Law and Odor: Trump Trials

Speaker 2 My uncontrollable movements called TD, tard of dyskinesia, felt embarrassing.

Speaker 4 I felt like disconnecting.

Speaker 5 I asked my doctor about treating my TD and learned about Ingreza, a prescription medicine clinically proven for reducing TD in adults.

Speaker 8 That's always one capsule, once daily, and number one prescribed.

Speaker 9 People taking Ingreza can stay on most mental health meds.

Speaker 12 Ingreza can cause depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions in patients with Huntington's disease.

Speaker 11 Call your doctor if you become depressed, have sudden behavior or mood changes, or suicidal thoughts.

Speaker 10 Don't take Ingreza if allergic.

Speaker 10 Serious side effects may include allergic reactions like sudden, potentially fatal swelling and hives, sleepiness, the most common side effect, and heart rhythm problems.

Speaker 15 Know how Ingreza affects you before operating a car or dangerous machinery.

Speaker 17 Report fever, stiff muscles, or problems thinking as these might be life-threatening.

Speaker 19 Shaking, stiffness, drooling, and trouble with moving or balance may occur.

Speaker 20 Take control by asking your doctor about Ingreza.

Speaker 21 Learn more at ingreza.com.

Speaker 22 That's ingreza.com.

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 24 I'm Tommy Betor.

Speaker 25 I'm Aaron Ryan.

Speaker 1 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get to the news. Now that we 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 24 Don't clap till we have a verdict. Right.

Speaker 1 So, New York Times reports this morning that the prosecution is planning to call former National Inquirer publisher David Pecker as their first witness.

Speaker 1 Could be as early as tomorrow, if opening statements are quick enough.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Um 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.

Speaker 1 On a lighter note,

Speaker 1 There are unconfirmed reports that Trump has been farting in the courtroom,

Speaker 1 which we were of course repeating purely for entertainment value we would never never traffic in such rumors

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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 want about me. They can say anything they want.

Speaker 26 They can continue to make up lies and everything else. They lie.
They're real scum.

Speaker 26 But you know what? I'm not allowed to speak. And I want to be able to speak to the friend, the press, and everybody else about it.
So why am I gagged?

Speaker 1 It's so unfair that the judge won't let that guy speak because now we have no idea what he thinks about stuff.

Speaker 1 It's just brutal.

Speaker 1 So Trump has nonetheless spent the weekend accusing Judge Murshan of having a a conflict of interest, calling the district attorney corrupt, and threatening to prosecute Joe Biden if he wins.

Speaker 1 Tommy, do you think Trump is helping himself here, legally or politically? You can pick either.

Speaker 24 Sure, I'll take both, John.

Speaker 1 500.

Speaker 24 We could do a whole episode on this farting allegation because

Speaker 24 it is hilarious. It is believable.
It's probably not true, or at least not confirmed in any way.

Speaker 1 But also, he'll probably comment on it. Yeah.

Speaker 24 And it tells us a lot about the media ecosystem that we all live in. But back to your question.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 I think he's viewing this though primarily as a political fight.

Speaker 24 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 will ultimately vote to make him president or not.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 He just thinks that he'll be able to impact public opinion. And

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 1 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 like whining like that about a gag order, like at some point,

Speaker 1 I don't know if that helps him.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, 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.

Speaker 1 And if all we get from Donald Trump is just him complaining about the trial, I don't know. Aaron, what do you think? And do you have any other takeaways from the first week of this trial and

Speaker 1 thoughts on the fart?

Speaker 25 I don't want to think about him farting.

Speaker 25 I truly don't.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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 own safety.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I've heard Donald Trump has been trying to stare people down who

Speaker 25 he was like glowering at them, but I think he has like resting, glowering face.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And he's giving you the stink eye. Like, that's not great.

Speaker 24 He was doing little fist bumps if you read Art of the Deal, too.

Speaker 1 Yes. Oh, God.
According to the New York Times.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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 reelected and how low quality GOP candidates are across the country.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dan, our friend Anat Shankaro Sorio has a new piece in Slate titled The Trump Trial is Already Influencing Public Opinion.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Do you think that damage is already being done here, or do you you think it's sort of too early to tell? You're not going to ask me a fart question? I mean, that was going to be my follow-up, Dan.

Speaker 1 Okay, sorry. Sorry, I didn't read the script this week.

Speaker 1 Also, apparently he was farting because he was falling asleep. We know he's falling asleep, right? That's like Maggie Haberman reported that.
That's true.

Speaker 1 And the rumor is that as he was nodding off, then I think he was maybe, you know, farting.

Speaker 25 But who does that? Who farts as they're falling asleep? Is that a thing?

Speaker 1 Let me tell you.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 24 look, I talked to Maggie.

Speaker 1 He waked himself up, you know?

Speaker 24 I talked to Maggie today.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. You did some reporting.

Speaker 24 I did some reporting on this. She told me she could not confirm that gas was passed at this trial.
So

Speaker 24 it seems to be potentially fake news.

Speaker 1 Dan, you would have something smart to say.

Speaker 1 Some's a resistance account got hashtag odor in the court trending on Twitter.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good. I'm not going to lie.
Because I love it. Could be worse.
Could be worse. anyway.
Sorry, did I steal your pun?

Speaker 1 What was the question again?

Speaker 1 Do you think the damage is already being done?

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, damage is being done, right? I think ultimately,

Speaker 1 and this is, 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.

Speaker 1 Like, that's definitely going to happen, right? There's nothing the media likes more than to cover something in their backyard, and New York is their backyard.

Speaker 1 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 fruiting,

Speaker 1 while Joe Biden was in Pennsylvania in a battleground state that is a must-win for both candidates talking about the economy.

Speaker 1 And that is really going to, there is a massive opportunity cost for Trump here. Now,

Speaker 1 we also know that Trump being in the news is bad for Trump, right? He is, I mean, there's a huge irony that he's... Are you saying he doesn't comport himself well?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm saying he is not his best messenger per se.

Speaker 1 And, you know, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And the fact that this meet, 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And if he's acquitted, you'd 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 In fact, the judge said to the instructions to the jury was he's being charged with falsifying business records to cover up trying to unlawfully influence the election.

Speaker 1 And I do think the more, I mean, having David Pecker go first, who was at the National Inquirer 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, which election interference trial is this? Oh, this was the 2016 one, not the 2020 one. Right.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 an extramarital affair with an adult film star weeks before the election. And you're like, oh, that's the one that's not as serious as the other two criminal trials? It's wild, right?

Speaker 24 And it seems like David Pecker, the

Speaker 24 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, which is

Speaker 1 allegedly. Allegedly fake.
Prove it didn't happen, Tommy. Right.
So, I mean, it's just typical. Typical liberal media guy here.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump definitely farted, but maybe Ted Cruz's father didn't kill him.

Speaker 24 It will be a fascinating look into the way that organization worked.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 All right, so Dan and I talked on Thursday's pod about Biden's world's decision to steer clear of talking about this trial, other than a few jokes and puns here and there.

Speaker 1 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...

Speaker 1 Park Ave Trump thing, which I think is great.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This is after Kamala Harris gave a similar speech in Arizona last week. But it's not just speeches.
So far in 2024, 90%,

Speaker 1 90% of the Biden campaign's television ads have focused on abortion.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 25 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,

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And,

Speaker 25 you know, it's a winning issue. It has been demonstrated over and over again that abortion is a winning issue.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 It is deeply weird to have the government involved at all.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Like, I don't think these people should be making rules. And it is, it's something that a lot of people are seeing more clearly now.
Exceptions don't really, in any practical way,

Speaker 25 work.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I would take that bet. It is a winning issue.

Speaker 1 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, like almost tumbling into the pro-choice position, like Carrie Lake, right?

Speaker 1 Who had said that she supported the 1864 Arizona ban, you know, that was just a complete ban. And then she's like, well, no, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I might be personally against abortion, but I don't think I should make the decision. That's the pro-choice, Carrie.
You're almost there. You're pro-choice.
You're almost there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What do you make of that decision? And do you think they will sustain that level of spending on abortion-related ads?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I think the reason for that is exactly what Aaron said, is it is a motivating issue for a lot of voters.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And if

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If they're thinking about tax cuts for the rich, abortion bans, and violent insurrections, that's probably good for Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And only 6% of Americans cited abortion. It was like fourth or fifth on the list.
But then they asked a follow-up question, and this is the most important question from the perspective of a campaign.

Speaker 1 What issues are so important to you that they could influence your choice? And 19% of people said abortion. Right?

Speaker 1 And so what the Biden campaign wants to do is make people think more and more about abortion as they make a decision and what the very real dangers of Donald Trump with a 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 it's going to, you're going to have to put money behind it to, because the press is not going to cover it. continually this whole time.
It's like what you're exactly talking about.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so spending money on this is quite smart in my view.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I also want to jump in and add that

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 That affects us in California.

Speaker 25 That affects people in the bluest blue states who 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.

Speaker 25 No, it's happening here.

Speaker 25 And there are a lot of races here in California that could determine the balance of the House of Representatives.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 We can determine who keeps the House.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also think, I mean, you have Republicans out there who are trying to, you know, back away from their positions and sort of muddy the waters.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Even if Democrats keep the House and the Senate.

Speaker 1 or flip the House and keep the Senate, he could, just through executive action, ban Miffit Pristone, ban abortion medication, which is responsible for, what, like two-thirds of abortions in this country.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I do wonder too, Dan, like if part of the reason that they're spending so much now on these abortion ads is to define Trump before he tries to like back away from his position, like him saying, oh, I don't like the Arizona ban and I'm not going to sign a a national ban and just reminding people that he was the one who did this in the first place?

Speaker 1 Do you think some of it's that? Yeah, I think obviously

Speaker 1 you want to fill a vacuum and Trump's not on the air, right? He doesn't have as much money. This is the time to pressure evangelic game.
I mean, there are a couple other reasons for this, too. One is

Speaker 1 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. Right.

Speaker 1 We've said this many times. He's this rich guy from New York who cheats on his wives.

Speaker 1 He does not, in the mind of voters who think about the sort of right-wing, religious, Mike Johnson-esque Republicans, Donald Trump belies that notion. So you want to define him that way.

Speaker 1 And that's going to take money. Just because he compares himself to Jesus Christ being persecuted doesn't necessarily

Speaker 1 see him as so religious.

Speaker 1 But even like no one, 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 Bibles.

Speaker 1 It's all wink, wink, not, not, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And one thing it shifted was, if you talk to people who are working on 2022 races,

Speaker 1 the thing that Democrats have been talking about this mag extremism argument for a long time, mag extremism, mag extremism. We want to pay for Republicans as extreme.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And even on something like cutting Social Security and Medicare, right, because of what happened with Dobbs, people

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 they think it's kind of a bullshit political attack or they don't think they could actually accomplish it to take this freedom or this thing away from me.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 My uncontrollable movements called TD, tard of dyskinesia, felt embarrassing.

Speaker 4 I felt like disconnecting.

Speaker 5 I asked my doctor about treating my TD and learned about Ingreza, a prescription medicine clinically proven for reducing TD in adults.

Speaker 6 That's always one capsule, once daily, and number one prescribed.

Speaker 9 People taking Ingreza can stay on most mental health meds.

Speaker 12 Ingreza can cause depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions in patients with Huntington's disease.

Speaker 13 Call your doctor if you become depressed, have sudden behavior or mood changes, or suicidal thoughts.

Speaker 10 Don't take Ingreza if allergic.

Speaker 10 Serious side effects may include allergic reactions like sudden, potentially fatal swelling and hives, sleepiness, the most common side effect, and heart rhythm problems.

Speaker 15 Know how Ingreza affects you before operating a car or dangerous machinery.

Speaker 17 Report fever, stiff muscles, or problems thinking as these might be life-threatening.

Speaker 19 Shaking, stiffness, drooling, and trouble with moving or balance may occur.

Speaker 20 Take control by asking your doctor about Ingreza.

Speaker 21 Learn more at ingreza.com.

Speaker 22 That's I-N-G-R-E-Z-Z-A dot com.

Speaker 22 Ingreza.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And the story Donald Trump wants to tell about abortion, literally, is he says Democrats want to have to abort babies after they're born, which is.

Speaker 25 It's illegal. It's already illegal.

Speaker 1 It's called murder. We're talking backstage.

Speaker 24 Murder.

Speaker 1 Murder. Murder, I think is what that would be.
You can't do that.

Speaker 24 That's the narrative he wants to portray about about Democrats. And the reality is

Speaker 24 that abortion is an incredibly complicated and painful decision. And

Speaker 24 when you create these laws in places like Texas or Idaho or 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 their lives at risk.

Speaker 1 And it's just like,

Speaker 24 it's so unbelievable, the abject cruelty of putting someone through that undercuts the idea that there's anything about this decision that is pro-life.

Speaker 24 It is about controlling women and telling them how to live their lives and like, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I do think, I mean,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And they're going to be able to, there's so many of them.

Speaker 1 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, 19% say this or that.

Speaker 1 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 think.
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 25 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

Speaker 25 no going back. 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.

Speaker 25 So states like Idaho and Texas,

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And like 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,

Speaker 25 need an abortion. Like these are the people where it is absolutely, like you said, Tommy, the most cruel and tragic circumstances that abortion occurs under.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And I think that that is just wrong because like what you were saying, often it's a medical necessity.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And as someone who has sat through an ultrasound where

Speaker 24 you thought there'd be a heartbeat and then there isn't,

Speaker 24 to take that moment and then deny a person medical care is so unbelievably cruel to me that I almost can't fathom it. So.

Speaker 1 All right, so we have two fun things to end the new section.

Speaker 1 It's because you've all been so good.

Speaker 1 I brought the tone up. I wanted to lighten it up for you guys.
Is this what we do?

Speaker 25 The abortion disco siren.

Speaker 1 Bear, bam, bum, bam! We get some serious, we get some funny, it's the show.

Speaker 1 All right, the first, Tommy picked this clip out, it's a clip from Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez, who basically, I think, cut one of the best ads for the Democratic Party that I've seen this year.

Speaker 1 So he was on CNN Sunday talking about how the House of Representatives beat back the MAGA hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gates to pass aid and support for Ukraine, Israel, the Palestinians, and Taiwan with a huge bipartisan majority.

Speaker 1 And Representative Gonzalez said this: I served with some real scumbags.

Speaker 29 Look, Matt Gates,

Speaker 29 he paid minors to have sex with them at drug parties. Bob Goode endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi.
These people used to walk around with white hoods at night.

Speaker 29 Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 wow, it's a Republican. Republican.

Speaker 1 Tony Gonzalez, he voted for impeachment, right? I think he was one of the, I think he's one of the few. I don't think he's on Donald Trump's

Speaker 1 shortlist.

Speaker 1 Well, not to get ahead of our next segment, but.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was wild. That was wild.
Great clip. Good for Tony Gonzalez.
We'll be seeing that in battleground districts before long.

Speaker 1 All right, so we're going to wrap up the news section with some wildly irresponsible Trump VP speculation.

Speaker 1 Just as a little treat.

Speaker 1 So Tommy and Lovett and I covered this a few weeks ago. Since then, we learned some new information.

Speaker 1 First, according to the New York Times, Trump is focused on a candidate who can help him raise money

Speaker 1 since he seems to be a little short on cash right now.

Speaker 1 Two, according to RFK Jr., Trump's team asked him to consider being his running mate,

Speaker 1 though Trump's team says that's not true. Hard to tell.
All these people are liars.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If true, that would probably eliminate South Dakota Governor Christy Noam, who just said this today, Sunday, about her position on abortion.

Speaker 25 Do you think there should be exceptions for rape and incest, for example?

Speaker 30 And I think that every state's going to look different.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 And I just don't believe a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy.

Speaker 25 Can I just say she's not used to her new teeth yet?

Speaker 1 That's mean.

Speaker 25 It's mean, but she's a bad person, so I can be mean to her.

Speaker 25 This famously got some new veneers in the Veep Stakes race, and they're not quite taking.

Speaker 1 I think if you get the joke about Chrissy Noob's new teeth, you reach a certain level of political junkie that's very impressive.

Speaker 24 You should cut an ad for the veneers company.

Speaker 1 She's hawking veneers. Governor of the state.

Speaker 1 Is that what happens? I don't know. Anyway.
Dan, what do you think? We haven't talked to you about your VP, VP speculation yet. From a political standpoint, who do you think would help Trump the most?

Speaker 1 And separate question, who do you think he's most likely to pick? I promise you, those will not be the same people.

Speaker 1 I think it's important to note, just 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 is talked about more but matters less than who someone picks as their VP nominee.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, it certainly meant like who becomes vice president certainly matters,

Speaker 1 particularly for a candidate like Donald Trump, who can't can't stay awake in court.

Speaker 1 But in terms of how much it changes the race, I think it's on the margins

Speaker 1 at most.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 What segment of the Biden coalition do I have the best chance of bringing some people over with me, right? Like ultimately, we're an anti-MAGA majority in this country and in the battleground states.

Speaker 1 So in order for Trump to win, he has to fracture that coalition. And the answer is voters with veneers.
Yes.

Speaker 1 People with insecurities about their teeth.

Speaker 1 And so I think you 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.

Speaker 1 So I would be looking at a black or Latino man as my running mate. And now there are some constitutional complications to this.

Speaker 1 But if you really wanted, I think, the pick that would be most impactful, you would pick Marco Rubio.

Speaker 1 Oh, 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, we can applaud for Marco Rubio resigning from the Senate, but he would be replaced.

Speaker 1 No, no, but then you don't have to pick him in someone. That's hilarious.
Yes. I love this plan.
So I think you would do that, or you would do Byron Donalds, I think, the congressman.

Speaker 1 Who would also have to move? He'd also have to move.

Speaker 1 Last consequence. We actually can't even afford.

Speaker 1 As of right now, Mike Johnson couldn't afford losing that seat because that would go vacant. But

Speaker 1 everyone, I think, thinks. Where are you on Tim? What about Tim Scott?

Speaker 1 I think this is where you get to who Trump would actually pick.

Speaker 1 I don't think Tim Trump. I think let me make the case for Marco Rubio from Trump's perspective, at least.

Speaker 1 Trump loves a power dynamic, and he knows that he has bent 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.

Speaker 1 I think the problem with Tim Scott is Tim Scott is just a little

Speaker 1 too Mike Pence for him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Too.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You can't have a VP that bows to a higher God.

Speaker 24 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It's got to be.

Speaker 1 There's only one God Trump wants them to worship.

Speaker 24 Only one God.

Speaker 25 You don't want a VP pick who people would trust to babysit their kids.

Speaker 1 So there was more reporting on the Marko Rubio possibility, especially because apparently they 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.

Speaker 1 But so they were to the point where they were talking to Trump about what they do about Florida.

Speaker 1 And they were like, well, it's easy for Trump to just change his residency to like Bedminster in New Jersey, where he's got a golf club there or Westchester or any of these places.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Or he would prefer to deprive the state treasury of New York of the additional tax dollars of a New York resident. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 But what was your idea about what he, Tommy, this is a prank for Rubio?

Speaker 24 Oh, yeah, no. You tell Rubio to resign and then move, and then you don't pick him.

Speaker 1 And it's hilarious. Honestly,

Speaker 1 let's

Speaker 1 get that idea to Donald Trump because I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 Aaron, what do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 25 Well, okay, so

Speaker 25 Trump needs money, right?

Speaker 25 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. Who stole it from Charles Lindbergh?

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 25 I think he should pick Paul Ryan.

Speaker 25 Paul Ryan,

Speaker 25 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

Speaker 25 I think that he thinks, I don't know, there's a whole like, I'm not a psychologist.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 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 Christie gnome, but she's kind of like flailing.

Speaker 25 Also, like everyone kind of missed out on that New York Post report about her and Corey Lewandowski having an affair, which is like kind of wild. How does he keep getting such beautiful people?

Speaker 25 I'm just

Speaker 1 hope hicks.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you think it'll be a woman?

Speaker 25 I think it'll be a woman because

Speaker 25 he needs a woman to go out there and be his attack dog on this losing issue of abortion.

Speaker 25 He needs a woman to be like the one speaking out in favor of

Speaker 25 common sense bans, which we all know are not common sense. So I think he's going to pick like a, if there is a Christy Noome approximate type, he's going to pick her.

Speaker 24 And that's why Katie Britt would have been great until she did the State of the Union response and scared the hell out of everybody.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Although now I think because Alabama was where the horrendous IVF decision went down, he probably is maybe a no-on-right, and Carrie Lake is out too because of the Arizona thing.

Speaker 25 So like all the Miss America ladies are just one by one getting knocked out of the semifinals.

Speaker 1 Tough.

Speaker 1 Nancy Mace. What's that? Nancy Mace.
Nancy Mace.

Speaker 25 I guess she's a liar, though.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's a, that's a, you mean,

Speaker 1 that's a good thing for him. That's a, that's a selling point.
Um, Tommy, last time we talked about this, you had sort of like an outside-the-box idea with J.D. Vance.

Speaker 1 And since then, like, there's been a lot of reporting that Trump is like moving closer to actually doing the J.D. Vance thing.

Speaker 24 Well, yeah, I mean, I think if he just wants to bro out, he'll go J.D. Vance.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 1 Because,

Speaker 24 because you can say, you guys call me partisan? She was, you know, she was a Democrat. She was an elected Democrat, and I picked her.

Speaker 24 So it would be an interesting splashy thing, but then she's a weirdo.

Speaker 1 Well, that's hard. 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?

Speaker 24 I believe it. I mean, I really do believe it.
I think.

Speaker 1 You've never disbelieved a single thing RFK Jr. said.
Yeah.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 1 He just completely buys it.

Speaker 24 Yeah, no, he's like, D-TAP vaccine. Why would anyone take that?

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, write that down.

Speaker 24 So RFK Jr., obviously, the only reason anyone's talking about him is because of his name, name, right?

Speaker 24 But also the conventional wisdom was someone named Kennedy, someone with a record as an environmental lawyer, might draw from Democrats.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And on top of that, if you just sort of look at issues that RFK is out there talking about, it's anti-vaccine stuff. He's more hawkish than Trump and Biden

Speaker 24 in support of the Israeli war in Gaza.

Speaker 24 He is in all the sort of

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 pick and have a dude on the ticket named Kennedy. You know, for like low-information voters, that's pretty, that's a big news story.
It's interesting.

Speaker 24 It makes 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If that continues, you could see Trump starting to panic and wanting to bring him into the fold.

Speaker 24 Well, yeah, no, all the little right-wing kind of influencer types who used to have him on their shows, kind of the Charlie Kirks of the world, et cetera, now viciously attack RFK Jr.

Speaker 24 Trump's calling him, you know, kind of a radical left socialist Democrat and tweets.

Speaker 1 So it's

Speaker 24 getting nasty.

Speaker 25 But 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.

Speaker 1 Dan, what are 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 worthwhile.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I think it would be. If you listen to, if you I would would encourage people who are sleeping too well at night to listen to

Speaker 1 the focus group, Sarah Longwell, the Bulwark has a focus group podcast where she listens to focus groups. She did one with RFK

Speaker 1 people who voted, one group of people who voted for Biden in 20, one group of people who voted for Trump in 20, who are open to supporting RFK Jr.

Speaker 1 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 outpolls Trump it's uniting the country and abortion and I think

Speaker 1 this would help Trump like Trump's divisiveness is one of his greatest weaknesses with a lot of persuadable voters and this would address it the good news is it's there two I mean there are two there are two upsides to this scenario one it is highly unlikely to happen because they're both megalomaniacal narcissists.

Speaker 1 And two, if it were to happen, I do kind of think the debate with Kamala Harris would be excellent television.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's a good one.

Speaker 24 That's a good one. That would definitely be like the burn-it-down ticket.
And you could see a lot of people, especially young people, being able to get to the point of view.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's worth it. That's what I would worry about.

Speaker 1 is that in an election year where probably more people than usual are sick of both parties and when you start public voters voters who haven't showed up in previous elections,

Speaker 1 they are more, they're Trumpier, or they're more like 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.

Speaker 1 And you could see if it was Trump and RFK Jr., you could see a little bit those voters peeling off.

Speaker 1 Okay, when we come back, we're going to talk about democracy or else how to save America in 10 easy steps.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we are here at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Speaker 1 My friends and co-hosts here, along with John Lovett, who has a live show today so you can be here, they wrote a book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps.

Speaker 1 Everyone here has obviously pre-ordered it, so I don't have to tell you two, 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.

Speaker 1 I've also, I would say John, John, and Tommy

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You didn't know it was coming. And so now is the time in which you're going to talk about this book, sell this book, explain this book.
Our first question comes from Aaron.

Speaker 25 Okay, so trees had to die for this.

Speaker 25 Can you justify their death?

Speaker 1 That's okay.

Speaker 1 Audiobooks are a thing. No,

Speaker 1 we read the audio book.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 24 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?

Speaker 24 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 paying more attention.

Speaker 24 It was volunteering. It was donating.
It was voting. It was getting your friends to vote.

Speaker 24 And so that's what the show became, is trying to help people figure out how to become an activist in your own life.

Speaker 24 And over the course of doing this Pate of America America for what's seven million years now?

Speaker 24 We've talked to some of the smartest politicians, organizers, activists,

Speaker 24 and they've taught us a lot.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 But 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So talk to us a little about the process of writing the book. John, you're a speechwriter.
Love it was a speechwriter. Tommy, you've done a lot of writing.
How did you divide up work here?

Speaker 1 What was the process?

Speaker 1 Well, since Lovett's not here, I can talk about the real process.

Speaker 1 So we worked with a fantastic writer as well, Josh Holloway. Josh, are you here? Yeah, there he is.

Speaker 1 He's handsome, too. There he is.

Speaker 1 Josh, Josh is a real comedy writer. He writes for Jimmy Kimmel.
So

Speaker 1 we had a ringer. So basically, we...
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

Speaker 1 I think, I'm trying to think of the process.

Speaker 1 I think, like, Josh and Tommy and I would sort of like write out the different sections and then Lovett would go through about a week after the deadline we set for him.

Speaker 24 A week is generous.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I wanted to like write in Microsoft Word, you know, but then there's like a bunch of people fighting each other in the Google Doc. It was, honestly, it was

Speaker 1 a great book came out of a process that was rough to do with with four people, one of them being John Lovett. Who, by the way, I guess, I can say this because like I

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But in the White House, he worked for me and editing Lovett's speeches and working with him on speech edits was fucking brutal.

Speaker 1 But he always made them a lot better. He always made them.
And his jokes are very, very funny. So that was the...

Speaker 1 what do you have to say about the process?

Speaker 24 I think you nailed it, John. I think

Speaker 24 my job, my job in campaigns in the White House was

Speaker 24 fighting with Jake Tapper all day or whatever I did back in the day. 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

Speaker 24 partner with two of the best speech writers in the history of democratic politics. Then partner with someone who writes Jimmy Kimmel's monologue every single night.

Speaker 1 And it turns out it's pretty easy. You know know what I mean?

Speaker 1 You just, you sit back and relax.

Speaker 25 So my podcast, Hysteria, I have a co-host, Alyssa Mastermonica, who's written an incredible podcast.

Speaker 24 Yeah, Alyssa.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 25 she and I have just, I haven't written a book because it sounds awful.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 Was there anything that you personally fought for or that you personally wish was in the book that isn't in the book?

Speaker 1 We really, I think we got it all in there.

Speaker 24 Yeah, there's nothing I fought for that I wish it 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.

Speaker 24 So that's the kind of

Speaker 24 agitator I have now, but it's not, it's not that we didn't include it, it's just you come up with things later.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it is a guide. So there's 10 steps on what you can do to help improve politics.
We're going to say save democracy.

Speaker 1 And then we have a lot of personal stories. Save America.
Not stopping with democracy. The entire enterprise.

Speaker 1 The entire enterprise, right? It's right here, people. Like the pod.
Save the whole thing, yes.

Speaker 1 But yeah, we have a lot of personal stories from both our time in the campaign and the White House.

Speaker 1 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 Latasha Brown on why organizing matters,

Speaker 1 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 is great.

Speaker 1 But it was hard figuring out which stories from all of our funny stories, which we don't find as funny anymore. But

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 which one of us performed secret gay weddings at the White House in the Rose Garden.

Speaker 1 And you find out who Obama's favorite staffer is.

Speaker 1 Also, which is a good tease. The big tease, yeah.
Now,

Speaker 1 10 is a very round number of lessons.

Speaker 1 So what I want to know is, and I refuse to believe that you just, 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. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So just for this audience, they're not going to tell anyone, what was the 11th lesson that didn't make it?

Speaker 1 I think we actually had nine and we needed an extra. That's not true.

Speaker 24 I mean, the original sketching out of it was like, literally, we,

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 We don't have a whiteboard for some reason at our office. We were drawing on a window.
And it was a little sort of like elevator of going up the mountain.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If anyone ever comes back from canvassing and they report that I talked to 100 voters, you know they're lying. It's never 100, right? It's 101, it's 97.

Speaker 24 You have 19 steps to stay democracy. You're right, that is more believable.

Speaker 25 You know, as you were talking, I just had a thought. Like, what if the Constitution started off as like a Boy Scout manual?

Speaker 25 Like, how to democracy in the colonies.

Speaker 24 I'm sure. That's probably pretty close.

Speaker 1 Do you consider yourselves equivalent to the founders based on that question?

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 talk about sort of how easy it is to change each part of the system.

Speaker 1 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 politics, right?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And if you're going to donate to candidates, like who is worth donating to, which causes are worth donating to, which aren't?

Speaker 1 If you're going to volunteer, what's the most effective way to actually persuade voters,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So if you are just starting out and just wanting to get involved in politics, definitely a book for you.

Speaker 1 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, you know, become a better organizer, volunteer in this election cycle, and hopefully future elections if we have them.

Speaker 25 Speaking of 2016, if you had written this book book in 2016, how would it have been different? Like, what have you learned since then that you included in the book?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 the one theme that I think we tried to get through the book is, you know, the goal of politics isn't to make you feel better

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 how right you are.

Speaker 1 The goal of politics is to get other people to see things your way.

Speaker 1 And I think when 2016 started and we were all sort of shell-shocked from Trump winning

Speaker 1 and scared and wondering what comes next, there was a lot of, and I know because I engage in this too, there's just a lot of sound and fury and people went online and they were yelling about this.

Speaker 1 And, you know, and

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It just takes a different skill set. And

Speaker 1 that's sort of a big theme throughout the book.

Speaker 25 So we were serious about inviting Carrie Lake to participate.

Speaker 1 Correct. Correct, yeah.
Someone all over.

Speaker 24 Bring that soft, gauzy filter you use on all your web videos.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Dan likes it because he's referred to as a sex symbol in the book.

Speaker 1 Which is the one edit of mine they actually took in the process.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Waquim is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 1 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 2 My uncontrollable movements called TD, TD, tard of dyskinesia, felt embarrassing.

Speaker 4 I felt like disconnecting.

Speaker 5 I asked my doctor about treating my TD and learned about Ingreza, a prescription medicine clinically proven for reducing TD in adults.

Speaker 8 That's always one capsule, once daily, and number one prescribed.

Speaker 9 People taking Ingreza can stay on most mental health meds.

Speaker 12 Ingreza can cause depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions in patients with Huntington's disease.

Speaker 11 Call your doctor if you become depressed, have sudden behavior or mood changes, or suicidal thoughts.

Speaker 10 Don't take Ingreza if allergic.

Speaker 10 Serious side effects may include allergic reactions like sudden, potentially fatal swelling and hives, sleepiness, the most common side effect, and heart rhythm problems.

Speaker 15 Know how Ingreza affects you before operating a car or dangerous machinery.

Speaker 17 Report fever, stiff muscles, or problems thinking as these might be life-threatening.

Speaker 19 Shaking, stiffness, drooling, and trouble with moving or balance may occur.

Speaker 20 Take control by asking your doctor about Ingreza.

Speaker 21 Learn more at ingreza.com. That's -

Speaker 22 R-E-Z-Z-A.com. Ingrezza!

Speaker 31 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 25 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 31 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 31 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at Bon Appetit, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 24 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 31 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.