Trump "Proudly" Supports Abortion Bans

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabra.
I'm John Lovett. I'm Tom Evitour.
On today's show, Donald Trump promises his billionaire donors more tax cuts and whiter immigrants.

Speaker 2 Joe Biden announces student debt relief for another 23 million people and finally gives B.B. Netanyahu an ultimatum.

Speaker 2 And later, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin stops by the studio to talk through her tough reelection campaign, TikTok, and what actually counts as milk.

Speaker 4 Yeah, what does count as milk?

Speaker 2 Stay tuned to find out. Is this a continuation of the Wisconsin trip I wasn't on? Yeah.
Sure, yeah. Okay.
Everything had been. A great milk day.

Speaker 2 That was an incredible trip.

Speaker 4 The inside jokes from that trip that you don't understand.

Speaker 2 Still talk about it. Never stop.

Speaker 2 But first, Trump said over the weekend that he'd finally be releasing a statement on abortion that was designed to, quote, win elections. That was in his post.

Speaker 2 And in a video posted on Monday, he again took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade and promised that as president, he'd let states pass even the most extreme abortion bans without any exceptions.

Speaker 2 Here's a clip.

Speaker 5 Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded, Roe v.

Speaker 5 Wade. They wanted it ended.
It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month.

Speaker 5 The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth, and that's exactly what it is, the baby is born, the baby is executed after birth, is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.

Speaker 5 My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state.

Speaker 5 Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others and that's what they will be.

Speaker 5 At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.

Speaker 2 Just beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker 2 Guy's pretty sick. A little deranged.

Speaker 4 It's the

Speaker 4 also

Speaker 2 just a little all over the place at the end there.

Speaker 2 He clearly was reading some of it from a prompter, and he still couldn't fucking read it. He read the riffs.

Speaker 4 It's the most

Speaker 4 when he has to do something like this, it's the most like a hostage he sounds. You know, he's

Speaker 4 deeply uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 So Trump had been weighing a 15 or 16 week national ban, but ultimately decided that whatever that was, it's better politics. What do you guys think? Is he right?

Speaker 2 I think so. I think he's trying to muddy up an incredibly extreme, unpopular position on abortion, and he's betting that

Speaker 2 this video will make some on the right angry, like Mike Pence, his former vice president, who angrily tweeted, I guess, or truthed. I don't know what he does anymore.

Speaker 2 Whatever Pence does, he's mad about this. But Trump is betting the far right is going to turn out no matter what, and they'll at least get that he's winking here about his real position.

Speaker 2 I think the political challenge for Biden is that a lot of people believe the Trump persona from the apprentice days.

Speaker 2 They don't believe that he's personally opposed to abortion, especially low-education swing voters don't necessarily know that he's the reason Roe versus Wade was overturned.

Speaker 2 So I think this is the right political bet. What do you think, Levitt?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's right. I also think he's banking on the fact that the statement is going to be covered at face value.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 A, it's going to be covered as if the position he's taking is a position he will continue to hold.

Speaker 4 Or B, that you can even accept this characterization of what he's saying, because there's nothing in his statement that actually says I oppose or I will not sign a national abortion ban.

Speaker 4 There's nothing.

Speaker 4 There's nothing in it that precludes, you know, if he were, if he were to end up signing a national abortion ban, there are people that say he's changing, that he's going against his word.

Speaker 4 He has not given his word. He has made no promise to not do what everyone expects him to do, which is sign a national abortion ban.

Speaker 2 You say, if Congress passes a federal ban, will you veto it? Honestly,

Speaker 2 he didn't say much new. Right.
For all the build-up to this, it wasn't much new.

Speaker 2 So I think it was better politics than him endorsing a 15 or 16-week ban, but I still think better politics isn't necessarily good politics. Like, I do not think he has solved his problem at all here.

Speaker 2 He still hasn't answered, will he sign a national abortion ban if it comes to his desk?

Speaker 2 He still has not answered the question, as a Florida resident, is he going to vote to keep the six-week ban in Florida? And the big one, will he ban abortion medication?

Speaker 2 A lot of his goons have been telling reporters that they want him to

Speaker 2 invoke the Comstock Act, which would ban medication abortion. A lot from 1873.
From 1873. And of course, two-thirds of abortions are through abortion medication.

Speaker 2 The Texas Solicitor General, who designed their state's ban said to Politico at one point, we don't need a federal ban when we have Comstock.

Speaker 2 So you have to, to believe that Donald Trump is not going to further restrict abortion, you would have to believe that even though he filled his administration with fundamentalist right-wing kooks last time around, that he's not going to do it this time around.

Speaker 2 And now that Dobbs has been decided, that they're not going to just decide to do what they want to do and have wanted to do for a long time, which is use the federal government to ban medication abortion that

Speaker 2 you can send through the mail. I mean, okay.
If you want to believe that, that's fine.

Speaker 4 By the way, it's going to be the same kooks. It's not a big new group of kooks.

Speaker 2 Worse kooks. I would say that's a good question.

Speaker 4 There'll be more and worse kooks, but the same people that helped put together the plan to promote the judges and write the executive actions to do everything they could to restrict or overturn or ban abortion will be the same people that come in next time.

Speaker 4 You know, they've the Heritage Foundation had this report, the 2025 project.

Speaker 4 In it, they talk about how the next conservative administration has to obviously sign a national abortion ban if they can get it through Congress.

Speaker 4 But if they can't, yes, they want to go after Mifopristone. But there was a part that I went through it and I just looked through all the parts.
First of all, this thing is fucking insane.

Speaker 4 Just one sentence is just I happened upon by accident. It's like 500 pages.
Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.

Speaker 4 Just kind of off the, just kind of in there.

Speaker 2 Good to know.

Speaker 4 But one part of it says the FDA, this is about Mifopristone, the FDA is statutorily charged with guaranteeing the safety and efficacy of drugs and therefore should withdraw this drug, Mifopristone, that is proven to be dangerous to women and by definition fatally unsafe for unborn children.

Speaker 4 And if that is their logic, right, their logic is that no abortion drug can be definitionally safe, right?

Speaker 4 That means any kind of abortion treatment, anything, any kind of care that could lead to an abortion would be something that the FDA would try to overturn.

Speaker 4 And so there could be no technical ban on the books in California, but they will go bit by bit through every single way that a person accesses abortion care and make sure that that is inaccessible or punishable or or criminalized.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And then there are the steps that would land a national abortion ban on his desk.
If Donald Trump wins the presidency, it is virtually guaranteed that Republicans will have the Senate.

Speaker 2 It is pretty likely that Republicans will have the House. If they get the House, it'll easily pass through the House an abortion ban.

Speaker 2 The Senate, I do think, is more of a challenge because if they have 51 votes, yes, they could get rid of the filibuster to pass one, but they probably don't have Collins and Murkowski for an abortion ban.

Speaker 2 But they could still have 53, 54 seats, right, if Donald Trump wins.

Speaker 2 So then imagine a Republican House passing a ban and a Republican Senate passing a ban and then it getting to Donald Trump's desk, Donald Trump who does not have to face voters again. Right.

Speaker 2 We think he's going to be like, no, no, no, no, no. This, I'm going to veto at this point.
He's going to sign it.

Speaker 2 So Biden responded saying Trump is responsible more than anyone in America for the cruelty and chaos unleashed by Dobbs.

Speaker 2 And Biden promised to make the freedom to choose the law of the land if he's elected with a Democratic Congress. Here's a clip.

Speaker 6 Donald Trump just endorsed every single state ban on reproductive care nationwide.

Speaker 6 All across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms or being forced to travel hundreds of miles or ask a judge just to get the basic care they need.

Speaker 6 That's Donald Trump's vision for this country. He said it himself.
He punished women who seek out the care they need. If MAGA Republicans put a federal ban on his desk, he'd sign it.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump is the reason Rose ended.

Speaker 6 If you re-elect me, I'll be the reason why it's restored.

Speaker 2 Campaign's also out with an absolutely gutting new ad about a woman from Texas who nearly died twice after she was denied care for a miscarriage because of the state's abortion ban.

Speaker 2 What did you guys think of the Biden campaign response, which has really been pretty full-throated and been happening all day?

Speaker 2 They've had surrogates out, they've got ads, they've got the president out, they had the vice president out. What do you guys think?

Speaker 4 I think they understand that this is one of the most important ways that they're going to defeat Donald Trump, but they're not going to let him get away with this statement.

Speaker 4 And they're really going to not, and what I think really important about it is they're not going to let it be reported at face value.

Speaker 4 They're going to make sure that they're in the story, calling him a fucking liar, which he is, but also pointing out all the ways in which he's responsible for Roe being overturned.

Speaker 4 The ways in which Roe being overturned doesn't just affect people who need abortions, but affects people who need all kinds of medical care.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm glad that they jumped all over this. I mean, I, too, was a little disappointed with how credulous the reporting was, at least the first round of it on this video.

Speaker 2 I think Biden did a good job of being clear what he would do. I think we need to push back even more on this disgusting claim that Democrats want to kill infants after they're born.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is murder. It is illegal even in blue states.
It's outrageous. That doesn't happen.
It never happened.

Speaker 2 But it's a Trump talking point. But I do think that ad that you're talking about is those kind of stories will do the most to influence opinion.

Speaker 2 But Biden, in his statement, I mean, I think his point is going to be, look what Trump did, not what he says. That's all you need to know.

Speaker 2 Make this broader argument about it's not just Trump that will get elected, it's this right-wing extremist crop of zealots in his coalition that wants a national abortion ban.

Speaker 2 And then I think you have to point out the inconsistencies, which is Trump can say that he's for certain exceptions for the life and health of the mother or for rape or incest.

Speaker 2 But if he's okay with these extreme state-by-state bans, that completely undercuts that position.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I thought the Biden campaign just has been tweeting out like state by state some of the most heinous extreme bans. And now Trump owns all of those bands.

Speaker 2 There's a little bit of like people trying to convince Democrats trying to convince people like this is what Trump would really do. This is what's in his mind.
He's lying.

Speaker 2 And like, do I think he's a liar? Yeah, of course. But we don't have to convince people of that.
We don't have to exaggerate much here.

Speaker 2 All you have to do is exactly what he's already done, what Tommy was just saying. And he owns every single ban that is currently in place right now, including his home state.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, I would also say, you know, he actually doesn't say health of the mother. He says life of the mother, which there's a lot of reasons a person would need an abortion because of their health.

Speaker 4 One being that they would like to have children in the future that this doesn't provide an exemption for. The other thing is, you know, I think sometimes

Speaker 4 Trump gets exempt from normal politics because he's crazy.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 when he's normal, gets exempt from normal politics because he's crazy. And in this case, treat him like a normal politician.

Speaker 4 Like John, you mentioned this, but Florida, Florida voters will have the opportunity to either protect abortion, access in Florida, or basically approve a six-week ban. There's no 15 weeks.

Speaker 4 There's no, oh, we're going to find the perfect thing.

Speaker 4 He's going to have a, he is going to have a very simple choice for the next year that will be ahead of him, whether he would be in favor of a six-week ban or protections.

Speaker 4 It's an either or, and he should just be hammered on that until he provides an answer because I don't think I assume he's going to avoid answering for as long as he possibly can.

Speaker 2 And medication abortion is popular among Republicans. You know, this is like very early.
It's an 80-20 issue. Yeah, it's used in early stages of pregnancy.
It's 60% of abortions, medication abortion.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's some weirdness from the numbers when you talk about whether

Speaker 2 people approve it getting shipped over state lines. I think because the polling was bad more than anything, but it's a very popular

Speaker 2 path for people. Yeah.
And you can, you know, you can debate what he's going to do, what he might do, what he has done, this ban, this many weeks.

Speaker 2 But I think him owning what has already happened proudly, as he said in the video, and then watching an ad like that from the Biden campaign for most voters, that's how this is going to land, this debate.

Speaker 4 And by the way, we're going to get another cycle.

Speaker 4 Like he's going to be asked the next time he does any kind of a mainstream interview, like, does this mean you're going to veto a national abortion ban? And he's going to fumfer.

Speaker 4 I mean, who knows what he's going to say, but that is going to be the next round of this.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, we'll get it on the right-wing interviews too. I know Hugh Hewitt doesn't have a spine, but eventually he'll talk to like a, you know, some Christian outlet or something.

Speaker 2 You know what he's going to say? He's going to say, I'm going to, before he even gets that, I'm going to bring both sides together. We're going to make everyone very happy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you just lie. So you would sign him.
So you would sign him, man.

Speaker 2 We're going to make everyone very happy. Look, you know what I did? I killed Roe versus Wade.
Everyone wanted me to. Anyway.
Yeah, I did. Anyway, have you seen the eclipse?

Speaker 2 Beautiful, beautiful eclipse.

Speaker 2 So Trump also hosted a big fundraiser in Palm Beach over the weekend with some of the worst billionaires on the planet.

Speaker 2 People who profited off of the subprime mortgage crisis, compared higher taxes to the Holocaust, and opposed the Civil Rights Act, just to name a few.

Speaker 4 I mean, John, just be careful, because for two two of those, they could be our billionaires, too.

Speaker 2 Trump promised the billionaires more tax cuts, said he only wants immigrants from, quote, nice countries like Denmark and Norway, and accused Joe Biden of pooping on the resolute desk.

Speaker 2 Did you guys catch that one?

Speaker 2 I mean, I didn't catch that one, but I read the story. You read the story? Yeah.

Speaker 2 The campaign claims that the event raised $50 million, which would be double what Biden raised in New York the other week.

Speaker 2 Lots to unpack there, starting with the money. You guys buy the $50 million number?

Speaker 4 Here's how I feel about this. Do I believe they would lie to say it's double, say it's double? Oh, we doubled it.
We doubled it. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Do I also believe that a group of the country's absolute fucking worst billionaires would get together to give $50 million to the guy whose only legislative accomplishment is cutting their taxes?

Speaker 4 Yes, I believe that as well. So I'm really open.
I'm really open. My mind is open.

Speaker 2 We will not know for sure until we see the campaign finance reports, but it's possible.

Speaker 2 So remember, they're raising money for the Trump 47 Committee, which is a joint fundraising account that goes to the Trump campaign, the RNC, state parties, and Trump Super PAC.

Speaker 2 So that committee can accept a check up to $824,600 per person.

Speaker 2 So is it possible that they found 60 billionaires like the ones Lovett just described and said, write the max? Possible.

Speaker 2 I mean, one person I talked to said they heard this event was all the low-hanging fruit for Trump.

Speaker 2 And like you said, this is like, you know, they view this as an investment in a future tax cut. It's a low-hanging nation.
That was a lot of low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in that room.

Speaker 2 Like super rich people, right? You have a big check.

Speaker 2 But it's also possible that they're just screwing with the accounting and that a big chunk of what they're reporting was super PAC donations, which can take unlimited money from whomever. And

Speaker 2 also, by the way, that will end up paying Trump's legal bills.

Speaker 2 So the Biden campaign thinks that they're reporting a bunch of super PAC money and that this is just an apples to orange comparison with his event in New York. Can I just say one more thing on this?

Speaker 2 If they want to lie about raising $50 million from some of the worst billionaires in the country, who he then just promised a whole bunch of like another trillion dollars worth of tax cuts to, go for it.

Speaker 2 I would die.

Speaker 2 I would at least seed the title of a big money campaign.

Speaker 2 I don't know why we get into this thing where it's like, oh, the Biden needs 25 million. Oh, it's double.
We're more than you. Like, no, no.

Speaker 2 But raising a lot of money like this is a necessary evil in politics. Who the fuck cares who raised money?

Speaker 2 We just need a well-funded campaign to run a bunch of ads and beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I think they were doing the kind of, they did the 25 million number to show, like, look at the strength of this thing. We're going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2 Which is good.

Speaker 4 At a time when the polling wasn't great, this is just like, Trump double. We double.
You bad, we double. You old shit on desk, we double.

Speaker 2 That's what that is. You can certainly imagine Trump reading the $25 million headlines and saying, we need to double this, figure out how to make it happen.

Speaker 4 And also, like, you know, it could be donations that have been coming in for a long time.

Speaker 2 It could be a bunch of earmark things for this event. It seems to me like tax cut for billionaires and white immigrants only

Speaker 2 isn't the message to win over those swing voters. But maybe some of these voters are cross-pressured by their opposition to Joe Biden shitting in the oval.
I don't know what do you guys think.

Speaker 2 LBJ famously took meetings on the toilet.

Speaker 4 The Mountain Comes to Muhammad with Nick Biden.

Speaker 2 Hustle culture has gotten pretty bad. So maybe you're just sort of skipping a step here and being even more efficient.

Speaker 2 Just reading the words in the New York Times,

Speaker 2 when we asked attendees, they said he was referring to Biden actually defecating on the desk.

Speaker 2 Because when I was talking about the fact that

Speaker 2 I assumed it was fake news. Midiculous reports.

Speaker 4 I assumed it was fake news. I assumed that people were misreporting a Trump ridiculous statement that he was saying.

Speaker 2 You think it was just a Friday news dump?

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 I did the

Speaker 4 usual DC bullshit.

Speaker 4 But that, no, what I thought is, I thought

Speaker 4 that he was saying Biden is so old, he's soiling himself at the desk. But then you look at the chest and he says, I don't even want to touch the desk.

Speaker 2 Right. So it's like, oh, so it's now on the desk.
Here's, I don't know if he put a lot of thought into it. Maybe he's just one up to the table.
He's just riffing.

Speaker 4 He's just riffing. He's just riffing.
He's just looking for stuff. Yeah, that's it.

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Speaker 2 All right, so speaking of the president, when he's not pooping in his desk, he was in Wisconsin Monday, where he announced a new plan to provide debt relief to more than 23 million people who are still paying off their student loans.

Speaker 2 Ever since Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court blocked Biden's earlier plans to provide debt relief, the administration has been able to use its existing legal authority to help more than 4 million Americans.

Speaker 2 The plan he announced this week would obviously be a much bigger deal, up to 23 million people. Here's the president talking about it.

Speaker 12 Today, I'm proud to announce five major actions to continue to relieve student debt for more than 30 million Americans since I started my administration.

Speaker 12 And starting this fall, we plan to deliver up to $20,000 in interest relief to over 20 million borrowers and full forgiveness for millions more.

Speaker 2 So the question with all these Biden student debt plans is, can he actually get it done without it getting blocked? And who does it help?

Speaker 2 What do you guys think?

Speaker 4 I hope we can get the checks out before Clarence Thomas gets back from Bora Bora.

Speaker 4 Just get those checks out.

Speaker 2 We've got an election to win here.

Speaker 2 Hopefully there's no clawback provision.

Speaker 4 You know, I remember the first round of this.

Speaker 2 They said early fall they think

Speaker 4 the first time i the first time we went through this round of student debt i remember like reading carefully about like the the re the rationalizations and all the reasons and the different ways he could like kind of structure the thing and now i'm just like get the checks out we gotta win i don't care get the kids some money this one's hard because obviously in the first round President Biden was pushed very hard by progressives to cancel student debt.

Speaker 2 He was concerned that it might get struck down in the courts, which is why he hesitated for a while.

Speaker 2 Then he put forward what was actually a more generous plan in a lot of ways than I think people were expecting. Then the court struck it down and then everyone was like, god damn it, Biden.

Speaker 2 Yeah, then some progressives were like, what's wrong with you? You should have just used another law somewhere and found it and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what he did.

Speaker 2 So, well, what they've done is, you know, they've tried some creative approaches that they've, as you said, they think they've provided nearly $150 billion in student debt relief despite the Supreme Court ruling.

Speaker 2 So they're trying another path. They know they're going to get sued.
I mean, we talked to them and they said, yes, we know we're going to get sued.

Speaker 2 But I think the idea is to get caught trying here and make clear this time that the Republicans are the ones blocking him, not President Biden blocking student debt from getting canceled.

Speaker 2 And I mean, they did have their lawyers go back and look and see like what could be more feasible to do, right? So this is a different, this is all according to the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 This is a different law. They had the 2003 Heroes Act is what they tried the first time it got struck down.
This is based on the authority they have in the 1965 Higher Education Act,

Speaker 2 which allows the education secretary to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances. So in this instance, there's four groups of people who would be helped by this.

Speaker 2 So they would wipe away some or all of the interest on loans that have become bigger than what was originally borrowed.

Speaker 2 Also, cancel debt for people who do qualify for some existing student loan relief programs, but just haven't applied yet. So they would just cancel it for them.

Speaker 2 People who are still paying off their loans 20 years after they took them out or 25 years for graduate degrees. And then they creating a special hardship program.

Speaker 2 So if you also have high medical debt or child care or something like that, then you can apply and potentially get a waiver.

Speaker 2 So they do seem like they're not like this blunt force, everyone gets student debt relief that a court could easily, I mean, the court could still strike it down, but you can see where they're trying to find.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The other instance specifically is if you got

Speaker 2 convinced to go to a school that lost his accreditation, like one of these junk for-profit schools, but you still have a huge debt and no diploma anymore, they will cancel that debt too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, mean, where I'm at with all this is like, okay, like, I think it's great.

Speaker 4 I think we should be doing everything we can to fulfill the promise of canceling student debt, go through the law books, find some fucking thing, get the lawyers in there with, I don't know, microfiche, probably not, and just like find ways to do this, fine.

Speaker 4 But, like,

Speaker 4 we do like

Speaker 4 the idea that like the way the government now works is Congress does nothing and then administrative lawyers like comb through the books to find various little rules they can abuse to do the things, like, okay, I guess that's that's the world we're going to live under.

Speaker 4 That's what we did for DACA.

Speaker 2 That works. Pen in the phone.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. I'm literally about that's what I'm saying.
That's what the laws are abused. That's what, come on.

Speaker 4 That's what, look, that's what, like, look, DACA was a way to get around the fact that Congress wouldn't do anything on immigration.

Speaker 4 These are all ways in which the administration is basically legislating. I'm for it.
I think we should do it.

Speaker 4 I think we should do as much as we possibly can as long as we have a completely fucking useless and feckless Congress.

Speaker 4 But it is like an ⁇ it is like in the long term, like we have accrued more and more power

Speaker 4 to the White House. And then these presidential elections feel like the stakes are total because they are.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I just think there's, I think there's also a lot of gray area in some of these laws that are open to interpretation.
Right. Like, I don't think it's obvious.

Speaker 4 Sure. But like, do I think that whatever law they're using was written so that decades later the president could go through and wipe away vast swaths of student loan debt?

Speaker 2 Probably not.

Speaker 4 I don't care. Go for it.
Do it and be legends.

Speaker 2 We'll see. We'll see.

Speaker 4 What a country.

Speaker 2 The president has also been making news on one of his biggest challenges with young and progressive voters, the war in Gaza.

Speaker 2 Last week, after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers from Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen, Biden finally told Netanyahu that if Israel doesn't change course by immediately announcing steps to, quote, address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers, that quote, we won't be able to support you.

Speaker 2 That last quote is from an Axios report on the call. Bibi responded by finally allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where millions are suffering, many on the verge of famine.

Speaker 2 Biden hasn't specified what the consequences will be if Netanyahu doesn't do more, but conditioning military aid is presumably now on the table.

Speaker 2 This comes as more Democratic politicians and voters well beyond the progressive base have criticized Biden's Gaza policy.

Speaker 2 Tim Kaine applauded Biden for the move, but said, quote, this was an obvious solution that should have happened months ago.

Speaker 2 Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said that it shows, quote, when the president uses leverage to enforce his demands, he gets results, but that we will, quote, look feckless if we do not match our words with deeds.

Speaker 2 Seems right to me. What about you guys? Do you think this could be a turning point? I hope so.
I mean, in the near term,

Speaker 2 419 aid trucks got into Gaza on Monday. 322 aid trucks got in on Sunday.
In February, the average per day was 98 trucks.

Speaker 2 The two highest totals since October 7th. So there's been an impact.
That increase is good.

Speaker 2 Also, it proves that the slowdown in the previous months was the entirely the result of a policy choice made by the Israeli government, not other complications that you saw blamed in the media.

Speaker 2 It's also gross that it took the death of seven Western aid workers to get here, but you know, I'm glad we're here.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I agree, it's long overdue. I think the next step is getting a ceasefire agreement.

Speaker 2 That gets more complicated because it's a negotiation that involves Hamas to secure the release of these remaining hostages,

Speaker 2 at least the ones that are still alive.

Speaker 2 But the negotiators were reportedly mad that Netanyahu was not giving them enough flexibility. Biden pushed him on that, too.
So, we'll see if that gets things moving.

Speaker 2 And then there's the question of Rafa, which is that city in southern Gaza where there's like a million people sheltering.

Speaker 2 The U.S. position is that the Israeli military should not launch an invasion into Rafah, at least until they get a plan

Speaker 2 that shows how they'll protect civilians. The U.S.

Speaker 2 has said they're yet to see such a plan, but Netanyahu today or Monday said that he has set a date for a Rafah invasion, and he keeps saying things like, we're in the middle of this war.

Speaker 2 So I do hope the message is, no, we're not. We're at the end of this war, and you need to end it.

Speaker 2 The problem, though, is politically, Netanyahu sees this war as a lifeline and he is worried that he will face elections once it's over, that his party will get destroyed, he will lose power and then face a bunch of corruption charges.

Speaker 2 So that's the long-term complicating factor that makes all of this harder going forward. I do think that the politics at home here for Biden have changed pretty significantly in that you have, I mean,

Speaker 2 you have all kinds of people criticizing him for his Gaza policy, including, according to the New York Times and other reports, like Jill Biden. Chris Koons.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like his wife has been saying, Joe, this needs to end.

Speaker 2 So, and it is, it was amazing and also just like really frustrating to see that like he does one call to BB where he finally gives him an ultimatum and then immediately see the aid truck start going into Gaza.

Speaker 2 And it's like, well,

Speaker 2 I don't know. I don't know how the people who were who were defended the like, you know,

Speaker 2 the Hug BB strategy in private and he's got to maintain his leverage. It's like, well, well, then it was self-evidently stupid from the beginning.

Speaker 4 And by the way, also the people that defended the claim that Israel couldn't get Aiden for weeks and weeks on end.

Speaker 4 And then also, by the way, on the other, the second Biden does shows just puts puts the puts like real pressure on Nanyahu in this call.

Speaker 4 Republicans immediately put forward a resolution to say that he's being insufficiently pro-Israel. Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's going to he's going to deal with that. I mean, I've heard a lot of people cast doubt on whether this is a real political problem for Biden.

Speaker 2 Certainly the polls now show that his Gaza policy is unpopular with a majority of voters. Sending more weapons is unpopular, too.
Right. Now,

Speaker 2 whether voters' opposition to his Gaza policy is a deal breaker for them is still unclear, but I would say two things. Like, one, in a rematch against a guy you beat by only 40,000 votes last time.

Speaker 2 Every single thing matters. And also, it's like beyond the politics.

Speaker 2 Like, I just haven't heard a moral case or any case at all for like why the only way to dismantle a terrorist organization and free hostages is to kill and starve tens and tens of thousands of people, including children and babies.

Speaker 2 It's because there is no case. Right, that's because this war is a moral, strategic, and political disaster.

Speaker 2 The morality of it is the death toll, the number of children who've been killed using starvation as a tool of war.

Speaker 2 But then strategically, even the Israeli military intelligence services do not believe that you can defeat Hamas entirely. They will exist as a terrorist organization, as a guerrilla organization.

Speaker 2 They're not going to go away.

Speaker 2 You can diminish their capabilities and reduce the threat, but you cannot kill off the organization or kill an idea or a resistance to occupation. So they're not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 And I worry that a generation of young people are being radicalized and that that radicalization is not just going to be pointed at the Israeli government. It's going to be pointed directly at us.

Speaker 2 And you're seeing this thing metastasize into the Middle East. You're seeing the Israelis bombing Iranian generals in a diplomatic facility in Damascus.

Speaker 2 Now we're all waiting to see what the Iranian response is and whether they're going to fucking attack Israel directly or attack some U.S. interest in the region.

Speaker 2 Like, nothing about this is making anyone safer. It is all just getting worse.
You know what really drives me nuts is people who are like, well, no one's calling on Hamas to just release the hostages.

Speaker 2 Hamas could end this war tomorrow. It's like, of course they could.

Speaker 2 Hamas being murderous monsters who use their own people as human shields.

Speaker 2 Like that, that doesn't absolve the Israelis or any of us from our duty to protect people and to think about the consequences that you just laid out of carrying on this war.

Speaker 2 Of course, they're murderous terrorists. We get that.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 4 you can't spend six months running all the civilians into one city and then bomb that city.

Speaker 4 You just simply can't.

Speaker 2 It's not complicated. The calling on Hamas...
argument frustrates me so much because everyone is calling on Hamas to release the hostages. They have been since the very beginning.

Speaker 2 They're holding innocent civilians. Everyone wanted to release the hostages.
The U.S. doesn't doesn't have diplomatic relations with Hamas.
We don't talk directly with Hamas.

Speaker 2 We talk to Hamas through intermediaries like Qatar or Egypt or other countries, right? So we don't even have a relationship with them. So there's no leverage there.

Speaker 2 We have leverage with the Israeli government. We can shift, as we just saw, the way they prosecute this war.
And that's what everyone's been looking for.

Speaker 2 Netanyahu, after October 7th, had bad options and worse options.

Speaker 2 And he chose the worst of all options, which is this war and this death toll and starvation as a tool of war and this disastrous situation we're now now in.

Speaker 4 And by the way, he's facing massive protests inside of Israel.

Speaker 2 You're starting to see big protests in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. You're seeing former hostages who have been released calling on him to do more.
You're seeing the families of hostages.

Speaker 2 I mean, the real question is how many of these hostages are alive at this point? And I don't say that to blame Netanyahu or the government. But again, like

Speaker 2 the only time hostages have gotten back is through a negotiated ceasefire, temporary ceasefire between the two sides. And I think that's what everyone's been looking for.

Speaker 4 You saw Netanyahu today, well, recording is Monday, once again said there's a date for when we're going to go into Rafah.

Speaker 4 I mean, obviously he intends to do that, but he's also negotiating.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, look, there's, you could, I wonder if he's using that to put political pressure on Hamas, but I don't know. Are they feeling political pressure at this point?

Speaker 2 We have no read on what they think. You know, even the negotiations that are happening at Qatar are like with some political operatives that don't even live in the Gaza Strip most of the time.

Speaker 2 They negotiate with the U.S. and Israel and Egypt.
Then they try to pass a message into Gaza to get it to Yaga Sinwar, who's sitting in the tunnel somewhere hiding out.

Speaker 2 And it's like, I see, are the people in Qatar really speaking for him, the military leaders on the ground? We just don't really know.

Speaker 2 Well, I wish it had happened a lot sooner, but I'm really glad that Joe Biden made that call. Bibi Netanyahu is a bad guy.

Speaker 2 Again,

Speaker 2 there are not great options here for Biden or for the Israelis after October 7th, but Netanyahu is a bad person, a bad leader, and he should not have been given this much rope. Yep.

Speaker 2 Before we go to break, I thought we'd just talk about maybe some other quick stories everyone should be paying attention to. I noticed today, first of all, RFK Jr.'s campaign, what a fucking mess.

Speaker 2 It's a juggernaut.

Speaker 2 It's a real mess. So there's first.

Speaker 2 First, there was something on Friday where he released a full statement about

Speaker 2 the January 6th rioters, okay?

Speaker 2 Insurrectionists, and basically was like, I have not examined the evidence in detail. It's always great when you put that out in your statement, even though the evidence is there for all to see.

Speaker 2 It was on television.

Speaker 2 It was on television. Yeah.
Famously on television. Trump watched it.

Speaker 2 But reasonable people tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observed that the protesters carried no weapons.

Speaker 2 Then he promised to appoint a special counsel to investigate the prosecutors instead of the people who pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury of their peers for violently assaulting police officers.

Speaker 2 Then, when everyone pointed out to RFK Jr.

Speaker 2 in his campaign that actually they carried a lot of different kinds of weapons, flagpoles, mace, explosives, all that kind of stuff, he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I was told there actually were weapons.

Speaker 2 So that was great. And then the campaign's New York director was caught on video talking to some supporters and said the following.
She said, the Kennedy and Trump voter, our mutual enemy is Biden.

Speaker 2 If nobody gets 270, Congress picks the president. So who are they going to pick? If it's in a Republican Congress, they'll pick Trump.
So

Speaker 2 a little quiet part out loud.

Speaker 4 But it doesn't actually make, I can't, how does it make sense? Because like, I like the idea that there's Kennedy people out there being like, it's Trump and Kennedy versus Biden. That's great.

Speaker 4 Keep doing that. But you still have to get electoral votes.
So, so what are we talking about here?

Speaker 2 I think they're just, I think what she was saying is like, the most important thing is to make sure that Joe Biden doesn't become president. And obviously, we'd love if RFK Jr.
becomes president, but

Speaker 2 the chance that he's not going to be, well, get Trump. But there's another guy that hates vaccines up there.
Donald Trump. I mean, that's probably the rest of her sentence.

Speaker 4 It's a, what a fucking dilettante. It's just like, just unbelievable.
This is like this blundering oaf running around making absolutely no sense.

Speaker 4 For RFK to help Donald Trump by throwing it to Congress, he would have to get an electoral vote.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure

Speaker 2 they believe all kinds of crazy things. I'm sure they think that.

Speaker 4 Was he going to do great in Omaha?

Speaker 2 Maybe that's it.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's an Omaha play. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One other story worth watching. So this is a very weird one.
So this is about the Montana Senate race. So there's a Republican named Tim Sheehee.

Speaker 2 He's running for Senate in Montana against John Tester. He's He's a former Navy SEAL.
Apparently at some point in his life he got shot and he still has a bullet lodged in his arm.

Speaker 2 Over the years the story about how that bullet got into his arm has changed.

Speaker 2 He

Speaker 2 once said that the bullet was from his time in Afghanistan when he was serving in the U.S. military.

Speaker 2 Other times he says he accidentally shot himself during a visit to Glacier National Park in Montana. He dropped his gun, it discharged, the bullet went into his arm, whatever.

Speaker 2 So both these stories are in the public record. The Washington Post was like, Hey, what's the deal with this discrepancy?

Speaker 2 So, she says, Oh, actually, I lied about shooting myself by accident at Glacier National Park. The real story is I fell, I hurt myself on a hike, I had to go to the ER.

Speaker 2 Someone was like, What's up with that bullet in your arm? And he said, Then he had to talk to a park ranger.

Speaker 2 So, he lied to the park ranger and said, I shot myself because he wanted to avoid an investigation into the shooting in Afghanistan because he never reported it and didn't want to get his buddies in trouble.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 that's weird on a number of levels. One might imagine that an ER doctor would notice the difference between a bullet wound from that day and one from a few years ago.

Speaker 2 That's one area where it seems to fall apart.

Speaker 2 He also previously said that he was shot multiple times in Afghanistan. Look, he said he was shot multiple times.

Speaker 2 So who knows where, like, if he was a Democrat, you'd have swift boat veterans for truth, you know, chasing him out of the state as we speak because he's a Republican.

Speaker 2 First thing that popped into my mind is John Kerry, John Kerry, who knows how I shouldn't have thrown that medal. But what a weird story.

Speaker 4 That is strange. That is strange.
Because I think if I shot myself in the arm, I would lie and say it happened in combat, but I wouldn't make up multiple wounds.

Speaker 2 You wouldn't make up a lamer story. No, you wouldn't go worse with it.
You wouldn't pay a fine.

Speaker 2 Really weird. Shout out Washington Post, Liz Goodwin.
Great story. And also, go donate some money to John Tester.
He's a great guy. John Tester needs to win.
Church Bryan needs to win.

Speaker 2 I mean, two really, really tough Senate races, and we have to win both of them and have Biden win to keep the Senate.

Speaker 4 So we have, we have Tammy Baldwin on, and this is his audio just came out that her opponent said that

Speaker 4 about nursing home residents. Well, you only have a five or six month life expectancy.
Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.

Speaker 2 What? What? Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 This guy is.

Speaker 4 The race is getting tighter. She should kick the ever-living shit out of this guy.

Speaker 2 Love Tammy. Love Tammy.
All right.

Speaker 2 A few bits of housekeeping before we get to Senator Baldwin.

Speaker 2 First, Love It or Leave It will be in Austin, Texas on April 21st.

Speaker 4 April 21st.

Speaker 2 Where Love It will be joined by Joyelle Nicole Johnson, Zach Zucker, the Sklar brothers, and Tim Miller. And Joe Rogan.

Speaker 4 Sorry. No, no.
Couldn't cut him. Couldn't cut him.

Speaker 2 And then you're going to D.C. on April 25th for another great show with Josh Gondelman, Sam Jay, Al Franken, and Meddie Hassan.
That one's almost sold out. Wow.
And funny.

Speaker 2 If you're here in L.A., Pod Save America will be live at the LA Times Festival of Books on April 21st. Hysteria's own Aaron Ryan, Dan, Tommy, and me.
We're going to have a great show.

Speaker 2 That's a book burning, right? That's a book. Yeah, that is a book burning.

Speaker 2 Well, the tapes will be so hot, those books might burn. Huh? We'll be burning our books.
That's sort of a self-hating thing. Right, right.
Self-preservation.

Speaker 2 You can get tickets for all of those shows.

Speaker 4 Be the books you want to burn in the world.

Speaker 2 You can get tickets for all those shows at crooked.com slash events. Also, subscribe to Friends of the Pod.
I don't know if you guys listened to the Thursday pod.

Speaker 2 Did you hear Dan do a passionate push for Friends of the Pod subscription? He said that we don't do it as well.

Speaker 2 And he was like, I'm going to do an actual endorsement of signing up to subscribe to Friends of the Pod. And it was really good.

Speaker 4 As long as they don't ask us any follow-ups.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course we did.

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 2 you'll get access to Polar Coaster, where Dan calms your nerves and freaks you out about the state of the polls.

Speaker 2 You can also listen to Crooked's most unhinged podcast that will probably get canceled for someday. It's called Terminally Online.
Don't you think? Don't you think that'll do it? So welcome respite.

Speaker 2 It's for subscribers only, and it's where we talk about the craziest shit on the internet that week. Subscribe to Friends of the Pod to listen to our exclusive pods only at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 2 When we come back, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin.

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Speaker 4 Joining us today, United States Senator and someone who is so pro-dairy, I took a lactate before she sat down just in case. It's Senator Tammy Baldwin.

Speaker 3 Greetings.

Speaker 2 Good to have you back.

Speaker 3 It's great to be back.

Speaker 4 So the Wisconsin Democratic primary was this past Tuesday, and people upset with President Biden's Gaza policy organized a push to vote uninstructed, similar to the uncommitted vote in Michigan.

Speaker 4 That ended up getting 8.3%. Does that worry you about Biden's path? to winning Wisconsin in November?

Speaker 3 You know, one of the things I would reflect on that is these were people who voted, and they voted in the Democratic primary.

Speaker 3 These are people who said, I'm fed up and I'm staying home. They sent a message and as a message, I understand the frustration, the heartbreak that we're seeing.

Speaker 3 What I hope is that

Speaker 3 both their message is effective and that in November, there'll be a very clear choice,

Speaker 3 you know, both to support Biden, but also to

Speaker 3 understand

Speaker 3 that another Trump presidency would be catastrophic both domestically and abroad.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 let's talk about that.

Speaker 4 We're meeting here Friday, April 5th. You said in a post that any U.S.
aid to our allies must be in line with our values, and we cannot be complicit in Netanyahu's indiscriminate bombing.

Speaker 4 I should also note that in that tweet, you reiterated that you called for a release to all hostages and your position that Israel has a right to defend itself. But has your position changed?

Speaker 4 Because you supported aid in the last round in February. You did introduce an amendment about making sure humanitarian aid, or you supported an amendment about getting aid in.

Speaker 4 But does that mean you're saying there shouldn't be military aid to Israel as long as they're prosecuting the war in this way? Are you calling for conditioning aid?

Speaker 3 Well, first of all, there are conditions already embedded in U.S. law.
And recently, the president did sign an executive order articulating additional conditions.

Speaker 3 What I am observing is that Netanyahu is indiscriminately bombing.

Speaker 3 Netanyahu has

Speaker 3 charted a course that is not allowing humanitarian aid in. We've seen catastrophic loss of civilian Gazan life, as well as aid workers, as we saw horrifically this past week.

Speaker 3 And he needs to be held to account.

Speaker 3 You see protests in the streets in Israel demanding change, in course,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 I support that. I also have to say that

Speaker 3 just in the last couple of days, my colleague Tim Kain

Speaker 3 talked about

Speaker 3 our support for defensive weaponry so that Israel can protect itself.

Speaker 3 But so long as we see this course of the war, that offensive weaponry ought to be limited.

Speaker 4 So let's talk about the race that you're in. President Trump endorsed your opponent, Eric Laguna Beach Havdi, at an event in Green Bay.

Speaker 4 He said of you, this is what Trump said, she's a very weak candidate. I mean, if you lose to her, that's not a good thing, right?

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 4 this is wishful thinking on Trump's part because you're an historically strong Wisconsin candidate.

Speaker 4 You won by 11 points, the highest percentage achieved by a gubernatorial or senatorial candidate in Wisconsin since 2006.

Speaker 4 You beat a popular former governor and cabinet official, Tommy Thompson, by five points to win the seat in the first place.

Speaker 4 And that's in a state where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than one point. But this is the first time you're running when Trump is on the ballot.

Speaker 4 Does the turnout that that will entail give you any concerns, any challenges you're thinking about?

Speaker 3 There's a lot baked into that question. There is a lot baked into that.
Let me start with the end of that question.

Speaker 3 We were just talking about the Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday. And let's talk about the Republican presidential primary.

Speaker 3 12% voted for Nikki Haley, who's been out of the race for a month or so.

Speaker 3 3%, I think, voted for Ron DeSantis, who's been out of the race for even longer. So you got a solid 15%

Speaker 3 of Republicans participating in the Republican presidential primary who are not voting for Trump. So I don't necessarily see a completely unified front on that side.
So how that will impact turnout,

Speaker 3 how that will impact that 15% of Republicans who just couldn't vote for Trump, even though he was really the only candidate left standing, we don't know how that's going to play out right now.

Speaker 3 But, you know, in terms of

Speaker 3 my race, I do view it fundamentally differently than I did my first race in 2012 and the midterm race that I won in 2018. Our state has gotten even more divided.

Speaker 3 You know, Trump won Wisconsin by one percentage point in 2016. Biden won by one percentage point in 2020.
This is a rematch, and I don't see as many ticket splitters.

Speaker 3 So this is going to be a really tough race. And of course, the Republicans landed their hand-picked recruit,

Speaker 3 their top recruit, Eric Hovety.

Speaker 3 Eric, if you don't know anything about him, you know, while he was born and raised in Wisconsin, he spent his adult career either on the East Coast or the West Coast.

Speaker 3 He is president and CEO of a bank called Sunwest Bank,

Speaker 3 a California-based $2.8 billion enterprise. So he owns a bank in California.
He lives in Laguna Beach. He was named

Speaker 3 among the most influential business people of Orange County three years in a row.

Speaker 3 So he has a lot of presence in Orange County. We don't have an Orange County in Wisconsin.
We don't grow oranges in Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, right? Dairy. Dairy.

Speaker 3 Not oranges, right?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 so this is

Speaker 3 a multi-millionaire who's self-funding and is simply out of touch with the people that I fight so hard for every day in the Senate.

Speaker 4 So he is self-funding, and he's already up on the air with millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 $4.3 so far. $4.3 million so far.

Speaker 4 But you've been campaigning and working in Wisconsin for such a long time.

Speaker 4 Are these ads having an impact? How are you trying to blunt the impact of a candidate who is already promising to produce the most expensive race in the history of Wisconsin? Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 make no mistake, we are a pretty evenly divided state. And any Republican, a generic Republican, whatever name you want to put,

Speaker 3 starts with about 44% of of the vote.

Speaker 3 It could be anyone, but that's what kind of state Wisconsin is.

Speaker 3 And then when you have somebody who can put so many millions of dollars on the air and on digital ads, you know, their support only goes up. This is going to be a really tough race.
And his

Speaker 3 His investment right now of $4.3 million of his own wealth into TV ads and digital ads has increased his support. This race is kind of a dead heat right now, according to polling that I've seen.

Speaker 3 And yes, I work really hard both as a senator and on the campaign trail. One of the things that I try to do,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 every

Speaker 3 year is just get all around Wisconsin. And so I just wrapped up my dairyland tour, 1,400 miles on the car

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 19 counties and stops with farmers and with

Speaker 3 the owner of a brewery, a micro brewery, or craft brewery. I started in Superior, Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 This is the northern, northwestern part of the state in a snowstorm. They canceled the meetings we had planned because schools were closed, businesses were closed.

Speaker 3 So the first thing I did was stop and thank the snowplow drivers who made it possible for me to get there safely. That's politics.
With donuts.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. That's it.
That's how you win.

Speaker 3 That's how how you win. They needed a sugar high to get back out on the roads and keep us all safe.

Speaker 4 So this actually was when I started talking about the turnout. What I wanted to get at is you're a lesbian progressive.
I think you know that.

Speaker 2 I do. I do.

Speaker 4 But you have done and likely will do better in rural parts of your state than most Democrats could hope to perform. So

Speaker 4 what do Democrats not understand about competing in rural parts of the country? What have we lost?

Speaker 3 Yes, and I have some solutions in mind too. So I'll start by saying

Speaker 3 Wisconsin has had very gerrymandered maps for our state assembly and state senate. And what that has led to is that almost all the Democrats in the state legislature come from cities.

Speaker 3 Some suburban areas. There are very few Democrats in the state legislature who represent rural areas.

Speaker 3 For me as a senator, I represent a whole state.

Speaker 3 But I think the conversation with rural voters has essentially

Speaker 3 been stymied by those gerrymandered maps.

Speaker 3 If you are somebody who wants to engage in public service, you live in a rural area, you look at the map and say, there's no chance a Democrat could win in this district and people don't run.

Speaker 3 So we have new maps now in Wisconsin, which is very exciting. And I really think it's going to change the conversation.
If you have a real shot at

Speaker 3 engaging in public service, running for office, winning, representing your area, we're going to have much more diversity of districts

Speaker 3 and people who really do understand rural issues. as Democrats serving in the state legislature.

Speaker 3 So I do, I know that's getting kind of technical and in the weeds, but it is, I think, going to make a fundamental shift. I make it a point

Speaker 3 get out to my rural areas, to go to red counties and purple counties. And, you know, lots of times the people I meet with will say, I don't remember the last time we saw a U.S.

Speaker 3 senator in these parts, and especially a Democrat.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I hear you on the, there's been a lot of headwinds and a lot of, you know, identity propaganda from the right to kind of turn rural parts of the country against Democrats or kind of inoculate rural parts of the country against Democrats.

Speaker 4 But it's more than just that, right?

Speaker 4 Because you see, not just in politically drawn districts, but at the state level, you'll see a state like Kansas protect abortion rights or a state like Utah expand Medicaid.

Speaker 4 But these are states where a Democratic policy can do well on the ballot, but a Democratic person is seen as sort of anathema in some way.

Speaker 4 And I'm wondering if, like, put aside the districts, is there something about how we're communicating, right?

Speaker 4 Is there something that Democrats have lost in how they communicate that you think is important?

Speaker 3 That's a great question. First of all,

Speaker 3 I want to almost respond by saying I think we don't understand as Democrats how Republicans and conservatives and MAGA types are communicating with one another

Speaker 3 and defining Democrats. So you might show up at a place and they've been

Speaker 3 hearing, reading,

Speaker 3 being exposed to,

Speaker 3 in many cases, misinformation, disinformation about Democrats. And if you don't understand the way they're communicating, sometimes it's challenging.

Speaker 3 But what I find, and I want to get back to the sort of rural-urban issues, is when you show up, you convene,

Speaker 3 you know, I'm going to keep on hitting on dairy with you, but when you convene dairy farmers who work so hard

Speaker 3 every day and yet are challenged by high input costs, low prices, prices, and you listen, and then you move from listening to action.

Speaker 3 And you're successful with those actions in the Congress of the United States. And then they see the difference.
Word gets out.

Speaker 3 And I think that type of action and success can overcome the disinformation that people are exposed to. But I am not going to pretend to understand how they're communicating,

Speaker 3 which is scary to me. I wish I did.

Speaker 3 Because I do think that there's a lot of

Speaker 3 myths and stereotypes put out there that before a Democrat or somebody a candidate like me even engages, they already have preconceptions that aren't true.

Speaker 3 But you can, with hard work, break through those. I will also just say

Speaker 3 on this,

Speaker 3 my opponent

Speaker 3 is so

Speaker 3 sort of unaware of the challenges that real Wisconsinites face, including including comments he's made about farmers.

Speaker 3 And it's just,

Speaker 3 we have to get that word out too.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about your opponent a little bit more.

Speaker 4 So he seems pretty wishy-washy on democracy. There's clearly an effort, just sort of politically, he wants the benefits.
of being embraced by and embracing Trump, but doesn't want the baggage, right?

Speaker 4 So he says, oh, the election, oh, I don't think it was stolen, but there was some fishy stuff going on, right?

Speaker 2 Or, you know,

Speaker 4 he says, oh, I don't like this kind of negative politics, but he wants Trump's endorsement.

Speaker 4 He endorses Trump, the most vicious political, the personal attacking politician we've ever seen in our lifetimes.

Speaker 4 How do you make sure that he doesn't get to have it both ways? And

Speaker 4 yeah, how are you talking about

Speaker 4 the relationship between Hovdi and Trump and what it would mean for the kind of senator he'd be?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so he kissed the ring

Speaker 3 this past Tuesday when

Speaker 3 former President Trump flew to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and shared a stage with him and endorsed him.

Speaker 3 We now know where poverty stands with the MAGA agenda. And we also know because he did once before run for U.S.
Senate in 2012, and he didn't win the Republican primary.

Speaker 3 He came shy of defeating Tommy Thompson. But he's on record.
He was 100%

Speaker 3 opposed to abortion rights. He wanted to overturn the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.

Speaker 3 What he was saying about Social Security and Medicare made it very clear to me that he would never be in a position to have to rely solely on Social Security for his retirement

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 doesn't understand the lives of people who do, who don't have a pension, who don't have savings. We have to hold him to his word.
You know, we've seen Trump, he

Speaker 3 lined up everything that needed to happen to overturn Roe versus Wade.

Speaker 3 It was his three justices.

Speaker 4 He wants the credit. He takes the credit every time he can.

Speaker 3 Right. And then he's saying other things.
We have to hold them to their original word. They get in power again.
Eric Hovdia is going to vote for a national ban on abortion.

Speaker 3 I'm the champion of of the

Speaker 3 Women's Health Protection Act, which would codify Roe v. Wade.
I'm the lead Senate author on that. You couldn't have higher stakes in a race like this.

Speaker 3 You elect him, the Senate goes into Republican hands, they pass a national abortion ban.

Speaker 3 You re-elect me and we're fighting to restore those rights, just like I fought to restore other rights threatened in the Dobbs decision, including by passing the Respect for Marriage Act.

Speaker 4 So you talked about the stakes.

Speaker 4 The last time I saw you, we were in Wisconsin during that race for the Supreme Court seat, which Democrats turned out and were able to win. It was a huge impact on the state.

Speaker 4 But one of the things that you've said, that Ben Wickler, the head of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, has said, is that Wisconsin has been a bellwether for what's been happening in this country.

Speaker 4 And one of the ways that that's true is this is an incredibly divided state.

Speaker 4 A state that has Ron Johnson as one of the senators and you as the other that's gone from Governor Scott Walker to Governor Governor Tony Evers. Like that's an incredible shift on just on a tiny

Speaker 4 number of votes.

Speaker 4 How is this possible, right? How is it possible that politicians as

Speaker 4 radical, extreme, ridiculous as Ron Johnson are so competitive in a state that Joe Biden won, in a state that may determine who the next president is? What are we missing? Is it the dairy?

Speaker 4 Is it all that milk? No, it's not. Okay.

Speaker 3 So, and I, just for a quick history snapshot, you know,

Speaker 3 I have the honor of serving in a Senate seat that was once held at the turn of the last century by fighting Bob LaFollette Sr., an icon in our state and in our country.

Speaker 3 And later after his son served, it was McCarthy. in the same seat, the same electorate, followed by Proxmire, followed by Cole, followed by me.
We do have

Speaker 3 a very interesting electorate in the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin.
And it shows you how high the stakes are this time around to turning the vote out

Speaker 3 and talking to those never-Trump Republicans as well as those independents about the future of our democracy. You know, we've talked about several of the issues that are at stake, but

Speaker 3 you said earlier,

Speaker 3 you know, Trump supported an insurrection and told the big lie about the outcome of the last presidential election. We cannot allow that to happen again if we cherish our democracy.

Speaker 4 You know, you talked about how you've seen ticket splitting decline.

Speaker 4 And yet, in an election this close, there are people out there that very well may be either Baldwin Trump voters or Baldwin Biden voters.

Speaker 4 There probably are going to be Baldwin Trump voters because you're probably going to outperform Joe Biden. What are those people? You must meet them.
You must see these people. You talk to them now.

Speaker 4 What have you learned from talking to these kinds of sort of independent or true kind of ticket-splitting voters in Wisconsin?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I can tell you a couple of stories. I remember going to the groundbreaking of a

Speaker 3 county-owned rural hospital in Lafayette County.

Speaker 3 I worked really hard to help them be able to afford to replace their decrepit old hospital with a new state-of-the-art facility and brought home dollars, federal dollars, to help them do that.

Speaker 3 One of the county board chair, or one of the county board members, with the big Trump bumper sticker on his pickup truck,

Speaker 3 took the microphone at this celebratory event and couldn't stop singing my praises.

Speaker 2 I was so humble.

Speaker 3 And I was repeated, and they're like, that guy? No way. Really? He said great thing.
But, you know, showing up matters,

Speaker 3 listening and delivering matters. And that's where you produce some of those Trump Tammy voters.
Another one that I will never forget

Speaker 3 actually does deal with substance as well as, you know, dollars and support.

Speaker 3 I was touring a foundry. This was before the last election.
And it's a foundry that makes things for our nation's infrastructure.

Speaker 3 And so I was taking this tour and the guy showing me around on the tour kind of points at me and says, why do you keep picking on my guy Trump? Like, what?

Speaker 3 Why do you keep picking on my guy Trump? Well, maybe he deserves it, I responded. He was kind of, you know, he didn't really crack a smile.
Shows me what he does and I move on.

Speaker 3 And one of my staff members said, okay, so you're a big Trump supporter. What do you think of Tammy Baldwin? And he said, do you see what I do for a living?

Speaker 3 I make components of our nation's infrastructure. If it were not for Buy America policies, I wouldn't have a job.
This job would be in India.

Speaker 3 But Buy America policies that I champion in the United States Senate every day means that we have this really great paying union job in Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 Now, I want to make that guy into a Biden-Baldwin voter because we've never had a president who's been as good on organized labor, first one to ever walk a picket line. My gosh.

Speaker 3 So I hope we can do that. But that was a great example of a Trump Baldwin supporter back in 2018

Speaker 3 that I found. And it was like, okay, sometimes it's issues.
Sometimes it's listening and showing up. And just

Speaker 3 I think about all the casework we do.

Speaker 3 And I don't want to get into the detail, but I can't tell you how many veterans we've helped get their benefits that they've earned and deserved, but were you know, twisted up in the red tape.

Speaker 3 Or how many

Speaker 3 people who we helped with their social security or social security disability. Those stories

Speaker 3 are shared.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and you and do you think you can get some of those people to understand, right? Like the people that identify with Trump, but who see you as having benefited Wisconsin?

Speaker 4 Do you think you can kind of coax them over? Like

Speaker 2 I'm trying to get them over.

Speaker 3 I want to run a campaign

Speaker 3 that is

Speaker 3 successful and helpful to all Democrats on the ticket, from our state assembly and state Senate candidates who are now sprouting up all over the state now that we have a fair map. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And, you know, up through the top of the ticket. And I hope we can do that.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I want to ask you about two more things. One is the Senate's currently debating this House bill about TikTok.
You came out in support of the House version of the bill.

Speaker 4 The ACLU says that the bill is a violation of the First Amendment. It's also been strange to me.

Speaker 4 Like, there may be very valid concerns about about TikTok and its effect on privacy and the fact that it has this foreign interest, but it feels as though there's been a lot of kind of classified briefings for members of Congress and senators, but not enough leveling with the American people about something that they're choosing to use.

Speaker 4 Do you think the American people deserve more information

Speaker 4 before any kind of bill is passed, even if the goal is to have TikTok

Speaker 4 sold to an American company, that could potentially lead to a ban?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 the answer to the specific question is yes. And

Speaker 3 let me say of the House passed bill,

Speaker 3 you know, I'm still studying it. I'm likely to support it.
I think the goal of divesting it from PRC influence and Chinese ownership is very important for our data security and all sorts of.

Speaker 3 But I would have written a different bill.

Speaker 3 What I think is that we do not have any sort of apparatus that would not just evaluate TikTok, but evaluate all sorts of devices and applications, software,

Speaker 3 and educate these are the risks,

Speaker 3 and then be empowered to take certain steps up to and including banning.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 that is, I think, a better approach because this one is so, is pretty platform specific, right?

Speaker 3 But I can give you any number of examples of other products that we have in maybe our households or that

Speaker 3 we should be informed about. And we don't have any way of voicing that.
And, you know, you talked about classified briefings, and I can't disclose what I hear in classified briefings.

Speaker 3 But some of the information that we could gather if we put our efforts behind it, I think would inform consumers. I like like to know about my products, you know, whether it's food and

Speaker 3 nutrients or where it comes from, or in this case, are there risks of

Speaker 3 losing control of my data, somebody being able to surveil my whereabouts?

Speaker 3 You know, I don't want to

Speaker 3 too much bring it back to

Speaker 3 the Dobbs decision, but there was a lot of concern when this reverted to states like Texas that

Speaker 3 your location data could be surveilled.

Speaker 3 And if you were three hours in a Planned Parenthood parking lot, you could be prosecuted or pursued.

Speaker 3 People should know that their devices allow that to happen and be educated about the choices they make.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because it does seem like if the goal was to get TikTok to go from being Chinese-owned to American-owned, then

Speaker 4 whatever data is being collected is still being collected. We all have kind of resigned.
Right now, we have resigned ourselves to just having absolutely no idea.

Speaker 4 You're saying you would like to see some kind of larger privacy bill beyond just focusing on TikTok.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. I want to be an educated consumer.

Speaker 4 Oh, I don't.

Speaker 4 I don't want to know what's in the food. I don't want to know what the phone's collecting.
I just want to live my life. Don't tell me.

Speaker 4 I don't want to know what, I don't want so many calories are in my sandwiches. Don't tell me.
I'm trying to live.

Speaker 3 I think that you can just pass up on that information, but I'm going to look at it. All right, great.

Speaker 4 Fine. I think that's fine.
Now,

Speaker 4 speaking of giving consumers information, you've introduced a bill and called on the FDA to make sure non-dairy milks don't get to gallivant around town wearing the milk label, that you think the milk label belongs on dairy products, not whatever they're squeezing out of almonds and soybeans.

Speaker 4 What should we call what they're squeezing out of almonds and and soybeans?

Speaker 3 Well, we could even do a contest around that. I think almond beverage sounds great.

Speaker 4 Almond beverage, almond juice.

Speaker 3 Almond juice. That would be okay.

Speaker 3 So there's not a statutory definition of beverage or juice. There is a statutory definition of milk.

Speaker 4 Of milk.

Speaker 3 And it comes from an animal that lactates.

Speaker 4 So goats, that counts.

Speaker 3 Yes, you can say goat milk.

Speaker 4 We can still say goat milk, everybody. And cow milk, but none of this almond milk.

Speaker 3 That would be my preference that the the FDA actually enforce the law that they are required to enforce.

Speaker 2 I'm kind of with the algorithm.

Speaker 3 They're declining. They're declining to do so right now, which is very frustrating to my farmers.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 you know, the use of the name actually has a serious impact on their business. There's a lot of consumers.
Again, you don't need to have knowledge about what you consume if you don't want to.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm a low-information consumer.

Speaker 3 But what I would say is, you know, it's not a nutritional equivalence. And if you just like hear that, say, almond milk is

Speaker 3 better for you because it's plant-based, you know, children need calcium. Babies need nutrients that milk provides.
Don't suggest that

Speaker 3 this is a nutritional equivalent by using, you know, dairy names.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 4 Wisconsin's culture is not your costume, almonds.

Speaker 2 Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's it. But I'm not for

Speaker 4 getting some looks.

Speaker 3 I was going to say, but we were just talking about TikTok. I'm not talking about banning almond beverages.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 4 No one's saying you are. We just want to label it differently.
I think juice. I think we have to face the fact that just because it's milk in its appearance, it's just juice.

Speaker 4 Because you get it the same way you get juice, don't you? You squeeze, I don't know what they do to make almond milk.

Speaker 3 There's some great YouTube videos about how

Speaker 3 I'll let you know the link later.

Speaker 2 Okay. Now, last question.

Speaker 4 You're gay. We talked about that earlier.

Speaker 4 Let me ask you this. And you may not have an answer.
Muna or Boy Genius?

Speaker 3 I don't have an answer.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 I'm a Muna girl. What are your thoughts on Renee Rapp?

Speaker 3 Oh, gosh. You're going to show how.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. This is what this is.

Speaker 4 Listen, I think, look, these coastal elites, they know about Renee Rap. They know about Muna and Boy Genius.
Not the hard scrabble, milk-chugging, you're too busy.

Speaker 4 You're too busy under a cow doing this to know what Muna is

Speaker 3 i think the answer is yes and that's really

Speaker 3 you're supposed to brief me before this interview this is part of the fun uh senator tammy baldwin thank you so much for your time thank you uh what can people do to uh help in the campaign right now go to tammybaldwin.com um there's all sorts of uh opportunities there so obviously people can give people can volunteer um we even have a toolkit on how people can amplify the message online using all sorts of social media, including TikTok.

Speaker 2 Including TikTok.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, a lot people can do to help.

Speaker 4 All right. Senator, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 3 Are you going to give me the cultural reference?

Speaker 4 Let's actually keep, let's leave this on. Let's.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay. So basically.

Speaker 2 Here's what we got.

Speaker 4 So Muna and Boy Genius are two groups. They're both have three members.
They are a mix of bisexual and queer performers. I like, I'm a Moona person.
I'm a Muna person.

Speaker 4 You're a boy genius. You're a boy genius.
But they're just.

Speaker 3 So can I tell you that my era, it would be Elton John or Queen?

Speaker 4 For sure. And what would you have chosen?

Speaker 3 Elton John.

Speaker 4 Okay. And I think that's fine.

Speaker 3 Both of the movies, the biopics, came out like right about the same time.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I found them both very fascinating. But yeah, that's my, you know, in my high school,

Speaker 3 you know, basketball games, when I'm in the stand, it was, you know, we are the champions and I will rock you.

Speaker 4 So that, you know, I have Elton John phases and I have queen phases. I absolutely love both.
I will see neither of those movies for very simple reasons.

Speaker 4 I do not like movies about artists making art because it always ends up with somebody going like, what kind of rhapsody should it be?

Speaker 2 What kind of rhapsody?

Speaker 4 Bohemian rhapsody. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't want to know how this was made.
I don't want to see how the sausage is made, you know?

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 4 Well, we're definitely done a second time.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Tammy Baldwin for joining us today, and we'll have another episode for you on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Woakim is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 2 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 2 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelavive, and Molly Lobel.

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