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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett. And I'm Stacey Abrams. That's right. She's Stacey Abrams. Stacey, thanks so much for being here. We're so excited to have you. Well, I appreciate the invitation. On today's show, Kamala Harris shows off the campaign's enormous momentum with an electric rally in Atlanta featuring Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo. Donald Trump tries to flip the weird narrative back on Harris and J.D. Vance is still defending himself and why he thinks people without kids should be second class citizens. Before we get to the news,
Stacey, we have an announcement. You're going to be hosting a new weekly podcast right here on Crooked, taking on some of the biggest political challenges we face and talking about all the things we can actually do to make change happen. The show is called Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. It launches on August 15th. This has been in the works for a long time, and we're so excited about it. We've kept it under wraps. What can you tell listeners about the show? The show is really premised on my belief that
If you understand how we got where we are, we can figure out how to get out. But also that sometimes it feels too big. So if we break it down into digestible pieces, we can, you know, destroy them one at a time. And so the idea is that we're going to build this new world that we need together. And there is some assembly required. And you describe the show as a toolkit for progress. What do you mean? What do you mean by that?
One of the challenges we face is that we feel overwhelmed by all of the ways the world feels broken. And it's a lot of politics, but it's also what policy comes from those politics.
My intention is to say, we've got the tools that we need. We've got people who are using those tools. So the show is an opportunity to meet those people, to see what they're doing. And then what we give to the listeners is, here's how you can get involved. Here's the thing you can do. So it's not just a one-way street of ingesting information. It's then, here's what you can do next, how you can intervene, how you can make it better.
So I hope everybody can, you know what? Pause the show for a second. We don't mind. And subscribe. You can subscribe right now and make sure that you start getting these episodes when they come out in mid-August. It's a really great, like,
You know, you will listen to each episode each week. It will help you feel a little bit less overwhelmed and help you break down the most effective ways for you to get involved, which is what we're always trying to do here with both Crooked and Vote Save America. And there's nobody who understands that and does it in an entertaining, digestible, informative, common sense way than Stacey Abrams. So we're so excited about the show. We're going to get to one topic that you cover in the show a little bit later. But first,
We've got news. Last night in Stacey's hometown, Vice President Kamala Harris held a huge rally. Estimates were about 10,000 people packed the arena in Atlanta, easily the biggest event of the cycle so far on the Democratic side and exactly the kind of thing you want to see happening as the campaign gears up. It was pretty good time even before Harris took the stage. Here's a sampling of the introductory acts. We know what happens when someone who doesn't know how to care for others is put in charge of others.
We watched what happened for four years and we're not going back because we dream bigger and we dream better. Not going back, not going back, not going back. Maybe it's because I'm a pastor. Some days I feel sorry for Republicans because they've got to figure out how to run a criminal against a prosecutor. Kamala Harris is getting ready to prosecute the case. The American people are the jury.
We're going to get the verdict right, and we're going to send Kamala Harris back to the White House. And you can't understand the struggles of gun violence if you're not in the field or in the heart of it. So one thing I learned about working with Vice President Harris is she always stand on business. But the first, the first black female president, Pottie Fajaris, hi.
Hotties for Harris. So that was, I believe I made the order wrong. I believe that was Stacey Abrams singing. And then the introduction was by Megan. Is that right? Did I get that right? In the dream world? Yes. But yes, sure. My dream mainly. But yeah. And we also heard from Quavo and from Senator Raphael Warnock. Before we get into what the vice president said, I just want to ask you, what was it? What was the energy like in the arena? It was extraordinary. I've been to a lot of campaign rallies and
This felt like the excitement we saw not only in 2020 when we flipped Georgia, but in the 2021 runoffs when people really knew it was possible to do something seismic and unexpected. So there was a big debate, obviously, about whether or not Joe Biden should step aside. We'd all hoped there would be a kind of surge of unity and a surge of enthusiasm if that happened.
Are you surprised at all by just how much of both that we've seen? I think even the people that felt like Biden should step aside couldn't have predicted how much of a sea change there could be in just like a matter of days. Yeah. I mean, I was I was very strongly on the pro Biden side, in part because we are not as a party known for our capacity to pivot on a dime.
And the worry I had was that with so few days left in this campaign cycle, we would get embroiled in our version of Yellowstone trying to figure out who should be in charge. And that wasn't going to be good for campaigns or for democracy. And so I really wanted to stick with the one who brought us.
But what I've been incredibly grateful for is that as a party, as a people, we saw what was happening. And when President Joe Biden made the very, very thoughtful decision to pass the baton,
Kamala Harris picked it up and she has been running with it. And the great thing is no one on our side is trying to get in her way. We're all falling in line behind. We're all doing everything we can to create the wave of momentum. And I am mixing so many metaphors. I'm going to stop, but I'm just very excited that we're doing this together.
Well, I also, by the way, I'm just still stuck on the fact that there are so many analogies you could have reached for in the world. There's succession or the Sopranos or Veep. And you reach for Yellowstone and an effort to reach a part of the part of the the
the voting base that maybe some coastal elites don't often reach. Well, look, I believe in bringing together unexpected coalitions to get good done. I don't really know what Yellowstone is. I guess it is just succession with a cowboy hat on. I don't really know. Is there mob stuff? I don't know what's going on there. Is Kevin Costner in that one? Well, I will say you've got this incredibly strong woman who is at the center of the story.
Kevin Costner is of course the lead, but his daughter Beth spends a lot of time really explaining to us what the world should look like and can look like when a woman of determination and power puts her mind to getting something done. On that note, once the vice president managed to get everybody to stop cheering, um, the,
She delivered a version of her stump speech, which is, again, just that it is such a tight and coherent argument is amazing, given that the campaign didn't exist two weeks ago. And it works and it works as if she's been campaigning and testing out things. You know, she did. You know, we're not going back. There were two notable additions to the speech, and I wanted to share them. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border.
But he does not walk the walk. Or as my friend Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks to it. Well, Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say. First of all.
I don't know. I don't know how we're going to deal with rallies with this much enthusiasm because on TikTok, everybody's going to 2x speed. Everybody's going to 2x speed. And the 2x speed version of the speech is going to be next to B-roll of cooking or Minecraft. I don't know how to make that happen. I don't know what to do about that. But that wasn't my question. What do you make of this debate line? Like, do you think this is the right fight to be picking right now?
I think it's an appropriate fight in part because it signals how afraid of her the right is, the Republicans are. And this goes to all of the other pieces we can talk about that have come out of the Republican side of the aisle. They weren't prepared for this fight. And they've had a while to get ready and they just weren't prepared. They had a very, very narrow narrative that they were going to use. And she is forcing them to
think about how to do this and they don't have much time either. But I think the other part of it is there is something about having this prosecutor, but also having this woman, this Black and Asian American woman look at you and tell you that you're too afraid to face her in the schoolyard. And for someone who built his brand on being a bully, the reverse psychology, I think, is a thing of beauty.
So Kamala makes reference to Cuervo. When Cuervo spoke, he talked about gun violence as part of why he was getting involved in the election. How valuable do you view surrogates from sort of pop culture, from outside of politics in this campaign? What can they do? What can't they do?
Celebrities, influencers don't make you act. They remind you that action is necessary. They create a sense that if you take action, there is some benefit to it.
And when you have the unexpected or the unusual, like a Quavo and a Megan Thee Stallion getting involved in a presidential campaign at this stage, for those voters who tuned out or hadn't yet tuned in, this is a reason to start paying attention. This is a reason not to skip past and flick through your For You page to go to the next video. And instead, what it creates is the sense that maybe I want to stick around, maybe I want to pay attention.
So I talked about this with Governor Tim Walz on the show on Tuesday about sort of the fact that like people also just like kind of want to be associated with like winners, right? They like want to be part of a group of people that seem like they're going to win. And that may be part of the reason the Biden campaign had been struggling with certain groups of people, especially sort of younger men might be just because
It didn't seem like it was the winning team, or at least they didn't see themselves in the campaign. Is there anything to that, that seeing celebrities and not kind of, I don't know, the typical older Democratic...
celebrities, but like kind of younger and like cooler people like that actually makes that could it be more than just reminding you, but actually kind of inviting people in? Well, I think part of I think it is it's reminding you it's inviting you in. It's giving you a reason to believe that showing up matters. I will say, though, I would frame it more as this is something new and different than
We've had four years of President Biden, and there is an energy that comes with a new name. It's like dating someone new. It doesn't mean you don't love the person just as much as you did the first time you went out.
But when there's someone new on your, you know, when there's someone new who shows up in your DMs, there's a new excitement and it makes you more likely to feel this sense of enthusiasm. And so I think, and when cool people tell you, oh my God, in my case, or in both our cases, he's really cute, then, you know, it helps. And I think that's what we're seeing. We're seeing celebrities, we're seeing these 40,000, 100,000, 200,000 person calls that
And they're dotted with people who haven't really commented on your past relationships, but now they're out to say, I think this is the right one. You should try it.
So the vice president was also introduced by Tyler Green, who's a young black entrepreneur that the vice president had met with previously. In her speech, the VP said something and she said it here. She said in a few places. So I want to be clear that I'm not like I don't believe this is something that's being like sort of directed only at black audiences. I think this is something she's trying to use to reach a lot of different groups. But she talked about the importance of building wealth and building generational wealth. And I'm curious, what's your take on that?
What you think it's because it's very purposeful. And I'm curious what you think that is trying to say and what it's meant to either address or or or kind of a misapprehension it's meant to to combat. For so many communities, part of the doldrum of this campaign season has been.
no matter whose fault it is, the cost of living is high, the wage gap is real, and relief didn't seem to be in sight. The fundamentals haven't changed, but what she's able to articulate, and in particular to the Black community, because it does matter, as she was talking to Tyler, is that the racial wealth gap, the gender wealth gap, those are very real. Those are very, very salient.
But she's also saying that as a new generation takes the lead, we're also trying to think about how do we make certain that the next generation enjoys the perks and the perquisites of that change.
So generational wealth means that I don't have to worry the way my parents did. And more importantly, that I can give something to the next generation that they can build on. And that has not been true for a lot of communities, especially Southern communities, Black communities, communities of color, and communities led by women. And so I think that to your point, it does hit a lot of different frames, but there is a resonance there.
among those who have grown up without, but more importantly, have grown up without the possibility of more. It wasn't just aspirational, it was unattainable. And she is making it aspirational and saying, here's how we make it possible. Do you think Democrats should be talking more about
not just closing gaps in the safety net, but about like getting rich in America, that like there is still the dream that you could not just survive, but like actually like thrive. Look, I grew up in a working class, working poor family, depending on the day and whether the paycheck came through or not. Poor people don't begrudge rich people. Poor people want to be rich people. And this notion that all we should aspire to is to not fall is
isn't aspirational. That should be the baseline that we expect of our government, that we expect of our society. What we have to talk about is opportunity. What we have to talk about is how to thrive. We have to give people a reason to do more than the bare minimum. And if you know that if you do everything in your power, nothing changes, then you'll do less in your power.
But the reverse of that is that because of this administration, because of the investments that have been made, in my speech, I referenced Black farmers. We've got entire cohorts and generations that have been blocked from and kept out of opportunity. And there is something seismic and transformative about having a candidate for president who says, I see you, and I'm willing to make certain that you can have more. I talk about it in this way. Not everyone's going to be millionaires.
But we can create a whole lot more thousandaires in this country. And that thousandaire aspiration means maybe you're not sending your kid to private school, that's your bent, but you can at least afford camp.
That you may not be creating the next multi-billion dollar tech company in your garage, but you can create that bakery in your basement that helps you take care of yourself and your family and buy a house for your mom. That's what people want to know that they can do. And that's what I think Democrats have to do a better job of articulating while we're defending what we've built through generations of
you know, what FDR did and what LBJ did and what we have seen for the first time recently in the work of the Biden-Harris administration is that we can aim better. We can aim higher. We can have more, but we can't ignore those who still need the basics because the basics are under threat as well. Yeah, it's sort of, I feel like part of it has been like when you're fighting such an
an onslaught, right? Like you do, it is a victory to stop terrible things, right? Like it wasn't one of the, like one of the most hopeful experiences I've had in politics in the last, like, I don't know, like 10 to 15 years was the moment when John McCain gave a thumbs down and saved Obamacare. But obviously like that was,
that was just stopping something stupid and awful that was trying to desperately protect like a better status quo than we'd had, but a status quo nonetheless. So it is like, it is, I think part of what's exciting about like what the vice president can do is like, she can pivot towards the future and not just about what we're stopping. But as she does that, uh, you
you know, the Republican death star, the, the, the, the VC money that, I mean, the, the tech bro money, the Trump campaign money, the, the right wing operative, it's sort of starting to hone in on what they're going to attack Kamala Harris on. Uh,
The Quavo riff that we just played was also a counterpunch on what many would say is one of the vice president's biggest weaknesses, which is the situation at the border. At least that's what the Republicans would like it to be. The Trump campaign is up with a new ad hitting her on this. Let's listen. This is America's border czar, and she's failed us. Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.
A quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl. Brutal migrant crimes.
And ISIS now here. Do you have any plans to visit the border? You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. I don't understand the point that you're making. Kamala Harris failed. Weak, dangerously liberal. Oh, my goodness. First of all, and I haven't been to Europe. I'm sorry. It is very funny. It's a very funny thing. It's a very serious situation. And I see why it's in the ad, but it is funny. Absolutely.
Ad makes me want to hide under the table. In her speech last night, Harris pointed out that she was a prosecutor going after criminality at the border. They're also up with an ad that hits Trump on his blocking of the bipartisan border security deal. What do you make of that attack? How do you believe the vice president should be fighting back against it? I think that the attack...
Makes sense in their eyes. They've spent four years trying to build this narrative and build this crescendo. I think they've got two weaknesses that the Harris campaign is laudably focusing on. One is that, yes, you dared us to fix it. We tried and you stopped it. And so you can't set fire to the house and then get mad that there's flame. We tried to put it out. You would not let us. And therefore, you're either craven
and you wanted this dangerous situation, or you're a hypocrite and you don't actually think it's that bad. But basically, it's the terrible question that you ask where you're trapped one way or the other. And so I think what Harris is doing effectively is reminding people that
yes, there is a crisis because you don't want to tell people, don't believe your damned eyes, but you do want to remind them that he played a role in it and that when you tried to fix it, he wouldn't let you. That proves the weakness of both the attack, but also the possibility and the potential for her to be even better because she can say, well, you know, I could have gotten this through if you just let me. Yeah, there's also the, so I think that's part of it too. But I also like,
You know, one thing that's been heartening in polling on immigration over many years is that even with all the demagoguery around it, there remains a bipartisan big majority in favor of a generous immigration system. And in fact, the polls kind of show that people separate the border from immigration. And I and I do think that like.
I think for a for a beat, especially that there is there was a kind of conflation of the two in the way you proved you were progressive on immigration was by being less focused on the need for border security. And I wonder if you feel like it's important that Democrats actually full throatedly say we like embrace border security kind of unabashedly.
I'm always wary of trying to convince the other side by using their language because they're framing, it's not legitimate. That's not what they're asking for.
And so I think what she has to say is I'm going to go after criminals. She has to be specific about what it is, but the extent to which you adopt someone else's frame and then try to defend yourself using their own language, you're going to get caught up in their narrative. And I resist that as a fundamental belief system. Yeah, no, I guess I don't. I guess I don't. I would have, I would agree with that completely. I think I'm saying something slightly different, which is that I don't think it's just the Republican narrative. Like,
I think Republicans have stoked concerns about the border, right? But at the same time, like one of the ways you get to a coalition, forget Republicans, just a coalition of voters who embrace a path to citizenship for people that are here, to have more immigration into this country is by demonstrating that you can reduce undocumented immigration and increase legal immigration, right? Like you have to kind of do those things hand in hand.
So I'm agreeing. What I'm saying is I wouldn't use their terms of art to define it. And what she has done, I think, effectively in that first ad is that she talks about arresting and prosecuting transnational—she prosecutes the criminals who cross the border. Because when you see the images of a child, you know, 14-year-old trying to come across—
That technically falls under the auspice of that term of art, but that's not what we mean. And to your point, she needs to point out, one, that she's strong because she is a woman of color running for the highest office in the land. And so she doesn't get the benefit of any doubt, but she's also got to create her own language and narrative for how she's different. And if you take their frame and use their language, you're
you fall into the traps they will then try to tie you up with. I'm saying I completely agree with you. And I think the way she's framing it is actually quite smart and quite genius, which is I'm a prosecutor. I'm the only one of us who's actually put people in jail for doing what you're talking about. And I will do it better.
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Ah!
So, speaking of...
the vice president being a prosecutor, it's, it's interesting. You know, she obviously, like I'm, I'm in California. She was the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California. There's a big part of who she was. It was, it was the focus of, of, of, of, of when she would write a book. That's what she would talk about. I think in 2020, uh,
I think one of the reasons people had concerns about Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate was because she kind of backed away from that story when she was running and it wasn't clear what other story would replace it. Now she is running as a prosecutor versus a criminal. She is talking about her record. She's embracing it fully. And at the same time, she is
phasing attacks for a variety of positions and statements she made in the 2020 race. And her campaign appears to just be trying to kind of back away from a bunch of those positions at once, whether it's around fracking or single payer health care and so on. What do you make of this? Just like...
What do you make of like the political strategy of just saying, I am moving away from those positions, those are not my current position? - I would say four years is a long time and 97 days isn't much time. And so I think they're doing what they need to, to bring an audience in that didn't pay attention to the 2020 primaries that needs to meet her in this current moment. And this current moment has a number of contours that didn't exist four years ago.
But you also do not have time to do a litany of here all the ways and the reasons each thing is different. So I think the smartest thing to do when you're introducing yourself as you're on your way to the aisle is to give people, here's who I am. I'll give you the rest of my story. But let me tell you who I am and what you can expect if we can get this done right now.
So I also like, you know, saying, OK, her positions have evolved on certain issues. Fine. Great. It's not going to prevent the ads. The ads are going to run. Right. The ads are going to run with the hand raising around decriminalizing the border on fracking ban on. There's that moment where she talks about having that conversation of people voting while they're in prison. All these things designed to kind of spook moderates or paint her as sort of a leftist maniac. Right.
How should she talk about this? How should she like, OK, they've they've put they've said, you know, on the record, these are no longer her positions. How should she talk about it? Should she ignore it? What would she do to counteract those attacks? I think, again, I would go to the core of introducing myself and then introducing how I think about the world. So instead of going issue by issue, I would go value by value.
People vote based on the values they think you hold because they're trying to anticipate how you'll make decisions when no one is there to watch you and hold you accountable.
I don't think you can walk back or alter, you can't wreck con history unless you've got really good deep fakes. So we're left with what is. And in this moment, she's got to say, here are the values I'm going to use. And here are the values I will apply to these topics and to these situations. And here's who I'm going to surround myself with.
She's got to show that she's curious about why these issues are out there and what else needs to be done. So I think part of the opportunity in this last, in this, you know, 97 day stretch is to replace the litany of attacks with the value characterizations because the other guy has no values. He is happy to rewrite history in the same sentence.
And so you've got a pretty good contrast to say this is what you can know about me and this is why you can trust me. We may not agree on everything, but here's how I'm going to think about the work you need me to do. So one of those attacks, it's coming from all quarters, sometimes more subtly than others, is around race, describing the vice president as a DEI candidate,
There is, I think, like two schools of thought on this. One is, I think, you've got to take it on
full, you know, you've got to just sort of address this fully. You have to fight back. It's ridiculous. It's disgusting. It's racist. On the other hand, there's this idea that there's a little bit of bait, right? That if you're in a debate about whether a certain attack is racist, you're not actually talking about the substance of the attack. You're talking about whether or not the attack is racist. And I'm curious, like, look, you've, I'll stop talking about this topic and I'll just let you tell us what. I've had a little bit of experience. Yeah. So,
So here's how I would say it. You don't take the bait of it being a pejorative. That's the first thing. DEI isn't bad.
In fact, I would argue that if you benefited from Title I education, which was designed to expand access to education to the poorest children in America, that was a DEI law. That was part of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. Well, if you grew up in the Appalachian Mountains in the United States in, oh, I don't know, the last 30 years, you benefited from Title I education. Therefore, you received the benefit of DEI.
So rather than us running away from this narrative, I think we just need to embrace and understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion are the core values of this country. Diversity is all people. Equity means access to opportunity. And inclusion means a pathway for all Americans. Why should we be afraid of that? Why should we walk away from it? As I would say when I was running...
I'm a black woman. You can't miss me. And so I can either pretend we don't see me or we can talk about why I am so qualified because of what I've experienced.
Kamala Harris has managed to make it in one of the most competitive jobs in the world. And she now stands as the standard bearer. What I would ask is, why are you afraid of competition? Why do you think that it should only be those who never had to fight? Why shouldn't this be a job that everyone who's willing to do the work can get? Absolutely, because diversity, equity, and inclusion is proof that the American dream works. And that's why she's the candidate for president of the United States.
Fuck, all right. All right. We're gonna win Georgia? Yeah, it's gonna take some time and take some work and take some effort, take some money. What is the actual on the ground value or any objective observations you can make about what this enthusiasm and shift, the vibe shift has meant in terms of actually changing the outcome in Georgia? Well, I mentioned money at the end intentionally. We can have all of the enthusiasm we want to, but it takes investment.
You're not trying to win the people who showed up at the rally. You're trying to win the people who didn't know that there was a rally because they were worried about whether they could pay their bills. And reaching those marginal voters, which is what we did in 20 and 21 and 22 and 18, those marginal voters need folks to go out and those folks need someone to pay them for their gas and for their door knocking and for their time. And so investment is what's going to make that happen. This is a marginal voter election. And in every single swing state,
Our path to victory means who are we talking to on the margins, not who are thinking Trump or Harris, but are thinking vote or not vote. And so our mission has to be, here's a reason to vote. She is the reason that voting will matter for you, but we've got to do the hard work of making sure you understand it.
All right. And just if you're hearing this, you can also sign up to help on the ground or donate to the people fighting on the ground in Georgia at VoteSaveAmerica.com and at Fair Fight. Yes. If you go to FairFight.com slash LFGV, you can sign up to volunteer. We'd love to have your help.
Luckily for Trump, he's got a great asset, which is J.D. Vance, to make him seem more personable. Yesterday, the Harris campaign posted yet another, there have been so many of these videos, but another video of Vance saying something terrible about people who don't have kids. We're going to play a hopefully brief clip. I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country. There was this ridiculous...
effort by millennial feminist writers to talk about why having kids was not a good thing, why they were glad they didn't have kids. And what it made me realize is that so much of what drives elite culture is mediocre millennial journalists who haven't gotten out of their career what they thought they would, right? You're going to be a sad, lonely, pathetic person, and you're going to know it internally. So you're going to project it onto people who have actually built something more meaningful with their lives.
That's tough to hear. I guess I'm not a journalist, so it doesn't really apply to me. But this comes after a bunch of rounds about, you know, Van saying things that not having kids makes you more sociopathic, deranged. Now, look, we're just a couple of childless sociopaths here talking. What do you think the war on us is going to look like?
Well, I've gone through one of these salvos. So in my campaigns, both in 18 and 22, Brian Kemp would always invoke his wife and children in answering, you know, what he had for dinner or what was the state of the economy, uh,
every answer was used to remind people not so subtly that I did not have children, because this is a very common frame of attack for Republicans in particular against women candidates. The notion that if we have not procreated, we are incapable of human concern is one of their favorite approaches. And he is trying, J.D. Vance has made, you know,
apparently an entire compendium of how deeply he reviles those who did not have children. And so I think part of our responsibility is to call it out and to identify that this is an attempt not just to attack Kamala Harris, it's an attempt to demean women standing for public office. And I don't know if you saw the guy on Twitter
the five on Fox News who believed it's also a conversion therapy issue. So I just, I think there is a deep animus towards women of power or women who have the audacity to seek to participate in spaces and domains that they consider vulnerable.
their own. And God help you if you didn't have a kid along the way. Although if you did have a kid, then how can you possibly have the time and energy to do this work? So let's also remember that this frame is double-edged because their argument for women who have children is that they're abandoning and not doing what they should for their families because they're running for office. Yeah, I'm glad you raised that because they're, they're,
There is to me like, it's like, yes, underneath the kind of knee jerk misogyny, what's underneath? Oh, it's just a different kind of more kind of deeper form of misogyny right underneath. Because some of this is about attacking individuals, right? But if you listen to what Vance is saying, there is a kind of critique, an actual substantive critique of basically modernity, right? And around about two, about not just people who don't have children, but
single-parent households, households where both parents work, right? That there's a kind of traditionalism, like a revanchism that's about saying that like these, that like the kind of cosmopolitan elite is trying to impose a certain kind of lifestyle on you. And that's the reason that,
That's the reason things have gone wrong for you. It's not a lack of opportunity financially. It's not economic inequality. It's not housing costs. It's not financial. It's cultural. And it's not your fault. Exactly. I mean, look, it's the Harrison Butker speech that we can reshape and reframe America's future if women just learn their place and went back to what they were supposed to do.
It is Mark Robinson saying women shouldn't have the right to vote. And I think it's critical in this election that we draw a through line. There is no difference. It might be a matter of how they frame it. And J.D. Vance is using his Yale law education. And I apologize, you know, as one who had it too, it doesn't make us all the same. But he's trying, he might use highbrow language to describe it. But there is a deep difference
misogyny, but there's also, to your point, there is an attempt to cast blame and take no responsibility. And you can do that more easily when you have people fighting amongst themselves and not looking at who's in charge. Yeah. It's also part of the, like the kind of turn against no fault divorce. Oh yeah. Right. And like, again, it's like a
It's a turn. It does tie back to to this like sort of turn against freedom. Right. Because how can they justify taking away your basic bodily autonomy? How can they justify taking away your right to divorce, to make decisions about the kind of life you have? Well, because it's somehow imposing on them. Right. They're being imposed upon by your choices. Well, they're not only being imposed upon. They are at risk. This is an existential crisis.
Demographic maps tell you that the changing dynamic, and to your point, this is a modernity issue, and in this moment, the structural protections that they have relied upon forever are falling away.
And so if you have, if you eliminate no-fault divorce, if you eliminate abortion, if you eliminate women participating in the workforce, if you make it difficult, you can force them to then repopulate the earth in some Planet of the Apes retcon that is not what we need, but is very reflective of their belief that they are losing power and the only way to get it back is to take it from others. ♪
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Before we go, we have some breaking news here. As we've been recording, apparently, and I just want to say, neither Stacey nor I has seen this. We're going to react to something we have not seen. But by all accounts, Donald Trump appearing at the National Association of Black Journalists has in some fashion gone off the rails. What that means, we don't know. But I believe...
We're gonna share it. We're gonna be able to see a clip. We have a kind of super cut of what's been taking place so far. Sort of a horrified look on a row of producers that just can't believe what we're about to watch. So I'm looking forward to that. I don't wanna hype it up anymore. I don't know what we're gonna see. - You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals from Nikki Haley to former president Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen women of color who were American citizens to go back to where they came from.
You have used words like animal and rabbit to describe black district attorneys. You've attacked black journalists, calling them a loser, saying the questions that they ask are, quote, stupid and racist. You've had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So my question, sir, now that you are asking black supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that?
Well, first of all, I don't think I've ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, the first question. You don't even say, "Hello, how are you?" If I came onto a stage like this and I got treated so rudely as this woman treated me... Oh my goodness.
And I'm fine with it because she, it doesn't, she was very rude, sir. Very rude. That was a nasty, that wasn't a question. She didn't ask me a question. She gave a statement. That wasn't a question. I repeated your statement, sir, actually.
She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? She is always identified as a black. I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't. A lot of the journalists in this room are black. I will tell you that coming, coming,
from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking black jobs. You had the best. - What exactly is a black job, sir? - A black job is anybody that has a job. That's what it is, anybody that has a job. - All right. - They also have to stop the invasion. And remember, they're taking your jobs. These people coming in,
are taking your job. - Project 2025. - I think we have to leave it there by the Trump team. So leave it, that is the last word. Thank you so much, Mr. Trump for coming today and joining us. - Well. - Seems like that went well. - Yeah. If he keeps like this, a black job will be president of the United States again. - Hey, pretty good, pretty good. Wow. So I will say, I'll tell you what my two,
Just process. Just give yourself a second to process. Give myself a second to process. Here's one point I'd want to make. There are people saying that the National Association of Black Journalists was wrong to invite Donald Trump. What do you think about that? I disagreed completely from the beginning. They are journalists. Their job is to ask questions. And I believe he realized that simply being invited does not mean that you are going to be asked what you want to be asked.
Yeah, there's that. And then...
You know, it is a shame that Donald Trump is caught off guard by such a reasonable question. And it does seem to me a problem that it takes going to a National Association of Black Journalists to be asked a question about racism and specifically anti-Black racism in a way that surprises him. Don't you think? I think he was shocked by the fact that these journalists held him accountable. He was...
If I were in his head, he deigned to show up. And if you listen to the beginning of his response, his offense began with the fact that the niceties weren't observed.
This is someone who has made an art of bullying and ignoring the niceties. But I guess because what sounded to me like a group of black women weren't, you know, courteous in the way he would imagine they should be, everything that follows was, you know,
I'm trying to think of a term of art that doesn't just use four or seven letters, but. Well, we'll just fill in the blanks ourselves. You know, it reminds me also of, you know, J.D. Vance gave this stump speech that went obviously very poorly for a number of reasons. And it meant that people didn't pay enough attention, I think, to this moment where J.D. Vance says that Kamala Harris isn't grateful enough.
to America. And obviously, you know, not hard to parse the misogyny and racism in that, but it was especially galling after she had given a speech that was just sort of laden with patriotic fervor. Do they understand that they're motivated by a certain expectation around women and especially women of color in terms of how they expect to be kind of, I don't know, genuflected at?
They expect genuflection and catering, but also a reduction of the woman herself. They don't understand how it could be that women, especially women of color, actually believe in equality. And I go back to our earlier conversation about DEI.
This is a community of people who fundamentally despise diversity. They do not believe in equity and they find inclusion to be an insult. They're just saying the quiet part out loud and they're saying it because they think the rest of America is going to agree or at least a sufficient number who can then help them collect the electoral college votes they need to get restored to power.
But no, I, and what perplexes me is that despite the evidence of their eyes and the continued progress, they think that if they just say it one more time, progress will stop. But because they know that's not true, we have Project 2025.
Yeah, it's also, you know, I am sure that like when J.D. Vance says that Kamala Harris isn't grateful or when Trump says what Trump says on the stump about DEI, like I'm sure that there are heads nodding. Of course. In that room. I just it like.
I think that just they're not – that is not a reflection of where the broader country is. That's a reflection of where maybe some segment of their base is. 60% of Americans agree with DEI. When you explain what it means, the number jumps to 69%. This is based on a Washington Post poll from a month or so ago. What they don't like is that it works and that it has worked so effectively for
Kamala Harris is not just a viable candidate for president, but has an equal chance of getting that job as a Donald Trump. That J.D. Vance gets held accountable for his horrific narratives about women. They don't like that this cohort that they believe, to your point, should be genuflecting, has the audacity to actually compete and worse, to win.
And on that note, hey, I just want to shout out to mediocre, liberal, childless journalists in the cities. You're doing the work and we appreciate you. Why are we in this mess? Well, a lot of the reason we're in this mess is because as much as we're fighting every day to live in a democracy, it is a democracy with a bunch of anti-majoritarian people.
tendencies that makes our job harder. You talk about this in the first episode of Assembly Required about the Electoral College and why so many of us feel frustrated about the system. Here's a clip. In most competitions, it's first past the post. Whoever gets the majority of votes, whoever gets a plurality, that's the person that wins. But in the United States, when it comes to the top job,
It's a handful of states that actually make the decision. They're the ones that get the money. They're the ones that get the canvassers. They're the ones that get the ads. Almost everyone else just sort of watches from the sidelines. The Electoral College forces voters to narrow down their choices.
And the way that happens is that because we have so few states that actually get to participate, candidates have to essentially fit into a frame. They've got to narrow the way they talk about what they want. And they do it because they want to collect votes in a few swing states that are considered the ones that make the decision. And that means that voters who aren't in swing states are left feeling like their votes don't really matter. I love the way you put that, uh,
Can you just talk a little bit about one of the ways this seemingly impossible problem is actually solvable? Absolutely. So the United States has a uniquely terrible system in the Electoral College with its absolute history in racism. And it was created to allow Southern states to claim the bodies of slaves and not their souls as part of the electorate. And so there is a vile history to the Electoral College
That said, we are not the only country that has once had a system that didn't allow the people direct contact with the outcome. But those countries have fixed it. They've made changes. And it can feel overwhelming to think that we can change the Constitution because that's really hard. But what we can do is diminish the utility of this system by changing whose voices get into the political system to begin with.
And one of those ways is ranked choice voting. And so I got to have this amazing conversation with Cynthia Ritchie, who has been working on this issue very effectively. And we have seen ranked choice voting take on a lot of momentum. But the way to think about this is, no, we can't take away the Electoral College in time for November. Right.
But we've got four years to go across this country and change how voters are demanding their engagement with candidates be revised. And if we can do those pieces, we can make things better. And so just so people understand what rank choice voting, just what is it and why does it change? Like, what would it do? So rank choice voting basically says, I like this guy a lot. He checks like...
Six of my 10 boxes. But this lady, she checks eight of them. And I'd rather put her first, but I'm not sure she can win. Well, in the current political system, you skip the woman because the guy seems more likely to win. And so you put aside your values because you're trying to game the system and figure out the lottery of winning.
Ranked choice voting says, no, you can pick her. You can put her first, but you can put the other guy second. And if everyone else that you know is thinking exactly the same way, she'll win. But if you're right and the guy is going to get more votes, then instead...
He gets your vote second, so you haven't wasted a vote. This is the most economical and, I would say, efficient way to really understand and have our leaders reflect our needs. And so could that, like, so for example, that would do away with the concerns about, say, a spoiler, right? Because somebody could, somebody who's is sort of going to vote for a third party can put the Democrats second, right?
And then once that first, once that, basically the way it would work is the votes would be tallied. It would be clear that that third party candidate wouldn't have enough votes to be in the top two or however it was done. And then the votes that were their second choice place would go to the person that remained. Absolutely.
Absolutely. One issue around sort of I think like sometimes people get hung up on, say, like the anti-democratic nature of the Senate and how unfair it is that Wyoming has two senators, which is the same as California. But I have a feeling Democrats wouldn't care as much.
if Democrats were winning in some of these smaller states, right? Like we're not gonna change the makeup of the Senate, but we could change the fact that there is a kind of allergy to electing Democrats statewide when we know that Democratic progressive policies would actually help the people right now that are voting against Democrats. - That right now don't view Democrats as a viable option for them. How do you think about that, right? Like sometimes you gotta fight the system. Sometimes you have to win inside
Absolutely. We like to call that Alaska. So if you look at how ranked choice voting works, you have a hyper-conservative governor.
You have Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican senator, and you have Mary Peltola, a liberal Democrat congresswoman, all elected on the same ballot because voters had the choice to figure out what they ranked highest in terms of need for each of those races. And as it turned out,
Because they were able to listen to and support candidates who reflected their values for what that job required, they got the mix, at least that they could live with. But what was also really important is that Mary was telling folks to vote for Lisa, and Lisa was telling folks to vote for Mary. I'm not sure how the governor got in, but I do know that for ranked choice voting, it meant that more people got what they needed, and that's what politics should actually be.
Can you just let us know, what are some other topics that you'll be covering in the first couple of episodes? We're also going to tackle the issue of disinformation and misinformation and the fact that there's a difference. And particularly in this moment, we need to understand how we fight back and we don't get into the trap. We're going to talk to young voters about what they need to see and hear in this election cycle. And because I have an 18-year-old niece who is helping me
pick my topics, we're also going to have conversations about where young people are getting their media these days. I remember MTV. I remember when MTV was created and there was Nick News, but the landscape has changed. What is that doing to how we think about things? And because it's me, I'm going to find some way to do something about science fiction at some point. Fantastic. I remember Nick News. I used to love Nick News. There you go. I never really got MTV because...
I didn't feel like I was cool enough. It didn't feel like it was accessible to me. And that's just something I have to deal with. That's my issue to deal with.
So everybody, just a reminder, episode one of Assembly Required drops on August 15th with new episodes coming every Thursday. And Stacey, you're going to be at the DNC with the Crooked Crew a few days after that. You're going to be recording an episode of Assembly Required and we hope pumping up on some of our other shows while we're there. So everybody, please go subscribe to Assembly Required in a very chaotic and noisy time.
and a time where politics can make you feel cynical and overwhelmed. This is a great way every week to check in how to actually make a difference. It's a little kind of dose of optimism and information in an entertaining way. So everybody, please, please, please subscribe to Stacey's new show. That is our show for today. Stacey, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. John and Dan will be back with a new episode on Friday morning and see you later.
Bye.
Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.
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