Law and Odor: Trump Trials

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor.
I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
Thank you all for coming. Thanks to the LA Times Festival of Books for having us.
And thanks to everyone who's already pre-ordered our book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. We'll be talking a bit more about the book later,

and if you haven't ordered yet, you can do so at crooked.com slash books. Okay, let's get to the news.
Now that we've got 12 jurors and six alternates, opening statements are set to begin in the criminal trial of the Republican nominee for President Donald J. Trump.
I mean, the end of the sentence was, who could face up to four years if convicted? I figured like that would be... Yeah, there you go.
Don't clap till we have a verdict. Right.
So New York Times reports this morning that the prosecution is planning to call former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as their first witness. Could be as early as tomorrow if opening statements are quick enough.
Pecker is expected to testify about his agreement with Trump to buy and hide stories that would be politically damaging to him, which is known as catch and kill. There was plenty of drama last week in the trial, which ended with a man who tragically lit himself on fire outside the courtroom, while inside, several potential jurors broke down in tears over the risk of serving.
On a lighter note, there are unconfirmed reports that Trump has been farting in the courtroom, which we are, of course, repeating purely for entertainment value. We would never traffic in such rumors.
One thing we can confirm is that there is at least one gag order in place that the defendant continues to whine about. Let's listen.
The gag order has to come off. People are allowed to speak about me, and I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is.
I have a lot to say

to you and I'm not allowed to say it and I'm the only one. Everyone else can say whatever they want

about me. They can say anything they want.
They can continue to make up lies and everything else.

They lie. They're real scum but you know what? I'm not allowed to speak and I want to be able to speak

to the press and everybody else about it. So why am I gagged? It's so unfair that the judge

I'm going to go press and everybody else about it. So why am I gagged? It's so unfair that the judge won't let that guy speak because now we have no idea what he thinks about stuff.
It's just brutal. So Trump has nonetheless spent the weekend accusing Judge Mershon of having a conflict of interest, calling the district attorney corrupt, and threatening to prosecute Joe Biden if he wins.
Tommy, do you think Trump is helping himself here, legally or politically? You can pick either. Sure, I'll take both, John.
500. We could do a whole episode on this farting allegation because it is hilarious.
It is believable. It's probably not true, or at at least not in any way.
But also, he'll probably comment on it. And it tells us a lot about the media ecosystem that we all live in.
But back to your question. So I think legally, it seems like he's probably just mostly pissing off the judge and potentially putting himself in jeopardy of getting fined for contempt, and then the punishment for contempt could get escalated to potentially jail time if he continues to do it.
I think he's viewing this, though, primarily as a political fight. He is trying to not only shape the opinions of the jury pool, which is a process that started many, many years ago, but also sort of shape the opinions of the electorate who ultimately vote to make him president or not.
So I think he has one speed in politics. It's attack, attack, attack.

Doesn't matter if it's a campaign. It doesn't matter if it's hurting his interests.

He just thinks that he'll be able to impact public opinion. And, you know, in the past,

he's been pretty good at it. Propaganda doesn't have to be believable or savvy to be effective.

You just need to repeat it relentlessly. Yeah, it feels too early to tell.
But I do wonder if any time voters turn on TV or read the news and see Donald Trump just whining like that about a gag order, at some point, I don't know if that helps him. Some people could say that the trial is unfair, but it's the middle of a presidential campaign.
It's going to go on for, you know, six to eight weeks. And if all we get from Donald Trump is just him complaining about the trial, I don't know.
Erin, what do you think? And do you have any other takeaways from the first week of this trial and thoughts on the fart? I don't want to think about him farting. I truly don't.
I think that I've seen enough Mueller time T-shirts out in the wild that now are mysteriously vanished that I am not counting on the justice system to deliver any we got him kind of a moment. The first week of the trial did kind of make me worry about the safety of the jurors as a lot of jurors were worried about their own safety.
It seems like there are some media outlets that are really bent on doxing them or getting their personal information out there, possibly intimidating them. I've heard Donald Trump has been trying to stare people down.
He was like he was like glowering at them. But I think he has like resting, glowering face.
Yeah. So I'm not sure if that's just like how his face goes when he's not doing anything.
But still, I mean, it would be intimidating. You're coming in, you're supposed to be a juror, and you've got the former president with this like army of Wahoos who will do basically whatever he says, and he's giving you the stink eye.
Like, that's not great. He was doing little fist bumps if you read Art of the Deal too.
He said, yes. Oh God.
According to the New York Times. One thing that I am a little bit worried about is that this is a great event for like New York media because they know where it's happening and it's in New York and it's easy for them to cover and I just don't want this to suck all the oxygen out of the room when we should be also talking about like what a nightmare it would be if he were re-elected and how low quality GOP candidates are across the country.
Yeah. Dan, our friend Anant Shankar-Osorio has a new piece in Slate titled, The Trump Trial is Already Influencing Public Opinion, and she's got a polling memo that finds a majority of voters already see this trial as evidence of Trump engaging in a, quote, long-term criminal conspiracy.
Do you think that damage is already being done here, or do you think it's sort of too early to tell? You're not going to ask me a fart question? was gonna be my follow-up tan okay sorry sorry i didn't read the script this week also apparently he was farting because he was falling asleep we know he's falling asleep right that's like maggie havenman reported that that's true and the rumor is that as he was nodding off then i think he was maybe you know Yeah, but who does that? Who farts as they're falling asleep? Is that a thing? Let me tell you. I mean, look, I talked to Maggie today.
Maybe wake himself up, you know? I talked to Maggie today. Oh, wow, you did some reporting.
I did some reporting on this. She told me she could not confirm that gas was passed at this trial.
It seems to be potentially

fake news. Dan, you had something smart

to say.

Some resistance account got

hashtag odor in the court

trending on Twitter.

That's pretty good. I'm not going to lie.

Does that love it? Could be worse.

Could be worse. Anyway, sorry.

Did I steal your pun?

What was the question again?

Do you think the damage is already being done?

Yes. Yes, damage is being done.

I think ultimately, and Aaron is right to be worried that the media is going to focus on this trial

to the expense of so many other very important stories in this campaign and in this country.

That's definitely going to happen. There's nothing the media likes more than to cover something in their backyard, and New York is their backyard.
However, it is meaningful that last week Donald Trump spent eight hours a day, four days a week, in a courtroom in Manhattan, alternately sleeping and farting, while Joe Biden was in Pennsylvania in a battleground state that is a

must-win for both candidates talking about the economy. There is a massive opportunity cost for Trump here.
Now, we also know that Trump being in the news is bad for Trump. There's a huge irony that he wrote- Are you saying he doesn't comport himself well? Yeah, I'm saying he is not his best messenger, per se.

And there's an irony to that because Donald Trump won the White House for the first time by dominating media, and he may win it a second time by not being in front of the cameras all the time, or at least living in a media environment where being in front of the cameras is a less dominant experience than it was before. It's just people don't see him as much.
And the fact that there's a high-profile trial of a former president happening in New York, he's going to dominate the news. And that is not good for Trump.
Ultimately, all of that is going to matter much less than what happens at the end of this. Is Donald Trump convicted of a crime? Because the polling shows that there is at least some number of voters, including a significant portion of people who voted for him in 2020, who that would make them much less comfortable voting for him again.
And if he's acquitted, he would have the opposite and less exciting effect. And so this is going to dominate time, but what's going to matter is what happens in the end more than anything else.
Yeah. I do think, I mean, this was, of the four trials, the one that people thought was the weakest case.
Doesn't mean it's a weak case. But it's been talked about as a hush money case.
There's a lot of people who talk about it as an election interference case. In fact, the judge said, the instructions to the jury was he's being charged with falsifying business records to cover up trying to unlawfully influence the election.
And I do think the more, I mean, having David Pecker go first, who was at the National Enquirer and did this deal with Donald Trump where it was basically like, any story that's bad for you, we'll buy it, we'll bury it, like making the argument that he was trying to pay money to keep damaging information about himself from the electorate so that he could win is, I think it's a stronger argument than just like it's a hush money trial. I mean, it just also speaks to how severe the other crimes were, that this is the weak one.
Right. Right.
It's like, wait, which election interference trial is this? Oh, this was the 2016 one, not the 2020 one. Right.
But also just if you say this paragraph to yourself out loud, that the presumptive Republican nominee is on trial for a felony crime of falsifying business records to cover up an extramarital affair with an adult film star weeks before the election. And you're like, oh, that's not as serious as the other two criminal trials, is wild.

And it seems like David Pecker,

the National Choir guy, testifying,

you wonder if also part of that conversation

or part of that testimony will be the allegation

that Donald Trump was able to basically write

fake headlines about his opponents,

such as Ted Cruz's father killed JFK. Allegedly fake allegedly, allegedly fake.
Prove it didn't happen, Tommy. Right.
So, I mean, it's just typical, typical liberal media guy here. Donald Trump definitely farted, but maybe Ted Cruz's father didn't kill him.
It will be a fascinating look into the way that organization worked. Yes.
All right. So Dan and I talked on Thursday's pod about Biden world's decision to steer clear of talking about this trial, other than a few jokes and puns here and there.
Last week, the president was out in Pennsylvania, as Dan mentioned, contrasting his plans to help middle class families with Trump's plans to help the rich. He was doing the Scranton Joe versus Park Ave Trump thing, which I think is great.
This week, Biden's going to focus on abortion with a big speech in Florida. On Tuesday, hitting Trump for the state's six-week abortion ban.
This is after Kamala Harris gave a similar speech in Arizona last week. But it's not just speeches.
So far in 2024, 90% of the Biden campaign's television ads have focused on abortion. And the most aired ad is one in which Trump takes credit for killing Roe and Biden promises to pass a federal guarantee to protect the right to choose.
So, Aaron, Republicans are arguing that even if they have the politically weaker argument here, that they don't think enough voters who are up for grabs rank abortion as their top issue. What do you think? I think that all you have to do is take a look at election results since Dobbs to find that that is not the case.
Abortion has been kicking ass in the ballot box, and it's an extremely important issue to a lot of people. I think it's a motivating issue to some people who would otherwise not be excited about voting for Joe Biden.
We're seeing polling that shows that since Dobbs, people are still just as mad about Dobbs today as they were the day that Sam Alito's smug ass handed down that opinion on the Supreme Court. And, you know, it's a winning issue.
It has been demonstrated over and over again that abortion is a winning issue. And I think that Dobbs also helped people who didn't otherwise think too deeply about abortion, who were trying to think of themselves as moderates.
It is deeply weird to have the government involved at all. It is deeply weird for these people to be making rules about women's bodies when I don't think they know the difference between the sizes of tampon.
Like, I don't think these people should be making rules. And it's something that a lot of people are seeing more clearly now.
Exceptions don't really in any practical way work. People who think of themselves as pro-life, who would never get an abortion, are finding that actually it's not such a black and white issue.

You don't know what medical care you're going to need, and it is fucked up that state legislators get to make that decision for you. This is something that people are realizing across the country.
It is a... I would take that bet.
It is a winning issue.

It has been wild watching some of these Republicans who are now

backing away from their more

extreme anti-abortion stances

that they've had in the past.

Almost tumbling into the pro-choice

position, like Carrie Lake,

who had said that she supported

the 1864 Arizona ban. you know, that was just a complete ban.
And then she's like, well, now, here's the thing. I might be personally against abortion, but I don't think I should make the decision.
That's called pro-choice, Carrie. You're pro-choice.
You're almost there. So, Dan, you were the one who pointed out that 90% number on the Biden campaign's ads.
That seems like a huge amount of their ads, even for an issue that they do want to make central to the election. What do you make of that decision, and do you think they will sustain that level of spending on abortion-related ads? I'm not sure it'll be 90-10 by the end of this campaign, but I'd be willing to bet that at the end of this election, the issue that the Biden campaign will have spent the most money on will be abortion, and it probably won't be close.
And I think the reason for that is exactly what Aaron said, is it is a motivating issue for a lot of voters. And ultimately, what campaigns are about is trying to, everything they do, the ads, the speeches, the tweets, the social media strategy, is about trying to influence what issues are top of mind when voters make their decisions starting in October.
And if what people are thinking about when they make that decision is the price of groceries or the border, that's probably good for Donald Trump. If they're thinking about tax cuts for the rich, abortion bans and violent insurrections, that's probably good for Joe Biden.
And there's a very interesting poll that came out today from NBC News where they asked two questions. One, what's the most important issue facing the country? And only 6% of Americans cited abortion.
It was like fourth or fifth on the list. Then they asked a follow-up question.
And this is the most important question from the perspective of a campaign. What issues are so important to you that they could influence your choice? And 19% of people said abortion.
And so what the Biden campaign wants to do is make people think more and more about abortion as they're making a decision and what the very real dangers of Donald Trump or the Republican trifecta would do to the parts of this country that don't yet have extreme abortion bans or what a President Biden and a Democratic, pro-choice Democratic Congress could do to pass a law federally, right, to stop these abortion bans. And so I think it's going to be a huge part of the campaign.
It should be a huge part of the campaign. And it is going to be one where you're going to have to put money behind it, because the press is not going to cover it continually this whole time.
It's like what you're exactly talking about. What is one of the issues that's going to get lost because of this criminal trial? We're talking about abortion bans in Idaho and Arizona and Florida and places like that.
And And so spending money on this is quite smart in my view. Yeah, I also want to jump in and add that if I think something the Biden administration hasn't been hitting as hard as they should is that if Republicans take the White House, the House and the Senate, we will get a federal ban.
That affects us in California. That affects people in the bluest blue states who think they're safe, who after Dobbs were texting their friends and saying, oh, it's so terrible what's going to happen over there.
No, it's happening here. And there are a lot of races here in California that could determine the balance

of the House of Representatives. And I think it is really important for us Californians, maybe some people who didn't vote in the primaries, to think about how important these local elections are.
We can determine who keeps the House. Yeah.
I also think, I mean you have republicans out there who are trying to you know back away from their positions and and sort of muddy the waters and they're like well there'd never be the votes in the senate to pass a national abortion ban and then you have donald trump saying i'm not going to pass even if democrats keep the House and the Senate, or flip the House and keep the Senate, he could just through executive action ban Mifepristone, ban abortion medication, which is responsible for what, like two-thirds of abortions in this country. So, even just Donald Trump in the White House alone with no Congress could be bad, let alone what would happen if there's a full Republican Congress.
I do wonder too, Dan, if part of the reason that they're spending so much now on these abortion ads is to define Trump before he tries to back away from his position, like him saying, oh, I don't like the Arizona ban, and I'm not going to sign a national ban, and just reminding people that he was the one who did this in the first place. Do you think some of it's that? Yeah, I think obviously you want to fill a vacuum and Trump's not on the air.
He doesn't have as much money. This is the time to pressure advantage.
And there are a couple other reasons for this too. One is voters do not think, they think Trump's extreme, but they don't think of him as extreme in a religious right sort of way.
We've said this many times, he's this rich guy from New York who cheats on his wives. He does not, in the mind of voters who think about the sort of right-wing, religious, Mike Johnson-esque Republicans, Donald Trump elies that notion.
So you want to define him that way. And that's going to take money and time.
Just because he himself to Jesus Christ being persecuted doesn't necessarily mean anyone to see him as so religious there's not a person alive not evangelical, not anyone else who believes Donald Trump when he talks about his favorite bible verse or he's selling it's all wink wink not not but the other thing is and this is something that's very interesting that happened since Dobbs is Dobbs really was a singular tectonic shift in American politics. And one thing it shifted was, if you talk to people who are working on 2022 races, the thing that Democrats have been talking about this mag-extremism argument for a long time, mag-extremism, mag-extremism, we want to paint the Republicans as extreme.
Dobbs happened, and that opened a door for people to see Republicans as more extreme on a whole host of issues other than just abortion. And even on something like cutting Social Security and Medicare, right, because of what happened with Dobbs, people, they were more open to the idea that Republicans would actually do these really extreme things that they usually are pretty skeptical politicians will actually do because they don't, they think it's kind of a bullshit political attack or they don't think they can actually

accomplish it to take this freedom or this thing away from me and so establishing donald trump's

involved responsibility for dobbs opens the argument to a whole bunch of other things about how extreme he is building a business may feel like a big jump but on deck small business Thank you. As a top-rated online small business lender, OnDeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan to fit your needs.

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On that note, Tommy, the AP just reported that ever since Dobbs, complaints have spiked that pregnant women facing medical emergencies are being turned away from ERs in states with abortion bans, even though that's against the federal law. Do you think stories like that have the potential to broaden the coalition of voters who might choose Trump or Biden based on this one issue? Yeah, I mean, I think what those stories shows is that having a patchwork of state-by-state abortion bans that include laws passed in the 1860s puts all women, all pregnant women, at risk.
And the story Donald Trump wants to tell about abortion, literally, is he says Democrats want to abort babies after they're born, which is... It's illegal.
It's already illegal. It's called murder.
We're talking backstage. Murder? Murder, yeah.
Can't do that. So that's the narrative he wants to portray about Democrats.
And the reality is that abortion is an incredibly complicated and painful decision. And when you create these laws in places like Texas or Idaho and North Carolina, where you have doctors or medical organizations worried that they could lose funding or be prosecuted or lose their accreditation if they treat patients.
You read stories about women who are pregnant being turned away or told to drive to another facility nearby and losing children on the way or being denied an ultrasound or not getting care that put their lives at risk. And it's just like, it's so, the abject cruelty of putting someone through that undercuts the idea that there's anything about this decision that is pro-life.
It is about controlling women and telling them how to live their lives. And like, you know.
Yeah. And I do think, I mean, the stories that we've already heard since Dobbs and the Biden campaign has, you know, I think one of their first ads on abortion was a story of a woman in Texas.
And they're going to be able to, there's so many of them. And telling those, that's going to have an emotional impact with voters that I think you can't necessarily measure in a single poll or just by like looking at a big sample and saying, oh, say this or that you have those ads running between now and November and the whole country is hearing these stories I do think that's going to have a bigger effect than people yeah I agree I also think two things first of all abortion isn't always a complicated decision sometimes it's the right decision and it's obvious and it's no no going.
But if you're going to an emergency room and the treatment that you need might include abortion, then it is almost certainly a complicated and heartbreaking decision. So states like Idaho and Texas, which have laws that ban essentially abortion at any point in pregnancy, up until the point that the mother is about to die.
They are arguing that abortion is actually not medical care. And they're arguing over the expertise of doctors and they're arguing over the expertise of women.
So if you show up as a pregnant person at an ER, need an abortion, like these are the people that where it is absolutely, like you said, Tommy, the most cruel and tragic circumstances that abortion occurs under. Yeah.
What I was sort of trying to get at is for a long time, the line from Democrats on abortion was safe, legal, and rare, which I understood like what the messaging politically, but it made it sound like this was a choice that people were making that we wanted to prevent that choice from being made through whatever policy. And I think that that is, that is just wrong because like what you were saying, often it's a medical necessity and it's often someone whose life is at risk or someone who needs abortion care because if they don't get it in that moment, then they won't be able to have another kid in the future.
And as someone who has sat through an ultrasound where, you know, you thought there'd be a heartbeat and then there isn't, to take that moment and then

deny a person medical care is so unbelievably cruel to me that I almost can't fathom it.

All right. So we have two fun things to end the news section.
Because've all been so good I brought the tone up I wanted to lighten it up for you guys That's what we do The abortion disco siren We get some serious, we get some funny It's the show The first, Tommy picked this clip out It's a clip from Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez who I think, cut one of the best ads for the Democratic Party that I've seen this year. So he was on CNN Sunday talking about how the House of Representatives beat back the MAGA hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz to pass aid and support for Ukraine, Israel, the Palestinians and Taiwan with a huge bipartisan majority.
And Representative Gonzalez said this. I serve with some real scumbags.
Look, Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi.
These people used to walk around with white hoods at at night now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime i mean wow the republican republican tony gonzalez he voted for impeachment right i think he was one of the i think he was one of the few i don't think he's on donald trump's um team short list well not to get ahead of our next segment. Yeah, that was wild.
That was wild. Great clip.
Good for Tony Gonzalez. We've seen that in battleground districts before long.
All right, so we're going to wrap up the news section with some wildly irresponsible Trump VP speculation. Just as a little treat.

So Tommy and Lovett and I covered this a few weeks ago.

Since then, we learned some new information.

First, according to the New York Times,

Trump is focused on a candidate who can help him raise money,

since he seems to be a little short on cash right now.

Two, according to RFK Jr., Trump's team asked him to consider being his running mate, though Trump's team says that's not true. Hard to tell.
All these people are liars. And lastly, according to Puck, Trump has removed from his shortlist governors from states with the most restrictive abortion bans because he's worried about the politics.

If true, that would probably eliminate South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who just said this today, Sunday, about her position on abortion. Do you think there should be exceptions for rape and incest, for example? And I think that every state's going to look different.
What do you think? That's what's different, Dana, is that I've constantly looked and we rely in South Dakota on the fact that I'm pro-life and we have a law that says that there is an exception for the life of the mother. And I just don't believe a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy.
Can I just say she's not used to her new teeth yet? That's mean. It's mean, but she's a bad person, so I can be mean to her.
Because, you know, famously got some new veneers in the Veepstakes race, and they're not quite taking. I think if you get the joke about Chrissy Noeb's new teeth, you reach a certain level of political junkie that's very impressive.
She cut an ad for the veneers company. She's hawking veneers, governor of the

state. Is that what happens? I don't know.
Anyway, Dan, what do you think? We haven't talked to you about your VP speculation yet. From a political standpoint, who do you think would help Trump the most? And separate question, who do you think he's most likely to pick? I promise you those will not be the same people.

I think it's important to note,

just, I know we're... who do you think he's most likely to pick? I promise you those will not be the same people.

I think it's important to note,

I know our speculation is irresponsible here,

but I think we should just at least note for the record that there is almost no issue in American politics

that has talked about more,

but matters less than who someone picks as their VP nominee.

I mean, yes, it matters.

That's why it's last on the list.

That's why it's our fun segment.

Yes, that's right. I mean, it certainly meant like who becomes vice president certainly matters, particularly for a candidate like Donald Trump, who can't stay awake in court.
But in terms of how much it changes the race, I think it's on the margins at most. I think if I was thinking about this from the perspective of Donald Trump's campaign, I would think, what segment of the population can I separate, what segment of the Biden coalition do I have the best chance of bringing some people over with me? Ultimately, we're an anti-MAGA majority in this country and in the battleground states.
So in order for Trump to win, he has to fracture that coalition. And the answer is voters with veneers.
People with insecurities about their teeth. And so I think he would look at the place where, at least in the polling thus far, Trump has had the most success bringing over, or at least separating from Biden, are men of color, right? So I would be looking at a black or Latino man as my running mate.
And now there are some constitutional complications to this. But if you really wanted, I think, the pick that would be most impactful, you would pick Marco Rubio.
Wow. Damn.
And now this would require Marco Rubio to resign from the Senate because he'd have to change his residency to somewhere else because they can't both be from the same state. I mean, we can applaud for Marco Rubio resigning from the Senate, but he would be replaced.
No, no. And then you don't pick him, and it's hilarious.
I love this plan. So I think you would do that, or you would do Byron Donalds, I think, the congressman.

Who would also have to move?

He'd also have to move.

As of right now, Mike Johnson couldn't afford losing that seat

because that would go vacant.

What about Tim Scott?

I think this is where you get to

who Trump would actually pick.

I don't think Tim Trump... Let me make the case for Marco Rubio from Trump's perspective, at least Trump loves a power dynamic and he knows that he has bet Marco Rubio to his will.
He's basically destroyed him and he thinks Marco Rubio is kind of a chump and he definitely wants a chump. I think the problem with Tim Scott is Tim Scott is just a little too Mike Pence for him.
Yeah.

I think when push

comes to shove and you need someone to overthrow

the government, I think he knows Tim

Scott's going to turn to his Bible like Mike Pence

and not be there for him. You can't have a VP that

bows to a higher God. You know what I mean?

It's got to be. There's only one

God Trump wants them to worship. Only one God.

You don't want a VP pick who people would trust to babysit their kids. So there was more reporting on the Marco Rubio possibility, especially because I apparently think that he could raise a lot of money because he ran for president and has a network of donors, some of whom are still on the sidelines, whatever.
So to the point where they were talking to Trump about what they do about Florida, and they were like, well, it's easy for Trump to just change his residency to Bedminster in New Jersey, where he's got a golf club there, or Westchester, or any of these places. And apparently Trump was like, I will not do that because I don't want to deprive the citizens of Florida from having me as a resident.
Or he would prefer to deprive the state treasury of New York of the additional tax dollars that would cost me a New York resident. Exactly.
But what was your idea about, Tommy, this is a prank for Rubio? Oh, yeah, no. You tell Rubio to resign and then move and then you don't pick him.
It's hilarious.

Honestly,

I'd be incredible. I'd be trying to get that idea to Donald Trump

because I think that's fantastic.

Erin, what do you think? What are your thoughts

on this? Well, okay, so

Trump needs money, right?

And he never

has any original ideas. Everything is

sort of derivative. Even Make America Great

Again was stolen from what, like Charles Lindbergh or Ronald Reagan? Yeah, Ben Reagan, yeah. Who stole it from Charles Lindbergh? Anyway, I think he should pick Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan, good at making, good at raising money. Somebody else already had the idea.
It's like the perfect Trumpian. It's the perfect Trumpian pick.
I think that he has bandied about the idea of picking a woman as VP because I think that he thinks, I don't know, there's a whole like, I'm not a psychologist, but I need one to like break down all the reasons why he would pick this type of woman. He will pick a woman who is a Miss America type.
He will pick a woman who he thinks that other women want to be. He'll pick the type of woman who would show up at like a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
And I would normally say like a Christy gnome, but she's kind of like flailing. Also, like everyone kind of missed out on that New York Post report about her and Corey Lewandowski having an affair.
Yeah. Which is like kind of what? How does he keep getting such beautiful people? I'm just Hope Hicks.
Corey Lewandowski. I don't know.
I don't know. It's weird.
I think he's going to pick somebody who looks like someone who would be in a Miss Universe pageant. And you think it'll be a woman? I think it'll be a woman because he needs a woman to go out there and be his attack dog on this losing issue of abortion.
He needs a woman to be like the one speaking out in favor of common sense bands, which we all know are not common sense. So I think he's going to pick like, if there is a Christy Gnome approximate type, he's going to pick her.
And that's why Katie Britt would have been great until she did the Union response and scared the hell out of everybody. Yeah.
Although now I think because Alabama was where the horrendous IVF decision was down, he probably is maybe a no on Katie Britt. Right, and Carrie Lake is out too because of the Arizona thing.
So like all the Miss America ladies are just one by one getting knocked out of the semifinals. Tough.
Nancy Mace. What's that? Nancy Mace.
Nancy Mace. Yeah, she's a liar though.
I mean, that's a you mean, that's a good thing for him. That's a selling point.
Tommy, last time we talked about this, you had sort of like an outside-the-box idea with J.D. Vance.
And since then, there's been a lot of reporting that Trump is moving closer to actually doing the J.D. Vance thing.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think if he just wants to bro out, he'll go J.D. Vance.
I thought the one that was sort of the most interesting in terms of just the narrative and the story you get to tell is Tulsi Gabbard. Because, because you can say, you guys call me partisan? She was, you know, she was a Democrat.
She was elected Democrat, and I picked her. It would be an interesting, splashy thing, but then's a weirdo.
That is a great segue to my question for you about the RFK Jr. story.
What do you make of this whole RFK Jr. saying, yeah, the team called me.
He wanted to pick me. I believe it.
I really do believe it. You've never disbelieved a single thing RFK Jr.
said. Yeah.
I think it could have been a prank call. Somebody could have been doing their Donald Trump impression, called RFK Jr., and he was like, yeah, that's RFK, Donald Trump.
Yeah, he just completely buys it. Yeah, no, he's like, DTaP vaccine? Why would anyone take that? I'm like, oh, write that down.
So RFK Jr., obviously the only reason anyone's talking about him is because of his name, right? But also the conventional wisdom was someone named Kennedy, someone with the record as an environmental lawyer, might draw from Democrats. As time goes on, it's becoming more and more clear that Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. is drawing more votes from Trump than from Biden.
There was an NBC poll out today. People who were supporting Trump in the head-to-head were twice as likely to support RFK if he was included in the poll than Biden.
And on top of that, if you just sort of like look at issues that RFK is out there talking about, it's anti-vaccine stuff. He's more hawkish than Trump and Biden in support of the Israeli war in Gaza.
He is in all the sort of, you know,

kind of right-wing paranoid spaces.

Joe Rogan all the time.

He's talking to Tucker Carlson.

So you can imagine Trump wanting to sure up his base

through an RFK Jr. pick

and have a dude on the ticket named Kennedy.

You know, for like low-information voters,

that's pretty, you know, it's a big news story.

It's interesting.

It makes him sound more willing to reach across the aisle than I think the pick actually exposes him to be. So you could see it happening.
Yeah. I mean, if those numbers, this is like the NBC poll from today is like the first time, first major poll, I think we've seen RFK take more from Trump than Biden.
If that continues, you could see Trump starting to panic and wanting to like bring him into the fold. We got to-wing influencer types who used to have him on their shows, Charlie Kirks of the world, etc., now viciously attack RFK Jr.
Trump's calling him a radical left socialist Democrat in tweets, so getting nasty. Do we really want someone with such strong Leland Palmer vibes second on the major party ticket? All the Twin Peaks fans, all five of you laughing at that.
Dan, what were you going to... I mean, I don't know what you think, but I would be scared shitless of a Trump-Kennedy ticket.
That'd be very worsen. If you listen to...
I would encourage people who are sleeping too well at night to listen to the focus group, Sarah Longwell, the Bulwark House's focus group podcast where she lists the focus group. She did one with RFK.
People who voted, one group of people who voted for Biden in 20, one group of people who voted for Trump in 20 who were open to supporting RFK Jr. And the reasons are crazy, but there is this sense among voters that because he's a Democrat or was a Democrat and because he's a Kennedy and he doesn't like either party that he has this like independent streak.
And if you put that with Trump, that would like the one, there are two issues in all these polls where Biden out polls Trump. It's uniting the country and abortion.
And I think this would help Trump. Trump's divisiveness is one of his greatest weaknesses with a lot of persuadable voters, and this would address it.
The good news is there are two upsides to this scenario. One, it is highly unlikely to happen because they're both megalomaniacal narcissists.
And two, if it were to happen, I do

kind of think the debate with Kamala Harris would be excellent television. Oh, wow.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a good one.
That's a good one. Yeah, that would definitely be like the burn it down ticket.
And you could see a lot of people, especially young people, being able to do it. Yeah, that's That's what I would worry about, is that in an election year where probably more people than usual are sick of both parties, and when you start polling voters who haven't showed up in previous elections, they're Trumpier, or they're more willing to go third party, and you wonder at the end of the election whether those voters are going to stay home or turn out.
And you could see if it was Trump and RFK Jr., you could see a little bit

those voters peeling off. Okay.
When we come back, we're going to talk about democracy or else,

how to save America in 10 easy steps. Thank you.
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Okay, we are here at the LA Times Festival of Books. My friends and co-hosts here, along with Jon Lovett, who has a live show today so he couldn't be here, they wrote a book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps.
Everyone here has obviously pre-ordered it, so I don't have to tell you to, but on the off chance you forgot or have not yet

pre-ordered your second and third copies for your friends

and family, please do so now.

I've also, I would say

John, John, and Tommy,

they have a long history of doing

a lot of writing. They're excellent writers.

They're very humble writers. They

have not talked about this book very much.

They wrote it kind of quietly.

Now it's here. You didn't know

it was coming, and so now is a time in which you're going Thank you. very humble writers.
They have not talked about this book very much. They wrote it kind of quietly.

Now it's here. You didn't know it was coming.
And so now is a time in which you're going to

talk about this book, sell this book, explain this book. Our first question comes from Erin.

Okay. So trees had to die for this.
Can you justify their death?

That's a great question.

Audiobooks are a thing. No, we read the audiobook.
We recorded the audiobook. We recorded the audiobook, and I had to read a lot of jokes that Lovett wrote, and it's not going to end well for me, let me tell you.
Oh, my God. So after the 2016 election,

I'm sure all of us got a million texts from your friends

saying, what do we do?

How do we fix this?

This is so fucked up.

You worked in government.

What do we do now?

And the honest answer was there was no one thing.

There was no easy answer.

It was a million little things over time. It was being more engaged in democracy it was being paying more attention it was volunteering it was donating it was voting it was getting your friends to vote um and so that's what the show became is trying to help people figure out how to become an activist in your own life and over the course of doing this pot save america for what's seven million years now, we've talked to some of the smartest politicians, organizers, activists, and they've taught us a lot.
And we wanted to put all of that in one place to help people figure out your media diet, how to get informed, how to vote, how to figure out where to donate, how to figure out where to volunteer, maybe run for office, maybe work in politics. So, you know, one other option besides buying the book is going back and listening to seven years worth of Pod Save America episodes.
You're welcome to do that as well. We thought putting it all in one place was important, especially as we're heading into this election where the stakes just couldn't possibly be higher.
Yeah. So talk to us a little about the process of writing the book.
John, you're a speechwriter. Love it.
Who's a speechwriter? Tommy, you've done a lot of writing. How did you divide up work here? What was the process? Well, since Love It's not here, we can talk about the real process.

So we worked with a fantastic writer as well, Josh Holloway.

Josh, are you here?

Yeah, there he is.

He's handsome too.

There he is.

Josh is a real comedy writer.

He writes for Jimmy Kimmel.

So we had a ringer.

So basically, we came up with the 10 steps because we know we wanted it to be a guide and we wanted it to be useful for people. And then I think, I'm trying to think of the process.
I think Josh and Tommy and I would sort of write out the different sections and then Lovett would go through about a week after the deadline we set for him. A week is generous.
A week is generous. And then we'd edit, and then we would all take another pass.
There was a Google Doc involved, which is always, you know, I'm old. I wanted to write in Microsoft Word.
But then there's a bunch of people fighting each other in the Google Doc. Honestly, a great book came out of a process that was rough to do with four people, one of them being John Lovett.
Who, by the way, I can say this, because, like, it reminded me of us being in the White House when Lovett worked for me. He does not work for me anymore, I'll tell you that much.
But in the White House, he worked for me, and editing Lovett speeches and working with him on speech edits was fucking brutal. But he always made them a lot better.
His jokes are very, very funny. So that was the, what do you have to say about the process? I think you nailed it, John.
I think my job, my job in campaigns in the White House was, you know, fighting with Jake Tapper all day or whatever I did back then.

I was not a writer.

So my advice for people

who want to write a book

and are not sure if they're able

is partner with two of the best

speechwriters in the history

of democratic politics.

Then partner with someone

who writes Jimmy Kimmel's monologue

every single night.

And it turns out it's pretty easy.

You know what I mean?

You sit back and relax. So my podcast, Hysteria, I have a co-host, Alyssa Mastromonaco, who's written a couple of books.
Incredible podcast. Yeah, Alyssa.
And she and I have, I haven't written a book because it sounds awful. But she and I have discussed how sometimes once your book is cooked and out there, there are things that you're like, oh, I wanted to put that in or like I had to cut that.
Was there anything that you personally fought for or that you personally wish was in the book that isn't in the book? We really, I think we got it all in there. Yeah, there's nothing I fought for that I wish had gotten in.
The minute the PDF is locked is when you start thinking of far better stories than you thought to include in the moment. So that's the kind of agita I have now, but it's not that we didn't include it, it's just you come up with things later.
Yeah, so it is a guide, so there's 10 steps on what you can do to help improve politics. We can say save democracy.
And then we have a lot of personal stories. Save America.
Save America. Not stopping with democracy.
The entire enterprise. The entire enterprise, right.
It's right here, people. Like the pod.
Save the whole thing, yes. But yeah, we have a lot of personal stories from both our time in the campaign and the White House.
and we also interviewed a lot of the people that, if you've listened to the pod, you've come to know and love. And so we talked to LaTosha Brown on why organizing matters and Congressman Maxwell Frost on how to persuade voters and Ben Wickler on state parties.
So we included a lot of those interviews in there, which was great. but it was hard figuring out which stories from all of our funny stories which we don't find as funny anymore

but a lot of those interviews in there, which was great. But it was hard figuring out which stories from all of our funny stories, which we don't find as funny anymore, but they are.
There's some good ones. You find out in the book a couple of interesting things.
Which one of us ran over a moose while campaigning? Which one of us performed secret gay weddings at the White House in the Rose Garden? And you find out who Obama's favorite staffer is also. It's a good tease.
The big tease, yeah. Now, 10 is a very round number of lessons.
So what I want to know is, and I refuse to believe that you guys all sat down and you're like, here's how we save democracy and it just ended at 10, just by chance. So just for this audience, they're not going to tell anyone, what was the 11th lesson that didn't make it? I think we actually had nine and we needed an extra.
That's not true. I mean, the original sketching out of it was like literally we, the early, early, early concept that we got a little bit away from

was kind of a Boy Scout manual type vibe.

And I think we were just all in a conference room drawing.

We don't have a whiteboard for some reason in our office.

We were drawing on a window.

And it was a little sort of like elevator of going up the mountain.

And I think we got to 10 in those early steps.

So yeah, you're right, Dan.

It's a round number that might seem artificial,

but it was the right number.

I mean, it was an actual edict. You would know this, Tommy, from working in Iowa, that round numbers are not real numbers.
Oh, yeah, yeah. If anyone ever comes back from canvassing in their report that I talked to 100 voters, you know they're lying.
It's never 100, right? It's 101, it's 97. Yeah, 19 steps to save democracy, you're right, that is more believable.
You know, as you were talking, I just had a thought. Like, what if the Constitution started off as like a Boy Scout manual? Like, how to democracy in the colonies? I'm sure, that's probably pretty close.
Do you consider yourselves equivalent to the founders based on that question? We do talk about the founding a little. No, we talk about the different, we write about the different parts of the political system and like talk about sort of how easy it is to change each part of the system.
Just so that the whole purpose of the book is really for people to focus their time and energy on what is going to be most useful and most likely to make a difference in, right? And so, can answer questions like, you know, is it realistic to expect that we'll ever get rid of the electoral college? What do we do about the Senate? What do we do about gerrymandering, right? Like, and if you're gonna donate to candidates, like, who is worth donating to? Which causes are worth donating to? Which aren't? If you're going to volunteer, what's the most effective way to actually persuade voters, which is sort of the best way to organize, how to give a good speech at a local meeting if you're going to get involved in local politics. So if you are just starting out and just wanting to get involved in politics, definitely a book for you.
But even if you have listened to us, God love you, since 2016, there will be a lot of interesting things in there to help you become a better organizer, volunteer in this election cycle, and hopefully future elections if we have them. Speaking of 2016, if you had written this book in 2016, how would it have been different? What have you learned since then that you included in the book? I mean, the one theme that I think we tried to get through the book is, the goal of politics isn't to make you feel better about how right you are.
The goal of politics is to get other people to see things your way. And I think when 2016 started and we were all sort of shell-shocked from Trump winning and scared and wondering what comes next, there was a lot of, and I know because I engage in this too, there was a lot of sound and fury, and people went online, and they were yelling about this, and what we have learned over the years is the most important thing that you can do in politics, the best way to change the system is to change people's minds.
And whether that means, whether you're persuading a Republican, an Independent, a Democrat who's sort of sick of politics right now, or someone who hasn't ever voted before or might not want to vote, figuring out the best way to bring them to our side, to welcome them in, to give them the grace to change their mind, that is probably the most important thing you can do in politics. And I felt like that's what we learned from all of the organizers and volunteers and listeners that we've talked to over the years.
And I think the skill set for doing that is different than the skill set that's required to win an argument on social media. It just takes a different skill set.
And that's sort of a big theme throughout the book. So we were serious about inviting Carrie Lake to participate.
Correct. Correct, yeah.
This is an olive branch to Carrie Lake. Bring that soft, gauzy filter you use on all your web videos.
Okay. So if you are, as you should be, freaking the fuck out about this election, and you are trying to find ways to channel that anxiety into productive action along the ways John said, buy this book.
I have read this book. I've read it twice.
It is excellent. I highly recommend it.
It is constructive. It is hilarious.
There are drawings. There's a lot of drawings.
Pictures. Dan likes it because he's referred to as a sex symbol in the book.

Which is the one edit of mine they actually took in the process.

So yeah, please buy our book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps,

crooked.com slash books.

Thank you for coming out today.

Thank you to Aaron Ryan for joining us.

Go listen to Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you to LA Times Festival of Books. Thanks, Dan, for coming down.
We'll see you guys later. 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.
And if you're already doomscrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review.
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.

Kira Joachim is our senior producer.

Reid 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 Toles,