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When needed, I wear a mask. OK, let me ask I don't have I don't wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me and he shows up with a big mask I've ever seen.

Welcome to Positive America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, and that was the president of the United States mocking Joe Biden for the use of masks on today's pod. Dan, we'll talk to Andre Banks of Wind Black about how we can handle the flood of misinformation being directed at black and brown voters right now.

And before that, we will talk about how the president of the United States and the first lady have contracted the coronavirus. Joe Biden's decision to resume in-person organizing. And we'll answer some of your questions about the final weeks of the campaign. Few quick housekeeping notes before we start. Check out this week's parts of the World where Tommy and Ben talk about everything from the security risk posed by the debt that Donald Trump owes to how Bibi Netanyahu quite literally brought his dirty laundry to D.C..

Also on Saturday, we will be exactly one month away from the election. Holy shit. Voter registration deadlines come as early as this Sunday, October 4th. So make sure to double check that you're registered on vote. Save America Dotcom. While you're there. You can also sign up to make some calls, send some texts, get some pro Biden content to share, get other folks registered to vote before the deadlines.

And we have something fun for you, our brand new Voter of America action calendar. It's like an Advent calendar, but for the election and instead of chocolate, there are stickers. There you go.

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All right. Then late last night, we learned the shocking and yet not entirely unsurprising news that President Donald Trump has tested positive for covid-19, along with First Lady Melania Trump, senior adviser Hope Hicks, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and US Senator Mike Lee.

According to various reports, McDaniel is with the president last Friday and tested positive on Wednesday. White House aides believe that the president was exhausted and feeling sick on Wednesday.

Hicks tested positive Wednesday afternoon after traveling with the president to the debate in Ohio on Tuesday and a rally in Minnesota on Wednesday where she started feeling symptoms. The White House hid the president's symptoms and Hicks's positive diagnosis from the public on Thursday, when Trump traveled to a fundraiser at his golf club in New Jersey. And according to The New York Times, quote, seemed lethargic as he interacted with about 100 people at the fundraiser. He also delivered remarks from the White House for the annual Al Smith dinner, where he said, quote, The end of the pandemic is in sight.

The president and the first lady are now isolating at the White House with what's being reported as so far mild symptoms. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, tested negative this morning, as did Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a number of other Trump family and staff members. Just as a little reminder, here's how Trump talked about the virus at a crowded Marsalis rally just 10 days ago.

But it affects virtually nobody. It's an amazing thing, by the way. Open your schools, everybody open your school.

Dan, is it weird that the most shocking news of the twenty twenty campaign almost seems like it was inevitable all along?

I will say in that clip from Trump virtually is doing a lot of work there.

I mean, like, the way you sum this up is exactly right, which is it is obviously shocking that the president and the first lady have coronavirus a month before the election. That is, you know, it's a huge news event. But it is ultimately unsurprising, given the fact that Trump has flouted the advice of his own scientists, has refused to do even the bare minimum to prevent the spread of the virus, including simply just a piece of cloth over his face.

The right response is that I can't believe that Trump has covered it's I can't believe it took Trump this long to get covid.

And it I mean, it really is like the very it was just three days ago, three days ago, that the president in front of 80 million people made fun of Joe Biden for social distancing and wearing a mask as if that was a sign of weakness.

From what we've seen is when you ignore the scientists, you know, the doctor is a dishonest sign of stupidity and Trump is paying the price that I think we like. I do think that we should have a caveat, which is we don't want anyone in the country to get covid. And that includes the Trumps.

We don't want we want everyone who contracts covid to recover without any complications. That includes the jobs. But that does not mean that because Trump has covered that he is now immune from criticism for what he has done to the country and how he put himself in this position. And so you can you can hold both of those two thoughts in your head at the same time.

Well, especially because of the virus we're dealing with here, which is incredibly transmissible, easily transmissible, very, very catchy.

And so, like, even though more than 200000 people have died in this country of covid, like another 40000 plus were diagnosed with covid yesterday.

In addition to the United States, no one in America, no one in the world should have to suffer through this horrible, horrible fucking disease.

What makes this disease unique is that it's not just about you catching it. It's not just enough about whether you take precautions for yourself. It's when you have the disease, you when you have covid, you are very transmissible to everyone else. So you have a responsibility not to put other people at risk. The president has a responsibility not to put the fucking country at risk, which he has been doing the entire time by flouting scientists recommendations, by not offering easy, accessible, fast testing to every American, by not requiring people to wear a mask.

He's put the whole country at risk through his policies.

And over the last week, he put just about everyone he came in contact. With at risk, there's now reports that the president of Notre Dame, who was at the event on Saturday at the White House in the Rose Garden, where the president nominated Amy CONI Barrett for the Supreme Court, that he contracted the disease, it could have been there could have been a super spreader event at the White House on Saturday. But even if that wasn't a super spreader event, there have been multiple potential super spreader events at the White House at Trump rallies indoors, no masks like just no social distancing whatsoever, people shaking, hands hugging and like those.

If those people don't give a shit about themselves, that's one thing. Doing that means you don't give a shit about anyone else around you, that you come in contact with it like it has become this litmus test.

And if you act responsibly, you were somehow insulting Trump in his eyes. So the president Notre Dame is a great example. He is a university president. If the students of Notre Dame had done what he had done to gone to event like that without a mask, they would be in violation of the policies at Notre Dame. Like no one is acting like adults here. It's not just Trump, it's everyone around him. It's the fucking debate commission which put in place rules for mass wearing, but then did not impose them on the Trump team when they did not wear them.

Like everyone involved is so afraid of seeming biased in some way, shape or form that they're ignoring scientists. The debate commission, the Cleveland Clinic should have thrown the Trump family, the Trump staff out of that room because that is what the rules were. But they did not do that, right? They did not do that. And they put everyone at risk doing it. And it is the whole thing is fucking disgraceful from Trump to every member of Republican Party to the people who went to that event, who may wear masks normally but are afraid to do it in front the press because they think they will be ridicule for everyone involved here.

Like I started today, I discovered this news at 2:00 in the morning when I looked at my phone accidentally and wondered why I had seven hundred texts and like there's and is out there, like, obviously there was shock.

And then, you know, and then you do think about it in the context of what does it mean politically?

You know, we'll talk about and what does it mean for government to have the leader of the free world incapacitated, potentially? What does all that mean? But the place where I have landed emotionally is pure, unadulterated rage because America is what has happened to Trump. He has done everyone else and he's obviously someone who was older. He is not particularly healthy. He is in that vulnerable population, but he also has access to the best health care in the entire world.

And at the same time that he is going around being the single biggest source of misinformation about the virus, modeling the absolute wrong behavior, he's trying to take health care away from all of the people who may get covered because of his insipid stupidity. And that is just absolutely infuriating at the most basic level.

I mean, you know, the Trump will eventually say or the White House will say, like, you can take all the precautions possible, you can wear masks, you can stay away from people, you can have rapid testing. And still you might be able to contract this virus. And that is true. A lot of people take every possible precaution and you can still do it.

They have taken very few of those precautions. They vote the rules all the time. I mean, I remember during the debate seeing Naomi Biden, Joe Biden's granddaughter, tweet like we're all sitting here massed up all the Biden family, all the Biden staff, and we're all looking at the Trump family, the Trump staff sitting there with no masks.

And it's like it's just fucking common respect for other human beings and their lives and their well-being. Right.

Like I mean, just the idea that all those people who were at the at the debate sitting there watching a bunch of people who didn't have masks on because.

Why? Because they said, oh, we were tested this morning. They know that even if you're tested walking into the debate hall, you should still what's the problem with wearing masks?

What's the problem with wearing masks while you're sitting watching the debate? There's no problem. There's nothing that that doesn't that doesn't hurt anything. It's just an extra precaution to make sure that you don't spread it to people. Well, guess what? A bunch of them had the fucking virus while they were sitting there unmasked inside.

It's not even just being selfish. We have come to expect that from Trump and the people around him. That is their defining quality. Right. Is self-interested narcissism.

But that's the problem is they're just so stupid. Like, I am not shocked that the Trump family, the Trump staff, don't care about the Bidens or the staff who work the debate hall, but they're too stupid to even protect themselves.

Like that is just how dumb this is, which is even if you if you do not care about anyone else, you can't even do the bare minimum to protect yourself because you think I don't even know what you think like it. Events is weakness. I'm trying I'm going to give myself covid to own the lives of all of this is so stupid. And like everything else that's happened in this country since March, it was completely and totally preventable if we had the basic modicum of responsible leadership in this country, which we do not.

Well, because they and they politicize it from the start. Like I'm remembering remember that I forget which movie chain it was, movie theater chain. But they said that we're not going to necessarily require masks because we didn't want to politicize. We don't want to get into politics. And everyone mocked them for that. Eventually they relented and said they were going to require masks.

But because of what Trump and Republicans have done since the beginning of this, like the idea of doing something that every scientists say would protect you from a disease and protect others from the virus that was politicized.

And so stepping in to say we're going to require mass became a political move for a lot of people across this country because of what Trump did. And the other thing, too, is like we can talk all we want about all the precautions that they have not been taking at all of their events at everywhere Trump has gone.

But even after they knew this was also outrageous, even after they knew that Hope Hicks tested positive for the coronavirus, they all decided to get on a fucking plane and go to New Jersey, the president, and then have him mingle with one hundred people. What that is like.

He knowingly the White House knowingly exposed other Americans to the virus and then they tried to hide it from the press. We only know this. We only know this because if Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News reported the news, the White House, if she hadn't reported that, would they have ever told us or would they have just like let Melania and Donald Trump just, like, hang out at home for 10 days and then the rest of us wonder why or if they were feeling OK?

Would they just let them go out and do an event? Who the fuck knows? We don't know because they didn't tell us. They didn't tell the Biden campaign. They did not alert the Biden campaign that they may have been exposed because they were with them at the debate, not even a fucking phone call.

And it's not even just an abundance of caution. There are reports that Trump was feeling symptomatic on Wednesday night. So you have Trump being in contact with someone for days on end in a small room for debate prep with no mass on further reporting by Dana Bash at CNN. Then you get a positive test for that person. Then Trump himself is exhibiting mild, mild symptoms, according to reports. And then you still go and think about it. If he treats his rich friends at his golf club this shitty, think about how he treats the rest of Americans.

Huh? I mean, would it? Let's talk about what this means for, like, whether we can have a functioning government here, like what happens with, you know, the Supreme Court nomination, what happens with Congress?

We've got Mike Lee's tested positive. You know, I guess all the other congressional leaders have to get tested, though.

There's not like a routine testing regime for Congress, which is seems like a problem to what happens with like, you know, the president supposed to be on a call with governors even today after the diagnosis, but then Mike Pence jumped on.

So we don't know how the president's doing. What are the sort of implications for the functioning of government here?

It's really hard to say, because even under the best scenarios, government hasn't been functioning really. So, I mean, so let's do the let's do the executive branch in the White House and then we'll come back to the Senate.

And that confirmation of Berrett, it's it's really unclear. The White House, like Mark Meadows, went out today and declared essentially he was in charge, I guess, in a not particularly confident, by the way, with no masks on.

Mark Meadows walked outside, no mask on and started talking to reporters and oh, well, I was tested, so I'm fine now.

And so if the White House is following the appropriate precautions, most of the White House staff would be at least working from home for the next 14 days, as I understand it. Not sure if that's happening will happen. And I think the government, the government is set up. In a crisis to function like that, right in a world in which there was a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, the White House was incapacitated. We know that there are processes in place to do that.

So I think. The government should at least function at least as poorly as it was functioning two days ago, and so that's not high, super high on my list of concerns. They weren't doing a lot anyway, and I don't think they're going to be doing a lot now. You know, the fact that Trump did not make that call is interesting. And we just and this is also the problem with dealing with a president, an administration that has zero credibility.

Is we don't we just don't know we're going to hear from the White House doctor, like normally I would say that you could trust the White House doctor. I don't believe that anymore. And so at least we would take everything report about who in the White House has covered what their symptoms are and what they are doing, certainly with a grain of salt, because the Trump administration has not earned the benefit of the doubt and medication.

Now, soon, right before we got on this zoo or recording whatever I want to say. Schumer and Feinstein asked for a delay in the hearings on imipramine. Barrett saying that they have to happen in person for a lifetime appointment. Now, I am pretty confident that if the Capitol were on fire.

Mitch McConnell would insist the Republicans vote to confirm a Supreme Court vote against the ACA before you could evacuate the building. So I think they will put everyone at risk. They will run over every norm to do this. I think what has been driving so much of the momentum from McConnell and others here is they believe that Trump is going to lose. And I think that belief is probably even stronger today. We don't know that that belief is correct or not.

But the urgency to get this done come hell or high water, I think is going to continue for the Republicans. The Democrats should push back against that as much as they can. I think it's good that you did that. But I think we we know where McConnell's head is on this.

And, look, it's just beyond the politics. Every Democrat who's working in Washington and their staff and everyone who comes in contact with the White House like should follow every single protocol and procedure to protect themselves. You know, like there's the CDC has guidelines.

If you around someone who has covered, you're supposed to quarantine for 14 days, maybe 10 days, depending on what kind of tests you get back.

And so, like, yeah, we can't have live hearings where, you know, who was around Mike Lee, who was like, Nancy Pelosi's got to get tested. She was around Manoukian, even though he was tested negative. Like who was Mitch McConnell talking to?

Like, all these people work together all the time and they are all in the line of succession here to the president.

A lot of them, like it is very important now that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, in the White House, take every possible precaution right now to make sure that there are no more positive tests in addition to the ones that may come out. I mean, Mark Meadows said when he went out there that he expects more positive tests to come from the White House, from White House staffers.

So un fucking believable, man. It's so stupid.

Like everything else that has happened.

It is so stupid because we are led by stupid people who do stupid things for stupid reasons and have and have no concern for other human beings, have no concern about anyone, for anyone but themselves that characterizes the whole fucking administration the whole time, that they just do not give a shit about anyone else. They care about their own egos. They care about their own fucking re-election, and they don't care who they hurt, quite literally by possibly, you know, giving them a virus.

The president's diagnosis comes with only thirty two days left until Election Day, with over two million Americans having already voted. The next presidential debate is 13 days away. We have no idea whether that debate or even the final debate will take place. We have no idea whether Donald Trump will hold another rally. Again, we have no idea whether there will be anything resembling a normal campaign, though senior Trump aides have already told The New York Times that, quote, The president would face harsh judgment from voters for throwing the country into greater uncertainty after one of the most trying years in American history.

No shit. Republican consultant Rob Stutzman told the Times. It's hard to imagine this doesn't end his hopes of re-election.

Then is it even possible to assess the political impact of this development yet? And what are the various factors at play here?

I think you have to separate two related questions here. How does this diagnosis impact the conduct of the campaign over the next thirty two days? And the other question is, how does it impact the outcome of the election? On the latter, we just don't know. There is this is too early. You know, we just heard right before this that Biden tested negative. I think he's probably going to get tested a couple more times that that's a huge factor in how this plays out.

We don't know that. I think we can make some guesses about what could happen and we can talk about that in terms of the how the conduct of the campaign is going to happen. I can't imagine the two presidential debates are going to happen in the same way in which they were before. Right. Do they happen at all? Do they happen in Zoome? You know, the president should be quarantined for the next 14 days, right? So that's about half of the remaining time that he should not be out campaigning or do anything like that.

And we should tell people that 14 days is at the low end. Right. That's like a minimum for the president. If the president continues to have and hope he does mild symptoms and nothing more, then you could see in 14 days getting another negative test. And then he's clear because he just had mild symptoms. And that's all. If he has moderate symptoms, even like it can take three weeks, four weeks, five weeks to recover. So, like and that's another thing is he really we have to know that he can't leave the White House and expose other people unless he's had you know, I think it's a couple of negative tests within 24 or 48 hours of one another that he doesn't develop more symptoms like all that has to happen before he can ever leave the house or go back to having any kind of public events where he's around people.

And there are two parts of that just there is the political impact, like when can he go campaign where I imagine people will want to push the envelope. And then there is the institutional effort to keep the president alive because of continuity, regardless of who the president is. Right.

Like it it it was always reminded or that was remember that the Secret Service takes protecting the president so seriously that. They put slip guards in the shower in the hotel season so they don't fall and hurt themselves. And so they are probably in trouble for saying that. But Elizabeth, let me know either way.

And so and so you get like there will be pressure to ensure that he does, because even when the election's in a month, he is still president for several months after that until January. And so there there is going to be this impetus to try to keep him for the sake, for the continuity of government, to keep him safe to abundance of caution. So there will be a push there, you know, for the political impact in terms of what it means about who's going to win the election or not.

Like I said, we don't know. I do think we know enough to be skeptical of some of the tapes we saw last night, which which are this will lead to an outpouring of sympathy for the president. Will this be will he be able to defeat covid and look like some sort of superhero? I'm very skeptical of that because his greatest political weakness, it has been his failure to deal with it. His unwillingness to listen to scientists is disregard of the appropriate behaviors like Maheswaran social distancing.

And so this is the embodiment of that in the biggest way possible. And the other thing to think about is we're just so conditioned to think about the October surprise. What are the things that happen in the days before the election that that have a huge impact on the election? You know, you think about in two thousand and for a lot of people believe that Bush won in part because bin Laden released an audiotape that final weekend which shifted the focus to terrorism in 2012.

We were incredibly nervous about the final jobs report that happened the Friday before the election. And if that had been bad, we were very concerned on that campaign that could hurt us. But what is different now is that the bulk of the voting is happening right now, right. Like in previous elections, something that happened on October 2nd would have very limited impact because the voting wouldn't happen. There would be there's an entire month for more things to happen.

But right now, huge numbers of people are going to go vote this weekend in states with early voting. People are mailing in their mail ballots now. And so the impact of these things are bigger either way, positive, negative, neutral. The impact is felt more will show up more in the final vote count and in a normal election year. I'm just trying to think of the voter who says to themselves, oh, the guy who for months has told us that the virus isn't a big deal, just contracted the virus.

So I'm going to switch my vote from Biden to that guy.

It's just it's hard to imagine that voter like, look, you could see something where if Trump came out and said, I just want to say this, this virus has hit me hard and I was wrong.

I was wrong that the virus was not as as deadly as it is or was not as scary as it is. It's a very serious I need to take it seriously. The country should take it seriously. We everyone needs to wear masks now. We need to be careful. I'm not going to do any more rallies. Like if he did all that, you could start to maybe see something. But like, I don't know how Trump is going to react to this whole thing.

That's the other X factor, though. I don't imagine he's going to change his personality overnight, but who knows?

Yeah, I mean, that's always the thing is, you can always look at this in a vacuum and say this is something that Trump could do that would improve his political standing. But it is almost always something that is not available in his temperamental toolbox. Right. Self-awareness, apologizing, admitting he's wrong. If, you know, despite all the Newtown coverage we get every six weeks is not something that he has ever shown any capacity to do. And I am skeptical, highly skeptical that that will happen this time either.

It's also it's one thing if a president or leader or candidate falls ill and just sort of came out of the blue, of course, there's an outpouring of sympathy.

Want the person to get better. That's still the case in this scenario.

But the fact that they tried to conceal it, knowingly exposed other people to the virus when they knew that Hope Hicks had it and they knew that the president was in close proximity to her, and then they went to that fundraiser. He was in close contact with one hundred other people. And the fact that he flouted all of the precautions that all of the scientists told him to abide by and so did his team, the fact that he did all that I don't believe gets him much sympathy beyond hoping that he recovers from the virus itself.

Yeah, it seems hard to fathom.

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So Joe Biden tweeted this morning that he and Jill send their thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery, saying, quote, We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the president and his family.

How does the Biden campaign deal with this in the next few weeks? I read right before we started that now that Joe Biden has this negative test, he is continuing on to Michigan for an event. What do they do?

I think a lot doesn't change for them. I think you will. Just because we know Joe Biden, you will hear him at his events, express the sentiment included in that tweet. He will wish for the Trumps to recover. I think that assistance that will obviously be a sincere belief of his and very consistent with who he is.

Their campaign was centered around how to protect Joe Biden, attendees and everyone else from the coronavirus.

And I think they have confidence in those measures. And so absent some information that would suggest that they have been exposed in some way, they should continue doing what they were doing. I imagine there'll be some tonal shifts, at least in the next period here about how they talk about Trump. But really but I think for the most part, the campaign will stay the same.

And I think you can wish Trump well and still talk about his failures at the same time. And they're like, this is not a one of those situations where it's like. I although I can see the press treating it this way, where if somehow Biden is being disrespectful, if he critiques Trump's leadership on this very specific issue, it's the exact opposite. This is a reason to talk about it, because this is the example of why we need change.

Yeah, and also, I mean, this is the central issue of the campaign, the Biden campaign is trying to make it the central issue. It is there are tens of thousands of people contracting a virus every day. There are almost a thousand people still dying from a virus every day.

And the United States hasn't had a plan to deal with it, doesn't really believe it's a problem, and is trying to install a Supreme Court justice that may repeal the Affordable Care Act and take away health care from 20 million people in the middle of a pandemic and protections for preexisting conditions from tens of millions more in one of those pre-existing conditions as having covered like, of course, we have to talk about that.

Of course, that's part of the campaign. These last 30 days like that.

It's absurd. It's life. It's literally a life or death issue. I also think the Biden campaign, like I said from the beginning, they have taken a lot of heat from Trump and from some pundits about like Joe Biden, trying to be safe, trying to stay at home, trying to do socially distance events, not trying to do big crowds, not try to do all this stuff. Everyone's like, was that a mistake? Should but is Biden being too cautious?

Well, no. Now we know what happens when you're not cautious and when you are cautious.

We have seen the contrast.

So go ahead. Now, I was going to say, you are right that Biden has an obligation to push through whatever Pearl clutching comes from the Morning Joe panel to make a case to the country about why we cannot have a leader who can't follow his own rules and then catches coronavirus because it exposes his friends and family and staff to the disease out of stupid selfishness. Right. Like he has an obligation to do that this close to election. The stakes are too high.

And I do. And I promise you promise. You promise. You promise you the voters will not penalize him for that. Joe Biden has been incredibly respectful of this president. Respect this president does not deserve, has not earned. And if he keeps with, as I imagine, with the tone he has used throughout this campaign, that will be perfectly consistent with how to talk about this situation in a way that the voters will respect, even if I'm sure there will be a lot of stupid gotcha driven by the Naggar media.

So there's a lot we still don't know. A lot of news breaking probably while recording this podcast. But we do have a we had another topic on on the outline that we'll jump into.

So there's many other topics that were just just discarded when this all happened. Remember, Melania Trump was was caught on tape attacking Christmas and and children who are being separated from their parents.

That was something that can wait to talk about that for a second.

Like when you talk about the millennials, quote unquote, friend, not so great of a friend recording a conversation with her, which she was complaining about Christmas decorations and then complaining about being asked by children being separated from their families at the borders. And what is she supposed to do about that? She said it was sort of horrific to hear.

I think, like when we talked about the political impact, I guess if you were to, like, dig deep into this dark cloud for Trump to try to find some silver lining, it would be there were two stories this morning that in a normal world would be relatively devastating. One, we got the final jobs report before the election and the recovery has slowed.

And we're going to go into Election Day, down 11 million jobs since before the pandemic. Great job, Trump. And the other one is this audiotape of his wife saying who the fuck cares about Christmas?

Which really should it matter? Like first ladies are put in this really sort of an unfair position anyway. But it only is politically relevant because Trump has been running around taking credit for winning a mythological war on Christmas. And so for his wife to be on tape saying, I sort of think it would be like Eleanor Roosevelt being caught on tape saying, fuck Normandy.

It's like it has obviously fallen to the wayside.

We should not let it. We were going to even leave the show with it. It was going to be in the intro before that, before this happened just for fun. So this at least we could just remind people that that actually happened moments before this happened.

Well, and also the president, you know, he went on Hannity last night when he at that point knew that he was positive for the virus probably and started.

And he finally, after the third attempt, the third time he was asked, denounced white supremacy, that there were plenty of stories yesterday about Republicans either trying to run away from him on that or just directly criticizing him. Like former RNC chair and Montana Governor Mark Roscoe said that I decided to endorse Joe Biden because I believe that Donald Trump is a threat to the republic, a threat to the existence of the republic. That's what was being said yesterday by Republicans before this happened, that Mark Rothko, not like some like never Trump or middle of the road guy, conservative governor like chair of the fucking RNC.

I'm with Biden because Donald Trump is a threat to the existence of the republic that. Is yesterday before we learned about all this and let's not forget, in that same interview, he blamed the troops and law enforcement for giving Corona virus to hope.

Forgot about that one. Forgot about that one. Yeah, he did.

She just can't stop herself from bugging them. That's what she. Yeah, that was his explanation. That was his explanation. All right. Well, let's let's talk about the Biden campaign, because this is somewhat related to what we're what we've been talking about.

They announced on Thursday that they'll be relaunching in-person canvassing efforts in the battleground states in order to connect with voters who are hard to reach remotely, starting with Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania campaign manager Jen O'Malley. Dillon explained the change in plans by saying, we're now expanding our strategy in a targeted way that puts the safety of communities first and foremost and helps us mobilize voters who are harder to reach by phone now that we're in the final stretch. The decision came amid an NBC report that Dave Wasserman the decision came amid an NBC report by Dave Wasserman that said, quote, New data from the past few months shows that Republicans have swamped Democrats in adding new voters to the rolls.

And that, quote, Several Democratic strategists are deeply disturbed by their party's failure to keep pace with its registration successes in 2016 and felt the Biden campaign's lack of in-person outreach for the lag.

Why do you think the Biden campaign changed course on this? I don't know, like the exact reason, although I think it's probably embedded in that Dave Wasserman report, you know, you and I have heard from lots of people we know activists in the states that we've adopted deeply concerned about this. Right. It feels like asymmetric warfare. This is how we've always campaign. We put such pride into such a huge part of how we won in twenty eighteen.

Now you see Republican canvassers going door to door and Democrats not doing so. You feel, are we losing because of that?

And when I originally heard Jen, who is someone I know very, very well and I think is the smartest, most accomplished organizer in our party, explained that they weren't going to do it. That made sense to me. And if you've had someone come to your door unexpectedly in the last six months, you know, you sort of understand their reasoning that who wants that, right? Someone knocks on our door yesterday and I thought I had to put on a hazmat suit is like, where does this person come from?

Do I have to talk to them?

And the no, I did not want to buy solar panels being sold door to door, which was an odd choice for them to do that. A pandemic.

But the but then relatedly, how he was doing calls for the North Carolina Democratic Party this week. And these were calls to they're called cure calls. They are to North Carolinians whose ballots have been rejected to tell them those ballots and rejected. And B, here's how you fix it. And the people doing the calls are doing tremendous work. I was listening to the training as it was happening, but it's really hard, right? It's a complicated process.

And what you know and how he was an organizer in North Carolina in 08 when she kept saying to me is before this announcement was this is the sort of thing that you really need to go door to door for.

You need be able to show people the ballot, how to do it right and or leave them a note who answers the phone from an unknown caller these days, it's very hard to get a phone.

Yeah.

And so be able to go to someone's door, Lee, you know, leave a door hanger that says your ballot was rejected. Please call us or to be able to talk to them is hugely valuable. And so I think there is, particularly because of some of these ballot rejections in these states that have a cure process. This makes it even more important to do. I'm sure it's like per the report, it's going to be more limited. It's not going to be this sort of mass effort, but it's going to be focused on hard to reach voters, people you can't get in contact with.

And, you know, you can know where people live. But the number of change is a huge people want to change a lot of time. So it's sometimes hard to find people whose votes did not count. And so I I understand why they are doing this. It seems probably necessary in this area, and I have trust that they can do it safely on a limited basis. How much concern do you have about that Wasserman's story on party registration?

I've heard a few different things, and Dave says in the story to some of this is like, you know, people who've voted who have been registered as Democrats forever.

And some of these states who actually did already voted for Trump in 2016 as Democrats just finally moving their voter registration over to a Republican. A lot of it is just that. You know, the time period that Dave story covers is sort of the end of the primary through the summer, which is when the pandemic was at its height. And so Democrats just didn't do a lot of voter registration drives in person. And so they fell behind a little bit.

But that if you look overall at registration numbers since 2016, like we're still doing OK.

But I don't know what what level of worry do you have about that?

It's definitely a level of worry I would use. I would say I'm worrying about it, but not panicking about it.

There you go. OK, I look, it is there's any real truth to the caveats you mentioned. It is a relatively typical thing for when a party takes the White House for there to be a voter registration shift in their favor, because it is it it's almost an incentive to now finally be a Republican or a Democrat. We saw similar things with Obama. The hard part is we need new voters in many of these states more than Republicans do. And the best way to register voters is in-person in ways that are very hard in a pandemic, which is standing, you know, standing outside of supermarkets, universities, the places where you would normally do it, and getting people to fill out voter registration cards.

In some states, Republicans have gone like Texas and Florida have gone to make that incredibly difficult by basically launching criminal penalties over people who register voters.

But in the states where you can do it, that is a tool in our toolkit that has been denied to us. Even with the pandemic, we're still not going to be able to do it at the same level we would because you can't, but you're not going to put people out there just standing on street corners and there's going to be less traffic on those street corners in supermarkets, places like that. There would be in a normal world. But everything we can do safely, we should be doing here because, yeah, it is it is absolutely concerning in a very close race.

Speaking of doing things safely, I mean, reading a lot of these stories about rejected ballots and just how how difficult both how difficult Republicans are trying to make it to vote by mail in states all across the country, like is it should people think about if you can if it's safe, like voting in person, voting early, like as long as you can be safe about it, just make sure you go drop your ballot off like I'm I'm starting to think I want to drop my ballot off in person.

Like, just because I mean, California is a good state for this because they're not like rejecting ballots left and right.

But like, if I was if I was in a swing state, I would probably figure out a way to, like, either drop my ballot off early or vote early in person to avoid crowds.

So it's going to differ massively by state and by person. Right. Everyone has a different risk factor for coronavirus themselves and for the people in their lives, right? That's right. That's right. We like I see my in-laws all the time. They're older. So we are like extra careful than we would otherwise otherwise be. So it's like super, super careful to super, super, super duper careful. Right. And so we may think about that differently.

Now, if you mail your vote in or you drop off your mail ballot, you are still at risk of some of the similar challenges around secrecy envelopes in some states, signature signature matches and others.

Now, the if you're in a state that has a cure process like North Carolina, the sooner you turn your vote in the longer time you have to find out that it did not get counted and to fix. Right. And so I would encourage everyone, whatever path they go through to to do it early. Voting in-person early is probably your best bet to have your vote counted in the most states. And so if that is something people feel they can do safely, they should.

You know, that's what I would encourage people to do.

Yeah. And again, go to vote to America. We have all of the options and every state for you so you can figure out which voting option is right for you and say for you.

OK, let's take a few questions before we go to questions John Stehly asked us.

And we got a lot of versions of this type of question. I don't believe it. Is it a ploy? There is always an angle.

I'm guessing he's referring to the news of the day.

But no, I mean, I can't imagine. It's like, yes, Trump is a liar. Yes. We used to hear the of the grain of salt I struggle to imagine. And what sort of hypothetical three dimensional chess world Trump saying he has coronavirus would be some sort of master stroke.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like a big win. I mean, look, I totally understand everyone who is skeptical, not trusting anything they hear conspiratorial about this kind of stuff, like Trump has given us every reason to be all of those things for the last four years.

I get that. But remember that at their core, these people are incompetent.

Buffoons like that is what drives them more than anything else, more than scheming, more like they're just they're bumbling idiots and everything about this story so far and they're bumbling, selfish idiots. And everything about this story so far fits very neatly into how they've acted for the last four years. Don't care about anyone but themselves. Don't really take science seriously. Don't take a lot of precautions. Only thinking about Trump's election, not thinking about other people like all of that just fits perfectly into this story.

So, yes, there's like an outside possibility they could be lying to us. But again, you have to think why.

You have to think what what's in character for this crew. And everything we've heard so far is perfectly in character with this group. Yeah.

I mean, here are someone who in the middle of a pandemic has repeatedly met with strangers without a mask on. So it is a safe assumption that if he says is coronavirus, he probably contracted it.

It was a matter of time. Jessica Bondie asks us, can you touch upon media strategy for Biden going forward since Trump will likely dominate the news cycle, not in a novel way, meaning it won't be campaign coverage. SCOTUS confirmation process is taxes. There will be a unilateral focus on Trump's battle with the virus. Will you think about that? Well, if the Biden campaign were to pick one topic to be the number one topic between now and Election Day would be coronavirus, because it is the issue where he has a plan, Trump doesn't.

It is the perfect manifestation of Trump's incompetence. And that is like we've had some fears when you and I have talked privately about things, we worry about this idea that for some reason or somehow coronavirus receded into the background of the public consciousness would be an opportunity where Trump could gain some political strength. That seems highly unlikely now.

I think Biden is going to have to find ways to communicate with groups that he has probably under communicated with the need to communicate with more black voters, young voters, Latino voters, and doing that in targeted ways, both with communications that, you know, media outlets, platforms that speak directly to those audiences and unpaid communications.

You know, he's going to be able to go on MSNBC or CNN and talk about something other than the president having rhinovirus for a while. But there are still opportunities to get your message out. You just have to be a little more nimble about. I'm sure that's what they're thinking about. And then finally, Brian Marble asks us, when was the last time an outline survived? Twenty four hours. You know, the outline always survives, I guess is not what I was going to say, debate outlines always right.

But that's only that's because they're only like eight hours old when it happens.

Yeah. Just yesterday we were like, we've done two pods. This week we got a third. You and I were going back and forth all day yesterday with Michael and Jordan trying to figure out like what we're going to do. And we're like, all right, I think we've got enough now. And then all of a sudden this happened where I was like in the middle of it was like nine o'clock when this started happening. And I'm just staring at the screen.

Emily came downstairs, looked at me and she's like, you look sort of crazy right now. And I'm like, I think Donald Trump has coronavirus. She's like, What?

Are you crazy? Is this like have you, like, lost your mind? Knows the conspiracies. I'm like, no, I think he has coronavirus. He like we should have known by a test by now he has rapid test and he hasn't told us. And then of course it broke. And I was like, well, I'm done with the airline for tonight and I'm just going to do this tomorrow morning.

You know, up until like the last three months, that sort of the naturally occurring dynamic with our podcasts is we record the podcast, then the news happens. It has changed slightly, which is on a fairly regular number of occasions.

Now, I will say to you, I really don't know what we're going to talk about this week. You guys have covered a broad range of issues on Monday. Not that much has happened. It's sort of the same stuff. And then that happened with the Woodward story. I sent you the outline after a lot like we had a long back and forth about what are some of the news topics we could bring up and then have the Woodward story break.

I think it happened with a couple of other things recently. And so this is fitting with the dynamic of twenty twenty. All right, when we come back, Dan talks to Andre Banks of When Black about how we can handle the flood of misinformation being directed at black and brown voters right now.

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I'm now joined by Andre Banks, founder of AB Partners, and Wynn Black Pawlenty, an organization dedicated to stopping the spread of misinformation, targeted black and brown voters. Andre, thanks for coming on parts of America.

My pleasure.

Tell me a little bit about your organization and what led you to start it.

Yeah, absolutely, so when Black Pawlenty is an organization that is focused on countering misinformation and disinformation, targeting black and Latino voters, and what led me to start it was an article that I read in the newspaper back in twenty seventeen in early twenty seventeen, the Senate came out with a report about the 2016 election. And what they said was that black Americans were actually the number one target of interference by Russian operatives. So basically Russian people, trolls in content and running people running content farms and bots were really had an active campaign.

The most successful campaign in history to misinform voters and black people were the number one target. So we brought together a network of organizations across the country, some great creatives, great researchers to try to push back.

And what are you seeing this cycle in terms of that kind of targeting? We are seeing more of the same, you know, the strategy in twenty sixteen was incredibly successful. You know, there was a seven percent drop in black voter turnout from 2012 to 2016. And so one thing we thought coming into 2020 was like, why would they stop this really work the last time? Why wouldn't they try it again? And that's a lot of what we've seen.

Every time we see big protests around black lives matter for racial justice, huge upticks in misinformation, lots targeted around voting by mail, pretty much anything you can think of. We're seeing pretty negative activity.

And what are some specific examples of what that misinformation looks like this cycle? Sure.

So, you know, every time there's been kind of a key moment where people have gotten into the streets, you know, after the murder of George Floyd more recently around the decision not to prosecute the police officers who shot Brianna Taylor, we see in literally hours massive numbers of posts generated from all corners of the dark web that do a lot of things. They basically say that, like the protests are not actually run by black leadership, that they're sort of just puppets who are driving these things.

They say that the protests are violent even when they're not, they push people to fake demonstrations that don't actually exist. So that's one thing where we've really been trying to to keep our eye on.

I imagine you got your in somewhat regular contact with the social media platforms, you know, who claim to be doing monitoring and they tout when they take things down. What are you seeing from them and what what are you still concerned about from their their their efforts? Facebook, most notably, I guess. I mean, you know, what am I seeing for that from them, not nearly enough. You know, when you look at the scale of what's happening on their platforms, if you look at the level at which black voters and Latin text voters are being, you know, depressed and suppressed, the level of effort that they're bringing is just nowhere near to meeting the challenge.

And so, you know, what we've seen is like, you know, it takes sometimes weeks, days, weeks to take down a bot that's generating thousands of comments and driving a conversation in a wrong direction, like so much that it actually gets picked up by mainstream media. You know, it's just really not not sufficient. It's been a challenge.

Are there some specific things you'd like to see them do that they are not doing or policy changes that they are refusing to make? Sure, absolutely, I mean, I think one big thing is like, you know, when we see misinformation and we identify it, you know, it takes a very long time. Even when you see something like that. You know, we had a case earlier in the year where you might have remembered where the CEO of Goya Foods sort of made some positive comments about Trump.

And there was a lot of blowback right after that. There was suddenly this like wave of like support for the Goya CEO. It looked like there was kind of this online wave coming behind him of folks, conservative folks who were supporting him. What we found through our research was that actually almost all of that wave was bought activity one bought, driving thousands of comments and engagements. And so that's the kind of thing where we saw that, we identified it and it still took us, you know, days close to a week before that was actually taken down from Facebook.

One of the strategies that you guys employ is creating viral content to combat misinformation. Talk to me about how you're doing that, why that is so important and why it's just not sufficient just to get this stuff taken down, even if their companies are able to do it quicker. Yeah, absolutely, so you know what, the scale of what we're up against is huge. You know, I told you about the what the Russians were doing. We also learned last week through some reporting that came out of the U.K. that that the Trump campaign in 2016 had a database with three and a half million black voters where they literally had a column in the database that said Deter.

So there was an active campaign also inside the country to deter black voters.

So, you know, this is to me, massive. I mean, it feels much more scandalous even than things like Watergate. Can you imagine a U.S. sitting U.S. president has, like at his campaign, has actively tried to stop three and a half million American voters, black voters in particular, from trying to cast their ballot. It's actually really crazy. So, you know, we've got to fight that with fire. So that means that we can't just, like, research our way out of it.

We've got to actually create content that we can get on the feeds that can compete with everything else that people are saying. So what that looks like is a war room that involves creative director, strategists, editors who make video, people who are copywriters sitting together with researchers who are tracking misinformation and coming up with like the best content we can make and getting it to millions and millions of people. So, you know, we're doing that every day of the week.

We've got a partner network of a hundred organizations in 17 states to help get it out that way. And then we're also pushing it on people's feeds through various kinds of other media made.

You know, we we talk a lot when we talk about sort of misinformation online about the Russians and other foreign actors. You know, what are some of the domestic things you're saying in addition to what you just said about the Trump campaign, you know, trying to stop people from what are you seeing things from right wing groups, you know, other things happening that's domestic in nature.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely see a lot coming from domestic organizations, lots of partisan activity. You know, we see bot's, but, you know, at the end of the day, I always say it actually doesn't it's problematic, but it doesn't matter where it's coming from. And it's actually kind of hard to tell in the short term where it's coming from. And often what ends up happening is we don't act until we know where it's coming from.

But that might take days or weeks or months of research. So a lot of our effort is to say wherever it's coming from, it's here and it is actually working. It is depressing voters. It's convincing people in the to sort of move towards cynicism, not want to participate in this election. And so we've just been trying to make sure we have a volume of content.

That's true, that's inspiring and that we're getting it in front of folks, you know, a lot of what if's or the misinformation, radicalization of things are happening. There's this type we see like on our Facebook feeds or on Twitter elsewhere. But there's a lot that's happening both within private groups on Facebook and Instagram in particular, but also in private networks like WhatsApp. How do you go about finding out about and then targeting misinformation that's happening in those walled and gardens, if you will?

It's really tough. It's really, really tough to find. But what we've been doing is partnering with a couple of research collaboratives that have come together just to do this thing. So these groups are looking through with every tool that's available to us, scouring every corner of the Internet, looking at sort of both the open platforms and closed groups where they can get into them to try to identify both the trends that we see in misinformation and also new things that were coming up.

So, like, I just got in and a message and a signal group that was telling me about, you know, what are some things that are popping up right now around Trump announcing that he has covered what are the conspiracies that are starting to like, populate and starting to get get traffic and gain ground? So we're working really closely with those partners and every day get a brief from them on like what's happening and where we need to take action.

So if you're someone who's listening to this podcast who sees it for what they believe to be misinformation online, what should they you know, what should that individual person do? What are some of the best tactics that that A, that a person can use to push back against that? Yeah, absolutely, so I think one thing that we say is like, if you see something, say something. So if you see something that looks like a bot, report it.

Don't be afraid to click that. Click that button. It's one of the few tools that we have with the platforms to actually make sure that they will somebody will like look at it and investigate. The other thing I say is like, you know, sometimes it's actually really good people who have the bad information. So it's not always the the paid. It's sometimes it's like your mom or your grandma or your uncle or your brother who's in the family group chat.

And it's like, don't just walk away from that crazy chat room, actually get in there, actually try to educate folks. You know, one thing that we've done is created a ton of content that we've made publicly available for people at Winblad Dawg, where you can find Meems infographics, videos, the stuff that you need to just jump into that conversation, that conversation yourself.

There's also a lot of misinformation going around in Spanish, targeting leathernecks voters. And my understanding is there hasn't been a lot of coverage of that within the Spanish language media. What are the you know, how are you guys thinking about approaching that challenge in this election?

Yeah, we've been doing quite a bit of Spanish language content. We actually just yesterday worked with Univision to do a piece about misinformation that's targeting Latin voters. So, you know, one big part of the way that we work is, you know, we felt like it's not enough for me, you know, in Brooklyn to be running a campaign like this and like trying to figure out what all the right messages are. So we actually built this network that includes, you know, state based organizations in 17 states in Florida, in Arizona.

People who do this work day in and day out are talking to communities there and actually surfacing for us. What are the big messaging challenges? What are the things that are happening in South Florida in Spanish that we need to figure out ways to combat? So that's really helped us be able to refine our content, make sure that we've got stuff in Spanish that's allowing people to, you know, to to get into a different story.

For our listeners who want to support your efforts to want to contribute to what you're doing, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, you can go to win Blagg. You can smash that donate button. Well done. Well, we're going to have, you know, one of the big things that we're doing now, you know, at this point, we actually all of our operation is paid for. We're not you're not paying for my time or any of our staff's time. It's literally just to pay for us to amplify content getting in front of more people in more states.

So that's a huge help. And also, if you go there, you can find a link to our our library of of videos content. And a big thing for us is like share this stuff. It's not enough for us to be right. It's not enough for us to be smart. We actually have to be in the conversation and we have to be getting other people excited about this election and getting people in the right story about it. So please use your feed and let us help you do that.

Andre, thank you so much for being here about the work. Thank you for the work you're doing. This is incredibly necessary and impressive and I encourage everyone to support your efforts. So thank you so much and good luck down the stretch here. Yeah. Thanks so much. My pleasure.

Cookie Media has a new video series on disinformation. You can watch episodes at YouTube dotcom slash media, which I'm sure you've already subscribed to via some form of previous smashing.

Thanks, Andre, for joining us today. And, you know, we'll talk to you guys on Monday.

Stay safe, everyone. Stay safe. God Save America is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Soglin is our sound engineer thanks to Tanya Nominator, K.D. Lang, Roman, Papadimitriou Quinn Lewis, Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston and Elisa Gutierrez for production support into our digital team.

Elijah Konar Melkonian, Elfriede and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.