Is Trump Winning the Sun Belt?
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump is too scared to debate again after the worst two weeks of his campaign. His pal Mark Robinson, a.k.a. Black Nazi, is staying in the North Carolina governor's race, even though most of his campaign staff has quit.

Kamala Harris talks about her gun with Oprah and has a warning for would-be intruders. And Tommy talks with Chenjerai Kumunika about his excellent new series that we co-produced, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD. It's a really good show.

I highly recommend it. I'm excited to dive in. It's great. He goes way back, deep dive into the history of the NYPD, how it evolved and developed, and how that led to some of the systemic problems in policing we see today. It's really good. That's great. Everyone should check it out and stay tuned for the interview. But first, the polling gods giveth and the polling gods taketh away. On Friday's pod, Dan and I talked about the New York Times Siena poll that showed Harris up 50-46 in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania.

but oddly tied at 47 nationally. Then over the weekend, we got an NBC News national poll showing Harris up 49-44 on Trump. That is the largest lead for Democrats in over a year in the NBC poll. And then we got a CBS YouGov poll that showed her up 52-48 nationally and 51-49 in the battleground states. That was a slight improvement from their last poll.

But then when I woke up at 3 a.m. and checked my phone this morning, I saw that Nate Cohn punched us in the face with three new Sunbelt polls that show Trump leading 50-45 in Arizona, 49-45 in Georgia, and 49-47 in North Carolina. This is all with just six weeks to go until Election Day. I think we need like a little pollster shrine or altar or something in here with like a candle and some incense.

some nights no yeah let's get some more um magic and mystique and mystery into this we have a funny willis votive candle we could repurpose if we can yeah right or is mercury in retrograde if someone could send us like a good nate yes candle and a bad nate candle and then we swap them yeah

like how there's a candle you that they light at the vet to let you know that someone around you is dealing with a pet loss i'm sorry what what what vet are you going to well well they so that you don't get to you know like if they're letting you know that hey someone is someone in this vet you know that just made me so sad i didn't know that no i've never just saying that's why the candles lit because everyone's in a bad mood because the nate has given bad information that's all i'm getting at birthday yesterday all right let's get into the numbers uh what's

what's your take uh guys and and feel free to uh add anything about last week's time sienna polls uh because you two didn't get to uh weigh in on this yeah the one you you and dan talked a little bit about how the electoral college advantage may be slipping and looking at these latest polls today i thought it was part of the same trend which is uh if you look at the exits from 2020

Joe Biden did much better among Hispanics. If you look at how Kamala Harris has sort of improved her standing over Joe Biden, she's kind of rebuilt the 2020 coalition in a lot of ways with black voters, with young voters, but not with Hispanic voters. Not because she's lost people Biden had. It was that Biden had the same struggle, too. And that's sort of what you'd expect with a bunch of polls that make us feel good about Michigan, Pennsylvania, California.

and Wisconsin and make us really nervous about Nevada and Arizona and to a lesser extent, Georgia and North Carolina. That would also be about eroding electoral college advantage because you lose a few percentage of Hispanic voters in California and New York and Florida. And all of a sudden that you don't need the three to four points you otherwise would have needed.

Did you guys see the video like a month back of the people who are on a ride at Six Flags in Mexico and they just got caught like 250 feet in the air because of a storm? No. No, I didn't see that. That's how I feel. That's how I feel right now. I mean, Nate Silver, I know we're talking about good Nate. Other Nate said, in 16 years of running election forecasts, I've never seen such a close election.

So I think that kind of tells you everything you need to know about the state of the race. I guess on balance, I'd rather be Kamala Harris than Trump because of the recent strength in Pennsylvania and the blue wall states. Yeah. Is that hopeful? I think so. And we got some great news out of Nebraska today. We talked about this on Friday's pod as well. There was a push by Republicans to change the way they allocate their electoral votes. Lindsey Graham went to the state. Trump called in a few times. But the key state senator...

who was a Republican holdout, Mike McDonald, has said today, no, he's not changing it. They don't have his vote, which means the governor basically gave up, said we're not calling the special session. Deb Fisher, who's the Republican senator from Nebraska, said it's over. So Nebraska's not going to a winner-take-all system for electoral votes.

which means that if Kamala Harris wins the three blue wall states plus the second district of Nebraska, which includes Omaha, she will win 270 to 269. Yeah, the fact that this Nebraska electoral vote was a little bit up in the air and the fact that you could look at the map and realize that

that tie was one of the most likely outcomes was just sort of something emotionally I don't think we could fully face. Yeah. Why do you think Trump keeps sending Lindsey Graham to do these negotiations? I think for fun. Just that's your henchman? Go Lindsey. What are you going to send Rudy? I don't know. Yeah, he's running out of he's running out of respectable henchmen. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Do you see Rudy yelling yelling that he's going to stop? Yes. Yeah.

At a rally. At a rally. Incredible. Just to go back to the Times polls for a second. I think that the best thing to do here, I know this is like cliche at this point, is to throw them in the averages. Yeah. Do what we say, not what we do. Right. Don't freak out. Just throw them in the... Obviously, the New York Times Siena polls are one of the highest rated set of polls. They're a great polling outfit, but even the best pollsters, like...

They showed the race in August, Kamala Harris up five in Arizona. Now she's down five in Arizona a month later. The race in Arizona and Nate Cohn will say this, too. And the New York Times folks, it did not swing 10 points in one month. Also didn't happen. One thing I just would add to that, too, is in the both of those polls, Gallego is still has basically the same margin. It's forty nine, forty one and then fifty forty one. So you're saying there's been a 10 point swing there.

That is not affecting the Senate race either. It's just a little bit weird. It's just a different sample of voters, which is what you get. And look, I mean, the margin of error in these polls, according to the Times, is four to five points in terms of the difference between the two candidates. So a plus five Trump vote

in Arizona could be anything from a plus two Harris lead to a plus eight Trump lead. Like that's just what polling error is. So I don't, I try to avoid doing like going cross tab diving stuff like this just because the, you know, this like the sample of Latino voters in that Arizona polls like, oh,

like a hundred voters, you know? And when you get to the sub samples, the margin of errors get even bigger. So it's just hard. - I think it's, yes. I just think you can like, you can kind of blur your eyes and see a trend across these polls. And you see like the problem solidifying Hispanic voters is kind of what you'd expect to see. It's what you see in the NBC polls, what you see in the other Siena polls, just sort of, it kind of, it is what you see across the samples. - There's a larger trend over the last couple cycles of racial depolarization, which is oddly enough in the Trump era,

Democrats doing better with white voters, especially college educated white voters, but white voters overall. And because even Joe Biden did a little better in 2020 with non-college white voters. And then Republicans doing slightly better with black and especially white

Latino voters. It's just a very, I mean, we'll see if it holds up, but it's been in the polling. It's been in some of the special elections, the midterms. It's just, there's been hints of it. Yeah. And she's also just struggling on the questions on the economy. I mean, 31% of voters in these Sunbelt polls said the economy and inflation are their top issue. And 55% of people said that Trump was better on those two issues. And people just aren't sold on the idea that Kamala Harris's policies will help them yet. So there's just some work to do. That story, again,

Again, if you squint at all the polling and look at all the data, the people who want to know more about Kamala Harris's plans on the economy, who still think that Trump was better on the economy, they tend to be your low propensity voters who don't always show up in every election, independents, Latinos, non-college voters. It's...

they are worried about the economy, worried about cost of living, pessimistic about the direction of the country. It's like all the same. Yeah, there's two other points I want to make just looking at the Arizona poll. Specifically, this is a state where two-thirds say they're pro-choice or pro-

pro-abortion rights. 58% say they're going to support the ballot measure, which means there's a bunch of people telling posters that they're in favor of abortion rights and they're voting for Ruben Gallego, but they're either voting for Trump or still not sure who they're going to vote for. I'm a little, I don't know what you guys think. I'm a little worried about that because I think if you, I know that the conventional wisdom is having the,

abortion ballot amendment is going to help drive turnout. But you can see voters thinking to themselves like, yeah, I like Trump, but I'm pro-choice and I could have Trump as president, but protect the right to choose in Arizona. That was that was sort of what you look at this. You're like, oh, yeah, of course I'm pro-choice, but Trump is better on the economy. I'm voting to protect my access to abortion in Arizona. I'm voting for Ruben Gallego.

And then I can, I can throw a vote for Trump. Here's a little bit like the situation in Georgia with, uh, Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. And it was like, well, we're not going to vote for Trump, but we can vote for, you know? Yeah. I worried about that too. The other question I had just looking at this, which you can't find in the data is to Tommy's point, there's a lot of people who say the economy is their biggest issue. And there's also just a big chunk of independents who say that, uh,

Basically, like a lot of independents say Trump's policies will hurt them. A few more independents say Kamala's policy will hurt them. Here's what I don't know looking at this.

Is that a group of people that are polarized? Some of whom think Trump is better and some of whom think Kamala is better? Or is that a group of people who just think neither will do right by them? And I just think we just don't know the answer based on this. And I'm interested in that only because like, what is our job here? Is our job to persuade a bunch of people who right now are saying Kamala isn't who they want on the economy, but care about a bunch of other things, including character, abortion, democracy, whatever, and persuade them that she is better on the economy or persuade them that actually, uh,

These other issues are more salient. Yeah, I think that's a very important question. I talked to someone very smart who's done a lot of races in Arizona about this poll. And this person said they think that voters don't think that either candidate understands them or really cares. But they think the Trump economy was better and maybe reelecting him will put some money back in their pocket. And also Arizona is a little more Republican than other states. I thought that was an interesting theory of the case. I also talked to some folks who see a lot of other polling data and they just think now that Arizona

poll is bullshit. There's no way we moved 10 points in this period of time. And it's one of the two recent times polls was an outlier. So I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. I've heard a lot of the internal stuff has it pretty close to tied. Super close. Which is what you would say if you just average these two polls together. Right. Exactly. Plus five and minus five. I will say to your point, Tommy and love it about the economy stuff. Those, the people who think that again, if there's any lessons to take away from this, if you're the Kamala Harris campaign is I think you've

they've got to figure out ways to reach these voters who are, it's a much smaller percentage now, but who are still not engaged following. They probably didn't watch the debate. They have no, like you said, they have no idea. They don't think Kamala Harris is going to improve their lives because they probably have no idea what she stands for. Right. Right.

Or they just have never, you know, they've seen a bunch of elections in their lives and they feel like it's never made a difference. And they think, eh, they're all the same. - Just one hopeful thing I took away from these polls, like this is a poll that, in which Kamala is down by five, it was a Republican-leaning sample.

63 to 30, they are pro-immigration, believe being open to people coming to the country is more in line with their position than America's too open. Similar results on immigrants strengthening rather than sapping the country. And like, there's a group of people who say that Donald Trump is better on the border than Kamala Harris, but are still very pro-immigration. And I think that just

It just points to the fact that we have to separate border security from immigration policy and how we talk to these voters and that there's a place there where she can make up ground. Well, one thing you're seeing in some of this polling, too, is that for the undecided crew voters, and again, everyone gets crazy when you say undecided. How could anyone be undecided? Undecided between Harris and Trump or undecided about even voting at all?

For those voters, abortion and immigration, which are big issues for Democrats who've decided and Republicans and independents that lean either way, for those voters, they are lower on the list than the economy, right? So the Trump campaign's insistence on making everything about immigration, I really don't know that it works beyond their base that much. And I do think that the final...

the final frontier of this race is going to be fought out on the economy, right? And whoever can really break through to that will win. One more fun thing before we go to the next. The NBC poll did favorability ratings with a whole bunch of public figures and issues.

Top three most favorable items in the NBC News poll. Number one, capitalism, plus 26. Number two, Tim Walz, plus seven. That's American in a nutshell. Good for Tim. And number three, one more. Number three, Taylor Swift, plus six. Those are the top three most popular things. Now, three least popular things in the poll. Third from the bottom, J.D. Vance, negative 13. They tested about a dozen things.

Second least popular thing, socialism, negative 37. So Twitter got some brand work to do. Yeah, right. What a funny thing to pull. And then the least popular thing that they pulled, maybe the least popular thing they've ever pulled. Project 2025 is negative 53, only 4% view it as positive. And it's not like no one's heard of it. 57%.

View it as negative. I found that to be so strange that only I actually like saw that and I really couldn't believe it because this is America and it is rare that you can't get 10% of people to believe fucking anything is good. Yeah. Ghosts.

Well, Trump's disavowed it too. Yeah, that's true. So they might, it might be a lot of Trump voters just saying, no, no, no. They're supposed to not like it. Well, I took, I couldn't tell if that meant that a bunch of Republicans know the right thing to say is that they don't like it. Or is this, or is it another example of like one of the aspects of right-wing propaganda we don't talk about is it's not just what we hear. It's what right-wingers don't hear. Like, have they really not heard?

is Project 2025 not breaking through on their side enough? Because that is too low. 4% is too low. This is the United States of America. You can't find 10% of the country to say that Project 2025 is good? I don't buy it. Okay, okay. Well, get out there. Don't be hanging around with J.D. Vance socialism or Project 2025. That's the lesson. J.J. That's so funny. Socialism is like, J.J. Vance, what's your secret? I don't know.

One could argue that Trump's latest good polling isn't because of the campaign he's been running for the last few weeks, but very much despite it. The Times and The Washington Post both ran stories over the weekend about just how deranged and undisciplined Trump and his operation have become lately. They're still pushing the pet eating conspiracies and standing behind a self-proclaimed black Nazi. Trump has attacked Taylor Swift recently.

He's flown around the country with 9-11 truther Laura Loomer, and he's threatened government shutdowns. He added a few more crazy comments to the list over the weekend at his events. Let's listen. If I don't win this election...

And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy. So let's talk about our great women, all right? Because women have gone through a lot. They've gone through a lot. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now where it always had to be, with the states.

Real, real hypnotist there. You will no longer be thinking about abortion. You'll be very sleepy. So one Trump confidant said this to the Post about the campaign strategy, quote, It's not even let Trump be Trump. It's let Trump be unsupervised at all times. We can't control him, so let's hope he wins anyways. If you look at the polls, strategy just might work. Why do you guys think none of this stuff is moving the needle?

It's really a very dispiriting question. I would say this. First of all, I think, do we know that it's not moving the needle? I don't think we know that. Right. It might have moved the needle already. Well, this is one. Right. It may have moved the needle already. Right. We don't know what the world looks like where Donald Trump is showing like a modicum of discipline. The other piece of this, too, almost much like he did during the time when Biden was in the race. Right. The other piece of this, too, is I do also wonder sometimes like.

about why you might see a national poll that moves away from some of these swing state polls. And there is just a little bit of a kind of like maybe responsibility bias in some of these polls where people that are paying attention understand that their vote will determine what happens, maybe take these kinds of things more seriously. And people outside of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, or people in New York, other non-swing states just don't take it as seriously. We saw that in the midterms. Yeah. Yeah, and I guess it's just partisans are aware of these stories and the swing voters are undecided or just not. Yeah.

Like if you got a hundred percent of the country to know, you're like, Hey, okay. Just before you vote, uh, uh, Donald Trump brought, uh, someone who said nine 11 was an inside job to the nine 11 commemorative event thoughts. They might be like, what? Well, maybe he's trying to change some minds. Well,

Well, also in these in these Times polls, 90 percent of voters said they don't need to know anything more about Donald Trump in order to make up their mind. It is, you know, I think reminding people what we you know, we talked about Trump Trump amnesia during the whole when Biden was in the race. Trump is is solving Trump amnesia a bit by just.

giving everyone new material. Yeah. Reminding them why they hit him. It's not, it's not, you know, ads about things that happened in the Trump presidency. It's like, oh, he's just doing it all again. Yeah. Like, you know, we, you, we've all had like people in our lives that we couldn't fucking stand. And then you don't see them for four or five years. And they weren't that bad. And then you see him spend a couple hours with them, get stuck on a, that's enough till next year. Yeah.

Love it. What'd you make of Trump preemptively blaming the Jews? All right. Well, you know, going back to the classics. Here we are again. So I have two points of this. One,

I feel more explicit than he said before. Yes. Well, no, no. I like, yes, absolutely more explicit than he said. When I say the classics, I mean the classics, not Trump classics. This is America classic. This is original formula. But the, I think there's two things happening. One is this feels to me like what rich right wing Florida Jews sound like at Mar-a-Lago. The other thing is,

There's a Kamala Harris sign in my neighborhood, very liberal neighborhood, most liberal state. And somebody keeps putting poop bags in front of it because I think that if you are a conservative in California, it makes you a little bit crazy.

And there's something about being a right wing Floridian Jewish person. And you know that like I've had it happen to me, which is like politics comes up in some way and somebody sort of shaking with tension and then just goes so fucking hard. Like you think they're good for Israel? You know, you get like one of those like,

really intense right in your face. And I just know that Trump is hearing that all the time. And I think that's what's coming out here. The other piece of this is there is a tension on the right between knowing that they can peel off some Jewish voters with this sort of pro-Netanyahu shit and the classic kind of anti-Semitism that has driven the right for fucking ever. I do worry about what happens if Donald Trump loses.

Once again, he feels as though he did everything he was supposed to do for the ungrateful Jews. And that becomes a big part of what he says after the election. And it just riles up all of this sort of anti-Semitism that's just right there under the surface or increasingly above the surface on the right. Yeah. I mean, what Jews are, I think, 2% of the U.S. population. So presumably if Trump loses the election, it will be because of

the rest of the people in the country, the core usual. And because of him, I mean, it is a wildly antisemitic comment. It was an event about combating antisemitism, by the way. I mean, accusing Jews of dual loyalty or being insufficiently loyal to Israel or to America is like the classic antisemitic trope. Tommy, what'd you think about him, uh,

He's trying to handle his struggles with women voters by telling them everything's going to be great and that they'll never have to worry about abortion. I'm not sure that he's hit on the most compelling abortion message yet. Fine tune that one. I mean, just from the data, the number of women who say abortion is the most important issue in deciding their vote has increased from May to...

to August, according to the recent Times poll. 60% of the country wants abortion to be legal in most or all cases. That's from Pew. And then I think the latest NBC national poll found Trump trailing Kamala Harris by 21 points among women. So they have not nailed this one yet.

That said, voters are not universally well-informed on this issue. Remember, there was a poll back in May that asked who is more responsible for overturning Roe versus Wade, Trump or Joe Biden? And nearly one in five battleground state voters said Joe Biden. And then 13% said, I don't know. So it just reminds you of the kind of information deficit that is out there about

issues yeah and those numbers have improved a lot thanks to the common thanks thanks to kamala harris trump himself and then the you know millions and millions of dollars of ads that they've run but it's yeah it's still an issue yeah somehow i think um i don't know uh in politics as in life a kind of bloviating chauvinist man telling women to relax i think uh is not the most effective

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In terms of Trump's actual campaign, Axios noted that he's doing way fewer rallies this time than he did on his last two campaigns, possibly because he's old, because they're expensive and because people already know him. Because they're expensive. How fucking dare they're expensive. You're saying they're expensive. That's like the look. I'm who knows where them like.

Oh, so this really is a fucking great. Where's the money going? Right. It's too expensive to do rallies. Legal fees. But but like that is a like, oh, so it's just not worth the money. Well, I think I think the strategy would be let's spend the money on television and not on rallies. So were they wrong? Yes. There was also rallies when he became president. The dozens and dozens of rallies that allowed him to win. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. Look, I just I think he's also lazy. Yeah. You know.

The campaign did say for the story that they're going to be ramping up the campaign events. There was also an AP story about how Republican leaders in the swing states aren't seeing the campaign doing a lot of organizing, door knocking. How much do you think this matters, Tommy?

I mean, it was interesting. A good ground game can move the needle like a percentage point, two percentage points, both in terms of persuasion and then get out the vote. I think what's interesting about those stories in this cycle in particular is the Trump campaign, thanks to increasingly pathetic campaign finance laws, has basically outsourced their ground game to super PACs and outside conservative groups like TPUSA, that little right-wing college fascist organization.

And those groups don't have any track record of doing this well. And then one such group is Elon Musk's Super PAC. And they fired the vendor who was overseeing all the door knocking. So that's not the best way to run a railroad. And again, like these are not like in Obama 08 or 12, we had a bunch of excited, committed volunteers knocking on doors. These are just people getting paid by the hour to like go through a list.

Their theory of the case seems to be that the rallies, the nuts and bolts of campaigning, like all that really matters is reaching these low propensity voters who don't usually turn out. And the way they're doing that is, you know, Trump and the manosphere and going on all the podcasts and doing stuff like that. And they're kind of hoping that just the vibes and the gravitational pull of the election, which is,

you know, I'm annoyed with the direction of the country and the economy and I like to instruct, like that will do it and that they don't need to spend money on all this other stuff because not a lot of the people that are undecided are paying attention. That seems to be the theory. It's a little bit also confusing though because...

This is a better operation than the operation Trump had in 2016 or 2020. He didn't have operations in 2018 and 2022. And what we have seen is that Republicans are able to turn out their voters. And so I think on some level, they're also relying on all these other campaigns and all these other organizations to do the work for them. I think we should assume that they'll succeed. I think we should not assume that we get that one or two points from being better at organizing than they do, because even if Trump is incompetent or not, not, not paying enough attention to this, there are other organizations that will. I think.

never bet on Trump voters not turning up. Yeah, no, that's just one lesson from the last two cycles. I think in their theory of the case that he just kind of dominates the national narrative around the election and therefore can kind of turn people out that way. It's been proven right in a lot of instances. I do think, I mean, David Plouffe describes a presidential campaign as essentially you have seven battleground states, you have seven gubernatorial campaign style GOTD efforts.

I would rather operate those myself, have a handle on them, know they're being done professionally than not. So like, it's certainly not a good thing to have Elon Musk firing everybody who's supposed to be knocking doors like a couple months out, but I don't think we should bet on it. You guys noticed the, uh, the campaign intrigue in fighting in the, uh, in the post story with, uh, with the arrival of Corey Lewandowski, uh,

The post says Lewandowski soon began telling others he was in charge of the campaign as the chairman, which was not true. He raised questions with Trump and others about how Susie Wiles had spent money, particularly on advertisements, forcing her to spend time defending herself internally. Others on the campaign defended Wiles as frugal, and he also began calling staffers in swing states and asking if the campaign was being well run, outreach that filtered back to Wiles and rattled the stuff. That's the Trump campaign. I do like to hear them suffering. I know, that's the Trump campaign we know and love. But by the way, like,

That's probably what he should be fucking doing. He's figuring out what the hell's going wrong for these people. Yeah. One thing that Trump and his campaign clearly don't want to do again is debate. Over the weekend, the Harris campaign accepted an invitation from CNN to debate on October 23rd.

Here's Trump responding to the invitation over the weekend and then Kamala responding to him on Monday morning. Kamala and her group have seen what's happening to their campaign and it's not going well for them. And they would like just announced a little while ago as it was coming off the plane, they would like to do another debate. The problem with another debate is that it's just too late. Voting has already started.

She's had her chance to do it with Fox. You know, Fox invited us on and I waited and waited. Join me on the debate stage. Let's have another debate. There's more to talk about and the voters of America deserve to hear.

the conversations that I think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies. What's your plan? What's my plan? And we should have another one before Election Day. We should note Trump saying it wouldn't be fair to debate Harris again because early votes are already being cast, even though in 2020, Trump and Biden held their last debate on October 22nd. That was a month after early voting started. That seemed to be on a level. 13 days before Election Day. Seems like bullshit. So...

What do you guys think? You think you think Harris is onto something calling out Trump on the on trying to dodge the debate? Yes, I do. There was I couldn't tell for a while. Is he just negotiating for better terms?

There's one more when Trump was rambling on about the debate. There was one thing he said that made me think he really actually doesn't want to have another debate, which is he was talking about how he did one debate with CNN. They were very fair. And I killed Joe Biden. And then I did the ABC debate and it was three on one. And people still say I did a good job. You know, CNN was very fair, which means they wouldn't be fair if they did it again. He like throws that in again. CNN was very fair to me, but they couldn't be fair again because they got in so much trouble, which was.

actually him ahead of an argument about then why not just say yes to the CNN debate, which made me think he really actually doesn't want to do it. He just looks weak.

He looks weak. Which is why I think if I was Kamala Harris, I'd do a whole push on this. Yeah, hit the gas. And I wouldn't make it to avoid making it just be like a processy thing that no one cares about because of the debate. That's what will get the media to cover it. But to make it an actual message, it's Trump is weak. He's scared. The reason he won't debate is because he doesn't want to talk about his plan on the economy because he would slap a $5 trillion tax hike on

Right.

on everyday goods, I would be like, why doesn't Trump want to talk? Why doesn't he want to defend his plan to raise taxes on you? And just, I put ads behind it, do the whole thing. I also like, I think that's all true. I also think like, we just saw, you know, Rogan is out there being like, wow, she did really well in the debate. He does it with this as conspiratorial, like her minders certainly did prepare her well, but like Trump scaled,

is like a very, I think like pretty embarrassing. Cuts him to his core. Yeah. And it would really break through. Well, she called him a P word at an event publicly. I don't hate it. It's a hard P. I like it. I don't hate it. She should do it on Fox. Go on Fox. Yeah. Put it, run some of those ads on Fox or his favorite programs, whatever he's watching, like get in his head on this. Yeah. Maybe an F word. Farmer.

All right. So all these Trump clips that we played were from his rally in North Carolina over the weekend, which was notably not attended by previously announced guest Mark Robinson, a.k.a. Black Nazi, a.k.a. nude Africa posting enthusiast. Well, you might say he certainly has his hands full. Couldn't make it. No.

Robinson has decided to stay in the race and is threatening legal challenges against CNN, even though he's provided no evidence to contradict their story. Sue them. Which might be why nearly his entire campaign staff quit and why the Republican Governors Association confirmed they're not spending any more money on the race. In fact...

Two of the only political leaders still standing behind the guy who said he wants to bring back slavery are Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Vance said over the weekend he's keeping an open mind. Do you believe him that those were not his posts? I don't not believe him. I don't believe him. I just think that you have to let these things play out in the court of public opinion. I don't I don't not believe I don't believe it or not believe it. It has to play out in the court of public opinion.

So just you'll decide its truth will be determined based on what does it mean to believe anything anyway? Incredible. What happened to the fucking traditional? What happened to the fucking classics? I thought you were supposed to. I thought there's a there's a moral truth that the postmodernist movement was destroying American society. Suddenly it's out the fucking window. Suddenly it's back at college. Unbelievable. What is true? J.D.?

Coordinated campaign in North Carolina on the Democratic side put out a memo talking about how they're going to tie Trump to Robinson and use it to Kamala's advantage, in particular going after counties where Nikki Haley did really well. Harris campaign is already running an ad featuring Trump's effusive praise for Robinson. We played some of that on Friday's pod. Tommy, what do you think of the strategy here from the Harris campaign? I think the strategy is just to depress Republican turnout.

And Republican voters will be bombarded with stories about this. This has got to be the biggest thing in all of North Carolina right now, politically, news story-wise, politically.

across the board. I can imagine, you know, some Nikki Haley Republicans staying home because they're grossed out by it. And I also think in practice, the Robinson campaign imploding will mean less GOTV money, less TV, you know, less TV ads on air. It also just means every time Trump goes to North Carolina, his coverage is going to be fucked up by questions about this and J.D. Vance too and everybody, every surrogate. So it's just kind of mischief making. And I think Republican voter suppression at this point.

Yeah. One point about all this that's sort of been bugging me is just like, I listen, I personally find his posts on nude Africa to be disgusting. But but he has a long history of despicable comments, many of which rival what were said on this website that he committed the sin of losing. That's sort of, I think, what ultimately led Republicans to want him to get out before the deadline and why a bunch of people quit. It became embarrassing to work from not because of the horrible things he said. He said incredibly disgusting, racist, misogynist.

transphobic, homophobic things over and over again. They plucked this guy from obscurity. He never had a backer check. He's the current lieutenant governor. No one is calling on him to resign. The only sin that's really a sin that they all can collectively agree on the Republican side is the sin of losing. I think you got to make this really simple, which is he has said a whole bunch of horrific things. I think calling himself a black Nazi is

Saying that he'd like to bring back slavery, that he would certainly buy a few, and that what's going on in Washington makes Hitler look good, look better. Those are three things I think worse than any of the other stuff we had heard from him.

Sure. I think so. Okay. And then extended fantasies about having sex with this wife's sister probably won't play well. Probably won't play well. But even that is like whatever your own, your own stuff is your own stuff, right? But the Hitler Nazi slavery stuff really bad. And then you got Donald Trump who has not condemned him at all. And then you got plenty of footage of Donald Trump saying how wonderful he is. That's it. That's all you need. And I think then it's, it's less about,

you know, whether Robinson depresses turnout or not, or if someone's going to leave the Robinson thing blank or vote for Josh Stein and vote for Donald Trump, you got to tie, you got to use it to damage Trump by tying Trump to Robinson. Here is this guy that he just loves.

And by the way, if Donald Trump wins, the whole government is going to be run by people just like Mark Robinson. If not Mark Robinson, maybe he'll get a spot in the administration, right? Along with Laura Loomer, along with J.D. All these people are going to be running the government. It's like you don't want the government that Donald Trump is going to bring for the second time. I think that's a strong argument.

I think you make it. That's a good extremism argument. I talked to some people in the campaign. I was like, what's the goal here? Is it just to kind of keep people from turning out? And they were like, yes, that's the real goal. It's just like people are going to be really bummed out. Republicans who thought that they were going to get to vote for the next governor and Donald Trump in this election. And now they're like, this guy's embarrassing us and humiliating and let's just not even bother. Yeah.

A couple other things to cover before we go to the interview. One, Kamala Harris held a live streamed event last Thursday with Oprah Winfrey and others focusing on reproductive rights. But the moment that got the most attention was this. I'm a gun owner. Tim. I did not know that.

If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot. Yes, yes. I hear that. I hear that. Probably should not have said that. My staff will deal with that later. What did you guys think of that? I liked it. Here's what I appreciate about it. I would say that did not seem planned.

She just seemed very... Even, like, the my staff will clean it up later. Like, it just seemed like it came out in the moment. Yeah. It's great. I think, like, what I like about it is the...

The kind of like joking about like, my staff's gonna have to clean this up a little bit. Like Trump does that kind of thing all the time, which is like, I'm not gonna read the prompter. I don't need the teleprompter. I probably shouldn't even say this. I get in trouble for saying these things. They tell me not to say it. Like forget the substance of it. It was a moment where she was saying, fuck the talking points. I want you to hear a little bit more from me directly. And like, I think Kamala Harris is running an incredibly disciplined campaign. The problem is she's running an incredibly disciplined campaign. Yep.

Donald Trump is an anti-establishment. It's just what, even though he is fighting to preserve democracy,

the wealthiest prerogatives and the traditional prerogatives of some of those powerful forces in our country, he gets to run as this rebel figure. And the more that we can embody that spirit of like, fuck it, you know, like I don't follow the talking points. I'm just gonna tell you what I really think. Like, I'm gonna break down the kind of, I'm not just gonna be a typical politician. Moments like that, I think are really valuable. That's what made it more valuable to me. My staff's gonna have to clean this up. Like that to me was the part that really made me think like, oh, that was good.

I thought the same thing crack jokes about shooting people with Oprah normal campaign stuff you know I I don't think it's I don't think it's gonna move anyone on gun policy necessarily but I I had the same thought as you love it is that like she has been incredibly disciplined and on message and all these interviews but a few moments where you know Obama was always very his sense of humor was like

telling everyone I know that this is a circus and this is a game that we're all playing sometimes and it's a little absurd and I'm going to call that out. Like she could do a little more of that to just let us know like break the third wall. Yeah, for sure. It's me. It's Kamala Harris. I know all this is crazy. The staff's going to get mad at me because everyone's going to be freaking out about the gun thing, but whatever. It's the fourth wall. The third wall is still on the set. Sorry, the fourth wall. No, and I like that. No, the third wall is just a big fake boat behind you. You know? Yeah.

Or whatever. Also, for those of you capable of thinking beyond November 5th, which I am not, Trump did an interview with conservative commentator Cheryl Atkinson in which she asked him about his future plans. Let's listen. If you're not successful this time, do you see yourself running again in four years? No, I don't. No, I don't. I think that that will be, that will be it. I don't see that at all.

- Wow, no Trump 2028. What do you guys think? You believe him? - Nope. - Really? That'll run again? - You think it'll run again? - It's all grift. Trump, well, he's got a new crypto coin to roll out. He's got a new NFT. He's got a... - He just seems exhausted.

he just seems like he he's done all this retreat this is a third time for him days a week i know i know but he's he's fucking sick of this shit i had forgotten that in 2020 he said that if he lost to biden quote you'll never see me again and then remember biden turned it into an ad on twitter and said i approve this message i forgot about that too yeah i just think he'll be so old he will be 82 he'd be older than a lot of bronzer uh that was with cheryl eckison i can't

I knew that's what you were going to pick up on. She was a CBS correspondent during the Obama years who wrote just –

Did the most insane Benghazi coverage. Yeah. Was she the one that got her space keys? The delete key got stuck on her laptop. And she thought she was hacked, but it was really just sort of a sticky button. Yeah, she videotaped her keyboard deleting letter by letter by letter some document she was working on. She said it was like the NSA planted something to delete her Benghazi truths. Incredible. Anyway, it's something nice to think about that if we can just...

beat Trump one more time, you will be out of public life forever. Oh, yeah. Wouldn't it be great? Just going to the, just occasionally popping up at a conference like the fucking Babadook. Just, just hawking crypto. Yeah, great stuff. The grift, the grift can continue. Yeah, that's fine. I don't care. Go for it. Okay. When we come back from the break, you're going to hear Tommy's interview with our friend, Chenjerai Kumunika, the host of Empire City. But,

But before we get to that, a lot can change in four years. Maybe you move, change your name, turned 18. Even if you voted in 2020, it's important to make sure you are still registered and up to date. The outcome, as we've talked about this episode, is going to come down to every single person showing up to vote. So are you registered? What about your friends? What about your family? Thanks to Vote Save America, it's easier than ever to check your registration, apply for a mail-in ballot, and stay on top of your state's voting deadlines. It only takes two minutes.

Check if you're ready to vote at votesaveamerica.com slash vote. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. And this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, Chenjerai Kumanika.

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I am so excited to welcome to the show, Chenjerai Kumunika. He is the host of the truly excellent, truly, truly excellent new limited series, Empire City, which was produced by Wondery, Push Black, and yours truly here at Crooked Media. Chenjerai, great to see you. I'm so excited to be here. Big fan of the show. Listen, what makes this show so great...

is all the deep research you have done into the history of the NYPD over the last several years. But also, you're not just coming at this as an academic. You have this deep personal connection to the story going all the way back to your father. Can you tell us a bit about your dad and his interactions with the NYPD and how that got you interested in pursuing the series?

Absolutely. And I just want to say that, you know, the history of the NYPD and policing in America is something that people should be interested, period, right? Because so many of our conversations, people are talking about public safety, talking about policing, but not that many people know where policing really came from. And for me, it did start in a personal way. You know, I was, you know, you know,

And basically, I had noticed that I hadn't really seen a moving image of my dad. My dad died in 93, and that was before you could just easily get moving images of people. It wasn't like you couldn't do this on your phones. A lot of camcorders. Yeah. And I did wind up seeing, someone sent me a link to this archive, and I wound up seeing

this moving image of my father for the first time. And it was shot by NYPD. They were surveilling him because my father was the chairman of the Bronx chapter of CORE, and he was protesting an incident of police brutality.

And so, yeah. And so I saw this moving image of him. And, you know, when you see someone, you know, I see my father, I haven't seen him in years. It felt like I wanted to hug him. He's right there. He's moving. But there was also this other thing going on, which is, you know, why were the police surveilling my dad? Yeah. And just to be clear, like the police were not surveilling your father because there was any allegation of criminality or rule breaking. It was because he was organizing protests.

Exactly. I mean, you know, the things that Congress of Racial Equality was fighting for, you know, and the activists like, you know, my dad and other activists that, you know, went into this police station, they were protesting police brutality, but they were also fighting against, you know, there were activists fighting against housing discrimination, you know, fighting for voting rights. These are things that I think people widely believe, you know, the rights we have today that people appreciate. But, you

The NYPD formed an entire unit to surveil these people and infiltrate and provoke them. And so because so many of our conversations start with these incidents of police brutality that can be discussed like, was this bad training or was it excessive force? And what I'm saying here is like, no, this incident was the NYPD created a unit to stop people who were fighting to make America a stronger democracy.

Yeah. And clearly constitutionally protected rights in the process. The story doesn't start there. I mean, you went way back. You read a lot of really old newspapers. How did that early news coverage of crime and policing shape kind of the origins of the NYPD and its mission?

Well, you know, of course, newspapers are great for historians who want to understand the past. But in this case, you know, yet newspapers actually were kind of driving the agenda. You have to remember that in the early 19th century, there wasn't TV. You couldn't go on TV if you were a politician and speak to the public. You couldn't go on like, you know, TikTok or whatever. You just literally, you had to, it was the newspapers that had the power. And so newspapers taught people.

New Yorkers in America, what was dangerous. And so you can imagine in the 19th century, the thing that was dangerous really was poor people, you know, and things that threatened business. And, you know, and then, and, you know, I,

sad to say that also free black people, even in a state like New York were considered dangerous. So the newspapers were teaching people that this was dangerous. And that really shaped the, that shaped the vision of what policing became. But, you know, the thing about it that I would also say is that there's almost like this symbiotic relationship, right? Where by painting the idea of a very dangerous New York, a dangerous America, newspapers are also creating headlines for them. You know what I'm saying? You've heard the saying, if it bleeds, it leads, right?

but they're, they're actually setting our priorities up about what, what safety is going to look like, you know? And that included, I mean, you know, some of these early police officers, you know, not just returning escaped, uh,

African Americans to slavery in the South, but essentially kidnapping free black people on the streets of New York, right? And essentially selling them into slavery, into Southern slave states? That's correct. What you're going to learn when you hear the series is that the very first major deployment of the modern NYPD was deployed against a man named George Kirk, who had escaped to New York because New York was supposed to be a free state and he thought he was going to be free. And

And what happened was that the NYPD, as a professional force, hunted him down.

And, you know, New York was a kind of a precedent in that way to the fugitive slave law where, you know, you see the police department being used as a slave patrol. And then this became this becomes the case around the country. And the first test cases of this are in New York. Right. Whereas people are going to understand, like, all right, New York, you're supposed to be this free state. But really, we expect you to protect this plantation economy. Right. And I just thought that that was powerful because when you think of slave patrols,

You know, it's like you think of Harriet Tubman, right? You think of like in the woods, you know, dogs hunting people down. You don't think of, you know, professional police officers, you know, in a place like New York. But that is, in fact, how this started.

It's an amazing part of the first couple episodes that everyone should listen to. I thought your focus on the media and the origin of the police, it's sort of how the coverage shaped it was so interesting because I know Gallup, which is a great polling agency, they do regular polling about people's views on crimes. And I always found this statistic really remarkable, which is that in 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993,

at least 60% of adults said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period. Now, interestingly, people are less likely to say that crime is up where they live than they are to say it is up nationally. So that just seems to suggest that

from the very beginning of policing until today, that the media has a huge impact on our views about crime. And I would imagine kind of the political context and debates about funding, et cetera, that then lead to how policing is actually conducted in this country.

Absolutely. And so in that episode, that's one of the things we're seeing happening back then. And we're trying to call attention to the way that that still goes on. You know, I talk in the series a lot about my father, but my mother works in the field of public health. And so I have kind of an inside scoop on the things that actually threaten people's safety. And it's not the things that are being policed. Right.

And also, you know, if you've ever seen the work by Alec Karakatsanis, who talks about, like, propaganda, talks about, you know, wage theft and these kinds of threats to people's safety. All kinds of things that businesses are doing, you know, whether it has to do with climate change, violating those rules. Those things aren't policed, right? But those are the things that, at scale, are harming the most people. And so...

Usually what they'll do is take a particular murder or a particular instance of harm, which does have to be figured out. People do need protection from, but which is not representative of what's actually happening. And then they'll blow that up so big and make it so graphic that that sort of

colonizes how people think about safety. And so in Empire City, we tell the story of a woman named Mary Rogers who was murdered. And that's terrible, right? We don't wanna minimize the importance of her death or in the contemporary realm of the harm that's happening in some communities,

But it turns out police actually they never solved this crime. And just as today, police aren't very good. I mean, as people in Uvalde, how well police have done at protecting them from those kinds of things. So, yeah, it really is a media plays a role that's really important. And I think that I'm hoping that people see those connections and think about what needs to change.

Yeah, I want to unpack this a little more because you in the series and in conversations I've had with you offline and then also, you know, your scholarship, you push back on the idea that police are policing actually keeps us safe. And certainly like listeners are probably thinking, well, certainly there are instances of, you know, crimes being solved or prevented by the police on sort of individual basis. Even if the clearance rates broadly are shockingly low. I think the statistic is that.

fewer than half of crimes in the U.S. are reported and fewer than half of reported crimes are solved. I think it was 36 percent of violent crimes and only 12 percent of property crimes. So quite low. But I imagine, are you talking about like the record of policing in the aggregate or are you measuring, you know, the efficacy on one hand versus the violence conducted by police against citizens? Like, how are you thinking about that?

Well, I mean, in some ways I would say both things are things that we should think critically about and we should think historically about. So, you know, the first question is what are the things that are harming most people right in the city? And, you know, and, you know, is policing actually structured to really prevent and dig into those, into those areas? And I think that we'll find that, you know, when it comes to that, you know, for example, like, you know, public health issues, um,

or even getting a little bit further down, you know, upstream in terms of some of the roots of these things, we find that police don't really attack those things or address those things at all.

But I think that, so there's that. But then there's these other things which are really the focus of the show, which is the political use of policing. And part of what I want to happen is that people need to think about policing and what it means, you know, in a democracy, right? I mean, unfortunately, you know, when we talk about, you know, people who are protesting to make, you know, companies have better policies on climate change, to make the country have better policies on climate change. When we talk about people who are trying to protect voting rights, right?

all these things, a lot of times you wind up finding police on the opposite side historically of those, right? Like for a long, you know, it wasn't until after the Voting Rights Act, for example, that you could even pretend like black folks really had the right to vote. And for all that time before that, police were against us, right? In trying to have those rights.

And actually, when these states pass different laws in different places, whether it's abortion, whether it's all these other things, once those laws get passed, police are enforcing them, even if those laws are anti-democratic, inhumane and unjust. And so I think we really have to grapple with what police mean in terms of democracy. And, you know, to give something more concrete, you know, right now in New York, we're going through a situation where a person was stopped,

You know, police chased down a person because they claimed that he stopped a subway, he hopped his subway or evaded his subway fare. And this instance gives you everything you need to know about policing, right? Here's a person who may or may not have paid the subway fare, and then the police chased them down. And what do they do? They tase the person, they wind up shooting, and they wind up shooting one of their own officers and three other people.

Right. And so no one was made safer by this. And the motivating incident, we're going to get body cam footage and there's still a lot of details. But what the motivating incident was that someone did not pay a two dollar and 90 cent fare and you shot three people, including a police officer. And then you talk about the media. You know, the mayor then goes and makes this press conference and he's and he's talking about, you know, how proud he is of these. We should commend these officers because they showed restraint. Right.

He goes to the hospital of the officer, but not an innocent bystander who was shot in the head and probably will have brain damage for the rest of his life.

So who is made safer by this? Right. This is what we have to look at. Right. And of course, the role that the media plays in scaring people about the subways and all these other things. So we're still getting facts about this case. But I was down at Sutter Ave on Monday where this happened. It's in Brownsville. It's in a community that is disproportionately black and has a long history with police. And people were incensed.

They did not feel that. Of course, the people in Brownsville are aware of different harms happening in their community. But when I was there, I heard a very clear message. It's like, we don't want you to do this.

We don't, we don't, you're not helping us. Yeah. And I think I also read, I can't remember the source of, forgive me if this is off, but I think I read that the amount the NYPD spends on overtime to chase down people who did not pay their fares is about 10 times what could be recouped if everyone actually paid their fare. So like at a, at a, at a micro level, the incident you described is a shockingly terrible use of policing, but even at a macro level, just as a public policy, it's like, why are we spending 10%,

10x the amount we could recoup. Isn't there a better use of resources than just chasing fair hoppers? I mean, this is a great point, right? Because of course,

The subway is a wonderful public good. Now that congestion pricing is not happening anymore, we're trying to figure out how do we fund this public good. But I think that what you point out is there's all kinds of places to look rather than trying to chase down armed thugs, chasing down people who, this person, they said he has a history of mental illness for like a $3 fare. That can't be the solution.

And I think that, you know, there's a long, again, there's a long history of this. In Empire City, in episode, I think, three, we're going to learn about someone named Elizabeth Jennings Graham. This is a Black woman in the 19th century who's trying to take a streetcar to church with her friend. And essentially, an incident unfolds where she winds up getting yanked off the train by the police. And we'll see how she responds to that, though, because, you know, one thing that's really important about Empire City is I didn't want to tell a story in which it's just like,

you know, sort of oppression after oppression, you know, kind of what I call trauma porn. Right. Right. I wanted to talk about how have people, when they recognize that the police were not on their side, how did they find strategies, you know, to push back, you know,

One other thing I want to mention about your point about the Sutter Ave thing is that, as I understand it, NYPD is currently under a consent decree based on previous instances. Maybe I think some of the things that happened in 2020. And, you know, they were literally in the wake of that protest doing everything that the consent decree asked them not to do. So I'll be very interested to see what happens after that. Like, will they be held accountable? Because, you know,

I don't know if we're going to get to this, but the NYPD is, I mean, it's almost like they're timing all their scandals to match with the show. It really was. Well, yeah, I do want to get to that next. I just, one last point on this. I mean, I do think it's really important to,

look as you did at the history of policing and sort of like where it came from and how it evolved to the version we see today. But also just the data in aggregate because someone who you probably know, Samson Youngway, a great data analyst and organization, he tweeted the other day, this is a quote from Sam, one in every three people killed by a stranger is killed by a police officer. So you might think the biggest threat to your life is some random shooter or gang, but one organized group that is most likely to shoot and kill you is the police and it's not even close. And I just think like

That statement might shock people or sound offensive to some people, but it's just worth understanding that, yes, the New York Post is going to write lots and lots of front page stories about the mentally ill person who pushes someone into a subway car. And that is awful, and that should never happen, and it is a tragedy, and I'm in no way minimizing it. When you kind of look at the data in aggregate about risks to people from strangers, I mean, Sam, I think, makes a pretty important point there. Yeah.

That's right. And, you know, I just want to say that these are lived experiences, right? Part of what is happening in our show is that I'm seeing all these people. And by the way, it's not just black folks, right? It's all these immigrants, ethnics, people who came to America with this dream that they could participate in American democracy, whether it's Irish, Italians, you know, Chinese immigrants, you know, all kinds of folks. And these people are, you know, face terrible, horrible oppression at the hands of the NYPD.

And so I think that's important. You see this show, right? And it's kind of like, I know a lot of people who are working in law enforcement, right? And I'm sure when you have a force that's 36,000 people, a lot of people in New York have relatives, friends. I don't want to give the impression that I think every police officer actually signs up

to do harm that these people all mean to do, you know, to do people harm. In fact, I just corrected somebody on social media. Someone was looking at a video that recently emerged of a police officer that entered a homeless shelter and is just pummeling them. And they said, I guess people who want to punch people just become cops. And I said, no, I don't think that's the case.

I said, what's more scary than that is people who do join the NYPD, like Officer Edwin Raymond, who we'll meet in the show, who want to make a change. And the system of policing, the culture of policing requires them to do violence to people.

requires them to uphold that blue wall of silence and not do what we all know is the basic principle of right and wrong. If you see wrong, speak on it. They're ostracized if they do that, right? And so that culture, what to me is more scary is if you have a system where good people can enter because it's a working class job that you can get jobs.

you know, one of the few, you know, jobs with some kind of security, you know, and then that job takes people's instincts and turns people into the examples of monsters that we see. That's what we have to worry about. And then where is, where is the system that can hold this accountable? Right. I mean, if, if all the, what body right now can hold the NYPD accountable for these things that people are putting people through, because, um,

I saw there was a guy at I'm going to go back to Sutter Ave. I mean, in addition to let's just be clear, there's New York is three people in New York who were not police who got shot by the NYPD right now. Those are lived experiences that they're going to have to deal with medical bills, all these other things. And I talked to a young man who was telling me how he had been pulled over and beaten by the cops yesterday.

And those are lived experiences that people live through. So we who are interested in policy and solving these problems, there's a way where we can kind of look at the data points and just kind of start. We kind of roll our eyes out. We've heard these stories before, but not if you live through it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you made this point. I mean, the NYPD is having a rough go at the moment. I mean, the police commissioner just resigned after the feds used his phones as part of a corruption investigation. Mayor Adams's approval rating is in the toilet. I mean, it's below the drinking age in some polls. He was once a member of the NYPD and he's a stalwart defender of the NYPD.

Do you think like the NYPD is is unique in terms of I don't know what a mess it is, for lack of a better term, and its challenges? Or do you think it's representative of systemic challenges across forces across the country?

I mean, I definitely think it's representative. You can go to, you know, it's sort of like you name the police department. And if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, you start talking to people in the community, you start going into the court files, you're going to see some of these scandals, right? And it's, I think these represent problems that are, I think, endemic to policing and that mostly people have never really grappled with in a serious way beyond just like surface, you know, just police.

efforts that reform like body cams or training. But

It is true. The NYPD does seem kind of like right now. It's just, I mean, it's not funny, but it's like, woo. I mean, the way it's going down. I mean, as, you know, as we were getting ready to drop the show, I'm seeing the police commissioner is resigning. I think maybe, I don't know if he was, you know, he resigned very soon after the launch of the show. And so there is, the NYPD is kind of an egregious example. And I think that's telling because the NYPD was the first modern police force. So in theory, they should have the most experience, right? Right.

Right. Yeah. And they're probably what, you know, that experience is probably what a lot of other forces have drawn from for better or for worse in a lot of instances.

So, I mean, I did want to talk to you about this broader debate over policing and police reform and defund the police because like the conversation has kind of been all over the place since 2020. And 2020 is an arbitrary starting point. I mean, you could go back much further, you know, most recently to Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner. Right. So the BLM movement was really kind of 2013, 2014. But I think that.

Starting in 2020 is instructive because the Black Lives Matter movement was the biggest story in the country, or at least in politics, for months and months and months in 2020. That's right. That was followed by Biden's election. He went a different direction. He embraced more funding. Right.

And more cops on the street. Now we have Vice President Harris, who's a former prosecutor as the Democratic nominee. So I'm just wondering what you think that means for the conversation about reform and where to go, because I was looking at some polling from 2023 that found

Forty seven percent of voters think major changes to policing are needed. Forty two percent think minor changes are needed. Only 11 percent said no changes are needed. So it does seem like there is a broad mandate for reform. It's just not at all clear to me what that is and whether we're talking about a local level or something that needs to come out of Congress.

Yeah, I'm glad you're bringing this up. I mean, and, you know, I always like to start from the standpoint that it's understandable why people would be confused about this, right? Like, you know, why it's like, well, they're like, yo, we need, we want some kind of solution to this. We want safety. People have grown up with police as the answer to that their whole lives. I mean, I think there's one area that involves really a more robust conception of what safety actually means. And that means moving. It does, I think, I mean, it

It's funny. During the 2020 protests, I remember seeing this police chief. I believe he was in Texas. And he was like, people want police to do everything. They want us to be social workers. They want us to do this. They want us to do that. I'm like, you kind of are making the abolitionist argument. You realize that, right? We're saying the same thing. We don't want you to do all that. You know what I mean? You don't have training for that. Let us do that. But that has some budgetary implications, right? But then when you say defund, it's like,

We saw what that has done. But I think what the genius of defund is,

I think as a term was that what it should have done was to put that exact thing on the, on the table and say, are we asking too much of police? Even if you're someone who believes in police, are we asking too much of them? You know, um, what, who actually is better at some of the things that forgive us safety. So that's one element of this, but I think there's some more low hanging fruit, which is like literally just to be able to hold folks accountable and be honest about, um,

The harms that are being done by the police, not just in New York, but all over the country, the harms that are happening in prisoners like Rikers. Right now in Rikers, there is, I think, there's like 700 allegations of sexual abuse and assault. Jesus. So, and that this is not, this is not, I think this is underreported story that are not even really being seriously investigated. I agree.

The NYPD has 86 public relations workers or over 86 is the number somewhere in that range of people who work as PR people.

When you have 86 PR people, we're not having an honest, good faith conversation. And so for me, and this is part of why I wanted to move historically, because I wanted to leave room, right, for people who are operating in, you know, in good faith, but may have very different senses of what is called for with police reform. But we have to be starting from the history, from some facts about what has happened and

You know, when you have all those PR agents like that, we can't even get an honest accounting. I mean, listen, what I mean, this is not funny at all. But what I'm trying to say is people are like, well, what do we do about police? I'm like, here's one thing we got to figure out. When the police shoot three people in the subway, including a cop, can we even hold them accountable? Right. Let's start there. Yeah. The lack of accountability is shocking. And there's so many people.

systemic and structural reasons. And you're right that that conversation started, but it certainly hasn't finished. But I do think, listen, we could have a whole other conversation about the treatment of prisoners in this country. I mean, the fact that it was culturally funny and okay to make jokes about dropping the soap and prison rape, people who are in state or federal custody, we're okay with that happening to human beings. I mean, it's just like, it's unconscionable.

But I mean, the reason I think the show is so great is because I think,

Understanding that this conversation didn't start in 2020 or 2013 and that it's grounded in this long history and in these systems that we've just come up with and we think are, look, I'm a white guy in America, right? So if I feel unsafe, I'm going to call the police and I would never think twice about it. But to understand that a lot of different people have a very different perspective based on lived experience, as you say, but also on how broken some of these systems are, I just think is an invaluable contribution to

to the broader conversation and why Empire City is such a great show and why we're just so proud of it and grateful to you for doing it. Well, thank you. You know, I just want to say we talked about a lot of stuff that's pretty depressing, but, you know, our show is...

I think our show is actually like fun to listen to. If maybe fun is a weird word, it's compelling. You know, we, there's some funny moments, a lot of funny moments. We found those ways to find humor in the show. And I would also say that, you know, for me, the history of police is kind of a unifier because the way that Americans have been policed is really the real story of America. And you see all these different groups

that are trying to sort of be here and participate. And, you know, so in some ways, I think it's a chance for a lot of people to come together around understanding how we got to this moment, what strategies people have used, and also why our votes matter. You know, you all have done such great work sort of, you know, explaining to people what the stakes are of this upcoming election. And I think that, you know, being able to have an honest conversation about

about policing that's not dominated by political talking points, that's not dominated by PR folks, but really getting to the real, you know, stories and history that reflects people's real experience. That's part of how you engage those voters who have lost faith.

And so y'all are doing a great job. Listen to Empire City. You're going to be riveted. The episode is about to drop. Oh, my God. Oh, listen, Tommy, I'm trying to tell you. I can't wait. Listen, you're going to go on a fun walking tour of New York and hear about history you won't hear anywhere else. You'll learn about the actual history of Central Park and people who live there and what happened to them. You'll have some fun anecdotes with you and your daughter on a

playgrounds. What else? Like you'll learn about why the, the, the NYPD's own museum has been shut down. Oh yeah. Implications of that. There's a lot of great stuff in the show. Uh, it's a tremendous show. So, so make sure you follow empire city, wherever you get your podcasts and you can binge all of the episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Chandra, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Chen Jirai for coming on. Everyone check out Empire City. It's really great. And we will be back with a new show on Wednesday with Lovett and guest host Aaron Haynes from the 19th. Bye, everyone.

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