Trump’s Surprise Q-chella Set

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 3 I'm Succession Spoiler, John Levin.

Speaker 4 I'm Tommy Vitor. Oh, are you why we're getting yelled at on Twitter?

Speaker 3 No, no, that's a separate incident. Okay.

Speaker 4 Okay. We'll sort this out in the after.

Speaker 1 Anyway, I know we have to be careful in today's episode because even Tommy hasn't seen it. I haven't seen it either.
You haven't either? What is wrong with you?

Speaker 3 It's hard to get to it now.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. A lot going on.
Anyway, on today's show, Ron DeSantis tries to reboot his presidential prospects in Iowa. Donald Trump calls into Mike Flynn's QAnon rally.

Speaker 1 Joe Biden is much more optimistic about a debt ceiling deal than Kevin McCarthy. Senator Joe Manchin flirts with playing Spoiler in 2024.
And Diane Feinstein returns to the Senate.

Speaker 1 Then I talked to the youngest Democratic Party chair in the country, North Carolina's Anderson Clayton, about her plan to turn her state blue.

Speaker 4 Tarheel blue or Duke blue?

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It is.

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Speaker 1 All right, let's get to the news. Ron DeSantis is busy trying to revive a campaign that hasn't started yet.

Speaker 1 He had Iowa to himself this weekend after Trump canceled an event in Des Moines Moines because of a tornado that never happened.

Speaker 1 So DeSantis twisted the knife by making an unscheduled stop there in Des Moines,

Speaker 1 talking about how sunny the weather was.

Speaker 1 It was pretty funny. All right.
The New York Times says that he impressed the Republicans he met, showing off the, quote, sometimes enigmatic lighter side of his personality by flipping burgers.

Speaker 1 Also, he let his wife talk a lot. So I guess that's one way he showed off his personality by handing it over to his wife.

Speaker 3 The bumper bowling that was this article is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 I know, and I couldn't tell. It's so funny because like a couple days before the New York Times had an article that was like, why Ron DeSantis is limping to the starting line?

Speaker 1 And suddenly like two days later, he's impressing voters in Iowa.

Speaker 3 I just love the idea that like

Speaker 3 finally the pugnacious DeSantis we've all heard about because he said nice weather we're having.

Speaker 1 And he's started flipping a few burgers.

Speaker 3 They called it a pointed pit stop, which I think is a very, this is

Speaker 1 really, really stretching. The DeSantis team also invited Politico's Jonathan Martin to Tallahassee to make their case for the governor's candidacy, which is basically:

Speaker 1 A, their internal polling shows DeSantis does better than Trump against Biden in swing states and that he also has higher favorability ratings, especially in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, still after a lot of Trump attacks on DeSantis.

Speaker 1 B, they think most of the big GOP donors will back DeSantis once he announces. And C, they think he can unite the Republicans who aren't MAGA diehards and maybe is the only candidate who can do so.

Speaker 1 Do you guys buy any of this DeSantis spin? Is he being counted out a bit too early? What do we think, Tommy?

Speaker 4 Definitely being written off too early. I mean, like, you could make a long list of candidates that were declared, their candidacy was declared dead, and then they went on to get the nomination.

Speaker 4 John McCain in 2008 comes to mind. Remember, he basically fired all the staff, moved everybody to New Hampshire and started over.
So it's too early to write off.

Speaker 1 We were pretty close, too.

Speaker 4 We were not doing well for a while.

Speaker 1 There was a, I remember, was it a New York Post story where the headline was, Hillary ready to accept her coronation? Yeah, that sounds right. In September of 2007?

Speaker 3 I got a friend in the opposite.

Speaker 1 If that went up on the wall.

Speaker 4 That doesn't mean he's doing well. But yes, it's definitely too early to write him off.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, you can't be written off any earlier.

Speaker 1 It's true. He hasn't announced yet.

Speaker 3 He hasn't announced.

Speaker 3 I would say that if he goes down in flames, it was the right time to write him off. That's right.
If he comes back, it was too early.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, that's the announcement. Check back in with John Lovett.
Some trench in and out. It's so ridiculous.
Yes, of course it is. It's all silly.
Well, let's talk about their case.

Speaker 1 What do you buy about the case? What do you not buy about their case?

Speaker 4 So there seems to be a couple core, two or three core arguments.

Speaker 4 One is everyone knows the majority of the Republican Party wants to move on, said DeSantis' gubernatorial campaign manager and closest aide to Jonathan Martin.

Speaker 4 I think that's maybe that's true, but Donald Trump is far and away the Republican frontrunner at the moment. So it doesn't seem like all of them want to move on.

Speaker 4 So I'm not sure that that quite adds up yet. There's probably a lot of moderate voters who do want to move on from Trump.

Speaker 4 There's probably voters who are worried about electability that want to move on from Donald Trump and look at the midterms and think he's at fault and look at 2020 and know the reality of what happened was not that the election was stolen.

Speaker 4 But I think it's probably a little early to make that argument or to say it's conclusive.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 maybe you can make an argument that they want to want to move on, but the surest sign that they don't want to move on is that he's being, is that DeSantis is being dominated by Trump in the polls.

Speaker 3 If he can make this electability argument, then maybe people will want to move on to DeSantis.

Speaker 1 So I think it's true that it's definitely true that most Republican voters are not paying attention to the primary right now. And national polls...

Speaker 1 don't tell you nearly as much as about the race as early state polls.

Speaker 1 National polls never tell you much about a primary, but especially this early and especially in comparison to these early state polls, which in fairness, Trump is still leading in a lot of these early state polls.

Speaker 1 But again, it's early. I do see some problems in the DeSantis case.
One,

Speaker 1 it's hard to unite the donors and the non-MAGA diehards when there are still so many other candidates in the race besides DeSantis and Trump.

Speaker 1 And I think some of these donors who were like maybe high on DeSantis at first and now are sort of backing away, they're not like going back to Trump.

Speaker 1 They're like thinking about Nikki Haley or Tim Scott or some of these other people.

Speaker 4 They're all getting quoted in the paper saying, we're keeping our powder dry.

Speaker 3 There's something so

Speaker 3 cynical about even the DeSantis spin already. If it's too early to count them out, I feel like it's also at this point,

Speaker 3 they're saying, how dare you count him out? We have all these perspective reasons. We think he's ultimately going to win this boxing match.
He's stronger. He's fitter.

Speaker 3 He's able to sustain himself over more rounds, but he's also not willing to punch yet.

Speaker 3 And they make this argument like, well, obviously he's not going to start going after Trump until after he's officially declared his candidacy.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay, well, then we'll see how it goes once you do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think his central challenge here is making the electability case.

Speaker 1 And first of all, we've seen that some of DeSantis' more extreme positions, like the six-week abortion ban, hurting his own electability argument and spooking donors and voters who were sort of thinking about DeSantis because they thought he was more electable than Trump.

Speaker 1 And now he's taking these extreme positions that don't make him so. And also, as you said, Lovett, he's got to make that case.

Speaker 1 And he's got to make it against Trump so that it's sharp enough to get attention and draw blood, but not too sharp that it pisses off voters who still like Donald Trump, even if they might want to move on.

Speaker 1 And that's a, and he has not figured that out yet. And it may be an unsolvable problem.
I mean, like, there was another story, I forget where, but

Speaker 1 DeSantis can't even say that Trump lost

Speaker 1 in 2020 yet.

Speaker 3 That's what I I was going to talk about here because

Speaker 3 he thinks he can do this with subtlety. He says, like, we have to move on from this loser mentality.
Here is my electability argument. But he's now been asked dozens of times about the 2020 elections.

Speaker 3 He will not give an answer. He has the audacity to be annoyed that he's being asked.

Speaker 3 And so, how can you make a case that you believe Donald Trump is a loser and therefore we must move on from him while endorsing election deniers and refusing to say that Donald Trump lost the election?

Speaker 3 And forget how hypocritical it is and how illogical it is. He just seems weak.
He just seems like a politician. So it sort of hits him twice.

Speaker 4 The other quote in the Jonathan Martin piece was: not only will Republicans have significant problems in traditional battleground states if Trump is the GOP nominee, but any of these reach states would already be off the table.

Speaker 4 And I agree with you. I mean, that might be true, but DeSantis is steadily weakening his own case with the abortion ban, with his culture war fights, with getting beaten up by Disney and Bob Iger.

Speaker 4 So what the big takeaway I had from the Jonathan Martin piece was, is is DeSantis' staffers realize that they need to get in the game and play the game a little bit.

Speaker 4 They can't cocoon him in Florida in a legislative session. They can't only talk to like, you know, bloggers at TP USA or whatever.
They need to play the game a little bit.

Speaker 4 So they call in the media elite that all the other elites read, and they try to spin Jonathan Martin for a while. And like, I don't know, I think Jonathan's piece, I mean, I saw him this weekend.

Speaker 4 I talked to him about it. He came away thinking, okay, these folks are getting in the game now.
They're going to try. But they still have a lot of convincing to do.

Speaker 1 What did you make of his Iowa trip as our resident Iowa expert?

Speaker 4 Thanks for asking, John. I mean, like, so

Speaker 4 he's got a,

Speaker 3 like a, like a, what are those?

Speaker 1 Corncob?

Speaker 3 No, no, no. Like a

Speaker 1 hay? Like a hay, a piece of hay. Really, really in touch with rural America.

Speaker 3 He's got a chicken. I don't know.
What do they do over there? I can't. It's hard to see from up on the plane.

Speaker 1 A piece of straw? Yeah, a piece of straw, sir. Straw.

Speaker 4 We're landing on straw?

Speaker 1 Sure. All right.

Speaker 4 So this is what the

Speaker 4 guy comes. Let me get on my hay bale real quick.
Tom Tom Sawyer chew on. So the Des Moines Register headline was: DeSantis in Iowa calls for positive alternative to Biden.

Speaker 4 Though absent, Trump's presence was felt. So he was even felt in the headline.
It was a completely standard trip to Iowa.

Speaker 4 He went to Northwest Iowa to do this sort of fundraising event with a member of Congress.

Speaker 4 All the Republican elites from the state were there, the governor, the AG, all these statewide elected officials.

Speaker 3 So good thing to do.

Speaker 4 It's kind of like the hearken steak fry, right? You flip some burgers, you press the flesh, you meet with a bunch of influential people. Then I think he went to Cedar Rapids, which is in eastern Iowa.

Speaker 4 And I guess they just added this last-minute stop to troll Trump a little bit because he canceled his event with his fake tornado warning.

Speaker 4 So they went to some barbecue place right by the airport in Des Moines, and I guess probably flew out that way. It was fine.
Like you got the coverage you want. You check all the cliche boxes.

Speaker 4 You talk about Casey's breakfast pizza, blah, blah, blah. The really weird thing about this is DeSantis' super PAC announced a bunch of endorsements.

Speaker 4 I just don't get how you can have a super PAC announcing endorsements for a campaign that doesn't exist yet.

Speaker 3 It's also weird that they're not allowed to coordinate.

Speaker 3 So I guess it must mean that the DeSantis, some DeSantis org published the list publicly and then the super PAC had to run with it or they're just breaking the law, which is just plausible.

Speaker 1 It's so weird. Speaking of the super PAC, one more thing I wanted to say about that is after the CNN town hall, DeSantis' super PAC just like unloaded on Donald Trump.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They basically they tweeted something that could have come from like the DNC about everything that Donald Trump did wrong in the town hall, particularly focused around electability.

Speaker 1 If DeSantis starts making a case like his super PAC has been making recently, then I think he's got a pretty decent shot, but he's kind of got to get to that level.

Speaker 3 Well, I think he has to actually make a case against Donald Trump, and then we will see, is it working?

Speaker 3 Are we finally going to see if there's actually going to be a contest here or not?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 The only really interesting thing from the Iowa standpoint that jumped out at me was this guy, Bob Vanderplatz, who's kind of a right-wing religious conservative activist, criticized Trump via tweet about for criticizing the six-week abortion ban.

Speaker 4 So it does seem like the first little inkling that maybe some activists think there is some room to attack Trump from the right on that issue.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's going to work personally, but it was notable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought what was interesting about the

Speaker 1 JMart piece, too, is the way he framed it is like DeSantis has to unite the like evangelical conservatives, like the people who would have, who are like behind Ted Cruz in 2016, with like the more moderate John Kasich type Republicans, with the Mitch McConnell GOP establishment.

Speaker 1 Those are like three pretty disparate groups to get together. And

Speaker 1 I don't know if he can do that.

Speaker 4 Trump lost evangelical voters in Iowa to Ted Cruz in 2016, but that was long before he named every right-wing judge they could ever have hoped for and got Roe v. Wade overturned.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 Despite not going to Iowa, Trump kept himself in the news by giving a long interview to a new outlet called The Messenger, where he mocked CNN for being traumatized by the town hall, DeSantis for having, quote, no personality.

Speaker 1 And he also, as you mentioned, Tommy, seemed vaguely critical of the governor's six-week abortion ban, even though he refused to say whether he would sign or support a national version.

Speaker 1 Trump also called into the Reawaken America rally on Saturday night, which is a Christian nationalist organization that has ties to QAnon and Nazis, and told convicted felon Mike Mike Flynn that he will bring him back if he gets a second term.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 5 My wife's going crazy.

Speaker 1 Not the only one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think he wants people to just have great lives.

Speaker 3 He was reaching for healthy, wealthy, and wise, I think. And he couldn't find it.

Speaker 3 Stay wealthy, stay healthy. You got to stay healthy.

Speaker 1 So I counted exactly three media mentions of Trump's call into QAnon Palooza. A tweet from Never Trump pundit Ron Filipkowski and pieces in Newsweek and Rolling Stone.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Don't you think this should have have been bigger news and why wasn't it?

Speaker 3 Should it have been bigger news? I mean, is it bigger?

Speaker 1 Shiny news. Shiny news.
Forget about bigger news.

Speaker 3 Yes, I guess it should have been bigger news.

Speaker 3 I don't know. It's like he's been doing this sort of footsie with QAnon on True Social and Twitter forever.
He's been, and he's been, he pardoned Mike Flynn for his crimes already.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, it's hard to get. I don't know.
At this point, it's like,

Speaker 3 was this worth another cycle similar to the cycle that happened when Trump met with anti-Semites in Mar-a-Lago? Probably, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 But I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 4 So, this event, the Reawaken America Tour, I think it's bigger than even just QAnon. It's like conspiracy theory Coachella.

Speaker 4 Like, you got the guy from Loose Change, the 9-11 documentary, I think, spoke at it. There's a bunch of 5G conspiracy people that's anti-vaccine.
It's like white Christian nationalists.

Speaker 4 They're all there. They bring all these people together.
They cross-pollinate their crazy shit, and then they sell them merch, and that's how they make money.

Speaker 4 So it's this like grifting conspiracy thing.

Speaker 4 I agree, it's like objectively a weird and big deal for the president of the United States to embrace this conspiracy theory that, if you really understand it, says that JFK Jr.

Speaker 4 is still alive and he's going to be president someday soon. But I think the truth is truth QAnon has become like truth social is the home of QAnon now.
Trump re-truths Q people all the time.

Speaker 4 And I think a couple of years ago, he was asked about

Speaker 1 QAnon and he said uh is that supposed to be a bad thing if i can help save the world from problems i'm willing to do it so he's been on the record kind of like endorsing it it felt incremental to me so everyone got very upset about the cnn10 hall i don't know if you guys noticed that yeah wait when when did that happen there's some people people were a little upset about that I think that the greater danger in the media coverage of Trump this time around is not giving him a platform to say extremely unpopular shit.

Speaker 1 I think it is failing to report when he says extremely unpopular shit because voters need a constant reminder of that if they are going to assess him as a candidate because no one has any fucking memory whatsoever anymore.

Speaker 4 For sure, but did he come out in favor of Q at this rally or did he just call into a rally that is pro-Q? I think that's sort of the bank shot that makes it a little more complicated to report on.

Speaker 3 He continues to associate himself with and seek the support of and praise some of the most heinous and unhinged people in our political process.

Speaker 1 And also, there were, this was held at Trump Dural,

Speaker 1 one of his

Speaker 1 resorts. There were two

Speaker 1 neo-Nazis who they had to disinvite from the thing, who were like, there's so many horrible people associated with this.

Speaker 1 And again, yeah, there was a whole news cycle around Kanye, Nick Fontes, and him meeting. There should just be another one.

Speaker 1 Why not remind people that he's doing this? That is news.

Speaker 4 There's a lawsuit out today against Rudy Giuliani by a former staffer that is is full of truly heinous allegations.

Speaker 4 But one of them in this complaint, she alleges that Rudy Giuliani told her he was selling pardons for $2 million each and splitting the money with Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of string to chase right now.

Speaker 1 Also, Mike Flynn, convicted criminal, pardoned by Donald Trump, but also wanted Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines, spread a conspiracy that Italy used military satellites to switch votes from Trump to Biden.

Speaker 1 Well, that happened. Thinks that's true.

Speaker 1 Thinks COVID vaccines are infused with microchips, designed for mind control, took a QAnon oath, and then pled the fifth when asked by the January 6th Committee if he believes in the peaceful transition of power.

Speaker 1 Forgot about that one. Trump calls into a rally and says, want you back in the White House my second time around.
Think that's worth reporting. Wish you well.

Speaker 1 That'd be for lunch. I mean, it's not.
Like, I missed

Speaker 1 out for the outrage over

Speaker 1 CNN letting Trump just say a bunch of shit that will make it less likely that he's elected president.

Speaker 1 All right, so Trump was asked by the messenger, which is a new outlet that has raised a ton of money, run by the former, former editor of the Hill, Shimmy Hinkelstein or something. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Who cares? Trump friend or something.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so the Messenger asked Trump why he's doing all these non-mAGA media interviews.

Speaker 1 And Trump said, the one thing I find is that if it gets ratings, they know it, they cover you, even if they say they're not going to.

Speaker 1 Seems like a fairly accurate observation about the mainstream media, but what do you guys think?

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Yeah, of course. I think this goes to what you're saying before, though.

Speaker 3 I feel like there are these

Speaker 3 two competing ideas that we have to have in our minds about

Speaker 3 the way Trump is covered and how we react to it, which is that

Speaker 3 there is this valid and earned criticism of how the mainstream press covers Trump. They can, as you were saying, elide the threat,

Speaker 3 downplay or just do the work of making Trump make sense, right? Describing what he is, his rhetoric is having some cogence to it when it doesn't.

Speaker 3 Or even more damaging is just covering Trump, actually, I think, fairly, which they often do, but then trying to elevate the sins of Democrats to kind of make it feel more level, attacking Democrats or Washington or Hillary or Biden.

Speaker 3 And like, that is something I think we have worked the refs pretty hard on for the past like now six years. And I think something we've moved the needle, but not enough.

Speaker 3 But then there's this other side of it, which is this fear that Trump has these magical powers.

Speaker 3 And when he says deeply unpopular things in a town hall, basically open to a national abortion law, proud of a turning road, doesn't support Ukraine, supports default, whatever it may be.

Speaker 4 Pardoning the J6.

Speaker 3 Pardoning the January 6th

Speaker 3 insurrectionist or claim or not.

Speaker 1 Which even Josh Hawley disagreed with him on. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Welcome to the Resistance, Joshua.

Speaker 3 But there's this, I think, this fear comes from a lot of bewilderment about the fact that Trump could even get close to the White House in the first place, that we, the kind of careful watchers of politics, can see how bad and dangerous he is, but most people can't.

Speaker 3 But that's not true, right? And there's a little bit of, I think, working the refs or attacking CNN because you're afraid of what happens when Trump's words hit people's ears.

Speaker 3 And I think that, to me, is can be, I think, the least helpful form of sort of media outrage.

Speaker 1 I think it's, what do you think the media's job is? I don't necessarily think that the media's job is to defeat Donald Trump or when they interview him.

Speaker 1 It's certainly not. When they interview him to like act like we would if we interviewed Donald Trump.
That's not their job.

Speaker 1 I do think their job is to just report in an objective way what he's doing, what he's saying, and then let people decide for themselves.

Speaker 1 And you're right, most people in the country have made up their minds about Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 But again, it's just, it's reminding people what he is doing, what he is saying all the time, because otherwise, you know, it all sort of gets mashed up and you forget all the phrases.

Speaker 1 Forget everything.

Speaker 1 I forgot all that Mike Flynn stuff I just read. I forgot most of that until I read it today.

Speaker 3 And that Donald Trump is at his least popular when he's most present, which is another lesson that I think we, we kind of, our memories lose resolution.

Speaker 3 And I think there's a lot of people who remember rightly that Trump sucked up the oxygen in the 2016 primaries and no one else could really kind of catch up to him.

Speaker 3 And there was the CNN with the empty podium and it was all treated like a joke. And so when they see a CNN town hall coming, they go, has the media learned nothing? As if it's a rhetorical question.

Speaker 3 It's like, no, they've learned a lot, but also they still do things that are pretty shitty sometimes. Like it's actually more nuanced than that.

Speaker 3 And the fact, and I think in hindsight, when you look back on 2016 and to a lesser extent 2020, was the problem the amount of coverage that Donald Trump had got, or was the problem the kind of coverage he got and the way Democrats were covered in the horse race that sort of denied enough attention to the actual stakes?

Speaker 4 And also, probably don't take them live with a friendly audience. You know, Caitlin Collins did a lot of good work there, but like, let's give a shot collar on the guy.

Speaker 4 You're not going to fact-check everything. So, it's expectations management here for everybody.

Speaker 1 To your point about 2016, though, if you gave me a choice between I wish we had more fact-checks on Donald Trump's speeches or

Speaker 1 fewer stories about Hillary Clinton's emails, I definitely take the fewer stories about Hillary's emails over the fact checks.

Speaker 1 We are not fact-checking our way to a Donald Trump defeat in 2024. That is not the fucking problem.

Speaker 3 If the fact-check gun fired strong enough rounds, I think we would be in a different situation.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't know he was a liar.

Speaker 1 Oh, my goodness. My goodness.
My goodness.

Speaker 1 I would not have voted for none of it. What do you mean it's not true? He's a liar.
None of this is true, but he went on television.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about Joe Biden, who's meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday in an attempt to avoid a catastrophic default that's just a few weeks away.

Speaker 1 Janet Yellen on Monday came out again and said, oh, yeah, June 1st, still the deadline. Still the ex-Aid.
Still the ex-A.

Speaker 3 Janet Yellen being.

Speaker 1 Jesus.

Speaker 3 Wow, I was not.

Speaker 1 You weren't going to make another Janet Yellen poop joke.

Speaker 3 No, I wasn't.

Speaker 3 I was going to say, I was going to say she is being, you know, congress is filled with children and she is being a teacher giving them a deadline uh that uh they probably can blow through safely that's a good metaphor i like yeah um while she uh desperately desperately oh

Speaker 1 tries to john keep anyway the president told reporters over the weekend that he's optimistic about negotiating a deal with republicans and laid out some policy conditions he's a no on work requirements for medicaid sounded like a maybe on work requirements for other aid programs Meanwhile, House Republicans are now adding border policy to their list of debt ceiling demands, which doesn't seem all that constructive.

Speaker 1 And Kevin McCarthy gave a press conference on Monday where he's like, no, we're not at all close. Things are bad.
We're not making progress.

Speaker 1 I think Joe Biden doesn't really want a deal, all that bullshit. So let's talk about Biden.
He certainly seems to have moved off his position of refusing to negotiate over the debt ceiling.

Speaker 1 You think that's a smart move? Did he realistically have any other options?

Speaker 4 I mean, I think what the White House would say is we will negotiate over the budget. We will not negotiate over the debt ceiling.
You can tell me it's a distinction without a difference.

Speaker 4 But I think the point they are trying to say is you are not giving us something when you offer to raise the debt ceiling. If you want to negotiate, let's negotiate.

Speaker 4 But the Washington Post just reported that the White House proposed closing about a dozen tax loopholes to

Speaker 4 get money in, reduce the deficit. It got immediately rejected by the Republican Party.
Congressman Dusty Johnson, real name,

Speaker 4 who was a moderate, apparently, apparently, said their two red lines are no clean debt ceiling increase and no tax increases. I'm sorry, that's just not a serious position.

Speaker 4 You're not seriously concerned about the debt if you won't consider raising more revenue. One of those loopholes was

Speaker 4 in the stock market, there's something called the wash rule.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 4 if I bought... shares of Apple, the price went down, and I sell it for a loss.
I can't immediately buy Apple again and then write off that loss for my taxes and then still own the stock.

Speaker 4 You have to wait 30 days. There's no washroll for cryptocurrency.
So they proposed creating one as one of the loopholes to raise a bunch of money. And the Republicans in the House said no.

Speaker 4 Like, that's a stupid position to take. Of course, you should not be able to just game the system by buying and selling crypto all the time and writing off all your cap gains.

Speaker 4 So the Republicans are not serious about this. Kevin McCarthy's comments show that they are not serious.

Speaker 4 I think the White House is just looking for concessions on the other side, and then they'll probably offer some of their own. But it doesn't feel like we're getting close.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I will say there's something interesting about the like the contours of this negotiation that Biden can go out there and say, I'm optimistic, I'm feeling good about the progress we're making, and he views that as good for his politics.

Speaker 3 And Kevin McCarthy goes out there and says, We're nowhere, we're getting nowhere, and he sees that as good for his politics.

Speaker 3 That doesn't bode well, I think, for

Speaker 1 where we're headed.

Speaker 1 I'm sure the White House believes that this Republican House is very likely to blow up the economy if they don't get their way, and then hope that voters will blame Biden because he's the guy in charge.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure they're wrong about that.

Speaker 1 So, that leaves for Biden the choices of unilateral action, like invoking the 14th Amendment, or negotiation.

Speaker 1 And as Tommy said, a negotiation where you say, look, even if there was no debt ceiling, we would still have to have these negotiations over all these programs, these spending programs, because we need a budget or else the government shuts down, which is not as bad as a default, but still something that we're going to have to deal with.

Speaker 1 So these negotiations would happen regardless of the debt ceiling.

Speaker 1 And so they're going to try to separate those two.

Speaker 1 But unless the Biden folks decide that they can legally do the 14th Amendment thing or mint the coin or whatever the fuck you want to throw out there,

Speaker 1 they have to negotiate. There is no other way.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 3 Biden having been part of the 2011 negotiations, which were seen as a mistake, right?

Speaker 3 By the, you know, the consensus was that, oh, Obama and Biden made a blunder by opening up the debt ceiling to negotiations and they wouldn't do it thereafter. And

Speaker 3 it's almost as if when you, that that line, which was a really good line to draw, meant that the only ways Republicans could open up debt ceiling negotiations again in the future is not by just feigning crazy, but by being crazy.

Speaker 3 They actually had to radicalize to the point that we now sincerely, and I think rightly,

Speaker 3 as opposed to in the past, believe that they truly would default.

Speaker 3 And once they have that power, and it is power, the willingness to bankrupt the country and to destroy the global economy to extract congestions, they have a lot of power.

Speaker 4 And you're also getting even more conservative members,

Speaker 4 senior members in the House trying to add things like, you know, immigration policy into a debt ceiling deal. And, you know, like that's impossible.

Speaker 4 The goalposts are being moved on Joe Biden every single day. I mean, if you can't get Dusty Johnson to the table,

Speaker 1 what is that new? And not just immigration policy. I mean, they want to finish the wall.

Speaker 1 They wanted to, they just passed a bill, Republicans passed a bill through the House on immigration, on border policy that would like finish Trump's wall, crack down on asylum seekers even more, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So it's like, I don't know, what do you think the politics are of Republicans threatening to blow up the economy unless Biden agrees to finish Trump's border wall?

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is

Speaker 3 another place where I do think the coverage matters.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 right now, I think in a lot of polls, the blame would be equally distributed, maybe slightly towards Republicans, but people would hold Joe Biden accountable.

Speaker 3 A lot of the mainstream and like even sophisticated political coverage ultimately sort of redounds to, oh, they're so far apart. This is politics today.
Politics is broken. And

Speaker 3 I don't think we have successfully made any kind of a case that Republicans are holding the economy hostage or want to bankrupt the economy to get these spending cuts.

Speaker 3 And that's a case that we just need,

Speaker 3 if we really are pushing towards this abyss, that case has to be made so that they worry that they will face the consequences.

Speaker 1 Well, the other issue is that the coverage and a lot of the elite opinion is, yeah, we know Republicans are crazy and that they would blow up the economy, but President Biden's supposed to be the adult, so shouldn't he give a little bit, right?

Speaker 1 Which is so fucking annoying. But Greenlander just leaves frustrating.

Speaker 4 I do think on your immigration question, John, I think immigration is probably the last thing that Joe Biden wants the conversation and the coverage to be about because I think it's probably the area where they're polling the worst.

Speaker 4 It's the thing where the country is the most united in frustration with the status quo.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And I think you're seeing that because I know they put out a White House put out a memo in the last couple of days that's like, if the if we went with the bill that the House Republicans passed to avoid the debt ceiling, that in itself would cut border enforcement, border security.

Speaker 1 So they know that's on people's mind. That's like a sort of a political issue that's that's tricky.

Speaker 3 There are pieces of that House bill, though, that would ultimately be part of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that even Biden would support.

Speaker 3 Like there's e-verify in there, which is about just making sure that when companies hire people, that they verify that they are eligible to work.

Speaker 3 There's rules around visa overstay, which sounded pretty draconian to me, but would again be part of any kind of compromise. You know, I don't, who knows what's going to come out.

Speaker 3 They're meeting again tomorrow, and we're in the middle of a negotiation. It seems like it's in a lot of flux.

Speaker 3 But one way the negotiation widened beyond budgeting is that now permitting reform is part of the conversation.

Speaker 3 So there are some ways in which this, the widening of the scope, gets you away from needing to give on things like crazy draconian caps, right?

Speaker 3 And you could find other policies where you can have given something. So who knows?

Speaker 1 I just can't figure out how they do this because unspent COVID funds, seems like they can agree on that. Permitting reform, it seems like you could get to an agreement on that.

Speaker 1 They want budget caps, right? Cap on spending. Republicans want it for 10 years.
The Biden folks say they want it closer to two years. I don't know how you meet in the middle on that.

Speaker 1 And then this work requirement stuff where Republicans said they must have work requirements on Medicaid, and that's a red line for... President Biden and Democrats.

Speaker 1 So like, I don't, we also, by the way, there's only currently scheduled four days between now and June 1st where both the House and the Senate are in session at the same time.

Speaker 4 Joe Biden goes to Japan this week.

Speaker 1 Wednesday. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And like, unless he wants to, unless Biden cancels his trip, unless they cancel congressional recess next week.
Great week for recess. Take some time.

Speaker 4 Let's just pause for a moment to talk about the fact that adults have recess as long as you're elected.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, it's a work period. It's a district period.
District work period.

Speaker 3 As Janet Yellen eats another full fucking roll of Tums,

Speaker 3 just trying to get something

Speaker 1 going.

Speaker 4 I feel like the opposite of that, but sure.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure that's why.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 it doesn't seem like we're in a good sense.

Speaker 4 All eyes turn to Dusty Johnson and the moderates.

Speaker 3 How about the or the 14th Amendment?

Speaker 1 I would say that.

Speaker 1 Send it through the courts now. See what we got.

Speaker 3 14th Amendment. No skips.

Speaker 1 That's the beauty of it.

Speaker 3 People don't talk about it.

Speaker 3 Every fucking article of the 14th Amendment is a banger.

Speaker 1 It's a banger. It rules.
All right.

Speaker 1 We've talked before about how the Democrats' debt ceiling strategy might be complicated by perpetual pain in the ass, Joe Manchin, but D.C.'s most famous houseboat resident may also tank the party's 2024 prospects, and with it, democracy.

Speaker 1 Manchin is a co-chair of the third-party spoiler group No Labels, which says it's, quote, laying the groundwork for a potential independent unity ticket in 2024, and they have already gained ballot access in swing states like Arizona and Colorado.

Speaker 1 Manchin recently met with 170 Iowa business and community leaders in D.C. and has been issuing cryptic statements about his political future, like,

Speaker 1 I will win any race that I enter.

Speaker 3 Now, I would say this: one thing: I've seen that number, 170 business leaders in Iowa. Several of them were cows.

Speaker 1 Leave that in. I'm fine with it.
Hang on. How worried are you that Joe Manchin might be the Connor Roy of 2024?

Speaker 1 The con heads.

Speaker 3 I am very worried about a third-party bid. I'm worried if that third-party bid is led by Joe Manchin.

Speaker 3 This could be the difference. I mean, having a...

Speaker 3 a spoiler that got a bunch of votes is the reason Hillary Clinton didn't become president. And not having one in 2020 was one of the reasons that Joe Biden was able to become president.

Speaker 3 So I think there is reason to be concerned that something like this can gain traction and then kind of spin out of control and gain its own momentum.

Speaker 3 And then even after it is mostly, if not fully abandoned, there are enough ballots where they have some godforsaken ticket garnering votes that it could make the difference.

Speaker 3 I really, we should be worried about that.

Speaker 4 I'm going to put on my optimist hat.

Speaker 1 Let's hear it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And just hope that Joe Manchin's play here is to understand that to get re-elected in West Virginia, he has to put as much distance between himself and the White House and Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as humanly possible.

Speaker 1 And maybe flirting with no labels is a path to doing that.

Speaker 4 He's also threatened to hold up all of Joe Biden's EPA nominees because he's mad about the implementation of the climate bill. He's really like making a lot of noise.
He's attacking the White House.

Speaker 4 It has worked for him in the past.

Speaker 4 Running and getting re-elected in 2024 in that state is going to be tough, but that's my optimistic take.

Speaker 1 Here's what I think we've got to root for.

Speaker 1 There are probably two candidates running on the Republican side in West Virginia for the Senate nomination.

Speaker 1 One is extremely popular governor Jim Justice, who used to be a Democrat. He's basically like another Joe Manchin.

Speaker 1 And everyone in the state knows him, very popular governor there. If he wins the nomination, I really worry that Joe Manchin will bow out and potentially make this third party no labels bit.

Speaker 1 If Mooney wins, the super right-wing kook that Manchin has beaten before, then I think Manchin probably sees, okay, I have a chance to to win more.

Speaker 4 The only thing, though, is like if Manchin runs as the No Labels third party, like he's going to lose. And so I guess you do it why? Because you're promised some sort of job by the Republican side.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 both outcomes end in a humiliating defeat. So I'm not sure what's in it for him.

Speaker 1 Or Joe Manchin is as dumb as we sometimes think he is and

Speaker 1 believes, as No Labels says they believe, that there is some path for a third-party candidate. And we should say that it's not, and No Labels always makes this known, it's not an independent ticket.

Speaker 1 It's a unity ticket, meaning you would run one Democrat, which presumably would be a Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema or someone like that, and one Republican.

Speaker 1 Susan Collins is also co-chair of this, but some kind of Republican. So then you'd get both of them, and perhaps they

Speaker 1 wrongly see a path to win, which again is wrong. It's crazy that you could imagine a third-party candidate winning.

Speaker 3 There was

Speaker 3 a call that the head of No Labels did with a bunch of donors. That was reported by Puck.

Speaker 3 And first of all, there's one part in which Nancy Jacobson, who leads No Labels, says that they got Pearl Harbored by Third Way.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because Third Way is the one that said, hey, everybody,

Speaker 1 look out.

Speaker 3 This third party. They wrote a memo.
This third-party bid is coming.

Speaker 3 And so they got Pearl Harbored by a memo, which I just enjoyed the phrasing of. But they weren't planning to have this out there yet, which is, I think, why,

Speaker 3 and basically they knew that what was coming is you're just going to be a spoiler.

Speaker 3 But what was interesting in the call is there's one point where Jacobson says this, and I do actually find this reassuring.

Speaker 3 If this is not a national sensation and the crowds are not coming out, then it's not happening. We're getting out of this.
We can get out of this by the end of August. Pull the plug.

Speaker 3 That's the latest we can get off the ballot. I know there's a lot of fears about all this.
What I'd love to hear on these calls is more of a can-do spirit of why can't we convince other people?

Speaker 3 Why can't we do this? So even on this call with donors, there was a little bit of what she described as dark and doom and gloom. So, that to me was reassuring.

Speaker 3 And that, at least underneath the bravado and the bullshit, there's some understanding that this may be a completely futile and stupid and grift Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 Here's one example of how dangerous this could be. In 2016, voters who didn't like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton voted for, tended to vote for Donald Trump.
He won those voters.

Speaker 1 And partly because some of them went for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. In 2020, voters who didn't like Trump or Biden still chose Biden by 15 points.

Speaker 1 You give those voters a third choice in 2024, it's going to hurt Biden. And it doesn't have to hurt him by that much.

Speaker 1 A couple states.

Speaker 1 2%, one round.

Speaker 1 That's it. You're done.

Speaker 4 It's an enormously dangerous and stupid organization. They're raising 70 million, they said, or they want to, including 100 grand from Clarence Thomas's Sugar Daddy Harlan Crowe.
So that's fun.

Speaker 1 Also, the voters who happen to be the weakest partisans also happen to be the most low-information voters and the more likely to think maybe a unity ticket could win because they're not paying close attention to politics.

Speaker 1 So that's, again, another reason why this is dangerous.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's very bad.

Speaker 4 It's, yeah, it's lethal and gross. Maybe they'll get 9-11 by the Brookings Institute.

Speaker 4 I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here.

Speaker 1 I do think at some point we just got like the third-way memo of the great Pearl Harbor attack.

Speaker 3 A day that will live in India.

Speaker 1 A day of living in the memo that will

Speaker 1 be like, you know, democratic groups, super PACs, all that. They need to get the message out to more people that if this does happen, there is no chance the Unity ticket is winning.

Speaker 1 And so you're just throwing away your vote if you're voting for it.

Speaker 4 Listen, I think I'm opposed to mindless partisanship and, you know, the silly tribalism that we sometimes see in politics. But wait for it.

Speaker 1 Fucking teacher. Mindless centrism.

Speaker 4 Mindless centrism is equally stupid. Just combining Republicans and Democrats together doesn't mean you stand for something.

Speaker 4 I'm a Democrat because I believe in a bunch of things that unbalance the Democratic Party supports. That's why people join political parties.

Speaker 4 Treating that like a sinful act or like it's gross or distasteful, stupid and annoying and classic, like DC idiot centrist debate.

Speaker 1 But maybe he'll run on permitting reform.

Speaker 3 That'd be great. It's also just like you step back from all of it.

Speaker 3 It's like Joe Manchin, who has confirmed all these Democratic judges, who has supported, who made possible passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the biggest investment in climate in history.

Speaker 3 It's like

Speaker 1 Love is cutting an ad for no labels here. Well, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 My point would be that, like, put aside all the, put aside all the kind of process stuff that Joe Manchin really cares about, about the way that Washington works. Like, this guy has like,

Speaker 3 by his policy votes, he should be like terrified of a Trump presidency.

Speaker 4 Man, your criticism of Diane Feinstein and praise of Joe Manchin is troubling.

Speaker 1 Speaking of which,

Speaker 1 she's back.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she's back, baby.

Speaker 1 She has returned to the Senate and already voted to advance six federal judges who'd been stuck in the Judiciary Committee because of her absence.

Speaker 3 She lifted a Volkswagen off a kid.

Speaker 1 That's also true. She also said, though, that her doctors have advised her to work a lighter schedule due to lingering side effects from shingles.

Speaker 1 So, all's well that ends well, or should Lovett stick with his plan to stay just sit-in outside her Senate office? I would say this.

Speaker 3 All's well that ends. Like, she's back.
She's not resigning. I don't know how much more pressure we could have put on this 89-year-old woman.

Speaker 3 We all collectively did a great thing, which is got her to travel before her doctors wanted her to.

Speaker 1 Now she's voting in the Senate.

Speaker 3 She's not going anywhere. We got our judiciary votes.
Let's make sure she votes for the fucking subpoenas. I don't know what else we're supposed to do at this point.

Speaker 3 I don't know how much more heat we can bring on this old lady.

Speaker 4 I'm glad she's doing the bare minimum. Left unsaid is the opportunity costs of having a senator that's, I don't know, working really hard for the biggest state state in the country.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 A senator is more than an arm that goes like this.

Speaker 1 As long as we can hear I. As long as we can hear I.
We can put an eye together.

Speaker 4 Also, her staff refused the Washington Post requests for any sort of memo from her doctor detailing what's going on, the complications that prevented her from traveling.

Speaker 4 They're just not disclosing anything. So this is not a good situation.

Speaker 1 I'll also say that the fact that the day she got back, she voted. for six judges who'd been stuck out of committee to advance them sort of belies the arguments from

Speaker 1 some other democrats that this was not causing any problems. Sure does.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was that turned out.

Speaker 1 It clearly was causing some problems. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Not having a senator causes some problems on the Judiciary Committee.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 We live in the fifth largest economy in the world here, and we're represented by, we've been being represented by one senator. One senator here in California.

Speaker 1 Well, well, fucking Wyoming's got two, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, state less than, I don't know, 500,000 people versus like 10 million in L.A. County.
Okay. I kind of like Wyoming, though.

Speaker 4 It's a nice place to go.

Speaker 1 Mad of the people are

Speaker 3 mindless partisan. I'm sick of all this mindless partisanship.

Speaker 1 Anyway, what else? Anyway, that's it. That's all we have.

Speaker 1 When we come back, I will talk to the up-and-coming 25-year-old who is the state party chair of North Carolina, Anderson Clayton.

Speaker 1 And she's got a lot to say about how to turn North Carolina blue in 2024.

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Speaker 1 Joining us now is the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. At 25, she's also the youngest party chair in the country.
Anderson Clayton, welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 9 Thanks, John. I'm so excited to be on and just happy to be here.

Speaker 1 Well, we're happy to have you.

Speaker 1 So I was on the Obama campaign when we won North Carolina in 2008, and we all thought that by now the state would vote more like Virginia or even Georgia, but no Democratic presidential or Senate candidate has won the state since.

Speaker 1 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 9 I mean, I think Obama really had an inspiring and galvanizing across North Carolina support.

Speaker 9 He was one of those once-in-a-lifetime type of candidates that I think that just really touched people from all across North Carolina.

Speaker 9 And I think in order to be able to campaign in our state, you have to hit all 100 counties.

Speaker 9 And I remember, honestly, people in Person County, I I took over, I was the Person County Democratic Party chair before I became the state party chair.

Speaker 9 And I had people that would look at me and be like, I remember when Barack Obama had an office here.

Speaker 9 And I was like, there's no way that Barack Obama had an office in Person County, but that he had an organizer here.

Speaker 9 And they remember him being like the person that everyone went to, and that everyone saw that campaign.

Speaker 9 And so I think when you see the trajectory that North Carolina's taken, we've let go of the grassroots a little bit more since Obama's campaign here. But also,

Speaker 9 our state's just had a hard time with the Republican majority. And also since 2010, when they took back our state maps, we saw

Speaker 9 an increase in gerrymandering, racial gerrymandering across our state. And so when you really look at

Speaker 9 what we've been up against, I think, over the last decade and a half, really here, it's been hard for us to beat Republican extremism in that capacity.

Speaker 1 So the Washington Post reported today that President Biden does plan to invest in North Carolina and hopefully win the state in 2024.

Speaker 1 What would you advise the campaign to do differently from what they did when they lost the state in 2020?

Speaker 9 I think that for us, that comes in a lot from the party perspective, too. You know, we didn't have 100 strong county party operations when Joe Biden ran in 2020.

Speaker 9 We didn't have a Democratic messenger in every community and every county getting out his message.

Speaker 9 And for me, really this year in rural North Carolina in particular, I want to go ahead and I want to tout, you know, the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the American Rescue Plan, but genuinely, because I think that both these two pieces of legislation are historic.

Speaker 9 And for the first time, you know, I'm from a rural part of the state.

Speaker 9 And, you know, Joe Biden is looking at rural North Carolina and rural America and basically saying, we believe you deserve to have a future 50 years from now.

Speaker 9 And there's such a powerful thought to that message because that's not happened in the last 50 years of a federal administration.

Speaker 9 We've never seen the investment in trying to bring back manufacturing and really make things locally again. And Joe Biden wants to do that.

Speaker 9 And particularly when you look at North Carolina's history and economically, you know, we had a huge downfall in 2008. My dad lost his job in 2007.

Speaker 9 He was in manufacturing before that in textiles in Western North Carolina. And we saw a big population of our state just lose their jobs.

Speaker 9 And Joe Biden is trying to rectify that by bringing manufacturing back to North Carolina and back to the United States again. And I think that that's something that we can run on in North Carolina.

Speaker 9 And we need to run on it really strong, honestly. And that's what I plan to do, John.
So.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Nice.
I like it. I want to ask you more about state politics.
Republicans in the legislature just passed a 12-week abortion ban.

Speaker 1 Democratic governor Roy Cooper vetoed it over the weekend, but Republicans in the legislature hold a slim supermajority, so they can override the veto if they all vote together.

Speaker 1 Is there anything Democrats can do to prevent that from happening? What are you guys thinking?

Speaker 9 We're trying to organize the best that we can.

Speaker 9 You know, Cooper has done an amazing job going across the state over the last week and a half because Republicans did this under the cover of darkness, right?

Speaker 9 Last week, we had 48 hours to really understand what the 12-week abortion ban would be in North Carolina, one of the strictest abortion bans that that we've seen throughout our state, when you think about the actual ramifications of the bill inside it, the 46-page piece of legislation also,

Speaker 9 it basically takes medication abortion down, limits it down to 10 weeks.

Speaker 9 And there's also stipulations in there where women have to go to their provider at least three different times before they're able to actually have an abortion.

Speaker 9 And so really, when you're looking at women that are coming in from across the country and especially across the Southeast region, it just makes that access harder.

Speaker 9 And so we're really trying to push these Republicans and let them people in their districts know what's going on right now, because not everyone is paying attention to what's happening in Raleigh.

Speaker 9 And that's an unfortunate reality when you have so many other things that are going on across the state and also in your life.

Speaker 9 But we're trying to make sure that the voters in those districts are aware of it.

Speaker 9 And we're doing phone banks, hosting really like strong rallies, trying to bring as much attention to this as possible because Republicans are afraid and they should be afraid of the people that they're doing this to.

Speaker 1 So the reason the Republicans have that veto-proof majority is that state representative Tricia Cotham recently switched her party party affiliation and went from campaigning on abortion rights to voting for the 12-week ban.

Speaker 1 Do you have any insight into why she switched parties? It's a real head scratcher for a lot of people reading this from outside of the state.

Speaker 9 Yeah, there's a lot of speculation, I think, going around right now about why Representative Cotham made the choices that she did.

Speaker 9 And for me, I think it just comes down to the fact that she maybe was never actually a champion for any sort of values that she has, in particular about how she's taken the vote last week, right?

Speaker 9 I mean, she voted with Republicans. And I think that she owes it to the people of this state to be able to explain why she's having them question democracy right now.

Speaker 9 People voted her in to represent their values and their best interest. And right now, Tricia Cotham is representing politics above party.

Speaker 9 And I think that that's something that's really interesting to me, but it's also a head scratcher for us, to be real with you, John, right?

Speaker 9 Like I, I, I tell people, I'm like, you know, I wish folks would actually ask Trisha Cotham that because I'm not a mind reader. I don't know why she's making these decisions.

Speaker 9 And folks can't get her to answer the phone for some reason. I mean,

Speaker 9 it's hard when your constituents are demanding things of you and want to see, you know, whether or not you're going to uphold the values that you ran on. But yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, you mentioned her constituents. Do you think Democrats can win back her seat or break the super majority in 2024? What are the chances? I plan on it.

Speaker 1 All right. I like that.
I like that confidence. Governor Cooper is obviously term limited.

Speaker 1 so you'll have a very important governor's race in 2024, especially since the Republican running for his seat, Mark Robinson, is one of the more extreme candidates we've seen.

Speaker 1 What should people know about Robinson and how do you feel about the potential Democratic candidates?

Speaker 9 I think that folks need to understand that Mark Robinson is someone to be fearful of. And he's someone that's not to be taken lightly.

Speaker 9 And I think that a lot of folks brush him off as though no one in North Carolina would ever vote for someone that extreme.

Speaker 9 And I need my party to get the reality drilled into them that yes, they would. And it's because I think that he's relatable in some capacities, especially to rural North Carolina.

Speaker 9 And North Carolina has the second largest rural population in accordance to Texas, right? And people don't often know that about our state, but we have really dense rural populations, including in

Speaker 9 northeastern North Carolina and southeastern North Carolina, heavy majority black and brown communities that live in these areas.

Speaker 9 And I think that our job as a party is to really educate folks about who Mark Robinson is, the positions that he stood on.

Speaker 9 he's someone that said if he could pass a heartbeat bill tomorrow for abortion, he would. Even in the case of rape and incest, he would not allow a woman to have an abortion.

Speaker 9 And he's calling the LGBTQ community filth. He doesn't believe that you should be allowed to be who you are.

Speaker 9 And I think that it's devastating when you look at what he would do to our economy here in North Carolina, what he would do to our public schools here in North Carolina.

Speaker 9 I mean, he basically believes in

Speaker 9 segregation of schools again. And I think that you have to see the reality of that for what it is rather than the picture that he's painting painting right now.

Speaker 9 But he paints a dang good picture, to be honest with you, John, and has so far since he's announced.

Speaker 9 And so my job has really become, I need to help explain this to people and help folks understand what we're fighting for as a party this year, which is everything that he's not.

Speaker 1 And do you feel like you guys have some good Democratic candidates?

Speaker 9 I was about to say, but to your point about my Democrats this year, I think we've got some good ones.

Speaker 9 And I think that we're going to really make sure that there's a good juxtaposition there with not just, you know, who are you voting against, but who are you voting for?

Speaker 9 And in this election cycle, there's so much good to vote for in North Carolina.

Speaker 9 When you think about, you know, marijuana passing in our state, you know, making or pushing that forward in some capacities, when you're actually thinking about legalizing that and bringing in the tax revenue back to our public schools, hopefully, when you actually think about, you know, we just got Medicaid passed through our state legislature finally, because they finally realized they could not repeal that or go back on it.

Speaker 9 And I think that there's a real opportunity for us to message on that. But in general, also municipal broadband access, making that something that we campaign on this year in rural North Carolina.

Speaker 9 Our Democratic legislators and our Democratic governor or people that are running for governor this year in our state, but also running for every position on council of state this year, I think are exciting, dynamic, ready to get out across North Carolina and really campaign everywhere.

Speaker 9 So that's what we're going to have to do.

Speaker 1 You've mentioned Democrats needing to do better in rural parts of the state. I know you're from a rural community in North Carolina.

Speaker 1 How much of this is about sort of infrastructure showing up in rural communities? And how much is about the message when you're in a rural community?

Speaker 9 It's funny that you asked that because I've really looked at folks lately and I've said, I don't think we have a messaging problem. I think we have a showing up problem.
We just don't do it.

Speaker 9 Like we, we have everything to message on right now in rural North Carolina.

Speaker 9 Like the fact that the reason your community just got three to $5 million and you're for not only your municipality, but also your county as a whole, like where's that money going?

Speaker 9 If I'm in rural North Carolina right now, the only meeting I I want to be going to is my city council meeting and my county commissioner meeting. And I want to go, where's my money?

Speaker 9 Where's my money for my Democrats at the federal level right now? And where are you putting it?

Speaker 9 Because this money was supposed to be given to communities to make them better and to actually bring them back out of the pandemic crisis that we've been in, especially for a small economy.

Speaker 9 And it's supposed to be bringing revitalization back to your community.

Speaker 9 And so, how are your county commissioners and your local municipal electoral elections, like or folks that were elected municipally, right, focused on

Speaker 9 like bringing that change back to your area with the money that's coming down from the federal government.

Speaker 9 And so I think that there's a huge opportunity for us to go in and talk about, you know, the affordable connectivity program right now, $30 off a month of your internet bill if you make a 200% below the poverty line.

Speaker 9 And in North Carolina, fun fact, John, that is $44,000 a year. And when I go into rural North Carolina and I say that, folks look at me and they go.
Anderson, that's a good job.

Speaker 9 What you talking about?

Speaker 10 And I'm like, yeah, you're poor.

Speaker 9 That's what that means. Like you're poor, unfortunately.

Speaker 9 And I think that there's a reality to put a number with the legislation and the things that are coming down from the federal government to really help folks realize like, wow, this is talking about me.

Speaker 9 It's helping me at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 And, you know, as someone from a rural community, you know, oftentimes rural communities have more culturally conservative values.

Speaker 1 And then the question is always, can a strong economic message, economic populism, talking about sort of the economic benefits that Democrats can bring to rural America, is that enough to sort of overcome folks positions that are a little more culturally and socially conservative in those areas what would you say about that does it have to overcome it and like i think that people are really thinking about and when i say i'm talking about organizing rural north carolina folks go well how are we going to win back rural north carolina and i'm like i'm not talking about winning them back just yet that's going to take a long time we got to put trust in these areas we got to let them know that democrats are not some sort of scary

Speaker 9 like apparatus anymore And like that we're not, we're not the party of coastal elites, honestly.

Speaker 9 Like we've got a rebranding problem to do in some of these areas where it's just like we haven't been there for so long.

Speaker 9 So the Fox News rabbit hole that people have been down has been able to message for us. They've been able to put out that intricacy for us, right? Or that

Speaker 9 stereotype, I want to say. But I really do think that there's an opportunity to break margins.
And I tell folks all the time, I'm not just telling you to go out there and talk to rural voters.

Speaker 9 I'm talking rural Democrats. Like, who do we still have in this party that's in these areas that haven't been talked to by us, haven't been tapped into, aren't getting out to vote?

Speaker 9 And in North Carolina, that's the problem, right? In other rural areas that I've been in, that's not the issue. You know, that's not the issue, maybe in Iowa.

Speaker 9 It's not the issue, maybe in eastern Kentucky sometimes. But I do believe that it is the reality in North Carolina.

Speaker 9 We have black and brown populations that live in rural areas that are just not being talked to. Their doors are not being knocked.

Speaker 9 And when we're losing, you know, 80, 20 in a rural area versus when we used to lose by 60, 40, like those margins matter.

Speaker 9 And I think we've gotten so far away from believing that elections are won on the margins, but Joe Biden losing by 2020 or by 100,000 votes in 2020 to me is a margin.

Speaker 9 Like it's something I have done, right? It's Sherry Beasley losing by 134,000. Like that's a margin.

Speaker 9 And I'm chasing those this year, everywhere I can find them from rural to my young folks to like every place in between that like we just have to pick up those votes because I know they're there.

Speaker 9 And not even talking about the new registration efforts that we're trying to do. Like I want to get more people registered to vote this year.

Speaker 9 That should be the job of a party always is how are we engaging new voters and getting them there. So yeah.

Speaker 1 What made you run for party chair at 25?

Speaker 9 I was mad.

Speaker 9 To be honest with you, I was really, really mad.

Speaker 9 At rural North Carolina being ignored because I'm like, people like me live in rural North Carolina right now.

Speaker 9 And I grew up there believing that no one ever thought the same way that I did or wanted to see this place change like I did.

Speaker 9 And I'm like, no, it's worth going back to and it's worth having that fight because there are more people like me that live there.

Speaker 9 And I grew up with a a gay best friend in person county and i think that you know there are more folks that are part of the lgbtq community than we realize of north carolin like rural north carolina and rural america in general and they need a place to also feel like they can be themselves growing up there so yeah that's great there's a lot of people your age who aren't super excited about a second biden campaign what would you tell them I tell them that the Democratic Party is the only party right now putting up a fight for your right to exist and to love who you want to love, to have the rights to your body that you want to have and to actually make change.

Speaker 9 You know, I know a lot of people, a lot of young folks feel like the parties are broken, the party structure in general, the two-party system, right, is broken.

Speaker 9 And I will give them like, when you're looking at how politics is run right now, it's really divisive. It feels ugly and it doesn't motivate people to get involved with it.

Speaker 9 But better people, unless better people get involved with politics, politics doesn't get any better.

Speaker 9 And I think that there is a whole movement that we have to change as young folks of saying like, there's one party that we can change, though.

Speaker 9 There's one party that wants us to get involved, though, and that is the Democratic Party.

Speaker 9 And so so when you're when you're looking when i'm looking at how do i welcome new folks in i'm like what do young folks want to do like how can i train you and and there's so many young people the thing that i heard most when i was running for this office is they said anderson where are the young folks like none of them want to get involved and every young person i've talked to has been like how do i get involved how do i bring my skills up to the party like what can i do differently and i was just talking with someone earlier about how do we train like do an organizing boot camp for young people this summer just because i i've talked to so many of them in particular in rural north carolina i was in davidson County the other day and met like six young folks that just came out of the blue.

Speaker 9 And I was like, oh my gosh, like they're here and we just have to find them and tap into them.

Speaker 1 Anderson, your energy and optimism about the future of your state and the party are inspiring and infectious.

Speaker 1 It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. And

Speaker 1 I really wish you luck because

Speaker 1 we could use more of that in the Democratic Party. So

Speaker 1 thank you for

Speaker 1 joining.

Speaker 9 No, thank you. I'm going to need all that look that I can get.
Um, and thank you for everything that you've done for the party.

Speaker 9 Like, genuinely, I, there's a whole inspirational speech that I go on about that. But, um, I just want to say, thank you.

Speaker 9 Iowa was a dream, and that's where I think I really learned like retail politics and how it should be run. So, and I feel like Barack Obama set that off for everybody.

Speaker 1 He sure did. He sure did.
Well, thank you for saying that. That's very kind.
And again, good luck. And thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah, thank you.

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Speaker 1 Okay, before we go, Republicans took control of the House six months ago with a lot of big promises about investigating Joe Biden, but so far, they've come up with nothing.

Speaker 1 Last week, House Oversight Chair James Comer released a 30-page memo on the Biden family's business dealings that didn't implicate the president himself in any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Speaker 1 When asked about the much-hyped whistleblowers and informants by kooky conspiracy theorist Maria Bartaromo, here's what Comer said.

Speaker 13 Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?

Speaker 14 Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant. We're hopeful that the informant is still there.
The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.

Speaker 13 Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?

Speaker 10 Well, we're hopeful that we can find the informant.

Speaker 14 Now, remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don't make a habit of being seen a lot or being high-profile or anything like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like the girlfriend you met at summer camp that

Speaker 1 no one has ever met.

Speaker 4 Informants are like AirPods.

Speaker 1 They find it.

Speaker 3 You drop that thing. It flies.
That informant flies.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you dropped that case. Yeah, explode open.
I do like that Maria tried to... change that quickly from we can't find to has gone missing.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, I was just glad to see that she learned her lesson from the Dominion lawsuit about good guests and sources and sort of checking everything twice.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The imaginary informant is quickly turning into the informant that the Biden White House made disappear. Right.

Speaker 1 I'm sure he was on Hillary's list. The informant.

Speaker 1 Hillary's kill list. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Found somewhere with adrenochrome.

Speaker 1 They're all talking about this, like there's a whistleblower, there's an FBI. And it's also like, you know what?

Speaker 1 I'm sure there is some disgruntled FBI person somewhere that's going to be able to say something

Speaker 1 uh some salacious allegation against joe biden that is probably unsupported most likely unsupported since they have now been investigating this for the better part of a year right it's it's can't find anything

Speaker 4 was prosecuted on january 6th too so yeah right yeah come in all different shapes and sizes over there yeah Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's a lot of like innuendo, which is, we're late in the game for innuendo. They've been doing this for months.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It doesn't sound like they got anything.

Speaker 4 They have not tied anything directly to Joe Biden, Biden, any of his decisions. He releases his tax returns every year, like show us where he benefited financially.

Speaker 4 They haven't done any of this, and yet it gets an audience on Fox News.

Speaker 1 And I know that DOJ is deciding now whether to prosecute Hunter Biden for gun charges or whatever else. Art crimes.

Speaker 3 Crimes against art.

Speaker 1 But even then, it's like, you know, well, that's going to be, you know, it's going to be really tough for Hunter Biden's presidential run in 2024.

Speaker 1 Like, they have not connected anything directly to Joe Biden. They haven't even alleged.

Speaker 1 They haven't even been to been able to allege anything that's connected to directly to Joe Biden, only to say that, oh, how could he have not known that his family was making some money from foreign sources, which is also, again, not illegal?

Speaker 4 They maybe didn't ask them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, a lot of insinuation. They haven't tied anything to Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 Trump has a Chinese bank account.

Speaker 4 Hunter Biden getting in trouble for like lying on a gun application, saying a permit application, saying he was not using drugs when he wasn't. It's the most like silly,

Speaker 4 unrelated charge.

Speaker 3 They don't want Hunter Biden to be able to use his Second Amendment rights?

Speaker 4 I guess not.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 Disgusting.

Speaker 1 Anyway, tough for James Comer. Thank you, Anderson Clayton, for joining us today, and we will talk to you later this week.
Bye, everyone.

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Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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Speaker 1 What's poppin' listeners?

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