Trump's Abortion Gambit Implodes

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

And I'm Jennifer Palmieri.

A big thanks to Jennifer for joining us on the podcast today.

She's the co-host of MSNBC's How to Win 2024 podcast,

a former communications director for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,

my old friend and a White House colleague.

Jen, great to have you doing this with us.

I mean, as you know, I love to talk politics with Pfeiffer, so I'm super excited.

I'm glad we can just do it in front of the, for the entire world to see now. Absolutely.
What could possibly go wrong? All right. On today's show, President Biden sits down for a big interview on Univision as part of an effort to target Latino voters.
And with just over seven months into the election, we'll take a look at the state of the polls and the way both campaigns are spending and raising money. But first, in a decision released Tuesday, Arizona's highest court upheld an 1864 law that abans almost all abortions and could send doctors who administer abortions to jail for up to five years.
Activists are working to get a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion on the state's ballot in November. But until then, the ban will be in effect.
Now, since Trump just said abortion should be left to the states, he's obviously totally cool with this new ruling, right? Well, not so much because on Wednesday, he said he thought Arizona went too far and expected voters to overturn the law. Other Arizona Republicans, including Carrie Light, came out against the law.
Jennifer, they are clearly scared shitless. Should they be? Yeah, totally.
Absolutely. Of course.
I mean, it is just and it is I was I was texting with one of our former colleagues who's currently at the White House to be like, you know, this is so I don't understand why people are getting tripped up that, oh, Trump's trying to moderate his position on abortion. It's like deferring to the states is the most extreme position to have on abortion.
Second to overturning Roe, like he already did it, right? He already did the big thing and he owns all of this. And that should be, you know, it's like, it's such nonsense that now he's trying to backtrack and say like, oh, Arizona should overturn this and Florida will overturn this.
By the way, he votes in Florida. Is he going to vote to overturn the six-week abortion ban? I mean, he basically said today that he's not for a six-week abortion ban, right? Kind of said that.
Sort of, yeah. Right? Sort of.
The right wing will go after him. But, you know, that Biden ad that they put out the other day with Josh and Amanda's horrific family story, family from Texas.
She had a miscarriage, needed an abortion to protect herself, couldn't get one. And now she may not be able to have children again.
You know, we have a lot of friends that have been through this, right? I mean, I don't, your parent, is there anything more wrenching than that ad? Yeah, I mean, it's it's gutting. It is something that you it's it is hard to watch, but also impossible to turn off.
And that's just we've seen, you know, we saw a similarly wrenching ad in Kentucky during the governor's race about a woman who was a rape victim. It just it is you're we're going to see this over and over again everywhere.
And it's just, it's like the thing, you know, it's, I like, I think it's like the, it's just the issue particularly, I mean, you know, not just for women. I mean, for, just for, for parents overall, like when, when you see that ad of these parents who went through this terrible miscarriage, she may never be able to have kids.
Um, you know, you're like six weeks,, 14 weeks. You're like, oh my God, it's just all bullshit.
Like, how about you just trust women to make these decisions for them and their families, right? How about that? Yeah, it just, so it, you know, it cuts, I think, you know, those kinds of ads, just they cut through the clutter of him Mao Mao, you know, Trump trying to dance on the head of a pin about, about this when he owns this. And I just think that's the best.
He did this. That's it.
He did this. He owns this.
All of this trauma is happening because of him. And that's what the Biden campaign should, you know, that is their messaging.
That's what they should stick with, right? Like, and I just think it's going to be a huge, huge deal. Yeah.
I was a little more worried prior to this Arizona ruling that Trump was going to be able to navigate this a little better than I think maybe you were. I mean, the thing is the thing, right? Roe-Rigouite is overturned.
One day, millions of Americans had a constitutional right. The next day, because of Donald Trump, they didn't.
Like, there's no spin. There's no position.
There's no video. There's no ad that changes that fact.
And the fact that every woman in America lives in fear of that ban happening in their state, right? We are just one bad election cycle in a Pennsylvania or any state in which you live where this could happen to you, right? Like, that is on Donald Trump. Now, the polling has shown prior to this that Donald Trump is held less responsible for the overturning of Roe v.
Wade than he should be, right? Because he's the person, singularly responsible for it, who calls it one of his proudest accomplishments. Talks about all the time.
Yeah, I talked about this with Sarah Longwell, who's done focus groups on this a couple weeks ago. In their focus groups, when you ask voters if they think Donald Trump is personally pro-choice, they often laugh.
Some of them will even just volunteer the idea that he has personally paid for abortions. And so he's got this sort of like billionaire, fake billionaire, New York, cad, cheats on his wife sort of thing.
that's not a doctrinaire Republican extremist on social issues like Blake Masters, Carrie Lake, Herschel Walker, and some of these other ones. Right.
But now in Arizona, the state that he has been doing the best in in the polling averages of the six swing states, it's been his strongest state to date. And now this is the top, this is going to be the top issue, right? The top issue, yeah.
Politics is- And like Florida. Yeah.
Like Florida too. Every couple of weeks, this keeps happening and it's not going to stop.
It's not going to stop with the crazy Arizona law, right? Yeah. And he, and this is, I think this is the, like, this is just, there's such a sweet, politics has seemed largely unfair and unjust since 2016.
But there is a sweet justice that he puts out this video and he thinks he's so smart on Monday and they're like spinning it. And he's got some dumb reporters to sort of like Donald Trump trying to triangulate on abortion.
And look how great it is that Mike Pence is attacking him. And then 28 hours later in one of the six battleground states, he says, leave it to the states.
The states take him up on it. And they pass this incredibly extreme law using a – this is a law from before Arizona was a state.
State. I mean, before I know.
And that is on Donald Trump. And now he owns that, right? He owns not just every law that's in place.
He theoretically owns every crazy proposal from a Republican legislator, right? Because it's up to the States. That could happen if it happens to the States.
Right. Yeah.
Up to the States. This is what happens when you leave it up to the States.
Um, so I, um, you know, and I also just, I mean, I'm always more optimistic than you are. This is why we're, I mean, congratulations.
Um, so I know it's. But it, you know, it's like, and there were a lot of people fretting on Monday or whenever that day that he did that.
And I was just like, I don't know, like he's responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.
And he said, leave it to the States. And that's a debacle.
Like, it's just, it's the most extreme position to have. And, you know, you look at a map now of where abortion restrictions are.
Whoa, it is, you know, really, that is really scary. And, and, and, and growing and this won't be the like, it won't be the end of it.
So like, I feel pretty good about it. Yeah.
The last thing I'd say is just, you, ultimately, politics boils down to a battle over issue salience. What I mean by that is just the parties are trying to say, what do you want to be in voters' minds when they make their decision? And in Arizona, the choice really now comes down to abortion, which every election and every poll shows is bad for Republicans, or the border, which every poll at least shows has been a challenge for Democrats.
Now there's a very good chance that because of this Arizona law that for those voters in Arizona, abortion is going to be top of mind. It's going to drive turnout.
It's going to drive voter registration. It is a reason for former Biden voters or progressives who have concerns about Biden for whatever reason, right? Gaza, just, you know, they wanted a younger candidate.
Whatever that is, this is a reason to get them to vote Joe Biden, or not stay home and not vote for RFK Jr. or Jill Stein or whoever else is about.
I think this is a massive moment for the campaign in a state that some thought, I was not out, even I am not this pessimistic, but some thought could fall off the map or be, or be the hardest state for Biden to win. And now I think it is firmly in play.
So that's really good. It, and I just think when you look at the, yeah, when you look at the saliency between just like immigration, they're a big thing.
And abortion is, you know, I just, it's gonna, it's just like, I just, I just think it's way more. I understand it's a problem for Democrats, but I just think it's way more salient than abortion is just way more salient.
Yeah. I mean, and particularly for the voters that Biden has suffered with, abortion is the progressive voters, the younger voters.
And even the voters who are more moderate and voter and Latino voters, they align with Joe Biden on abortion, right? That is like, there is, I mean, that's ultimately what you want. You want people focused on an issue to which they agree with you and disagree with your opponent.
And that got a little bit easier. One other thing Trump said.
And I'll help with the Senate race. Senate race.
The Senate race. I mean, Carrie Lake is on tape repeatedly saying that she supported this law.
This was a good law. It would be great when it was in place.
And now she's trying to walk it back. This is, I mean, this is a challenge for Trump.
I think it's really, like she said, we got seven months to go here. A lot's going to change.
People can memory a whole lot of things. But this is really bad news for Carrie Lake, right? We're going to see the Senate Majority PAC, the Gallego campaign, any other super PAC, we're going to see tens and tens of millions of dollars of footage of Kerry Lake endorsing this 1864 law.
And there's plenty of it going around the internet today. It's really powerful.
The other thing Trump said on Wednesday that is notable is many people pointed out in his Monday video that he never said he wouldn't sign a federal abortion ban if it were to come to his desk. He did say that today.
He said to reporters in Georgia. Oh, I even watched the clip and even I didn't focus on that part of it.
Yeah. What do you make of that? You're going to take it to the bank? He said he would not sign a bill.
He said he would not sign a national abortion ban. That is not going to stand.
Absolutely not. It's just like, it's just, yeah, that is absolutely not going to stand.
He can't get, he can't, he can't, he can't survive continuing to say that he wants Florida to overturn what they, that their six weeks ban, and that he won't sign a national abortion ban. He can't do both of those things.
He, and you can tell like in his stupid video on Monday, you could tell that he's so uneasy about this because he's like legal scholars on both sides say that Roe v. Wade, that Roe v.
Wade should have been overturned. And I was like, what? No, no.
Like, so he's just, he's obviously living in his own head even more than normal to convince himself that he can manage this issue. And there's no, there's no way that can stand.
Do you think he will have to backtrack on that? Yes. Right.
Don't you? I know I don't actually. I think he, I think the right will give him the space to like, they don't believe him.
They, I mean, this was ultimately the thing. And you see this in Trump's group sometimes with evangelical voters is they don't think Trump agrees with them on the issues.
They just think he'll do it. He'll do what they want.
Then he'll fight for them when he gets into office. So I think they're going to give him space here.
And all the right wing groups attacking him for not doing it is probably on the margins. Good for him.
Right. It is the it makes him seem a little bit more.
Sure, sure, sure, sure. It is.
But it's on us as Democrats to say, of course, he would sign it. This is the same guy who said in, as you will remember very well, that he would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
And then he got an office. The first thing he did was try to completely eviscerate Medicaid and repealing the Affordable Care Act and put cuts to Social Security, Medicare in his budget every single year.
He is a known liar. There's not a lot that is constructive, although it can be cathartic to just scream about headlines.
But the amount of headlines I've seen, Trump says he won't sign an abortion ban. Great.
Like, who cares? We said that that's not the the reality of it is he's also not going to face the voters again after this. So his driving force to try to, you know, I think clumsily avoid the fate of other Republicans on abortion is because he's

scared of the politics. He won't face the politics in office.
And of course, he's going to sign it if

Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate leader white guy named John or whatever, send him the bill. Of

course, that's going to happen. Well, and this is what he always does.
Like, there is a record

of this, that he will always back the MAGA wing because they're the ones that have his back. So

like, I think that this has to go in the bucket of like MAGA extremist agenda, right? Not, you

I'll see you next time. there is a record of this, that he will always back the MAGA wing because they are the ones that have his back.
So like, I think that this has to go in the bucket of like MAGA extremist agenda, right? Not, you know, abortion most prominently, but not just abortion. And he always backs those people up.
So Vice President Harris is headed to Arizona on Friday. She's obviously been leading the White House effort on talking about, you know, opposing these abortion bans and pushing for more access.

What else do you think Democrats and the president should do to drive the issue?

um i think that uh i i think that in the individual states that the people you know

the i mean one of the reasons why i feel good about things just in general is the ground game

that the democrats have had in arizona ne Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia. And I think, you know, Gretchen Whitmer and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and, you know, all the House members in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, they need to pick it up and drive it.
And it's going to help all of them in their races as well. And they just got to keep it nice and with paid, right? I'm not sure what else.
Yeah. Harris is great on it.
It's interesting that you said, you noted about Biden being aligned with Latino voices on this. A lot of people don't love that the word abortion doesn't come out of the president's mouth.
Like I, I understand that. Um, you know, I'm with Nancy Pelosi, like just when baby, like whatever you gotta write, I, you know, whatever you gotta do.
And, you know, people should keep in mind that what the president talks about this issue is probably aligned with the way a lot of Americans think about this issue.

Yeah.

John and I talked about this a few weeks ago after the State of the Union when there was that criticism of the president not using the word abortion. It's just like we – I – in all kinds of worlds where you wish the president was more comfortable talking about it, that he used the word.
but like let's take the win here that the 81-year-old Catholic president stood in the State of the Union and said that if you sent him a law to restore Roe v. Wade, that he would sign it.
In the first five minutes of the State of the Union, that is wild that a Democratic president talked about protecting access to abortion in the first five minutes of the State of the Union. And the president has been aggressive about this.
He has not been shy. There was a little bit of a transition period after Dobbs, but is talking about it everywhere and should keep doing because he has the biggest megaphone, right? And so talk about it all the time.
Highlight the worst examples of these proposals. Put him on Trump.
He owns every bill. I don't care what he says.
He owns the Florida law. He does.
That is the net result of his action to overturn Dobbs and is the result of his position. What he said today is absurd compared to what he said on Monday.
It's absurd. And we should just hold him to what he said on Monday and make him pay for all these things.
Well, and even if he's talking about the future, it's like, you own this. Why are we in this situation? Arizona shouldn't be in the situation of having to vote to like have a constitutional amendment to clean this up, to clean your mess up.

You made this whole debacle.

None of this is necessary.

Women are dying because of what because of what you did. Like this is just just no.
You know, I think that it's, you know, I think that the more people get tripped up on the particulars, the less salient the argument becomes because he just – he did this.

He owns this.

He has the most extreme – the most extreme position is what's already happened.

Yeah, and he is responsible for all of it.

And he has said so, right?

So there's all this video of him saying it.

So let's use that.

Happily, he continues to say that.

Even in that video.

We got him on tape.

Even in that tape, even from today, did it? Yeah. As a business owner, you wear a lot of hats.
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New episodes Wednesdays, streaming on Hulu. Okay, speaking of the president, President Biden is continuing a major push to win over Latino voters, a group with whom he is struggling in losing ground to Trump, according to at least one new poll.
In an interview that aired last night on Univision, one of the main Spanish language news networks in the country, Biden talked about democracy, gun violence, inflation, and the border. Let's take a listen.
What, in your view, constitutes the primary threat to freedom and democracy at home? Donald Trump. Seriously.
Donald Trump uses phrases like you're're gonna eviscerate the Constitution

he's gonna be a dictator on day one but I'll stand in Mar-a-Lago and say to his

friends I know you're all wealthy I know 20 you guys are worth a hell of a lot of

money we're gonna make sure we get you a tax cut a tax cut and they're all

cheering well guess what man it's about time they start paying their fair share

have you made a final decision on taking executive order in terms of what

Thank you. they're all cheering.
Well, guess what, man? It's about time they start paying their fair share. Have you made a final decision on taking executive order in terms of what you want to do at the border that includes the power to shut down the border as it was suggested? Well, it suggested that we're examining whether or not I have that power.
I would have that power under the legislation when the border has over 500,000 people, 5,000 people a day trying to cross the border because you can't manage it slow it up and that's why i also put in 14 billion dollars in spanish-speaking institutions of higher education so it's overwhelmingly the interest not only of the community but the country to grow the capacity for these students to be able to learn jen, how did the president do? What do you think of his message?

I mean, like, you just like as a former communications director, you want to give him an A plus for like managing to weave so many,

so many messages into that answer. Right.
I mean, I'm really, he, he,

he managed to work into a question about, about the border,

how he's invested in like in, in, you know,-speaking education, right? He managed to work that in. He ended up a question, and then he managed to work in, remind people what Trump said about billionaires and getting more tax cuts.
He said that the Mar-a-Lago. And he reminded us that the Republicans had blocked the border security bill from going through.
He could have been better on that. He could have said, like, specifically they did it to help Trump because Trump doesn't want this to be solved.
And so, you know, I felt like that was all I felt like that was that was that was good. Yeah, he was he clearly went in with a punch list of things that he knew from his from polling or his political advisors were important to get done in this interview.
And I thought I thought did well. What do you think of his answer on the border? It seems like he is very seriously considering an executive order shut down the border.
Right. There has been some serious concerns raised about that from immigration groups, from progressives on Capitol Hill.
What do you think? What are the politics of it? It's difficult, but I think that he did seem to lean into that. I mean, you know, we went through, it reminds me of DACA, right? It was election year, re-election year, June of 2012, when we finally, our legal team in the White House and justice and DHS finally figured out how you could do DACA.
So it's the same process they're going through now. You know, there'll be blowback, but I think they do it.
I think that they make the calculation that there's something does need to be done. And I think that that probably spills over, you know, the benefit of taking some kind of decisive action doesn't just apply to the border, right? That just, you know, his team democracy, Trump's team chaos.
He's got to show I can get stuff done for you, you know, even when he's got these difficulties in Congress. But it'll be, you know, that will be some tough, you know, brace because that will be some tough weeks to go through after he does that.
If, you know, if he does. Yeah, I I'm torn on this one because the like there have been some very legitimate policy concerns around taking this move, right, that people who are legally who have legitimate asylum claims will now not be able to have those claims heard.
The president's obviously managing an impossible situation without the resources he needs to do that because Congress, because of Donald Trump, won't take the action, won't give him the funding, won't give him the officers, won't give him the technology, all the things he needs to deal with it. So you have this crisis happening, right? From a pure substantive perspective, if you take action, there will be some bad downside effects.
And if you don't take action, we already know what some of the bad downside effects are because they're happening right now, right, to the people who are happening in the cities where people are being sent, to the migrants who are being bussed, all the terrible things that are happening. From a pure political calculus, right, from like just being a hack about this, right, the poll, you know, Blueprint, the uh and polling organization to actually pull this very specific question and majority of voters support it and more than six in ten independents support it when you take executive action it is always best to do it in the face of a specific congressional failure right that's what daca was and in this case is the the messaging of this is I didn't want to do this.
But Donald Trump, the Republicans forced my hand because they Donald Trump blocked the bipartisan bill that would have given us the resources to better secure the border. So I have to do this.
And if Republicans will come back to the table and work with us, if Donald Trump will get out of the way, then we can do this through the normal course of business. There is a always look better when they are being – when Congress isn't working and is broken.
And particularly because one party, the Republicans in this case, are being overly partisan. And then you're taking action, right? That's what DACA was.
That's what much of President Obama's executive actions in the run-up to the election were about related to the economy, right? When the Republicans were blocking his jobs act and he was trying to do as many things as he could.

And so the politics, you know,

will there be blowback?

Absolutely.

Is it going to be blowback that could cost him

or at least further inflame some segments of the party

who are already unhappy with him over other issues?

Absolutely.

So there, I mean, there is no,

he's president of the United States.

There's no risk-free,

there are no risk-free choices, right?

It's only 51, 49 decisions that you have to make and take your gut on it. So it sounds like they are headed in this direction.
Maybe they're holding out some hope that Congress could resuscitate something. Maybe as part of a deal around Ukraine.
Or at least be vocal about giving Congress the opportunity to do so. Right.
So one more time he's established that I tried. Yeah.
And that's important, right? Especially given what we say and what he says about – in the beginning of that clip from the interview about Donald Trump being a dictator, right? You have to – you have to show your work before you take the executive action. I think he has done that, but Joe Biden has an eternal faith in the ability of Congress to get things done that has actually worked quite well for him as president.
But so I can see he will always I mean, you and I know this from working with him. He would always want to give a deal.
You know, Republicans a little more time than necessarily folks like you and I would before we, you know, took the deal off the table, took an executive action, blamed them for not doing the deal. And that's why he's president of the United States and we're doing this podcast right now.
But all right. The context for this interview is struggles with the Latino community in polling.
A Axios-Ipsos Latino poll, which is quite a thing to say, and I don't know how Axios and Ipsos decide not to rebrand this, but an Axios-Ipsos Latino poll shows that Biden's lead over Trump among Latino voters has dropped from 29 points in his first year in office to only nine points now, and a mere three-point margin among Latinos who say they will vote in the fall. Those numbers are, as they say, not great.
There's no way to win with those numbers. What do you think is going on? Do you buy that biggest shift among Latino voters? There's been some people pushing back on the idea.
Yeah, I don't buy that. I don't buy that big of a shift.
I do. And I know some of our colleagues that work in this space with doing GOTV and you know, other voter rights work in this space with, you know, trying to do in GOTV and, you know, other voter rights work in the Hispanic community, like they don't they're like, that's just not going to, you know, same thing I hear from people that, you know, work in the black community.
It's like that is that is not going to happen. That is not that that number is not going to be what ends up being Biden's vote.
I will say, you know, I've been to a lot of Trump rallies and went to one in Hialeah. And, you know, he's got a lot of support in the Hispanic community.
You know, it is there's an interesting alignment. Some people expressed to me about they're like, oh, somebody from Venezuela who was like, well, this is what this would happen in Venezuela.
The, you know, person with the power tries to jail their opponent, you know. And you're just like, right, this is that's how they they think that Trump is going to, you know, all the things that we're worried about Trump doing, they think Trump is going to stop Biden from doing.
Right. That's just like it makes your head spin.
But that's where some people are. And then just it's just the same thing that's happening.
You know, that's sort of I think the white voters were first, the demographic, the gender, the gender gap. And my understanding is that the most people that are moving from the Spanish that are moving Trump's way are men.
And mostly working class, non-college educated. Yeah.
So it's the same. It's the same shift.
And, you know, that that that his appeal is appeal. You know, it spans over a lot of different demographics.
You know, there's just there's not these people are not a monolith. So I don't think it's that bad, but he's making inroads.
I see it.

Yeah, the not a monolith point is very important because whenever people talk about the Latino vote, it's often treated as a monolith.

And that's just absolutely correct. You made the point about people in Florida whose roots are in Venezuela or El Salvador.

You have Puerto Ricans. You made the point about people in Florida whose roots are in Venezuela or El Salvador.

You have Puerto Ricans who are voting in Florida or New York or elsewhere.

You have people whose families have been here since the border crossed them, right?

Where you come from, how long you've been here, whether English is your primary language at home or not, they're all different.

And then you see different issues that are important to them, different responses to the candidates, different views on the parties, different views about the importance of voting.

And so it's always such a tough thing to talk about because you can actually have like a 17-hour podcast talking about it if you were to do it justice.

And so it's always important to do the not a monolith caveat before we then sort of revert back to probably painting with too broad a brush. You know, I hear all the same things you have, like it's not going to be, you know, he's not going to only buy himself, not going to only win by nine points or, you know, or he's not, but Trump's not going to get 15% of the black vote.
And that may be true. Like who am I to say, we don't know what's going to happen.
A lot, There's going to be a lot. You know, there's just a lot of time for Trump to make his case, Biden to make his case, organizing to happen.
But it's like that is such a false binary because Joe Biden won by 50,000 votes across six states. Right.
It's like that's the whole thing. And like, yes, if Trump's making inroads, that's too many.
Right. It's like, where are we going to like it? Right.
You know, in my view of it is, is, and it is fair. It's also fair to say that these polls are all over the map.
Some show a huge shift like this Axios-Ipsos poll. Others show a smaller shift.
Almost all of them do show a shift from 2020. And 2020 was a pretty big shift from 2016.

And so you get a sense of what's probably happening here. And even if it's all fake and all the polls

are wrong, we might as well just sort of prepare for the worst and hope for the best, right? It's

like, oh, you know what? These polls are wrong. It's not going to be that way.
We'll spend less

money. We'll run less ads, right? That's like obviously not the right way to look at it.

Yeah. But within the polling, there is clearly two topics, three topics really.
One of them is immigration in the border. Two is the economy and primarily cost and inflation.
And three is crime. And these are issues where Trump has been stronger than Biden in much of the polling.
And so it kind of makes it fits with some of the trends. Now, I guess the question here for you is, how do you win these folks back, right? Is it building up Biden? Is it tearing down Trump? Is it a little of both? What do you think? It is a little of both.
I think, you know, and I've talked to the Biden campaign about this. It's like, do you need to choose between shoring up your accomplishments and tearing down Trump? Like, does the spring need to be about, particularly with the Latino community? And you see that they're, you know, they're doing this in their travel and in their targeted ads about, and what the president did in the Univision interview, about what he's accomplished on the economy.
You know, I think Hispanic unemployment is at a record low. I think small business growth among Hispanics might be at a record high.
But there are good stats that, you know, again, I feel like it goes back to like he has to prove he has a plan and it is working. And I think that has to be part of it.
The economic numbers, Trump has always, you know, I think you'll agree. I know the campaign feels this way.
Trump will always do better than Biden on the economy. But Biden can cut into that lead by, A, showing that Trump is, even Trump supporters believe that when push comes to shove, he will sell them out to help himself.
Like, they believe this. So we know that that message works, that he's in it for himself.
He is not in it for you. And Biden is going to fight for you.
And then I think you have to show what he's done. It's interesting they did something today where I noticed they talked about lowering costs, taking action to try to lower costs.
This was Whitmer's message in 2022 in Michigan. Right.
She didn't do ads about she did ads about how she was trying to fight and, you know, help people, help things be more affordable for you. That's more tangible, right? And then this like amorphous, like the economy is doing better when people think that prices are still too high.
And so I think that he has, and then, you know, and then you got to make the anti-Trump argument as well but i think particularly with um this community there's more there's a lot more they need to know about what he's already done yeah you gotta win you gotta win people back right it's like it's that's easier than trying to convince people who've never been for you so winning them so i think it went in the back it's like like, you voted for me. It worked.
We got a plan.

It's taking hold.

He's chaos.

He's all these things.

Stick with us.

Yeah, I think that's right.

It's obviously a little bit of both because there is there's just this massive, massive knowledge gap when it comes to President Biden.

For so many voters, he basically was elected, gave the inaugural address, and then disappeared for three and a half years. Yeah.
Right? And just they didn't. And that's not even really – it's not even a critique of the White House communication.
Just the way the world works, right? The way the media works, the way he treats Biden. To the extent they heard anything about him was his age, to the extent they ever saw him speak, it was generally out of context.
Clips often pushed by right-wing interests on TikTok and Instagram that made him seem old. It's just people tuned out of politics.
And the mechanisms by which people would run into political news sort of just organically, you kind of bump into it, disappeared after 2020, right? You don't see political news on Facebook anymore. Twitter doesn't really exist for most people.
Meta is suppressing political news on Instagram and threads. And so people are watching less cable, right? Just it's, he just disappeared.
And so like, you have to reach the threshold. Like they really think he hasn't done very much because he hasn't been – and Joe Biden does not – he does not want to dominate the conversation.
It isn't really his forte. And so he – just like Obama and Trump are omnipresent in our lives during their presidencies because they were sort of cultural figures.
Biden doesn't want to be a cultural figure. I think it's a very admirable quality of him.
But he has suffered somewhat politically because – it know, it's like Obama, if you weren't paying political news, you'd see him on ESPN talking sports, but also pitching the ACA, right? Trump is just fucking everywhere all the time, often not to his benefit, but Biden wasn't. So you have to sort of get back to that.
Now, the one issue that I think is really interesting, and I think it's sort of the sleeper issue in this election, particularly the Latino community, is the Affordable Care Act and Trump's plan to repeal it.

Good point.

If you watch the whole interview.

I read your message box.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading the message box, as everyone listening to this is obviously doing.

And subscribe.

As everyone listening to this obviously should.

Thank you.

At the end of the interview, Biden's been there for 40 minutes, right?

The guy's like, the interviewer is very tuned in to the White House aide miming their watch, pointing at him from afar. And he's like, well, I guess we're out of time.
And Biden's like, wait, you didn't ask me about the Affordable Care Act? And he immediately goes in and talks about how Republicans tried to repeal it 50 times. Because that is a huge issue for the Latino community.
You remember this from 2012. It was even popular back in the day when we worked in the White House.
The number one issue with Latino voters in 2012 that made them support Obama over Romney was not Obama being better on immigration than Romney, who had a very Trump-esque position on immigration. It was that Romney wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
And so I think we're going to see a ton of ads on it. I knew this.
Biden was clearly briefed that you've got to get the ACA in there. And he was, I mean, he was very focused for this interview.
It was like- He did such a good job. Yeah.
He was like, wait, you haven't asked about the ACA. Well, I'm going to tell you about the ACA.
I don't care. And he did it.
And so I think that's one, like that's one negative argument on Trump where he is clearly not fighting for them, where he wants to take something away from their lives. He's big into that.
And that is huge. Taking things away is actually, the fear of something being taken away, I think is now more present for voters than the hope that they'll get something new because they have so little faith in the system.
and this is partially because of Dobbs, right? You had the right to choose and then you didn't, right? And you're now you have healthcare and now you may not. That's always been true though.
That was a big lesson that Bill Clinton would teach us in the Clinton White House is like people, like we were trying to sell healthcare. They are always going to believe that the government is going to take something away from them.
They are not going to believe that what you're offering is going to benefit them. It's going to benefit someone else.
So just to say, lay the groundwork for what we're trying to do is really hard. And yeah, and now Trump's in the position of being the one that's going to take something away.
All right. Man, that was hard.
That health care thing was hard to get done, wasn't it? Yes, it was. Nothing makes me happier to see that Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll every month showing it more popular than it's ever been before.
It just makes me very pleased. One last thing before we go to break.
In case you missed it, Tommy and Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers have teamed up once again for another season of World Corrupt. This is one of my favorite podcasts the cricket has ever done.
This time they unpacked how Saudi Arabia, yet another oil rich nation with a troubled human rights record, has secured the role of 2034 World Cup host.

You can listen to the whole series right now by heading to the Pod Save the World feed.

I promise you it is fascinating.

It is funny.

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Check it out.

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Hey, it's Haley Steinfeld. When everything requires your attention, it can be tough to figure out what to prioritize.
But I'm here to talk to you about something that you should always put first, your breast health. In fact, if you're 40 and over, you should be getting screened once a year.
And if you're under 40, it's never too soon to visit yourattentionplease.com to learn about your breast cancer risk. So go on, pay the girls some attention, and take the time to find out your breast cancer risk at yourattentionplease.com.
Trust me, your future self will thank you. Last month, you were on Polar Coaster, my subscriber-exclusive podcast that everyone should be listening to.
And if they aren't, they should go to cro crooked.com slash friends to subscribe. We love an organic plug or maybe a not so organic plug in this podcast.
But anyway, you're on right after the New York Times Siena poll came out and the vibes weren't great. But since then, I can't believe that was only a month ago.
Oh my God. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, I recognize time has no meaning anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was a month ago.
Um, yeah. Or it was last month Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
I'll check my calendar. It's been a while.
But since then, the president has given a fiery State of the Union, and the campaign's ramping up with millions in ads. There's now been more than a dozen polls in recent weeks that show Biden with at least a narrow lead are tied with Trump.
So with seven months to go here, now seems like a good time to take stock of the campaign. What do you think? Has the race moved in Biden's direction? Are you feeling better than you felt when we talked last month? Yeah.
Yes. No, no, no, no, no.
I am definitely feeling better. I mean, I think that the, the, the state of the union was key because not like I, not that I expected the polls to move out of the state of the union, but everyone saw, first of all, like all the nervous Democrats and everyone, you know, who did, who did watch, which is, you know, more people watched the state of the union than the women's basketball game, but not a lot more.
It's like what you saw was like, oh, he's fine. And he will be fine through the election.
Right. Like the man who delivered that state of the union is not going to crumble between now and the election.
So we're like, OK, Joe Biden is great. He was feisty.
I thought that speech was really well crafted, particularly well suited for him. Like that was all great.
And I think you and I are both like in other and other venues, we're both telling people don't expect the polls to change. If they do, that's great, but don't, they may not change until Labor Day.
Right. Like that, um, people it's March.
And just because the election, it's like, okay, general election is happening. We want all the polls to change.
It's like, it was March. The polls were not going to change.
And say the fact that he, what makes me feel good about it is they have a plan. They have a lot of money.
They're executing their plan. And at a time of relative quiet where they can kind of control things, I feel like that's the period we're in right now with big estrus of Gaza, they are moving the polls.
So that shows you their team is good. It shows you that they have a smart plan and they're executing it.

There will be times something terrible will happen.

You know, there's a long way to go.

Bad things will happen.

Those polls will go up and down.

But I have this sort of foundational faith in him and the campaign.

I just said before that I have like faith in the ground operations and the battlegrounds too. When was the last time a Republican won a statewide in any of those states except for Brian Kemp and the governor in Nevada, but not, you know, not the Senate race in Nevada in 22? So, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think you have to feel better, right? Obviously, as you said, the president, he didn't just clear the low bar that Donald Trump set for him.

He did a great job.

And if you were nervous about his ability to navigate a convention speech, debates, all of those things, he showed he can absolutely do it and that he can do it quite well.

And people who saw that or saw clips of it feel better.

And I've seen this in focus groups that had a real effect on people where they were believing the caricature of Biden. And now you have Biden, you have that great ad where he talks about his age, he's out there more, the campaign, they're driving a message now in a way they have not done in a long time.
They've been sort of on their back foot for several months, just largely dealing with Gaza, dealing with just the challenges of being president, the attention the Republican primary was getting. And just this like they were stuck in this cycle of Biden's too old.
So the polls are bad. Now the polls say now the polls are worse.
No, Biden must be really too old. It's just, they kind of broke out of that.
Biden keeps getting older.

Yeah, he keeps, every day he's older.

What are we going to do? Zero days since Biden got younger, right? And he, and so like that, like they're, Trump's on the defensive a little bit more than he has been in a long time. And that's all, that's all great, right? Like that's, that's what you want, right? You're going to, we should be realistic that a tie national poll is a, given the bias of electoral colleges as a race, Trump wins.
So Biden, you know, he won by 50, he won the popular vote by millions of votes last time and lost electoral college. So he's going to have to do better.
You want to start seeing some movement in the swing states. We've seen a little of that in some polls.
You want to see more, but all good, right? Like I said, let's take the win here, right? You mentioned how the campaigns are funded. So let's say Trump claims that he raised $50 million in one night from a bunch of billionaires.
Whether that's true or not, who knows? But as of April, the Biden campaign had twice as much cash on hand as Trump. They've hired 300 paid staffers and opened 100 offices.
And according to NBC News, Trump and the RNC just hired their state directors for Michigan, Pennsylvania only last week. And they only have less than five staffers in every battleground state.
Look, as every MAGA Yahoo on Twitter will point out, Hillary Clinton famously outspent Trump. How much does this money actually matter? And what's your take on how Biden is spending it thus far? So I feel like it matters.
It's really important that Biden has more money because he's the one that's not being heard, right? You kind of made this point before. So it is he needs money more than Trump does because Trump doesn't have any problem being heard.
And Biden has. And it's not just Biden.
It's having a hard time getting heard. Biden has this amazing story to tell.
So it's not like, oh, we got a message. We got to do ads to message to these people, like why they should continue to hang in there, even though we got nothing done.
He's like, you know, sometimes Democrats are in the position of doing. He has a great story to tell.
So I think that, and also the, you know, and the ground game, right? That's like, I feel like that's why it matters. And from what I can discern from the way they're spending it now on ads, I mean, I don't, you know, I don't have a good sense.
Do you have a good sense of how it's going digitally? because, you know, I'm just assuming that, and this is, you know, what I understand to be the case is that they are, that the ads that we see pop up,

you know, because they get announced are then going – are being tracked to the platforms that the voters that you need to reach actually are on. Yeah, that's right.
Right? So you got to – I'm just like taking on faith that that is happening. But I think it's it's good.
I mean, I, you know, I feel good about that. Yeah.
I, you know, the, there had been this talk when Trump sort of glide, glided through the primary without having to face too much, you know, too much challenge, no real diminishing moments, no, no losses of consequence that he had sort of eroded Biden's incumbent advantage.

But the way the campaign has come out gangbusters since the State of the Union, I think proves that's not the case. They've been planning for this moment.
They had been building the infrastructure to do it. They had a strategy.
They had a message. They'd done the testing.
They'd cut the ads. And they were ready to go.
And they were kind of waiting for the starting gun in the State of the Union. and what they have done and the way they've turned up the volume,

the ferocity of response on things like Trump's abortion statement today, some of his crazy things he said at Mori Lago over the weekend, is a sign. The $25 million fundraiser is a sign that they have the infrastructure in place to do it.
And they were very well prepared for this moment. I have very little concerns about – I have no concerns really about the execution of the Biden campaign.
I don't think – if he were to lose his race, it's not going to be because he didn't run a good campaign. Infrastructure-wise, organizing-wise, running smart ads.
I think they know what they're doing. We know all those people.
They're all of our friends. We worked with them in the White House.
We worked on our previous campaigns. They know what they're doing.
They're going to be very good. And even the Trump campaign is better than it's been in the past.
I think the Biden campaign is still much better. Much, much better.
I wonder what you thought about that, that notion that the Gabe Sherman piece in Vanity Fair about how the Trump campaign is a discipline. I have a lot of thoughts about that piece.
They are better. But being better does not mean being good.
And one thing that I think, and this is important on the money thing, because everyone says 2016, 2016, 2016. And Trump and Chris Lasavita and Susie Wiles are clearly better than the complete group of knuckleheads and grifters who ran the previous two campaigns.
Like, yes. God, the grifters.
And they're better than replacement-level GOP consultants, right? Like they right? Chris Lasveth in particular has a long record of winning races for Republicans. So he's a person actually qualified to run a presidential campaign, which Trump has never had working for him at any level before.
But the way in which he was able to win despite – or come close in 2020 even with having much less money to spend, those ways are not available to him anymore. He does not get the free media attention he used to get, right? We live, Trump was, was the monoculture in America from 2015 to 2020.
And then he disappeared and his ability to like, he just doesn't dominate the conversation anymore. Just the ability to speak to therefore to be this one singular political conversation

is that does not exist anymore.

The social media platforms don't allow it to happen.

That's not how media works anymore.

It's not how people consume information.

We're living in these algorithmic, individualized algorithmic prisons in some of our news

consumption.

And so he just can't do the thing where he's so dominant that he drowns out everyone else.

And I think this is one of the most important things about this election that is not talked

I'm not going to be a good one. And so he just can't do the thing where he's so dominant that he drowns out everyone else.
And I think this is one of the most important things about this election that is not talked about enough is that Facebook was a massive asset to Trump all the way through. And he was and that's how a lot of people were being fed his messaging was because you'd go on Facebook for whatever reason.
People went on Facebook, right? You're like your friend's kids, you're checking on an event, you're just mindlessly scrolling in line at the grocery store. And you were getting, because of the way the algorithm worked, a ton of very pro-Trump content or very anti-Biden content or very anti-Hillary content in 2016.
That doesn't happen anymore. They've changed the algorithm.
And so that was free, that was absolutely free messaging. And that's gone for him.
And that's, I think that's a huge, that's a huge deal. So really good point.
Yeah. Huge.
His campaign is going to be better. It's going to be, they're clearly strategically smarter, right? What he did on abortion today was clumsy, but it's a sign that he like reads the polls and is trying to win.
And he would, we have to make sure it doesn't work, but it was the right,

it was the smart thing to do. That's right.

Yes.

That's right.

So I think they're doing better, right?

But I still think Biden's advantage is huge.

And on the money thing,

I think this is really important too,

is he raised $50 million.

But a lot of that money,

as far as we can tell,

goes to super PACs.

And this is the thing that I think people forget,

is a dollar to a campaign is worth exponentially more than a dollar to a super PAC because by law, TV stations have to charge campaigns, the actual campaign, the Biden campaign or the Trump campaign or the Gallego campaign or the Casey campaign, the lowest rate. And they can gouge the living shit out of a super PAC.
So oftentimes you'll see, you know, the stats at the end of the campaign, which tells a lot in 2022, which is like on the Democratic side, there was $100 million spent. That's funny, I'm making this up.
And on the Republican side, there was $150 million spent. But when you actually do the measurement called share a voice, if the number of ads run or like ratings points behind ads, the Democrat number is way larger because they're getting more ads per dollar than the Republicans.
So the super PAC money matters. But the fact that Biden's raised $25 million for his campaign and Trump raised $50 million, some for his campaign and some for a bunch of super PACs, there's a difference there.
And I think that's just an important thing to remember as we talk about the money. All right, Jen, you were recently in the Battleground State of Michigan talking to voters.
What did you hear? Did you come away feeling better or worse? Why were you in Michigan? Why were you at the Trump rally in Hialeah? That's a question I meant to ask you earlier in the podcast, because after you were on Polar Coaster, you cited being at many Trump rallies and many people, including some of our producers, were curious as to why you went to so many Trump rallies. So at least you maybe put, put your trip in Michigan in context and your, your frequent attendance at MAGA events in context.
The circus would send me to a lot of Trump rallies, but I got to tell you, I miss going to them. Sadly, the circus was canceled.
Showtime kind of doesn't exist anymore, but I miss going to Trump rallies cause you just learn so much. Right.
Um, and you just get a lot, you just get, you just get texture that you, you don't get anywhere else. And so, um, I still make it a point to, um, go to battlegrounds, um, and just get a feel for how things are going on the ground.
And my husband had to go to Grand Rapids for the, you'll appreciate this, for the National Wildlife and Natural Resources Management Conference. Oh, a wild event once again.
I know. Jim, you know, that's what my husband does.
He's a conservationist. And so I was like, oh, I'll go to Grand Rapids with you for five days for spring break and just see what's going, you know, what's happening.
And so Granholm was there. I got to tell you, like Biden, Evan Ryan, the head of cabinet affairs at the White House, is doing a good job because when I when I was there, I saw three cabinet secretaries.
Coincidence, obviously. It was like Granholm, yeah, the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, the Acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, and I think it was Buttigieg.
I think Buttigieg was there too. So, but what was good, they did, Granholm was doing a tour.
She went from Ohio to Michigan to Wisconsin. I think it It was like the kind of route she took.
And she had like massive announcements, every single stop, you know, like just, she just drove. She didn't even have to get into a plane.
Massive announcements, every single stop. A lot of local press, all about investments in these three states.
And I talked to one of the members of Congress there. And she, and you can say she, and you don't know who it is because there's so many women members of Congress from Michigan.
She's like, she's like, the investments are starting to break through. The people know about broadband.
They know about those investments in broadband. They certainly know about infrastructure.
Some of the EV stuff, while it's complicated in Michigan, there are jobs that are coming because of it. That's a positive.
People are making the connection back to Biden. They know about $35 insulin, and they're starting to pare back to her, the national abortion ban being on the ballot.
And that's really important in Michigan because they just passed a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rates in 2022. So you could think, oh, maybe Michigan's not going to really care, but they know that that's a possibility if Trump wins and Republicans win the Congress.
So it felt like there is a lot of, even there's whatever the Biden campaign is doing in Michigan, but then there's a lot of Biden administration, you know, legit activity as well.

And the one, you know, just one quick story that I think is the power of this is there's a nuclear power plant in, it's called the Palisades in Western Michigan. It was decommissioned a couple of years ago.

The plant stopped operating and it is going to come back from a bunch of state incentives plus a loan from DOE. And there were workers at that event that had worked at the plant for 25 years, lost their jobs, had not worked anywhere for two years, and now are getting jobs back, you know? And it was like, people are crying.
It was like a big family reunion. And you're like, that is changing people's lives, right? Like that kind of, that's not a stat.
It's not like, you know, the unemployment rate is this point percent, whatever. That's just, you know, that's like real impact.
And so there's a really great story to tell, I think, in these battleground states. So I came out and people are engaged, you know, felt good.
That's great. That's great.
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, like you don't know, you don't, you don't know, you don't know what's going on on the Trump side, but in terms, again, in terms of executing the Biden strategy, it felt good.
That's a great place to end this. Thank you, Jen, for joining us this week.
And we'll talk to everyone again soon. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.
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