Biden's Fiery State of the Union

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Speaker 3 welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And we just watched the State of the Union, Dan.
It's late.

Speaker 3 It's 8:45 Pacific time. I don't know how people on the East Coast do this.

Speaker 4 I mean, we used to do it. I know.

Speaker 3 Like, we were a lot younger.

Speaker 3 We are fortunate to have White House Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre. She'll be joining us a little bit later.
But first, Joe Biden just gave a humdinger of a state of the union, Dan.

Speaker 3 He really enjoyed himself. I think he likes doing this.
He likes giving the state of the union.

Speaker 3 That was my first impression. He was energetic.
He was forceful. He picked a lot of fights.
Dan, if a Biden skeptical friend who didn't watch the speech asked you about the speech, what would you say?

Speaker 4 Watch the speech.

Speaker 4 I mean, that's sort of the point, right?

Speaker 4 Is

Speaker 4 all of the concerns we hear about the president's age, his fitness to do a job, all of that are offered by people who most likely have not seen him give a speech in three years.

Speaker 4 And so if what you see of Joe Biden is what you hear about an 80-year-old man and the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of people saying they're concerned about his age, so more people are concerned about his age, or you see out of context, largely unflattering TikToks of the president, watch the speech.

Speaker 4 I think you people, anyone who watched the speech would feel very good about his ability to do the job. He certainly widely surpassed the expectations.

Speaker 4 A lot of people very concerned about his ability to do the job. He widely surpassed the very low bar of expectations set by the right-wing media and Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Speaker 4 And I also think there's a lot in this speech for people who are concerned about costs,

Speaker 4 the border, just whether or the president's going to fight for them. So I've like, this is one of those things you would do where you would take clips from this speech.

Speaker 4 You would show that if they would watch the whole speech, God bless them, they must be a really good friend.

Speaker 4 But if not, there's a lot of really important moments we're going to talk about some of them that we should show people.

Speaker 4 And I think that was the sort of thing that would begin to change people's impressions of the president.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it started at 9.26 p.m. It was a little delayed.
I was getting a little nervous there.

Speaker 4 Where do you think he was?

Speaker 3 I don't know, but it was just waiting and waiting. I was like, let's start this thing.

Speaker 3 Maybe the most surprising thing about the speech, I thought, is the first State of the Union I've ever heard where he directly went after the guy he's running against.

Speaker 3 Now, of course, nothing is normal about this situation. We have two former presidents who served in two consecutive terms who are now running against each other.

Speaker 3 You know, Donald Trump's going to run again. This is the third time he's running for president.

Speaker 3 And so he looms over the entire night, particularly because he is basically the boss of the Republicans in Congress right now.

Speaker 3 But Joe Biden, over and over again, I thought it was going to be like oblique references. He just called out his predecessor, he calls it my predecessor, many times in the speech.
Let's listen.

Speaker 3 My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6th.

Speaker 3 I will not do that. Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.
My God, what freedom else would you take away?

Speaker 3 Over 100 million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

Speaker 3 But my predecessor and many in this chamber want to take this prescription drug away by repealing Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to let that happen.

Speaker 3 My predecessor told the NRA He's proud he did nothing on guns when he was president. After another shooting in Iowa recently, he said, when asked what to do about it, he said, just get over it.

Speaker 3 There's his quote, just get over it.

Speaker 3 I say, stop it.

Speaker 3 Stop it, stop it, stop it.

Speaker 3 So what did you think about that? I was surprised. Were you surprised?

Speaker 4 I was impressed that they got that through the lawyers.

Speaker 4 I mean, like, we know, you know, when Obama gave the 2012 State of the Union heading into that campaign, you wrote that speech.

Speaker 4 We did not yet know Mitt Romney was definitely going to be his opponent, but we had a pretty good idea. And that speech was written with the idea that we were going to be facing Mitt Romney, a

Speaker 4 private equity executive who made a lot of money buying companies and firing the employees and was promoting policies to cut taxes for rich people like himself.

Speaker 4 And you remember in that speech, there was a lot about economic inequality.

Speaker 4 That was the Buffett rule, which was the rule that said that there was based on the idea that Warren Buffett used to say that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.

Speaker 4 And so I expected it to be all about Trump. I didn't expect that they would directly mention him, but they did.
That's great. Like, let's just, why

Speaker 4 no reason to like dance around it? I except our hate when you don't meet, when you don't just say the thing and they said the thing. And I think it's great.

Speaker 4 And because he did that, and I think this is the most important part about this, is it will get more attention.

Speaker 4 And one of the things that the president has really struggled with because of the sort of structural deficiencies that the Democrats have in the media is grabbing the nation's attention.

Speaker 4 And one way to do that is to just, is to break some eggs, right? Have some conflict.

Speaker 4 And this speech will get way more attention because he went directly after Trump than if he had kind of sort of given a very good speech that just was an implicit, a subtle, implicit White House counsel approved contrast, just going after the president these, I think it was 13 times in the speech was, was a smart move.

Speaker 3 I also think we should say hatjack doesn't apply to the president. So that's in terms of the president's speeches.
Yes. Yes.
The president can say what he wants.

Speaker 3 But what I thought about when listening to him go after Trump and really just the entire speech, the energy level, the feistiness, like Joe Biden is

Speaker 3 not going to let Donald Trump return to power without a real fight. Like he, he feels this.
He genuinely believes that Donald Trump is a threat to this country.

Speaker 3 And he has heard the worries and the criticisms and all that kind of stuff. And he was up there tonight and he he was feisty.
He was like, he was as energetic as I've seen him.

Speaker 3 And here's the thing too. It was not perfect, right?

Speaker 3 Like he, his stutter, which he has been struggling with his entire life and which we saw him struggle with in 2020, it was definitely like there were moments tonight where he swallowed his words like he usually does.

Speaker 3 But, and I think I've made this point before, but like he, it was okay. It's okay if he mumbles through some stuff as long as he is showing energy and fight and

Speaker 3 expressing himself in a way that makes you believe it, right? And I think that there was a lot of times tonight where he, probably more times than his staff would like, that he went off script.

Speaker 3 But even those moments when he went off script, it was something that he like deeply believed.

Speaker 3 And so I think that like the performance of the speech tonight, the delivery was something that he felt deeply. And I think that goes a long way with people.

Speaker 3 And so then if you flub some lines here and there and you mumble through some words,

Speaker 3 people don't penalize you for that because they know that what you're saying is authentic to who you are and what you believe. And I think that's what he demonstrated tonight.

Speaker 4 Those are the sort of

Speaker 4 not even misstatements, but sort of speech delivery moments that voters don't care about, right?

Speaker 4 It's really only people like us and reporters and close political observers who look at every single word a politician says. Voters have a much more human approach to the way people talk.

Speaker 4 That's always been true of Joe Biden. And it's just the way he delivered the speech was strong.

Speaker 4 And I think that's so important, right? It was like it felt like a fight. Like it felt like the battle for the soul of the nation, if you will.
But he really was,

Speaker 4 he was fighting. And that's important because the age concerns are often sometimes become a proxy for strength concerns.

Speaker 4 And if he's out there fighting and seeming energetic, it just goes a long way to making people much, feel much more comfortable that he can be the strong leader they want in a time and in times that feel chaotic.

Speaker 3 I'll just tell you you the Chiron on Fox News on Sean Hannity show. It's got a video of Biden

Speaker 3 at a rally somewhere, and then it's got Biden at the speech tonight, and it just says, jacked up Joe, not his normal self tonight.

Speaker 3 Sure, great.

Speaker 3 I'll take it. Great.
Jacked up Joe? Absolutely. All right, so there was another thing that I had not seen in a state of the union before.
He started with Ukraine at the beginning of the speech.

Speaker 3 He had a message for Putin. Let's listen.
We will not walk away.

Speaker 3 We will not bow down.

Speaker 3 I will not bow down.

Speaker 3 In a literal sense, history is watching. He did say history is watching quite a few times.
I was wondering at first when I heard, I'm like, oh, that's interesting that he's starting with Ukraine.

Speaker 3 And the reason I said that is because if you ask most Americans their top concern, they're not going to say the war in Ukraine, even though

Speaker 3 a majority of Americans support Ukraine and support sending additional aid to Ukraine to stop Putin. So he's, you know, public opinion's on his side, but it's not the most salient issue.

Speaker 3 But then that clip that we just heard, the message to Putin, after he said that, he got applause from Democrats and Republicans.

Speaker 3 It was one of the few times during the speech that everyone stood up to applaud. So I'm betting that's why

Speaker 3 they did it first. Probably because Joe Biden thinks it's very important that we support Ukraine.
He genuinely believes that

Speaker 3 if Putin is allowed to

Speaker 3 take Ukraine, then he'll roll through NATO next.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it was interesting that they started with that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 4 as I said to you earlier, in every state of the Union I've ever worked on or watched, I always always go pee during the foreign policy section. And so

Speaker 4 he had a mild panic attack when he started with that, but I think I think there was he it wasn't he had a bunch of really big things really fast.

Speaker 4 And I think it's actually a pretty savvy understanding of both how people consume media right now and how political narratives are set. We remember this from debates, right?

Speaker 4 What happens in the first 15 minutes of a debate is if you start out a debate super strong, no matter almost nothing happens in the last five minutes of the debate hurts you, right?

Speaker 4 But if you start out weak and then you get better, then the narrative doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
So he started with several big, strong moments, lots of applause, seeming very strong.

Speaker 4 And it sort of set the stage for how people were going to think about the debate going forward. So I thought it was smart.
It was good.

Speaker 3 Well, so it was Ukraine, and then he went to January 6th, and then he talked about Roe v. Wade and IVF.
Let's listen.

Speaker 4 If you,

Speaker 3 if you, the American people,

Speaker 3 send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I'll restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.

Speaker 3 So that is all right at the beginning. Ukraine, January 6th, row.

Speaker 3 The campaign has been saying, and Democratic strategists have been saying for some time now that the election is going to be Dobbs and democracy.

Speaker 3 And I guess that was the signal for the beginning of the speech that they're going to be campaigning on that. And that's going to be the central focus to the campaign.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And it's also an acknowledgement that while abortion has been, has driven Democratic victories ever since the Dobbs decision, that there is work to do.
You guys talked about this a few days ago.

Speaker 4 There's work to do in helping voters understand how responsible Trump is for every single one of these abortion bans.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Did the speech tell you anything new about Biden's reelection strategy?

Speaker 4 I don't know if it told me anything new, but it sort of clarified, I think, some of his top priorities.

Speaker 4 First is definitely trying to reestablish some of his populist credentials to demonstrate that he is fighting for middle and working class people.

Speaker 4 That's something that he did very well on in 2020 and he has fallen behind Trump in the polling on. And Trump has like a 10-point advantage on it in the CBS poll that came out this weekend.

Speaker 4 And you saw that in the policies on shrinkflation and corporate price gouging and raising taxes on corporations that he was, he said, I'm like, I'm going to fight like hell for a more fair tax code.

Speaker 4 And so I think that that is one of the main things that he's doing there. And abortion is obviously another huge part of the agenda.

Speaker 4 And the third thing is that he is going to draw a contrast between the progress that he has made, which is strong progress, not triumphant progress, but strong progress against the chaos of the Republican House, which I think is serving as a proxy for Donald Trump in this, which is why he hit them on refusing to pass the border security bill, refusing to pass Ukraine aid, and trying to really stroke a fight with them over a whole bunch of different things to sort of show just how sort of chaotic and overly political they are.

Speaker 3 You mentioned that you talked about taxes.

Speaker 3 He went into a section section after sort of that opening that we talked about where he discussed sort of where the country was when he took office, the economic progress we made.

Speaker 3 He's retouted a lot of his accomplishments. And then, as he spoke about his economic agenda going forward, I think that his section on taxes was probably maybe the longest section.

Speaker 3 It was certainly one of the feistiest sections in the economic section. Let's listen.
Folks at home, does anybody really think the tax code is fair?

Speaker 3 Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2 trillion tax break?

Speaker 3 I sure don't.

Speaker 3 So that is not going to be the sexiest section for media coverage, I would imagine. But I haven't seen focus groups yet.
I haven't seen dial tests yet.

Speaker 3 I would bet that's one of the more popular sections.

Speaker 4 And the subtext here, which I think is worth pointing out, is that the Trump corporate tax cuts that lowered corporate tax rates, gave huge benefits to the wealthiest people, expire at the end of the next president's first year.

Speaker 4 So if we elect Donald Trump, he's going to renew those. If we elect Joe Biden, he will let those expire and raise taxes back up to a normal, more fair level for corporations.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think it's going to be a great contrast with Trump. He's going to be able to kick the shit out of Trump on this.

Speaker 3 Trump already passed one of Trump's few domestic policy achievements in his first term was passing a giant tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, which skyrocketed the deficit.

Speaker 3 And Biden's going to say, I want to raise tech.

Speaker 3 He talks about no billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse, much like the Buffett rule that you mentioned.

Speaker 3 One of these days we're going to get it passed.

Speaker 3 So I do think when he talks about his economic agenda, when he's out on the campaign trail, I would imagine that his tax agenda is going to be something that he really focuses on.

Speaker 3 And we have seen in polling and a lot of message testing that when you ask a lot of working-class voters and a lot of these gettable voters who are persuadable, who haven't made up their minds yet.

Speaker 3 Their biggest concerns about Trump are both what he might do on taxes and then also what he might do on Medicare and Social Security.

Speaker 3 And I thought Biden had a great back and forth with Republicans, similar to the one he had last year and last State of the Union, about Social Security and Medicare. Let's listen.

Speaker 3 If anyone here tries to cut Social Security, Medicare, or raise the retirement age, I will stop you. That's the proposal.

Speaker 3 Oh, no. You guys don't want another $2 trillion tax cut?

Speaker 3 I kind of thought that's what your plan was.

Speaker 3 Well, that's good to hear. You're not going to cut another $2 trillion for the super wealth.
That's good to hear. They are going to do that.

Speaker 3 That is their plan. That's their plan.
That's Donald Trump's plan. They're going to cut Social Security and Medicare so they can pay for a giant tax cut for rich people.

Speaker 3 They also want to defund the IRS so that rich tax cheats can continue being rich tax cheats. That's what they want to do.
Look, I would love the whole campaign to be fought about.

Speaker 3 In normal times, this is what we would fight a campaign on. This is what we fought the 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney about.
And they are good issues for Democrats.

Speaker 3 Since then, it has been very hard. It was hard for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
It was hard for Biden in 20 because of COVID to have an economic message break through.

Speaker 3 But I do think that Democrats have an advantage on taxes against this Republican Party that wants to give tax cuts to the wealthy and that wants to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Speaker 3 And it was good to see Biden really zero in on that tonight, I thought.

Speaker 3 So he talked about the border like we thought he was going to do. He did not announce any new executive actions on the border.

Speaker 3 He did whack the Republicans for having, you know, and Donald Trump for killing the bipartisan border deal that came together in the Senate.

Speaker 3 And then it was an interesting moment where Marjorie Taylor Greene, who

Speaker 3 she was like wearing her MAGA hat, she got like a t-shirt on. And she gave Biden a button when he walked into the State of the Union.

Speaker 3 And it was a button about Lake and Riley, who's the young woman from Georgia who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. And it has been this gigantic story.

Speaker 3 You probably have not heard about it, but it has been a gigantic story on the right. It's been all over Fox, all over conservative media.
She gave him this button.

Speaker 3 And as he's going back and forth with Republicans about the border, he picks up the button and he says, you know what? He's like, I, I'm, it's horrible that this young woman died.

Speaker 3 And he like says something to her parents, I don't think we're there. Maybe they were there, but he mentioned something about her parents.

Speaker 3 What did you think about that sort of ad lib where he went off off script to talk about that?

Speaker 4 I don't, that was certainly not his strongest part of the night.

Speaker 4 Obviously, the use of the term illegal, which he did once or twice, was unfortunate, not how he would normally, he would usually use the term undocumented.

Speaker 4 So that I think he was a little flustered in that moment. But I think, you know, the back and forth is usually good for him.
That one was less good.

Speaker 4 But in the whole of the speech, I don't think it's, I don't think it's a huge, huge moment, but I think we are now hitting a transition period where every state of the union is going to be like this now.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Where it's, you know, they sort of started.
We've been getting there. There was such backlash when

Speaker 4 Congressman Joe Wilson yelled, you lie to Obama. And then it was everyone was on their best behavior for like a decade.

Speaker 4 And then last year, they got into a thing with Biden, even though Biden won that exchange.

Speaker 4 now i think every one of these members is going to try to get some attention from doing it so this is the future if this biden is re-elected he has four more of these democrats will probably do the same thing to trump um so i think this is par for the course going forward i will say like

Speaker 3 obviously uh him using the word illegal is uh just evidence of him being from a different generation yeah that's what people said even people who supported immigration way back when so that wasn't great but it's very joe biden to take on so like like Marjorie Taylor Greene hands him this button.

Speaker 3 And instead of being like, fuck off, I'm not going to talk about this issue.

Speaker 3 The fact that he's like, yeah, no, my position is it's, of course, horrific that this young woman was murdered, but what I want to do is secure the border and also give a pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrants living here who make this country stronger and not set up mass deportation camps like Donald Trump wants to do.

Speaker 3 And he also, you can tell he, he enjoy the, you're right that the back and forth is going to be the norm from state of the unions from now on, but he really enjoys it.

Speaker 3 He's like, like, you could see the guy would be very comfortable in the British parliament. Of course, the question does, right? Like, he liked the back and forth.
He wanted to talk to them.

Speaker 3 He's like, you know, he's like talking, he mentioned Bob Casey and his bill about shrinkflation at one point. He's like, pass Bobby's bill.

Speaker 4 Bobby is in the prepared remarks.

Speaker 3 Bobby is in the prepared remarks.

Speaker 4 Well, he said, pass Bob Casey's shrinkflation bill, but he passed Bobby's bill.

Speaker 3 Calls out Lindsey Graham later, and it's just very, it's very Joe Biden. He loves legislating.
He loves governing. He loves Congress.
Like, that's what he wants. That's what he likes to do.

Speaker 4 I'm sure the staff was not super excited when they saw him going into his pocket to get the thing that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave him, but he navigated, other than that one flub that we mentioned, he navigated that moment fine.

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Speaker 3 I know that we are not Tommy and Ben. This is not Pod Save the World.
So we will not get deep into the policy.

Speaker 3 But obviously, the president announced the opening of a pier in Gaza to get more aid in, humanitarian aid.

Speaker 3 It seemed like a very specific effort to speak to the voters unhappy with his approach to Gaza. What did you think of that section of the speech?

Speaker 4 I thought that that was probably the politically worst part of the speech. I think he,

Speaker 4 from a policy perspective, he's trying to do something to speak to the people who and I think within the administration themselves who are incredibly horrified by what's by the humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza without changing the actual policy and approach to Israel.

Speaker 4 But the

Speaker 4 rhetoric that he used, the way he talked about it was, I think,

Speaker 4 you could just see it online that people reacted very negatively to it. I think

Speaker 4 he seemed more concerned about being considered insufficiently supportive of Israel

Speaker 3 than

Speaker 4 insufficiently supportive of trying to help the people in Gaza. And I think that that that is just like when you say being of a different generation, that is of a different generation.

Speaker 4 That is a different political world. It's it felt not attuned.
And it's certainly.

Speaker 4 If the policy was designed to, I think actually do what the United States can to deal with it, obviously this crisis, but the announcement of the policy in the preview was designed to speak to the people in his 2020 voters in our our base who are very unhappy with what's happening there, the uncommitted voters in Michigan and Minnesota and elsewhere.

Speaker 4 The rhetoric around that policy made, I think, certainly didn't help things. It may have made them worse.

Speaker 3 Yeah, in that moment, I could see, I really felt for his staff and I could see what they must have gone through over the last several months.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, he gets in the prepared remarks, he gets to a, but Israel must do its part, must allow more aid in to leadership of Israel.

Speaker 3 I say this, humanitarian assistance assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or burden and goes on and on.

Speaker 3 But before he gets to the butt, the only ad lib in that section was saying, like, and no one has been a stronger supporter of Israel.

Speaker 3 And I challenge anyone, you know, like, and I imagine that over the last several months, since October 7th, there have probably been several instances where, whether it's Secretary of State Blinken, whether it's Jake Sullivan, whether it's other people, like who are probably trying to get him to be a little more forceful, but he is a, he is, we've talked about this before, and Tommy and Ben have, like, he is a president from an era era where Israel's security was so threatened all the time that I do not think on that, I mean, he talks about whether your ideas are old or not.

Speaker 3 I think on this issue, he is still, he is a man of the past, and he is, you know, it's, I didn't like it. I didn't love it.
Okay, so

Speaker 3 end of the speech. He used the end of the speech to take on the age issue directly, which I thought was interesting.
Let's listen.

Speaker 3 I know you don't want to hear any more, Lindsay, but I got to say a few more things.

Speaker 3 I know it may not look like it, but I've been around a while.

Speaker 3 When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever.

Speaker 3 I know the American story. Again and again, I've seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation.

Speaker 3 Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.

Speaker 3 The issue facing our nation

Speaker 3 isn't how old we are, it's how old are our ideas.

Speaker 3 Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas.

Speaker 3 But you can't lead America with ancient ideas. It'll only take us back.
You lead America to the land of possibilities. You need a vision for the future and what can and should be done.

Speaker 3 I thought it was great. I thought it was a great way to take it on.
And it was a slight joke. It was the end of the speech.
I do think

Speaker 3 the best sound of him taking on the age issue was not in the prepared remarks. It was caught on

Speaker 3 Hot Mike when he was talking to Congressman Jerry Nadler after the speech. Let's listen.

Speaker 3 Nobody's going to talk about cognitive inflammatory now.

Speaker 3 You are, Byron. Kind of wish sometimes I was cognitive infirm.

Speaker 3 I kind of wish sometimes I was cognitively in cognitive decline.

Speaker 3 I love that. That's just great.
That's just real. That's real.
What did you think of the end there?

Speaker 4 Well, he, you know, he road tested this. It's not the, it's not my age, it's the age of one's ideas on

Speaker 4 Seth Meyers a few weeks ago or last week, I guess that was. Time has no meaning anymore.

Speaker 4 But, and I think that's the right thing to do. You're not going to keep, and it's also, I think, an acknowledgement that he has taken a transition on this.

Speaker 4 I think he was very dismissive of people's concerns for a while. I think he was annoyed by them and frustrated by them.

Speaker 4 And he's, I mean, as he mentioned tonight, he was elected to the Senate when he was 29. They wouldn't let him get in the senator's elevator because they thought he was like an intern.

Speaker 4 And so he's always been the youngest person. And now all of a sudden, he's the oldest person.
That's kind of how I feel on this podcast.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 4 see, and you make a joke about it.

Speaker 4 You make a joke about it. You feel better.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, man, it's fine. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But now he's sort of going on offense a little bit with it. And it's just like.
ultimately what the words are not going to solve the concerns.

Speaker 4 It's just going to be how he performs over the next eight months here.

Speaker 4 But to the extent when you talk about it, if you can just pivot into offense and then, because what he is, when you do this, not in the speech per se, but like in the Seth Myers interview, it's the age of his ideas.

Speaker 4 Look at all these things he wants to do. He wants to take us back to when women didn't have reproductive freedoms, when

Speaker 4 gay people couldn't get married and just go right at sort of the Ravanchist MAGA agenda. And it makes a very easy pivot point.

Speaker 4 And you go from defense to offense very quickly as opposed to just being incredibly defensive about it, which he was in

Speaker 4 that Robert Herr report press conference a few weeks ago.

Speaker 3 Ron Barnstein had a very smart piece in The Atlantic today where he talked about sort of the three options for this race, for how to define this race.

Speaker 3 He talked about it could be a referendum on Biden, right, which obviously Biden does not want.

Speaker 3 It can also be a choice between whether voters think that Donald Trump's term was better or Joe Biden's term was better.

Speaker 3 And he was saying it is clear that the Trump people want that choice because right now they are benefiting from short memories and people forgetting how bad Donald Trump was.

Speaker 3 And so they are judging it by the last four years, which, you know, we're pretty happy with, but a bunch of people in the country apparently are not happy with. And

Speaker 3 the other choice is to make it about the future and about what Donald Trump is going to do and what Joe Biden is going to do in the next four years and where Donald Trump's going to take the country and where Joe Biden is and Donald Trump's policies and old ideas and Joe Biden's policies and ideas that will take us into the future.

Speaker 3 And I do think that you're definitely going to need to do some looking backward to remind people how bad Trump's term was, particularly 2020, not a great year.

Speaker 3 At least Stephaniek the other day said, are you better off than you were four years ago?

Speaker 3 Four years ago right now, everyone was about to be locked in their homes, like thousands of people dying a day in April. And then the year ended with a fucking insurrection.
So not a great year.

Speaker 3 So there's going to be, it's going to have have to be, the campaign's going to definitely do some work reminding people of how bad Trump's term was and also remind people what Joe Biden has achieved over these last four years.

Speaker 3 But I do think the bulk of the campaign is going to have to be what Biden wants to do versus what Trump will do. And, you know, he...
basically set that up at the end of the speech.

Speaker 3 And I think he did that throughout the speech.

Speaker 3 You know, they're still a little heavier on the accomplishments than I would like, but I like that at least at the end and at the beginning and with a lot of the policy he laid out, he is setting up a campaign where he can talk about, you know, maybe I'm pretty old, but I'm the one who wants to take us into the future with the policies that I have already enacted and the ones that I'll be fighting for if you give me another four years.

Speaker 3 And Donald Trump will take us backward and it'll be chaos and disaster. And it's all there in the plans that he wants to enact if he's president again.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I thought the accomplishments was pretty good.

Speaker 4 I thought you have to do it. You know, there was polling that shows that it's actually incredibly influential with particularly

Speaker 4 with the double hate, the double haters, the people who disapprove of both of them, which makes up a quite a large swath of the electorate this time around.

Speaker 4 That they are, and particularly, and this is the one he did it for a lot, a lot tonight, is there is no policy more popular than the law having Medicare negotiate with the prescription drug companies, get lower prices, and capping the price of insulin at $35.

Speaker 4 Polls show that upwards of 80% of voters love it. Also, polls show that less than 50% of voters know about it.
So talking about those things is important. But what I thought the tone was

Speaker 4 right for people's mood right now. Like people are a little more optimistic about the economy.
They're not yet giving the president credit for it, but it was not so triumphant.

Speaker 4 He really got to where I think he needs to be, which is we inherited a shit show.

Speaker 4 We've made some real hard progress.

Speaker 4 We did it even though, even in bipartisan ways, and we're making that progress and we're going to get there, but we're not going to get there if Donald Trump and these fucking extreme Yahoos get in power and they take us all the way back.

Speaker 4 Right. And I think that was sort of the tenor, the subtext and the tenor of the speech.
And I thought that was good.

Speaker 4 He did not do, we passed all these amazing things and everything is perfect, the greatest economy of all time, right?

Speaker 4 There was like obviously a little triumphalness and there should be, but I don't think he overshot the runway at all tonight.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I think a campaign that is Donald Trump is consumed with his own past and getting revenge and Joe Biden is consumed with the future and what kind of country he can leave to his grandchildren and everyone else's,

Speaker 3 that's a good choice.

Speaker 3 That's a fight that they're going to want to have. And I think they did a great job setting that up tonight.
All right. Katie Britt,

Speaker 3 Republican senator from Alabama.

Speaker 3 She gave the response and

Speaker 3 I've never heard one like this before.

Speaker 3 Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 9 Mr. President, enough is enough.

Speaker 9 Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame.

Speaker 9 Fulfill your oath of office. Reverse your policies.
End this crisis and stop the suffering.

Speaker 3 Got the Oscars this Sunday, a late entry from Katie Britt.

Speaker 3 That's a good.

Speaker 3 She sounded like she was on a bad Netflix teen drama. It was like the shaky, the overacting was just, it was wild.

Speaker 3 It was the only, I don't, I can't even tell you what she said because I could not, I couldn't focus on anything but the like the quiver in her voice and the fact that it was so obviously inauthentic in acting.

Speaker 3 It was horrible.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's one of the worst ones ever. And that is saying a lot because

Speaker 3 they're all bad. They're all bad.

Speaker 4 You knew it was going to be bad when Jonathan Swan of the New York Times tweeted this out that her

Speaker 4 allies have already put out talking points before the speech was given, comparing it to Ronald Reagan's Berlin Wall and City on a Hill speeches.

Speaker 4 She hadn't given the speech yet. This is like, you're compensating for something there, people.
You've seen the dress rehearsals.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 MAGA people did not like it either. Charlie Kirk tweeted, Did you like Katie Britt's speech? And go check out some of the replies.
Way too dramatic, bizarre, very babysitter reading a bedtime story.

Speaker 3 These are all the like blue check MAGA people. It was bad reviews, bad reviews from Katie Britt.
And then, of course,

Speaker 3 Trump was doing a

Speaker 3 in real-time truthing of the whole speech where he just really zeroed in on Joe Biden coughing a lot. He's like, don't shake his hand.
He's coughing, which is interesting.

Speaker 3 As someone on our team said, this is the guy that exposed everyone to COVID, almost killed a few people.

Speaker 4 He is very worried about receiving germs, not giving them to people.

Speaker 3 Anyway, enough with Katie Britt, enough with Donald Trump. It was a great night for Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 Have you seen any of the dial tests anyway?

Speaker 4 I I have not seen any dial tests. Have our team seen the CNN or CBS polls yet?

Speaker 3 I haven't gotten a chance to dig into all the dial testing. I think some of the flash polls were quite good for the president, as they often are after state of the unions, but that's great.

Speaker 3 We'll take it. I'm interested to see all the data.
I would not be surprised, though, if this speech really energized Democrats, wavering Democrats, and probably

Speaker 3 picked up some ground with independents as well.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I think whether this this moves the polls or not, I don't want to set expectations too high, but I think it sets the stage.

Speaker 3 I think he's going to get a 10-point bump.

Speaker 4 You heard it here. State of the Union bounce, something that we argued against for years in our previous life.
But no, look, I think this was a great night for the president.

Speaker 4 He should feel very good about it. His team should feel very good about it.
I think this is the kickoff of the general election campaign. And he kicked it off in a really good way.

Speaker 3 Yeah. We should say

Speaker 3 the only real presidential approval bump after State of the Union in the last couple of decades was Barack Obama three points after the 2009 State of the Union, which I can only imagine is because we were going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and he was a brand new president.

Speaker 3 So they were like, all right, let's give him, let's cut him some slack for a little bit. And then that quickly went away.
It's real.

Speaker 3 But just to just to set the baseline, usually these things don't actually move presidential approval.

Speaker 4 It is unlikely to change, but it sets the stage for change later on.

Speaker 3 Yes, and it is a blueprint for a message that he can deliver throughout the campaign. And also, it was good to see him have a lot of fight tonight.
Okay, before we go to break, two quick items.

Speaker 3 We're announcing new tour dates in just a few days. Pre-sale tickets will only be available for Friends of the Pod subscribers starting on Tuesday.

Speaker 3 So make sure to join for access to the best seats in the house. Head to cricket.com slash friends to sign up.

Speaker 3 Also, if Biden's remarks didn't calm your anxiety about the year ahead, you can pre-order our book, Democracy or Else, right now at cricket.com slash books.

Speaker 3 And we're going to be donating the profits to support Vote Save America, its partners, and other organizations, which are mobilizing around the 2024 election.

Speaker 3 It's a fun book, lots of illustrations, pretty short, a good guide to how to get through this election and other elections if we have them. And again, it goes to a good cause, VSA.

Speaker 3 So pre-order your copy of Democracy RLs now at cricket.com slash books.

Speaker 4 I've read it. It's great.

Speaker 3 Danny's read it.

Speaker 4 I've read it. I've pre-ordered it.
It is a short read, which is real.

Speaker 4 That's a plus.

Speaker 3 You're going to learn a lot. It's all you want.

Speaker 4 You're going to laugh a lot. It's not going to take too much of your time.
Go for it.

Speaker 3 That's what we need. That's what we're looking for.
When we come back, White House Price Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre.

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Speaker 3 Joining us tonight, White House Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre. Corrine, welcome to Pod Save America.
Welcome back.

Speaker 10 Thank you so much for having me back. What a great night.
What a great night. It's good to see you both.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 You too.

Speaker 3 So you're the White House Press Secretary. What's your dream headline for this speech? What are you hoping to see at Friday morning?

Speaker 10 You know what? I think what we saw tonight,

Speaker 10 as far as a headline, is you saw a president stand up and fight for the American people.

Speaker 10 And it was a president who stood up for our democracy, who stood up for the middle class, who stood up for our rights, who stood up for our freedoms, and laid out his vision for moving this country forward, not going backwards.

Speaker 10 And I think that is what you saw. It was a probably one of the best State of the Union speeches that I think we've seen in some time.
And he was incredible in the sense of taking it on.

Speaker 10 He just took it on when House Republicans were trying to give him a little bit of a hard time. He's like, oh, yeah, you want a little bit of this? I'll show you Joe from Scranton, you know?

Speaker 10 And so, but, but, you know, you saw a leader drawing a stark contrast between the vision of this country and that of those who are trying to block our progress, right?

Speaker 10 And he started from that from the beginning. Right.
You, you know, you can't, I mean, there's some great, there are some great lines that he had in the speech.

Speaker 10 Let me see if I can, I wrote some of them down. Let me see if I can, if I can share some of them that I thought that was really, really good, which is

Speaker 10 the state of our union is getting stronger and stronger. You don't love your country.

Speaker 10 This is the first, I think the first thing that he said, which was so powerful, you don't love your country only when you win, only when you win. And so

Speaker 10 it was exactly what he needed to do. He met the moment of where we are as a country.
He met the moment of where we need to be going.

Speaker 10 And I think one of the last one of the way he ended it is so Joe Biden in an optimistic way, talking about the future, the possibilities of Americans not betting against Americans.

Speaker 10 And that is something that is so quintessential, Joe Biden, that optimism of who he is.

Speaker 10 He is in his DNA, he's optimistic. And also, let's not forget there's a commander in chief

Speaker 10 component of it as well, discussing what America's role around the world and the threats that we face and where we stood.

Speaker 10 You know, the first thing he talked about was Ukraine and called out House Republicans for really not moving on that, not moving on that national supplemental deal that passed 70 to 29 in the Senate.

Speaker 10 And if it was put in the floor by the speaker who was standing obviously to his left, it would get overwhelming support. And this is about not politics, but about our national security.

Speaker 10 And we have to help the brave people of Ukraine as they are defending themselves, defending themselves against a tyrant as they're fighting for their democracy.

Speaker 10 I mean, it was a jam-packed speech, but it was impactful. And let's not forget about one of the number one issues that we hear about over and over again,

Speaker 10 especially over the last couple of years, which is reproductive rights, fighting for women's health care.

Speaker 10 I think he gave one of the most strongest remarks on that and the reason to make sure we protect reproductive rights. He did that in the, in a really forceful way.

Speaker 10 And also our democracy, our democracy. We got to fight for our democracy.
So

Speaker 10 that is what I saw last night. I think that's what other people saw.
I got so many texts from people saying, wow, what a powerful speech. He was great.
This is exactly what we needed him to do.

Speaker 10 And I will say one more thing.

Speaker 10 The fact that he talked about his age at the end and took that head on and didn't back away from it and said look there were time where people thought i was too young there were times where people thought i was too old and i think all of these things are important because he answered and leaned into things that we keep hearing about right um and i think that was incredibly important as well i think he did a great job i think he was fantastic so here Here's my question for you.

Speaker 4 John and I worked on a lot of state of the unions together.

Speaker 10 Yes, I was going to say, I was thinking that

Speaker 4 one of the great impediments to progress in any state of the union is the White House Council's office. I know you guys take the Hatch Act very seriously.
Yes.

Speaker 4 Yet somehow there were, by my count, 13 references to an unnamed person.

Speaker 4 How, like, is the White House Council tied up in a basement somewhere? How did you guys get that done?

Speaker 10 Here's the thing. I mean, he did say the former president, right? And Donald Trump was a former president.

Speaker 10 And I think there are real things that have happened in the last three years, even before then, obviously during his presidency, that I think the president was able to lean into and talk about.

Speaker 10 And here's the thing, you know, there is extremists in the Republican Party that follow this former president. I mean, he talked about the border deal.

Speaker 10 Let's not forget that border deal that we got from the Senate, which is a bipartisan deal, Republicans and Democrats. We worked with them for two months.
And this is not normal.

Speaker 10 We don't normally get bipartisan deals, especially bipartisan deals that is supported by the Border Patrol Union or the U.S.

Speaker 10 chamber of commerce like that's not something that happens here in this political discourse that was we were able to land that and what happened the former president stepped in and said do not move this forward because joe biden will win and it will be a political gain for him and i don't want that and they rejected the deal they rejected the deal and so the president had always said he was going to be very honest about that take it directly to the american people i mean the reproductive right you think about, you've been talking about Roe v.

Speaker 10 Wade, the Dobbs decision. That happened under the former president when he, as you all know, you've covered this very, very well, what he did to the Supreme Court.
It leans very much conservative.

Speaker 10 And because of that, and he was really clear as why he was doing that. because they wanted to overturn Roe v.
Wade. And that's what happened.
So it is everything that we're seeing right now,

Speaker 10 everything that we're seeing right now with this country, with Republicans, is tied in to to the former president. But you're right.

Speaker 10 You're right. Dan, you've been a communications director.
You were a senior advisor here for

Speaker 10 the

Speaker 10 former president, President Obama. John, as a speechwriter, you know how much of a massive undertaking it takes to write these types of speeches.
You're right. It has to go through

Speaker 10 council. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 10 I think he's able to make his point about where we are politically and where the Republicans, how extreme they are. And it is being led by the former president.

Speaker 10 This is just the reality that we're in right now.

Speaker 3 You mentioned the section on when you challenged Republicans on passing the bipartisan border bill.

Speaker 3 There had been some rumors that the president might announce some executive actions on his own, did some reporting on that.

Speaker 3 Is that something that you guys are thinking about in the next several weeks? He didn't mention it tonight. What was the thinking there?

Speaker 10 So the president, look, we always, as you know, working in an administration, you always have to be prepared, look at all of the options on the table, and we're doing that.

Speaker 10 We're always going to look at the options on the table. What we believe, what this president believes, and this is what he said

Speaker 10 today in this speech, and this is what he's even said privately, is he wants to get this bipartisan border deal done. He believes there's still a chance to get this done.

Speaker 10 He believes it's the best way to move forward with a broken system, a broken immigration system. He believes it's the best way to actually deal with the challenges that we're seeing at the border.

Speaker 10 It is tough, but it is a fair piece of legislation. And it's not very often that you come to this, to come to the space in a bipartisan way.
So he wants to continue fighting for it.

Speaker 10 Let's not forget that was the bipartisan infrastructure legislation. People said we wouldn't get that done.
It was a joke in the last administration.

Speaker 10 It was, you know, a punchline infrastructure week, and the president was able to get that done. The Chips and Science Act, the PACT Act, right, that helps veterans, veterans and their families.

Speaker 10 Nobody thought we would be able to get that done. And we were able to get that done.

Speaker 10 Obviously, Congress, the makeup of the Congress was obviously different, but the president, again, an optimistic guy, he wants to get that done.

Speaker 10 As it relates to any executive action, we don't believe any executive action would be as strong as the one as the deal that we have currently. So he wants to continue to work towards that.

Speaker 10 But of course, we're always going to look at all the opportunities, options that we have in front of us, but we want to try, right?

Speaker 10 We want to try and get to see if we can move this at all, move this at all.

Speaker 3 This state of the union for every president running for re-election is usually the speech where, as the president did tonight, you sort of lay out your agenda for a second term.

Speaker 3 President Biden certainly did that.

Speaker 3 As he is going out on the road talking to crowds in the next several weeks and months, what do you think are the like the big ticket policy initiatives that he talked about tonight that he's going to really emphasize and focus on

Speaker 3 in the months to come?

Speaker 10 It's a great question.

Speaker 10 So, two things that we talk, actually, three things that we talked about this week, as you know, as we go into the State of the Union, which this week obviously was on a Thursday,

Speaker 10 we try to lean into a couple of policies, a couple of new things to kind of lay out the ideas and what he's thinking about for the rest of this year. And

Speaker 10 we did drug, we focus on pharmaceutical drugs this week, right?

Speaker 10 What can we do to make sure that we continue lowering costs right he talked about obamacare right aca and how important it is to protect that so healthcare costs are really important drug costs are really important and it's actually very popular uh very important for the american people so we talked about that he put he brought together his competition council right to talk about more junk fees ways that we can get rid of junk fees and so that is something that americans really truly care about and so these are things that are that we think that are important.

Speaker 10 Lowering, all of this really goes under lowering costs. And so that is critical.
And that is, that is, I think you're gonna continue to hear the president talk about that.

Speaker 10 We're gonna be on the road for most of the March. Tomorrow, we're gonna be in Philly.
On Saturday, he's gonna be in Atlanta, Georgia. We're gonna be announcing a lot more trips.

Speaker 10 And you'll see that theme, right? The economy, making sure that we're growing the economy from the bottom up, middle out.

Speaker 10 That is something that the president wants to continue to do, not leave anybody behind. And those important pieces of

Speaker 10 laws that, legislation that he signed into laws, like the, like I mentioned, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, we got to, and bipartisan infrastructure legislation, we have to implement those and protect those because Republicans want to repeal, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act.

Speaker 10 So those are the things that he's been talking about this week that we're going to continue to move forward on.

Speaker 10 And so that's going to be kind of what you're going to be hearing from him throughout this month. And also making sure we're protecting, we're fighting for reproductive health, women's health care.

Speaker 10 And so that's kind of what you're going to be hearing from the president this month.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for staying up with us. I know it's a late night and a big night for you and for the president and for everyone at the White House.

Speaker 3 So we really appreciate you jumping on with us for a little bit.

Speaker 10 It's my pleasure. Happy to do it again, guys.
Thank you for everything that you all do. And talk to you all all soon.

Speaker 4 Talk to you soon. Congratulations on a big night.

Speaker 10 Thank you. Bye, Dan.
Bye, John.

Speaker 3 Thanks to Karim for joining us. And everyone, have a great weekend.
We will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.

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Speaker 3 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.

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