"He’s Running (From Prison)."

Joe Biden sort of kind of makes news about his own presidential ambitions. Lovett and other Democrats pressure Dianne Feinstein to resign, and some Republicans now want to ban entire libraries. Then Governor Gretchen Whitmer joins to talk about what National Democrats can learn from Michigan. But first, check out the latest episode of Stuck With Damon Young, featuring writer and director Avey Rockwell, who talks about her Sundance Award winning film 1001..

And Ted Lasso's Cola Bokini, who talks about the challenges of becoming a step parent. Listen to Damon Young for free only on Spotify. Also check out this week's pod, Save the World, where Tommy and Ben break down everything you need to know about the massive leak of classified documents that has rocked the world, and especially the U.S. government. I think they're closing in on the leaker now. Dan Yeah, a lot's happened in the last couple hours here.

A lot has happened, a lot has happened, but that's why you listen to Pod Save the World. To know, to know what happened, because we don't know. Anyway, check it out.

It's a great episode, all right. Let's get to the news. For all you Trump hating Libs who think a criminal conviction might stop Cheeto Jesus from running for president, think again. In Trump's first big interview since his arraignment on 34 felony counts. He told Tucker Carlson, who has called Trump a demonic force who he hates passionately, that nothing short of death will stop him from seeking the White House in 2024..

He also shared some typically sharp insights on a range of topics. Let's listen, nobody talks about nuclear, the problem.

You have two N words, you don't mention either one of them, the nuclear word, you don't mention. How smart is Kim Jong un?

Top of the line started rough, remember with, you know, Rocket man, Little Rocket man. And he said, I have a button on my desk, a red button. I said, I have a red button on my desk, too. Mine's bigger and mine works.

Yours doesn't. President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn't find it. There's nobody like that, the look, the brain, the whole thing.

He had an incredible. I'm not allowed to say it because it's very impolite and very politically incorrect. A beautiful female interpreter, she was very beautiful. Is there anything?

So in one sense, it was beautiful because they get it, and in another sense, you know, it's nasty. I went to the Wharton School of Finance, they didn't teach me about that, that wasn't part.

That wasn't, that wasn't, we didn't have a class on arraignment. When I went to the courthouse, which is also a prison in a sense, they signed me in. And I'll tell you, people were crying, people that worked there.

I don't know where.

Top of the line, President Xi, love him, you couldn't get someone in Hollywood to play President Xi.

Loves China now works, works really well with China, they get along so well.

Like, I love Xi, he's the best.

A real selling point with a lot of voters is that he will be maybe waiting his sentencing hearing while people are casting early votes. It doesn't seem great.

In the week since his arrest, he just asked a judge to delay the trial of a lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who's accused him of raping her in the 1990s. He's in court trying to prevent Mike Pence and his other senior White House aides from testifying about January 6th. He's suing Michael Cohen for $500 million for violating attorney-client privilege.

I do think he has a strong case on that one, it seems like he might. Yes, it's only been a week. But do you think that any of these legal developments have affected Donald Trump's chances of becoming president again?

If he were to become the Republican nominee, he is a near coin flip away from being the next president of the United States. We should always have to remember that, no matter anything else that happens, conviction, two convictions, three convictions, no convictions. That is the issue. But he has. The Republican Party has in some ways consolidated around him because of his arrest, which is an amazing thing to say about today's Republican Party.

Right now, though, national polls are national polls, there was an ABC Ipsos poll from last week. The percentage of Americans, the general electorate who think Trump should have been charged, is up from 45 to 50. The percentage who think he should suspend his campaign is up from 43 to 48, and his overall favorability rating among all voters is down to 25%.

I don't think that's good, 25 doesn't seem good when you're trying to run for president. That's down 10 points since the 2020 election, and that's just one poll. But overall, 538's average has his favorability at 39, which is the lowest since just after he lost the midterms for Republicans. And it was around 36 there.

So not doing great.

House Republicans want to pass a bill that would move all prosecutions against former presidents from state court to federal court. I love that bill. It's like all prosecutions. So far, there's just been one. There may be others for the same guy, but so far it's just one guy who's had a prosecution.

They're also trying to investigate the Manhattan DA's office, though. Alvin Bragg this week just filed a lawsuit against Jim Jordan to stop that investigation. What do you think Bragg did that?

I think he wrote a book. And so it is to prevent that subpoena from moving forward. And just the general idea that Bragg understands that. Jim Jordan has committed everything in their power to throw up roadblocks. And so he's going to try to use the courts to stop that from happening.

MARC THIESSEN Yeah, Ben Dorman. And also wants to probably highlight how ridiculous it is that the federal government is somehow getting involved in a local prosecution. Because it's a bunch of Republicans are upset that their frontrunner is the guy who committed the crimes. So, yeah, good for Bragg.

But we will.

I heard that he pulled a Trump judge in the lawsuit, which isn't great, but we'll see where that goes.

Now you split a whole bunch of other vote that could go to him among three people Pence, Haley and Scott, who aren't going to win the nomination. And you start seeing how Trump's just going to run away with it.

And Nikki Haley had a pretty good fundraising first quarter. I think she raised like $9 or $10 million. But will they actually get there when votes are cast, that's the real question.

But like this Republican party these days, are you kidding me?

Marc Thiessen and Tim Scott was asked this morning about whether he supports a national abortion ban. Now this is a guy who already signed on to. He co-sponsored Lindsey Graham's national abortion ban at 15 weeks. But instead of just giving that answer, he gave this, like, just garbled answer that ended with something about Janet Yellen.

Let's see what we think that does not happen in the Republican Party anymore. This is like Nikki Haley when she got asked the Trump question and just also vomited up. Word salad, that was word salad from Tim Scott. It's mind boggling.

After the Wisconsin race, you know, that is the question that is going to get asked. He's getting in the race on almost the day. That. Ron DESantis is going to sign a six-week abortion ban in Florida, you know, it's in the news. Come up with an answer. Does it have to be a good answer?

Does it have to be the right answer? Frankly, for Republicans, it would be an honest answer. Just say some coherent words in a row. So you actually seem like a competent human being. That is beyond the pale for these people.

They're not practiced at answering real questions from real reporters. That wasn't even a tough question. First of all, it's not like it was an issue that's not in the news. It was like, got your question?

It's abortion, it's everywhere right now. To not have an answer on that, it wasn't even like, Hey, what do you think? national abortion ban? what do you think? Pretty simple question.

Couldn't do it. And DESantis only talks to Florida right-wing press. Nikki Haley. She's been out of practice. I mean, it's just that, you know, none of these people can really face hard questions anymore. Speaking of campaign announcements on Monday, Joe Biden made some unintentional news. His favorite kind when he said this to Al Roker.

Joe Biden I plan on running Al.

So I'm not quite sure why it got so much attention, maybe just the media's bored, so they wanted to make some news. But stepping back from that, like, what is going on here with Biden, not just filing papers? At this point, seems like everyone around him, including him, has made up his mind.

I know it doesn't seem like there's any doubt left that he's going to run for president again. So why not just file the papers?

And they were never like, we're definitely doing it by this day, or it's not happening. That was just sort of the common understanding. I think there are a couple things going on here. One is, I don't think President Biden is in any hurry to become a candidate again that said, he's not running.

He's clearly running, but I think he recognizes that the Republicans are all sort of light themselves on fire in support of Donald Trump. Right now. Some of Trump's opponents are sort of melting down before our eyes, like Ron DeSantis. So just stay out of it and just be president. Which is your comparative advantage right now?

With these people, you're kind of above the fray. Can I just ask about that? What is the real?

He's going, he's doing events, he's talking about the infrastructure bill, he's talking about the IRA, whatever else, he's going to Europe, doing, whatever else he has to do. I just don't know what the real difference is. Once he sort of crosses the rubicon into candidate, there is no difference.

The press is already treating him.

He filed papers in April and then, a few weeks later, did a couple rallies in the battleground states of Ohio. Virginia. Ohio was a battleground state back then, which is a nice old thing to remember. And so he could do that again now. The reason you would not just up and do that right away is you have to have all of your ducks in a row when you do that. Because this would be a big online fundraising day for you. On the day you announce, it'd be the first time you've hit your list to raise money for yourself in two and a half years.

And so you want to have all of your infrastructure up. You want to be able to have some messaging done and a whole bunch of other stuff to be able to do that. And I think they're just still working on that. As far as I know, both from the public reporting we've read and just sort of the people we talked to is. He has not yet picked a campaign manager for this campaign, although my understanding is there's a leading contender that's been written about.

But you sort of want your campaign manager, you want some staffing, you want to be all ready, to be able to have some infrastructure to take in. The money and the enthusiasm. People are going to say, want to volunteer, they're going to want to apply for jobs and all those things. You just kind of got to get that stuff ready. I don't think it matters whether he does it now or he does it next month or the month after that. But there is a point at which you are giving up some of the advantages of accompany. By waiting too long and not using all of the head start, you will have over.

Why do you think he went with Chicago over Atlanta, and how much does this really matter at all?

There are a lot of Union hotels, which is very important for Democrats. There is a Democratic governor in J..B. Pritzker, who is an experienced fundraiser who has pledged to help raise the money for the convention. Because one of the last things you want is to be in a situation where President Biden is forced to spend time raising money for the convention. As opposed to raising it from the business community and everywhere else, this is purely a logistics decision more than anything else. And ultimately, that's probably what you want, because Republicans are going to attack wherever you do the convention, no matter what, you might as well just have a better convention that runs better is easier and is a better experience for the attendees. Than trying to make some sort of political statement that will last basically barely through the press release when you announce the city.

So, President Biden and Senate Democrats are currently having trouble confirming judges because of 89-year-old California Senator Dianne Feinstein's extended absence. Due to a bad case of shingles. Which is preventing a lot of these nominees from even being voted out of the closely divided judiciary committee, she's on the judiciary committee, noted. Democratic kingmaker John Lovett made some news on Tuesday's pod. When he called on her to resign, Lovett was quickly followed by a California Democrat with real power. Representative Ro. Khanna Feinstein then released a statement saying she wouldn't resign, but would ask Chuck Schumer to temporarily replace her on the judiciary committee. Though, it doesn't seem like he can do that on his own.

What happens now? Why do you think she's not just resigning, and what happens if she does?

It has to be voted on by the Senate, and that requires either unanimous consent, which would require all 100 senators to agree. Or if someone were to object, someone like a Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, or Tommy Tuberville, or any other MAGA Republican, then you would need 60 votes to do it. Now. Do we really think there are 10 Republican senators who want to make it easier for Joe Biden to confirm nominees? No, I think not.

Just google the rules before you start going off. About Chuck Schumer Yeah, no, it's going to be really tough. So if Republicans block it and then it's sort of like the ball goes back into Feinstein's court. Because then it's like, you tried to do a temporary replacement, you didn't get it. You're not back to Washington.

And we have basically until one more year to confirm a lot of judges, which is extremely important if you've been following the news over the last several years. So then I wonder, maybe the pressure on her to resign amps up again, and she finally does, I don't know.

When we picked up that extra Senate seat, thanks to John Fetterman and Raphael Warnock, et cetera, in 2022, then now Democrats had an advantage, so party-line vote heads right to the floor. Without Dianne Feinstein present, we're right back to where we were before we got to 51 Senate votes. And so you have to address, you have to replace Dianne Feinstein too, or she has to return to the Senate to be able to.

So, like, the idea that Newsom would appoint either Barbara Lee or Katie Porter or Adam Schiff to a seat that they're all running to fill. Seems like it would be giving an advantage to one of the candidates in a race that the California voters are going to decide anyway, I don't know what do you think? It just seems to me, like, why wouldn't you select a caretaker for the seat who's not going to run to fill the whole thing? Just to stay out of the race? Like a caretaker, like, you know, John Lovett.

So that would be the most likely scenario. I think Ro Khanna is very, incredibly smart about the politics of this. The substance in the politics is that he has a good sense to do what John Lovett says. But I do not think this is some sort of grand, sinister plan to get his candidate put in the Senate. He knows what. Gavin Newsom was highly unlikely to do that.

The House of Representatives passed a budget that eliminates all funding for the state's public libraries $4.

5 million Republicans in the Senate seem less enthused about defunding the state's libraries. But we shall see. Llano County, Texas, is also deciding whether to shut down its public library system after a federal judge ruled that the county violated the constitution by banning a dozen children's books. So if we can't ban our books, no one can read.

So my question is, when do you think we'll start seeing book burnings at Trump rallies? When's this going to become, like a major part of the?

Just ban.

Kitchen table. Economic issues like social security, Medicare, taxes, jobs and cultural issues, which is sort of everything else. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration, crime, anything. That's that because no one has ever talked about abortion or civil rights at a kitchen table. So that's how you separate them. I think that is a false binary, a weird way of thinking about the politics, but that is how we sort of thought about it. And the conventional wisdom is kitchen table issues good for Democrats, cultural issues good for Republicans, right?

Cultural issues incite the Republican base, divide our base. And I think that for some period of time in life, that was kind of sort of true, but it's not true anymore, and it's largely not true. Because Dobbs changed the world, it changed how people think. We talked about this last week, I believe. But Celinda Lake, the Democratic pollster, made the point that the country has become 10 to 15 points more pro-choice since Dobbs.

Dobbs has shown the real-world dangers of Republican extremism. And that if it can happen to abortion, it can happen to marriage equality, it can happen to civil rights. Book bans, all these other things. And that Democrats should not be afraid of these issues. We should not dodge the question, spend all this time trying to defuse, talking about it. We should feel comfortable to take them on. But and this is the important but is? We have to recognize that we are winning these issues because we hold the majority position. So we need to talk about them in broadly appealing ways that people understand.

And that begins with focusing on the Republican position, the dangers of their extremism. And we also have to recognize that not all of these quote-unquote cultural issues are the same. Abortion I think we have a very, very strong hand, certainly on abortion, on just the entire suite of reproductive freedom issues like banning contraception. All these other insane things Republicans want to do. The polling shows we are actually much stronger in pushing back on the Republican anti-trans laws in rhetoric than most Democrats think. We actually hold majority positions on a lot of them if we take them on and frame them on factually correct terms and on our terms.

But we have a lot of work to do on some other issues, so this is not winning. Culture war is not permission to say whatever you want about whatever issue you want. Or, and it's certainly not an argument for ignoring the economy, because you have to do both. Because our the necessity of our political coalition is to reach out to voters concerned about Republican extremism. Voters deeply concerned about life or death issues like abortion bans, and voters who are who's the central issue in their life is economic insecurity. Who are very concerned about whether they're gonna keep their job, whether they're gonna be able to send their kids to college. And we're gonna have to do both.

Republicans can win in a lot of states by doing one. We have to do both, and we are strongest when we do them both aggressively and proudly. And not sort of with one hand tied behind our back like we have done on abortion.

And so that was, you know, that was an unpopular position for them. And then, on the so-called cultural issues, it was a little more divided. Partly because of the position that the Republican Party had taken, and partly because the country wasn't necessarily there. Yet. Now, the country has moved on a lot of these social and cultural issues, but also just the extreme extreme positions Republicans have taken. And in the case of Dobbs now, the court has taken away rights that people have had for a long time. And so that's affecting the whole, the political environment as well.

So I do think you're right, like, you can't, you can't lump all of these issues together. We do because it's just like it's shorthand on the culture issues. But like, each issue is very different. And each issue depends on both the position that the Republican Party has taken and some of the more extreme positions. And where Democrats are.

And, of course, where the country is. And I do think that, like, part of the challenge for Democrats is making sure that we highlight the most extreme positions that Republicans have taken places. Right? Like, you know, Republicans in Congress aren't banning entire libraries yet. But they should be made to answer for the Republicans in Missouri, who are every Republican should be made to answer. For some of these extreme positions on abortion that Republicans are taking in state houses across the country, and and and judges are deciding cases, the judges are deciding across the country.

And so we have to continually bring up the most extreme examples of what Republicans are doing. Not just to paint the whole party like that because it's good politics, but because history has shown that this is where Republicans end up anyway. Some Yahoo in a state house takes an extreme position in like South Carolina, saying that there should be the death penalty for women who get abortions. And it seems like, oh, that's only two extreme Republicans in South Carolina that are doing that right now. And, you know, a couple of years from now suddenly becomes the majority position of the party, right? So I think it's very important for Democrats to continue to highlight this extremism.

And I think this whole culture war thing is really about Republicans going off the deep end as a party more than it is just about where the Democratic Party is.

And every Republican, every Republican, should have to answer for it.

Joining us now is the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. Governor, welcome to Pod Save America. I'm glad to be with you. So this morning, you signed a major gun reform package of 11 bills that includes universal background checks, red flag laws, and safe storage requirements.

I know the short answer to how you got it done is the newly democratic legislature. But I'm curious about how you've seen the politics of gun safety change over the course of your career? Especially in a state like Michigan, where there are a lot of gun owners. Alyssa Slotkin is putting gun safety at the center of her Senate campaign. Is this an issue Democrats should no longer be afraid to run on?

The conversation evolved where people expect us to be conversant and have a plan to make them safer or protect their rights when it comes to abortion. And I think we have to be bold. When I first got into politics, if you'd have told me I'd run for governor, I would have thought you were nuts. But if you'd told me on top of it that I would be running on some common sense gun safety policies as well as protecting abortion rights, I wouldn't have believed it. And yet that's exactly what we did.

And we won overwhelmingly and flipped both chambers of our legislature. And now it's time for us to do exactly what we told people we were going to do.

We have codified and repealed a zombie law that would threaten women's reproductive rights. I mean, these are the things that we're doing. We ran on these, the public told us, they wanted us to take action. What you hear out of the other side is just criticism of it, not an alternative view. Not ideas of how we can address some of the issues. Like keeping kids safe in schools, or parishioners safe in church, or shoppers safe in a grocery store.

They just want to keep doing the same old thing. And I think that's a lousy vision for electoral success, and that's why I think they're wrong. What's on the agenda for the next hundred days? Oh, we got a lot to do.

So, you know, we got to get the budget done. I've introduced a budget a couple of months ago, the legislature has it, they're holding hearings. But delivering on that, I mean, they're long overdue investments. Whether it's fixing the damn roads. Or it is making sure that we get the educational outcomes for our kids that we need by greater investment and individualized tutoring and universal four-year-old preschool.

This is front and center for the next line. But we've got a lot of work I think we can do around climate and eliminating our carbon footprint. I built a plan last term and now I've got a legislature that actually helped me codify it, so that's front and center as well.

They're taking, you know, accurate teaching of history out of schools. I mean, if being not, that is supposed to be an insult. I mean, I'll take that every single day. In Michigan, we're going another direction, we're expanding rights, we're codifying rights.

We're ensuring that every person, no matter who you are or how you identify, is respected and protected under the law. So I think that there are a whole lot more freedoms in Michigan, and also we got two peninsulas, they only got one.

And I think it also is why we're seeing so much crossover. Right from people who are more traditional Republicans or more middle of the road, maybe economically, more conservative, but more liberal minded socially. Coming over. And I think that's a part of why we've had such great, overwhelming success beyond the usual Democratic lines here in Michigan. But I don't think we should make any assumptions that it's going to fix itself or it's going to get better. I think we've got to keep speaking truth to power. Every state's different.

So I'm always reticent to subscribe how another governor might conduct themselves because they've got different tools at their disposal. But here in Michigan, I can tell you, being blunt, being clear, listening, it's a unique thing in politics, but listening, I think, is the strongest, most important thing any elected official or aspiring elected official can do.

I got thick skin, but I kind of got tired of that question and I said, Listen, if you don't think abortion is about the economy, you probably don't have a uterus or know someone who does. Because the most important economic decision a woman will make in the course of her lifetime is when and whether to have a child. And so if you're talking about jobs, or affordable housing, or clean drinking water, talking about fundamental rights. To make your decision about your body, and whether or not to start a family, or having protections in your workplace or in your home, these are economic issues.

And so I always reject that tendency to bifurcate social issues versus economic issues. They are intertwined. We are human beings and all these facets impact us at the dinner table and in our lives every day. And that's why we shouldn't shy and we shouldn't pick. We got to talk about both and we got to be bold.

But I'm grateful to say here in Michigan, we overwhelmingly embraced abortion rights and expect them to be codified, but Michigan was a party to the Washington lawsuit. We're obviously in the morass of these two dueling outcomes. And so one of the things we did early on was talk to all of our insurers and make sure that there was not going to be any disruption in coverage. For birth control and methadpristone. I think that a number of states are stockpiling.

That's something that we are looking at, as well as a number of other possibilities. I think part of it is that we've got to use every single tool that we can, and every state's different. And while they promised this was going to be left to the states very clearly, that's not their intent at all. It is to eliminate this, right? And that's why every person in a position of authority needs to use every tool at their disposal to continue to.

You've answered plenty of questions about your own future around 2024.

So I will not ask you one of those again. Thank you, I know what your answer is going to be. But what do you think Joe Biden's biggest challenge will be in 2024??

I think it's going to be telling the story and cutting through a lot of the noise, because there's just so much noise and so much misinformation. So I think that communicating.

That's something that I spend a lot of my energy and time on. Because at the end of the day, whether or not. People can get a good paying job and take care of their families and live a high quality life is the most important thing. Any governor can focus on, Governor Whitmer.

Bye, dad.

Thanks to Governor Whitmer for joining us today. everyone have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week. Bye everyone.

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