Can Trump Be Stopped in Iowa?

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 6 I'm Interim University of Pennsylvania President John Levitt.

Speaker 5 That was a good one. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 4 On today's show, Congress's last week of the year could be its biggest yet. The president of UPenn resigns after disastrous testimony on campus anti-Semitism.

Speaker 4 A woman flees Texas after the state's abortion ban puts her life in jeopardy.

Speaker 4 And later, United Auto Workers President Sean Fane sits down with Tommy to discuss his union's historic wins and what comes next. But first,

Speaker 4 Donald Trump has somehow expanded his lead in the Iowa caucuses, which are now just five weeks away. The latest Des Moines Register poll has him at 51%,

Speaker 4 up from 43% in October. Ron DeSantis is next at 19%, up slightly from 16% in October.
Nikki Haley's support is unchanged at 16%.

Speaker 4 Vivek Ramaswamy is at 5%. Chris Christie at 4.
And I learned from this poll that Asa Hutchinson is still in the race and polling at 1%.

Speaker 5 That was shocking to me, too.

Speaker 4 Asa Ada Hutchinson.

Speaker 5 Who's giving him money at this point?

Speaker 6 Who's picking him?

Speaker 4 Who's picking him? Maybe one respondent. Who knows? So this is the largest recorded lead this close to a competitive Republican caucus ever.

Speaker 4 Poll also shows 70% of Trump's supporters say their minds are made up.

Speaker 4 You guys see anything in this poll that the DeSantis or Haley campaigns might find even mildly hopeful? Can we just,

Speaker 6 I tried.

Speaker 6 I can say no. But before we even get to that,

Speaker 6 the domination. So Trump leads every age group.
He leads with Republicans and independents. He leads with people with a college degree and people without.
He leads across every income bracket.

Speaker 6 He leads with evangelicals. He leads with rural people, suburban people, city people.
He leads every group, even the group where he does the worst.

Speaker 4 College-educated.

Speaker 6 He's beating Haley and DeSantis in those groups.

Speaker 4 And non-Republicans, he's doing the worst, but he's still leading among like independents.

Speaker 6 Yes, among independents. That's

Speaker 4 closest on that. Yeah, but even independents.
Brutal.

Speaker 4 Sounds like Republicans want Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 There is not a sliver of good news in this poll for anyone not named Trump.

Speaker 5 He moved plus eight from October.

Speaker 5 He's the highest percentage of people who say he's their first choice, second choice, or actively considering him. So he's the biggest sort of universe of support.

Speaker 6 Yeah, if you wanted to find one thing in this poll, you could say, okay.

Speaker 6 If you look at everyone that would make DeSantis first choice or second choice or would consider him, he's doing better there than Haley.

Speaker 6 But then you realize, actually, that's a place where he's gone down since the last poll.

Speaker 6 At least he he has sort of, he has lost people in, even in that big, wide group to Trump since October.

Speaker 5 49% of caucus goers say they've made up their mind, but 70% of Trump supporters say they've made up their mind. Yeah, that's what I was saying.
His electability numbers against Biden improved.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's just a disaster.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, I think what it shows is the people who dropped out, even though they didn't have much support, that support largely went to Donald Trump.
Maybe a little bit went to Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 4 I think Nikki Haley has probably maxed out on the anti-Trump vote, at least in Iowa. New Hampshire, there's probably a bigger anti-Trump vote among Republicans.

Speaker 4 But it goes to show how she doesn't have a ton of room to grow.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Dan's made this point, but if not Trump, then DeSantis is still the only candidate who can at least have some support from people who really, really like Trump.

Speaker 4 I think the number that says it all is you mentioned the electability.

Speaker 4 The way they asked the question, 73% of Republican caucus goers said said they think Trump can win an election against Biden despite his legal challenges. 73%.
So there goes the electability argument.

Speaker 4 And like, honestly, even if the other candidates tried to prove those voters wrong, I mean, it's not easy to do so when poll after poll after poll now shows Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, both in the general election, that was a Wall Street Journal poll that just came out over the weekend, in states, there were CNN polls of Michigan, where Trump's leading by 10 on Joe Biden, Georgia, where you're leading by five.

Speaker 4 So, you know, we're not going to have another debate over whether the polls are to be believed this far out from the election.

Speaker 4 But if you're a Republican caucus goer and you really like Trump and you had been concerned at one point about electability, why would you be concerned about electability at this point?

Speaker 6 Yeah, one thing that jumped out at me too is, I think, look, we talk a lot about, and rightly so, just the kind of abysmal performance of people like DeSantis.

Speaker 6 But there is a structural problem that they're dealing with. So one thing that was interesting is there is a difference.

Speaker 6 Even though sort of DeSantis and Haley, they're both kind of stuck where they're stuck. You know, everyone, the Haley boomlet seems to have

Speaker 6 not done too much booming, but there's a difference in their polling. Among DeSantis supporters, people think Trump can win.
They say 59% think he can win.

Speaker 6 A minority thinks that is impossible. For Haley, it's the opposite.

Speaker 6 So Haley has consolidated the anti-Trump vote, and DeSantis is doing well with people that still like Trump but are open to an alternative.

Speaker 6 But what's interesting is how both of those paths have not worked, right? Like there's not enough of an anti-Trump vote to rally around Haley to give her anything that she can do.

Speaker 6 And kind of trying to get people who like Trump to switch is basically impossible because if you like Trump, he's right there.

Speaker 4 Yeah. All you really need to know about this is the quote that NBC had in this write-up from

Speaker 4 one Republican caucus goer who said, they can promise me a million dollars. I tell them to keep it.
And I would still vote for Trump.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I like that person. Okay.

Speaker 6 Burn was like, I tried it.

Speaker 5 Spin zone for Ron Ron DeSantis and Haley. Here's one thing you could try.
Actually run against the person winning. Step one.

Speaker 5 Step two, there maybe is an expectations management challenge now for Trump.

Speaker 4 So they lose by like 20 and then they're like, ooh.

Speaker 5 So I was talking to a political scientist in Iowa who was saying, look, Trump's basically an incumbent. Incumbents usually win the Iowa caucuses by like 60, 70, right?

Speaker 5 They have a much higher total than 50% of the vote. Maybe you could spin that.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe if you gain on him in this last month. I'm trying here.
I'm flailing here.

Speaker 4 No, I. much like them.
I appreciate you doing.

Speaker 5 Daisy, Iowa, it's not about winning the Iowa caucuses. It's about how you are perceived to have done by an arbitrary jury of your non-peers called the Press Corps and the pundit class.

Speaker 4 And then the voters in New Hampshire, right? So like, I do think at this point, I'm looking beyond Iowa, as I'm sure Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are.

Speaker 4 Like, I don't know how you make up this much ground in five weeks. I have not seen that happen, certainly, in our lifetime, from anyone this close to the caucus.

Speaker 4 But if DeSantis stays in and Haley stays in after Iowa and they go to New Hampshire, I do think there's a bigger independent vote there. There's a bigger college-educated vote there.

Speaker 4 That we know for sure. And there's most likely a bigger anti-Trump vote there.
And so then if all these voters wake up and say, oh, Trump's running away with it, then who knows?

Speaker 4 Maybe you get more in the mix in New Hampshire. But I'm doubtful.

Speaker 5 Chris Christie skipping Iowa and almost tying Vivek Ramaswamy has got to be tough for Team Vivek.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.
Well, there's a lot of tough things for Team Vivek these days.

Speaker 4 Not good. DeSantis seems to be sticking with his strategy of half-heartedly criticizing Trump on Twitter.

Speaker 4 Late a salvo came after Donald Trump told this bizarre and I'm sure 100% true story at the New York Young Republican Club gala Saturday night. I saw the clips from this.
I'm like, what?

Speaker 4 Trump's dressed up in a tux. He's in New York for a gala.
What the hell?

Speaker 4 That is the sign of someone who is not worried about any competition in the Republican primary. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 8 And a general who's a fantastic general actually said to me, Sir,

Speaker 8 I've been on the battlefield. Men have gone down on my left and on my right.
I stood on hills where soldiers were killed.

Speaker 8 But I believe the bravest thing I've ever seen was the night you went onto that stage with Hillary Clinton after what happened. And then that woman asked you the first question about it.
And I said,

Speaker 9 Locker room talk. It's locker room talk.
What the hell? What are you talking?

Speaker 9 Locker room talk.

Speaker 4 I honestly have to hand it to Trump for like not cracking up while telling that story.

Speaker 5 The sir story is an entire genre.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 He tells so many made-up generals coming to him and meetings or weeping over things. It's awesome.

Speaker 6 It's an awesome story.

Speaker 4 You're so awesome. I just need to tell you that.

Speaker 6 Sometimes they're hot pilots.

Speaker 4 More often. Strapping.
Yeah, strapping.

Speaker 6 The biggest guy you've ever seen, weeping, crumbling in tears because of how grateful he was to me.

Speaker 4 So in response to this weird story, DeSantis accuses Trump of denigrating military service and then says in his Twitter post, quote, debating isn't brave.

Speaker 4 It's the bare minimum any candidate should do. Hiding from debates, on the other hand, is an example of cowardice.
Meanwhile, here's what Trump said about DeSantis on Saturday night.

Speaker 8 You know what I love? I love when they say,

Speaker 9 We really want to run against Donald Trump. That's the one we want.

Speaker 8 How did they do in 2016, by the way?

Speaker 9 We want Donald Trump.

Speaker 8 We don't want to run against Ron DeSanctimonius with his high heels

Speaker 8 and his bobblehead bullshit, you know.

Speaker 6 No, he looks like a bobblehead, doll.

Speaker 4 Is that Trump's like Netflix special? Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know what I love?

Speaker 6 He does some anti-woke stuff. He does cancel culture.
I mean, he's basically, yeah, that's his. Put it right up next to Chappelle.
Why not?

Speaker 4 It's just like Ron DeSantis gets up. He's like, I'm going to really take this no character limit for a spin here.
On Twitter. I'm going to write this long statement that no one's going to care about.

Speaker 4 I'm going to call Trump a coward, but instead of saying it in front of a camera or in front of a crowd or at a debate, I'm just going to tweet it.

Speaker 6 Trump is like, I'm going to fuck these libtards five ways till Sunday. They don't know who they're dealing with.
And DeSantis is like, it's whom. It's to whom they're dealing.

Speaker 4 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is attacking Ron DeSantis' wife and accusing her of planning voter fraud.

Speaker 6 Well, she gave an interview. Did you see what she said?

Speaker 4 Yeah, she screwed up.

Speaker 6 She fucked that up. She's like, hey, everybody, come to Iowa and vote.

Speaker 4 I was like, I don't think that's right. Right, so we should tell people

Speaker 5 and volunteer. Yeah,

Speaker 4 she said people should, you don't have to be, you don't have to be a resident of Iowa to participate.

Speaker 4 That was the problem there in the caucuses. They don't take it.
So people can descend from all these other states.

Speaker 4 And what she said she meant is that people can come to the state and volunteer and knock on doors, which of course they can. But

Speaker 4 you think Donald Trump's going to take it that way or anyone else?

Speaker 6 It's not the first time people have bust people in. Yeah, we know.

Speaker 4 We know. Playing from the Clinton playbook over there.
Mark Penn, love it.

Speaker 6 Listen, listen. Look, look, the Iowa polls said what they said.
Then all of a sudden.

Speaker 5 It's just so funny. Like, again, Trump is literally attacking Ron DeSantis' wife in the most personal terms possible.

Speaker 5 And the only sort of little lane that DeSantis thinks he can carve out and safely criticize Trump about is participation in the debate. It's so pathetic.

Speaker 4 Well, and he wants to call, I mean, because it's the whole, you know, Trump is strong, so you got to call him weak.

Speaker 5 It doesn't work to just be like, I'm going to tweet tweet quietly that he's weak.

Speaker 4 It doesn't work.

Speaker 4 That'll do. That'll unlock the.

Speaker 6 It's just, everybody's reading DeSantis exactly for who he is, and it just doesn't, it just doesn't work.

Speaker 6 And I do think, like, going back to the poll, like, the fact that more Republican caucus goers in Iowa believe Trump is electable today than a few months ago is such an indictment of the way these campaigns have tried to fight against Trump because that's the whole ballgame for people.

Speaker 4 It's also the, I think, I think it's the polls. It's the polls.
It's like he's beating Joe Biden. So it's like, why?

Speaker 4 They also suck.

Speaker 4 DeSantis.

Speaker 6 But they haven't been willing to make any kind of argument around the felonies, right? Like that, the fact that those felonies have not changed this calculus at all, it's staggering.

Speaker 6 And so all these, oh, he's too weak to debate me. Like the, the, how dare you, Mr.
Trump, it doesn't work with the country.

Speaker 6 It's sure as fuck not going to work with Republicans who have become basically full-blown fucking animals.

Speaker 4 Like, how dare you, Mr.

Speaker 6 Trump? It's our troops that are brave. Like, when does that work? It didn't work with fucking, he did the gold star thing at the, at the convention in 2016.

Speaker 4 not going to work with republicans in iowa and now desantis is starting to do like a polling analysis you know he told some reporters in iowa that uh if it's trump trump's going to inspire higher democratic turnout and trump's going to bring out all the democrats if he if he's the nominee and and desantis won't bring out as many democrats to vote against to vote against him

Speaker 6 go apply at 538 man yeah what are you doing well i also just think like we've kind of been through a version of this right like when we were first i remember when when like this we were first thinking about like oh who's going to challenge desantis is like oh is ron desantis a bigger bigger threat than Donald Trump in the general?

Speaker 6 And at this point, like watching the way DeSantis kind of fucking

Speaker 4 He's doing the worst against Joe Biden in these trial heats

Speaker 4 of Haley and Trump. He's doing the worst.

Speaker 5 Because he's stuck in Georgia debating the wrong guy.

Speaker 4 He's fighting with Gavin Newsom in Atlanta.

Speaker 6 He tries store clerks next.

Speaker 4 Well, we did get one December surprise over the weekend that could shake up the final weeks of the caucuses.

Speaker 4 A real, authentic, actual P-tape, but not from Donald Trump, During a Twitter Spaces live stream with Elon Musk, accused rapist Andrew Tate, and the newly reinstated Alex Jones, Vivek Ramaswamy forgot to turn off his mic while taking a leak.

Speaker 11 You know, humans in America, humans and

Speaker 11 thing on the screen

Speaker 11 and everywhere else.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's Vivek. Vivek, that's your phone, Vivek.
I'm not able to mute you.

Speaker 11 Go ahead, Elon.

Speaker 11 Sorry about that.

Speaker 11 Well, I hope you feel feel better. I feel great.
Thank you. Sorry about that, guys.

Speaker 4 I'll tell you. I'd rather hear him pee than talk.

Speaker 4 I think I'll take the pee.

Speaker 6 My boys come out for water sports.

Speaker 4 What a world.

Speaker 6 Happy holidays, everybody.

Speaker 4 Vick's like Alex Jones, like sword fight.

Speaker 6 I do like that he just called it out of you.

Speaker 5 I accidentally tuned into this Twitter space yesterday.

Speaker 4 In fact,

Speaker 4 you just

Speaker 4 slip on a keystroke there. It was Alex Jones, Andrew Trayton, Vivek.

Speaker 4 It was like Mike Flynn was on truly the worst people in the future Secretary of State.

Speaker 4 It was the Trump cabinet for the second term. The worst people in politics.

Speaker 5 I tuned in and they were complaining about the possible creation of an unelected world government and Davos and the World Economic Forum. It was exactly what you would expect.
So I turned it off.

Speaker 4 I meant to tell you when you just brought up the Newsom DeSantis debate, did you see or hear that at the gala on Saturday night with the Trump was at, the Republican gala, he did say that Newsom won the debate.

Speaker 4 Oh, nice. Which is what you predicted for that.
Nice. That's real.

Speaker 5 That's the meanest thing you can say.

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Speaker 4 All right, it's a big week in Congress.

Speaker 4 This is their last scheduled week of 2023, and they're still nowhere close to an agreement on a bill that's supposed to include $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, a few hundred million dollars in humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians, and some combination of funding and policy to address the migrant crisis at the southern border.

Speaker 4 Republicans are still saying they will not vote for Ukraine aid without new border policy.

Speaker 4 And even though Democrats and Biden have said they're open to some new limits on asylum, some of the latest Republican demands include ankle bracelets for children detained at the border and banning people from even applying for asylum, closing down the entire border.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is making a special trip to D.C. to plead with Congress for support.

Speaker 4 Though Senator Lanksford, the lead Republican negotiator, just told CNN that nothing Zelensky says will change Republican minds and that they probably won't be able to get a deal by the end of the week.

Speaker 4 Nice. So it does look like,

Speaker 4 I mean, I guess that doesn't mean that Ukraine aid is dead for good, but it does seem like

Speaker 4 it's not going to happen in 2023 because they don't have time.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, so Murphy said something like, if I were cynical, I would say they're using the border to make sure we can't pass Ukraine aid,

Speaker 6 but I'm not cynical, which I think was a

Speaker 6 sounded like a way of saying without saying that he's

Speaker 4 pretty worried about the whole thing. Don't you think that the Republicans could have said that nothing Zelensky says would change their mind before Zelensky got on a plane to pull the guy got on?

Speaker 4 It's pretty fucking fucking rude, actually. It's like he's in the middle of a war.
It is a real war.

Speaker 6 I know it's on television for you, but it's an actual war.

Speaker 5 It's terrible.

Speaker 4 For him. I still don't see how this is going to get done even in 2024 because,

Speaker 4 I mean, Murphy on, Chris Murphy, who's the lead Democratic negotiator, was on Meet the Press, and he basically outlined what a compromise on the border could look like.

Speaker 4 He said, we're not going to support anything that shuts down the border completely to people who legitimately are coming here to have their lives rescued, but we are willing to talk about tightening some of the rules so that you don't have 10,000 people arriving a day.

Speaker 4 But like, I don't know. I don't know what the Republican incentives are to, political incentives are, to go along with a compromise like that.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I don't either. I mean, it seems like they've all just gotten to a place politically where they feel like being

Speaker 5 in support of Ukraine funding is bad politics for them with the base because Trump has demagogued it, because it's become this right-wing

Speaker 5 cause to oppose supporting Ukraine. And it just means that over time, that the Ukrainian military is going to slowly run out of weapons.
I mean, literally. Like,

Speaker 5 their air defense system is pretty good right now. But over the couple months, they will run out of interceptor missiles.
The things will slowly break down.

Speaker 5 They'll stop being able to defend from these drone attacks. I mean, people will die because they're not able to intercept these things.
And so, I mean, it's not going to be like a precipitous,

Speaker 5 you know, one day they just won't be able to fight anymore, but they're going to have to change their strategy. They'll probably have to leave territory.

Speaker 5 You'll have Putin feeling like he's ascendant, and he'll be looking to our election and thinking, boy, if I can press now and wait till Donald Trump's around, then they'll have nobody in my way.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is a very bad setup.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Well, they're certainly threatening that or talking about it.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And look, the minority of Republicans, mostly in the Senate, who are for Ukraine aid, still know that Republican voters are in favor of much, much tougher immigration and border policies.

Speaker 4 And so even though even the ones who are for Ukraine aid, I don't know what the political incentive for them is to compromise on the border when they know they've got the issue and that their base wants tougher policies.

Speaker 6 Aaron Ross Powell, right? Especially because even if they could get, even if they get a compromise, which by the way, we should say is still possible, right?

Speaker 6 Like deals have come out of more intransigent situations than this, that even if they get a deal that has incredibly restrictive changes to border policy, there will be enough Republicans calling it a capitulation and a failure to kind of mitigate any political gain they could have, right?

Speaker 6 Because as you said, like Republicans in Congress are more in favor of Ukraine ad than they than Republican voters.

Speaker 6 So there are Republicans who want to vote for aid and are looking for a political way to do so.

Speaker 6 Border security is a way for them to get there, but not if doing it, then all of a sudden all these House Republicans who say, if it's not our bill, it's basically,

Speaker 6 it's basically a kind of amnesty or whatever they're going to say, all of a sudden they're doing something to help their politics, and their own members are going to make it seem as though they've capitulated to Democrats.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Like, even theoretically, if you get some kind of a deal with Republicans in the Senate who were, again, theoretically slightly more moderate on border stuff and might want to compromise, that kind of deal, it seems very difficult for that deal to get through the House.

Speaker 4 Then I think the question is, like, did they try to split Israel aid off at some point and do that?

Speaker 4 Though I don't know, like, I think the idea, again, that the Democrats and the Senate should all vote for aid to Israel with no conditions is lunacy at this point.

Speaker 4 I do too.

Speaker 5 I think they probably will, but I absolutely think it's outrageous. I talked to

Speaker 5 Senator Welch last week from Vermont, and he was talking about all the conditions he wants to see. I mean, there's definitely growing

Speaker 5 concern about the number of airstrikes by the IDF and the need to condition aid.

Speaker 4 And I haven't seen, I don't know if you've seen, Tommy, like any evidence whatsoever that over the last couple of weeks, Netanyahu has changed strategy at all to do more to limit civilian casualties or settler violence at all.

Speaker 4 The opposite. Yeah.
So

Speaker 4 that's just terrible. All right.

Speaker 4 So one thing Congress did get done is forcing the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz McGill, who along with the presidents of Harvard and MIT was called to testify last week about anti-Semitism on campus.

Speaker 4 When Elise Defonik asked whether, quote, calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their school's code of conduct, McGill only went as far as to say, quote, if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.

Speaker 4 The other two presidents gave similar answers. The clip went viral.
It was widely condemned by politicians in both parties.

Speaker 4 And even though they all tried to apologize, McGill ultimately resigned on Saturday. So we haven't talked about this yet.
Just been brewing in the background.

Speaker 4 What do you guys think about this whole controversy?

Speaker 6 Oh, man. Okay.
So I think, first of all,

Speaker 6 I feel like Stefanik set two traps and they stepped into both. They kind of dove headfirst into both of them.

Speaker 6 All right, trap number one is conservatives have created a caricature of what's going on in college campuses and the caricature basically says if you express any kind of conservative viewpoint, it's considered bigotry, it's considered hate speech, you'll be yelled at, you'll be

Speaker 6 barked off campus. And then they pull out examples of protest or a conservative judge gets yelled at and then they say, see, if you express anything other than liberal orthodoxy,

Speaker 6 you're not safe on campus, but you can say any kind of anti-Semitic thing you want.

Speaker 6 And that's okay, because this is about espousing what they call like sort of extremist views on gender and race and all the rest. So, that's like trap number one, that character.

Speaker 6 The second trap is equating any form of legitimate criticism of Israel or a belief or anti-Zionism at all, and trying to equate that completely with anti-Semitism, right?

Speaker 6 That's what a lot of Republicans in the House have done.

Speaker 6 They just passed this resolution, and it says right there in the middle, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism to basically paint anything, anyone who is not supportive of Israel as being anti-Semitic, that is a part of this project.

Speaker 6 And basically, this hearing was a way to get these college presidents to fall into both of those traps. And in the way, by the way, they'd sat there for hours answering questions.

Speaker 6 And by the time they got to this moment, they kind of fell in that trap. Why? Because it's sort of like Ghostbusters.
When someone asks if you're a God, you say yes.

Speaker 6 If someone tries to bait you into doing anything to defend a call for genocide, you have to not take that bait.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, they've just seemed so like rigid and lawyer up and tied to their talking points that they somehow were incapable of answering the most obvious question in the world, which is, is genocide bad?

Speaker 5 Right. That shouldn't stump you if you're a college president.
But you're right.

Speaker 5 Like, Stefanic was playing a game in bad faith, which was trying to say, she was trying to get these presidents to accept the premise that the word intifada is calling for a genocide.

Speaker 5 That is just not true. Just not true.
Intifada means uprising. Often people are referencing specific points in time.
The first intifada was in 1987. It was primarily civil disobedience.

Speaker 5 So there was rock throwing, there were Molotov Molotov cocktails, there was violence. The second Intifada started in 2000 and was much more violent.

Speaker 5 Suicide bombings, huge crackdown in response, just like an intolerable loss of life.

Speaker 5 So the trap she was trying to lay is to say, to get them, it's like if P, then Q, a little logic bomb, to say, do you agree that saying Intifada is calling for genocide? Aha.

Speaker 5 Why didn't you punish those kids then? for saying Intifada. But they stepped on the rake before she had time to lay her full trap.

Speaker 4 I was just going to say.

Speaker 5 She's like shocked at their response that they can't answer the question, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your policy against harassment?

Speaker 4 I was just going to say, like, I don't think the trap was that clever that she set.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 she didn't even get to it. Because when you look at

Speaker 6 she hadn't put Leez over the hole yet.

Speaker 4 When you look at the transcript, she actually does separate intifada from the genocide thing.

Speaker 4 So she starts talking about intifada, which is something, as you point out, Tommy, that does depend on context, whether or not it's violent. So that does depend on context.

Speaker 4 But then she says, and this is completely hypothetical because this is not something they heard from students at Penn. What would you say about

Speaker 4 a call for the genocide of Jews? And if you hear, if someone asks you if your university is okay with students calling for genocide of Jews, you just say no. Yeah.
You just say no.

Speaker 6 That's what some questions are.

Speaker 4 That's an easy one. Some questions are hard.
Easy one.

Speaker 6 The other part about this,

Speaker 6 I do think that as progressives, I think it's worth calling out the game, right? Like, first of all,

Speaker 6 weaponizing anti-Semitism isn't wrong because there isn't anti-Semitism.

Speaker 6 It's wrong because there is a lot of anti-Semitism and diminishing it and trying to equate A, legitimate protest with anti-Semitism, B, trying to paint whole movements as being anti-Semitic. Like,

Speaker 6 that is...

Speaker 6 That is dangerous because it turns something that should be serious and treated as the threat that it is into a political cudgel.

Speaker 6 First of all, and also, by the way, it like changes the incentives for people. Like there is anti-Semitism inside of the anti-Zionism movement.
That is a problem. That is a real problem.

Speaker 6 That is a problem in some parts of the left. And like, if we don't take that seriously, if we don't treat that with like the specificity and

Speaker 6 honesty that it requires, like, I just, it's, it's very, it's dangerous.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I think most people at a Harvard pro-Palestine rally are there to call for a ceasefire and to call for a two-state solution. You know what I mean? It's like sort of self-evident.

Speaker 5 I think part of the problem more broadly for some of these college presidents is there has been a context created in a lot of progressive spaces that words are equivalent to violence and that sometimes how you perceive those words is more important than the intention of the individual saying them.

Speaker 5 And I think the intention of the individuals at these pro-Palestine rallies got lost in this bad faith logic trap.

Speaker 5 And so like long story short, these college presidents looked unbelievably tone deaf when it comes to combating anti-Semitism.

Speaker 5 And they botched their testimony so badly that I do worry that it could shrink the political space for pro-Palestine activists who just want to save lives on both sides and are just like there for legitimate speech and

Speaker 5 political purposes because these fucking people couldn't say genocide is bad.

Speaker 5 And there was a moment earlier in Stefanik's testimony where she asked the president of Harvard, she said, quote, a Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?

Speaker 5 And the president didn't just say, correct.

Speaker 5 She said, our commitment to free speech extends all the way to the corner.

Speaker 4 She got that too. It was just like, wow.

Speaker 5 Like, look, you're the president of a college.

Speaker 5 Throw the talking points book away.

Speaker 4 I get that they all feel a lot of these presidents and administrators at colleges now feel like they're, they're caught in this free speech debate that, again, a lot of it's bad faith that the right wing started.

Speaker 4 It's been weaponized. But like, you can have a code of conduct.
First of all, a lot of people are like, First Amendment, First Amendment, it's the code of conduct at a private college and university.

Speaker 4 So you can have the conduct be what you want it to be.

Speaker 4 Like you should be able to police hate speech, especially hate speech that calls for violence against marginalized groups, whichever the groups may be.

Speaker 4 And if it, and that's the decision of the administrators, if the speech sort of goes into calling for violence against marginalized groups, really against anyone, calls for violence, like then you're right, but it should be the end, it should be the intent of the speech.

Speaker 4 And like, if, and obviously that's a case-by-case basis, but like, yeah, hate speech that calls for violence. You should be able to police that on campus.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And I just one other thing about all this is just like, oh, right.

Speaker 6 These conservatives don't give a fuck about free speech because the thing that they've been trying to accuse the left of forever, which is basically trying to make conservative views beyond the pale by turning anything you say that isn't progressive into some kind of bigotry to make it unwelcome on college campuses, that is exactly what they're trying to do here.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it's just a

Speaker 4 farce. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But for presidents of colleges and administrators who actually want to like have real standards that everyone can abide by without any hypocrisy, like maybe, maybe start with, okay, yeah, violent speech is violent speech.

Speaker 5 That's step one. Step two, don't go to Congress unless you get subpoenas.

Speaker 4 They were invited there. They were invited.
You should have better things. Hey, look at this hot stove.
Think I want to touch it. Why don't I trap? Why don't I get on a plane?

Speaker 6 I hear the hot stove in DC. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I wanna get there by the end of the day. Also, I didn't realize, Love and I were talking about this before.

Speaker 4 Like, did you know that this, that McGill, there was like a long history of her getting in trouble for not taking a stance against anti-Semitism even before October 7th? Oh, good.

Speaker 4 So she's had this long history there, which makes it even crazier for her to accept the invitation to go.

Speaker 6 And I also, look, I also do think it's like the standard, right?

Speaker 6 Is that like, these are supposed to be places where people can express unpopular, dangerous, abhorrent views as long as they're not calling for violence against anybody.

Speaker 6 And like, that is an important spirit.

Speaker 6 Like that, that idea that like, that's what tenure is about, like like the free exchange of ideas, like that is an important part of like the culture on these campuses.

Speaker 6 But I do think that like there have been times when these college presidents, because of pressure from on campus, from administrations, from professors, from faculty, from students, that have like, they've put them, they've, they've to get through short-term news cycles where they wanted to seem a certain way on certain contentious issues, have like put out statements and taken stands, right?

Speaker 6 And that's put them in a position now when then they go before Congress and they're put in a position like this where they have to answer these questions, they suddenly feel on their heels because they once again want to go back to the basics of, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't take a position.

Speaker 6 Whoa, we don't take a position. I think like, we don't take a position is a good position to have for people at a college campus.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, and to the point Tommy made too about the, um, about what it, how it shrinks the space for Palestinian protesters. and other people on the left.

Speaker 4 Like, I think it is good for the left to understand, too, that when like some conservative you don't like comes to campus and

Speaker 4 says some odious things that don't cross the line into directing violence towards people, like, yeah, you're free to protest them. You're free to argue with them, tell them they're fucking idiots.

Speaker 4 But like the idea that those people shouldn't even be allowed on campus at all, it's the same kind of, because on the flip side of this, if you have Palestinians on campus who are trying to talk about a ceasefire or two-state solution, to then have that be characterized as anti-Semitism automatically and that that shouldn't exist, like you don't want that either.

Speaker 6 Look, a bunch of conservatives just spent their whole weekend trying to get the president of the University of Pennsylvania canceled. And she was.
You canceled her. She was a victim of cancel culture.

Speaker 6 Now, they won't call it that. They'll They'll never think about it that way, but that's exactly what happened.
And they're happy about it.

Speaker 4 And she did apologize, and so do the other presidents. Apology doesn't count.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the Stephanie, Stefanic going on Twitter being like, I got one for three. Like she's on it, like she's doing, doing whack-a-mole at the carnival.

Speaker 5 I do think that if you're really for free speech and intellectual freedom, you should be very concerned about the conflation of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism.

Speaker 5 Because first of all, a lot of the earliest Zionists were actually anti-Semitic. A lot of them lived in the United States.

Speaker 5 And they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, let's build a state for the Jews and send them there, right? Like, you can imagine how that happens.

Speaker 5 Two, the suggestion that criticizing Israeli policy is somehow anti-Semitic, I think is just wrong. Israel is a country.
It's governed by people,

Speaker 5 political views. They can be right and wrong, right? And they get to vote on those.
And so conflating those two is just a very dangerous path to go down.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And obviously, a lot of hard debates here.
But again, what do you think about a call for genocide? Bad.

Speaker 4 Did I get that right?

Speaker 6 Denounce anti-Semitism. Denounce the weaponization of anti-Semitism.

Speaker 5 In Harvard, if you really hate genocide, let's talk about Henry Kissinger for a little bit.

Speaker 4 Oh, there we go.

Speaker 6 And hey, look, and I go back to my position. If you want, and I'm comfortable with this, we can just shut Harvard down.
I do think that that money can do a lot of good elsewhere.

Speaker 4 I'm like, I think it's like, I think we've all had enough.

Speaker 6 That's where this needs to be. You had a nice run.

Speaker 4 It's done.

Speaker 5 All right. Waitlist me.

Speaker 6 Waitlist me. Oh, now we're going.

Speaker 4 Okay. How fucking dare you?

Speaker 4 What kind of process? What kind of fucking process? I imagine we never heard this before. And thus, and thus he reveals that most criticism of Harvard is for people who did not get in and are pissed.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Please, please.

Speaker 5 Oh, and you went to school in Massachusetts anyway.

Speaker 4 Oh, tough.

Speaker 4 All right. Didn't realize that

Speaker 5 I was born there.

Speaker 4 Didn't realize. Oh, I didn't apply to Harvard.
Didn't realize that you were carrying that chip on your shoulder. Unbelievable.
All right.

Speaker 4 Let's talk about what's happening with abortion in Texas.

Speaker 4 A woman from Dallas named Kate Cox found out that her fetus had a fatal genetic condition and that carrying the pregnancy to term could threaten her own health and ability to have children in the future.

Speaker 4 Because Texas has a total ban on abortion. She had to go all the way to the Texas Supreme Court to get permission.

Speaker 4 The first time a woman has had to get permission to get an abortion from a court since Roe v. Wade was decided.

Speaker 4 And of course, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opposed her doing this, asking for permission.

Speaker 4 He also sent threatening letters to the various hospitals as well, saying that they would be prosecuted if they allowed her to have the abortion.

Speaker 4 But while the Texas Supreme Court was deciding, it was too dangerous for her to wait for the ruling, so she just left the state to get an abortion. This is horrific, horrific story.

Speaker 4 We've seen a lot of debate recently, I think, about whether abortion will be as big of an issue in 2024 as it was in 2022.

Speaker 4 I would say a story like this certainly makes it seem like it will be, but what do you guys think?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, one of the things that came out of the polling and the results in 22 is that in places like New York and California, where the threat of state abortion laws, local abortion laws wasn't as salient,

Speaker 6 the results weren't as good for Democrats. That there was a way in which places, in places where people felt the threat personally, locally, it felt more real and severe.
We saw

Speaker 6 better outcomes. I do think that like, there's another example too.
A woman named Brittany Watts in Ohio is facing felony charges. She had a miscarriage at 22 weeks, another awful, awful story.

Speaker 6 And I do think as like we head into 2024, the fact that if Donald Trump wins and Republicans hold the House and win the Senate, they will pass a nationwide abortion ban.

Speaker 6 And look, Kate Cox was able to leave Texas to find health care in another place. The goal of Republicans, their explicit goal, is to make sure there is nowhere for people to go to get medical care.

Speaker 6 There will be no safe place. There will be no place where doctors won't face the agonizing choice between practicing medicine and facing criminal or civil liabilities.

Speaker 6 There will be no place where people will feel like they can get the care they need in time. And like making sure that that is real for people everywhere.

Speaker 6 Like being in a Democratic state will not protect you if there is a national abortion ban.

Speaker 6 Having a good governor who understands this issue will not matter if Republicans win the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Speaker 6 And that to me is the point we have to be driving home over and over and over again.

Speaker 5 This is just, it's unspeakably cruel and vindictive and like undercuts a Republican lie that these are decisions that are made carelessly or casually by women or anybody else.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is a woman who wants to have another child. She already went through the hell of learning that her fetus will not survive.
And now she wants to have a big family.

Speaker 5 So the doctor told her the safest thing to do is have an abortion. And because of this dystopian nightmare, she had to go to court to get authorization for a healthcare procedure.

Speaker 5 Like, can you imagine that? And she's been to the emergency room four times already because of complications. And then this guy, Kim Paxton, is threatening to arrest doctors providing care.

Speaker 5 Again, you can get 99 years in prison for providing an illegal abortion. 99 years, life in prison in Texas.
So, yeah. And by the way, she's had two kids before.

Speaker 5 So she'll probably have to have a C-section again to deliver this child, living or dead, which means that could complicate her ability to have kids in the future.

Speaker 5 So like there might be a small sliver of like extreme religious conservatives who think this is the path we should be going down on.

Speaker 5 But I think that the majority of even Republicans in this country will think this is a horrifying. nightmare and will not want this.
Like Ken Paxton should not be making these decisions.

Speaker 5 His last job before he worked in politics was at JCPenney. This man should not be in your fucking hospital room telling you what to do.
This is unbelievable.

Speaker 4 I don't care if his last job was being a fucking doctor, right? Like

Speaker 4 it also shows that like Republicans trying to have it, have some kind of find some kind of middle ground on this, right?

Speaker 4 And some of them are like, well, we will have exceptions for rape or incest or the life and health of the mother.

Speaker 4 But that still means that those decisions are not being made by the doctors who are treating these women.

Speaker 4 The decisions are being made by politicians who are writing it into law and then the doctors have to decide, well, is the health really in jeopardy here? Is the life really in jeopardy here?

Speaker 4 And then they have to get court orders and then they have to wait for it to go up through the different, you know, they have to go through the district court and then they go to the federal court and it's just a fucking mess, which is why Roe v.

Speaker 4 Wade offered the protections in the first place. Because a bunch of politicians and judges should not be having to make these fucking decisions.

Speaker 6 Literally, this is literally an attorney general saying, no, no, that doctor is wrong. I know better than this woman's doctor.

Speaker 5 I know better than this person.

Speaker 6 I will decide what medical care she can encounter.

Speaker 4 And we'll just wait for it to go through the courts.

Speaker 5 And sending threatening emails to hospitals in the Houston area saying he's going to prosecute them. Again, also, Ken Paxton, by the way, is like the worst of the worst.

Speaker 5 This is a man who was so bad at his job that he was impeached for bribery and abuse of office by Texas Republicans.

Speaker 4 He might get prosecuted by the feds in the next year or two.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is

Speaker 5 right. This is the logical end state of Republican policies, even the ones the moderates pretend that they're carving out some middle grounds.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And I think that's key because they'll, you know, some of them, there's a story in MBC that some of the Republican Senate candidates for 2024 are like trying to moderate their position on abortion.

Speaker 4 And then you have Trump out there talking about exceptions are important, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 This is why the exceptions thing, the 15-week thing, all of these attempts at supposed moderation just like don't actually work in real life.

Speaker 4 You talked about the 99 years that doctors could get. Missouri Republicans are now introducing legislation that would allow law enforcement to charge women who get abortions with homicide.

Speaker 4 So this is women getting charged with homicide.

Speaker 4 And if, of course, back in 2016, when Trump was running the first time, he said there has to be some kind of punishment for women, which is what Trump said.

Speaker 4 So Trump's going to try to sneak away from his position on abortion.

Speaker 4 But as Levitt said, if he wins and Republicans hold Congress, which they are likely to do, if Donald Trump wins, then we're going to see a nationwide ban.

Speaker 4 Conversely, if Joe Biden wins and Democrats keep the Senate and you replace Kirsten Sinema with Ruben Gallego, Democrats can pass a national law that will nullify the Texas ban so that women like Kate Cox, even in states like Texas, don't have to leave the state.

Speaker 4 So it's not just to stop awful things from happening in this case. It's also if we elect Joe Biden and Democrats, then we could get national abortion protections for people.

Speaker 4 So just another thing to think about.

Speaker 4 All right, before we go to break, if you're looking for something to binge this holiday season, Friends of the Pod subscribers now have access to a new limited series feed where you can listen uninterrupted to this land, Dreamtown, Atalanto, and another Russia right now.

Speaker 4 Great series. Take a listen.
Head to cricket.com slash friends where you can sign up and listen to some limited series. Also, Catch Pod Save America's final live show of the year in San Jose.

Speaker 4 It is tomorrow, December 13th. Co-host Adisu DeMessi will be there.
And I will not.

Speaker 4 Emily and I are on Baby Watch. What are you talking about?

Speaker 5 What do you you mean?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 I don't want to be a plane wide away from home if Emily goes into labor early.

Speaker 5 What are you going to do? What do you do?

Speaker 4 You're an observer.

Speaker 6 It's basically going to the theater for you.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 Anyway, it's going to be a great show. I can't wait to listen.

Speaker 4 Get your tickets at crooked.com slash events now.

Speaker 4 All right, when we come back, UAW President Sean Fane sits down with Tommy to talk about the union's historic wins and what comes next.

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Speaker 5 Sean Fane is the president of the United Auto Workers. Under his leadership, the UAW won historic contract victories this past year and now has its sights set on non-union plants across the U.S.

Speaker 5 Sean, thanks so much for doing the show.

Speaker 10 Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Speaker 5 I was hoping we could start with just a little bit of background about you, because I know you've been a UAW member for a very long time, but you were elected president as an outsider, as a reformer.

Speaker 5 I don't think a lot of folks were, you know, were betting on you in the early days when you started to run. Can you explain the basics of the reforms that led to you getting elected?

Speaker 10 Yeah, you know, really

Speaker 10 I'm just like a lot of our members. I've been frustrated for the better part of 29 years.

Speaker 10 We've had a very complacent leadership that just really was what I would say was more of a company union philosophy where they were somewhat working closely hand in hand with the companies. And

Speaker 10 when they do that, workers tend to pay the price. And with all the things that went on in this union, there was a corruption scandal with some of our leaders.

Speaker 10 The government became involved in that.

Speaker 10 I think that was a genesis for

Speaker 10 we've had reform movements in the past back in the 80s.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 this establishment, the administration caucus is what has ran this union for years, which was the top leadership. They created their own caucus, and they had immense power over everything

Speaker 10 and have had for longer than I've been alive. So with the things that have gone on recently in the last several years,

Speaker 10 there was a reform caucus that formed called Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 they pushed a referendum for one member, one vote, where every member was able to directly elect the top leadership of this union.

Speaker 10 In the past, we were elected by a convention system of elections, which

Speaker 10 every local was allowed so many delegates based on their size of their membership. And, you know, it was a very controlled environment.

Speaker 10 The conventions of the past, the administration caucus had their hand over it and

Speaker 10 was able to twist arms and threaten people and get the results they wanted. So there was really never a

Speaker 10 true democratic election in my lifetime. So UAWD was able to push for this referendum, and the membership

Speaker 10 supported it, and it passed overwhelmingly. So we were able to get one member, one vote, and that's really what catapulted myself and

Speaker 10 a lot of reformers into these positions of leadership. Because without that election, without a direct election of our top leaders, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.

Speaker 10 So that was really the catalyst.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I bet a lot of people listening are thinking, boy, I'd love a direct election in American politics.

Speaker 5 That Electoral College thing. It seems like a pretty good reform.

Speaker 4 You bet.

Speaker 5 So, you know, just six months into your tenure as president, the UAW launched strikes against three of the biggest automakers in the U.S.

Speaker 5 Can you describe for folks what you were fighting for and talk about some of the tactics you used, like the stand-up strike that was so different and successful?

Speaker 10 Yeah, you know, truly the platform I ran on was completely changing our culture in this union, changing everything we've been doing, because what we've been doing has not been working.

Speaker 10 Our numbers have been going backwards for years. Our conditions have been going backwards for years.
And

Speaker 10 it was really about just, you know, when I was elected was trying to bring in some people that weren't UAW members, that had experience in organized labor and growing unions and organizing and bargaining good contracts.

Speaker 10 recognizing people we did have in-house you know on staff and and and in the uaw that had a lot of the same frustrations i had that that knew that saw the issues that needed to be dealt with so you know we we got our team put together and mind you i'm only eight months months into this, so we've done a hell of a lot in eight short months.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 it was about changing the culture.

Speaker 10 You know, we've never ran a contract campaign, as sad as that sounds, we have never ran a contract campaign in my lifetime in the big three when it came to bargaining, which that to me was the

Speaker 10 thing that really got the membership rallied around our issues and their issues. I mean, it's their issues, not mine.

Speaker 10 And so, you know, we've had these tiers, what we call tiers of workers that, you know, are doing the same work on the same line or the same job in a plant or in a facility. And

Speaker 10 one person's at

Speaker 10 full pay, one person's taking eight years to get to full pay, and another may be a temp worker that's been out there for working as a temp for five or six years, but they're working seven days a week.

Speaker 10 That's not temporary work. So ending tiers was a big issue.
Cost of living allowance, naturally, because of what happened with inflation the last few years was a massive issue.

Speaker 10 We've had cost of living allowances since the 1940s and 50s, And

Speaker 10 it went away with the economic recession.

Speaker 10 The companies used the recession as a means to pretty much go backwards on a lot of our victories over the years. And

Speaker 10 so that was a big one.

Speaker 10 Retirement insecurity is a huge issue, not just with us, but in this country. So trying to address some of the retirement issues, job security, and then the EV transition, the EV battery work.

Speaker 10 When I was elected,

Speaker 10 we were screwed, just to be blunt about it. I mean, the joint ventures these companies had formed to circumvent their obligation to their workers and to our contracts, it's unacceptable.

Speaker 10 So, you know, there were several issues that we were trying to undo literally decades of going backwards in one contract.

Speaker 10 And so, you know, we ran a contract campaign to get the members rallied around those issues. You know, and corporate greed.
I mean, this all boils down to one thing, and it's corporate greed.

Speaker 10 And the fact that that's why we pushed the initiative, you know, and the narrative that

Speaker 10 the big three had made a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits in the last decade and corporate CEO pay went up 40 percent over the last four years with our two three percent pay increases in the last four years but with inflation we went backwards so we really wanted to get members rallied around those issues and so that was a piece of the contract campaign the other thing was you know, the communication, the transparency of our union, we had to turn that around because in the past, members and local leaders and even people on staff were always told, you know, you don't speak to the media, only the president speaks or only the vice president speaks, but then nobody spoke.

Speaker 10 So all we ever heard going into bargaining was

Speaker 10 the company putting the narrative out there about the greedy union workers or

Speaker 10 they got these pensions or they have this or that and it's bankrupt in the company, which is all lies.

Speaker 10 But we didn't have leadership that was aggressive in responding to that and putting the facts out. So we really it was important to have transparency with the membership.

Speaker 10 So throughout the entire process, before bargaining and during bargaining, we were doing weekly updates, Facebook Live, social media updates. And really, it just took off.

Speaker 10 It took off not just with our membership, but nationally and globally. It was great to see that.
And I think that all was laying the groundwork for where we were going to go.

Speaker 10 We knew with what we were going to be asking for, the companies weren't going to just be willing to freely give it.

Speaker 10 In all likelihood, we thought we would have to have a strike. So, you know, typically in the past also, our leadership would pick one company.

Speaker 10 They would call it the target company, and they would bargain with one company and set the pattern, and then they would go to the next two. I never liked that philosophy because I felt like

Speaker 10 it would leave the other two companies kind of with what they're doing, you know, just on the back burner waiting. And so we wanted to take on all three at the same time.

Speaker 10 The companies traditionally would, knowing that, would drag negotiations out until like a week before the deadline. And then it would start getting serious.

Speaker 10 But at that point, the president and the vice presidents would come in and cut the deal behind closed doors with the corporate leadership. So my philosophy in that was I didn't like that.

Speaker 10 We made it very clear to the companies before we even began bargaining that September 14th was a deadline, not a reference point. It was a deadline.

Speaker 10 And it was a deadline for all three companies, not one. We were not going to pick a target.
The target was all three of them.

Speaker 10 And we expected them to be at the table and get the agreement done by the 14th. And if they didn't, there would be repercussions for that.
There would be action.

Speaker 10 We knew in all like that we would have to strike to get what we needed to get. So, you know, we have a strike fund, and we wanted to figure out what was the best way to attack these companies

Speaker 10 and

Speaker 10 maximize the effect but also efficiently use our strike fund so that we can keep taking action on down the road rather than go through all the money in one big massive strike of everybody walking out at the same time.

Speaker 10 So we came up with a stand-up strike campaign and kind of a homage to our sit-down strikes. that built the labor movement back in the 30s.

Speaker 10 And it worked out, you know, I mean, really, this was all, it was uncharted territory for us.

Speaker 10 We were, you know, doing this, you know, we had a lot of people feed into this, our research team, and a lot of, you know,

Speaker 10 we were mapping out the plants, mapping out each company plant, what they did, how it would affect other plants down the line.

Speaker 10 And we tried to, you know, assimilate targets based off high-profile targets, mid-level targets and things, and the impact it would have on the company. So we really...

Speaker 10 We really did a lot of legwork on that early and research and just,

Speaker 10 you know, to formulate that plan.

Speaker 10 And it worked masterfully. I mean, it's,

Speaker 10 you know, so that was really what led into all this, I guess. I mean, that's a long answer, but there was a hate.

Speaker 4 No, it's good.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's a complicated, you know, set of actions.

Speaker 5 And no, but you guys really did a masterful job of getting the narrative out there and talking to folks, and I think getting public opinion on your side.

Speaker 5 And I know that will be important because I think you've said publicly the next step for the UAW is unionization drives at non-union plants in the U.S. Companies like Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla.

Speaker 5 Now, I know Elon Musk has like, you know, said some pretty nasty things about unions in the past.

Speaker 4 How does that work?

Speaker 5 What does like a unionization drive at those non-union factories look like?

Speaker 10 Well, you know, if you look in the past, I mean,

Speaker 10 again, we're a different union now than we've been in my lifetime. And I think

Speaker 10 that's the starting part of this is just, you know, I think we have a lot of momentum now.

Speaker 10 Throughout this entire contract campaign and through the strike,

Speaker 10 we've literally had thousands of non-union auto workers reaching out to us and actually signing cards online. And

Speaker 10 so, you know,

Speaker 10 I've always said this, I've always had this philosophy that, you know, when my grandparents' generation, when the UAW formed, I mean,

Speaker 10 people went through a Great Depression. They wanted a better life for themselves.
And so

Speaker 10 You know, the union, when they organized, you know, they found a better life and it led them to you know, they lived the American dream. And that American dream has been dead, you know, since the the

Speaker 10 I don't want to say the president's name of the 80s, but since that person took over and

Speaker 10 drove this economy in the ground and drove this country in the ground and went to a different philosophy of just enriching the rich and

Speaker 10 sacrificing the working class and the poor,

Speaker 10 we've been going through 40-plus years of this, and it's time to turn that around. And so this, to me, it's not about

Speaker 10 the Elon Musk of the world.

Speaker 10 I mean, Tesla's a company just like the rest of the non-union companies are, and they're getting rich off the backs of their workers. And it's interesting

Speaker 10 looking at the numbers alone. I mean, we looked at the big three.

Speaker 10 We talked about the quarter trillion dollars in profit the big three made and the 40 percent CO pay increases.

Speaker 10 But when you look at the top ten non-union auto manufacturers, they made over $12 trillion in revenue in the last decade, a trillion dollars in profits.

Speaker 10 The Japanese, and what we call the Japanese and Korean six, made $480 billion in profits, and the German three made $460 billion. And, you know, Toyota of all of them,

Speaker 10 I actually was just in Georgetown two days ago and spoke to some workers from Toyota there in Georgetown and

Speaker 10 who have expressed a desire to organize. And

Speaker 10 as I told them,

Speaker 10 these companies will run massive campaigns. They'll bring in union-busting firms.
They'll put every negative narrative they can out there about unions.

Speaker 10 And it's all designed for one reason, to put fear in the mind of workers, to make them afraid of recognizing the real power that they have.

Speaker 10 I mean, the workers have the power, but when you don't have a union and you're an employee at will, you don't have a lot of power because they can fire you any day of the week.

Speaker 10 You know, we talk about the UAW bump since we bargained these record contracts. Right away, Toyota three days later gave an 11% pay increase to their employees.

Speaker 10 Honda followed suit. Nissan followed suit.
Hyundai gave them 25% through 2028, which matched what we had done. They could have done this a year ago.
I mean, they could have done it six months ago.

Speaker 10 Why do they do it now? Because they know the threat is there, that these workers are going to realize the potential of the power they have.

Speaker 10 So they're trying to throw them some crumbs, hoping that they'll not come for their full share of the pie. And,

Speaker 10 you know, you look at all those things, and it all comes back to one thing, it's corporate greed.

Speaker 10 And it's insane to me that, you know, you look at the history of the Big Three, and we played to that in this campaign. Toyota alone made $256 billion.

Speaker 10 They made $6 billion more than the big three combined in the last decade.

Speaker 10 And their CEO's pay went up 125% in the last two years.

Speaker 10 They're doing all that off the backs of the workers. So, you know, this all comes back to one thing.

Speaker 10 You know, when it comes to organizing, you know, we have the philosophy of record profits and equal record contracts. And these workers don't have contracts.

Speaker 10 The only way they're going to get a contract is through organizing and joining the union.

Speaker 10 But they've got to stick to facts. And that was my message to the workers at Toyota.

Speaker 10 And that's my message to all these workers over the country that don't have a union is, you know, you have the power. And

Speaker 10 it's only going to happen when workers get fed up and they stand together. Because the companies and the wealthy class is always

Speaker 10 taking all the loot, doing what they're doing, you know, having 26 billionaires have as much wealth as half of humanity.

Speaker 10 That happens because they divide the working class over every issue under the sun, whether it's guns or whatever it is. You know, working class people fight over all these things.

Speaker 10 You know, then they're scraping to get by paycheck to paycheck, working seven days a week, working multiple jobs, trying to survive.

Speaker 10 And the companies in the corporate world and the billionaire class is walking away with all the money and concentrating the wealth in fewer and fewer hands. So

Speaker 10 when we talk about that, you know,

Speaker 10 that to me is something that I learned from COVID that, you know, it was a silver lining, if there was one in the COVID pandemic, was

Speaker 10 We had a great example there. If you look at the fast food industry, people said, I'm not coming to work at McDonald's for $12 an hour and risking my life.

Speaker 10 And they stayed home.

Speaker 4 And what happened?

Speaker 10 McDonald's started paying $20 an hour, $25 an hour. The pay went up immensely to get people to come to work.

Speaker 10 And to me, that's a great lesson for working-class people at the power that we have.

Speaker 10 So, you know, when you're an employee at will, you don't have that power as much because you could be fired any reason or no reason at all as an employee at will.

Speaker 10 But when you have a union, you can't be. You have due process.
You have a contract that governs those terms.

Speaker 10 And so, you know, to me, working class people need to focus on, we need to harness that power.

Speaker 10 And the best way to do that is organizing and unions can coming together and working and fighting together in all this to raise a standard for working class people. And

Speaker 10 that to me is the key.

Speaker 10 You know, for instance, Toyota and these companies that gave these raises and stuff here recently, we call the UAW bump. They can take it away tomorrow.

Speaker 10 The contract we just bargained for, they can't take that away tomorrow. They have to live up to the terms of the agreement.

Speaker 10 So, you know, there's so many benefits, and I just think workers have to realize the power we have.

Speaker 10 If we withhold our labor, nothing moves, no matter what industry it is. And that to me is the lesson out of COVID and out of that, the fast food sector.
What we saw there and everywhere is

Speaker 10 the billionaire class and the other parties want to call these people job creators or whatever stupid name they want to give them. They're exploiters is what they are.

Speaker 10 And we have the power, but if we they you know, the billionaire class, the corporate class can build all the factories and all the businesses they want.

Speaker 10 But if workers don't do the work, nothing moves. Nothing's going to get produced.
Nothing will get done. So we have to recognize that power, and it's organized labor's job to lead that fight.

Speaker 10 So that's really what this whole initiative is about.

Speaker 5 Yeah, agreed. You mentioned political support in your answer there.

Speaker 5 You know, president who we won't name ribes with pagan.

Speaker 5 Obviously, the workers who put their jobs on the line and hit the picket line deserve all the credit for these recent successes.

Speaker 5 But I'm wondering what it meant to you, to your members, to have political support from the White House, to have President Biden become the first president to join a picket line.

Speaker 10 It's a big deal. I mean,

Speaker 10 it's never happened.

Speaker 10 You know, so

Speaker 10 naturally, it's a big deal.

Speaker 10 You know, we and that's one thing else

Speaker 10 other thing that I'm proud of. You know, when we took over, you know, we've we had a history in this union and a lot of organized labor of just endorsing one party and,

Speaker 10 not really requiring much work out of them. And

Speaker 10 so that's one thing I said early on was we were not just going to give endorsements, they're going to be earned. And we mean that.

Speaker 10 And there was a lot of work to be done with the EV battery transition.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 the proofs in the pudding

Speaker 10 for our members and for me as far as when we make endorsements. So

Speaker 10 President Biden coming and visiting the picket line was a big deal. Their team working with us, Secretary of Labor Julie Su and

Speaker 10 U.S. Trade Ambassador Catherine Tai, dealing with some of the Korean issues with some of these partnerships that these companies had,

Speaker 10 they worked hard with us, and not just with us, with the companies,

Speaker 10 to make this happen. So

Speaker 10 I think there's two disparities when you look at these two candidates right now. I mean, obviously

Speaker 10 you have a president that came and visited the picket line and stood with workers, and you had another former president that went to a non-union business and had a rally for union workers at a non-union business.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 that person's just trying to play to the crowd. And it's,

Speaker 10 you know,

Speaker 10 I think workers are smarter than that. You look at the track record of that person, and he has an abysmal track record when it comes to unions and organized labor, and workers having their fair share.

Speaker 10 So, you know, there's two

Speaker 10 with the two leading candidates, there's two great disparities there. I mean, and so obviously, but, you know, the president coming and visiting our picket line was a big deal, and

Speaker 10 we still have work to do, but we're definitely on the right track.

Speaker 5 I mean, about that sort of broader labor record in contrast. I mean, I know Biden joined the picket line.

Speaker 5 You talked about the work he's done with you guys on EVs and the battery factories, but also the NLRB has taken steps to prevent employers from unfairly impacting union recognition votes by firing pro-union workers.

Speaker 5 I saw one reporter call that the NLRB's most important ruling in decades for labor. There's new overtime rules.
They're updating the Davis-Bacon Act.

Speaker 5 And then when you look back at the Trump record, it's him stacking the courts with anti-labor judges. He made Eugene Scalia, who's a union-busting corporate lawyer, his labor secretary.

Speaker 5 NLRB is making it harder for workers. But I still noticed that Trump got 40% of the vote from union households according to the 2020 exit polls.

Speaker 5 So I'm just wondering what you think leads to that level of support. Is it people just care about other things that aren't necessarily union-specific?

Speaker 5 Is it lack of understanding of that contrast you talked about earlier? What's your take?

Speaker 10 I think we have to do a better job. Again, I go back to our leadership.
Our leadership's been silent for years, for decades. And we have to get the facts out there.

Speaker 10 And even with this organizing campaign,

Speaker 10 as I told these workers at Georgetown the other day, and we're going to keep talking about this, the companies put the fear out there. They want fear, fear, fear.
That's how they operate.

Speaker 10 But we have the facts on our side. Working class people have the facts on our side.
And the facts are very simple when it comes to this.

Speaker 10 When we talk about the profits of these companies, and it's no different in politics.

Speaker 10 You know, I think the former president, who I refuse to say his name, you know, the facts speak for themselves about where he stands for working-class people.

Speaker 10 And I think we really have to put that out there. We really have to continue to pound that home to our members and the working class people in general.

Speaker 10 Again, I go back to the billionaire class, the wealthy class, by design,

Speaker 10 they create a lot of issues out there and try to divide the electorate over single issues. And it works.
It's worked in the past. But we've got to be focused on what matters.

Speaker 10 And what matters at the end of the day is we go to work to put food on the table. We go to work to have a decent standard of living.
And most people are struggling in that realm.

Speaker 10 Majority of people don't have any retirement savings, can't afford to save for retirement. And so there are a lot of issues I think that

Speaker 10 I think the Democrat Party needs to get focused on, and really we need to drive together. And I think we'll have a lot of success, a lot more success.
I think the last person getting elected

Speaker 10 prior to President Biden,

Speaker 10 I think that was more of a,

Speaker 10 I don't know if I can drop an F-bomb or not, but an F-U to

Speaker 10 the establishment because they were just fed up. People are frustrated.
They're frustrated with going backwards and fighting and struggling.

Speaker 10 And so I think that was just basically a fuck you to everyone that I'll vote for this idiot because I'm just pissed. And

Speaker 10 so I think we really have to connect the dots and just really put the facts out there. The facts speak for themselves.
And so I just think we really need to

Speaker 10 bury that, you know, embed that. And I think it'll change.

Speaker 5 Yeah. It was a fuck you to elites.
It was a fuck you to the establishment. It was people feeling like it didn't matter who they voted for.
Nothing changed significantly in their lives.

Speaker 5 So yeah, I agree with you there. Last question.
Speaking of divisive issues,

Speaker 5 as I was preparing for this and reading up on you, I heard that you're a big 90s rap guy. I don't know how you bridge the East Coast, West Coast divide that was really problematic for a long time.

Speaker 5 But also, that you occasionally will do some rapping at karaoke. Is this factual?

Speaker 10 I've done it. Yeah, I've done a few.
But yeah, I guess I'm Midwest, so you know,

Speaker 10 I like the East Coast and West Coast. I mean, I like Tupac, but I love, you know, I mean, I love Public Enemy.
I love

Speaker 10 a lot of the music back in the 90s. But I mean, even, I mean, I raised two daughters, so I mean, my daughters are

Speaker 10 28 and 31 now. but, you know, I mean, they

Speaker 10 we always, we shared music, you know, so I always stay up to date on all that stuff. They keep you young.
Oh, yeah, you bet. So, I mean, it's,

Speaker 10 I love all the genres of music, but naturally, I played basketball back in the 80s and high school and stuff, so I was always,

Speaker 10 you know, back

Speaker 10 run DMC was my days. I hate to say my age, and the Beastie Boys came out in my senior year, so, you know, I'm.

Speaker 10 I'm telling them a good time.

Speaker 5 Listen, I'm 43, so the 90s were my defining generation for music, for culture, for everything. I have a one-year-old daughter.

Speaker 5 So God knows what she'll be listening to when she's in high school that I'll be either hating or trying to pretend I understand. But listen, thank you so much for doing the show.

Speaker 5 Thanks for all the work you're doing.

Speaker 5 It's incredibly impressive and inspiring. And, you know, keep at it.
Best of luck, kid these, Tesla and everywhere else.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah, no, I appreciate it. And I look forward to hopefully more dialogue in the future and talking about more victories to come with organizing.
And we're going to grow.

Speaker 10 We're going to grow the working class and grow this movement. And it's time working class people get their fair share.

Speaker 5 Amen. Amen.
Well, thank you again.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 4 All right. Thanks to Sean Fane for joining us.
Everyone have a great week. And

Speaker 4 you'll all hear the San Jose show on Thursday. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 4 Pot Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
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