Trump’s Get Out Of Jail Free Campaign (w/ Gov. Tim Walz)

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden goes on offense.
Nikki Haley calls Trump unhinged. Mike Johnson has lost control of the House.
And later, Minnesota Governor Tim Wall sits down with Tommy to talk about how much you can get done when Democrats have full control of your legislature. But first, it has been a big week for Donald Trump's get out of jail free campaign.
The Supreme Court is now set to make a decision that will determine whether Trump will stand trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election sometime before the 2024 election. We should get that decision sometime within the next week.
A judge in Georgia heard arguments about whether D.A. Fonnie Willis should be removed from that election.
We should get that decision sometime within the next week. A judge in Georgia heard arguments about whether DA Fonnie Willis should be removed from that election subversion case because of a romantic relationship with one of her co-attorneys.
We're about to find out how much Trump and his businesses will have to pay for committing fraud in New York. And Trump showed up at another Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, only to have the judge deny his request to delay the case where he's being charged with violating election law by falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to the porn star he had an affair with.
Jury selection in that case will now begin on March 25th. And Trump, of course, used the opportunity to campaign just outside the courtroom.
This is no crime. But outside, right outside their courthouse, this courthouse, people are being murdered.
So it's a very unfair situation. They want to keep me nice and busy so I can't campaign so hard.
But maybe we won't have to campaign so hard because the other side is incompetent. The other side has done a horrible job running this country.
They've done a horrible job at the border. Add up the countries that make up NATO.
It's about the same size as our economy. So we're in for $200 billion.
They're in for $25 billion. And it's much more important to them because we have an ocean in between.
It's a much more, much different thing. So the NATO countries have to pay up.
They're not paying up. They're not paying what they should.
And they laugh at the stupidity of the United States of America. They're definitely laughing at some stupidity.
I will say that. There's people being murdered right outside the courtroom.
Right outside the courtroom. He should watch out.
That's where Donald Trump is standing. So lots to unpack here.
He's really doubling down on his war against Europe, huh? He said something about NATO again at a rally on Wednesday night. What do you think's going on here? Well, I would say first, I don't think – and I'm not sure I need a lot of polls for this.
So I don't think the public supports presidential candidates inviting Russia to invade Finland. I think people are probably generally against that.
I do think that his general message that the United States is being asked to carry more than its fair share of the burden and that US taxpayers are paying for stuff they shouldn't pay for is probably pretty popular, right? It is one thing that Trump has talked about for a long time. Now, this may come as a shock to you, but Donald Trump does not know how NATO works.
No. There are no NATO bills.
There's no NATO dues. It just have, it is just some guidelines that you spend 2% of your GDP on defense.
United States does. We are the biggest country with the biggest military, so we carry more of it.
But it is an absurd thing. But I think it is that he is right to political, not right, right is not the word.
He's definitely wrong. but he is politically, there is some political savvy in fitting this gaffe of his under his larger narrative of America has been dumb, we're paying for things we shouldn't pay for, and I'm going to fix all of that.
And so that probably works for him. And so he is trying to, I think, shift away from the Russia, please invade countries to the part of the message is more politically effective for him.
Yeah. I mean, if you were to poll test, why are we spending more to defend Europe than those deadbeats in Luxembourg? I think it would probably poll pretty high, right? It would test pretty well.
People say, yeah, that's bullshit. It is, of course, untrue.
Like you said, is no like it nato we talked about this on tuesday's pod that like you said it's a guideline every country should spend two percent of its gdp on its own defense many countries do that in the nato alliance the united states is one poland is one right there's like a lot of countries doing that some countries aren't spending two percent of their gdp on own defense. The question then for Donald Trump is, are you suggesting defense cuts in the United States?

Do you want us to spend less on our own national defense?

Because I don't think that's what he's advocating for either,

though I do think that's probably fairly popular across parties to spend less on defense.

We do have a bloated defense budget in this country.

But like you said, the better message here to count about what Donald Trump has said is, why does Donald Trump want Putin to take over Europe? Do we think Putin's going to stop there? Do we think that the ocean between us and Vladimir Putin is going to protect us from a third world war? Do we think we're going to be able to stay out of World War III if Vladimir Putin sets his sights on Europe? Is that what's going to happen? I mean, the guy is building space lasers right now, as far as we know. So I don't think the ocean is going to save us.
You know what, Dan? Tommy Vitor just asked me, are you guys going to talk about the space lasers? And are you going to talk about the Russian space nukes? And I told him that we weren't. But you know what? You being the worldo that you are, you brought it up.
I have some worldo thoughts right now about how so many democrats have been worldo pilled and are fucking up the response of the trump nato thing if i see one more senate democrat be like donald trump does not respect our multilateral institutions i'm gonna lose my mind i know i know it's the it's the international or here's the thing though you know you know if we were in the white house right now with barack obama he'd be talking about the international order. You know, I think not, actually.
I think not. You think you and Axe and everyone would get to him and be like, it's about Putin taking over Europe.
I think Barack Obama, one thing he does understand is how to fit these things into larger narratives. And so while he does have a true passion for multilateral institutions in the world order, he absolutely does.
I think he would get that the argument here is that Donald Trump is an erratic dunderhead, right? Not that he is a principled isolationist in a time of global interaction, no. All right, let's get to the legal stuff.
So Jack Smith's election subversion case was supposed to go first on March 4th. But now that we're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the immunity question, and now that there was the ruling in Manhattan today, it looks like the first Trump trial will be the hush money case.
Jury selection on March 25th. It's happening.
Not ideal that it's the first case, but I don't know. What's your take? Yeah, I would agree.
Not ideal. CBS did a poll last year at some point where they asked people about the various things that Trump had been indicted for, overturning an election, hiding classified documents, possibly falsifying business records and violating campaign finance law to cover up extramarital affair, which is that is the subject of the New York trial.
That was the least concerning to people. Now, I do think a conviction in any case is bad for Trump.
And so we made it given the Supreme Court, given what's going on in Fulton County today, we may not be in a place where we get to pick which conviction would be best for us. We have to take whichever convictions on the menu.
And this may be the only one. But yeah, this is not the one I would have chosen to be the first trial because I think it's the least politically damaging to Trump.
I think a lot of this is background noise, even for the small minority of voters who are paying attention. Like Thursday was wall-to-wall cable coverage of the hearing to decide whether Fannie Willis is disqualified from the Georgia

case because of a romantic relationship with another attorney.

Like, how many people do you think turned on their TVs and had no idea what the hell

was going on?

Fannie Willis is she took the stand.

She's yelling at prosecutors.

They're yelling at her.

They're going back and forth over what counts as physical intimacy and who paid for what

on a wine trip.

I mean, it's like I'm a news junkie and it was still tough to follow. No one is getting deep into the weeds in any of these things.
I think that people are going to be surprised about the content of this trial when it comes, which actually I think may have some prejudicial impact on how people view the other trials, which is why I think this one being for us suboptimal. I would say, too, if you're right that I think any conviction, probably Trump would rather not have a conviction.
Although this one comes with prison time. But right.
But I even think that if he is if the jury acquits him in this case, in the first case, the hush money case, I think there's an argument to be made that if you have, because if a jury acquits him in this case, then he'll say, oh, see, the people have spoken, the prosecutors, the Democratic prosecutors tried to come get me, but the jury saw it differently and I'm exonerated. And then he gets a conviction from a jury in DC.
It's going to be hard. It's going to be harder for him to say to start attacking juries if suddenly he goes on the side of the people.

The people have exonerated me in the Manhattan case, but the D.C. people did not.

So I guess he's just going to have to attack.

I'm sure. I'm sure.

I have no doubt that he will attack the jurors in D.C.

Well, you raise a good point, John, because Trump is known for his logical consistency, and he definitely

won't. Well, he will be pinned

in by his argument on the jury in this one

if he is convicted by jury in the second one.

I think his argument will be, hey, I'm batting

500 in jury trials, which is better than Ted Williams.

I'm one and one. Yeah, that gets you in the

baseball hall of fame pretty fast.

And Jack Smith was rigged. I love

Alvin Bragg. I always said Alvin Bragg was a great guy.

Anyway,

so, meanwhile, Nikki Haley's out there fighting the good fight. She went on the Today Show this week to call Trump unhinged and predicted that voters won't elect him if one or more of these trials ends in a conviction.
Let's hear it. The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016.
He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.
He's just trying to control as much as he can control. But we don't want a king in America.
That's the problem. There is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal.
They're not. But you said you would.
They're not. But you said you would.
No, that is not the question. I mean, how ridiculous is it that you're literally saying that I'm hurting him by staying in? They're hurting resources.
No, when, okay, resources from a man who spent $50 million of his own campaign contributions on his personal court cases where the rnc is broke i'm the one hurting in resources i don't think so i'm the one that saves the republican party she had some good points she had some uh not so good points i think i know i don't know if she's the one who saves the republican party uh a lot of her comments about donald trump were correct I don't know what she was trying to say there when he was like, yeah, you said you'd vote for him. Because she did raise her hand on stage at that debate.
Maybe that was, will you support? Because I guess she signed the pledge to support the Republican nominee no matter what, even if it was Trump. So maybe that's what she means and she's not really going to vote for him.
I don't know what the hell she's saying there, but. I think she just didn't want to answer the question.
I mean, he made, she was trying to make an electability point and Craig Melvin, I think that was Craig Melvin, in a very good follow-up question said, well, you said you were going to vote for him. But her voting for him isn't going to deliver him the White House, I guess.
Who knows? She's in a pickle here because she said she would support him. She said she would vote for him even if he was convicted.
She said all these trials were shams. And then she decided to start running against him.
And her past positions are a little bit of a prison here. Yeah, maybe she's like, well, I might vote for him, but most people aren't going to vote for him.
That's right. It's not great.
Just because I want to vote for a convicted felon doesn't mean most Americans are. She's also got a new ad in South Carolina up.
It's a $6 million ad buy. It hits Trump on his plans for a 10% across the board tax increase.
And of course, you know, asking for a Russian victory that will bring more war. But the latest polling average in South Carolina is Trump 66, Haley 30.
If anything, his lead has grown slightly larger over the last few weeks. So it seems like this is the wrong message for the Republican electorate, to say the least.
But do you think that Haley's message could move some Trump-curious voters in a general? I think this is not the message. It's the messenger in the Republican primary.
This is a MAGA party, and she's insufficiently MAGA. And she was insufficiently MAGA before she decided to actually start attacking Trump.
And so this is where we were always going to end up. And as much as we wanted to, there is no phrase you can come up with.
There's no slogan. There's no argument against Trump that she could do now that would change this dynamic.
However, I do imagine that somewhere in the bowels of the DNC or the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, they are taking every one of these clips and they are saving them.

They're going to use them to target Haley voters across the country because the everyone who is identified, I hope folks are pulling these states where the primaries are never going to happen to ID Haley voters, particularly registered independent Haley voters, and targeting them with these ads. And this is a universe of voters who are very ripe for Biden to get.
And we have to work very hard to keep them from moving back to Trump. And so I think all of these clips, as are any clip from a Republican criticizing Trump, can be very, very powerful in this media environment.
I'm interested in whether they polled on the 10% across the board tax increase. What she's talking about there is, of course, Trump and his advisors have talked about their plans to slap tariffs on all imported goods, 10% across the board.
and think about how many goods that would mean, how many things you buy are either made in other countries

or have parts in them that are made in other countries. I mean, it would just, that level of tariff, like talk about inflation, that would just send inflation skyrocketing.
Imagine everything that you buy that has even a small little part that's not made in America costing 10 percent more. I think it's a I think that is very ripe for for attacks again in forget about the primary and the general election.
Yeah, I think absolutely for general election. I think it is incumbent upon Democrats to lay out very specifically why Trump will be bad for the economy.
and this is one of those things. And we should spend more time arguing about what Trump will do going forward

than trying to argue that what he did in the past was not as good as people remember it. Yes.
I don't think that's an argument we can win. In the primary, I'm sure a 10% tax increase is very unpopular among Republican primary voters.
I also think if you ask them a follow-up question is, do you believe that Donald Trump implemented a 10% tax increase? They would say no. But in the general election, I think he'd be favorable.
You got to really pick a fight with him on it. And you got to make it an issue.
So Politico ran a piece this week arguing that Haley is doing something similar to what Bernie did in 2016, basically arguing that if Trump ends up losing, she'll have made the case that there was a better path and be able to influence a post-Trump Republican Party going forward. I don't know why I'm asking what you think about that because I know what you think about that.
Awesome. I mean, how many people are going to write stories comparing Nikki Haley to Bernie Sanders? It's a take.
It's a take. Look, it is hard to get your takes off in these days to get them so unique they can be talked about on this popular podcast.
I am going to do something that's very in vogue at Pot Save America these days, which is I'm going to agree with Chris Christie. But I don't think this is about influencing the party.
This is about setting yourself up for 2028 if Trump loses. If Trump wins, she cannot run for Republican dog catcher anywhere in America.
But if he loses, I still do not necessarily think that she would be a favorite. It's still a MAGA party.
But parties do, they often have reckonings when they lose elections, they should win. And could that happen in the Republican Party? Who knows? But I think there would be a lot of people who would get behind her campaign, just money people, elected officials, stakeholders, operatives, because she made an argument.
She said he couldn't win, and then he did win. Now, what happens when the voters get involved? Maybe a lot like what's happening right now.
But if she's trying to – there is an element of delusion in every presidential campaign. And so I imagine she has eyes on 2028.

And that's why she's still doing it and making this case. She's decided if he wins, she's toast.
If she loses – if Trump loses, she may be in the game for a political future in the party. And that's why she's doing it.
I think it's less like she's going to get to pick the RNC chair next or help edit the policy platform. I think it's about running for office again.
But I could name 20 Republican politicians and media stars who would have a better chance to win the nomination in 2028 than Nikki Haley or Chris Christie or like it's just or Mitt Romney. Like it is not the party, the base of the not just the base of the party, like 65 percent of the voters in the party, if not more.
They just they want Trump like candidates. They want xenophobic, isolationist, faux populist candidates.
That's what they want. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, it all depends on who runs and how the vote splits, right? If she, if you are getting 30% of that, there is a 30 to 40% of people who, depending on the state, who say they don't identify as part of the MAGA movement. If she were to get those people and the other people split the MAGA vote, then she could win.
Trump won in part because the MAGA part was a minority back then and everyone else split everyone else. And so who knows? The point is, who cares why she's doing it? Keep doing it, Nikki.
That's my point. Keep doing it.
Keep going. Don't drop out after South Carolina either.
Keep going. Go to the convention.
Go to the convention. Take your delegates that you've won.
Just go to the floor. All 12 of them or whatever it is.
Take your 12. Yeah, whatever you get.
After South Carolina. Yeah, take all your delegates.
Put them in one minivan where they would all fit and go right to the convention. After South Carolina, Trump and his new, you know, RNC chair,

his daughter-in-law,

I'm sure they'll just

change the rules

and be like,

the rest of the primaries,

the only way you can

win a delegate

is if your last name

begins with T.

That's just the rule.

Sorry.

We are moving forward.

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USAA! All right, let's talk about Joe Biden, who's out there. He's out there trying to show that he is a well-meaning elderly man who can still kick Donald Trump's ass in November.
He's hitting the road with the rest of his cabinet to whack Republicans for voting against all the new jobs that his climate and infrastructure bills are creating. He's now on TikTok with the rest of the cool kids.
And he took a shot at Trump over his NATO comments. Let's listen.
No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can.
I never will. For God's sake, it's dumb.
It's shameful. It's dangerous.
It's un-American. I'll tell you, nothing's going to be more viral than a debate about NATO on TikTok.
I think Biden did that right there, though. He did.
No, we talked about this on Tuesday, and we were hoping that he went out there and whacked him on the NATO stuff, and he did it well, and he didn't do too much multilateral institution stuff. He went, he did the message we were just saying it was good.
And he was, and he sounded energetic and sharp there. Yeah.
And I actually think he probably could have gone out. I think Trump made these comments on Friday night, maybe, but it's, it's been 40.
It'd been like four days, but I think Biden was in a position where he felt like he had to wait until the Senate voted on the foreign aid bill before he could give Republicans any seat. I do.
I think that is the actual reality. No, but I know what the alleged affairs people always say.
I don't know if you do this. We could lose Tom Tillis's vote.
It's really up in the air. And then either way, they lose Tom Tillis's vote.
I think he did. He vote the right way.
I don't know. I just picked Tom Tillis as funny as a generic replacement level Republican senator.
But yeah, that's about right. All right, so we are a week out from Biden's Justice Department reminding the world that he's old, which special counsel Robert Herr will likely do again now that Republicans are going to have him testify before Congress on March 12th.
Mark your calendars. It's going to be a great day.
It's going to be really fun. How do you think Biden and his team are handling this so far? And do you have any more advice from the cheap seats? I think there are two related issues here.
One is how are you doing with the her report? And I think they're doing that very aggressively. They are going out.
They're pointing out where he was overly partisan. They've gone after him.
Her has helped them by hiring Steve Bannon's lawyer, hiring Jeff Sessions' spokesperson to help advise him on this, pointing out the partisan nature of this. What you want to do with that alone is impugn the messenger and give your supporters a permission structure to ignore this.
And I think they're doing that well. Who knows what happens when her testifies and how that goes in Democrats.
That's really going to depend on the Democrats and on the Judiciary Committee to help carry that case. Then there's the broader question of how do you deal with the issues that existed before the her report were exacerbated by the her report and exist afterwards, which voters' concerns about Joe Biden's age and ability to do the job.
And that is something that is not a problem that you have to solve right now, but the way it is going to be solved is by Joe Biden being out there a lot, demonstrating, as he did in that clip we just played, that he has the ability and the energy to do the job. And not just the job of president, but the job of running for president, which is different and easier in some ways, but harder physically in terms of physical stamina than just being president, I think, because of the travel and the rallies and speaking in public all the time.
And that, you know, I think there's going to be a ramp up of that. There's a tour you mentioned,

there's a state of the union coming. And I think the one thing that the Biden folks have,

and I think this is largely about the president, less about his staff have struggled to do in recent years is find moments to high leverage moments to grab the nation's attention, right?

Where he, where people will actually break through and that's going to be picking some

fights. That's just why the NATO thing was smart.
It's going to be how he does the state of the union. If he delivers just a normal state of the union with no conflict with the people sitting there who are torpedoing his agenda and impeaching his son and doing all these other things and holding hearings on his son impeaching him, that would be a mistake.
And so it is going to have to be performing, but performing in moments that people will actually, in finding moments where it will actually break through. And I think that is still an open question.
And I like there's no doubt that the very, very smart people who are working for President Biden on these very things like Ben LaBolt and Anita Dunn and the people on the campaign are thinking about that. But that just being good at midday Roosevelt room events is not going to solve this problem.
It's going to have to be in the big moments. They're going to have to create some of those moments because there aren't enough of them already penciled in on the calendar between now and election day.
And again, I keep coming back to Biden has, you know, a ton of smart people around him. And I think that the campaign and the White House are doing a great job.
But this is about Joe Biden figuring this out. Like it's about his performance.
And I'm sure the people around him know what he needs to do, but he actually needs to do it. I think you can put him, I think more informal settings are good.
I think he needs to show passion, but passion for people, not passion about defending himself, not sounding defensive, the, the not getting snippy with the press. I know that's like fun for libs on Twitter to see Joe Biden,, you know, tussle with the press, but like that's, I don't think that's helping him.
I think he can be self-deprecating about the age thing, which he's already doing. I think he could do that, continue that.
I think he can be mocking of Trump and the Republicans, use mockery with them. Like there's only so many times you can get up there and say that Donald Trump is like a threat to democracy.
He is. And Biden said it.
He's done really well saying that. But there's plenty to mock with Donald Trump.
And he started to do that a little bit with the Nikki Haley, Nancy Pelosi mix up. So probably should do more of that.
What's your take on the new TikTok account? I don't know why that's so funny. It just is.
John, obviously, you know, Jon Stewart's back on The Daily Show. It was great.
He made fun of the campaign's first, or the first TikTok with Biden in it, because he was mumbling about cookies. I don't know.
What do you think? I can't believe you brought up Jon Stewart, that traitor to the resistance on this podcast. Unbelievable.
Some people are very mad at Jon Stewart for also criticizing Joe Biden and Jess. Oh, I know you know.
This is for the listeners. I know.
I know exactly how you feel about it. Don't get me wrong.
The TikTok was fine. I don't know that I'm the right person to judge TikToks.
Great. Good job.
And you're going to have to do a lot of them. And I think it's good the campaign's on there.

Ultimately, when I talked to Rob Flaherty on this podcast a couple weeks ago, he's the

deputy campaign manager who oversees all the digital and a bunch of other stuff on the

campaign.

He made the point, although he could have broken the news of the TikTok account in the

interview with me, he chose not to, which...

Come on, Rob.

Seems like maybe you're not that digital, Rob.

But he... You know who likes to break news in this podcast? Chris Christie, Liz Cheney.
Oh, man. But he made the point, which I think is true, that it's less about what Joe Biden himself and the campaign does on TikTok than what all of the people who have platforms on TikToks do.
And building a network of influencers on TikTok

are going to carry the message.

And I think that has value.

I know that's something they're working on.

So one in three adults under 30 get news from TikTok.

And that number has nearly quadrupled since 2020.

And so it's going to keep going up.

And so you have to be there.

It is where probably the most important political conversations

are going to happen that

aren't happening in people's group chats. And so having a presence there and a strategy for it's absolutely essential.
I'm guessing that the reason they had Biden in one of the early ones is because that gets more attention. They can announce that they're there.
I think that the best utility of that campaign TikTok account will be TikToks of why Donald Trump is awful, because I don't think you're going to, at 81 years old right now, make Joe Biden cool or have him record a ton of videos that are going to go viral in a positive way on TikTok. Already all the comments are, all the comments, most of the comments under most of their TikToks are about Gaza.
But I do think that it is useful to get out sort of the negative information and the contrast with Trump. But then, like you said, and like Rob said to you, the most important thing is going to be allies and Biden supporters who are on TikTok who have bigger platforms to start spreading the message that way.
Do you have other thoughts on reaching voters who aren't political junkies? We've spent a lot of time talking about the infrequent voter that Biden has been, at least according to the polls, not doing as well with. How do you reach those voters? Do I have thoughts on that question? How long have we known each other, Sean? That's right, again, I don't ask questions I don't know the answer to.
That's right. I mean, obviously, as you know, and I think people who listen to this podcast probably know, this is something I think about to an unhealthy level.
And I think more and more in this campaign, we're just in this world where they, as you talked about Peter Hamby on Offline a couple weeks ago, the media ecosystem is collapsing around us, right? Local newspapers essentially gone for all intents and purposes. Local TV still has some value, but mostly watched by older people.
The number of people who have access to cable news cut dramatically in an incredible rate, particularly among young people. Facebook is downplaying political content.
Instagram and threads are not going to recommend political content to people. Twitter's a total husk of itself.
And so the political conversations that happen in the mainstream media, powered by the big social platforms, that day is over in politics. And now they have moved.
The most consequential political conversations are now going to happen with the exception of TikTok, which I think has tremendous import to one segment of voters. The most important political conversations are now happening on what's called the private internet, on text chains, group chats, WhatsApp groups among family and friends.
And what Democrats are going to have to do is empower the millions and millions of people who fund our campaigns $5 at a time, who are text banking at home or knocking on doors, who are doing phone banks all the time during the campaign, empower them to be our messengers, right? We have to give them the content and the ideas to insert themselves in those conversations that they are already having about politics with the people in their lives, because they're the most trusted messenger. No, people don't trust politicians, and they don't trust the media.
So the only thing they trust is people they know. And so we have to leverage that power.
And that is ultimately something that I have really hoped was going to end up being sort of how Democrats think about communication for a while. And I think now necessity has come and we have to do it.
It is ultimately why I started MessageBox a few years ago, which was my idea that we have to give the same messaging advice and strategic guidance that we give to candidates to average everyday people, right? Help them understand what the polls say, help them understand the political environment so they can be grounded in those conversations. And so I think that is what this is going to be.
It's going to be less about who has a smarter strategy to get on 60 Minutes or who has the most viral tweets. It's going to be whose supporters are carrying the weight in the most persuasive ways with the most people in their lives.
And that is ultimately how we're going to reach those people because they are not going to tune into the news. You can do 7,000 fucking MSNBC town halls cnn town halls you're not gonna reach any of those people they're not gonna know those things happened right we can scream about the new york times for that's just about let me let me clear it let me let me step back and allow you to uh to answer this no i'm not i will not go on another rant about this but it the reason it's this is not a defense of of the New York Times or the political press.
My views on all of that is well known, has been for many years. It's just that it doesn't matter as much anymore because it's not reaching as many people.
It's certainly not reaching many people at all who are persuadable. Again, 90% of the New York Times 10 million subscribers are Democrats.
Democrats. These are the people that are showing up to the special elections in the midterms and voting for Joe Biden and Democrats and who are still supporting Joe Biden and Democrats and who are going to go to the polls and probably vote anyway.
Right. So like and the reach of the Times, cable news, all the people that we're yelling at about their chyrons and their headlines, it's just not the same as it was even in 2020, let alone 2016.
And so it's just, it's a lot of, it can be understandable outrage, but it's a lot of wasted energy is my point. But no, I totally agree.
And the other thing is, you know, in 2022, in the midterms and a lot of these specials, sort of the difference you saw, especially in the midterms, between how Republicans did in places where there weren't competitive campaigns versus the states where there were heavily competitive and contested campaigns and you saw Democrats do better. It's because they did exactly what you said.
It wasn't just television ads that were run in those districts and states. It was a real campaign happened.
And the supporters and the staff of the campaign and the volunteers and the field staff, all those people, they carried the message. They had those conversations you were talking about with neighbors, with friends, with social networks.
And it's one of the reasons the Democrats overperformed how the polls suggested, how the pundits suggested, and even how they did in states where there weren't competitive elections.

And the challenge just goes way up in the general election because the percentage of

people who are going to vote in November who don't consume political news is dramatically

higher than it is among the people who vote in midterm elections and especially special

elections.

So we need to reach much more than we did in 2022 to succeed in 2024 because more people are not going to consume the news in the way the midterm voters did. Yeah.
And that work has to happen in those swing states. So we mentioned this, Biden's going to have the chance to reach maybe the biggest audience he'll get all year during the State of the Union.
It's a few weeks. And he'll go to Congress for that.
And boy, have they become a useful foil, especially House Republicans. Punchbowl on Thursday called them, quote, the most chaotic, inefficient, and ineffective majority we've seen in decades covering Congress.
Unless you think, why are you quoting Punchbowl? Chip Roy, Republican Chip Roy, on the floor of the House today was like, you know, Jake Sherman and Punchbowl was right about us. Big day for Jake Sherman and democracy.
And Chip Roy, right. So Trump and Mike Johnson killed the bipartisan border deal.
They won't hold a vote on the bipartisan national security bill. They can't pass the bipartisan tax deal.
Republicans are turning on Mike Johnson now. We are just a few weeks away from another potential government shutdown.
And they're leaving town for a two-week President's Day recess. When they come back from President's Day recess, they get 13 days apparently.
There's only going to be three days left until the government shuts down. Unbelievable.
So you and I haven't talked about the special election to fill George Santos's seat, but the winning candidate, Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi, spent a lot of the campaign hammering House Republicans for killing the border deal. Do you think Biden and Democrats should try to replicate that strategy nationally? Yeah, I think there are elements of what Tom Suozzi did that are pretty instructive.
And I think it's important to focus on what we can learn from it instead of arguing online about whether it tells us that Joe Biden's definitely going to win because that debate on Twitter is fun. But that is fun.
Yes. The do special elections predict general elections fight on Twitter is mind-numbingly something to behold.
And if you're wondering what we're talking about, just move on. Yeah, just say, you know what? Thank your lucky stars.
If you don't get this reference, pat yourself on the back. There are a couple of things I thought from Tom Swasey's strategy that Democrats should emulate.
One is he was on offense the whole time. He did not wait to be defined on the other side's issues.
He took them on himself. He was aggressive.
Two, he was able to make abortion a much more salient issue in 2024 in his district than it was in 2022 by specifically and aggressively not running just on the Dobbs decision, but on the idea that a Republican Congress would pass a national abortion ban. Because New York, well, one of the things we learned from underperformance in California in New York in 2022 is those voters, because they live in Democratic states with Democratic governors and Democratic legislatures, were not afraid of an abortion ban passing in their state the same way voters in Georgia, in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, and Michigan were.
And so it did not maybe have the same political impact that it did in those big states. But he aggressively went after his opponent for her backers who supported a national abortion ban, put his opponent on the defensive on abortion because she, just like every other Republican since 2022, can't figure out how to appease the far right extremist GOP base and not anchor the larger electorate, which hates these extreme Republican abortion bans.

And then he was, Swazi was particularly vulnerable on border issues because he's in New York where the Republicans busing migrants to New York has made it a very big issue, a completely gross and cruel and cynical stunt, but one that has been very politically damaging to Democrats. and when he, as Lovett and Adesu talked about, when Swazi was the Nassau County executive, he kicked ICE out of Nassau County at the request of his police commissioner because they were hindering, the police commissioner thought that ICE was hindering their crime prevention efforts.
But there's this video of him and his gubernatorial primary saying, bragging about kicking ice out of Nassau County, which was in basically a gazillion ads. So, but he had this vulnerability, but he took it on aggressively.
And one thing he did that every Democrat can do is he attacked his opponent for opposing, rejoining with Trump to oppose the bipartisan border security deal. And I think that is a very effective strategy.
Now, the hard part on the border stuff, every other Democrat can run on this, which is he was pretty critical of Biden. He separated himself from Biden on border stuff repeatedly throughout the campaign.
And obviously, Joe Biden can't do that, credibly, I think. But there is a downside of every Democrat adopts that strategy, which is in swing states, Biden will have negative ads on the border from Republicans and negative ads on the border from Democrats.
And that would be unhelpful. But the idea that you be aggressive on border and try to put Republicans on the defensive and use the bipartisan border security deal, I think, is something that every Democrat can do.
You hear some Democrats say, OK, well, Republicans are now, you know, we're playing on their turf. They want to make it about immigration.
So we shouldn't make it about immigration. They want to make it about crime.
We shouldn't make it about crime. The way I think about it is it's not about what issues Republicans want to make the election about necessarily.
It's about what voters are concerned about and thinking that voters are concerned about an issue only because Republicans try to make it an issue or only because Fox News demagogues it, I think is sort of missing how actual people live their lives, especially people who don't tune into the news. And it is fairly clear from all the data everywhere, it's not a close call, that a vast majority of Americans are concerned, somewhere up around 70, 80 percent, about what's going on at the border.
And they think it's chaotic. And I don't think that means you have to then take those concerns and adopt Republican policies, but it means that you have to acknowledge that the concerns are real.
And look, it's happening on the Republican side with abortion, right? It's not just, oh, well, now Democrats want to fight the election about abortion, so we shouldn't talk about abortion. But people, including Republican voters, are very, very scared of the fact that you could have a national abortion ban.
And they've been saying that in elections over and over again. And Republicans have decided they refuse to listen to those concerns and they refuse to acknowledge them.

And I think on the Democratic side, if people are concerned about the border, then we have to acknowledge it.

And we have to put forward our own proposals and our own language that is true to our values, but still take on the issue.

And I think the bipartisan border deal, which is tougher than a lot of Democrats would have designed themselves, is the perfect opportunity to say, we compromised. We didn't like all of it.
We wanted to work with Republicans and we want to do something about the border. And they killed it because Trump wanted it dead because he thought it would help him win in November.
And that's the kind of people they are. And by the way, it's not just happening on immigration.
It's happening on everything. They didn't want us to support Ukraine because Donald Trump's out there saying Russia can attack whatever ally they want if NATO doesn't pay up.
So again, Trump's making us, you know, Trump's helping Putin, right? Because he loves dictators. Trump's killing the border deal because he thinks it's going to help him politically.
They can't pass a tax deal that both parties agreed to that would help lift children out of poverty. And I also think it helps Joe Biden.
The challenge that he has now is Trump is the challenger where he is most comfortable and Biden is the incumbent. And the danger here is that Biden will have to defend the status quo at a time where people are not happy with the status quo.

And what Congress is doing right now, what House Republicans are doing is giving Biden an opportunity to say things could be better if you give me a bigger Democratic majority. I've made I've made certain progress and here's the progress I've made, but I could make a lot more if you send me a bigger Democratic majority.
and if you just stop the madness that's happening right now

because Donald Trump and his handpicked speaker, Mike Johnson, are just, you know, paralyzing the government because they think it's going to help him politically. And we've just got to end this.
We got to end the chaos. And if you give me more Democrats and get out the and vote down the MAGA Republicans like you did the last several elections and vote down Donald Trump again, then we can actually get moving as a country and we can fix a lot of things.
Like, I think it's a powerful message. Yeah.
And I think this is where the State of the Union comes in, which is Republicans have the Biden is in this place. I've thought about this every time I see a piece of bad news anywhere in the country.
I worry this is bad for Joe Biden because he is the incumbent and he has become a vessel for everyone's anger about what's happening. Things he has nothing to do with, right, or get blamed on Joe Biden.
Because why aren't things better? Well, he's the president. Why didn't he fix it? And he's in a position right now where this incompetent, extreme clown car of a republican house majority is blocking anything from getting done the border security bill deal aid to our allies all of national natural disaster aid that's all being blocked by this group of chaotic maga knuckleheads and biden has got to make them trump's pulling the strings yes that's the best part right for the political argument is that it's not just, like we did this in, you know, like it's not like there's the Republican Congress and then there's the Republican candidate.
The Republican candidate for president that he's running against is controlling the Republican Congress. He's the one that's making it happen or not happen.
He's got to make, and every Democrat has to help him. We have to help him.
Senate Democrats have to help him. House Democrats have to help them.
Everyone else out there with internet access has to help them. Make what is happening in this House under Mike Johnson's leadership, a preview of how government will function if the Republicans get the reins of power again.
And that has not happened yet. And that is why I hope the State of the Union is used to tell that story because you're going to have your audience to do it.
And I hope they boo the shit out of them because that'll prove the point right there. And the other important part of this is you need a forward-looking agenda that everyone remembers and is on board with because it's not just enough to say, oh, look at the stuff they blocked over the last couple of years.
Look what they're blocking now. It's here's what I want to do for the country.
Voters are concerned about X, Y, and Z. Here's how I want to solve those problems.
The only way I'm going to solve those problems is if you get rid of these guys and you get rid of Donald Trump. That's it.
That's the way I'm going to solve these problems. And so you need that forward-looking agenda, which I expect that he'll at least start laying out in the State of the Union.
All right. Two quick things before we go to break.
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When we come back, Tommy

talks to Minnesota Governor Tim Walls.

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I am so excited to welcome into the studio the governor of Minnesota, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, Tim Walls. Welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me. Pretty exciting to be here.
It's great to have you. Now, I wanted to tell you this on air.
My first job in politics was for a Minnesotan. I don't think I've ever talked about this on the pod.
So you remember this backstory. Listeners might not.
There was an heroic, amazing U Senator named Paul Wellstone, tragically died in 2002. Governor Jesse Ventura, Jesse the body Ventura, Jesse the governor Ventura, named his replacement.
It was this guy named Dean Barkley, who was his campaign chairman, I think, or something. Yeah, yeah.
And I think what happened was- This is fascinating. I'm glad you're telling this story.
Do you remember this history? Oh yeah, this is Minnesota in history. history so barkley i think he either decided to caucus with the democrats or not caucus with the republicans he did the democrats a favor so dashwell's office helped him staff up yep i was an intern for ted kennedy at the time so they got me in there and i answered phones for two months for dean barkley as an interim senator yeah that is a good story that's my That is a good story.
And then it was all the Obama staff in Iowa was like all Minnesota people. Like Paul Tews was our state director.
Like everyone from those center races came down. Yeah, no, I don't know if you, for your listeners, not from Minnesota, I can't stress enough the impact of Paul Wellstone, uh, politically one thing, but, but culturally on the psyche of what it means to be progressive Minnesotans, to lean into issues that improve people's lives.
And I think there was this sense of, you know, be courageous for people who don't have a voice. And that just resonates.
A lot of people who were surrounding me early when I ran for Congress were former Wellstone folks. And I was a graduate of Camp Wellstone, which was a training program.
I think it was Dave Loebsack from Iowa and i were the first two elected to federal office through that program i did not know dave lobesack did that too yeah yeah like just the most inspiring guy uh everyone should read his book conscience of a liberal yeah great book inspiring person no there's a lot of there's a story out there um i i'm surprised there hasn't been more written on it because it's still very powerful still very uh hard for minnesotans felt likeelt like it was a loss. I think many of us thought that they probably had a president there.
Yeah. Yeah.
Amazing guy. Well, you folks in Minnesota have managed to inspire a lot of people in present day with how much you've gotten done over the last couple of years.
So full disclosure, I stole this summary from an EJ Dionne column who stole it from some Minnesota-based reporters. So, you know, don't get me fired, Bill Ackman, for plagiarism.
But you guys codified abortion rights, passed paid family and medical leave and sick leave, banned conversion therapy and put in place protections for trans people, voting rights, voter access bills, tax credits for low-income parents, free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students, gun control, legalized recreational weed. I could go on a lot longer.
2040 carbon decarbonization, one of the most aggressive moves. We could go on forever on this.
You did it with a one vote advantage in the state Senate, two votes, I think, in the House, right? So I know you folks, like the DFL folks, are progressive, but you're not California. I mean, how did you pull off this incredible list of accomplishments? Yeah.
The Republicans always say, you don't learn anything from us, Tim. And I said, yes, I do.
I learned what a one vote majority is. It's a majority and you move.
I think the biggest thing about this was, is there was just such a pent up desire for a progressive state like Minnesota that led on so many things from education to, uh, to access think the resistance from Republicans of stalling on a lot of those built some of that up, but I think there was a fierce sense of urgency of now. There's a whole generation of folks, me being one of them kind of, that we believe the politics of bad happens really fast and that we just got to be patient on these things.
Look, 20 years we were trying to get driver's licenses for folks after, you know, we took driver's license away from undocumented folks after 9-11, had nothing to do with terrorism. Took us 20 years to get that back.
And I think, which we did that too this last year, but that idea that there's a fierce sense of urgency of improving lives now. And if you do those things, the policies are good.
The good politics will follow. And you saw just this fallout of excitement excitement it was really kind of funny to me we had a few young interns on our working in our office and and we got all these things passed within about a three-month period and they had worked on the campaign before their first campaigns you know we got to re-elect in 22 elected the house and senate and they're like well this isn't that hard to get that these are things like paid've worked decades on.
I mean, my entire life I've been working on some of these things. So I think it was more about appealing to what really improved people's lives.
And it was such a contrast to see the reduction of rights. Don't underestimate what Dobbs did of people like feeling a sense of urgency.
Yeah. I love that.
You're in terms of being like, this is easy. Politics is easy.
What are you guys complaining about? We worked real hard. We won an election.
We came in, we got all this stuff done. Now, what do we do? What's next? I read this great quote from you, which I totally agree with.
You said you don't win elections to bank political capital. You win elections to burn the capital to improve lives.
I wish more people governed like that. I will say there's one other path available to you.
Wisconsin Republicans did it back in 2010, which is where you gerrymandered the hell out of the state and lock in power for a decade. Did you consider that? Yeah.
Well, I have, and, and I go way back on this one as a member of Congress and I talk about people would always ask me, you know, this was the time when, uh, what was it? Game of cards was the big thing. Game of Thrones.
No, no. No, house of cards.
House of cards. What's wrong with both of us? Yeah.
And they would ask me is dc like that and i'm like no it's like forrest gump you know these are outdated things i said stuff just happens for a reason um and the one thing i said that was so frustrating to me in congress was is that gerrymandered districts yeah and money in politics you know that that look if we fix those things that would fix it but i also came to the conclusion on this and eric holder worked on this affair redistrict and all that i did get to the point They were saying, look, if we fix those things, that would fix it. But I also came to the conclusion on this, and Eric Holder worked on this affair redistrict and all that.
I did get to the point where saying, look, they do it. It distorts the entire electoral map in the electoral college by what they do.
Isn't there a responsibility of us to do something at least to shore it up? But, no, we didn't think about it. Coming to this, I think we have to figure out how to get back to at least where there is fairness in that system.
And that's what I think they're trying to get to. That's what Tony's trying to do in Wisconsin.
But it is hugely distorting because we're almost mirrors, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Very long progressive history there.
We shared a lot of things back and forth. And electorally, pretty close.
We're still purple state. But I think doing it that way, just how horrific that undermine things.
Um, but it doesn't mean that, you know, I'm not appointing judges who believe in rule of law, personal freedoms, things like that. Right.
Right. You served in the house of representatives for over a decade.
It is obviously an incredibly important job. I mean, your job description is article one of the constitution,

you know, that's pretty cool, but the job itself, I mean, you sort of alluded to it. It seems like it can be pretty brutal at times, right? There's the chaos of like Speaker Johnson's, you know, what looks like it might be brief era, the constant fundraising, the lack of ability to do things in the minority.
Am I wrong? And are there things you think we could do to make the job feel more fulfilling or more rewarding so that good people stick around and like the Matt Gates's of the world maybe resign? Yeah. And I represented a, I think I was the second Democrat since 1892 that represented that.
And the good news was I was a school teacher and running, I had no clue. Like, oh, you didn't know.
And then once you're in, you're like, yeah, tell me that the incumbents continue to win, continue to win. It was a challenging district.
But here's the thing. I think there is still something about who are we sending to Congress and what can they do? I focused heavily on like veterans issues.
I'm a veteran myself, spent years in that. So I focused on improvement of veterans, quality of life, those types of things of really seeing this as positive governance.
And it was incredibly rewarding. It was, you know, now I think back on it, you know, after you deal with COVID, we deal with civil unrest after George Floyd's murder.
I would obsess about a vote I'd have to take. You know, this was really stressful stuff, one vote type of thing.
But there was work that you could get done, that you could build around things that you could actually deliver on. And I think if you got the right people there, I proudly said I served with that speaking of matt gates that was jeff miller's district at one point in time jeff miller was the rank was the chairman of the va committee when i was ranking member okay and i considered him a friend we did good work together we delivered on things together and it was all about that personality that district hasn't you know geographically changed that much but philosophically and i think this goes back to i mean in the age of trump i don't know if any of these questions are relevant um because it's so distorted on what they think well i mean and also i think people who knew matt gates back in the day will tell you like he was just like a normal country club republican you sort of saw the way the winds were blowing he adopted the kind of trumpian demeanor and tactics and trolling and that's performance art i agree i see these guys every day in the gym when i was in congress and it was just stunning to me you know the changes right but you're you know you're a governor like you people vote you in or out uh based on whether you accomplish things yes that's your mindset but then you have someone like a james langford republican Republican senator from Oklahoma, who was getting threatened by the Republican Party in his state just for working with Democrats on a bill.
Nobody questioned his conservatives. I served with him in the House.
Very conservative, Christian conservative, but honest in that. And yeah, that's the problem now.
And you know, when you have these wave elections, it's not the extremists that get wiped out. It's the folks that are in the purple districts.
You know, I go, went through that. I, I think thousands of people voted for president Trump and me in 2016, where they were still plit-dick in voting.
I lose sleep over that of why they did that, but I won. Yeah.
Um, but they would still be willing to do that. I don't think that's true today.
Yeah, it's tough. Um, so you chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
We've got 11 races up in 2024. I would love to hear your thoughts on some of our best opportunities for pickups, where we need to play some defense.
I know our team here at Vote Save America is particularly focused on New Hampshire and North Carolina. And my mom spends part of their time in Vermont.
So I want to know why the hell we can't win a governor's seat in Vermont. Yeah.
Well, and again, DGA is a great organization. We represent the majority of Americans right now.
And if you don't know the difference, I said my state's one of those. You look, having a Democratic governor in Minnesota versus a Republican governor in the Dakotas, women's lives are put at risk, just bad decisions, books being banned rather than hunger being banned.
So we talk about why it's so important. And those states you mentioned, North Carolina being one where Roy Cooper is term limited, incredible governor, expanded Medicaid, doing the things that we know improve lives.
That one's going to be a priority. Washington State, Jay Inslee, we all tried hard.
Jay is the godfather of moving climate. You know, he, he finally calls me and said, it's good to see Minnesota catching up finally on these things.
Uh, Delaware with John Carney, but I agree with you. New Hampshire is a golden opportunity.
Um, we'll get, we've got a good couple of candidates up there, a mayor and, uh, a council member. Um, they're going to have Kelly Iott, you know, extremist on these issues that we care about.

And Vermont,

I mean, the thing is,

is that,

and I say this,

I think it's Democrats do this.

We see it in Massachusetts.

We see it in places like New Hampshire,

and we see it in Vermont that Governor Scott is,

is pretty moderate by Republican standards trying to get,

but he's still Republican on this.

Democrats,

when they're asked how the Republican governor is doing are kind of generous about this. Like we used to say, Charlie Baker would be the top rank, Larry Hogan.
We liked Mitt Romney for a while in that season. Exactly.
And we do this. There's not a Republican say we're doing a good job no matter what.
It doesn't matter that, oh, Mayo Clinic's investing $5 billion, you know, good for the governor. No, no.
It's why aren't they investing 10 billion? That type of thing. So I think the biggest thing is, is governors still matter the quality of the candidate.
Um, I think in this mood that we're in having the backing of the DGA, having some, some oomph behind it, you saw us pick up that seat again and hold the seat in Kentucky with Andy Beshear, uh, leaning in. So I think this idea that, well, we can't play in some of these places, I'm with you.

I think we just need to go out and get a good candidate on this.

Find them, make sure we're there to support them.

And we have to play everywhere.

I got a daughter living out in Montana.

We'll reelect John Tester, but my God, we have Steve Bullock.

We went from Steve Bullock to what we have right now.

Yeah, Gene Forte, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I think last time I saw him, he was beating reporters in Congress.

Yeah, he body slammed a reporter.

Body slammed a reporter in Congress.

Nice guy.

So now you've got property taxes skyrocketing there because, you know, trying to shift the property burden back onto regular Montana.

And so, look, DGA will play where we've got an opportunity.

We're going to be out there across the country trying to make a difference.

And the message here is we're going to reelect the president. We're going to do the best we can to take the House, hold the Senate.
But the things that impact your life immediately, like protections of reproductive care, banning hunger in our schools rather than books, those types of things are on governors. So we're going to go, I would encourage folks to think heavily about their governor's races.
Yeah. Tell me more about that.
So help us understand what does the DGA do? And if someone's listening, they're like, yeah, I really care about governors. Like how can they plug in and help out? Yeah, I'm going to do my shameless plug for DGA, Tim, T-I-M, to text me at 30201.
You'll get information, you'll get on there, you'll get on every email you want to have. We know how this all works it does matter dga is out there and it's become uh one of the most effective and efficient of taking resources and putting them into the races where we need to be we can work as uh you know our independent expenditures helping these candidates we also provide resources on training on media on on some of uh the things that help a candidate get there look i saying about the wellstone thing it's if everybody comes up, but we got folks that are coming out of classrooms.
We've got math teachers say, I want to run. And I'm going to make the case that fourth grade teachers can be good governors.
They can get this stuff done. They're out there doing it.
We've got veterans wanting to run. So the DGA is there to provide the resources to lift these folks up, to help organize and to bring national attention to these races.
And I like the idea that we're smart about where we invest, but I think folks who are running realize we'll be in every state. We feel like we can play.
Governors can win. I mean, Andy Beshear is the walking embodiment of that.
Yeah, that was an amazing race. He's done an incredible job.
Amazing. And the difference it makes is he's protecting reproductive rights.
He's making sure that affordability of college for working folks in Kentucky. He's thinking about climate change, promoting bourbon, doing the things he's supposed to be doing.
Do you have like a little rivalry with the RGA folks? Is Governor Bill Lee and Brian Kemp's the deputy, am I right? Yeah. I guess the rivalry is that I don't know what they're running on other than chaos and just craziness.
Their candidates come out. We're going to see it in North Carolina.
You've just got weird folks running. And we've got folks that want to improve lives.
So, yeah, the rivalry is in this is that we're going to go out and raise the resources. We're going to make the case.
And, again, governors are the firewall. And you see the difference.
And I talk to good friends with, you know, all the Midwestern governors. But Tony Evers, Ivers i mean my god thank god mark dayton won in 2010 or minnesota would have been wisconsin when scott walker won unlike you said yeah from the redistricting to the judges to everything else they're still clawing back um and we're getting close but uh so i'd make the case go on get information about this if you're in a state like missouri or indiana where we got good candidates, but it might be a little tough for road.
It's only been, you know, in some cases, less than 10 years that we've had great democratic governors like Montana. I mean, we had 16 years straight between Schweitzer and Bullock.
We can do that again. Yeah, we can win.
There are some headwinds. President Biden's numbers are not great nationally at the moment.
I know Biden won Minnesota with 52.6% of the vote in 2020. I saw a survey from late January that has him at 42% and Trump at 39%.
So that suggests even in Minnesota, he's struggling. What do you think the president needs to get those voters back? And how do you guys decide where and when to ask Joe Biden to come in to stump for you? Yeah, well, and those are on the individual states.
And I always say this to House candidates in Minnesota. Look, if you need me to be there, I'll be there.
If you need to pretend you don't know me, do that. I just want you to win.
That's what it takes. And I think the president's the same way.
The numbers aren't that surprising at this point in time. Those are not all that much worse than President Obama was when we were, you know, everybody was fretting in 2012.
Look, there's, there's challenges, there's headwinds. Uh, we've not been in a climate like this, uh, with the, the threat to democracy that's coming from former president Trump.
I think for us is, is it's telling our candidates and they know this focus on the things that are improving lives. And Joe Biden's delivered on that comes to Minnesota.
We're replacing that bridge up in Duluth, superior, $2 billion bridge. He's delivering on that.
Medicaid expansion in these states where we have governors running that said, look, if you elect me as governor, we're going to have another 100,000 people get health insurance in Missouri, those types of things. So I think it's watching that.
And then for all of us, it's do the work that's in front of us. Do the work that's in front of us.
These campaigns are about grinding it out. It's about, you know, don't doom scroll through the polls.
Just get out there, get on the doors, know that this, because the choice is not age in this one. If it is, it's age versus insanity.
Right. True.
You know, bat shit, crazy ideas, NATO, you name it. A cruelness.
You know, I think we kind of make light of this, but the cruelness, look, we got to deal with immigration. We're all going to talk about it.
We need to secure our borders, but at the same time show humanity. We're not going to go down the road of just the strange ideas that President Trump tells us, even though he had four years to do something about it and didn't do a damn thing.
Yeah. I love that he talks about ripping NATO apart, ripping NATO apart, basically.
And people like Marco Rubio on TV saying, oh, he's just a novice. You know, he talks like a normal person.
Like, well, he was the president for four years. I feel like you should know better, but.
I had German parliamentary members in this week and they are deeply concerned. And, you know, they come with the council general.
The council general is a little more diplomatic, staying neutral on this, not the members of parliament. Like, look, and I'm reassuring them, we're allies with you.
We have close ties as Minnesotans with Finland and Norway,

done trade missions there and things like that. They need to know that we're not going to turn

our back. And this is, you know, one of our great accomplishments in securing peace around the world

was our alliances, especially the NATO alliances, done amazing things. And I know you guys hit on

it too, this idea of paying your bills and the simplicity of this, of a Russia expansion, it just makes no sense. So I think governors, well, governors will focus on kitchen table issues.
Governors will focus on delivering good jobs, security, and that. I think for all of us to think about is they're not going to be able to do any of that if we're not able to secure the presidency too.
Yeah, absolutely. I just want to ask you a couple questions about you.
I saw that you taught in a Chinese high school from 1989 to 1990. I did.
Were you there like during the protests? I was in Hong Kong. Okay.
Yeah, I was in Hong Kong. So we were the first group of American high school teachers to teach in Chinese high schools.
There'd been folks there earlier than us, but they'd mostly taught in universities. This was a group that was through the Philip Brooks house at Harvard.
They picked 25. I didn't know this at the time.
When we got there, there were 25 of us. We were going to be spread throughout China.
12 were from the East coast, 12 from the West coast. My roommates were Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford.
And I was from Shadron state. And that's when I realized, oh, I'm the geographic affirmative action guy out of middle America.
But yeah, when we got placed in the Chinese high schools, you know, so they teach us Mandarin. And then they dropped me in Foshan and Guangdong, where it's Cantonese.
And I would tell, oh, you're going to teach in Mandarin. It'll be fine.
And I'd go in the classroom and everyone's speaking Guangdong. They're speaking Cantonese.
So I would go to the headmaster. He said, no, no, they're speaking.
Because the government says you teach in China in Mandarin. Well, they weren't doing it.
So it was an interesting mess. Oh, so they were like saying, no, no, no, no.
Don't listen to your lying ears. Yes, yes.
These are the facts. Yeah.
So I spent a couple years. But I was in Hong Kong when it happened.
I was in Hong Kong on June 4th when Tiananmen happened. Several of our, quite a few of our folks decided not to go in.
You trained in Hong Kong and then went to Guangzhou and then you spread out across the country. I was in Southern China in Guangdong, but crossing over in Hong Kong, there was a lot of European in Hong Kong, you know, don't do this, don't go, don't support them in this.
And my thinking at the time was, is, is what a golden opportunity to go tell, you know, how it was. And I did have a lot of freedom to do that, taught American history and could tell the story.
Yeah. I mean, the idea that going to teach in a high school is somehow supporting the government crackdown doesn't make any sense to me.
It was, there was a lot of, there was a lot of, uh, that out but i just thought it was just too good of opportunity yeah it's an incredible opportunity also i feel like that kind of person-to-person exchange is increasingly rare it's huge it's huge and then you think about in the early some of your you know your listeners if they can imagine being there at this time this is eight years after dung shopping opening back up like in foshan i was the first foreigner since liberation as as they would say, meaning 1949. So what I immediately did when I came back was organized and set up a little nonprofit and started taking American high school students because they would see older tourists there or teachers.
And so my wife and I took about 500 kids back to ride the trains and go. And it was that person to person.
And at that time I was pretty bullish that we were going to see a, maybe a, you know, because the older Chinese knew that America was their greatest ally during world war two. Like we were allies until the situation, uh, uh, with Taiwan.
Right. And so, um, but that gives us the opportunity to try and build some of those relationships, see if we could strengthen that.
I think that's honestly, I think that's missing. I think it's getting worse and worse.
And this is like leading to this Cold War sort of feeling. It is.
You know, the panda-hugging, dragger-slaying isn't it. You know, it's more about we're going to have to work with this.
We're going to, we have to tackle climate change. The Chinese know it's real.
They're moving towards, you know, electrification. They're going to own the market on electric vehicles.
There is a partnership here. And I mean we we can't just get into this cold war situation over you know uh south china sea again or something or spy balloons or something something stupid um you were also a social studies teacher i was geography teacher mankato west high school that's correct right you were also yeah i was just going to add because i hope you're going to add that in the football coach oh that's what i's what I want to ask about.
Well, thank you. Were you a position coach, offensive guy? I was a defensive coordinator.
Okay. What'd you run? Yeah, we ran a 4-4 where we read guards at the time.
I had really good athletes and good linebackers. How are your corners? They were good.
That was an age when I was coaching that it was unusual to see a 2,500 to 3,000 yard passer on the other side, but it was starting to come along. So they were running the ball a lot.
Yeah. I appreciate you bringing this up.
These guys were crowding the box, making sure they didn't. That's exactly it.
And our guards, because in high school, if you pull a guard, it pretty much know where the ball's going. And if you can teach kids to do that.
Like student body rights, student body left, that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Everyone is tuning in. Thank you for not allowing the yearbook to close on this chapter of my life.
I do think it's important. It is important.
And I have to tell people this. So look, I did 24 years in the military.
I was teaching and then I started running for Congress. I'm absolutely convinced when people have told me this, no, it's because you won that state championship.
Really? Well, we were 0-27. When I took the job, they said, well, we're kind of struggling.
We were 0-27. But I had some other coaches I worked with who were great guys.
And we said, this is nonsense. Let's just turn this thing around.
Three years later, state champion. Now they're the state powerhouse.
You guys went from 0-27 to state champs in three years? Yeah. Who was your steroid guy? No, we got him in the way through.
No, no. That's really impressive.
Yeah, it's impressive. We had good athletes's real football too.
Do you guys send anybody, any big D1 schools? University. Our linebacker ended up playing fullback at the University of Minnesota.
Cool. And a lot of them played, you know, Division II, like North Dakota State.
Yeah. Mankato, big powerhouse in that Division II.
Cool. A lot of fun.
Very fun. I think your term is up in 2026.

Is that right?

That's right.

So we did some pitching to see if you run again for something.

We're not saying what it is.

If you want to announce anything today, that's great.

We're not term limited in Minnesota.

So you could run again.

You could run again.

Okay.

You could run for president, something like that too.

We wanted to pitch you some bumper sticker ideas for your next campaign.

Okay.

I hope that's okay.

Walls out for the middle class no okay um walls to the wall for democracy yes i'm liking this tim is him no i'm looking at your staff they're all giving me the axe to the window to the walls mr gorbachev you can't tear down this walls um came in like a came in like a wrecking walls yeah that could be more of a post-governor thing okay what if your last year is um the last walls oh yeah there you go like the film yeah for the kids listening um if these walls they're gonna go google that now because they've not seen that you're my wonder walls I didn't put my best stuff at the end um well Okay. You like that one? Yeah.
You know, some of them are a little more risque. You know, things that rhyme with walls.
Yeah. I'm sure you got some of those.
Well, there's not a lot of, that one happened a lot. Yeah.
It's easy. It's lazy on that one.
That was lazy. I blame myself.
You know, my campaign, my unofficial campaign theme when I was running 2018 was it's walls or Wisconsin. I like that.
So we were going to turn into Wisconsin if we turn into Wisconsin. That's very good.
So I, I, I had that. So I would make my team say it because I thought it was clever.
So, uh, Governor Walls coach of the state champion football team. Makota? Makato? Makato.
Makato football team. Great to meet you.
Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Thanks to Governor Tim Walz for joining us today. And before we go, we have John Lovett here because we have to settle a bet.
So the Super Bowl happened. It did.
Usher took his shirt off. And then whatever.
So the Chiefs won. Now you two, we did the prop bets, but because the red Gatorade wasn't thrown.
Or orange. Or orange, it was purple.
This whole thing came down to someone named Mahomes and someone named Purdy. That's really what it all boils down to in the end.
And who threw more completions? And you bet on Mahomes. John did.

And Dan bet on Purdy.

Mahomes beat Purdy.

So John beat Dan.

It was as simple as that.

There was no proposal on the field.

Did you see that there was a microphone pickup of the dialogue between Travis and Taylor?

And it was beautiful because you could just see their connection because Taylor says,

oh my God, that was amazing.

And Travis said, there's going to be a big party. So i love that for them and there was and there was and you know who you know who she was next to her mom that wasn't one of the right right right well and i spice also not one of the prophets and blake lively was blake lively yeah wow did you see the photo of taylor's box where everyone is having a blast paying attention

and super in it into it and then the kardashian box where they look like they're bored of their fucking minds and just being kind of jetted around the world to various events of which they have no interest and then elon musk next to his son who he just was not looking at i didn't see that i didn't see that yeah i didn't see that anyway um so dan you've lost I did. And that means you have to post a tweet.

That's what they're called. And we have the text here that was drafted by the Intrepid Pod Save America team.
It reads as follows. Taylor, look what you made me do.
We have no choice left but to beg you for a Biden endorsement. We remember Trump's presidency all too well and think we should never, ever get back together with that man.
Please, please, please give us 2024 Biden's version. You're just going to put that online.
And I want to be clear about something. It's not one of those situations where you can say you can't ask the genie for more wishes and you can't say I have to post this.
You just simply must put it out into the world. Well, I had this one wrinkle here.
It's an important wrinkle, which is minutes before this podcast, I deleted Twitter. That's not it.
No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
I feel like I just saw you tweet. I believed it.
Wow. You know what's sad about that? Dan, you're like, minutes ago, I did something you could be proud of me for.
No, you didn't do it. You didn't do it.
You're still in the muck. That was like a little bit of the end of Goodwill hunting there.
Like, someday. Someday I'm going to come.
Someday I'm going to go to your Twitter feed. I want to see about a girl.
I want to go see about grass. And it's going to be empty.
All right. Well, Dan, the text is coming your way.
On X, it will go and you'll just face the consequences of putting that into the world. That's so great.
Maybe it'll work. I hope we screenshot it.
I hope we put it on Instagram. We should put it everywhere.
Look what we made Dan do. Look what we made Dan do.
Yeah, please. Definitely do that.
A few scheduling things here. We will have a special Sunday episode that is my interview with Elizabeth Warren.
That's going to go out Sunday. And then on Monday, it's President's Day.
So, of course, we're all celebrating. And then on Tuesday, you're going to get a special feed drop.
It's going to be Oprah. It's Oprah.
It's not us talking to Oprah. It's Oprah talking to more important people.
Yeah. Believe it or not, Oprah came to us to do some promo.
And we're like, no, no, no, no, we got Chris Christie. Why can't Oprah, why can't Oprah, why can't we go to Oprah? Why isn't Oprah promoting our stuff? That's the platform we need.
Oprah needs us. We need Oprah.
She asked for Friday and we said, nope, we got Tim Walz. Ask not.
Ask not what Oprah can do for you. Ask what you can do for Oprah.
For Oprah. So you'll hear Sunday episode of Pod Save America.
That's me talking to Elizabeth Warren. And then we'll be back on Wednesday.
So we'll see you then. Have a great President's Day weekend.
Bye, everyone. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.
And if you're already doomscrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review.
Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Kira Joaquim is our senior producer.
Reid Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with Cohn, Haley Jones,

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