestly don't know. I mean, I think everything is politics, but some things are actually policy and legal.
And I'm going to assume that this was in the works for a very, very long time. It is complicated, to your point, policy.
It is already being challenged in the courts. And so they had to make sure that it would pass legal muster, et cetera, et cetera.
So I wouldn't assume that the motivations are exclusively political, but I think it's pretty clear better to do this five months out from an election in the wake of the Trump conviction than one month out. I think it gives the president something proactively to speak about at the debate that he's doing on border security, which I think as we saw, um, you know, earlier this year in the New York special, people were talking about this, the one that Tom Swasey, Congressman Swasey won when we can go on the offense and are not just playing defense on, on border security issues, it can be beneficial to Democrats.
So the politics line up, but I'm not, I wouldn't presume that that was the only reason it was done. Now.
I also wouldn't assume this is the last we're going to hear on this issue, right? It is to my earlier point, piecemeal. And there can be other EOs coming to try to resolve some of these other pathways of citizenship and other issues down the line.
So, you know, I would guess this is like the first in a series of actions that he's going to take that have to pass or try to pass legal muster that can try to solve this temporarily as best you can through eo yeah i i think i think that that was my sense too i mean certainly they probably took as much time as they needed to strengthen the executive order legally to try to make it survive these lawsuits i don't know that it will but i imagine there was a pretty deep legal scrub it's also just the case that president biden um is known to kind of chew on decisions for a week or two. You know, right.
Like sometimes he takes his time to do these things. I also imagine, though, getting this done before the debate was probably a legal imperative.
I mean, when Donald Trump came out and killed the bipartisan immigration bill, he was like, blame me. Right.
And Republicans at the time were like, oh, you have all the authorities you need, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think, you know, he's probably going to call their bluff.
The frustrating thing about all of this, you know, that I keep returning to that word is the president's trying to govern, right? And he's not, he's doing things that are probably difficult for him. Not everything he wants, not everything that the other side wants.
I mean, he obviously came to that deal with Senator Lankford that a Republican from Oklahoma that got killed in Congress, that probably was a painstakingly long negotiation and finally got there just to have Donald Trump, you know, kill this thing with one tweet or truth social or whatever the hell it was. So that, you know, but trying to govern, this is Democrats problem in so many ways.
Like it's not a problem. It's our strength, but it's also our political weakness is that we want to solve problems and Republicans don't have an interest in solving this problem.
Responsibility gene is a, is a pain in the ass. So president Biden has faced some criticism from progressives about this policy, both the bill that was tanked by Trump in Congress and now this executive order.
How concerned do you think the Biden administration should be about, you know, criticism that this is a Trump like policy or a general sense among progressives that, you know, they're not going to be as motivated to go out and vote for him or volunteer for him in the wake of this EO or, you know, you're starting seeing similar sentiment among progressives about Gaza as well. I mean, are you worried about the progressive base getting demotivated? Of course.
I mean, when we're talking about five months from today, like I'm worried about everything, right? And so anything that causes folks who are otherwise on our side to be less interested in actually, you know, checking that box or filling in that bubble, I'm going to be concerned. I do think it's lazy and a little ridiculous to compare Joe Biden to Donald Trump on this.
I mean, you heard the last part of his quote that we played earlier, like, he's not trying to separate families from their children. He's not, or mothers from their children, parents from their children.
He's not sending the military in to round up and deport people. He's not banning people based on, you know, from the country based on their religion.
Like this is not, I can get why you're frustrated in the moment, but like to compare it, take a little bit of settle down juice. Like we're talking about comparing Donald Trump and Joe Biden on immigration policy.
But that said, the politics of this are obviously difficult. I mean politics of pretty much everything if it gets to the the resolute desk are going to be are going to be tough and the president i think is doing on balance the right thing electorally but i'm not sure that's the sole motivation here i think he actually wants to well i should say it's certainly part of the calculus everything everything is politics but he is trying to do the best he can to solve a real problem that the MAGA Republican base is preventing him from solving.
And even some Republicans seem to be as frustrated as he is with that. So I respect that he is trying to govern even in the midst of a very difficult and very tough election.
And, you know, that's what we should expect in our president. Yes, that's what we should want.
That's what we should want. Yeah.
So one of the Republican arguments about that bipartisan border bill that Trump scuttled was, again, that, you know, they said, oh, yeah, Biden already has the authorities. He needs to close the border.
He just doesn't want to do it. Some of them went even further and they were like, oh, this is part of the great replacement theory, right? He's trying to bring in new voters from the, you know, across the border.
Nonsense. So Biden issues this executive order.
He does what Republicans want. He uses the authorities they claim he already has.
So let's hear their reactions to this aggressive step he took. I'm sure they praised it.
They loved it. Extremely effusively.
Let's hear. I will make a prediction, Jesse.
In the next few months, we're going to see the numbers drop down a little bit. And this is just like what Biden did with gas prices.
They're trying to fool the voters into ignoring his disastrous record. He wants this invasion and so does every other Democrat.
Now, suddenly now, oh, now he wants to issue some weak executive order week executive order one by the way and we don't know what's in this the devil will definitely be in the details here i can assure you so i have an issue with twenty five hundred five thousand whatever the number is that we've seen before that number can be twenty five hundred why not make it zero well you can first look and nothing nothing that he did and allowing massive numbers of people still to come in. And it's just misinformation, disinformation, and just another hit job.
So that was Ted Cruz, Speaker Johnson, Congressman Juan Siskomani, and Donald Trump, obviously. Adesu, I don't expect these guys to praise Joe Biden, but it couldn't be more obvious that Republicans actually don't want to fix the immigration system because they want to run on it.
How do we show that to voters who are upset about the border and have been fed a steady stream of, you know, Fox News clips that say, oh, this is what the Democrats want. It's only their fault.
But when the reality is there was a bill on the table that could have passed if Republicans hadn't spiked it. So I think two things.
I think one, that is the political upside of this announcement that, you know, 22 days from today, when the president stands across from Donald Trump, he can say, I did something on this. And it's something that my base didn't love.
It's something that I may not have loved, but I'm trying to solve a problem. You are just trying to create an issue here.
And it's a communications challenge, honestly, is how do we tell the story that Democrats are trying to seriously address the issues at the border that are of serious concern to voters, and Republicans are trying to create a political issue. and i think you know for a lot of our um of the last decade i think we have as democrats lost the thread on we've been playing defense on this issue a lot and just taking the incoming about the caravan

and all this stuff and saying, oh no, it's not us. And, but going on offense as the Swazi campaign.
And I think the lesson that the Swazi campaign and earlier this spring taught us is that when we are affirmative, when we state our affirmative beliefs and those can be humane border policies, right? The EO yesterday has exemptions for unaccompanied minors. It has exemptions for people with medical emergencies, things that are, but still has some stricter, tougher policies.
We can say that out loud, and that actually can be something that persuades voters that we're serious about the issue and allows us to open the door to do the other things we want to do, like solve the dreamer issue and expand pathways to citizenship, et cetera. So I guess bottom line is we need to be able to make an affirmative case about what our immigration policy is and not just treat it as a third rail that, and a cudgel that Republicans are going to regardless beat us over the head with if we don't say something positive ourselves.
Totally agree with that. You have to be talking about what you're for, not just trying to duck the issue or, you know, criticize Republican policies.
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Go to shopify.com slash podcast free to upgrade your selling today well let's uh take a minute and talk about what the former president has been up to uh and how he responded to being convicted on 34 felony counts uh he you know of course reacted with his usual sobriety and seriousness of purpose. First, he went to a UFC fight and then he joined TikTok.
So the first TikTok was a video of Trump and UFC CEO Dana White walking into this arena, I think in Newark, to what at least sounds like raucous applause. Let's take a listen.
The president is now on TikTok. It's my honor.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey 48 hours after the verdict for a total of more than 140 million in the month of May. To put that number in perspective, it's near three times what Biden and the DNC raised in April.
So Adisu, you guys are doing a ton of research on the issues that move swing voters. How much do you think this Trump guilty verdict matters with the persuadable universe? I think, okay, first thing I have to say, because we talked about this in the the last time i was on a couple weeks ago is anybody who thinks that this is a good thing for donald trump needs to go outside and touch grass like i agree it it is the for the former president of the united states the nominee or soon to be nominee of his may of a major party to be a convicted felon on 34 counts is a bad thing for his political future.
It just is. And sometimes I think Democrats, we forget how to take the W.
It's like, sometimes a win is a win. This is a win.
With that said, I think the scale of the win is what is debatable, right? I think in the world that I live in, the world that you live in, the world that most of the folks listening to this podcast live in, you would think that a felony conviction would be disqualifying for a nominee for any office, let alone president of the United States. But the reality is, and this is just how it is, it's not how it should be, is it is not.
It is just not disqualifying. It is not the only thing that is going to be the silver bullet that kills the Donald Trump candidacy here.
So is it over? No. Does it help us? Yes.
And then the question becomes, how do we use it, right? And to me, I think the biggest and most effective use here is on the communication side, is it allows us to make the case very credibly. I think that Trump is running for himself and not for you.
And, you know, the contrast, I think the fundamental contrast of this election is that Donald Trump is running for president and wants to be president for selfish reasons. And Joe Biden cares about people and is trying to do the right thing by people.
And this is just a, as clear evidence as it is, he wants to pardon himself. He wants to stay out of jail.
He wants to use the federal apparatus to punish his political enemies, who he feels like mistreated him, even though it was a state case and not a federal case, whatever. And that is why he's running for president.
That has nothing to do with your pocketbook, your daily life. And Joe Biden, say what you will about him, but he is at least trying to help you.
And so that frame, I think can change minds, right? And to John's point from a couple of podcasts ago, it only needs to change a couple of people's minds. We're not talking, there's 80% of the electorate who's not changing their minds, regardless of what happens.
But in that, in that 20, if this really can move a significant portion, like that could be the margin of victory or defeat. Yeah, we need some tens of thousands of people in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, et cetera, et cetera.
But I mean, I think you made an important point there because I think for a lot of people listening to this show or kind of like in the progressive space, just the fact of this verdict to us is like, it's obvious. It's disqualifying.
It's over. But I do think the messaging around the verdict, like the messaging fight started, it started long before the verdict happened.
But in some sense, Donald Trump has a head start on us, right? Because he's been consistent in calling this case rigged and unfair and a kangaroo court, et cetera, et cetera, for months and months and months. And Democrats were trying to be, at least President Biden was trying to be more responsible and wait for a verdict and then point out, okay, this guy was found guilty by a jury of his peers.
And I think the broader point that you're making here about, you know, this is another proof point about where Trump only cares about himself and is running for office to get out of trouble. We have to advance that message and we have to beat back the Republican message of, you know, that this is a politicized attack led by Joe Biden's DOJ, et cetera, et cetera.
Obviously, that's wrong. But getting that message to people is not easy.
And back to the TikTok point, I mean, with only a few days after just a few days of getting on TikTok, Trump's account had more than 5 million followers. And that intro video that we just heard had 80 million views.
And so I talked to Michael Tyler about this too. But I mean, Biden does the worst with voters who get their news from non-traditional media sources like TikTok or social media generally.
And Trump's advantage in those places only seems to be increasing. How worried are you about this explosive growth on TikTok for Trump and this sort of general challenge of like getting information to voters who are looking to those places for news? I'm really worried about it.
I think anywhere, you know, the thing that has changed the most in the time that I've been in politics that you've been in politics is how people consume political or any news information, right? It used to be pretty straightforward about how you sort of mainlined information to the voters and tried to move public opinion, and now it is not. And even over the last four years, TikTok has exploded in how it is now a real platform where voters, particularly younger voters, get information about everything.
And it's harder to track, and it's harder to influence, and it's harder to move because it's algorithm based and all these things. And so the fact that, you know, the Trump campaign, and I think the right wing in general is very active on that platform gives me a lot of pause.
And I'm honestly, I'm surprised they didn't get on there sooner. I think it was the Superbowl, right? When the Biden campaign and President Biden got got on there so that's five or whatever four months ago but it's no it's it's to have a fully owned and operated broadcast channel for free where you know is essentially what tiktok is is a a valuable asset for the for the trump campaign and we have to take it seriously and compete there yeah and you know you're right that b, you're right that Biden got on, I think around the super bowl several months ago, but I think they only have about 350,000 followers.
I tried to get, you know, Michael Tyler to engage me on this question of whether the follower, the follower count question. No, the question of like, look, Joe Biden signed a bill to ban TikTok and then Donald Trump used to want to ban TikTok, but then his, one of his biggest donors had meeting with him.
And that guy owns a huge stake in ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok. And wow, what a surprise.
Now Donald Trump no longer wants to ban TikTok and Trump does really well on the platform. And Biden is struggling.
I'm not saying that's the only reason why. Obviously, communicating on the platform has been greatly complicated by the war in Gaza, for example.
But, you know, it's concerning that we just don't really know why Trump's seen this explosive growth and favorable pro-Trump content has. I think, A, they've invested a lot just infrastructurally in building a sort of right-wing echo chamber.
I think some of it is structural in that it's easier to be the opposition. And so

it's easier to make critical content than it is to make and share critical content than it is to make and share supportive content of the incumbent president. And it does better, right? So I think some of it is strategic.
Some of it is structural. It is what it is.
But I think, I know that the Biden campaign and allies are acutely aware of this. And it's not just the official accounts.
Like, sure, Biden has fewer followers than Trump, but this is a network problem. You need to have accounts to share.
You need to solve the algorithm. And God bless whoever is the content strategy director for the Biden campaign.
Because like, you know, you've seen have, you've seen there, there are accounts with, uh, 30 followers that go super duper viral because the content is really good. And so some of this is a content strategy question where we might have fewer followers on our side, but if we have better content than whatever that mess is with data, data white and Donald Trump, like it'll feed the algorithm, go viral.
We'll have influencers to amplify it behind the scenes and so forth. So it's an entire like battlefield that is just new, new to me, right? I ran a campaign for president four or five years ago, and this was like kind of on the radar screen.
And now it's like squarely in the middle of the battle for hearts and minds. Yeah.
And just on that content strategy and how communications have changed, I mean, you know, like we kind of set up Trump going to a UFC fight to show that like he wasn't taking the verdict too seriously, or at least not too hard. But listeners should understand that like going to a UFC fight is a message event, right? Like we think of message events as like real people, you know, at a round table about healthcare, the press court, right? Yeah.
This is very different. Like Trump walks into a stadium with 16,000 people.
They go nuts for him. The TV cuts to him.
He's buddies with Dana White who runs the UFC. So he gets the star treatment.
Trump walks around the arena. He says hi to a bunch of kind of influencer types, almost entirely male, but who talk about that interaction later.
Maybe they're on podcasts. Maybe they just post about it on social media.
And so I know it can sound a little silly, but I think this is actually a great use of time when you think about the voters he's trying to reach and turn out. Yeah, I completely agree.
I think, you know, we have to think about content differently nowadays, or I should say, we have to think about reaching voters and persuasion and mobilization differently via content. It is, you know, paid advertising is exceptionally important.
I think even more important this year than it has ever been because you just need volume to break through the noise. But the way to organically, what we call, you know, organically for free, reach people is like this, right? It's doing things that will, on their own, take on a life of their own beyond, beyond the exact moment.
And so in the old days, it was, you do a rally in a swing state, you get local press to cover you, which I'm not suggesting is a bad thing. It's a great thing, right? And you get some local influencers maybe to come, um, uh, you know, so they talk about it in their neighborhoods and it fires up your base and volunteers so you can knock doors.
Still an incredible part of the strategy, but, or important part of the strategy, but this is just that the social media version, right? It's, um, and it's gotta be a part of what every campaign and certainly at the presidential level does going forward because it's how people engage with politics now. Yeah.
And I honestly, I just, i don't know what the kind of progressive version is of of a ufc fight in newark well i mean president obama you know went to nba games right all that's true right like they were just i think the ufc base is a little more is a little whiter a lot mailer um i shouldn't say that it's actually pretty white and Latino, which I think is most combat sports. It's diverse.
It's diverse. It's just very male.
It's diverse, yeah. But certainly very male.
I think a little more looks like the Republican Trumpy base. NBA, more diverse, more black.
So it makes sense. So we have our own kind of sports strategy that I think mirrors it.
But that is not small potatoes, to your first point. It is actually you know so it makes sense so we have our own kind of sports strategy that that i think mirrors it but that is not small potatoes to your first point it is actually you know showing up at a whatever it might be is not a the otrs as we used to call them uh maybe they're still called right off the record stops are like they're not they're not little stuff that's actually can be really big stuff and i think this was smart honestly for the trump campaign to do this to go to a place where he's adored right after he you know got convicted of 34 felonies yeah and you know you sort of helped me get to my my last question here which is about fundraising so today you know the biden campaign has been out raising trump by a lot uh trump you know keeps spending tons of money on legal bills which't, which is not ideal if you're the campaign manager and trying to think about, okay, what do we have for ads down the road? But what do you make of those, those Trump numbers? I mean, I was a little, I expected him to get a bounce, but not that big of a bounce, to be honest.
Yeah, I think the same. I certainly, his base is feeding grief, you know, it's a grievance base and it has been since 2015.
So this is the be-all and end-all of grievance politics, right? And our leader, our savior, is being persecuted, is a great, easy pitch to your base to ask for money. So it's a little more than I would have thought.
Yeah, but how much of it is going to program that's going to reach voters versus, you know, some law firm bottom line is a question I, you know, I don't know. Um, but I'm going to assume is not insignificant amount.
So, um, we have to be, look, we, this is still going to be a close election, even in the wake of a felony conviction. You know, like I said earlier, if a significant percentage of a quarter of the electorate is now open to being persuaded or persuaded by the conviction, we still have to do the work to persuade them.
And not to mention the folks who might be in our base, less motivated to vote, et cetera, et cetera, that all costs money. And the bigger advantage that we have in being able to do all of that, more likely it is we going to win so the more money they raise the better the worse it is for us better the worse it is for us and uh uh that to me is like the in some ways the only silver lining for trump in this crazy conviction situation is that you know he's he can gin up his base and um try to offset the bad politics more spending and more money.
And just for our audience who are hyper engaged in reading these headlines and trying to constantly compare the Biden's results with the Trump results, just know that not all fundraising is equal. Money to the campaign itself, like federal hard dollars are actually more efficient because of the rates you get on advertising down the road.
Donations to like the DNC, for example, the RNC, you can take way bigger checks. So it's easier to raise money into those accounts or state party accounts.
And then there's the super PAC side where donors can cut, you know, basically unlimited checks based on how much cash you have. But those ads are not going to go as far down the road when the advertising environment gets really tight.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hard dollars are definitely the most efficient dollars. And you also can coordinate it with your candidate and there's all, you know, you can spend it on your offices or your field staff, et cetera, et cetera.
But it is not, you know, we should not take, take this lightly. And if there's one sort of piece of advice I can give to the audience here is we should not be spiking the football based on this conviction.
We should celebrate it as a W, as I said before, but this is, we've got five months left and we're going to have to run through the tape for these five months and use this as a, as a tool in our arsenal to persuade voters. But we got to make the case.
We can't assume the case is being made for us just by the facts that happen to be on our side. Yeah.
Well, that's a great place to end it. Adisu, as always, great to see you.
I'm sorry, everyone, for not being Dan. I say that all the time.
It's all good. Most Monday pods.
But he will be back, hopefully, Friday. If not, maybe I'll be in here.
Are you guys going to let me leave? We'll see you next time. You can listen to Jeff Lewis live at home or anywhere you are.
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Joining me now is the communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, Michael Tyler. Michael, it's great to see you.
Thank you for having me. It's great to be on.
All the way live from Wilmington. You got a nice backdrop there.
We see some Joe signs, some baby blue. Everything's very nice.
It's a very professional setup. I just want everyone to know that.
So thank you for joining. It's been a wild week or two in this campaign.
Obviously, President Trump or former President Trump had some legal challenges that came to the floor last week. President Biden and the campaign have gone from declining to comment on Trump's trial in New York and various legal challenges to you and Robert De Niro going down to the courthouse the other week where Trump's trial was happening for a press conference where you guys focused on January 6th to releasing campaign statements on the verdict itself.
Can you just walk us through like the evolution of your strategy and messaging and why you guys decided to weigh in when you did? Yeah, no. So let me back up and talk about during the trial.
During the trial, of course, the president in this campaign was never going to comment on the substance of the trial while it was underway. It's very important that we respect the rule of law, that we respect the integrity of the justice system and let that process play out.
What we did last week when we went down to the courthouse was, I'm sure you know this and everybody who listens, who watches cable news knows this, that every single day since Trump's criminal trial

began, news media cameras were camped out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you know,

incessant coverage where they were showing nothing but NYPD and security guards outside

the courthouse steps. A lot of the news media coverage was about the personal stakes for Donald Trump and not necessarily what the stakes are for the American people in this election.
So when we went down there, we went down there with that precise message that Donald Trump is a threat to the American people and to our democracy, echoing what the president said when he challenged Donald Trump to the two debates that we're now doing starting on June 27th, for the things that he wants to talk to Trump about as relates to the threat that he poses to the American people, right? The role

that he played in overturning Roe v. Wade, the political violence that he continues to sow,

the failed economy that he wants us to return back to, right? Like those are the things

that Donald Trump, when he's not stuck in a courthouse or not down in Mar-a-Lago,

when he actually goes out onto the stump, those are the things that he is talking about every day.

And we want to make sure that the conversation going into the first debate and going into this general election as more people start to tune in is about the fundamental stakes. And so that's what we were focused on then.
That's what we're going to be focused on for the next month here leading up into the debate. And that's what the president is going to talk about every single day between now and November.
Yeah, I think that's a good sort of peek behind the curtain into sometimes how basic communication strategy can be. It's like, hey, the cameras are all here.
Let's go to the cameras, right? Like Chuck Schumer made a political life out of having press conferences on Sunday because like the New York media needed something to cover and talk about. You guys, you did that in your press conference.
I mean, you said directly to those reporters, like, we're doing this because you're here, right? We're doing this because you're focused on this trial. Later, I saw the campaign express some frustration with the fact that Trump's trial was getting more coverage than some of President Biden's events.
Can you help us understand the frustration there? I mean, isn't it a good thing when your opponents' legal troubles are getting like roadblock coverage? Well, certainly now the American people know that we're running

against a convicted felon who's going to do anything to regain and hold on to power to serve himself. Like that is fundamentally true moving forward here.
I think the problem through a lot of the news media coverage, and it's not just related to Donald Trump's legal trials, it's related to, you know, the overall sort of media ecosystem that we're dealing with, right? It is far more interested in process, in horse race, right? Rather than the actual issues and the substance and what the personal stakes are for the American people, their families, their communities, their lives. And so what the campaign and what the president understands is that we are going to have to circumvent that a lot of the time, right? So sometimes that means going down to the courthouse to bring your message directly to the shiny object that the media is incessantly focused on.
Sometimes it means going and when the president does a speech in a place like Philadelphia, not just doing the speech, but actually sitting down around a kitchen table with the family, bringing our own cameras and then chopping it up and using it for our digital platforms, right? To have personal conversations about the fundamental stakes for this specific family. I think you saw us do this in North Carolina a while ago when we first launched our TikTok account.
You actually had a kid who posted it on his own account. We then amplified it from there, right? Got far more coverage than any speech we would give on any single day.
So we understand the challenges of the news media environment that we're operating in. And so we have to find creative ways to get around that.
Yeah, no, I think people don't totally understand that last mile problem with all communications and messaging and politics. It's like, you can edit that speech for as long as you want, but if nobody covers it and doesn't get it to the listener and to the voters you need, it doesn't really matter.
There is a broader, like constant debate about messaging focus. Some strategists will go on cable news all day and say, President Biden should only focus on economic messaging because people are mad about inflation and you got to meet them where they're at.
Others say President Biden is going to win this race by going negative and disqualifying Trump every day. Obviously, every campaign is a combination of both positive and negative.
But how are you guys thinking about that balance? Because you just had this verdict that is this like unprecedented, enormous outcome that, you know, a lot of voters don't know about yet. And it's your job to communicate it to them.
Yeah. So a couple of things, right? Number one, every campaign always has to do both, right? Regardless of the dynamics, regardless of the circumstances.
I think particularly as it relates to the 2024 election and the work that Joe Biden's campaign understands it needs to do is that we're doing quite well with a lot of voters who are paying a lot of attention, right? You listen to this podcast, you watch cable news, you read the New York Times, like you're tuned in, you're far more likely to support Joe Biden and understand the fundamental stakes. What we are dealing with in 2024 is a combination of factors, right? An increasingly fragmented, fractured media environment, an electorate that has been through a lot since going back to 2016 and is tired and has been rejecting politics and not necessarily tuning in, actively resisting politics.
And so what we have to do is address the information gap. So yeah, we've spent a lot of time going back to August of last year communicating the president's historic record of accomplishment, everything from the 15 million jobs he created, 800,000 of those being manufacturing jobs, the work that he has done to lower costs for Americans, capping insulin at $35, $2,000 out-of-pocket prescription drug cap for our seniors, the work that he's done in spite of Republican intransigence in a Supreme Court that tried to get in his way of reducing the student loan debt burden to the tune of almost $170 billion, like relentlessly communicating the record of accomplishment, while simultaneously addressing the fact that Donald Trump, outside of the last few weeks, has just not been in the spotlight.
So the emotional reality that the American people live with, the sense of anxiety, the chaos, the fear, the violence that this man inspired, right, has not been front and center in the lives of the American people. And so we absolutely have to not only remind people of the record of accomplishment, the vision for the future, but we need to remind people of the fundamental stakes now that we are running against a guy who is a convicted felon, who is out for himself, who is running a campaign of revenge, of retribution, who is literally in the wake of his criminal convention, once again, talking about jailing his political opponents, sowing violence, sowing chaos.
Like, we have to remind people of what's at stake in this election. So we're going to do both from now until November.
Yeah, I think you made a point that is really important for listeners to understand, which is that there's a lot of data showing that President Biden does really well with college educated voters and voters who are getting their news from traditional media sources like vetted good information. President Biden is doing less well with non-college educated voters and voters who are getting their news from social media or just generally not paying attention to politics.
So the good news for the Biden-Harris campaign is that voters who understand your record tend to like it more. The bad news is the voters we are losing, the Democratic Party are losing, are the hardest to reach.
There was a Data for Progress poll that showed swing voters are actually the least likely to have heard about Trump's conviction, which is troubling. How are you thinking about the best ways to communicate with those voters, especially to inform them about the guilty verdict if they're not listening to Pod Save America or reading the New York Times or traditional news? Yeah, absolutely.
So you got to use every tool at your disposal. That's why a lot of our work, as I said, began as far back as August to sort of fertilize the contrast for what we knew was coming.
That continues right now. Like we continue to run paid advertisements, but again, to address the information gap, making sure that we're not simply running TV ads, but that we are over-indexing on things like streaming, right? Hulu, YouTube TV, et cetera, et cetera.
So when people are sitting down in front of their screens, like we're actually hitting them with our messaging, it means that we're doing digital organizing. A lot of the lessons that we learned from 2020 still apply.
But frankly, even more so now in 2024, now that we've

put the worst of the pandemic behind us, thank you to Joe Biden, we have to get back to some of

the old school, like, you know, boots on the ground organizing. So the work that we are doing

in the month of June, for example, is scaling up our organizing apparatus. We now have

200 field offices across all the battleground states. We are doing things, not only traditional

Thank you. in the month of June, for example, is scaling up our organizing apparatus.
We now have 200 field offices across all the battleground states. We are doing things, not only traditional door knocking, phone banking, but we're working with small businesses, for example, right, in black and brown communities, not just doing visibility, but doing things where our canvas launches will actually launch out of these places.
So if you're going to get your hair cut, like, you're already going to run into a canvas, right? And that's your opportunity to open up the door of the campaign, get involved, volunteer, right? And so increasingly making sure that we are tapping in to local grassroots organizations so that we're not simply relying upon broadcast media to communicate our message is going to be the thing that helps us continue to address the information gap over the summer as more and more people continue to tune in. Do you think we'll see, you know, information about the Trump verdict in campaign ads? Stay tuned.
Stay tuned. Do you think we'll see Al Pacino doing a press conference? Are we just going for that kind of generation back here? Look, I mean, here's the thing, whether it's De Niro, Pacino, or anybody else who understands the stakes, Now's the time to understand what's at stake here and sign up.

Al Pacino wants you to go to JoeBiden.com. Not only donate, but to volunteer.
I texted you that morning. It's like the fact that you had to stroll up with those guys and like launch that press conference must have been intimidating as hell.
It was a very New York day. New York day.
Speaking of social media, ever since President Biden signed a bill to ban TikTok, it seems like there has been an explosion of pro-Trump content on TikTok. He got on Trump, recently got on TikTok.
He got massive follower growth almost immediately. Are you guys at all worried that they could put their thumb on the scales over there given that this is an existential election for the company itself? Well, listen, I think we're under no false illusion that there's going to be all kinds of issues that we have to deal with on these platforms.
From Trump, from foreign actors, everywhere else, we've seen it going back to 2016. That's absolutely going to be a factor.
I think that's why this campaign understood it was even more incumbent for us to not fight with one hand tied behind our back. You have to be on these platforms.
You have to communicate with your own voice, with your own message across TikTok and other platforms. So we're going to continue to do that.
We launched our own TikTok account going back in February of this year. So we're going to be on that platform and all others.
Of course, I'm getting a phone call during this conversation to make sure that we are leaving no stone untouched, right? Was it Biden? Was it Joe Biden? It was not. It was him.
Just conference him in. We'd love to get him on.
Sorry. So, yeah, like there are going to be barriers, right? There's going to be misinformation.
There's going to be just direct disinformation. But it's on us as a campaign and the entire ecosystem to combat that, right? It takes, frankly, like a deluge of our own messaging to overcome that.
So that's why we're on those platforms. That's why we're excited that our allies understand the need to be on those platforms, because we have to use every single tool that we have at our disposal.
Yeah. And then this is one that's really on not just the Biden-Harris campaign, but literally everyone listening.
Like if you're concerned about a flood of Trump content on social media, then you got to get on social media and push your own positive message. We are all messengers here, as Dan Pfeiffer likes to tell us.
Correct. You cannot rely upon the content moderation.
We have to flood the zone with our own messaging. Yes, absolutely.
Switching gears here. So President Biden is supposed to debate Donald Trump on June 27th.
That is ridiculously soon. How are you guys preparing for this? Are you going to do like the standard debate prep camp? Like, what does that look like? Yeah.
So we are prepared to debate on June 27th. I think it's an open question on if Donald Trump shows up.
Like there's one candidate here who has a record of complaining about the debates, then skipping out on them. That's Donald Trump.
He got beat by, you know, the president twice in 2020. He hasn't shown up to a debate since.
So Joe Biden will be in Atlanta on June 27th, but we'll see what happens with Donald Trump. The president's going to be ready.
He's going to be well prepared. The campaign is also, as you know, we're crisscrossing the country right now, sort of setting the table for the debate, for the questions that Donald Trump is going to have to answer for when he takes the stage.
You have victims of his extreme level of abortion bans that are crisscrossing the country. You have Capitol Police officers who put their lives on the line to protect and defend our democracy on January 6th who are doing the same crisscrossing the country.
And so we're going to make sure that when he takes the stage, that the American people understand that in Donald Trump, you have somebody who presents a persistent and growing threat to the American people, to our economy and to our democracy. And that Joe Biden, as you're seeing every single day, is somebody who wakes up every single day fighting relentlessly for the American people.
So the president's going to be ready and the campaign is certainly going to be ready. My tip is get that COVID vaccine booster like pretty soon, you know, because you don't want to get sick from that fucker again.
Exactly. Trump has repeatedly tried to suggest in the wake of his verdict that his legal problems will actually help him with black voters.
He has suggested that black voters relate to his mugshot. He said that repeatedly.
Yesterday, his son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a photo of George Floyd with the text, Democrats, and then said, quote, I don't know how you can support a felon. The suggestion being that, you know, Democrats who say that, you know, Donald Trump being an unrepentant felon makes him unqualified for the presidency is somehow compared to not wanting George Floyd to be murdered by police, I guess, is what they're trying to get at.
Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said that, quote, Democrats are still worshiping convicted felon George Floyd. All of this strikes me as shockingly cynical and racist messaging.
But I was wondering, you know, if you guys are seeing data or hearing from voters directly about these kind of comments from President Trump, and if you have a response to Marjorie Taylor Greene or Don Jr. I certainly don't have a response for them.
I think my response to the Trump campaign's entire outreach strategy here, it's ridiculous. It's offensive.
It is, in fact, racist. The idea that you're going to associate black people with criminality as the basis of your outreach strategy is just abhorrently racist.
But, frankly, it's in line with who their candidate is, who he's been his entire life, right? This is a man who stepped into public life in many ways by falsely accusing the Central Park Five and continued to do so even after we knew them to be the exonerated five. This is a person who, as you very well know, stepped into the political mainstream by taking birtherism and bringing the mainstream, right? And then this is a person who, when he was in power, like his entire policy agenda was incredibly racist, right? Like his tax policy, for example, gave double the benefit to the typical white household than it did the typical black household.
This is a person who fumbled the bag on the COVID response, which left black people disproportionately dead, left black businesses disproportionately shuttered. So it's no surprise that they can't figure out an intelligent way to actually communicate with black voters as we head into 2024.
I think the way that you can and should is the way that Joe Biden is doing it, right? Which is reminding people of what you've actually done, making promises and keeping them, right? And so things like Black wealth increasing by 60% since before the pandemic, record low Black unemployment during the first term of this administration, Black child poverty cut in half through the child tax credit, which is something that we're bringing back since MAGA Republicans cut it out, and the work that we're continuing to do into a second term. That's how you earn the respect and earn the votes of black voters.
That's what this campaign is actually doing. It's certainly not what the Trump campaign is doing.
Yeah. Black women on the Supreme Court, the vice president.
The list goes on and on and on. Final question.
Yesterday, President Biden announced an executive order that will allow him to effectively shut down the southern border after a certain number of migrants cross or seek asylum. He got some pretty quick blowback from progressives like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who argued that the EO was modeled after Trump's immigration policies.
I wonder if you have a response to that and if you guys are worried that this executive order could further anger progressives who maybe are frustrated about other issues like Gaza or demotivate the Democratic base at a time when we're trying to bring it together going into this election? No, listen, I think what the American people are going to see, what progressives are going to see, what all voters are going to see, is a president who takes seriously his responsibility as the president of the United States, right? As a president who worked relentlessly towards a bipartisan border security deal, one that was on the table that was ready to go until Donald Trump came along and blew it up and said, blame me. So we will continue to do that.
We will continue to blame him on this issue. The president himself remains committed to bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform that not only addresses the border, but treats people here humanely with the dignity and decency that they deserve as human beings, that provides for a pathway to citizenship.
All of that stands directly in contrast to what we know our opponent is going to do, right? This is somebody who is not actually interested in border security, certainly not interested in bipartisan, you know, comprehensive immigration reform. This is somebody who was telling us out on the stump every single day what he wants to do.
He wants to erect mass deportation camps. He wants to bring back family separation, separating kids from their mothers.
He wants to end birthright citizenship, something that's been foundational to the U.S. Constitution going back to Reconstruction.
So the contrast is pretty clear here. It's between a president who is fighting relentlessly for solutions and a chaos agent in Donald Trump who only cares about his own personal self-interest.
Well said. Michael Siler, thanks for doing the show.
Good luck with that debate prep, man. My experience is presidents don't love doing it.
They don't, you know, you get kind of used to everyone standing up when you walk in the room after like a couple months in the job, and all of a sudden you're at some debate prep, and someone's telling you your answer sucks, and Barack Obama's like, get out of my face. I have better things to do than talk to you, David Axelrod, or whoever.
I'm very excited to see how this goes and root for you guys. Thanks, man.
We're looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.
Thanks again to DCU for being here. Thanks again to Michael Tyler, and we'll talk to you guys on Friday.
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