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enroll today. Welcome

1:01

to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan

1:03

Pfeiffer. Dan, welcome back from vacation. We missed you.

1:07

I had a great vacation, but I'm excited to pod. You almost

1:09

look excited to pod. Well, we're excited to have you. On

1:12

today's show, we got with one week to

1:14

go before the debate, Joe Biden heads to

1:16

Camp David to prep, and

1:18

Donald Trump can't figure out whether to lower expectations or

1:20

to raise them. And both sides are

1:22

planning ahead for the next election. And both sides

1:25

are planning ahead for the post-debate spin, slash

1:28

social media, slash deceptively edited fake war, whatever

1:30

it's going to be. So

1:33

we'll talk all through that. Then we have a

1:35

lot of new polling to go through, and some

1:37

of it is actually good for Joe Biden, but not all of it.

1:40

And then later, former White House counsel Bob Bauer stops by

1:43

to talk about playing Donald Trump in debate

1:45

prep for Joe Biden in 2020, the Supreme

1:47

Court, and his new book, The Unraveling, about

1:50

just how unethical it is to talk

1:52

about the debate. The Unraveling, about just

1:54

how unethical our politics has become. Dan,

1:57

I told Bob this. It was interesting that he wrote

1:59

this. like sort of long look back about his life

2:01

and time in politics and came away with

2:04

his concerns about how unethical it all is. Because I think

2:06

of him as like one of the more upstanding people we

2:08

actually got to work with. Oh, absolutely. One

2:11

of the best, most solid, most serious people

2:14

you could ever be with. And very, very funny. Very,

2:16

very funny. And apparently was

2:19

an excellent Donald Trump in 2020. And

2:21

I got to tell you, I came away, he

2:23

couldn't comment, but I came away thinking that he's

2:25

reprising his role as Donald Trump in the 2024

2:27

debate prep sessions. And

2:30

I say this with all love for Bob, but I can't think of a

2:32

better person to do that. Yeah, he's

2:34

very true. But

2:36

first in our book, Democracy or Else comes

2:38

out on Monday. Look, you have

2:40

been on the New York Times bestseller

2:42

list, which is our goal. What do

2:45

you have to do to get there? Like who do we grease? And

2:47

will you make a gigantic bulk purchase on my behalf?

2:49

I've already made several bulk purchases because I'm competitive. And

2:51

if you if I was on the list, if you

2:53

guys made the list, I wanted to have that little

2:55

dagger that they give for book purchases. They always give

2:58

to Ted Cruz. Don Jr.

3:00

They all get the little dagger. Because the RNC buys them

3:02

in bulk. The very serious answer here

3:04

is here is how you get on the bestseller list.

3:06

This is the key. You people who

3:08

are listening to this podcast right now, what they do

3:10

is they go grab their phone, which they

3:12

already have because they listen to this podcast and

3:14

they preorder the book. You

3:17

go to crooked.com/books to

3:19

do that. You can do it wherever you

3:21

get your books. But that is the best way because

3:23

every preorder gets dumped into the New York Times bestseller

3:26

list the moment the book goes on sale.

3:29

So that gives you a huge surge of momentum,

3:31

which then puts you up the rankings on all

3:33

the sites, which then gets you more publicity, which

3:35

gets the book featured more. So we cannot live

3:37

in a world where this book is not on

3:39

the New York Times bestseller list and not yet

3:42

the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

3:44

So everybody listening, go preorder it right now.

3:46

It is very simple. You know you're going to buy it

3:48

eventually. So buy it now and have more impact. I'm

3:51

also I'm excited for our first just like scathing review. I

3:53

don't know if it's going to come from the left or

3:55

the right, but it's coming, baby. I don't think you're going

3:57

to get a scathing review. I've read the book. It is.

6:00

years. We don't know yet for sure who's playing

6:02

Trump in the mock debate sessions. I suspect it

6:04

might be Bob Bauer, but we'll talk more with

6:06

Bob in a few minutes. You'll hear all about

6:09

that. We do know that Biden will

6:11

be at the podium on the right hand

6:13

side of the TV screen after the Biden

6:15

campaign won a football style coin flip. Biden

6:17

picked tails because as you and I both

6:19

know, tails never fails. And Biden's

6:21

team opted to pick their podium position

6:23

and let the Trump campaign decide whether

6:26

they wanted to go first or

6:28

second in closing statements. So Trump is going

6:30

to go second with his closing statements, which means he

6:32

has the last word. This is so stupid. I mean,

6:34

I guess like this is the best way you pick

6:36

these little minutiae. You flip a coin, but I don't

6:38

know, it seems so silly. I'm curious as

6:40

to why, like you obviously have a plan, right? When

6:42

you go in overtime in football, like you were told

6:45

by the coach, we're going to defer, we're going to

6:47

kick off all of that. So

6:50

the Biden people were decided that they were going,

6:52

if they won the coin toss, their first choice

6:54

would be podium position. So I'm just very

6:56

curious as to why that was more valuable to them. His

6:59

good side, maybe. Is that,

7:02

that's gotta be the thing. Or maybe more likely

7:04

it's Donald Trump's bad side. Oh,

7:07

I bet Donald Trump cares a lot about what

7:09

side he's on. And I bet that they

7:11

think they'll be in his head if he has to have his bad

7:13

side facing the camera. Oh God,

7:15

I hope that's true. We don't know much

7:18

about Trump's plans for debate prep. One of

7:20

his senior advisors recently said that they don't

7:22

have any because Trump doesn't need to be

7:24

quote, programmed by staff. Not much

7:26

is true, sir. We believe you, but you

7:29

can tell it is on his mind. Here's

7:31

Trump at a rally in racing Wisconsin on

7:33

Tuesday. Is anybody going to watch the debate?

7:38

He's going to be so pumped up. He's going

7:40

to be pumped up. You know, all

7:42

that stuff that was missing about a month

7:44

ago from the White House, hundreds of thousands

7:46

of dollars worth of cocaine. I wonder who

7:48

that could have been. I

7:50

don't know. Actually,

7:53

I think it was Joe, but

7:55

I said, we'll do it. They didn't think I was going to do

7:57

it. They thought I would say, no, I don't want to do because

7:59

CNN. and so, you know, it's fake news. But

8:02

I think maybe they'll be honest. I think

8:05

fake Tapper would really help

8:07

himself if we're honest, but you'll see

8:10

immediately if it is or not. I'll probably be

8:12

Dana Bash is the other. I'll be debating

8:15

three people instead of one, instead of one

8:17

half of a person. That's

8:19

just typically incoherent. Dan,

8:22

can you lower expectations for your debate opponent

8:24

when you've been accusing them of dementia for

8:26

the better part of four years? Probably

8:29

not, maybe my guess. And not just accusing them,

8:31

there is a pro-Trump super PAC ad on the

8:33

air right now in many of these battleground states

8:36

that has the accusers Joe Biden having dementia. It's

8:38

the number one most run ad from the Trump

8:40

side, I think thus far in this race. What

8:43

Trump's doing there is bizarre. I mean, in some ways

8:45

you can sort of, you

8:47

know, kind of reverse engineer some sort of strategy to

8:49

it where he is trying to set up if

8:52

he does not do well, like hit

8:54

the sort of false logic he has here, is if

8:56

Biden does well, it's because he's on cocaine. And if

8:58

Trump does not do well, it's because everyone is against

9:00

Trump and it's a rigged system and he went into

9:02

it knowing it's right because of fake tapper and Dana

9:05

Bash because they're from CNN and all of that. But

9:07

it's not, you know, it's

9:09

just not a fully baked strategy, which I guess it's

9:11

not unusual for Trump, but it's just, he's kind of

9:13

all over the map. And he's mostly doing the cocaine.

9:16

Biden on cocaine is a

9:18

real, it's a real zinger that the Trump rally

9:20

people love. And I think it's why he's going with that

9:22

more than some debate strategy per

9:24

se. Yeah, I

9:26

mean, all of this sort of debate expectations management,

9:28

it feels like a thing from the before

9:31

times to me, because I can remember in 2004,

9:35

the Bush campaign was out in advance

9:37

of their first debate saying that John

9:39

Kerry was the best debater to ever

9:41

run for president and better than Cicero.

9:44

And the way like the kind of game worked at

9:46

the time was the press gobbled that stuff up and

9:48

they were like, oh, what a great line. And they

9:50

kind of like reported it at face value. But

9:52

now, I mean, it was obviously

9:54

nonsense then. It's nonsense now

9:56

like to accuse Joe Biden of doing

9:59

cocaine. for

12:00

President Obama than State Senator Obama. My

12:02

boss, Robert Gibbs, who went on to

12:04

be the White House press secretary said,

12:06

the first rule of spin is that

12:08

it has to be believable. Accusing

12:11

Joe Biden have taken like debate PEDs doesn't

12:13

seem believable to me, but I don't know.

12:16

It's like it's become an article of faith in

12:18

conservative circles. Like, do you think you have to

12:21

push back at that? No, I don't think you

12:23

have to push back at that. I think I've

12:25

argued this in every form I

12:27

have that the press should cover Trump

12:29

more aggressively when he accuses the sitting president

12:31

of doing cocaine. In

12:33

a pre-Trump world, that would be the biggest story in

12:35

American politics for six straight weeks. Yeah.

12:39

But what the cocaine

12:42

PEDs thing is, it

12:44

is a way for Republicans to

12:46

resolve the cognitive dissonance between the

12:48

Joe Biden that exists within the

12:50

magma media ecosystem and in their heads

12:52

who has dementia, incognitive decline, is a

12:55

puppet, can't stay awake, doesn't know what

12:57

inflation is. That's a common Trump

12:59

line and the Joe Biden who appeared at the State of

13:01

the Union. You

13:03

can't have both of those things in your

13:06

head without concocting some sort of story to

13:08

explain them. And so they have

13:10

landed on this. And it is like, yes, for

13:13

the vast majority of the electorate, spin

13:15

must be believable. And for the tradition, for

13:18

the mainstream press who used to matter so

13:20

much, who were the narrators of the campaign,

13:22

spin had to be believable. But

13:24

if in this media environment with your

13:26

hardcore base, particularly on the right who

13:28

exists in this hermetically sealed media ecosystem,

13:31

doesn't have to be believable, it just has to be enjoyable. Right?

13:34

And that's what that is. Yeah. That's

13:36

right. Yeah. It's funny to think

13:38

back in 2007, Billy Shaheen, who was then

13:40

Clinton's New Hampshire campaign co-chair raised

13:42

Barack Obama's youthful cocaine use and then

13:44

had to resign from the campaign because

13:46

it was a huge scandal that backfired

13:48

on them. So you're right. We've come

13:50

a long way from that to a

13:53

place where the former president accuses the

13:55

current president of doing cocaine before the

13:57

State of the Union. But

13:59

I digress, Dan. because

16:00

Gore's mic was live the whole time. You

16:02

heard him sign every time Bush said something

16:05

in a very exasperated, annoying way. And

16:08

so the reporters walked out of

16:10

the room thinking Gore had done fine.

16:14

But then when they got to the spin room, they

16:17

discovered in part from the Bush campaign, but also

16:19

because the entire nation heard it that Gore had

16:21

been signed the whole time and that was bad

16:23

for it. Now, in

16:26

this case, what is, there are

16:28

two things that have changed a lot in debate since then.

16:31

One is now you spin during the

16:33

debate. Like back in the

16:35

day, you know, like in the, when we worked in

16:37

the Barmakie Committee, we would email out fact checks to

16:39

reporters who would never open their, why would they stop

16:41

watching? You get like 150 of them. Yes,

16:44

they're coming, they're flying in, every group is sending

16:46

them and no one's ever reading them. It's just

16:48

like a gigantic busy work

16:50

project for researchers and writers. But

16:53

then Twitter happened, right? And then all of a

16:56

sudden the reporters who were watching the speech were

16:58

also following Twitter. That's partially why Obama did so

17:00

poorly in the 2012 first debate

17:02

because people were watching the

17:04

reactions of Obama

17:06

supporters online during the debate. And

17:10

like famously, Andrew Sullivan,

17:12

the conservative columnist who was an Obama

17:15

supporter, basically melted down on Twitter

17:17

about how bad Obama was. Chris Matthews melted

17:19

down on television. People saw that. Ben

17:22

Smith, who was then at BuzzFeed declared Romney the winner

17:24

like nine minutes into the debate, which

17:26

became a thing. And so the spin

17:28

room doesn't really matter anymore. There will still be people

17:31

who go into a room and they'll have interest behind

17:33

them with giant signs with their name. Like I still

17:35

have my giant sign from the first

17:37

debate, the first Obama became debate with my name on it

17:39

hanging in my house because it was very cool, but it

17:41

does not matter anymore. There

17:43

will be online spin, but what will matter the most is,

17:45

and this is what the Biden people are rightly worried about,

17:47

is maybe

17:50

50 million people watch this debate.

17:53

You know, so that is a third of the electorate and

17:56

that third of the electorate is watching is gonna be disproportionate.

17:58

People have already made up their mind. And so how

18:00

people work in front it will be clips

18:02

shared on TikTok and social. And are those

18:05

clips gonna be favorable to Biden or unfavorable

18:07

to Biden? And that is deeply concerning. And

18:09

this will be less cheap fakes than just

18:12

out of context, quick moment, right? Like everyone's gonna have the

18:14

same video feed. So I don't think you're gonna be able

18:16

to like make it seem like Biden wandered off. But

18:19

you will, if they will be, you

18:22

can see a super cut of moments where Biden's

18:24

stutter comes forward, which will make it seem like

18:26

he was not in it, like

18:28

on his game for the debate when he actually was or

18:30

a moment where he, as

18:33

he did in that one press conference where he said

18:35

the president of Mexico when he met the president of Egypt, so

18:38

there could be moments like that. There could be

18:41

then driven with the algorithms on Twitter, it

18:43

does with, sorry, with the algorithms

18:45

on TikTok, particularly to make people who didn't watch

18:47

the debate feel worse about his performance. Yeah,

18:50

I mean, there will just be kind of an arms

18:52

race where everyone is getting their video editors together to

18:54

try to tell a story from 90 minutes

18:56

of debate. It could be Biden stutter, like you

18:58

said, it could be a negative one

19:01

for Biden, or it could just be like Trump's angry

19:03

and incoherent again. Remember this guy, this is what you

19:05

hated about the first debate back in 2020 when

19:07

the two candidates interrupted each other or something like 76 times.

19:11

That is kind of a discrete challenge around

19:13

this debate itself. But on

19:15

this cheap fakes issue, I mean, the Biden

19:17

campaign does seem incredibly frustrated

19:20

with the proliferation of misleading

19:22

the edited videos of him,

19:25

I like feel their pain in some sense, like

19:27

when the New York Post takes a video directly

19:29

from the RNC and kind of makes it

19:31

even worse looking and then post it as

19:34

their own, like that is out of bounds

19:36

for a media gathering organization that essentially claims

19:38

to be just a

19:41

news company and not an opinion company. But it does

19:43

seem like at the end of the day, like there's

19:46

gonna be one of these cheap fake type videos every

19:48

single day from now until the end of the election,

19:50

and there's almost nothing you can do about it, except

19:54

make a bunch of your own stuff, right? And

19:56

like kind of fight fire with fire, either

19:58

by putting out. videos of

20:00

Trump where you're highlighting some sort of

20:02

weakness of his, or you're just putting

20:04

out stuff where Biden looks sharp

20:07

and on top of things and that

20:09

vision of him gets to someone in their algorithm

20:11

in the same way that the video of him

20:13

looking lost to the G7 does. This

20:16

is, I mean, this is very challenging for the Biden folks

20:18

for a whole host of reasons. Like they're at an algorithmic

20:21

disadvantage, right? Positive Biden clips

20:23

don't trend on TikTok like negative Biden

20:25

clips for a whole host of reasons,

20:27

which then creates a disincentive

20:29

for people to put out positive Biden clips because

20:31

you're not getting engagement. What

20:34

I think, there are a couple thoughts around this.

20:36

One is these clips don't exist

20:38

in a vacuum. They only matter if they

20:41

dovetail with the larger conversation that's happening, right? Where

20:43

there's like, everything happens in surround sound now, right?

20:45

So you see this and you're kind of hearing

20:47

other things. And if so, and

20:49

if Biden does well in the debate and

20:52

the takeaway is, and the conversation about the

20:54

debate is Biden did well, he beat expectations,

20:56

then those clips are not gonna make sense in

20:58

the context of that larger conversation. More

21:01

broadly, like there is an lack

21:03

of more elements to all of these things, right? Where

21:06

it's everyday, they're coming out. There are, you know, the

21:08

Biden folks are going after the New York Post, they're

21:10

sending out 7,000 tweets about it. They're angry about it.

21:12

They're trying to stop it. And you do wanna respond

21:14

to the ones that you can with as much force

21:17

as you can. But ultimately the way

21:19

to combat it is, is that the president has to

21:21

be omnipresent in the media. There has to

21:23

be, he has to be doing things all the time. Be able to be

21:25

seeing him. that

21:27

break through. Like one example, and I understand

21:29

why they didn't do this, but

21:32

I think you have to lean your

21:34

mentality towards viral content that'll

21:36

be positive for your side. You

21:39

know, the president went home between the Normandy ceremony

21:42

and the G, where we at the

21:44

eight, G8, G7, how many G7? G7. G7. We're

21:47

at the G7 now. We kicked those fractions out. Yeah, but

21:49

had he stayed in Europe, he could have gone to the

21:51

Phillies game in London. The

21:53

Phillies were playing, like that's the thing where he goes to that. That's

21:56

a big viral moment. Like you're gonna have to find more

21:59

macro. grow viral moments, just be everywhere, right?

22:01

And my hope and expectation is the president can

22:03

be out campaigning just about every day

22:06

after this first debate. And then you

22:08

will have the opportunity to push back with those positive moments,

22:11

but now those, because he is out

22:13

there less, or not that he's out there less, he's doing stuff all

22:15

the time, he's much busier than Trump.

22:18

It's just he has to do a lot of presidential

22:20

things that don't really break through

22:22

in the same way that campaigning political stuff do,

22:24

where you're creating the conflict by going after your

22:26

opponent, or getting out of the White House, and

22:28

hopefully be able to do more of that going

22:30

forward. But the only way around is through, and

22:32

it is with doing as much stuff as you

22:34

possibly can. You're not gonna beat these one by

22:36

one. Yeah, I mean, Trump getting

22:38

to go to like ultimate fighting competitions and hang out with

22:41

Dana White and get cheered by a crowd is a lot

22:43

more fun and a lot more viral than attending the G7.

22:46

What is the democratic equivalent of going

22:48

to the UFC event? I

22:51

don't know, I try to ask Aditya about this. I mean,

22:53

during the Obama era, it was probably going to the NBA

22:55

Finals or something like that, but I'm not entirely sure what

22:57

kind of like- That's a positive America show in Brooklyn, my

22:59

friend. Joe

23:03

Biden's better than that. Don't ever say that. Last

23:05

thing on debate stand. I came across this report

23:07

from a group called Open to Debate. They're

23:09

out of Princeton University. They had a

23:12

bunch of researchers watch every single debate

23:14

from the last 20 years, a bunch

23:16

of times, poor bastards, and came to

23:18

some conclusions, including that the debates

23:20

have gotten worse and worse. They've gotten more

23:22

confrontational. They've gotten less substantive. The

23:25

main recommendations they came up with are

23:27

that the moderators should be more empowered

23:29

to interrupt and stop candidates from deflecting

23:32

or refusing to answer questions. They also called

23:34

for more expertise. They liked

23:36

the idea and called for it as well

23:39

of the ability to mute mics when candidates

23:41

aren't talking, which is going to be in

23:43

place for these debates at the

23:45

Biden camp's insistence. Dan, I mean,

23:48

were the debates always bad in your opinion

23:50

or do you think they've gotten worse? The

23:52

report is so funny to me because they

23:54

watched every debate of the last 20 years.

23:57

So that's five presidential elections times three debates.

24:00

plus one vice presidential. I

24:02

wonder if it was primary ones too. If they watched

24:04

primary ones, then God bless them because there were hundreds

24:06

of those. But if it was just the presidential general

24:08

election ones, then you watch 20 debates. Congratulations. The

24:10

other thing that's funny is they're like, things

24:13

have gotten so much worse. And we're not really

24:15

sure why starting in 2016. All

24:18

of them are like, there was one personal attack

24:20

until 2016. And then starting in 2016, there have

24:22

been 76 of them. And it's

24:24

like, there was very little interruption. And then

24:26

in 2016, there was so many more eruptions.

24:28

And it's like, I wonder what

24:31

changed in presidential politics in 2016. Yeah,

24:34

could it suddenly do with Donald Trump arriving? Yeah,

24:36

I think that's right. I think debates have always

24:38

been stupid. It is important to have a moment

24:40

where people will tune into the campaign and

24:42

see the candidates, but a

24:45

debate performance under any format, like

24:47

traditional Lincoln Douglas, like Socratic

24:49

method debates, the way we've been doing them,

24:51

Town Hall, not all of those are terrible

24:53

proxies for what kind of president you would

24:55

be. Right. That's

24:58

the funny thing about being president. You never,

25:00

debating has become this key part of how

25:02

we select a president, but you never actually

25:04

debate anyone as president. And people

25:06

stand up and salute you when you walk in the

25:08

room, they kiss your ass. They don't push back on

25:10

you. It is completely divorced from the reality of the

25:12

job. Yeah, I mean, like it is fine, but we

25:14

shouldn't pretend that someone being good at debates means they'll

25:16

be good at president. Far from it actually. Yeah,

25:19

I mean, I think the question really is whether

25:21

this debate is gonna matter. Obviously it's impossible to

25:23

know. I mean, my instinct is that this one

25:25

will matter a lot for Joe Biden because it's

25:28

an opportunity to show that attacks about his age

25:30

are wrong. I also think it'll matter for Trump

25:32

because, you know, he has a chance now to

25:34

prove to voters that he is less of a

25:37

ranting, raving lunatic than he was the last time

25:39

they saw him debate. But at the same time,

25:41

I mean, it's happening in June and

25:43

the odds of us remembering what they even

25:45

talked about come November seems pretty

25:48

low, but I mean, where do you

25:50

land on like the, does this debate

25:52

matter question? This will be, in

25:55

my estimation, likely the most impactful moment

25:57

of the campaign. To date,

25:59

in massive. throughout the whole campaign and probably more

26:01

impactful than either of the convention speeches. And

26:04

obviously a second debate in September should matter more

26:06

than a first debate in June. There

26:08

is one giant

26:10

looming question about Joe Biden is, and

26:12

it comes up in every poll, every

26:15

focus group, every conversation you have with a voter in

26:17

your life is, is he

26:19

too old? And this is

26:21

his first best opportunity because people, because

26:24

of changes in the media environment, because of sort

26:26

of how he is as a communicator, people

26:29

don't see Joe Biden speak ever. And

26:32

so this is a moment to do this. And one of

26:34

the few things that actually break through in

26:36

American life these days is big

26:38

events. Right? Big

26:41

live events where people will get together, tune

26:44

in, talk about it simultaneously on social media,

26:46

post clips about it afterwards. And so this

26:48

is a huge moment. And when I had

26:50

Sarah Longwell in the podcast last week, she

26:52

made the point that it doesn't

26:55

really matter what Joe Biden says, it matters how

26:57

he says it. Right? Donald Trump's on that stage,

26:59

but Joe Biden is actually just debating the caricature

27:01

of himself portrayed by Republicans. And can he beat

27:03

that, right? Can he beat it by enough that

27:06

voters will say, I trust him? Because I

27:08

have come sort of to the conclusion that, and we're going

27:10

to talk about polling in a minute, but Biden's

27:13

age is infecting all of the polling, right?

27:15

It's one of the reasons why we do like, why don't people trust him on

27:17

these issues? Cause he thinks it's too old. Right?

27:20

And so if you can address the age thing, you

27:22

will address the polling in the economy, polling on immigration,

27:24

polling on strength, all of those things. And this is

27:26

a great opportunity to do it. It's a, it's

27:28

high stakes. I mean, it's not going to be easy with

27:31

Trump acting like a lunatic on stage, but this is the

27:33

best chance to do it. And you know, how

27:35

you have to imagine a lot of people will be watching. Pod

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a website or domain. Let's

30:30

turn to the polling though Dan because we

30:32

have a rule around here that we don't

30:34

focus too much on the results of any

30:36

one poll but we are willing to relax

30:38

that rule when the poll causes Donald Trump

30:40

to have a series of public meltdowns. So

30:42

that's what we got in a

30:45

Fox News poll released on Wednesday. So

30:47

this latest Fox News poll shows Biden up

30:49

two in the national head-to-head. Last

30:51

month he was down one point and he hasn't

30:54

led since October. It's a pretty big change. In

30:56

this poll when the third-party candidates are added in, Biden's

30:59

lead is only one point but very

31:01

little gets Trump angrier than when Fox

31:03

appears to betray him and he has

31:05

taken the opportunity to trash Fox and

31:07

he's blaming his imaginary enemy Paul Ryan

31:09

who is on Fox's corporate board of

31:12

directors. So this is one of his

31:14

posts from Truth Social today. Trump said

31:17

nobody can ever trust Fox News and I'm one

31:19

of them with the weak ineffective Rhino Paul Ryan

31:21

on its board of directors. He's a total lightweight,

31:23

a failed empathetic speaker of the house and a

31:25

very disloyal person. Romney was bad but

31:27

Paul Ryan made him look worse as a team. They

31:30

never had a chance. Rupert and Lachlan

31:32

get that dog off your board. You

31:34

don't need him. All you need is

31:36

Trump. Make America great again. Very thoughtful,

31:38

coherent truth there. He later wrote another

31:40

truth post calling the poll trash in

31:43

capital letters and saying it uses an

31:45

intentionally pro-Biden sample blah blah blah blah blah.

31:47

So Dan I know this is hard for you

31:49

because on the one hand you want Joe Biden

31:51

to win but on the other you agree that

31:53

Paul Ryan is a lightweight and failed empathetic speaker

31:55

of the house but who are you siding with

31:57

here? Well I'm not siding to

32:00

be very clear, because there's not

32:02

a chance that Paul Ryan would ever

32:04

be effective enough to influence anything. Like

32:07

his entire life is just being a

32:09

revolving door of failure. So I don't imagine that

32:11

he is, all of a

32:14

sudden he's in there like rigging the polls for Donald Trump,

32:16

so, or rigging the polls against Donald Trump. You wouldn't know

32:18

how he'd be proud. So I don't think that's happening. I

32:20

mean, this poll is very interesting on a whole host of

32:22

fronts. As always, we

32:24

take every individual poll with a grain of salt. A

32:27

poll that has Biden up a couple points is

32:29

the same as the poll that has Biden down a couple points because

32:31

of margin of error. But what is interesting

32:33

about this one is, A,

32:35

Fox is a high quality pollster. I

32:37

know that seems impossible to imagine, but they have a

32:40

polling unit with a record of integrity and

32:42

accuracy. There are A plus, either A or

32:44

A plus polls from 538, I

32:46

can't remember which, but top ranked pollster. This

32:49

poll has Biden's deficit

32:52

on the economy in

32:54

the single digits, right? Which is as close

32:56

as it's been against Trump in a very

32:58

long time. And to put that in perspective, the New York Times had

33:00

it at more than 20 points in their poll

33:02

back in May. And so if that is

33:04

the case, and we see, we've also seen, there's also

33:07

narrowing on immigration in this poll and a few other

33:09

issues. If that's the case, what that

33:11

says is that the sustained

33:13

advertising the Biden campaign has been doing

33:15

over the last several months

33:17

here, whether Trump campaign has not really been on

33:20

the air other than in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and some

33:22

in spurts, Biden's made it, and pro Biden's signs

33:25

are massively else spending, that that is beginning

33:27

to affect the electorate. People are beginning to pick that message

33:29

up and there you see some movement for Biden. It

33:32

also comports, even though we're not

33:34

gonna take this poll overly

33:36

seriously, even if it's enjoyable to do so, is

33:39

it does comport with the movement we've seen in

33:41

the polls since the conviction, which is

33:44

Biden picking up a few points,

33:46

right? Few points here and there, and that is

33:48

enough to push him in the lead in

33:50

some of these national polls. Yeah,

33:52

I mean, I think this poll isn't winning independence by

33:54

nine points in May. They

33:57

were with Trump by two points. Biden's now

33:59

winning double haters. by 11 in a two-way

34:01

race. And you're right on these economic numbers,

34:03

they're improving sort of across the range of

34:05

questions that we're asked. So 32 percent say

34:08

the economy is in excellent or good shape. That's not a

34:10

great number, but it's up to from May. 59

34:13

percent say they're getting ahead or holding steady

34:15

financially. That's up five from last summer. 44

34:19

percent feel optimistic about the economy. That's up

34:21

nine points from 2023. Biden

34:23

has 41 percent approval on the economy. That's

34:26

not great, but it's his highest in two

34:28

years. And then Biden's approval is 45 favorable,

34:31

55 unfavorable, which

34:33

again is underwater and not great. But

34:35

basically everyone is significantly underwater in this

34:38

poll. The only person I think who

34:40

was break even was Jill Biden, who

34:42

is at like 46, 46.

34:44

So Biden's also winning with

34:47

voters who are asked which candidate

34:49

cares about people like you by 51 to

34:51

45. That's a good

34:53

sign. But he's losing the question of who is

34:55

a strong leader by 43. To

34:59

53. So, you know, you can see where he has

35:01

a lot of work to do. Yeah. I mean, we

35:03

should. It's just always worth remembering that Biden won the

35:05

popular vote by four points last time and won the

35:07

electoral college by 40,000 votes over three

35:09

states. So you have there is a gap

35:11

there that you're going to have

35:13

a slight lead in the national polls

35:15

is good, but it's not the same thing

35:17

as winning, which is why most of

35:19

the models still have Trump as a at least

35:21

a slight favor because his battle we have not

35:24

seen. And this is also what's interesting is

35:26

we have not seen the numbers in the battleground states move

35:28

in the same way the national polls have moved, which is

35:30

the reverse of how you would imagine it to be because

35:33

the ads are running in the battleground states. So normally in

35:36

past elections, the national polls are a

35:38

lacking indicator. Here they're moving faster than

35:40

the battleground polls. And I'm very curious as to why that

35:42

is. Hmm. One of the Democrats are

35:44

coming home. Biden is finally

35:46

leading the 538 national average

35:48

for the first time, I think, in this year.

35:51

He's up by two tenths of a point. Now,

35:53

again, that's not a lot. And

35:55

it's but it's not only an average. It's sort of a trend

35:57

of the averages. So I don't know. Do you think this is

35:59

still. just sort of not statistically significant

36:01

Dan, or are you watching these trends

36:04

and feeling better broadly? Yeah, I feel

36:06

better broadly, right? I mean, you

36:08

have seen post-conviction, some gains

36:10

for Biden and some gains is good. There

36:13

is more work to do, but it is a positive

36:15

side, right? The debate is gonna matter more than anything

36:17

else, right? If Biden has a good debate, that's gonna

36:19

help. If he has a bad debate, that's gonna hurt

36:21

a lot. But what

36:24

we have seen, slight

36:26

movement towards Biden since the

36:28

conviction. Will that stay? Maybe,

36:31

we have a long time in the election. We

36:34

also know that a lot of the voters who could

36:36

be persuaded by Trump's conviction to

36:38

vote against Trump have not really tuned in yet.

36:40

So we may even not be fully realizing the

36:42

impact of the conviction yet, but it

36:45

tells me that the conviction had an impact in this race.

36:47

I think that's just an important data point as we think

36:49

about how this will play out. It is an important data

36:51

point for the Biden campaign strategy going forward, which is why

36:53

I think they put up that ad that you guys talked

36:56

about on Tuesday. Yeah, it's

36:58

also important rejoinder to all the

37:00

people who saw the guilty verdict come in and

37:02

said, this just sealed the election for Donald Trump.

37:04

I mean, those people- All the evidence. Those

37:06

people should not be talking about politics for a living. Yeah,

37:09

a couple other pieces of polling news over the

37:11

last couple of days, it's just worth mentioning, Dan. These

37:13

were less rosy for Biden, especially with

37:15

some of the specific groups he

37:17

really needs to win. So there were

37:19

some new results from ECCY's research, which

37:22

is basically a consortium studying the Latino

37:24

vote in America. They found that on

37:26

immigration specifically, Latinos trust Trump more than

37:28

Biden, though the margin there is much

37:30

narrower than what they saw with non-Hispanic

37:32

voters. The good news is that

37:35

talking about immigration solutions seems to be effective

37:37

in moving people to the Biden camp. After

37:39

looking at the data, ECCY's concluded that

37:42

Biden should emphasize keeping families together, that he

37:44

should keep the focus on immigrant communities that

37:46

are deeply embedded in the country. So it

37:48

was interesting research and recommendations there. And then

37:51

separately, the New York Times did a meta-analysis

37:53

of public polls from this cycle to see

37:55

what they could conclude about Biden and Trump's

37:57

support among women. that

38:00

Biden's lead with women has dropped from 13% in 2020 to 8% today

38:02

and that the losses are most pronounced

38:06

among non-white women. They found that

38:08

inflation is the most important issue

38:11

with women voters, the same

38:13

as it is generally across the board, but

38:15

that abortion and democracy could be key motivators.

38:17

So, Dan, a lot of information there, but

38:20

were there any key takeaways from any of

38:22

those surveys for you? Yeah, I thought the

38:24

ECCI survey was fascinating. And it really did

38:26

point to how Democrats should be talking about

38:29

immigration going forward. What I

38:31

think happened in the wake of

38:33

how the Republicans focus on the

38:35

border, the cynical stunts of sending migrants

38:37

to Democratic cities, the

38:39

reaction to that is that we

38:42

focused as a party so much on

38:45

border security, right? We tried to out-tough

38:47

Republicans on the border without talking about

38:49

the broader immigration picture. So,

38:51

I thought it was very important that Biden made

38:54

this announcement earlier this week about helping

38:56

find legal status for people who are undocumented

38:58

but are married to American citizens. There

39:01

is a message here that comes through in the ECCI's poll is,

39:04

we can work to keep American families together, that

39:06

we can be humane, indecent, and find a less

39:08

chaotic immigration system for the people who've been in

39:10

this country, who are embedded in our communities, while

39:13

still keeping the border secure and stopping them from

39:15

being chaos at the border. Right? That is, lo

39:17

and behold, the message that was at the core

39:19

of the Democratic Party on immigration for a decade,

39:22

and we have lost it over the last six months.

39:24

And I understand why the Biden

39:27

folks sequenced these announcements, the border of security

39:29

executive order, and this one, and the way

39:31

they did, a lot of it probably had

39:33

to do with the timing of

39:35

when it was, they were done, because you

39:37

have to sort of really legal-proof these things.

39:39

But now that both of them are

39:41

out there, you have to, I think, tell the broader

39:43

story about both, right? And still to this day, even

39:46

though support for conference immigration reform is down

39:48

from where it was, you know,

39:50

five, six, seven years ago, that

39:52

is still what people want. They want

39:54

a comprehensive system that has border security,

39:56

but also a pathway to

39:59

citizenship for the- people who have been in this country

40:01

for a long time, we have to pay fines, you have to

40:03

wait your turn, but a

40:05

pathway because it's too chaotic right now.

40:07

And I think a message that sort

40:09

of gets back in the old hits

40:11

the Democrats had on immigration would be

40:13

a very positive thing. And this poll

40:17

makes that very clear that it's with the broader

40:19

lecture, but also with the very specific Hispanic voters

40:21

that Biden is losing from 2020. I

40:24

think you're right. And I'm just glad that

40:27

Ekkie's highlighted the sense of humanity and decency

40:29

and the need to keep families together because

40:31

that has gotten just completely lost from the

40:34

conversation. It's all about border security. And you're

40:36

right. I mean, when the Trump administration was

40:38

separating families, that was really one of the

40:40

nadirs of the entire presidency. And I think

40:43

reminding people of those facts and

40:45

talking about human beings and just trying

40:47

to keep people together and not rip

40:49

people apart from their loved ones is

40:51

really important. Last question on this, Dan,

40:53

just big picture. We get

40:56

bombarded with so much survey data. Some

40:58

of it is national polls. Some of

41:00

it is about specific cohorts of voters. When

41:02

you were working on the campaign or in

41:04

the White House, and you

41:06

were taking in all this data and all

41:08

the private data, how did you keep it

41:10

from making you kind of lurch from message

41:13

to message in a way that could be

41:15

incoherent or just kind of like getting

41:17

overwhelmed by the deluge? Because

41:20

you can find ways to

41:22

slice and dice messages to reach out to

41:24

specific groups, but that can take

41:26

away from sort of the broader message you're trying

41:28

to put forward to the American people. You

41:30

need to have an overall theory of the case,

41:33

right? That is your argument for

41:36

why your country reflected it. No,

41:39

this is such an outdated antiquated

41:41

concept, but

41:44

my Subsect newsletter, the message box is named after

41:46

a very specific exercise that used to be done

41:48

at the beginning of every campaign where

41:50

you write a quadrant on a whiteboard and then

41:54

on one side you write your campaign's message about yourself,

41:56

right? What are you going to say about why you

41:58

should vote for me? Then you... Then you write

42:00

what you believe your opponent's message is about themselves.

42:03

Like what are they saying? What are they saying in their ads

42:06

about why they should be voted for? And then you write your

42:08

message about your opponent. Why not your opponent?

42:11

Then you write your opponent's why not message about you.

42:14

And from that exercise, you

42:16

develop a theory, an overall

42:19

narrative about why you're a candidate. And

42:21

you have to come up with that before you ever do a bunch of

42:23

polling. That is change

42:26

you can believe in. That is the Obama, that's how

42:28

Obama came up with it. It

42:30

is Bill Clinton's, it's the economy stupid, healthcare,

42:32

change is more, change is better, more than

42:34

the same, whatever was on the sort of

42:36

infamous Carville Post-it note. You

42:38

do that and then you don't

42:41

look at all those polls as a way to tell you what to

42:43

say. You look at those polls to

42:45

tell you how people are interpreting

42:47

what you're saying. And you make tweaks

42:49

to it, but you can see Democrats

42:51

have been, it's not really just the

42:53

Biden votes, it's all across the map

42:55

is that we have been flummoxed by

42:58

the polls because we don't

43:00

under, like it is, we're

43:02

losing voters we didn't think we would lose

43:04

ever, right? Young voters, black voters, Hispanic voters.

43:07

And so we are like ping ponging back from message to

43:09

message, right? Like one day it's inflation, we're doing inflation and

43:11

then it's, oh, it's border securities. We're doing a border security

43:13

thing. And then Donald Trump's a convict and then Donald Trump

43:16

is for himself, but also he has dementia

43:18

too. And we've been in this

43:20

way, in this sort of mold really since 2016 with

43:22

Trump is you should

43:24

start with the narrative and then use the data to help

43:26

you understand the narrative and we're using the data to tell

43:28

us what to say. And that never works. No,

43:31

that's a recipe for incoherence. One

43:33

last thing before we go to break Dan, there's

43:35

been a bunch of bad news for Robert F.

43:38

Kennedy Jr's campaign lately. So the

43:40

first piece is he has officially been ruled

43:42

out of next week's CNN debate because he

43:44

is not yet on the ballot enough states

43:46

to actually win. He probably

43:48

will end up on all the ballots in those states,

43:50

but he has not gotten there yet. And

43:53

he also hasn't reached the polling threshold, which is

43:55

a problem that didn't get any better with the

43:57

release of this most recent Fox News poll, which

43:59

found. that Kennedy's support has been ticking

44:02

downward month over month and critically

44:04

that his favorability rating has gone from

44:06

plus three to negative 11, which is

44:08

not good. In a two-way race, it

44:11

seems like Kennedy supporters split

44:13

evenly to Biden and Trump, so it's still

44:15

not entirely clear what his impact

44:17

is on this race. Kennedy put

44:19

out a statement about the debate decision, calling

44:22

it undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.

44:25

He has another problem though, which is fundraising. According

44:28

to a report in Politico, Kennedy's campaign spent

44:30

more than double what it raised in May, and

44:32

his total cash on hand is now falling. It's

44:34

just north of $6 million. It

44:37

is important to note that his running mate,

44:39

Nicole Shanahan, is a billionaire, and she can

44:41

give the campaign as much money as she

44:43

wants to give it, but she

44:45

gave the campaign about $8 million in

44:47

April, but nothing in May. So

44:49

interesting to note. Dan, it's not clear to

44:51

anyone, I don't think, maybe not even Robert

44:54

F. Kennedy Jr., what his goal is here.

44:56

It could be stroking a giant ego.

44:58

It could be him trying to just

45:00

generally raise awareness about his anti-vaccine views.

45:02

It could be that he's a spoiler

45:04

for Trump, or just really hates Joe

45:06

Biden. Either way, it's not going great for

45:08

him. Do you feel like we've

45:11

seen peak RFK in this election cycle? Not

45:14

yet. I think typically

45:17

third-party candidate numbers go down as you get closer to

45:19

the election. Is there sort of this, you

45:22

go from undecided to third-party

45:25

to an actual, to one

45:27

of the two-party candidates, or you, you know, we saw

45:29

this in some of the New York Times, CNN polling,

45:32

re-polling after the Trump conviction is you had

45:34

people go Trump, they make a way

45:36

station at RFK Jr., and then they end up at Biden,

45:38

right? And so this is

45:40

usually the time where the third-party candidates are at

45:42

their peak. However,

45:45

this race, you know,

45:47

if Kennedy were to tap Nicole

45:49

Shanahan's money for broad-based advertising,

45:52

he could raise his numbers, right?

45:55

He sort of maxed out the right-wing

45:57

MAGA, Jason Pierson.

46:00

podcast circuit, right? Like I saw him on the Kill

46:02

Tony, I saw a clip of

46:04

him on the Kill Tony comedy podcast, which is

46:06

just like he's everywhere in podcast world, right? Just

46:08

everywhere. But there's only so much you can't, you're

46:10

not gonna reach the broadest swath of electorate that

46:12

way. So are they gonna run real ads,

46:14

right? And are they gonna run them in battleground states? Will

46:17

he ever get the 15% to get on the debate

46:19

stage? That would mean that

46:21

would be a tremendous performance. Nothing we've seen since Ross

46:23

Perot to do that, but can he get, he

46:26

will likely get on the ballot in enough states to get there. So,

46:28

you know, hard to say. what

46:31

if this debate is one of those

46:34

moments, which is very possible where we all walk away

46:36

from being like, holy fuck, that was terrible, right?

46:39

And if you're a double hater, or

46:41

someone who's really not in the politics, that may push you to Kennedy.

46:43

So, you know, we'll see, I think is the way I would take

46:45

it. Yeah, someone named Kennedy might

46:47

feel like a safe place to park your vote. The

46:49

other thing for Kennedy that's been challenging is, you know,

46:51

he came in, I think everyone just assumed he was

46:53

coming in to be a spoiler for Trump or to

46:56

at least just go after Biden. But

46:58

then quickly the Trump folks started to

47:00

view him as a threat, I think

47:02

his welcome became a little less

47:04

friendly on some of these right wing shows, right?

47:06

You have like kind of like TP at USA,

47:08

conservative group types targeting Kennedy and

47:10

going after him instead of trying to prop

47:13

him up anymore. It is kind of funny

47:15

that Nicole Shanahan is slowly realizing that this

47:17

very expensive vanity project that she's engaged in

47:20

is basically just getting her like press

47:22

scrutiny that she probably doesn't want, including

47:24

about her personal life. So

47:26

that probably isn't very fun for her. But I mean,

47:28

last question on this, are there any third

47:31

party candidates that worry you more than Kennedy? No,

47:34

they actually all worried me about the same. There

47:37

was a USA Today Suffolk poll from

47:39

some of the battleground states, including Michigan.

47:41

They look just at Blackfooters. Yeah, Pennsylvania,

47:44

thank you. And Cornel West does surprisingly

47:46

well, right? He's getting enough points to

47:48

be problematic. Jill Stein is

47:50

on the ballot in some very alarming states

47:53

like Wisconsin. She gets a couple of

47:55

points, that matters, right? So they're all where every single one of

47:57

them is worrisome to me. Kennedy's

47:59

probably- the most worrisome because we have seen

48:02

polling that shows he has a particular

48:04

appeal among Latino voters. And

48:08

that could be obviously devastating in

48:10

Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere. But

48:13

all concerning worry, worry, I worry about them all. Wonderful.

48:16

Me too. Okay, we are going

48:18

to take a quick break, but we come back,

48:20

you're going to hear my interview with former White

48:22

House counsel, Bob Bauer. We talk all about his

48:25

role in 2020, playing

48:27

Donald Trump during these mock

48:29

debate prep sessions with Joe Biden. It's a

48:31

fascinating look into how debate prep works, what

48:33

it's like to get into the character of

48:35

Donald Trump and much, much more. So stick

48:38

around for that. This

48:46

podcast is brought to you by eHarmony,

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what are you waiting for? Get

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Who Gets You on eHarmony. Sign

49:14

up today. My

49:52

guest today is the former White House

49:54

counsel for President Obama, President Biden's personal

49:56

attorney, and the author of the new

49:59

book, The Unraveling Refle- on politics without

50:01

ethics and democracy in crisis. Bob

50:03

Bauer, great to see you. Good to

50:05

see you, Tommy. Bob, it's great to see you again. You're one of

50:07

my favorite people to work with both on

50:10

the campaign and in the White House. And there's

50:12

a lot to talk about in this book. Thank

50:14

you. But we have this

50:16

debate coming up, and you write about the debate

50:18

preparations that I wanted to start there. Donald Trump,

50:20

Joe Biden are debating in less than a week

50:22

somehow. You write

50:24

about preparing candidates for debates, including President

50:27

Biden in 2020. You

50:29

actually played Donald Trump in President Biden's

50:31

mock debate sessions. How did you prepare

50:33

for that role? Did you have to

50:35

go full method like Leonardo DiCaprio

50:37

and the Revenant? Was there a scaled back

50:39

version? How does this work? So

50:42

when you do debate prep, and I've done

50:44

it for other candidates, you

50:47

try to give them as much of the

50:49

experience that you project they're going

50:51

to have with the arguments and the way the

50:53

arguments can be made and the tone that's going

50:55

to be used. But you're not doing a SNL

50:57

impression. I mean, it's not theatrics, because

50:59

that's just a distraction. And you're trying to

51:02

help the candidate prepare, not sort of boost

51:04

your prospects for being invited to post a

51:06

comedy show. And so the

51:08

first order of business is to get that right. And

51:11

that requires you to immerse yourself

51:13

in just material, audio material, video

51:16

material, written material, everything going years

51:18

back that you can find about

51:20

that candidate that will help you

51:23

approximate the style

51:25

and the arguments likely to be made

51:28

for the candidate you're representing and trying to help

51:30

prepare. Now, you also

51:32

played Bernie Sanders in 2020. I did.

51:34

In the primary. I did. You were like Meryl Streep of debate

51:36

prep. Like, how do you get that range? Well,

51:41

I don't know. I

51:43

enjoy doing it. But

51:46

it's really an assignment that you get, and you take it.

51:48

Yeah. I could have been assigned another

51:50

Democratic primary opponent, and I was assigned Bernie Sanders, so

51:52

I did it. I love it. Any

51:54

chance you're hopping off this Zoom and heading up to

51:56

Camp David to reprise your role? I

52:00

can't answer a question like that. I love that. I

52:03

very much respect the fact that you

52:05

asked it. That is a wonderfully pregnant,

52:07

no comment, everybody. OK. You

52:09

and I both remember well the first debate between

52:11

President Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012. It

52:14

went quite badly for President Obama.

52:17

There was a full-on meltdown among

52:19

progressives afterwards. And one of

52:21

the reasons why President Obama didn't do well

52:23

is because incumbent presidents get rusty. You

52:26

are used to having people stand up and salute

52:28

when you walk into a room. Staffers

52:30

who used to push back on you maybe don't when

52:32

you are the commander in chief. Donald

52:34

Trump will not hesitate to attack

52:36

President Biden sometimes in vicious ways.

52:38

He will not hesitate to raise

52:40

personal matters like Hunter Biden's legal

52:42

issues. In debate prep

52:45

sessions, I mean, does the team go

52:47

there and sort of prepare candidates to

52:49

hear what can be very painful personal

52:51

insults so that you have that experience

52:54

kind of live in your practice or

52:56

response? They have to. I

52:58

mean, they have to. It wouldn't be a debate prep

53:00

unless you were thinking through what,

53:03

on some reasonable basis, recent history,

53:05

what you've seen out there on

53:07

the campaign trail, what is

53:09

my candidate going to face? What

53:11

sort of arguments are going to be made? In

53:13

what way? Approximating, as I said,

53:15

the tone as much as you possibly can, the

53:17

style as much as you possibly can. But

53:20

if you were for some reason to short that and you

53:22

were just not to do that, I

53:24

don't know, out of some misplaced deference or

53:26

anxiety, then you would really be ill-serving your

53:28

candidate because that's going to happen

53:30

or so you think. And therefore, that

53:33

candidate, your candidate, has to be prepared for it. Yeah,

53:35

I mean, that's got to be really hard,

53:37

right? Because look, if

53:40

you're at the debate prep, I mean, you

53:42

have a relationship with this candidate on a

53:44

human level saying something about someone's son or

53:46

daughter to them, whether or not you're kind

53:48

of playing a role, it feels wrong. I

53:51

mean, is that tough to get through? I

53:53

found in debate prep, everybody walks in knowing perfectly

53:56

well it may be uncomfortable, but that's your job.

53:58

It's what you have to do. I don't think

54:00

it's taken personally. I mean, do you love having

54:02

to do that? I mean, take a few examples

54:04

that are maybe a tad

54:06

lower in temperature than the one you're using. You're

54:10

lying about your record. You

54:12

didn't do this and you didn't do that, but here

54:14

are some terrible things that you did do. And everybody

54:16

knows you did them. And that's

54:18

not fun either, right? You turn to

54:20

a public official, or it can't be that you're not

54:22

yet a public official, and you just level these charges

54:24

at them. Sometimes, as you can

54:26

imagine, they're charges that either rest on

54:29

the thinnest factual foundation, or they're completely

54:31

fact-free. And no,

54:34

that's not entertaining. I

54:36

remember I won't cite the candidate and I won't cite the

54:38

occasion. It's not in the book. I

54:40

write about debate prep, but this particular episode

54:42

I didn't include. I remember

54:45

throwing some trade-related accusation

54:49

at the, actually it was not,

54:51

it was a healthcare-related accusation of a candidate,

54:54

not by the way, President Biden. And

54:57

the candidate I was preparing

55:00

asked for a timeout. And

55:02

so everybody was curious to know, what's the timeout?

55:04

And he turned to me and he said, I

55:06

don't know, there's no chance in the world that

55:09

X, my opponent, is gonna say that. And

55:11

I said, well, why not? And the answer was

55:13

because it's so obviously not true. And

55:16

my response was, well, that's exactly why he's gonna say and

55:18

he's already said it before. I picked it up, right?

55:21

So no, it's not fun for the candidate you're preparing, and

55:24

it's not fun for you in preparing the candidate, but it's

55:26

the job. Yeah. Big

55:28

picture on the job. What do you think

55:30

the key is to a successful debate against

55:32

someone like Donald Trump who is more likely

55:35

to interrupt, more likely to be personal, more

55:38

likely to shout over you or kind of creepily

55:40

loom in the background as Hillary Clinton learned in

55:42

2016? Let me speak

55:44

generically because I can't really speak to this debate prep. I

55:46

have to be cautious about that. Of course, of course. But

55:48

I think, generally speaking, the key

55:51

to a good debate, of course, a

55:53

preparation first and foremost, thorough preparation, but

55:57

I think candidates in answering

55:59

questions. want to communicate an

56:01

authentic sense of who they are, they

56:04

can use the excesses of their opponent

56:06

to their advantage. They're in front of

56:08

many, many millions of people, and

56:11

people are gonna take their measure. And

56:13

so if one candidate, to borrow a

56:15

famous expression, decides to go very low,

56:18

it serves the candidate on

56:20

the other side to stay high, not

56:22

to take the bait. I mean, that's generally what

56:24

I've seen work best in debate, perhaps over the

56:26

years, and that it's served

56:28

the candidates themselves very well. Last

56:31

question on debates. I think there's a sense

56:33

among a lot of folks, and Republicans, Democrats,

56:35

and voters, that the recent

56:38

debates haven't necessarily served the electorate well

56:40

when it comes to talking about issues

56:42

or getting good information out. I

56:45

was honestly happy to see that President

56:47

Biden decided to go around the debate

56:49

commission to negotiate directly with networks and

56:51

get this new schedule going, because the

56:53

initial debate plan had the candidates debating

56:55

after states had already started voting, which

56:57

just seems absurd on its face. But

56:59

one material change for this upcoming debate

57:01

next week is there's no studio audience,

57:03

and the candidate microphones will be muted

57:05

when they're not talking. Do you think

57:08

that will have an impact to just

57:10

make the discourse better? I

57:12

certainly hope so, and as you know, when I write about this in the

57:14

book, I have

57:17

real reservations about the presidential debate structure.

57:19

That is to say, I'm sorry, the

57:22

one that was typically sponsored

57:24

by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and

57:27

I was part of a study group that the

57:29

Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania assembled to

57:32

look at reforms in the debate process. And

57:35

certainly, some of what you know

57:37

will be the features of this particular debate, I think,

57:39

are an improvement. Not having all

57:41

this hoopla, an audience, moderators having to

57:43

counsel people not to shout or laugh

57:45

or hoot or whatever it is, let

57:48

the two candidates standing side by side, Kennedy

57:51

Nixon style, speak to the

57:53

American public, and then cut the theatrics out. And

57:55

the theatrics, by the way, are cut out in

57:57

part. That emphasis again.

57:59

the theatrics is served by muting

58:02

a microphone so that one candidate can't break

58:04

in and try to grab

58:06

quote unquote a moment. And that

58:08

gets me to a point I

58:11

do feel strongly about. When debates

58:13

are covered, the

58:15

coverage often focuses on the line,

58:18

the moment, right? What is most

58:20

exciting, which will immediately get the most

58:22

attention. What you hope for

58:24

is a debate that's not defined just by

58:27

the line. It's defined by the 90

58:30

minutes that the two candidates are being

58:32

required to address questions seriously. And

58:35

then treat the voters seriously

58:37

and let them hear that. Whereas if

58:39

you have them in a sort of

58:42

cage might match fighting style, that might

58:44

suit the video clips that are

58:46

going to be posted about the debate and draw

58:48

a large audience the next day. But I wouldn't

58:50

say it's the best thing for the process. Yeah,

58:53

could not agree more. Okay, in your book, The

58:55

Unraveling, you say that you feel like we are

58:57

experiencing a crisis in public

58:59

faith in politics writ large. And

59:02

one of the reasons why is

59:04

because people who work in politics

59:06

treat it as blood sport, winning

59:08

seems to justify almost any tactic.

59:10

You're quite introspective in writing the

59:12

book, and you write about times in the

59:14

past where you feel like you are part of the problem. And

59:16

I first of all, I just have to say, Bob, like, I've

59:18

worked on a bunch of campaigns now. I've

59:21

worked with a few, but not a lot of people that I

59:23

felt were kind of scummy and unethical.

59:25

You are like nowhere near that list.

59:27

You're like the on the furthest other

59:29

side, you know, like a lawyer who

59:31

kept people on the straight and narrow.

59:33

So I was wondering, like, what sparked

59:35

this, this introspection? Is this like an

59:37

act of political absolution? Like, how are

59:39

you feeling writing this thing? Well,

59:42

first of all, I appreciate that comment. I really do.

59:44

And I do feel like we worked on

59:46

campaigns that were, you know, tough minded and

59:48

very much committed to winning, but stayed really

59:51

within the lines. But having

59:53

said that, I just thought

59:56

for us to have a serious conversation about

59:58

the state of our politics, which are bad.

1:00:01

And I will say a little bit more about that just

1:00:03

in a second, that it was important

1:00:05

for me to kind of own up to choices that

1:00:07

I face, some of which I don't regret at all.

1:00:09

I was happy to be seen as a lawyer who

1:00:11

was a can-do lawyer, could help campaigns win, or a

1:00:14

can-do government lawyer who could help chart a

1:00:16

path for the president to fulfill a policy

1:00:18

objective. But I also wanted to be

1:00:20

clear that there were sometimes choices I made that were

1:00:23

more complicated than at the time I saw them to

1:00:25

be. And I think it's

1:00:27

important for that self-reflection at this particular

1:00:29

time when we see a,

1:00:32

how very wrong things

1:00:34

have gone. I mean, how much trouble we

1:00:36

are generally in in our politics, and

1:00:39

b, how much attention

1:00:41

people who have positions of responsibility in politics and

1:00:44

government need to pay to those issues. I mean,

1:00:46

it really is in their hands. A norm

1:00:49

is just a free-floating abstraction,

1:00:51

like don't treat your

1:00:54

adversary like an enemy. Try to defeat, but

1:00:57

not destroy. But that abstraction

1:00:59

doesn't have any life to it, except

1:01:01

in particular circumstances where somebody has a

1:01:03

choice about how to

1:01:05

write an ad, or how to write a press release,

1:01:07

or what to say in a debate, or what to

1:01:09

say online. And so those choices

1:01:11

are ones that I think now, particularly

1:01:14

given our current circumstances, people

1:01:16

like you, me, and others who've been very

1:01:18

much involved people in government, have to always

1:01:20

be thinking seriously about because these institutions are,

1:01:24

they're in peril. These norms are

1:01:26

in peril. We Democrats

1:01:28

often point the finger at some of

1:01:30

the boldface names in Republican politics, like

1:01:32

Leatwater or Karl Rove, for really sending

1:01:35

us off a cliff when it comes

1:01:37

to just gutter politics. But it wasn't,

1:01:39

obviously, it wasn't just Republicans or Republican

1:01:41

operatives that did this. You write, there's

1:01:44

a story in the book where you write

1:01:47

about a McGovern aide who talked about jingling

1:01:49

keys. Can you explain the

1:01:51

context here in that story? Sure.

1:01:53

And now let me be very clear to say

1:01:55

this was a claim that he made, and I

1:01:57

had no reason to believe. And I'm

1:01:59

not sure. I wasn't told that George McGovern knew about it. But

1:02:03

we were in a room during a tough

1:02:05

cycle, in which eventually, by the way, McGovern

1:02:08

and other Democrats in the Senate lost in

1:02:10

the Reagan landslide. And

1:02:12

he was talking about his kind of

1:02:14

can-do approach to things. And years before,

1:02:16

he claimed, when McGovern

1:02:18

was facing a conservative opponent in

1:02:21

South Dakota who had among a

1:02:23

key credential, that he was

1:02:25

a war hero. He had been captured and tortured,

1:02:27

held in Vietnam, I think, for an extended period

1:02:29

of time. And it apparently, written

1:02:31

somewhere in a memoir, that he

1:02:33

remembered distinctly to this day, and it just

1:02:35

gave him the, he just reacted strongly to

1:02:38

the memory of a particularly

1:02:40

sadistic jailer walking down the corridor

1:02:42

jingling his keys. He's approaching to

1:02:44

open the door and visit whatever

1:02:47

horror on the captive that he was.

1:02:50

And he told the story about a

1:02:52

debate in which he claims he positioned

1:02:54

himself slightly off stage. And

1:02:56

when his candidate and this war veteran

1:02:59

took the stage to debate, at some point, he

1:03:01

quietly jingled his keys. And

1:03:04

he professed, he claimed, that

1:03:06

it really threw the opponent

1:03:08

off. And I remember, there

1:03:11

was a, I was young and I was back

1:03:14

on my heels about this. There was a little bit

1:03:16

of embarrassment, but there was also a significant amount of

1:03:18

kind of admiring laughter, like, wow. Now,

1:03:21

that's really thinking through something

1:03:23

at a critical moment that could be helpful to your candidate.

1:03:26

You look back on that and you say, no, no.

1:03:30

And it's hard for me to imagine that George McGovern knew

1:03:32

about that. I didn't know him well, but if

1:03:35

it actually happened, but I was trying to

1:03:38

describe a mindset. Yeah,

1:03:40

if you're trying to trigger

1:03:42

a Pavlovian response in a

1:03:44

person who was tortured as a POW, you have

1:03:46

lost the threat. You should get out of politics, go

1:03:48

to something else. Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

1:03:50

So one issue that worries me a lot that

1:03:52

you also write about is money

1:03:54

in politics. And it's an area where some

1:03:56

critics will point the finger at

1:03:59

you and me and the Obama. for

1:04:01

being part of the problem because one thing we did

1:04:03

in 2008 was opt out of

1:04:05

the public financing system and rely instead

1:04:08

entirely on private fundraising. And

1:04:11

so look, whatever you think about that decision,

1:04:13

things have gotten way worse since that time

1:04:15

because of the Supreme Court's Citizens United

1:04:18

decision, which allowed corporations and groups to

1:04:20

spend unlimited amounts on our elections. There

1:04:22

have been subsequent decisions in the courts

1:04:24

or by the FEC that have loosened

1:04:26

up the rules even more. It feels

1:04:28

to me and I want to know

1:04:30

if you disagree, like our campaign finance system is

1:04:32

just is broken. Where do you

1:04:34

rank the question of money and politics

1:04:36

on your list of reasons why we're

1:04:38

in this crisis of faith in politics

1:04:40

and and do you have recommendations for

1:04:42

how we could fix it? So

1:04:45

in that chapter, I acknowledge I've always been

1:04:48

a skeptic about overregulation of political money. I

1:04:50

mean, set aside the fact that it has

1:04:52

never been successful in this country. Every

1:04:54

time a roadblock is put up, the

1:04:57

parties, candidates, whatever become

1:04:59

determined to get around the roadblock and employ lawyers

1:05:01

and sometimes don't even bother with lawyers to try

1:05:03

to do that. And so I

1:05:05

do think the campaign finance system in that

1:05:07

sense that the overregulation of politics is a

1:05:10

self-defeating exercise. And that's one

1:05:12

point I would make. I go on in length about

1:05:14

this. I'll just make that one point to begin

1:05:16

with. But secondly, I think

1:05:19

we do have to be mindful that

1:05:21

campaign finance reform, in my experience,

1:05:23

is something that is embraced somewhat

1:05:25

opportunistically. When Democrats had no

1:05:27

money or they thought they didn't when I

1:05:30

started out in the 70s, early 80s, Republicans,

1:05:32

they believed and I think rightly so routinely

1:05:35

raised them and outspent them in major races.

1:05:37

Democrats were very concerned about getting money out

1:05:39

of politics. We've become a lot more competitive.

1:05:41

And you and I recall the Obama

1:05:43

campaign had plenty of money and our supporters wanted

1:05:46

us to spend every last dime. In fact, we

1:05:48

had so much money, if you recall, Tommy, we

1:05:50

had a surplus when the campaign was over. We

1:05:52

didn't have another way to spend it. And

1:05:55

I sometimes in asking

1:05:57

people about sort of what they mean about there's too much

1:05:59

money. I asked them the following

1:06:01

question in a Democratic audience. What

1:06:04

limit would you Democrats be

1:06:07

prepared to live with in spending money to

1:06:09

defeat Donald Trump? And I have yet to get

1:06:11

a taker. Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean,

1:06:13

I think that's a fair criticism, but then I hear

1:06:15

about the British political system, for

1:06:19

example, where you've got like a six-week long election and

1:06:22

pretty well-defined spending limits, and I think to

1:06:24

myself, man, that sounds nice, no? Well,

1:06:29

it would be constantly impossible for us to compress

1:06:31

our campaign period in that way, but

1:06:33

this is where ethics matters, and let

1:06:36

me explain this in the book.

1:06:38

There's sometimes laws, the answer to the problem, and

1:06:40

sometimes a heightened ethical

1:06:43

sensibility and accountability is the answer to

1:06:45

the problem, although it may be not

1:06:47

as dependable, although the legal reforms aren't

1:06:50

all that dependable. Take the example of

1:06:52

a candidate who raises money from people

1:06:56

who are thinking of supporting them or

1:06:58

are supporting them. At what point is

1:07:00

that just representative democracy? You raise

1:07:02

the money from the people who like you, who like

1:07:05

what you've done or will like what you

1:07:07

do, and at what point does

1:07:09

it become a kind of corrupt transactionalism? If

1:07:12

you have somebody come to you about

1:07:14

a policy issue and make their case and then

1:07:16

offer to raise money for you, do you accept

1:07:18

that offer in that context? And

1:07:20

there are a lot of gradations of

1:07:22

complication in this world, the

1:07:26

largest protection against corruption of the system are

1:07:29

candidates who have ethical sensibility, and this

1:07:32

goes back a long way, I

1:07:34

wasn't a voting citizen when he

1:07:36

was in the Senate, but

1:07:39

Paul Douglas of Illinois was a reformer who held in the

1:07:41

Senate seat for many years, he wrote a

1:07:43

book called Ethics in Government, and in

1:07:45

that book he talks about ethical

1:07:47

sensibility on the part of public officials.

1:07:49

They owe a certain degree of care

1:07:51

and judgment to managing issues that I

1:07:54

don't think can really be successfully managed

1:07:56

by clamping major restrictions down on

1:07:58

money. I mean, a

1:08:00

lot of what you're writing about and

1:08:02

thinking about is basically like an age-old

1:08:05

means versus the ends moral

1:08:07

debate, right? And it's especially

1:08:09

fraught in this country with a winner-take-all

1:08:11

system because we basically have an ideologically

1:08:14

split country. We're split 50-50. Now,

1:08:16

the extremes of each party sort of move

1:08:18

inexorably further away from each other, but we

1:08:21

remain split, which is like an interesting thing

1:08:23

about our electorate. But a swing of 100,000

1:08:26

voters here or there can lead

1:08:28

to radically different outcomes. So it

1:08:30

really is very easy in that

1:08:32

context to justify these win-it-all-cost tactics.

1:08:35

And you also constantly hear people in

1:08:37

both parties arguing, we need to get

1:08:39

tougher because the other guys are tougher,

1:08:41

right? Trump says it all the time

1:08:44

about Democrats. They're tough.

1:08:46

They're vicious. They fight dirty. We don't.

1:08:49

We feel like we Democrats can be squishy

1:08:52

and wimpy at times. It's this slide where

1:08:54

each side feels constantly pushed to be more

1:08:56

extreme. Do you have a recommendation for how

1:08:58

to arrest that slide? Well, no,

1:09:00

I agree with you. That is the pressure. And

1:09:02

it's understandable when the stakes in the election are

1:09:04

really high and people think that loss

1:09:06

is unthinkable. Here's where I

1:09:09

come out. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I

1:09:12

reject the premise that you can't be

1:09:14

tough in your campaigns. You can't be

1:09:16

hard-charging. You can't be aggressively competitive and

1:09:20

win ethically.

1:09:23

I think you can. You and I look

1:09:25

back on the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012, and those weren't easy

1:09:29

campaigns for all sorts of reasons, including the election of

1:09:31

the first black president in the history of the country.

1:09:34

We're proud of those campaigns. Did we do everything

1:09:36

exactly the way looking back from a strategic or

1:09:39

other point of view? We should have done it.

1:09:41

I mean, nobody's perfect, but we were

1:09:43

proud of those campaigns and we won them both. And

1:09:46

I'm proud of the 2020 campaign that I

1:09:48

was involved in. Any one. I

1:09:50

think you can't reject the idea that the choice is between a kind

1:09:53

of do whatever it takes

1:09:55

politics and losing. I

1:09:57

think you can be aggressive. aggressive,

1:10:00

hard-charging, really outsmart

1:10:02

and outgun the other side without

1:10:05

starting to look like them and

1:10:07

act like them. Because that spiral

1:10:10

is one that we can pretend that we can one day get

1:10:12

out of and we may never get out of it when we

1:10:14

be trapped in it. Yeah. No,

1:10:16

that's fair. But I imagine there's some

1:10:18

listeners hearing us talk and thinking Trump

1:10:22

brings a new level of risk, right? He tried to stage

1:10:24

a coup. He calls the

1:10:26

January 6th insurrectionist warriors now.

1:10:30

He's talking about using the DOJ to punish his enemies

1:10:32

in a second term. And there's

1:10:34

this, I think, legitimate fear that a

1:10:36

second Trump term could irreparably damage our

1:10:38

country and our democracy itself in ways

1:10:41

that we just can't go back on.

1:10:44

Given that risk, I mean, what

1:10:46

would you say to someone who argues that justifies some

1:10:49

real bare-knuckle stuff? Well,

1:10:52

I'm not troubled by bare-knuckle in the

1:10:54

sense of really aggressive politics. I'm

1:10:57

not troubled by that. But Richard

1:10:59

Nixon engaged in bare-knuckle tactics to try to

1:11:02

win reelection in 1972. And

1:11:05

quite rightly, he lost his office and many of

1:11:07

his senior aides ended up indicted in

1:11:10

jail, either by conviction or plea. I

1:11:13

think that it depends on how you define

1:11:15

bare-knuckle. I have to have

1:11:17

faith, and I do have faith, and I'll give

1:11:19

you one reason why I do. That

1:11:22

at the end of the day, there

1:11:24

is still such a powerful

1:11:26

desire to retain the fundamental democratic

1:11:28

culture, small Z democratic culture of

1:11:31

our country, that

1:11:33

we can depend upon that, we

1:11:35

can appeal to that, we can

1:11:37

fulfill its promise, and still

1:11:39

defeat someone like Donald Trump. I'm quite confident that

1:11:41

we can do that. And the only thing I

1:11:43

want to say, I don't want to ramble on,

1:11:45

is in my nonprofit, when

1:11:48

I say nonprofit, my non-bipartisan voting

1:11:50

work that I do at the

1:11:52

same time that I'm very involved in this campaign,

1:11:54

I co-chair a couple of organizations with Ben Ginsberg, who

1:11:57

was Mitt Romney's general counsel,

1:11:59

longtime Republican. We travel around

1:12:01

the country to support election officials and

1:12:04

to bring them together with community leaders and

1:12:06

to show them support and to support them

1:12:08

in the Conduct of professional elections and

1:12:10

in those conversations We have Republicans in the room

1:12:13

Republican community leaders and Republican election officials

1:12:15

as well as Democrats on both sides

1:12:18

And they may not be prepared to go and shout it on social

1:12:20

media There's definitely an atmosphere of

1:12:22

fear that has developed the Republican Party, which is

1:12:25

just dreadful Reprehensible the fear

1:12:27

of retribution the fear of being called

1:12:29

out trolled right harassed But

1:12:31

in those rooms, I sense a

1:12:33

commitment to the system. They

1:12:36

probably agree with Trump about regulations They agree with them

1:12:38

about taxes. They agree with them about a whole host

1:12:40

of things maybe down the line They agree

1:12:42

with everything in the Republican Party platform for all I

1:12:44

know But they do believe

1:12:46

that they live in a democracy and they

1:12:48

want that democracy respected and they're deeply troubled

1:12:50

by the wing of the party The Republican

1:12:52

Party which is not the entire

1:12:54

Republican Party But it is the dominant wing of

1:12:57

the Republican Party that basically has no use for

1:12:59

them. That's not only Defying

1:13:01

the norms. It's funnily questioning them.

1:13:04

It's repudiating them and I don't

1:13:06

find comfort in Even

1:13:09

among Republicans that I deal with around the

1:13:11

country with that at all And

1:13:13

hopefully those people can kind of re-grab

1:13:15

their reins of the Republican Party Sooner

1:13:18

rather than later. Well, I agree. I

1:13:20

think that's yeah, it's real problem I

1:13:22

mean one sort of an associated and

1:13:24

worrisome trend I think is the

1:13:27

extremity of the courts We

1:13:29

have a conservative majority in the Supreme

1:13:32

Court that it seems increasingly activist and

1:13:34

partisan and frankly just shameless they

1:13:37

don't seem embarrassed by accepting lavish gifts from

1:13:39

people with business before the court or You

1:13:42

know, they don't seem embarrassed by criticism of

1:13:44

these conflicts of interest in fact, they mostly just

1:13:46

lash out and they blame the press or Democrats

1:13:49

or you know in some cases their neighbors who are

1:13:51

just walking the dog and get Screamed

1:13:54

at or have a flag flown in their face. Do

1:13:56

you have ideas for for how to address

1:13:59

this? total disregard for ethics

1:14:01

or accountability in the Supreme Court itself?

1:14:06

So a lot of the complaints, and you say, in

1:14:08

a polarized politics, is not surprised that the Supreme Court

1:14:10

wasn't spared the fate of other institutions. You know, it

1:14:12

used to be at the top of the list. You'd

1:14:14

have Congress way, way at the bottom, then the

1:14:16

presidency at various points, but the court

1:14:19

and the Supreme Court in particular would

1:14:21

enjoy generally favorable public ratings. And that

1:14:23

has changed because it's been swept up

1:14:25

in the general unhappiness in the electorate,

1:14:27

division, polarization, and the like. I

1:14:30

spent a lot of time on these issues over the

1:14:32

period of time that I was on the Biden Supreme

1:14:34

Court Commission, the presidential commission on the Supreme Court.

1:14:37

And of course, there have been periods in American history

1:14:39

where the court has come very much into sort of

1:14:41

into contention and in some quarters

1:14:44

in disrepute, because it

1:14:46

was viewed, think about the Roosevelt

1:14:48

era and the great court packing

1:14:50

controversy, as weighing in on

1:14:52

major issues in a way that was

1:14:54

undemocratic and ideologically driven. And

1:14:56

I think that the only

1:14:59

answer right now to that

1:15:01

is for pressure to be

1:15:04

appropriately put on the court

1:15:06

to pay attention to these

1:15:08

criticisms. They did finally, for

1:15:11

example, adopted ethics code. It

1:15:13

wasn't precisely what I was looking for. It wasn't

1:15:15

fully satisfactory, but they did it because they responded

1:15:17

to the public criticism and online justices signed on

1:15:20

to it. As I said, it's deficient

1:15:22

in any number of respects, but at least

1:15:24

it's a step in the right direction. Likewise,

1:15:26

as you know, there were criticisms of

1:15:28

the management of their emergency orders docket,

1:15:30

the so-called shadow docket, where they were

1:15:32

deciding major issues without argument, without briefing,

1:15:35

and frankly,

1:15:37

even without transparency about which justices had voted

1:15:39

which way. And that even became a topic

1:15:41

of conversation on the court, and they began

1:15:43

to step somewhat back from that. And

1:15:46

so I think that it's really in public

1:15:48

debate, that this is

1:15:50

going to take effect. It may not be

1:15:52

immediately apparent, won't necessarily cause, you

1:15:54

know, people who don't like Justice Alito to

1:15:56

see him fleeing in retreat, it will have

1:15:59

an institutional impact. or at least we

1:16:01

have to hope so, because we can't live without some

1:16:03

fundamental respect for these institutions. They play such

1:16:06

a critical role under our system. Yeah.

1:16:08

I mean, one thing that's been, I think,

1:16:10

challenging for Democrats is there is, you know,

1:16:12

there's a sense in the country of a

1:16:15

broader frustration with the political system and politics

1:16:17

itself and the feeling that it hasn't worked.

1:16:19

And yet we are the party that believes

1:16:21

in institutions and tries to defend them. And

1:16:23

you see that in defending the justice system,

1:16:26

or the FBI for, you know, trying

1:16:28

to do its job and investigate, for

1:16:30

example, interference in the 2020 election, the

1:16:33

intelligence community. But you and I know, as people

1:16:35

who've like worked in these in government and also

1:16:37

just read history books, that

1:16:39

these institutions are flawed at best. And

1:16:42

at times in our history, have they done,

1:16:44

they've done wildly unethical things, right? I mean,

1:16:46

FDR, who's a hero to a lot of

1:16:48

people was getting regular briefings from J. Edgar

1:16:50

Hoover about his political opponents, something that would

1:16:52

be enormously problematic if it came

1:16:55

out today. How do you think we can strike

1:16:57

a balance between defending

1:16:59

institutions while not seeming

1:17:01

to suggest that they are perfect

1:17:04

or can't be criticized, or

1:17:06

at least trying to hear people who feel like

1:17:09

actually my experience with the justice system is that

1:17:11

it's been broken in some way. So

1:17:13

that's the key question. And I'm glad you put it

1:17:15

that way, because I think it's really important. What

1:17:18

happens in these debates is each side

1:17:21

drives the other one into refusing to

1:17:23

give any ground whatsoever. They

1:17:25

just can't give up. And so if

1:17:27

the attack is on a particular institution,

1:17:29

then it's ferocious enough, and the good

1:17:31

faith motors of the people attacking are

1:17:33

suspected, then the defense of

1:17:35

that institution becomes kind of uncompromising. And

1:17:38

as you point out, they then become

1:17:40

blind to the possibility that there are

1:17:42

significant institutional problems. And again,

1:17:45

I go back to the Republicans that I talked

1:17:47

to even today, let me give

1:17:49

you two hopeful examples of I could really

1:17:51

quickly please to reform initiatives, the American Law

1:17:53

Institute organized two working groups that I've been

1:17:56

involved with. I co chaired

1:17:58

each of them with Jack Goldsmith, who who I

1:18:00

wrote a book about presidential institutional reform with,

1:18:02

called After Trump a few years ago. He's

1:18:05

a well-known and highly published professor of

1:18:07

law at Harvard. And we

1:18:09

co-chaired working groups to look at, in

1:18:11

the first case, reform of the Electoral Account Act

1:18:15

and the other case, reform of

1:18:17

the Insurrection Act, by which presidents

1:18:19

can deploy without any apparent statutory

1:18:22

limits, troops to, you know, quote-unquote,

1:18:24

insurrections, rebellions, illegal combinations, conspiracies. There's

1:18:26

a lot of vague language in

1:18:28

the statute. In both

1:18:31

those cases, we put together behind closed doors,

1:18:34

fully bipartisan groups that included officials of

1:18:36

both the Obama and

1:18:38

the Trump administration. And

1:18:40

we agreed we'd have these conversations behind closed doors.

1:18:43

If we couldn't reach agreement, we'd walk away without a

1:18:45

word to one another or to anyone else. And

1:18:48

if we could agree, we would put something out in our name as a group. To

1:18:50

give you an example, I was, in

1:18:53

both cases, we had, for example,

1:18:55

in the Electoral Account Reform Act, one of the

1:18:57

participants in the work group was Don McGahn, who

1:19:00

was Donald Trump's first White House counsel. Judge

1:19:03

Mukasey participated. Judge Michael

1:19:06

Mukasey participated. Courtney Elwood,

1:19:08

who used to be the general counsel to

1:19:10

the CIA under Donald Trump. And

1:19:13

then Democrats you would recognize immediately on our

1:19:15

side, like Jay Johnson in

1:19:17

the Insurrection Act reform, who was secretary of

1:19:19

Homeland Security General Counsel of the Defense Department,

1:19:22

obviously a Democrat through and through and

1:19:24

a senior official in the

1:19:26

Obama administration. Mary DeRosa, remember

1:19:29

Mary DeRosa, who was the

1:19:31

national security legal adviser in

1:19:33

the Obama administration.

1:19:36

So just some of the people involved

1:19:38

were hardcore Republicans, hardcore Democrats, including people

1:19:40

from the Trump and Obama administrations to

1:19:42

administrations that could not be more unalike.

1:19:44

And in both cases, we reached agreement.

1:19:46

In both cases, we put out consensus

1:19:49

points about potential institutional

1:19:51

reform. And in

1:19:53

one case, the Electoral Account Act reform, we participated

1:19:55

in what turned out to be a successful congressional

1:19:58

debate. I testified. We

1:20:00

were very involved with the staff in helping to work through

1:20:02

some of the drafting issues. And

1:20:04

we're going to hope to make similar progress on

1:20:06

Insurrection Act reform. So we can do

1:20:08

it, but we've got it with

1:20:10

the people who are willing to participate in good

1:20:12

faith. Close

1:20:14

the door, keep everybody

1:20:17

out of it for a minute and say,

1:20:19

let's have a conversation that is candid and

1:20:21

fair-minded and respectful of points of view. And

1:20:25

let's see where it takes us. Is it always

1:20:27

going to be successful? People know, but we have to do

1:20:29

that kind of thing. Yeah. Look, I

1:20:31

think the blueprint there, which is getting people into

1:20:34

a room, speaking to each other face to

1:20:36

face like human beings, that is definitely the path forward for

1:20:38

solving a lot of the problems in this country. Unfortunately,

1:20:41

our politics is increasingly being

1:20:43

fought in a social

1:20:45

media battle. And in the

1:20:47

book, you write about your extreme frustration

1:20:50

with some of the social media platforms

1:20:52

in the 2020 election for their failure

1:20:54

to fact check misinformation by political candidates.

1:20:57

And two years later, the Biden campaign is understandably

1:21:00

very frustrated with this wave

1:21:02

of misleadingly edited videos of

1:21:04

President Biden that seem to go viral every day.

1:21:07

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I would imagine that the

1:21:10

conversation with these tech platforms gets

1:21:13

more complicated when you are

1:21:15

the president himself because you

1:21:17

could run into real First Amendment problems. How

1:21:19

do they manage this? Is there any kind of,

1:21:22

is there anything the White House can do to constructively

1:21:25

engage? Well, on the

1:21:27

policy side, I'm sure there is. But

1:21:30

I just I do want to stress, and that's what I cover

1:21:32

in the book. On the campaign side,

1:21:34

the presidency candidate like any other at the time,

1:21:36

he wasn't the president, he was former vice president.

1:21:38

Now he's the president and he can engage as

1:21:40

a candidate, even as he

1:21:43

occupies the White House. Now,

1:21:45

there are choices to be made. We're going back again to the question

1:21:47

of choices. How do you go about doing it? How

1:21:49

much transparency do you provide the public about what you're

1:21:51

saying and why you're saying it? The

1:21:54

arguments of support of what you're trying to accomplish. And

1:21:57

that all should condition how you

1:21:59

proceed. But I think, like

1:22:01

in 2020, we are going to be

1:22:03

heard, the campaign is going to be heard and has to be

1:22:05

heard on these issues because, as

1:22:07

you point out, they play a really

1:22:10

significant role in some of

1:22:12

the problems that we're facing in this democracy.

1:22:14

The quality of the debate, the quality of

1:22:16

discourse, the treatment of the voters, the treatment

1:22:18

of opponents. It's a

1:22:20

very serious problem. Yeah. The book, again,

1:22:22

is called The Unraveling Reflections on Politics

1:22:25

Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis. Bob

1:22:27

Bauer, thank you for doing the show. And thank you, I

1:22:30

think it's really actually valuable when people like you at your

1:22:32

level are introspective and reflect on both

1:22:34

the good and the bad in a public

1:22:37

life and in a career in politics. So thanks for writing the

1:22:39

book. Well, thank you very much for having me.

1:22:41

I really enjoyed the conversation, Tommy. Thanks

1:22:48

again to Bob Bauer for doing the show. Dan, great

1:22:50

to see you. I guess we'll be back on Monday

1:22:53

per usual, I guess, unless the Supreme Court

1:22:55

dumps a big nightmares worth of cases on our

1:22:57

head tomorrow and we'll be forced to do something.

1:23:00

But cross that bridge when we get there, I guess. Yeah,

1:23:02

I've been refusing to open any emails about that, just in

1:23:04

case. Smart. Smart

1:23:07

move. All right, buddy, talk to you soon. All right,

1:23:09

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