Michael Cohen Incriminates Trump

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy is out today because last Tuesday, he and Hannah welcomed a baby boy into their family. James Vitor is now home from the hospital.

He's healthy. Hannah's doing great. Lizzie's excited to be a big sister. And Tommy's going to be back hosting Wednesday's Pod with special guest Jen Psaki, because we got lots of shows to do and we're still down a host since Jon's on his eat, pray, love it journey.

But first, the New York Times just came out with a poll that shows us leading everywhere by a lot. This is the cover story, and I think you'll find it very interesting, but I'm sure you've all read it. Leading in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada. I think we're probably leading in New Jersey. We have a rally.

Greg cannot prove his case. Got no evidence. And I'm innocent. Trump just summed up the show there. Another awesome, totally normal day in American politics.

So we're going to cover all that. Let's start with the trial, where the prosecution's star witness has taken the stand. For those of you who don't remember, here's a refresher. Michael Cohen was Donald Trump's personal lawyer and fixer for many years. In 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to some of the same crimes that he's now testifying.

Trump helped commit, namely disguising hush money payments as legal expenses to evade campaign finance laws and hide the Stormy Daniels story from voters. Cohen testified that Trump explicitly directed him to make the hush money payment because after the Access Hollywood tape came out, he thought the Stormy Daniels story might cost him the election, saying, quote, This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me. Guys will think it's cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign. When Cohen asked Trump how Melania would take it, Trump said, How long do you think I'll be on the market?

for? Not long. Great stuff. Great stuff. And husband of the year, that guy.

So the concern for the prosecution heading into this testimony was that Michael Cohen, not exactly an honest broker, had some credibility. issues, has perjured himself a few different times. As of this recording, he still hasn't been cross examined yet. But how do you think his testimony landed? Well, I want to stipulate that the.

Bit of a goofball. Yeah, goofball. Sleazy goofball. Slimy, slimy goofball. Slimy goofball is his general demeanor.

And I think it's something that the prosecutors are clearly aware of, because for much of his testimony, they seem to mostly be using him to corroborate testimony and evidence already introduced in the record, with yes or no questions, limiting his exposure to the jury. But when he did testify to first-person accounts, he did two things I think were very important, legally, but also politically, in terms of making this case matter. One is, he testified that Trump was actually involved, intimately involved, in the scheme itself, and that's very important. And second, and this goes to the point you just made in the intro here, is he testified that Trump's motivation was not necessarily about keeping this from his wife, it was about the election. And that's so important, I think, in terms of making this case matter to voters, is that he was trying to hide a key piece of information from the voters before the election.

And Cohen was crystal clear on that.

CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who also went to jail, testified that Weisselberg showed the document calculating Cohen's reimbursement to Trump, and that Trump signed off. And there's actually, to your point, there's a document with Weisselberg's handwriting on it saying that the reimbursement to Michael Cohen was grossed up for so that Michael Cohen could pay the extra in taxes. Again, this is not what you do with legal expenses. So yeah, it seems like there's a document for everything that Michael Cohen testified, or at least some corroborating evidence in some way. And I don't know.

I mean, like, I'm sure the defense has been preparing for this cross-examination for quite some time. But all the reporters in the courtroom on Monday have said that Cohen came off just, like, very matter-of-factly, didn't come off too crazy, didn't come off like a liar, just was, like, sort of just went through everything. And a lot of it was going through things where he was looking at a text or a document. And so it wasn't like Michael Cohen was freelancing a lot. Yeah, I'd just be interested.

We will have.

apparently Trump brought a cheering section on Monday? He had senators J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville were there to provide, I guess, emotional support and also attack the witnesses and the jurors as a way to get around Trump's gag order. Tommy Tuberville was calling them, suggesting that the jurors might not be Americans. I mean, what embarrassing.

They want him to have people in the audience who he knows loves him so he can look at, which is obviously not his family. It is thirsty, wannabe MAGA senators like J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville. And for those two men, what an embarrassment. Have some pride.

You're United States senators. If you want to shill for Trump, and especially in J.D. Vance's case, sacrifice everything you claim to have believed in before, that's fine. But do it from a respectable distance. You have to have something better to do than to sit in that courtroom for an entire day.

It's pitiful. They're all pitiful. It's all embarrassing. It's a sad statement on Trump. It's a sad statement on these people.

It's a sad statement on the Republican Party, because I'm sure there is a waiting list of yahoos to come fill these roles for the next couple of weeks. And somewhere, Ted Cruz is begging to be invited,

Here's what we learned. 64% of voters, and these are, by the way, voters in the swing states that they polled. So 64% of swing state voters say that they're paying a lot or some attention to the news about Trump's legal issues. By 49% to 45%, a plurality of voters don't think Trump will be able to get a fair and impartial trial in Manhattan, and only 35% of voters think it's likely he'll be convicted in this Manhattan trial. 53% say it's somewhat or very unlikely.

What do you think of those numbers? They tell you anything new.

You're vaguely aware that a trial is happening, and so you're going to say you're paying some. And I think what that shows is what we see just in general, political engagement, what we see in some of the other polls is that there are some people paying a ton of attention. I think it's 29% in this poll who are paying a lot of attention, and everyone else is paying either no attention or just they're vaguely aware it's happening and not dialed in the details. They couldn't explain the crime. They couldn't tell you that Michael Komen has testified.

They might not be able to tell you who Michael Komen is. And I do think that that is somewhat positive for the argument against Trump, where it means that the fewer people who know about the bad things he's done at least gives you the opportunity to believe that there's upside, and as more people learn about it, opinions can shift. And the other thing I think is just interesting is the fact that people do not expect to be convicted, which shows they're not paying attention. Because if you're reading, if you're on Twitter, you're listening to podcasts, you follow Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissman on Twitter, you would believe with almost a certainty he's getting convicted, because that is the general tenor of all the coverage. And you ask any of these people who've been following the case, these attorneys, former prosecutors, etc., and the only reason they tell you that Trump may not be convicted is because of juror nullification, like one juror hangs the jury or two jurors.

It's not because of the strength of the case. And I think if Trump's conviction comes as a surprise to people, it will have a bigger political impact than if they've already priced it into the baseline.

I had like an intuitive sense, because the text was that early that it was going to be New York Times, Siena polls.

The bad news is Trump is still leading in every state by similar margins in the 538 polling average, from seven points in Nevada to half a point in Michigan. And really, you know, it's easy to understand why. Just listen to some highlights we put together of his rally in New Jersey over the weekend, the latest state he announced he'll be competing in. The late great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner.

Remember the last thing? Excuse me, I'm about to have a friend for dinner. Is this poor doctor? But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations.

The late great Hannibal Lecter. I were also thinking about Melania's incredible mother, who just passed away. Amalia, we want to say hello. She's up there, looking down right now. She's saying that's a large crowd of people carried out by right side, all being done by him, carried out by radical Democrat district attorney.

You know who he is? Fat Alvin. When I'm president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals. And if you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You'll be out of that school.

That's it, Dan. That's, that's the guy that, right now, more voters want four more years of that. They want four more years of Donald Trump, the guy who is talking about Fat Alvin and threatening to deport pro-Palestinian protesters and going on a weird tangent about Hannibal Lecter. that, look, if you listen to the whole speech, you're not missing any context. there.

There's nothing that's going to say, oh, that's why he was randomly talking about and congratulating a fictional movie character who was a cannibal. Also not dead, Hannibal Lecter.

the crowd estimates were, I had to look three times. What was like a hundred thousand people? Eighty to a hundred thousand was the estimate. I saw. What?

It's a big rally. That's a big crowd. That's a big crowd. That's a big crowd. Even if it was exaggerated by 30, 40, 50%, it's still a big rally.

And there is, like with Trump, there's always, just like, you can kind of boil it down to, like his Homer Simpson brain, which is, like, me, love big crowd. And so let's go to New Jersey. And it kind of makes sense. Like you can, strategically, you can understand the desire to have a very large rally in the middle of this trial when he can't campaign just as a show of strength, right? If he did 18,000 people in, you know, Sarasota, Florida, we wouldn't talk about it, but 80,000 people in New Jersey, that'll get your attention.

And I grew up on the East Coast, I've been in Wildwood, New Jersey, a lot. And it makes sense, because for a rally, a big, big rally, you need two things. You need to be able to do it outdoors. And you need to be able to do it in a place you don't go to very often or ever. Like if Trump just went to Florida, or Ohio or other places he's been 50 times in the last five years, you wouldn't get a big crowd.

He doesn't do rallies in New Jersey. Wildwood is a, it's in a very red part of New Jersey, but it's also a beach town where the population swells in the summer. And it brings a lot of people out of including sort of Republican MAGA people from New York and Pennsylvania there. And so it's just, it's kind of pitch perfect for where Trump could have a huge rally and sort of just send this signal of strength. It doesn't say anything about where he's going to compete.

It's just a chance to show strength. And it probably succeeded in having a crowd of that size. All right, let's dig into the poll.

It's just important to remember that and that you just can't obsess about the head-to-head in these. There's a lot of fluctuation. You look at the larger trends and you try to mine these polls for actual information that can get you the outcome you want. But why is this snapshot in time so shitty? I think it's actually pretty simple.

It does. This poll just makes me think that we have probably overcomplicated politics a lot over the last several years, because there's this larger metaphysical question about how in the world can a plurality of this country want Donald Trump back in the White House after everything he did? And that someone else can answer that. But in terms of the electoral coalitions, it's pretty clear. One, Trump is getting 95% of his voters from 2020..

Biden is getting 87% of his voters. 7% of Biden's voters are planning on voting for Trump. That's kind of everything right there. Biden is doing less well with younger voters, Hispanic voters, and Black voters than he did in 2020 by pretty large margins. Second, this is largely about the economy.

You have three-quarters of voters in this poll say the economy is fair or poor. Those numbers are worse among the parts of Biden's coalition that he's struggling with. 90% of voters 18 to 29, say the Hispanic voters. It's very clear. And then you have 30% of voters, about 30% of voters in this poll say that either the economy writ large or inflation cost of living are the single most important issues that are going to drive their decision.

That is more than double any other issue, including abortion or immigration. And you have Trump leading on the economy by 20 points.

It's simply just not that complicated as to what we are dealing with. That's where we are right now.

About 30% cite the economy, inflation, cost of living, some combination there. 11% cite immigration. 9% said foreign policy. 7% said abortion. I guess these are like anti-choice voters who voted for Biden in 20, or maybe they're just confused about who caused Roe v.

Wade from being overturned. There's some numbers there that suggest not everyone's clear on that. And then 4% said Gaza. So you could imagine that the 9% that said foreign policy, probably a bunch of that is Gaza as well, though there could be also voters who are in the camp of like, we don't like sending money overseas to foreign wars. The world is a mess.

That could be mixed in as well. But anyway, that's sort of the breakdown of the universe of voters who are not supporting Biden, who did in 2020.. I do think the weird thing here is like in this poll, Biden wins almost exactly the same share of white voters as he did in 2020. in these states. College educated white voters and non-college educated white voters, who are, as an entire group, are much, much more Trumpy, Trump's best group.

But Biden's keeping his share of those voters as well. And I'm wondering if, like the larger story is about the economy. Why is it breaking down on racial lines and generational lines? When, if you just look at the economic statistics, there is not a ton of economic evidence that says that in this economy, over the last several years, young people and voters of color are faring particularly worse than white voters, obviously, over the last several decades, centuries in this country, they have been, but just in the last several years, since we've come back from COVID, there's not a ton of evidence of that. So I'm just, and it's not just the New York times, by the way, like all the polling keeps showing this, you get on one hand, this weakness with young voters and voters of color.

And there is an assumption that these are like progressive voters, abandoning Biden, either over Gaza or over not canceling student debt or whatever. 11% of registered voters think Biden was not progressive or liberal enough, this poll, and relatively few of those voters are actually defecting from Biden. So they don't think he's progressive enough, but they're not defecting. And Biden's losses are concentrated among moderate and conservative, democratically leaning voters. Yeah, I mean,

You've built up less savings, you have less wealth, you probably haven't a chance to buy a house yet. So you're one of the people being specifically hammered by spikes in rent or spikes in interest rates for making it impossible to buy a house, right? You don't own your car outright, right? You're trying to make car payments. And so I think that helps explain a little bit of why these specific groups are being targeted.

It's also kind of where Biden has maybe hit his floor with non-college white voters and hit his ceiling with college white voters, and the differences with everyone else. He's not going to lose many.

I wouldn't get too excited about it. But if we learn by the end of the election, that this was all, this was a lot of this was polling noise. That would be one.

Maybe not. Maybe it will. Maybe not. We don't know, but it ultimately doesn't change anything. The polls all show something similar, which is Biden is underperforming among these groups.

How much? There's a lot of noise in there, like a ton of noise. But the trend is very clear that there's work to do there. And I, so it's like the debate over, you know, response rates and sample size and cross tabs kind of missed. the point is, we know we have work to do and we're not, are we going to work less hard because the margin, because Trump's getting 12% of black voters instead of 18% of black voters?

Are we going to work less hard to try to turn out youth voters? Because Biden is really up 18 instead of eight. No, it's the same thing. Like we, it's like, there's a very specific, clear roadmap here of the voters we need to go get to win this election. And all the rest of it's kind of just like a parlor conversation.

that is really irrelevant to the people actually doing the work of winning the election, right? It doesn't really matter what the margin is at this point. You're going to invest the same amount of money, invest the same amount of time to do it. And the way the Biden campaign is spending their money and building their organization suggests that, whether their margins are like the Times poll or some other poll, that they see a huge priority to go get black voters, Hispanic voters, and young voters and bring them back into the anti MAGA coalition.

One other reason why, you know,

More importantly, those Democrats are winning their Senate races, or at least leading, sorry, in their Senate races, with very normal, ordinary support from young and nonwhite voters, which really does speak like if you're, and they did. interviews, the New York Times, interviews with some of these voters, these split ticket voters, and you know, 60 year old Hispanic truck driver in Milwaukee. I like what Tammy Baldwin is doing. I do not like what Biden's doing. He's failing the U S.

that's going to be a split ticket voter. Uh, like 22 year old Hispanic voter in favors Jackie Rosen right now, but is voting for Trump, saying the border crisis has a lot to do with it. Migrants crossing the border are lazy, just looking for free things. Uh, and then it goes on and on like that. You can read these interviews and just absolutely pull your hair out.

There's like a construction worker in Wisconsin. Who's literally, he's never seen more construction in the state ever. He's working on the AI plant that Biden just went to Wisconsin to tout. And he said that he's not voting for Biden because there's been so much traffic because.

Well, politics is not transactional, my friend. That's the thing.

it, has happened, not happened very often recently. It did happen in Maine to a great deal in 2020.. I, Mr. Wilderness, I think what we need here is focus groups of Trump, Baldwin voters, Trump Gallego voters, you know, in Pennsylvania, Trump Fetterman voters, or Trump Casey voters, or probably aren't a ton of those yet, since those races are close, but just, I let's, I. I'm glad that you're trying to interview those people.

That's interesting, but I would like to hear.

So you can be really mad about the economy and still vote for Tammy Baldwin, but feel, you know, I think incorrectly and unfairly penalized Joe Biden for the cost of eggs by voting against him. And, you know, because we saw that in 2022, one of the explanations why Democrats did so well, and the quote unquote red wave didn't happen was Democrats won a shockingly large number of voters who said inflation was the number one issue. It just didn't apply to their Senate or congressional vote. And that may be what's happening here, but that's why we need these wilderness focus groups. So stay tuned.

You,

But the takeaway from this poll, for me, is there's a pretty large, persuadable universe here, and Donald Trump's lead here is pretty fragile, I think. He is being propped up by voters who disapprove of him, don't like him, disagree with him on a whole bunch of issues, and have a long history of voting for Democrats. And so it's not easy. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of organizing.

It's going to take everyone listening to this to doing their part. But those are where we can go get back. We are not in a position where we have to go get a bunch of typical Republican voters or a bunch of people who voted for Trump in 2020 to win. We have to go get people who have long been a part of our coalition, who agree with us on issues like economic policy, abortion, immigration, a whole bunch of them, and just go persuade them. And what this shows is the more, and this is reflected in the split between registered voters and likely voters, it's reflected in the split between highly engaged voters and less engaged voters, is.

the more people know about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the better Joe Biden does. And that's a roadmap for winning the election, right? And there's less than six months to go. We got a lot of work to do and time is ticking away pretty fast here, but this is winnable. Donald Trump has winded his back.

There's no question about that. But the path to victory.

I'm still pretty pissed about inflation and I'm annoyed with Joe Biden, right? So like, it's not a perfect, but you know, if it is not like, the electorate is out there thinking my life is terrible and gloom and doom kind of thing. So, like that, that suggests some persuasion as possible as well. I also think to your point about the likely and register voter split, um, John Delavope, who we've talked to, you've talked to on all of our pods, um, noted that, especially among young people, uh, the registered, you know, Biden is basically down three with young people among registered voters. And he's up seven with, uh, likely voters.

That's a 10 point swing. Um, as you get to likely voters now, again, he won them by 20 something points in, in, uh, 2020.. So that's still a ways to go, but it's, you know, the, the likely voter model does change things. Also, I noticed this, they asked this question. If, if Trump wins, how much would change?

And the groups that are most likely in the poll to think that he changed little to nothing are 18 to 29 year olds and Hispanic voters, to the groups that Biden's doing not great with. And the groups that are least likely to think that Trump's changes would be very bad for the country are 18 to 29 year olds and Hispanic voters. So you've basically got a cohort of young voters and Hispanic voters who think like maybe Donald, who either think maybe Donald Trump won't actually change that much about what's going on. And if he does, maybe it won't be so bad. And that will be, and obviously that's an alarming thing to, to think, but like that is the work of a campaign.

And that'd be the Biden campaign to go out there and not only make the case for Joe Biden, but also make the case that a second Trump term would be extremely damaging to the country and would actually change quite a bit, uh, from where we are right now. So there's obviously, like some things that are beyond Biden's control. He can't do much to make inflation come down faster at this point. I suppose, uh, he could do like Trump would probably do and start yelling at Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, but I don't see him doing that. Nor do I know if that's a wise,

They've run. 90% of their ads have been about abortion. They've been hammering. it is you want to increase the number of people who, uh, say abortion is going to help decide their vote, and you want to expand your lead and trusting, trusting Trump of abortion. And we've seen in navigator polling, the listen I talked about on Friday, I guess, um, that more and over time, more and more people are beginning to see Trump as anti-abortion.

A majority now think he would sign a federal abortion ban. And so the work is being done there and you want to, so you want to see that expand. But I think, most importantly, we are now six months from the election. You have three quarters of the country saying the economy is fair or poor. And this is, as I mentioned earlier, particularly true among the voters you need most that your most important persuasion targets are the ones most sour on the economy.

And so I don't think you're going to make people be able to feel better about the economy. because even if, you know, I hope, you know, we have this sudden drop in inflation, Jerome Powell cuts in interest rates. We have this virtuous cycle. Everyone starts feeling better, right? As people vote, if that happens, great, but we clearly can't plan for it.

And I think there was probably some more optimism three or four months ago that we were going to be sort of leaning into a better economic environment as the election happened. People, how people feel about the economy is a lot, you know, lags behind actual economic progress. So even if things get better, it's not clear, though people will really be feeling it measurably by the time they vote. So instead of trying to make people feel better about the economy, we have to make people feel worse about how Trump would manage the economy. And I think a huge, just.

you have to, you don't have to beat him on the economy, you can't lose by 20 points. And the polling we've seen shows that Trump is very vulnerable if you make the case. And it's a pretty simple message about Donald Trump wanting to cut taxes for his rich friends, for wealthy corporations, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and try to pay for all of this by cutting Social Security and Medicare, right? We've seen this in polling. That's one of the things that working class voters in particular are most afraid Trump will do, which is to give tax breaks to the rich.

Just a New York Times story over the weekend, which didn't even make our podcast today, that he may owe the IRS $100 million for double counting tax credits on Trump Tower, Chicago. You went down at one of Donald Trump's first parties would be, if he gets elected, to stop the IRS from enforcing tax laws on rich people like Donald Trump. And so making this populist argument that, you know, the Scranton Joe versus Park Avenue Donald or Mar-a-Lago Donald, pick your rich place of choice, but we have to hammer him on the economy. I think that's the only way in which we will actually win the election. You're seeing that in some of the stuff Biden has been doing.

You saw that in his Pennsylvania tour. But that's my takeaway from this poll and how you go about changing the numbers.

Right now, Biden has turned it into a referendum, because I think the balance between here's what we accomplished. Listen to all these good economic statistics. And here's what I do to bring costs down. And here's what Trump would do is just way off. It's way off.

I get that you do have to do both. But just the amount of time. And look, I think it's Joe Biden is on all issues, of all issues. Joe Biden is especially empathetic to working people who are struggling. It's the Scranton Joe.

He gets this viscerally. He's got it when we were in the White House with them. So I know that he has that in him. But I also think that is at war with him being so annoyed that he's not getting more credit for bringing the economy out of recession and getting inflation down as fast as it's come down. And honestly, it's come down faster and better than in most other developed, wealthy countries.

And I think he's I would be pissed, too, if I was him. Right. But like every interview and in every speech that comes out, well, the first thing you hear is, well, people have more money and they're this or that. And New York Times interviewed a Biden 2020 voter in Nevada who is not voting for him this time, who said concerning to me when I keep seeing press come out of the White House, where they keep saying the economy is good, that's really weird, because I'm paying more on taxes and more on groceries and more on housing and more on fuel. So that doesn't feel good.

It's like, yeah, we can argue back and forth about like whether people should feel this way about the economy or not, which is like what everyone on Twitter does all day long. But like, if people are actually feeling this way, you can't argue people out of their feelings. You just can't do it. You've got to just like, say, here's what I'm going to do. I know things are tough and we've come a long way, but we have so much more to do and we have to bring costs down.

And it's ridiculous. These corporations are making so much money. And Donald Trump gets to get a hundred million dollars off his tax bill because he cheated and he's going to help his rich friends. Well, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to fight for you. And here's what I'm going to do in a second term.

If you send me a bigger Congress, Democratic Congress, like I just.

Which is? why do you think this poll says this? And he, I thought his answer for.

You've said this before that, like, he does need a baseline that he, to like make people believe that he has accomplished something on the economy, because that gives him the credibility to say, I'll be able to do more. But like the, the, the ability to do more thing is.

Right. Just, I think people thought that things were turning. It didn't turn. the ads now are either either about abortion or they are going after Donald Trump for being a populist, right? There's like a, it's all contrast, right?

It's Biden did this and Donald Trump would do this bad thing, right? He cut social security. He would. And so Biden has to like, there's no marching prayer here. You can't.

even, you do an interview, you got to answer it. Right. Right. You do a speech, any single, uh, off, you know, you go off the prompter for a minute, you delve into the dark, the parts of your psyche that are annoyed. Obama would do this a lot to every politician, does it.

There's not really room for that now, six months out, but since the state of the union, I think the economic messaging has been pretty damn good. that I really do think, right. There's, there've been some moments here, Biden, where I think they've been less good, but in general, I think they're doing the right things.

And so it just takes that much more effort and that much more repetition and that much more discipline to get the message out, which is just tough. You know? All right. When we come back, I will talk to Congressman Colin Allred about his Senate race in Texas to hopefully defeat Ted Cruz.

Joining us today, he's a former NFL linebacker and voting rights attorney who currently represents Texas's 32nd district and is running to unseat America's sweetheart, Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Pod Save America, Representative, Colin Allred.

What do you make of the rebrand, and do you take it as a sign that he might be worried about losing?

And the funny thing about the NFL is everything's on tape, you know, and we always say you are what you put on tape. But so is a lot of this, you know what I mean? Like, we've seen you on the Senate floor trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you're reading Green Eggs and Ham. You know, we've heard folks like John Boehner call you Lucifer, you know, and Lindsey Graham joking about if you were murdered on the Senate floor. I mean, like, we've been there for this, right?

And so it's funny, but I think, you know, maybe it is a badge of honor.

Which is what I was doing, because I was in office at the time, was on the phone with FEMA, working with our county, trying to find buildings that had power on that we'd call them warming centers, you know, at a food bank, trying to hand out food, because when the power goes out, working families lose all the food that's in the fridge. There was a lot to do. In fact, it was one of the busiest times I've had. But for Cruz, he was able to go on vacation. He's like, well, what am I gonna do?

There's nothing to do, right? I can't podcast, you know, I might as well get out of here. And so I think that's the biggest thing. is that number one, how extreme he's been, but also he's not been doing the job. And so we joke about him podcasting three to five times a week.

That's time he could be representing 30 million Texans who need him. His vision for us is an extremely dark one, you know, nationwide ban on abortion. I tell folks all the time, Ted Cruz is our problem in Texas, but he's also your problem, you know, because he tried to overturn the election in 2020.. He wants to ban abortion nationwide. And he's somebody who we're looking around for, who's responsible for how we ended up in this place in our politics.

You know, he's like exhibit 1B. Yeah. I don't know how he podcasts that many times.

Right. So clearly he's not doing that. Also not also a senator. Yeah. So Cruz did do a Fox News interview this week.

that sounded much more like the guy we've all come to know and loathe. He tried to blame you and Joe Biden and other Democrats for getting some donations from groups that, he says, indirectly funded some of these campus protests. I don't really understand why students would need funding to leave their dorms and go protest on their own campus. But he clearly sees this attack as a political winner. What's, what's your response to that?

And what do you, how do you feel about the protests in general? Yeah. Well, I mean,

Then, when you have somebody saying something that you disagree with, that, that's when they now they want to come in and crack down. Right. Right. And I find that to be instructive, of course, because, you know, we. the First Amendment is a stubborn thing.

You know, it applies to speech that you agree with and speech you disagree with. And obviously there's limits to it. You know, I'm a, I'm a lawyer, a voting rights lawyer, by training. You know, you can't run into a crowded room and say fire and all kinds of things. Right.

And your First Amendment rights can be limited in terms of how they impact someone else. So hate speech. Right. For example. And, you know, I think sometimes that line has been crossed, but I think it's, it's, it's an American value to understand that we have the right to protest.

There are limits to it. I don't think you should take it too far. But that certainly this is something that has been going on in our college campuses, but also just in our country, since the very beginning. And, you know, I'm a civil rights lawyer. I'm an African-American serving in Congress.

I'm here because of protest, because of the civil rights movement, because of some folks making some folks feel a little bit uncomfortable at times and talking about, hey, listen, we want voting rights. We want to be able to be a part of this democracy. And it can be uncomfortable.

Well, you know, I'm on the Foreign.

That's where the focus always should be. Obviously, what we've seen is that this has also impacted so many innocent civilians. And when I was last in Israel, I visited a kibbutz called Kfar Asa. And in this kibbutz, these are the most peace loving people that you'll ever come across. Our progressives wouldn't even touch these folks, you know what I mean?

These are the people.

And the Israeli general called it the site of a massacre. And I think about both of those things and think that, you know, there has to be another way for us here. We need to obviously find a way forward on creating two states, one in which we have a peaceful and independent Palestinian state next to an independent Jewish democratic state in Israel. And we all know that. But in some ways, I think this conflict has reignited that discussion.

And anything that takes us further away from that, I think we have to question. And so some of the conduct that we've seen, particularly this potential invasion of Rafah, I think, you know, calls that into question. Are we moving towards that or away from it? And as the United States, I think our role has to be to try and encourage that and try and create the conditions for what we know will be hard to do, but that we have to use this tragedy in some ways as an opportunity to try and revitalize this discussion around two states.

And, you know, we, after 9-11, we made a lot of mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think, you know, obviously, there are lessons that have to be learned from that, that as you are prosecuting a conflict, that the way you do it is as important as why you're doing it, right. And that moral high ground, especially for democracies, is incredibly important. And Israel is a democracy, and we share values with Israel. And I think we're encouraging them to follow the same values that we share.

I know you supported the bipartisan border deal that Donald Trump and the Republicans killed for what they admitted were political reasons. Do you want to see President Biden act without Congress to make?

My family's from Brownsville, which is the tip of Texas. I was raised by a single mom, was a public school teacher in Dallas. But my grandfather was a customs officer in Brownsville after fighting in the Pacific in the Navy in World War II. And so I spent a lot of my childhood in the valley in South Texas. And I know that our border communities are not just these places where you go to point out problems, right?

They also bear the brunt. when we see these migrant surges. I think folks around the country are starting to see it in other cities, but that's what the border experience has been for some time, right? And so I've been critical of, in multiple administrations, for not helping the communities themselves, and also of this administration, of not getting caught trying and trying to help alleviate some of that burden. And so I do think that it's important that the president acts.

I think that obviously Congress needs to act as well. We've not passed comprehensive reform to our immigration system since the Reagan era. And the deal that you were talking about, I was talking to some folks earlier. I'm not sure everyone understands exactly. This was really, I think, targeted at what we're seeing at the southern border, which is largely an asylum crisis.

We're having folks come and declare, ask for asylum. About 90% of them are going to be rejected, but it's going to take five, six, seven years for that rejection to come. And so what we were trying to address there was trying to speed that process up, raise that threshold a bit so that... Because most of these folks are coming because of economic inconvenience, economic disaster, where they're from. And that's not going to fall into one of the asylum factors.

And so what we're trying to do there is say, listen, let's make this more orderly. Let's make this happen much faster. Let's storage resources. There was CBP personnel, immigration judges, administrative personnel that all would have been hired from this. And folks like Ted Cruz, who have been talking about this being the biggest crisis facing the country, as you said, agreed with the policy, but wanted to take it down because they want to have this issue to run on in November.

And so I do think it's important that the president acts, but certainly let's call out the folks who are responsible for putting us in this position. I say all the time, I don't know why Ted Cruz won't help us secure the border, but I know that when I'm in the Senate, I will. And we can do it consistent with our values. We don't have to demagogue about it. We're the United States of America.

We're Texans. We can do this in a way that's consistent with who we are.

And the fact that that's also acting in some ways as a draw for folks who are saying, listen, if I can get there and claim asylum, then who knows, five, six, seven years, I might be able to stay. And that, I think, is also a contributing factor. And certainly the coyotes, the human traffickers, they're taking advantage of that as well. And they're spreading that message. So the word is out on that.

And so we need to counter that. Exactly what they can do. that will pass judicial muster, I don't know. But I do think it's important to show how much we care about this, that Democrats are serious about this, and also to present an alternative view of what a secure border looks like. Because to me, it's not barbed wire.

To me, it has to be that folks are treated humanely. They're processed in a timely manner. Not everyone's going to be able to stay. But let's do this consistent with our best traditions, instead of losing some of ourselves in how we treat others.

And that's really, I think, can be a beautiful thing. And this idea that it's just rampant with crime, it's so dangerous and all these things, I mean, that's just not realistic, and it's not true. But when I see folks like Ted Cruz put on their kind of outdoor clothing, like he's... And he goes down and he'll get in the weeds, and he's pointing out migrants. I'm like, listen, we have folks to do that, right?

Get your tail in DC and help us pass some legislation to address what they need us to.

That puts that well over 20, some percent of our population. It's the highest such number in the history of our country. People say, well, isn't that great? Is it? What do you think of that?

The whole great replacement theory is now almost mainstream.

We're a nation of immigrants. John Lewis, who was a mentor of mine and a hero of mine, used to say that we might've come here on different ships, but we're in the same boat now. We're all Americans. That's our strength.

Folks are not flooding into China. They're coming here. We are attracting the best and brightest from around the world. It's enriched our society. It's enriched our economy.

It's something that has been a strength for us, an ongoing strength, one that Russia can't equal, that China can't equal, that sets us apart. Even some of our allies, Japan and others, look at what they're facing in terms of their future, unless they address their population. For us, this is a strength. Immigration is a strength. Having new voices come in is a strength.

We're a beautiful tapestry of so many folks coming here. Texas is a perfect example of this. Texas is not... It is in every way as diverse as any place that you can ever go. That's in terms of white folks, black folks, Latinos, yes, of course, but also huge East Asian and South Asian populations, rapidly growing.

Folks wanting to come there. Folks wanting to start a business. In order for that to continue, it has to be a place where folks will feel welcome. That's what I think folks like Chip Roy and Ted Cruz put at risk. This near total ban on abortion puts at risk.

This is a story that this is a place where you will be welcome and that you can raise your family and grow your business and be allowed to chase your version of the American dream without somebody imposing something on you. That's all being put at risk by these folks. I think they don't even understand what.

Jamie Raskin and I and some others, we voted against expelling him at that point. When I did vote to expel, I based it on the ethics report that then had come out. I based it on what was in that report, that that was enough that he brought the House into disrepute, basically. That process had some element of due process to it. Henry's going to have his day in court.

I've said this and I believe this. I worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office. These folks take their jobs very seriously. I think it's a sign of a functioning democracy when people in power are held to account.

Whether it's Henry or anyone else, they'll have their day in court, in front of a jury of their peers, and they'll get a chance to make their arguments. If it's not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then they'll obviously get off. The point is, I think, that that's our tradition, that we have to have some element of due process. I don't think that's been reached yet. Got it.

Let's talk about the eternal dream.

What's your take on what's happened to the politics of the state since 2018? How do you think we start moving it back in?

We're living in the post-Dobbs world and we're experiencing what a near total ban on abortion looks like. This is a completely different era for us. I think it's only now becoming clearer to Texans, and I guess probably to Americans more broadly, just how horrific this law is.

My wife and I have had two baby boys in Dallas in the last five years. That process, as you know, is frightening. no matter what. You hold your breath at every single ultrasound, at every single genetic test. Those rooms are too small to have Ted Cruz in there too, peering over the doctor's shoulders.

When we hear these stories, Dr. Austin Denard is a friend of mine. She was my guest at the State of the Union. She's an OB-GYN in Dallas. Her husband is also an OB-GYN.

They had two kids at a much wanted third pregnancy. She notices on a routine ultrasound that the baby's skull is not forming. She's a sixth generation Texan. She grew up 10 minutes from where I grew up, went to high school. I know her entire life story pretty much.

She had to flee our state to get the care she needs, an OB-GYN. We're only beginning to experience the downstream impacts of what this law has done to our medical schools, to our universities, to our business economy, where now, if you want to recruit or retain top talent, you got to talk about this. It's going to have a huge political impact. We have to make sure Texans know that. Also, this is a different race.

I'm a different cat. I'm a different opponent for Ted Cruz. I've been the most bipartisan member of the entire Texas delegation. I'm proud of that. I've worked across the aisle to get things done.

I've shown that you can bring people together around our shared values instead of pitting folks against each other. I'm confident that when we can tell my story about being raised by a single mom in Dallas, having a big deal to get a scholarship to play football at Baylor, making it to the NFL, becoming a civil rights lawyer and serving in a way that has brought folks together,

I think it is just incredibly massive. I think. what surprised me the most, I don't know. I think I am constantly impressed by the pockets of resistance, if you want to use that term, that you'll see in the panhandle where they're trying to pass, at the local level, laws saying you can't drive through the county if you're going to use the county roads to access an abortion. There'll be a few brave women up there who have organized themselves, who are pushing back against literally billionaires, who are behind some of this radical social policy stuff.

They're standing up to them. They got their Facebook groups going. They're active. They're in what we would all call a deeply red county. They're winning.

They're winning because they care. It's their community. They think this isn't right.

That's something that I think folks often underestimate. I say this all the time and I really mean it. I think our people are so much better than our politics. Our people recognize extremism. I think our people generally, what they want is fairly modest.

They want to have a chance to chase their version of the American dream. They want to have some slight shifts in priorities to give them a shot. They know that it's up to them. from there. I think so many of those folks have stood up in recent years and been counted.

They inspire me. I'm serious. When I meet them, I thank them because I think it's so inspiring what they're doing against incredibly tall odds and in places where they're not coming on Thoughts. Save America to talk about it. Nobody's putting their name in the paper, but they're heroes.

Last question. I saw you post when Cowboy Carter was released. In 2018, Beyonce made a last minute endorsement of Beto. Any plans to reach out to her?

I know folks out there maybe think it is, and I understand that, because that's what you're seeing, but trust me, that's been my whole life in Texas. You don't get any more Texan than me. I was captain of the football team at Baylor. I grew up in Dallas and my family's from all over the state. I've had a relative who was the governor of Texas back in the depression era.

I think I know who we are and we're not who these people say we are. We need every Texan and everyone who's interested in helping out in Texas to get involved. Go to ColinAllred.com. This is not a long shot race, John. No.

This is a tough but winnable one. I got into Congress by beating a 22-year incumbent who nobody thought I could beat, and I'm going to beat Ted Cruz too. I believe. That's good. Colin.

Thanks to Colin Allred for joining today. If you want to help that campaign, go to his website, like he said, and also in Vote Save America, we have a bunch of down-ballot candidates in Texas. Avery Bishop in Dallas County, Laurel Swift in the San Antonio suburbs and Christian Carranza in the San Antonio suburbs. These are candidates who could flip seats. You can go help them.

Go to VoteSaveAmerica.

com and honestly, just go to VoteSaveAmerica.

com slash 2024 to sign up for organize or else, because we talked a lot about polls and we talked a lot about what we can do, and the one thing that we can actually do to make an impact is go out and talk to voters and we will give you all kinds of things to do. We will give you volunteer shifts. We'll tell you where to donate. Vote Save America has a fantastic website. Organize or else is really exciting.

You can sign up to join a team. Gamify it. It's great. I think we already got like a couple thousand after the first week, but we need more people. If you're listening to this pod and you're worried about the polls, this is the best thing you can do.

So everyone have a great day and we will be back with a new episode on Wednesday. Bye everyone. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at Crooked.com slash friends, and if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer. Reid Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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