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I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vietor on today's Pot Love. It talks to Congresswoman Katie Porter about the pandemic inequality and the election. Before that, we'll talk through Donald Trump's return to the campaign trail. The latest in Congress is covid relief negotiations and how Democrats should handle the Supreme Court confirmation hearings that have already begun today. One exciting announcement before we start vote. Save America's Build Your Own Ballot tool is now live in all 50 states. Here's what you do.

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All right. Let's get to the news. There are twenty two days left to vote in the twenty twenty election. Donald Trump is trailing Joe Biden by double digits and still recovering from a covered infection that he contracted after throwing a super spreader event at the White House.

And so his next political move was obvious. Kick off a full week of swing state mega rallies with another crowded White House event and a doctor's note that said the president is, quote, no longer considered a transmission risk from the same guy who already admitted to lying to us about Trump needing oxygen.

Tommy, first of all, what do we know and what don't we know about Donald Trump's current condition?

So the letter tells us that he is no longer considered a transmission risk to others, but it did not say that Trump has tested negative. And you would think that they would have released that fact because it's the thing Trump wants to hear more than anything else. We know that as of Saturday, he hadn't had a fever for twenty four hours. But the White House won't say when the actual start date was of his symptoms. We we don't know what his long scans look like.

We don't know whether there were negative side effects from all the drugs he was taking. And we know that we probably shouldn't trust all of this information because the doctor lied previously and the doctors at Walter Reed were all forced to sign an NDA or else they weren't allowed to treat the president.

Yeah, and you mean because they said that about the fever, that mean that there was a previous note that he didn't have a fever like last week, which means that there was a new fever this week and there were new symptoms this week, which is like when you read between the lines of the letter, you find that out.

So on Friday, Trump did some swing voter outreach on Rush Limbaugh show where he said, you know, I was asking the doctors today, how bad was I? They said you could have been very bad. You were going into a very bad phase. But then on Sunday, during his second interview in one week with Fox News's Maria Bartiromo, he said this again, I think I would have been fine, you know, I mean, I'm in good health.

I think I would have been fine. And people have to realize that. And once you once you do recover, you're immune. So now you have a president who doesn't have to hide in a basement like his opponent. You have a president who is important, which is a big I think, which is a very important thing, frankly, some of it.

The Trump campaign is pushing this line that the president has personal experience with covid and understands what people are going through.

You see any messaging issues with that?

So, yeah, I mean, it's he hosted a series of super spreader events at the White House. It caused dozens of people to become sick. He then claimed to have now understood what covered was all about and then immediately resumed hosting super spreader events at the White House and across the country. He's on his way to hosting a few in other covid hotspots across the country right now. There was always a conflict for Trump right when he got covid, because there are two things he wants to do at once.

One is to defeat the virus strongly. You know, he wants to say that he overcame it. He wants to say that it could have been very, very bad. But he's very, very strong and therefore defeated it. He also, for his ego, needs to act as if his denials of its seriousness all along were true, that it actually isn't a big deal. And sure enough, he said that both in some interviews he could have died.

In other interviews, he would have been fine. He can just do both because he's relying on the fact that he can just sort of spread various messages all at once on various platforms that people won't question him on, whether it's Rush Limbaugh or Maria Bartiromo. As for his message of, look, you don't want a president who hasn't had covid, I don't think that that's I don't like I don't think I like, you know, Illinois is going to hell.

And I had covid is not like the economic message. I think he should probably be close. Once if you if you want him to win. I mean, it's like essentially the messages you shouldn't be afraid of covid, which almost killed me, but for the special antibody cocktail I received only because I'm the president now, please excuse me while I go infect some more voters. Yeah.

I mean, it's really like it obviously look like we are through the looking glass, like this is not politics anymore.

This is we are in another kind of conversation, like Chris Christie got out of the hospital like a week later, like he was very, very sick, potentially on the verge of death, like Mike Lee, still contagious, currently in a hearing spouting off about the Constitution, like we are in a deeply strange political moment where, you know, we're not just talking about policy anymore. These are human beings putting other people at risk just to be in their presence because their egos in their politics demands that they deny that it is serious, that's all.

Yeah.

And like Tommy, you went through sort of the doctor's note on the physical conditions and how Trump's doing with covid. Like, we haven't even gotten into questions over his mental state right now with all the steroids he's on and some of the things he said over the last week, which, of course, four years into this, we are all very used to Trump saying completely crazy shit. And none of us can diagnose his mental condition, nor should we.

But there's some concerns.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the message seems to be that if you have a private helicopter to take you to your private suite, do you see your personal doctors to get experimental drugs? You're going to be fine. But, you know, in the middle of that, there was some rather unhinged behavior as part of whatever his closing argument is apparently going to be.

Well, we just got to note, like in The New York Times story, got a note and got a note. It got a note. This great, great anecdote that that Maggie Haberman reported in several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering when he left the hospital. He wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

But underneath his buttoned down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman t shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength. When he ripped open the top layer, he ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt. He wanted to Willy Wonka this.

So was it Willie Wonka or was it more of like a Kaiser, so say usual suspects?

Were you, like, limp and limp and limp and then all of a sudden you're good to go and you smash the cup on the ground? A hard one to visualize for me.

I want to make two quick points about this. Obviously, it's very stupid. We live in a very stupid time. Point number one, Gene Wilder, little fact about Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory. Willy Wonka only accepted the movie if he could do that stunt at the beginning. And the really. Yes. And the reason he said that this may be apocryphal, who gives a shit. But this is my understanding that he wanted to do is the only the only way he would agree to do the movie is if he got to do that.

And the reason he wanted to do that stunt is because he said, after I do that as this character, you'll never know if you can believe this character ever again. That was his goal. His goal is that's why he did it. That's one to. If you defeat an illness. You know, with grit and determination and you and you're getting a little welcome home party from your family, you want to make a little joke with a Superman t, I say have at it.

I mean to say have at it. I love it, but you but you don't do it if you put a bunch of other people at risk and your recklessness almost killed people, you don't do it if you get out of the hospital after you drove drunk into a school bus, which is basically what Trump has done with covid. So no, you don't get to brag about having overcome it. You heard a bunch of people.

Well, it just it's so varied from what is what is he really care about? He cares about looking weak. He doesn't care about all the people he put at risk. It's indicative of the entire presidency and his entire life. I think it would have been awesome and it was a missed opportunity. And you guys are wrong.

We'd be looking at a two point margin in the polls right now. This five thirty eight would be five. Thirty eight would be up to a twenty seven percent chance. You do this, Joe, here's opening.

Like Hulk Hogan, Donald Trump discovers Joe Biden's kryptonite.

Tommy beyond covid. What is Trump's closing argument? I heard him yelling about court, packing Hillary's emails, prosecuting Obama, the election being rigged, the debates being rigged. Anything I'm missing. Yeah.

Oh, look, look, let's think about it. So it's like thirty minutes of steroid infused improv on Maria Bartiromo weekday show that included calls for Bill Barr to arrest Obama and Biden in an attack on his own secretary of state for not releasing Hillary's emails. There's a two hour call into Rush Limbaugh's show because all the undecided voters are probably listening to Rush. There was the Saturday Joint Blogsite law enforcement event at the White House that was supposed to be two thousand people, but a couple of hundred showed up and they were paid to be there.

There were attacks at that speech about the radical socialist left and all of the normal hits on fracking. And it was a big Hatch Act violation. Then he called into Maria Bartiromo this weekend show to make sure he didn't miss any of her viewers who remained undecided. So now he's in Florida tonight. I think tomorrow is in Pennsylvania and he's tweeting specific attacks about California and New York and Illinois going to hell. So I don't know all that coherent. I'm sorry if I did describe it.

Well, I'm not sure there's a there's a thread that look gets you through it.

You boys are falling into the trap, not understanding what's going on. Once again, Pompeo is going to release those Hillary Clinton emails, and all of a sudden you're going to see Hillary's numbers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan crater. All right. Hillary is toast. She is toast.

Once Pompeo releases those emails, here's the problem with, like us laughing about what a fucking disaster Donald Trump and his campaign are right now.

Like, every time we do it, I think to myself, I want to hold a couple of ideas in my head. One, which is he can still win, of course. Of course he can definitely still win. But you know what? Even if he does win, this is still stupid. This is this is still a fucking horrendous way to close your campaign when you know that you are at least down with independent voters, swing voters, everyone else like he is retreating to the safe space of right wing media.

He is firing up the base. Right. He's doing all that kind of stuff. But it is bad.

It's also evil, by the way. It's also threatening to jail his opponents. Like, look, I've said everything is very stupid and very important and it sucks. Yeah. But also, three hundred thousand people watch Maria Bartiromo show. He gave her a full half hour and then called in again a couple of days later. Like, I agree that he could still win for a variety of reasons, but that was not a good use of time. No one will ever convince me otherwise.

He just cancel, he he pulled out of a debate this week that would have been 60, 70 million people would have been able to see him because he didn't want to do it virtually because you don't want to be on Zoom like all of us.

How much we love should be on Zoom because it's an advertisement for his failures. He didn't want to be on Zoom because he's, you know, Captain Contigo stuck in the White House, unable to unable to defeat the virus. So, like, no. Yeah, I mean, I get why he pulled out of the debate. There's no way, General Flynn, why are you talking about General Flynn for man guys trying to stay under the radar, says get arrested again.

I keep trying to think back to 20, 16 and like what?

What is different now? And I do I remember a hint of a message from him at the end of 2016. And it was, you know, the global elite are coming for you and I'm the only guy who can change Washington. There was still a lot of craziness. A lot about Hillary should go to jail and all this kind of stuff. But there was a at least with some of his ads, too. And I'm sure his ads are smarter than what he's saying every day right now.

But there was just there was a message about him being an outsider that was going to change Washington and fix immigration and all this stuff. And that really did come through in the last couple of weeks of 2016. And maybe there's still time for it, but I don't sense it now.

I think, look, if we got to you know, he can win. The forces of propaganda and cultural decline are still very much alive. But I do think what if I were to pick like one moment that to me signaled how we ended up where we are right now. There was a moment where Trump was supposed to roll out his new slogan, which was Keep America Great. And they quickly realized that saying Keep America great. In the middle of the greatest economic crisis in 100 years during a pandemic he failed to resolve was not a great idea.

So they they retreated back to make America great again. And I think in that you see the core underlying problem that they have, which is what are they supposed to fucking say? Give us a redo, Mulligan Mulligan, on the last four years.

So no, man, you know, he could have come out of covid and said, I recovered. You know, I really understand what this disease is now. I understand what people are going through. I'm going to get going and we're going to have to talk about this. I'm going to go work with Congress on covid relief package to help struggling Americans. We're going to do testing and I'm going to get us through this just like I got us through this, right?

Like what? It's turned things around. Maybe not, but like, it's something. Yeah. If he became a different person, he'd have had a real shot. Right. Well, so much of this so much of this debate is about can he become a different person just like.

But he was the same person at 16. And what he did well then was he made it about Hillary Clinton. He's never been capable of making this race about anyone but himself and his failed record. He's never had a clear message about Biden. Biden's either trapped in the basement or he's sick with dementia or he's all these different sort of flailing, you know, captive of the radical left. None of it's coherent. None of it is working. The law and order message isn't working.

It's just a mess. It's been a mess. Yeah, so we've talked before about how the one issue that's keeping Trump alive is the economy, where voters generally approve of his performance, but the president has put that advantage in jeopardy by bungling the negotiations over a new economic relief bill after tweeting that he was ending the negotiations last week. Trump has since reversed himself and proposed a one point eight trillion dollar package, which is more than the three hundred and fifty billion dollars Republicans offered in July, but less than the three trillion dollar heroes act that House Democrats already passed.

Nancy Pelosi called Trump's proposal grossly inadequate, while Senate Republicans revolted against the White House offer, according to The New York Times. Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a call that accepting a bill with Nancy Pelosi's support would deflate the base and amount to a, quote, death knell for the party's hopes of keeping the Senate. Love it. What happens if there's no deal? If there's no deal?

Right now, the only hope we have is that some vulnerable Republicans feel some pressure to do something before the election. The fear is, even in the best case scenario, where Joe Biden can win the presidency, we can keep the House and win the Senate. He will be unable to pass a significant relief bill until after Joe Biden becomes president, because the Republicans will want to saddle him with with the the pain of the downturn, as well as the cost of the stimulus bill.

And so people that are in desperate, desperate need right now who are running out of options right now will have absolutely no relief from the federal government for months. And it's incredibly. Dangerous and harrowing for people that are on a knife's edge right now. Tell me, what do you think Donald Trump wants a deal now at in this hour that we're recording this, but not Senate Republicans, what are the political considerations driving their position on this?

I mean, this is a hard one to answer because it is so irrational. I mean, I think part of it is that the Senate Republicans have no coherent leadership from either Trump or McConnell. Right. Trump changes his mind hourly so they don't want to embrace a position that he might then go against. There were all these leaks from over the weekend where you have Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, talking to these Senate Republicans. Mark Meadows isn't like a coalition builder either, right?

He's an arsonist. He's an obstructionist. Also, why isn't Trump on that call with these senators showing leadership? Then you have Mitch McConnell, who only cares about the Supreme Court. I'm sure he'd be happy to lose a couple of seats as long as he's got another justice to brag about. So you're reading these leaks where Republicans are saying they're worried about deficits and debts again and they're worried about some new iteration of the Tea Party and that they could get in trouble politically for being in favor of a big spending bill.

To me, that's one of the dumber things I've ever heard. The Tea Party was never about deficits. It was a bunch of Astroturf events paid for by corporations about how Obama was bad. But I guess maybe like they've made their bet on Fox News and with their supporters about how this bailout is just for Democrat run states and therefore must be bad. And they can't seem to walk back from that. But, yeah, I mean, the the implications for regular people, like you're going to see bankruptcies, you're going to see people losing their homes.

Half of all small businesses think they need more help from the government to survive. One point five million state and local government jobs have been lost like unemployment benefits are down two thirds for twenty five million people who have been laid off. So we're a very, very dire place right now. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about 20, 16, one advantage Trump had in 2016 is that voters at least perceived he was more economically populist than a lot of Republicans.

He made all kinds of false promises about protecting Social Security and Medicare and health care. And he talked about maybe taxing hedge fund owners and Wall Street.

And none of that has come to bear during his presidency. But there is a strain. There are there are some Republicans, the Josh Holli's people like that in the Senate who see the future of the Republican Party as maybe we should be more economically populist and we can be a xenophobic and culturally right wing and racist as we want to be. And that's that that's a coalition.

But most of this goes to show that, like most establishment Republicans, still aren't there. Most establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and the rest of them still would rather just push tax cuts for super rich people and absolutely fucking nothing for a bunch of Americans struggling in a recession through no fault of their own, because it's the middle of a pandemic. And I mean, I really think the only people worse of politics than Donald Trump are establishment Republicans in Congress. This is like the Paul Ryan Mitch McConnell wing of the party that somehow thinks if they if they pass a one point eight trillion dollar stimulus bill in the middle of a pandemic, that the price tag is going to be more offensive to their voters than actually, you know, lifting up the economy and saving a bunch of workers.

I also think it's potentially even more cynical than that. You know, they recognize that there's a need for a big stimulus. They see their majority going out the window and they'd rather put two trillion dollars on the Democrat ledger than on their own before they start complaining about the debt and the deficit again. And they'd rather hamstring a Joe Biden administration in the first hundred days with an even deeper downturn than give him a tailwind so that he can pursue some progressive priorities.

So I think there is a that's even more cynical, that's all.

I think that's that's a big part of it. How hard should Democrats try to make a deal here? Should should Pelosi accept the White House offer and then put the ball in McConnell's court? Tommy, what do you think?

I know this is hard, but I come down on the side of. Yes, like, we should just be. I recognize it's weird politics. Democrats are trying to help improve the economy for Donald Trump right before the election. But I worry about inaction, doing irreparable harm to millions of families and then also the economy generally and whether or not Joe Biden wins, like, I don't think that's a good thing for anyone, including our political system. We should also be clear that Pelosi is not playing super, super hardball.

Right. She came down from three trillion to two point two trillion. She didn't put in place provisions that say if the economy continues to struggle, unemployment insurance would automatically be extended. That's something a lot of people want to prevent Republicans from being able to hamstring Joe Biden if he is elected and we don't get the Senate. She didn't put a ton of money in there for a vote by mail, even though we probably need it. And so, you know, I think she's worried about like state and local governments collapsing.

We all should be worried about that because we're Democrats. We believe that government should work. It should do things for people. These are the people we've all got into politics to help the people who are out of work right now. And so I don't know how the politics will cut, but I like the idea of doing nothing until, you know, January or February with covid cases increasing, with people really hurting. I don't know. I just I can't stomach that.

Yeah, no, I think this is a tough one, too, because I do think there's a lot of politics that play into this, but I think on the substance, the absolute right thing to do is to try to get a deal, because you're right, people people struggling and hurting until February when things are only going to get worse is too much to stomach. So if you can get a deal, you get a deal. Now, let's imagine she gets a deal.

Let's imagine it passes. You know, Donald Trump spends the last couple of weeks saying he got a big bipartisan covid relief deal to save the economy. What does that do to the election? I don't know.

Maybe it's maybe it's too late at that point. Maybe people have already made up their minds. Maybe people give Democrats credit for working with Republicans. But I think it's a risk. It's definitely, yes. Now, what do I think is the most likely outcome? Pelosi passes something through the House that the White House has agreed to, and then Mitch doesn't have the votes in the Senate, which clearly he doesn't, because that's why he's been trying to avoid this.

And if you read all the stories about that call with the Senate Republicans that Marsha Blackburn quote wasn't the only one, there were a whole bunch of them saying absolutely not. Then Pelosi throws it to McConnell and McConnell kills it. Well, then but we tried to do the right thing. And the politics at that point are great because now Mitch McConnell in the Senate, Republicans single handedly killed the covid deal.

Yeah, I mean, I think it argues for Democrats not giving more than what they've already given and holding the line for a really, really strong package. Because I asked Katie Porter this. I asked it in the most cynical way possible. It was embarrassing how she answered for me.

But but but, you know, the point that she made is it's actually harmful to keep coming back. Right. Like, we need to give people certainty, need to like if you just give a little bit of money to small to local government or just to give a little bit of money to businesses, they don't have the certainty they need to not lay people off to keep people on the payrolls, et cetera. So, like, we need to do a really big package.

The only reason to do it now is because you need something that's going to last for a long time. And so, yeah, like I think like the politics of we put forward a really good deal and force Republicans to go along with it is the only way to make some kind of political hay out of passing something while Donald Trump is still president.

And if they walk away while they walk away, the other thing that gives me little hope that he wouldn't use this to great political advantage is when has he ever driven a consistent message about policy? When is Donald Trump run on an accomplishment? Well, they passed a big coronavirus relief bill, what, March, April? He never talks about it. So I guess I'm just less worried about his ability to leverage this in a way that's consistent when, you know, he'll probably pass it.

And then that same day, like have, you know, Pompeo lock up Hillary Clinton or somebody in the cabinet. Yeah, look, you could also see like Joe Biden in the last debate with him, if we have a last debate saying, you know, yeah, you tried to kill the deal single handedly. And luckily for us, luckily for the country, Democrats fought really hard to get a very good deal and, you know, just take credit for it.

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All right.

Today is also the first day of hearings on Amy CONI Barret's nomination to the Supreme Court. And over the weekend, we got a preview of her opening statement where she claimed to believe in an independent, non-political judiciary.

She said policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people. The public should not expect the courts to do so, and courts should not try. If you didn't know much about Amy coni Barrett's views or her background and this statement was the first you've heard from her, which it was for a lot of people who watched today, you would think she's some independent minded right down the middle. Judge Tommy, how should Democrats handle that?

I mean, look, I read her statement. She said nothing, nothing.

There were like five paragraphs about her family, which is all well and good and nice. But it's like mentioned how much one of her kids deadlifts and there was nothing about what she thinks about the law. It was the same right wing judicial rhetoric that tries to make them sound like non-partisan judicial robots who just call balls and strikes. And, you know, that's how the the court should work. It's total bullshit. I think the Democrats have done a good job focusing on the Affordable Care Act.

They should focus on the fact that she might overturn Roe versus Wade and stay focused on all the policy implications of the way she might rule. I think they can also talk about the fact that this is a rushed process that is happening in a way that is completely unethical and outrageous and stick to that. Republicans clearly want to manufacture some attack on her religion. They want to manufacture some sort of attack on her gender or her family. We shouldn't play that game.

It's that was happening anyway. You have like hack idiots like Hugh Hewitt tweeting that the left despises every person of any faith. Right. That's for a bunch of defenders of religion. They sure are trying to push it into the political arena to get pilloried. Right. Like, let's just not take the bait there.

What is. It say about how Republicans sort of view the court in these hearings that like before they pick a nominee, they have all these litmus tests, you must criminalize abortion, you must have all these positions. They say we're going to pick people who will do X, Y and Z policy outcome. Then once they have the nomination happens, it's, oh, what are you talking about? No policy positions from us. Just just balls and strikes down the middle, just as independent as they come.

I don't know. Politics. What are you talking about? Politics. I've never been political.

Look, I have decided to subject myself with weeks of embarrassing accusations of undeniable hypocrisy, risk life and limb, put my staff at risk. Do this in the middle of an election. Put bring bring covid positive. Mike Lee and covid curious Lindsey Graham into the Capitol to have a hearing because we just don't know what kind of judge she'll be. And the mystery of that, the excitement of finding out is just too much for us. We really want to see how this thing turns out.

Now they know what she's going to do. What matters is not what she says in these hearings. Like we've been through this before during the hearings. Their job is to be as inane and innocuous and banal as humanly possible. That's the game we're playing right now to to put forward kind of personal values in place of radical judicial philosophy. You know, she has written her views down. They are available to us. They cannot be denied. She has taken a pretty clear position on believing Roe versus Wade was wrongly decided.

She's taken a clear position on the Affordable Care Act. She's taking a clear position on originalism, which is the same radical view that Scalia held. She wrote a she wrote a piece for a law, a law journal, where she discussed basically how her originalism can can live in a practical world where all these, to her mind, unconstitutional statutes and laws and rules are in place. And basically in that piece, she talks about how you reckon with the fact that we're not just talking about the Affordable Care Act, we're talking about the Social Security Administration.

We're talking about the fucking Louisiana Purchase and and paper currency and and all kinds of aspects. The 14th Amendment being technically not ratified legally, like the view she holds are the logical conclusion of originalism. And everything that we're seeing is a kind of dance to hide that radicalism, a project that they've been engaged in for 40 years. Does that mean she will immediately begin overturning every single precedent and putting that originalism in practice? No, they are cynical operators who do their best to overturn as much as they possibly can while legitimizing their viewpoint.

But but like there's no reason to pretend that what we're seeing is a legitimate exploration of her views. We know what her views are. They are clear.

Yeah. And that's, you know, this morning as the hearings are going on, I see some reporters tweeting like, wow, the Democrats are like unbelievably disciplined on health care right now. And they're not even bringing up a lot of other issues and stuff like that's like, yeah, good. Finally, that's because like for voters, like voters are not going to get into a deep debate about originalism and textualism and all that stuff.

But they are going to know that she has views on the Affordable Care Act, which is that it was wrongly decided when it was upheld as constitutional. We know that for sure. And there's a case coming the week after the election to decide whether it's constitutional. Again, that's what you need to know about Amy CONI Barrett and like Mitch McConnell, very well probably has the votes to confirm her and he makes the rules in the Senate. So as much as we can slow this down, we can try.

But he can always change the rules at the end. So it's a very good chance he confirms her.

But at the very least, we want voters to know what's at stake in this election and what Republicans will do and what she will do if she gets on the court.

It's a little thing, but because her opening statement said nothing, that's all we can go with. But she said in her opening statement that she hadn't sat out. This job was like, you have been groomed for this job for decades. Are you telling me you spend every weekend with those goobers over the Federalist Society just because you thought it was a good time? That's what you wanted to do? No, these are little right wing Republican robots that have been grown through this Republican ecosystem on the right with their judicial processes and thrust upon us to do incredibly radical things.

And they are nice people who have families who, you know, come off as friendly in these hearings. But, yeah, the implications for how she would rule are massive. And I'm glad Democrats are focused on that.

So cynical. And I think her lifelong dream was to just be a lobbyist for sure.

For sure.

That's what she told us.

Like I will say, like, I think she is a sincere originalist, but we just shouldn't pretend that that's not radical. And outside of what Americans want from the judiciary, we just don't need to pretend. So if Barrett is confirmed, he will have the most extreme right wing court we've ever had that could last for decades. The only option for Democrats at that point would be to pass legislation that reforms the court in some way, either by changing its size or instituting some kind of term limits.

There are plenty of different reform options out there. Joe Biden keeps getting criticism from Republicans and questions from reporters about whether he's considering something like this.

Here's how he answered over the weekend quarterbacking going on right now. What's going on with Republicans packing? The court now is not perfect, but they're going to focus on what's happening right now. And the fact is that the only package going on is this court is, in fact, now by the Republicans after the vote has already begun. I'm going to stay focused so we don't take the eyes off the ball here.

That was Joe Biden from inside an airplane engines that were stealing that little that little tendency from Trump to do with the airplane engine. So that's great.

What do you think of that answer? Love it is. Biden landed on a good answer. I think it's a great answer. I actually like somebody made I've seen a few people make this point today, and it's actually, I think, a really good one. Like I think that's the right thing to say. They are packing the court. You know, these are people that wanted to shrink, that they successively shrunk the size of the Supreme Court in 2016.

They attempted to shrink the size of some lower courts when they didn't want liberal appointees to shift the court to the left. You know, look, we just saw a debate where Mike Pence was asked point blank if Roe versus Wade is repealed, what do you want to happen now? He has a clear position on this. They want to criminalize abortion. That is their view. That is their view that that's what they've been fighting for for 40 fucking years.

That's what they're trying to do. And if and if we are really going to be in another endless news cycle about asking Joe Biden about this prospective question around the Supreme Court when the politics are obvious to every single person, asking the question why he doesn't want to answer what the implications are for her confirmation or lack of confirmation. We really need to make sure that the stakes of what happens on the court, not just who's on the court, but what the court does are elevated.

And that means driving a similar question at the Republicans. What do you want to do if Roe versus Wade is overturned? You want to criminalize abortion. That is what you are driving towards. That is the goal of this project. And I think we should not let them off the hook. Like we need to direct that question at them, because that's what they've been doing. Now, say they decided that this is the most important issue. Well, I think there's another important issue about the Supreme Court, Tommy.

Obviously, like, you know, Republicans have made this court packing being an issue for the last several days. Reporters are happy to buy it. They've become obsessed with this as well. Why do you think what do you think the obsession around this is? Do you think it's warranted?

You know, I think it's an important question that's relevant. It's totally fair game to ask Joe Biden this. I think that they haven't handled it particularly well. So it's going to come up again and again. I also think that, like, you know, reporters probably feel like they need to be tough on Biden because they've been tough on Trump and a lot of ways. But my answer to this, if I were Joe Biden, is that the courts are already packed.

McConnell stole the Supreme Court seat from Obama. Trump confirmed 30 appellate judges from twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen. Obama confirmed two from 2015 to 2016. And the reason is because McConnell refused to move the process. And you just stole them for for Trump. And until this point in 2016, John McCain suggested that the Republican Senate might be justified in refusing to confirm any nomination that Hillary Clinton made to the Supreme Court for four years. Richard Burr said similar things.

The National Review proposed shrinking the Supreme Court down to six justices. Tom Cotton put forward a bill to reduce the size of the DC Circuit from 11 to nine. So none of these things are outside the mainstream. None of these things are new. I just think we have to do a better job reminding the press and the Republican Party that these are ideas that they've entertained, they've introduced. This is a totally reasonable conversation that they've tried to have for a long time.

By the way, Barrett got her seat on the 7th Circuit because the Senate blocked Obama's choice to fill the open seat for an entire year.

That's why we're here with your PACs.

I mean, I do think I would take it out of some of these process arguments to like sort of what you were saying about it. Like we we know what a right wing court will do. We know what they believe. We know what decisions they'll make. We already have evidence of that. They're going to gut the Voting Rights Act. They're going to prevent the government from doing anything to stop carbon pollution, to do anything about climate change. They're they're trying to criminalize abortion.

A good number of them didn't want gay marriage. They want to strike down the Affordable Care Act, a bunch of them. They want to actually prevent government from doing any kind of regulation of corporations at all. So if we have a six three court, those are the policy consequences. Those are the consequences that will cause millions of Americans to suffer. Right.

And so if I'm Joe Biden, I'm going to say I'm going to fight to stop that. I'm fighting to stop that now by trying to stop Amy CONI Bharat. From getting a seat on the court and I will continue to fight that as president to make sure that we actually have an independent, balanced judiciary, again, not like we've had for a long time. That's what I'm fighting for. And we're still in this nomination fight.

And once I'm president, we'll figure out what to do about one of the things you see, too, when you look at like Amy Kennedy, Barrett's writings about the law is I think I think they want to overturn the ACA. I think they want to overturn Roe. But she may find ways to uphold precedents that her originalism tells her are unconstitutional. But what is very clear is that they view it with an incredible urgency to prevent the passage of laws that they view violate originalism, that she will be an easy, easy, no vote on every form of progressive legislation we're trying to do just an easy, reliable.

Now, she she is as activist, a judge as you could get. And what Republicans used to say is they don't want to legislate from the bench and they have completely given up on that talking point because it's all they do. That's where all their wins come from. I mean, I think the thing worth noting is, you know, Dave Weigel was tweeting about this great reporter for The Washington Post, a bunch of others, no voters are asking this question.

No voters care about court packing. They care about the implications and all the things you're talking about, John. And that's exactly right. I just think in terms of like volleying this back into the sort of D.C. press arena requires pointing out the hypocrisy and the absurdity of Republicans suddenly caring that they care about like these strict rules around judicial nominees. That has not been the case for a very long time. That asshole, Mitch McConnell, is on FOX News bragging about how he stole a bunch of judges for Obama.

Like, give me a break. Judges aren't like inhuman people who just call balls and strikes. Whatever the narrative is, they're Republican and they're Democrat. They're conservative and they're liberal. These days, the Warren Court, all those old school days are gone. Like this is what we're dealing with now. And I think Biden has to act accordingly. Yeah, legislate from the bench like the Amy CONI Barret's of the world and Antonin Scalia's of the world, they don't want you to legislate from Congress, right?

Like like Joe Biden. And this is what's going to happen. Joe Biden, a Democratic Congress will pass a bunch of legislation that the berrett Scalia Cavanaugh court will strike down. There will be no legislation, no major legislation coming from a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress. If we leave the six three court the way it is, that's where we are.

You say Scalia, but I do see I can see them reconfirming him in the lame duck.

I think they hard to keep track of who's alive and who's dead on that court, frankly.

Then seven, Thomas Thomas.

It's so annoying. It's so annoying to watch these guys just like praying for like I like beer moment, praying for Lindsey Graham to be able to dust off his little soapbox and start screaming and freaking out again. They they they just want to be victims so badly when they're in control of everything. It's infuriating.

Lindsey Graham is going to have a different voice and just be like, oh, God, did you hear did you hear that Mazie Hirono just said she hates Catholics? I heard it.

God, Lindsey Graham, who refuses to take a covid test. What the fuck that is? So that is we are gone. We are in and we are in a whole new place. Yeah, no coitus, no coitus, because you might not get his justice through. OK, let's take a few questions from the audience before we go to Levitt's interview with Katie Porter.

Questions Jennifer Clapp Wrath asks us, I'm suspicious that the Trump campaign has pulled back on ads in the Midwest.

Does it mean he's given up or that he's rigged those states so he doesn't need to campaign in them?

I don't think you have the same paranoia at the exact same paranoia. I'm like pulling back. What's their fucking secret, you know? Yeah, I don't think he's rigged the states. I wouldn't and I don't think he's given up. I think that they're probably making very tough resource decisions about what states they absolutely have to win versus what states they want to win. And they're also hoping that the super PACs that can take twenty five billion dollar checks from Sheldon Adelson at a time will help them close the gap in some of these places.

But it's not an ideal situation to be in. I wouldn't look at that as a sign of strength or a great plan for Donald Trump. It seems like a sign of weakness to me. Yeah, I think what they have decided is if you if you look at the 2016 map and you give Joe Biden, Michigan and Wisconsin, but Donald Trump keeps especially Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida, he wins. And so they have now they are running out of money and they figure like, why save Michigan and Wisconsin?

We really want to pay attention to is Pennsylvania, Arizona and Florida, because I think they feel they're the closest there. So they're going to pour whatever money they have into those three states and try to pull an inside straight like they did in 2016.

And they don't view voter suppression and ads as an either or proposition.

True. Unfortunately, very true. Rachel Libbey asks, Hey, guys, question for you.

I'm confused as to why we are talking about taking some comfort in polls that show Biden in the lead when polls also predicted Hillary Clinton would win in 2016 in a landslide. What's different now? Why should we trust today's poll when they were so inaccurate?

Then any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so few things. The national polls in 2016 did not show that Hillary Clinton was going to win in a landslide.

The national polls showed that her final lead was three points and she won by two points in. The national polls are pretty close. The problem we had was in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. The polls were five, six, seven points off. So there was a big polling error in those states. One of the theories of why there was a polling error in those states is that polls were not capturing enough noncollege educated white people. So too many college educated people picked up the phone for pollsters.

Not enough people without a college degree picked up.

People without a college degree tend to vote for Donald Trump if they are white. So what do you do?

You change the polls this time to wait by education, meaning you make sure there are enough noncollege white voters in your polling sample that match the population of that state. So pollsters did that after 16 and then in 18, the polls were closer. They were closer. And they were they were now, you still had a couple of polls in 18. Florida showed Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson winning by a few. They both lost by a point. Polls showed, you know, Tony Evers in Wisconsin winning by a couple of points.

He won by one point. So they're still not they haven't totally fixed the problem. But they did improve the polls in twenty eighteen in the twenty eighteen polls in general were better than they were in twenty sixteen, but. Who knows, it's close, I would say. All of that take all of that. All right. All right. Remember it and throw it in the garbage. All right.

The polls are showing that I've, you know, get a good night's sleep like the polls are. Right. All right. Wake up every morning and assume they're wrong. And that's it. Tammy Dubow asks, Do you really think phone banking is more effective than text banking letter or postcard writing?

Because I personally never answer unknown calls and I've written hundreds of postcards and letters. Three text banking attempts have been frustratingly unsuccessful for technical reasons, but haven't phone banked. That's all you guys promote. So I'm feeling insecure, Tommy. I don't think that's all we promote. I don't think anybody knows what's more effective in the middle of a pandemic, whether it's texting letter, writing postcards, phones. So I would say don't feel guilty about whatever you choose to do.

Do the one you want to do and know that you're contributing and don't sweat it.

Great answer. All right. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Congresswoman Katie Porter.

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Very exciting. We are joined by Congresswoman Katie Porter, no whiteboard but whiteboard energy. Thanks for being here.

Well, that's what I have to.

I assume it's always nearby. I must always be available. There it is. There it is. Yeah, there it is. Deep background. Just in case. Just in case. It needs to be. People need to know. And it's like. It's like Chekhov's gun, you know. All right.

So so I actually got a new one that fits in my purse. Well, not my purse is about the size of a small newborn elephant, but nonetheless, it's a really awesome it's a boy that fits in my purse with a whiteboard marker that attaches.

So I do not truly always just trying to think of the emergency whiteboard situation. But I'm glad you're ready just in case. So the last time we talked last on your iPod, Save America, it was mid-March. The country was just beginning to shut down. Here we are all these months later. How are you doing? How you holding up? I'm holding up OK, but I'm worried I'm worried about my kids. You know, the Sun this morning I took my son to one of his in-person days at school and he came home because he forgot his math.

So I had to drive him and he said, I don't know if we really need these mass. Like I said, you know, call covid can cause brain damage. And he just looked like he was terrified. And so that's not really is what daily life is like for so many of us who are really trying to balance between doing the things we have to do, including, you know, in my case, trying to get Congress to be productive and get my kids to school so that they're learning and then trying to stay safe at the same time.

I mean, right now, you are the only single mother of young children in Congress. It's just seems very clear that lawmakers do not have the interests of people in a situation like yours. Is their priority over to Congress that is actually responsive to what families are going through. What would it be doing right now?

I think there are three top priorities, and I don't think this is this hard to discern. I don't think you need to be a single mom of kids to understand this. I think you just need to be in touch with your constituents. The first thing is help for state and local governments. These are the entities that are closest to the people that are delivering relief, food relief, food banks, rental assistance. These are things we need to get that money to the state and local governments.

And it needs to be a big enough number to tide them through what is going to be an extended period of lower taxes, lower sales taxes and things like that. Second thing is we need to be making sure that we're getting we're focusing on reopening schools and child care centers. If we don't do that, our economy will be permanently crippled. Not just now, because women are staying home, working parents are staying home for a whole generation of women going forward.

McKinsey not to be confused with MSG magazine. McKinsey, the consulting firm, just did a study that found that one in four working women with children is considering leaving the workforce. And that is a big problem for our economy as women are major drivers of GDP, their efforts in the workplace. And then three is making sure that we have adequate resources for testing and tracing. We still need to approach this from a public health situation.

So those are the priorities. Trump on steroids tweets that he doesn't want there. There will be no more negotiations. Then quickly, he realizes that that was a dumb thing to say. Now he's he's taken every position conceivable on negotiations. McConnell seems to be trying to pour cold water on the idea of the Senate doing something. What is going on right now with negotiations? Where is the possibility of stimulus? And like what what happens when you have Trump kind of taking every side, every single day?

Who the hell knows? OK, I have no idea what's going on in Trump's mind. Does anybody? And I think one of the things that we're seeing is that there is a divergence between whether Mitch McConnell is and where Trump is. And it's not the kind of divergence we were hoping for. We were hoping for a majority that would actually step up and legislate in this moment. And now we're in this odd world where President Trump is actually showing that he's more open to doing coronavirus relief than Mitch McConnell is.

So I think the Democrats are continuing to try to be open to negotiation. We know what the priorities are and we're continuing to try to push them. But we just can't do that with Mitch McConnell and the White House. Not on the same page I mentioned before, the importance of state and local government health and the importance of schools and child care testing and placement. I would also say we're in a situation where we need to give direct help to those who are unemployed, particularly with regard to keeping them housed.

I think we are cruising for a major housing crisis. And as somebody who's already lived through one of those, almost two of those now, I guess would be my third one in my lifetime, starting with the farm crisis in the 1980s when I was the kid in the Midwest. What we went through with the national mortgage crisis here in 2008, 2009, 2010, we're going to be in another housing crisis coming up. If we don't help people keep making their mortgage payments and keep making their rental payments, keep a roof over their head.

So, yeah, it does seem like, you know, there's been some it hasn't gone far enough. There have been some moratoriums, some of them local, some of them national around rent. But that doesn't at all address the problem about what happens when all these people that have been out of work, they're still going to have to figure out some way to either pay or be relieved from paying all of that back. It seems like we have this sort of ticking time bomb in the economy of all these people.

They're going to have the rent come due. What is the answer to that?

I mean, obviously, it's it's money, but so we've seen moratorium's used before. They were used during the Great Depression. Some. Time has been used during other agricultural based depressions, but you're absolutely right, you have to ultimately answer the question about how you're going to pay this landlord. And of course, there are large landlords that are private equity firms that have a lot of access to capital.

But there are also people whose landlord is a senior who is renting out an apartment and that rent is their income to make ends meet. So I think we need to be providing direct assistance to help people make the rental and mortgage payments. And if we don't, we're going to find ourselves in a world of hurt, not unlike what we did after the mortgage crisis. We're going to be trying to get loan modifications for people because this is affecting both renters and homeowners.

And, of course, those at the lower end of the income spectrum who are more likely to be renters are having the hardest time recovering in this pandemic. But I think the fact that we used the moratorium as our primary tool reflected a fundamental misunderstanding by policymakers that this would somehow blow over in a month or two. Right. Not treating this as the year or two economic game changer that that covid-19 is in this country.

Right. It wasn't a pause. It was a new way of living for a long time. So right now, Democrats seem open to pursuing a stimulus package. You know, there is this conflict for Democrats who want to help people who are terrified at the prospect of failing to do something before the election. Republicans having no interest in helping, even in the best case scenario. Knock on wood, all caveats we can win. We're talking about months and months without helping people.

Yet at the same time, I think Democrats are afraid of giving Donald Trump some kind of a victory in the in the final days before this election. How are you grappling with that? How do you put together our political interests of winning this election, but also, more importantly, wanting to help people in this crisis?

I don't think that's how we're thinking about it, or that's at least not how I'm thinking about it. As a Democrat, my concern is about Donald Trump. My concern is about the American people. So I will vote for any stimulus package, regardless of whether it comes before or after the election, whether it is bipartisan or not, that's going to deliver enough meaningful help, because the reality is we can't do these packages every two weeks.

We can't do them every month. All right. They take too long to negotiate and the programs take too long to set up to get help to people. So we need to come up with something that's going to be big enough to actually meet people's unmet needs for the last couple of months and understand that we have at least six more months, best, most miraculous case scenario of economic pain caused by covid. So for me, I think for most of my colleagues, my freshmen colleagues in particular, we are in our districts, we are hearing what constituents are going through.

We want to deliver for them. It's not a question of Donald Trump and helping Donald Trump. It's a question of helping people. Is this a package that will help people? And the Democrats have voted for more than one of those heroes, the updated heroes package. We keep going back to the drawing board. If Trump were willing or McDonnell were pointedly, we're willing to step up and do any of these things before the election, after the election, I don't care.

People need help. And when people are getting help from their government, that causes them to feel confident about government working for them and that leads them to go out and vote regardless of their ideology. That's an important thing to understand about this moment.

It also sounds like what you're saying is we can't settle for a half measure. We need to get the package we think is the absolute best package because it will be months before we should or would be able to do this again. So we should be using our leverage and we should only move forward if it's a really good deal that reflects Democratic priorities about how to actually fix this mess.

Absolutely, because this is not if you're thinking about someone who's lost their job and they can't make ends meet, maybe they have spouse kept their job and it reduced hours. They lost their job. They're three months behind on the rent. They have a moratorium. They're having to juggle child care expenses that are higher because schools closed. Sending them a fifty dollar check isn't going to solve their problems. That's a political stunt. So what we're trying to do is provide enough to actually help meet the needs.

And you think about it with state and local government. If you send them a tiny amount of money, they still have to lay off firefighters. They still have to lay off police departments. They still have to make cuts in senior services and child services. So it needs to be big enough to actually help people solve their problems.

Yeah, so one other question I was interested in talking to you about. So it seems like this downturn has accelerated or made worse certain trends that we were already seeing. So you have Amazon is hiring, local stores are closing. Big restaurant chains like Domino's and Chipotle are doing well. And restaurants that have fewer than five locations, they're really, really struggling. Millions of people have lost their jobs. You these small biz. He says they're not just the heart of downtowns and communities, they're also the competition for these big companies.

And we're in this situation where we have these big downturns is the second giant crisis in a decade. And it's like a brushfire. It clears out small businesses so these big giants can thrive, like what is the answer in good times to protect small businesses, to create incentives so that every time we're in any kind of downturn, it's not just the big guys that are able to weather the storm, that we have a system in place to make sure we have downtowns with like unique local businesses that are part of their communities.

So this is a wonderful point, and I'm really glad you're making it, because not enough people are talking about this. Any time we have a major economic crisis or a major industry transformation, there are winners and there are losers. And what we've seen in the last 50, 60, 70 years in the United States is the winners are always the biggest companies and losers are always the smallest ones. We saw that with the mortgage crisis, with the big banks came out fine, but a lot of smaller banks were closed, merged or consolidated.

So that part of the answer here is to be during the crisis, really right at the start, building programs that will help the smallest entities. And so I think there were mistakes made with the original paycheck protection program, the PPP, where it was much easier for larger businesses, for white owned businesses, for businesses with lots of credit already connected to financial services to get help. I do think we went back. We improved that program, but there's no doubt that we weren't thinking enough about the most vulnerable businesses right at the start.

I think the other answer to this is to understand that in good times, as you said, what should we be doing in good times? We ought to be making sure that we are focusing on enforcing antitrust laws, reducing barriers to competition, making sure that people can compete on a level playing field. And so those are all things that you have to be thinking about constantly in a capitalist economy. And that's a sort of a precursor of capitalism. Healthy capitalism is that you have this competition and there are lots of industries where we really can't honestly say we have that big pharma, great example, health insurance.

Another example, there's a handful of companies, pharmacies, another example, but there's lots of examples outside of health care as well.

So, you know, you recently had a viral clip and oversight around pharmaceutical costs. You've had a number of these in your time in these committee hearings.

You've made oversight, a cool thing for people. What is it that you're thinking about is a cool thing OK? Sure. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I mean, how about we say you're making it couleur? Absolutely.

I mean, look, I really do mean this. I love oversight. I mean, it's not it's because it's really fundamental to this core problem of democracy that I was hinting at earlier, which is if people think government isn't working, they don't vote for the other party, they simply don't vote at all. And that is a big long term problem. So we have to be thinking about oversight as a tool to help show people that their vote does matter, that their vote is improving the nature and type of government.

And that doesn't mean that's not an ideological agenda. That's just about getting the American people accomplished. So I do truly heart oversight.

I know. But what I'm trying to ask is, what is your approach in those moments when you're breaking out the whiteboard? How do you decide? This is what I want to focus on? This is what I think will really matter. This is what I think will break through, because I think you've managed to do that when a lot of other before you who have cared about oversight, it's been harder to break through, harder to get people excited about it.

One of the things we do is we really focus on not what I want to say, but what do the American people want to hear. And so we think about not the speech I want to give, but the answers that they need from these witnesses.

It also just takes a lot of hard work, will often start out with anywhere between eight and 10 possible ideas for lines of questioning and will even go into a hearing, even down with two or three different ideas, picking the one that we think is best in the moment. So it takes a lot of preparation, but it really takes not thinking about what you want to say. It's not an opportunity to give a speech. It's a moment to get answers.

Last question. What are you doing to say pumped in the final three weeks by the time this comes out, will basically be five hundred hours until the last polls closed? How you. How are you staying in the fight? Yeah.

So I've been really, really enjoying working and supporting other working with and supporting other House challengers this cycle. I think there's so much focus right now, obviously, on electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on taking back the Senate. But I have a newsflash for listeners of upon the House challengers, 20 20 are terrific. So if you like what you saw out of the class of twenty eighteen, get ready for the class of twenty twenty. So I formed a leadership organization called Truth to Power.

And through that PAC, I've been able to endorse twenty six House challengers. They're all women, people of color, women of color, and not one of them. It's corporate PAC money. So I'm going to help build. What I'm doing in this next phase is not only focusing on my own election, winning in this Republican territory of Orange County, but also making sure that I'm going to have many, many more colleagues who are willing to stand up.

The fight for the truth in those hearings, Congressman Katie Porter, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you so much. Thanks to Katie Porter for joining us today and no debate this issue a a. That's something. It was deep in the background, but it was there in case it was like I said in the interview, it was like Chekhov's gun. Did you get any lesson, though? OK, I got it.

But she's great.

We love Katie. She's awesome. Love Katie Porter. And we didn't use it, but we had a great conversation after the interview that was like really some some hot gossip. Oh, I like that.

Oh, are you just dropping that here at the end of the release? The tapes here really rough, Rob.

I saw her I saw her, quote, tweet and respond to Trump saying California is going to hell with just a big eye roll emoji, which I thought was spot on.

Classic, classic. All right, guys, we'll talk to you later. 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, Yael Friede and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.

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