“I vote. Do u?” (LIVE from Nashville)

What's up, Nashville? Welcome to Pause Safe America, I'm John Favreau. I'm Sonoma D. Sander.

I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy G. Tor. I'm Dan Feifur.

We have a great show for you tonight. Later we'll be talking to Stephanie Teatro, a local activist from right here in Nashville. You guys know her. Co-director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugees Rights Coalition.

All right, should we talk about the news, guys? It's a prep thing. Is that what we're doing here? We're going to start with the chaos that has resulted from Donald Trump's decision to take children away from parents who seek asylum in the United States.

Yes. A decision he claims he reversed with an executive order that not even his own government seems to understand. What we do know at this point is the administration has no plan to reunite the more than 2,000 kids who've been separated. Today, DHS said that about 500 have been reunited.

That's their claim. Of course, summer as young as eight months old, there aren't enough beds for all the families that they're detaining. There aren't enough immigration lawyers right now. The AP reported that kids are screaming and crying as they realize that their parents are gone.

And in the midst of all this, today, the president tweeted, we cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief. It's actually hard to listen to you summarize that. It's so frustrating. Just a reminder that last month, 18 House Republicans nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So back to the drawing board, Naslo, I think. Simone, how do we make sure that this administration doesn't get away with just losing track of 1,500 plus children? Like, how do we make sure this is not another quarter we go? I think we have to continue to be vocal about it, but we also have to challenge them in the courts.

And so I think you've seen a couple of yes, black enough for the court. And so unfortunately, right now, it seems like a legal option is the only option to ensure that these folks that the children are reunited with their parents and vice versa. That's why we saw there was a story that caught track in today, a mother from Guatemala, sued the Trump administration. And she was reunited with her son.

Now, she had a really great attorney. But unfortunately, everyone does not have the means of the access at this mother hand. So we have to make sure that we are raising funds, that we are supporting organizations that are providing close to immigration attorneys, and keeping the pressure on it. Every single time a reporter, anyone reports that Donald Trump stopped the family separation that the board will.

They need to accurately report that he stopped family separations and has instituted family detention, which is another name for jail. Tommy, what do you think? I mean, as someone just mentioned, I think we all talked about in the last show that the media so far has done a pretty good job of calling attention to this. It does feel like we are at that point in a media cycle about a Trump crisis where it's the end of a week where it has made news every single day.

It's been the only news story every day, which is a good thing because everyone's aware. But what do we do as we move into the next coming weeks? In these archives, we're in such a bizarre land. A great reporter named Simon Malay pointed out on Twitter that Melania Trump went on a fact-finding mission to observe a humanitarian crisis created by her husband.

We don't really have the experience to deal with that. She's going to next go tour the factories where Ivanka Shoes are being heard. LAUGHTER So we'll talk about Congress later in what we can or can't do, but the reality is we're not in charge of anything. And so I think the key right now for Democrats is constant sustained pressure and attention on reuniting these kids who have been separated from their parents.

Because if you read stories from lawyers that are trying to navigate this morass of bureaucracy and cruelty and incompetence, they are having an unbelievably difficult time finding these kids were taken away from families starting in May, not that long ago. So unless there is real focus, sustained focus on fixing this problem, it's not going to go away. And that's our job now, I think, is people here. So the Trump propaganda machine is working over time to minimize the story.

Foxes? The whole bunch of them. We have Laura Ingram called the detention center summer camps. Sinclair Broadcasting is reportedly forcing its stations to air commentary that says liberal reports of children detention were exaggerated.

Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends said, quote, these aren't our kids. Show them compassion, but it's not like he's doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. Dan, what do we do with this? Do the pictures themselves make this kind of propaganda harder to pull off this time?

Yes. I mean, what has been different? This past week was different in the sense that it felt for a second like the old rule supplied, where there was a crisis, Trump fucked up, and then he had to face some measure of political accountability. He did not solve the problem.

We are in the first inning of trying to reunite these families and deal with the larger problems of immigration in this country. But he felt pressure. And his ability to just scream fake news and have Ann Coulter go out there and call them child actors and all of that did not work with as much as I'm in that because of the images. Because they, for every time an ice spokesman went out and said, these kids aren't in cages.

Then there'd be dozens of photos of kids and cages that would be shared millions of times on social. So what Democrats have to do here? Because we don't have a propaganda machine. We don't have Fox News.

We don't have Breitbart. And I'm very happy about that. I wouldn't want everybody to have this horrible things. But as we have to keep our attention focused, and it's not just senators and members of Congress continuing to go to these centers and demanding to see the kids, it's all of us who have the power to communicate with people from the phone in our pocket, sharing these pictures, talking about it, tweeting about it.

Because we're in this weird media world now, where it's not the news that leads Twitter. It's Twitter that leads the news. And so we can keep discussion about this, keep it trending. We can have viral videos like Congressman John Lewis today talking about this.

We can share that with every person in our lives. Then we can keep the focus on the issue. And that's really important because once the cameras turn off, you know what little attention Trump administration is giving this is going to go away in a second. They're going to focus on the next policy of the debate they want to commit.

What do you think the Democrats need to keep focusing on this no matter what? I already saw there's some political story today that if you're the Red State Democrats are like, well, it was important to speak out this week. But how long are we going to be on this issue? They're already a little.

Oh, Red State Democrats. Will your or won't you be cool today? Healthcare, yes. I think it's a good question.

I think obviously we never talk about any story and sustained way at this level on any issue ever. So we should be aware of that. I think this has broken a record in the Trump administration. Yes.

Well, two things. This and the parking kits. This is a lesson of what can break through for a long time. But even still, stories come along and the story changes.

I think it's about making sure we're fitting our position and immigration into the larger story we're trying to tell. I think that's actually pretty challenging. The one thing that I was thinking about and how we can connect to what we're saying, what broadly is criminal justice reform has been signed meeting Congress for a long time. In large part, it was by Jeff Sessions.

And yes, sure. Absolutely boo. Absolutely boo. And the only reason I draw that connection is because I think what we're seeing is in a large way a conversation about justice and mercy.

And this idea of zero tolerance, this idea that what you can have is justice without mercy, that you can throw the book at people and it's simple and it's easy and these problems aren't hard to solve, in part because you're lying, in part because you dehumanize people. And I think that Democrats need to be the party of mercy. And I think one of the reasons Hillary Clinton, sure. Are you applauding because you remember her?

We debate. There's been a lot of debate as to whether or not she was an inspiring candidate. But there was something she said on the campaign trail that was inspiring it is when she talked about love and kindness because it was something deeper than the kind of teeny political words we're all used to. And so this is a point Dan's making, we've all been making it.

But not allowing the immigration debate to become one in which we are trying to prove how tough we are. So people give us maybe the chance to be humane. But leading with what we actually believe, which is that we don't believe that this immigration problem is big enough to visit these horrors on children. And we believe that this is a compassionate country.

We believe in compassionate college. And that goes, and we are compassionate on immigration. We are compassionate on health care. We are compassionate about making sure kids get an education.

I think it's about making sure we're telling a story about human empathy and that we are fighting for it. And I think the other thing is while we're telling that story, making sure we're being clear about the facts, this is a crisis at the border right now that the Trump administration created. But to be clear, crime is down. The people that commit the majority of crimes in this country are, in fact, not immigrants.

There is no immigration crisis. There is a we need to reform our immigration system because people are getting stuck in the system, so on and so forth, and Donald Trump wants to build this wall. But Democrats should not fall into the trap of using a Republican's language. We just want open borders.

No one is talking about open borders. We don't have open borders now. In the country, you know, for a fact, that they're in open borders in America. And so I think Democrats fall into the trap of using the Republican's language to talk about the issue, and that is where we lose.

Yeah. Tommy, you're good to say. No, it's a bit. Love and Simone are exactly right.

I mean, Democrats run scared on immigration a lot because there's tricky issues and tough votes that have been taken. But two thirds of the country oppose separating these kids from the families. And 80% of the country opposes finding a fix to allow the dreamers, kids who are brought to the country by their parents when they're small children, letting them stay in the country. So there are issues we can run on and fight on and win.

Yeah, no, I do think there is a problem with buying into Trump's frame that there is some crisis immigration right now. And this gets to something deeper. A bunch of people have pointed out that there is no huge influx of immigrants at the border, like there was actually when Obama dealt with this issue in 2014. So when you mentioned that crime rates for immigrants are in many places lower than Native and foreign Americans.

And yet, this administration from the beginning has decided to create this crisis. And the question is, why did they decide to create this crisis? So Vanity Fair quoted an outside advisor to the White House saying, quote, Stephen Miller actually enjoys seeing those pictures on the border. Stephen Miller, the White Nationalist.

I just want to be extremely clear. And if he gets, he has aligned with people in the White Nationalist movement, he's been very clear about this. He's been very clear about his ideology. And so why we are allowing a White Nationalist to sit in the People's House, the White House, and make policy that literally demonizes people of color in this country.

I don't understand. He needs to go and everybody needs to call on him and be in fire. Like along with Secretary Nielsen, everybody else. Everybody else.

I was just about to ask. I was going to take it further. He is a White Nationalist. Is this what a White Nationalist policy looks like?

Which is a scary thing to say. But my question is, if not, what would a White Nationalist policy look like? I don't want a high-pothicide about White Nationalist policy. OK, the Black one in America, that makes me care about it.

It is different. But it's like, you know, you've got Stephen Miller saying this. You've got Steve Bannon, who a couple months ago said, there's too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley where more than an economy, we're a society. My question is, how many more times do they have to tell us this?

Mexicans coming over the border are rapists, animals, infestation. There's probably the worries at some point. How many times do they have to tell us this before we believe them? I honestly think to the point that Love It Made about these red-state Democrats, folks are so scared to broach the topic of, to speak plainly and frankly about immigration reform, about what the White House is actually doing, about the language they're actually using, that they're not confronting it.

Oh, and Michael, Taylor wasn't some crazy outside person. He was a tool of the government. He was in charge. And he repeated the language over and over and over until folks internalized it.

And so they believed it was true. It was a propaganda machine. And that is what's currently happening in this country. I'm frankly concerned about the people that are excusing and justifying what the White House and his administration is doing, saying, well, these folks spoke the law.

If they will get on the side of folks tearing innocent kids away from their families, they did nothing wrong. Who are fleeing very desperate situations, desperate situations at the United States government. Maybe had a hand that did not create the environment. If there are folks in this country that are going to underscore that, what else will they underscore?

Now we're going to have 10 cities, i.e. internment camps. What in the? I don't know.

Yeah. Well, Simone is exactly right. And I think it is important that we not just put pressure on Stephen Miller and Stephen and Kirsten Johnson Donald Trump, because Stephen Miller and Stephen and they advocate white, they advocate white identity politics. They're put aside their own conservative white people.

Yes. But they believe the best politics in Donald Trump. No, no, no, no. You know what?

Being better than that is not where the plotting is right. All right? But so Donald Trump believes that the best politics for him is for white people to be scared of non-white people. Because Donald Trump will claim credit for the sun coming up.

Yet when border crossings went down, he didn't claim credit for it. He just tried to pump up the crisis and scare people. Right. He could have been out there saying border crossing where the lowest I did better than Obama did on border crossing.

I am the wall. He could have done that. I am the wall. I am the wall.

Just think. This says you so much that his racism superseded his narcissism in this moment. And I think we have to put pressure also on Republicans. Because not every Republican member of Congress is a racist.

But they are willing to enable a racist, because they want the votes of racists. And that is incredibly important. And I think we have to call them out. Because when history looks back on this moment, Paul Ryan, you pick a random member out of the crowd, Paul Ryan will be the Neville Chamberlain of racism.

Two possible episode titles, right? No, no. I would like to just reiterate with Dan said, which is that there are a lot of really good people who are Republicans. I'm sure all of us have family members who are in the public are like, there's no vote.

No vote. No vote. No vote. Because we want their votes one day.

There are, even if you feel there are, there are all kinds of members of Congress, decent people. But those people have sat side by side with a guy named Steve King for many, many years. Since the 2003. Now, Steve King is a Republican member of Congress from Southwestern Iowa.

And he is far more of a white nationalist overtly than Donald Trump is today. He doesn't think that racists should mix. During a debate about dreamers, he said for every valedictorian, there are 100 people who came north of the border who have calves like cantaloupes, because they were carrying drugs. He's been saying the most disgusting, despicable, overtly racist, overtly white nationalist things for years and years.

And he's sort of just been allowed to exist in their caucus, in polite society in Washington. It feels a bit like all the rumors about all these horrific men in the Me Too Crisis, and all of a sudden one day society decided, OK, now we care about what Harvey Weinstein did or what Bill Cosby did or all these people. I'm waiting for Washington to wake up and say, what the fuck have Steve King been sitting with us all the time? Also, by the way, Steve King has always been a racist.

But he has even been emboldened in this last few years. Some of his craziest shit has come. This is what happens, because he sees Donald Trump in the White House, and he feels more comfortable saying this stuff. He asked what did Black people do to help this country.

And I was like, we built this thing. We built this. He said we should electrify the border fence, because it works with cattle. I mean, he's a creep man, as a United States congressman.

And every Republican congressman goes to lunch with them once a week. They all sit with them, fucking pass the mustard, and they eat together, and no one says the right to go on. Pass the manis. LAUGHTER You see that with Scott Pruitt and Tom Price.

The regular rules of scandal. I mean, Scott Pruitt hasn't resigned, but that's because he shameless. But the scandal has hit him. There is still political gravity.

There are still things that won't be tolerated. Tom Price had to go. But I think there are admissions that when you make them require your behavior to shift so drastically, that I think there's a lot of people who become afraid to do it. So to admit that Stephen Miller is a White nationalist, to admit that Donald Trump is motivated by a desire to keep brown people out of the country, to admit that is to admit that you need to reorient your behavior totally against him.

And so Republicans can't do it. And even for reporters to report that. To admit that you're in an alliance with them. It's a myth that you're about bringing political alliance.

And the same thing happens with collusion, and with admitting to what's obvious. That is why the same reason a lot of the teach that controversy stuff happens around whether or not Donald Trump has racist, the same reason it happens around Russia's involvement in election and Donald Trump's corruption is because if you state the truth plainly, it would require your behavior to change. It would require the press to change. It would require that the Republicans to change.

And they just can't. They're afraid to do it. They're afraid of the moment that they're in. They're afraid of what history is asking of them.

And we just have to accept the fact that we won't be able to change them. We have to defeat them. We have to defeat them. Well, that brings us to how to actually change these policies, which unfortunately involves the United States Congress.

So an extremely right-wing immigration bill failed in the House on Thursday because not enough Republicans supported it. So it's the right immigration bill until next week, because not enough right-wingers support it. And then Trump, of course, these Republicans, like the crazy right-wingers and the moderates and the regular conservatives are all getting together to try to hash out an immigration bill and figure something out, even though they know that they probably won't pass us in at all. And then Donald Trump tweets this morning.

He just shits all over the entire process by tweeting that Republicans should just wait until after the midterms. For the red wave. For the red wave. For the red wave.

The red wave. Not coming far. Not coming far. Not coming next week.

OK? I'm waiting on the red wave right now. I thought I had a question here. Oh, yeah.

Can Republicans ever pass in this party, ever pass an immigration on their own? We're going to get to a point in this debate. I already saw it in a couple places in the media. Like, you know, our Democrats on the defensive now.

Don't Democrats have to get together with Republicans and compromise on an immigration bill. But it seems like there's nothing for Democrats to do until Republicans can get their act together and all agree themselves on what their position is. Like, I don't think they can pass anything, right? No, maybe they will bribe people legally, bribe people with appropriations or whatever, they'll twist arms and they'll just get over the line, because they think, because they know it's not going to become law.

So it's just, we don't embarrass themselves. This is how they pass a lot of legislation that ever comes law. But it just shows how messed up the mentality is from the Republicans, which is they're not even trying to get a Democrat. Like, you could, you could, like back in 2013, the Senate passed a bill with more than 60 votes to reform immigration system.

It was most of what Barack Obama wanted, but not everything, because we had to get the votes as like eight Republican senators. And that bill, if we're put on the floor of the House today, and people were just able to devote to their conscience, would get 300 votes. If you put a bill, a straight up bill, to give legal, to reinstate the DACA program, it would get 300 votes and pass the Senate. But they won't let it happen, because they don't want to solve the problem.

They just want to have an issue. The problem that we could address immigration, and we could do it tomorrow, but Republicans are afraid that if they lose that issue, then they're not going to have anything to fire up the base about. The right wing of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives have prevented this country from governing now for going on 20 years. George W.

Bush tried to pass immigration reform, had Democrats on board. The bill died because of the right wing Republicans in the House. Then Barack Obama tries to do it, gets the Senate Republicans and Democrats together, passes something. It dies because of the right wing Republicans in the House.

And it is not just the case that this is for immigration. This is every single issue. This is why 2018, in some ways, is even more important than some presidential elections, because there's a faction in the House of Representatives of Republicans that are literally holding the entire country hostage on every single issue. There's actually also a glimmer of hope in that, which is, Republicans have shown us, they know how to campaign, but not government.

Democrats have shown us how to govern, but not campaign. But you can lie and demagogue on immigration. You can lie and you can demagogue on health care. But when it comes time to pass something, the words have to be typed down on paper.

You can't just attack Democrats. You can't just say you're going to do something on Fox News. You have to write down what you're going to do in order and pass it. And everybody has to agree.

But when the only thing you agree on is the lie about the other side, governing becomes very hard. And it's actually saved us whether we should admit it. That is exactly what I'm saying. That is why.

That is the problem with health care. And their lies catching up with them when they govern has been a huge help to us and protecting us while we've been out of power. On Wednesday, in the midst of this whole disaster, like, five positions ago, Trump held this meeting with a bunch of Republican leadership in the camera. No women, by the way.

No women. One lady. One lady. No people fell.

But we're talking about immigration. No. I don't know. Mother's being rippling kids.

One mom. I don't know. And Lamar Alexander turned to him and said, it was so funny. I know the mind.

I just watched the whole thing. I'm the nerd. And he said, Mr. President, Nixon was able to go to China.

And Reagan was able to go and say, tear down that wall. And I think you can be that leader on immigration. And then somebody's like, Donald Trump doesn't fucking understand immigration. He doesn't know what he wants.

He doesn't know what's in the bill. He wants to go chant, lock her up, and build the wall. There's no desire or need to get it done. There's no positive rules underlying this.

You've all been told, this is how you do it. You flatter him. That's funny. And like, you feel good, but it never works.

So let's talk about the Democrats since it's no exaggeration. It's a per se that the survival of the republic hinges on us taking back the house. No pressure. On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee rolled out a new plan to turn out new and sporadic voters in the midterms.

And the plan specifically focuses on people of color. The DNC plans to spend millions of dollars to identify likely Democratic voters who are unregistered and removed from the political process and are hiring community organizers to target black, Asian, Latino, and millennial voters. Simone, you've talked to the DNC, worked with the DNC a lot. Do you think this is more of a symbolic announcement, or do you think this is their real deal?

I think they really want to do this. But I think there's an editing there. They're not spending millions of dollars. They're spending $1.5 million.

And it sounds like a lot of money. But in what's basically July of one of the most important midterm elections of our lifetime, I don't think $1.5 million is going to cut it. This is something that we needed in January. I don't like to poop on the party because I think we need the party.

The party needs to be strong. If the DNC is not strong, for the midterm elections and even post-mid term, we're in a lot of trouble. But the fact of the matter is, I think they want to do this. I think this is the actual commitment.

I'm just concerned about the timing of the rollout and the funds that have been allocated. And maybe $1.5 is what they had. So if you get them what you got them with it. But I don't think it's going to be enough.

Dan, apparently a lot of the money is going towards organizers so they can get people to vote who don't normally vote in midterms. How difficult is doing that? And what can they learn from what Obama did in 0.8 and 12? It's hard.

But it should be less hard this time. Because what kept people from turning out in previous elections was they thought it didn't matter. Now, you must be living in a cabin in the woods off the grid if you think elections don't matter anymore. Now, I completely agree with Simone over the NC here.

I think this is probably what they have. And if they had $3 million, they'd spend $3 million. It says a lot about how hard it is to be a party committee in a time when the Koch brothers can dump a billion dollars into a race. But this is what is I think the most hopeful things that has happened since this election is people out there in the country didn't wait for the DNC to tell them what to do.

They formed Swing Left, Indivisible. And I know. And I spend a lot of time with the Swing Left group in San Francisco where I live. And they have been knocking doors for these exact voters in the Crooked 8 districts for over a year now.

They go every weekend to one of those districts, and they knock doors. And so it'll be great. Everyone joined the party. DNC, the outside groups, Swing Left.

And everyone, if you think the DNC's not spending enough money, if the DNC money is not going to get you enough organizers, go to swing left and volunteer and go to all these districts and do it. We don't have to wait around to be told what to do anymore. Can I say one more thing? I also think it's important that people understand that because we're dealing with folks that usually do not vote in the midterm election and unregistered voters that if they were registered would be likely to vote Democrat, this is a persuasion and mobilization effort, and a persuasion of people that are our voters.

And traditionally, we look at the Democrats that they outline Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Latinx, African-American voters, and fairly mobilization. No. You need to go to these communities, communities that don't necessarily are cool in the Democratic Party, and explain why you would like to earn their vote, and persuade them to actually be with you on the issues, and then also persuade them mobilize into the polls. And we don't necessarily look at these demographics as persuasion folks, but we got to persuade our own people.

And folks have to understand that. That is the most important point. These Democratic Party is really good at looking at where blocks of voters are that we could turn out, and say, oh, we turned them out, then we will win. But that skips us down.

We were talking about Stacey Abrams about this a bunch last night. She's investing early in a lot of these communities. And then just thinking back to the Obama experience in Iowa in 2008, Iowa was viewed as a state that there was Edwards, Hillary, and Obama. And the theory of the case was that the caucus universe was, but it was about 125,000 people.

And it never changed. And it was a fool's errand to try. And Obama came in and said, the only way I can win this is to get young people, people of color, people have never cocked us before and turned them out. And the other campaigns scoffed at us, but we invested early.

We organized. We went to their house. We organized seniors in high school. Like communities that had never seen a candidate saw Barack Obama and lo and behold, he won the caucuses.

And that's the only reason he's president. So that kind of grassroots organizing from day one is the key. Absolutely. The one thing.

The one thing to me is just we should be honest. And it's really important. And it's really hard. Mid-term electorates look more Republican.

They're white or they're older. Also, Republicans realized, conservative activists realized, billionaires on that side realized, that with changing demographics, it was a more effective way to win. It was not to turn out more voters, but to make it harder for Democrats to vote. They made it harder.

We voted ID and gerrymandering. And so now we have to do all this work. We have to get people who don't normally vote to register and to vote. We have to turn out people who haven't traditionally voted in midterms.

They got this propaganda apparatus. And they just got people watching Fox News. And then just going to hit the Fox News cattle prod on election day to get those people out to vote. Their voters are there.

Their voters vote in midterms. And we have to do something that doesn't ordinarily happen. And it is really hard. And it's going to take a lot of work.

Yeah, I mean, right now you're seeing the enthusiasm gap in all these polls. Democrats are leading by double digits when you ask people, are you excited to go vote? But I think Republicans are catching up. And this is clearly Trump's entire strategy is to play on these issues, immigration, MS-13, all this kind of stuff.

It's not to reach out to swing voters, or to people in the center, or to do anything like that. He just wants to make sure his base isn't so dispirited that they stay home. But he's catching up because Democrats, we don't do well when we're not also talking about the issues that are directly affecting everybody's lives. We need to be talking about immigration.

We have to call out the white supremacy, the racism, sex, and xenophobia. But the economy is something that affects all of us. And we have to keep talking about the tax bill. The tax bill, which is now the tax law, is not popular.

When you explain to people what is going on with that bill, it's not popular. The Republicans got a bill that they're going to put on the floor in August to try and repeal and replace Obamacare. And that is just a repeal. In August, people like their health care.

And so what I think is encouraging, yes, yes, clap for the health care that we all like. What should be encouraging is the fact that Democrats are not going into these districts, talking about Donald Trump, praise the Lord. They're going into districts, talking about the tax bill. They're talking about health care.

And now we're going to be talking about immigration, specifically these children. And that is what's going to put us over the top in the midterm elections. We don't talk about Russia. We don't need to talk about Donald Trump because the fact is matter is the voters that don't like Trump reminding me that I hate him is not going to make me want to vote for you.

And for the voters that kind of like him and voted for them, don't necessarily want to be shamed into their midterm election ballot. But what they do is those opposing the issues. And so Democrats are out there saying, I talked a lot to them before the House Caucus more times than I was like. But it is the necessary work.

And they are saying. What did you say to vote them? Well, I tell them that one day they need to get out of the house floor. And they tell me that they're going to the House floor.

And I'm like, y'all, we ain't watching C-SPAN. No one's watching that. And so if you go to the House floor, clip it and put it on social. And then get on TV and repeat what you said on the House floor.

Why don't you go and take the House floor? Why don't you say there's no other trouble? Just scream in the shower for a few minutes. But the House floor is going to help.

And they do something that helps. I don't think they'll manage the House floor because they are using the tools that are before them as legislators. But you need to take the House floor and give it to the people because I don't watch C-SPAN. So, you know, I'm encouraged.

I'm encouraged, but I'm not encouraged by the teacher. But I just want to be clear. We have a whole show on the D-trap. Okay, not encouraged.

I just feel like, do you guys think that the message is a soft hit and no explanation moving forward? Not encouraged. You want to be on record. I think Democrats for a long time have thought when they look at all these different constituencies that they have to mobilize.

They're like, all right, we need our message and our strategy for African Americans, we need it for Latinos, we need it for young voters, we need it for women. It does seem like in this election and in this media age, we should be able to nationalize this election around a single message. One, you should never have different messages from people. This is one of the problems.

Which seems like common sense, but it's not the history of the party. What happened is we basically got too much information. The data was so deep and important. It was so deep that you would know white women over 50 care about education and young men under 30 in this precinct in Cleveland cared about climate change.

What you're doing is you're micro-targeting voters instead of having a story that appeals to as many people as possible. You need a broad message. If you have to go say one thing to in an African American precinct in Atlanta and another thing in suburban county, you're not going to win an election because guess what? The internet exists.

People here both messages. Right? And so it's like our friend Jason candor said to you and I right after the election. Right.

He made the case that if you talked about messaging the election and said what would be more persuasive if you were on a jury, a lawyer who would not have to do a specific argument to all 12 jurors or a lawyer who would not have to make an argument that all 12 jurors could try compelling. Right? And that's what Democrats have to do. Dan, what about a lawyer that makes an argument to everyone except Wisconsin and Michigan?

Too soon. And it's not rocket science. It's what Barack Obama did. And he won.

Right. And back to Tommy's point, that's exactly how we expanded the universe of caucus goers in Iowa. It was one message. Sorry, Dan.

Don't apologize to Dan. I apologize to all the Hillary staffers. They're going to be mad about this podcast. They know I kid.

I kid because I mean it. I can't even discuss cutting this on the car. We're not going to be a racist. We're not cutting.

Hold on. I'll make sure we don't cut it. It was Comey. All right.

It was a letter. And now for a game we call OK Stop. We're going to clip. Donald could say OK, stop at any point to comment.

For years, Democrats have been labeled as a party of the elites. But love you for us. Donald Trump is here to take the mantle. And Greg Gutfield of Fox News is finally getting it with himself to make his face to be excited to talk about it.

Take a look. Was that a man or a woman because he needs a haircut more than I do? I couldn't tell. He needs a haircut.

That's our Donald. Let's go. I honestly don't know what that was about. I don't know who was like this show is the side of Trump that people like.

I just like it's just a long hair. It's some kind of a woman. The worst thing you can be. Bradley was nothing new.

The crowd loved him. The people who already hate him will just hate him more. And the media patched itself on the head for not covering it while secretly watching Fox News. OK Stop.

But the media covered it. Like they always covered it. And they didn't put it live for one. Which is great.

But they were all on Twitter. Everybody watched it. They covered it. They tweeted about it.

We all know about the fucking rally. We heard about the rally. We cannot get away from the rally. And we thought a long problem is not to get up to the pressure.

Right. If he's a monster, he might be the worst monster ever. He's not good at all. Fact check true.

Great gut field. Box news is over true. This is what the actual outlet is. They're not lying right now.

He's the worst monster ever. And I'm with it. At all. That's why optimism is high.

95% of manufacturers have a positive company outlook. It's good news. Even if the elites deny it. And about those elites.

You have an notice. They always call the other side. And they do this up. The elite.

The elite. They don't call them. They're not like where are the elites? Let me slap my suspenders and go pull up.

You dickheads. He's like Sean Hannity makes $8 million a year. He rides a private jet and calls democrats elites. He's a slum lord in North Carolina or something.

What do you say? Donald Trump's an Ivy League educated billionaire with a gold toilet. What the fuck is he talking about? A billionaire adjacent.

I'd also point out that as always Donald Trump is projecting. I think Donald Trump was thinking before he went on stage. Was he on his mind? It was something that was on his mind.

It's a pie. You go look at the debate. He looked at his hair. He was on his mind.

He just projected out. Where does he always does? People listening to this can't see the chiron right now. Trump mocks elites at campaign rally.

I have a much better apartment and I'm richer than they are. That's what they were. He really wants to be the elite. That is legitimately funny from Fox.

They have no idea how funny it is. They're like yeah. They're like for a frippant Trump's point. Why are they elite?

I have a much better apartment than they do. I'm smarter than they are. Okay. I'm richer.

He knows he's not. He knows he's not. He's not. He's at the core of everything he does.

The funniest thing is he is jealous of not being labeled elite which is a derogatory term used in politics with people. But he's jealous that he didn't get that term. They are. I became president and they didn't.

Wait a minute. And I'm representing the greatest, smartest, most loyal, best people on earth. The deplorables. Remember that?

Okay, stop. There is something that's pretty disgusting about this. I know. Because every other president who has ever said that meant every American.

The ones that voted for them. The ones that voted for their opponent. The ones who didn't vote. He does not mean that.

He means only the 38 to 41 percent who support him. And that is a huge and dramatic change in all some of the presidents. I mean for all the people who are like, you know when Trump was first elected and people like not my president or not my president, there was all this criticism, he's basically saying like not my country. Not my half of them.

Not your president. Not your president. Like half the country. No.

I don't represent you. I only represent the deplorables. Well, let's take my head. The president is still black.

Right. That's key. Now bragging is never appealing. I just want to know that this is literally in the teleprompter.

Like he's reading this off. Somebody had to type this shit up. They put in the teleprompter and they were like, this is what we're going to do. Yeah, the caveat is bragging is never attracted.

Exactly. However. For you deplorables at the rally, the outrage celebrity class will always deem you to be the uncool kids. Trump defends you against the jerks.

So it's not about wealth or apartment. Okay, stop. You can't see this at home, but his ears start at his shoulders. And it's really unnerving to just drop down that deep.

Keep going. That's speaking up for people that the media celebrity complex Snickers at. And it's why when everything seems to be working out those Snickers seeing truly from Mars. What?

Is that a joke? That was so bizarre. And that's okay. Stop.

When we come back, we'll have Dan's interview and Simone's interview with Stephanie Teatro. Yeah, Stephanie. Hey, quick listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pie yet, you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week.

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Check it out. She is the co-executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant Refugee Rights Coalition. Whose mission is to empower immigrants and refugees to develop a unified voice. Please welcome Stephanie T.

Trope. Hi. Thank you. You're very popular here.

Happy to be here. And you got on a pop-in jumpsuit. That was my question. Thank you for joining us.

And thank you for all the work that you do. So, I'm going to start in 2017, just a few days after Donald Trump has been sworn into office, and after he had said his Muslim ban in emotion. He told a newspaper here in Nashville that Tennessee had already experienced the best in worse instincts than people responding to demographic change. How has your work been affected in the year and a half since?

When the person who's been encouraging the worse instincts of people has been in the President of the United States? So, something we've been saying since the election is that communities in Tennessee, we've been living in Trump's America for a long time. And so, that means two things for us. One, it means that we know how to fight and we know how to win in hostile climates.

But it also means that immigrant communities, especially, but many communities are experiencing sort of Trump on overdrive, right? So, not only are we dealing with the same ramping up of immigration enforcement, people are separated from their families when refugee resettlement is halted, but we have Tennessee sheriffs signing up to join the deportation force. We have our state legislature passing bills that will require our local governments to help carry out mass deportations. And so, I think what we've learned and what the communities in Tennessee can teach America about how to survive is that we can build power while we're fighting.

We've talked about how can we win while we're losing, right? How can we get stronger out of this? And part of that, and I think it's especially relevant in this moment, is not letting these crises pass us by. How can we make sure that these moments are transformative?

Absolutely. So, given that, a few months ago, I conducted a massive raid at a meat processing plant east of here in Bean Station, Tennessee. Yes, we hate it. Nearly 100 workers were detained, but you and your colleagues, you were actually there when it happened.

And you were there when the people in and around the plant in Morristown organized, and they pushed back against what was happening around them. A church was even converted into a crisis dinner. So, please tell us what kind of work have gone into organizing that community even before the raid happened, and then what work has happened since. I'm so glad you asked about Morristown because I think in this news cycle of crisis after crisis, it didn't break through, but it's so important that communities across America pay attention to what happened in Morristown, because since then, every few weeks, the Trump administration has carried out another mass worksite raid just this week while all eyes were on the border.

They arrested 140 people in Ohio. The second mass worksite raid there this month. So, what happened in Morristown, our in Bean Station, is there's a meat processing plant. Some people had worked there for over a decade, and all of a sudden, one morning, just like any other day, they kissed their kids' goodby, sent their kids to school.

Helicopter started swirling above the building, dozens of agents stormed in with weapons, and they arrest every Latino in the plant. They arrested every single Latino in the plant. Including a U.S. citizen, including several people with work authorization, the only people left behind, according to several reports from workers, were the white workers.

Workers report rough treatments, it was unbelievable, and it was the first worksite raid of this scale that we've seen in a decade. And so, the Morristown community understands better than anyone at this point why our country keeps stopped using this egregious tactic. So, all I can say is that when a raid of this size happens, it's like a bomb goes off. This is a small community, almost 100 people ripped away.

It's the closest thing I can describe how it felt in that church was like we were responding to a natural disaster. A small community in Tennessee, the very next day after the raid, 600 kids missed school. The fear and the terror that swept across the community can't be overstated, and the administration has only suggested that they're going to carry out more of these worksite raids. But on the positive side, I think two things to take from the Morristown experience one is the families didn't flee.

The families found sanctuary in that church, and they've been fighting like hell for their families. And already, of the 54 people who were shipped out of state that day and were detained for several weeks, of the 54 we've already brought 36 home, and we're not going to get up until everybody's back. But the other piece is that this community, 77% of this community, this county voted for Donald Trump. Many people talked about how they might have even supported his rhetoric on immigration.

But just like we're seeing at this crisis at the border, when it feels this close to home, when you can imagine having your kids or for the communities in Morristown, when it was the kids that their kids went to school with, the people that they sat next to in church. They felt it in a different way. And they also stood up and fought back. We had to turn away volunteers.

The church was overflowing with donations. And like I said, around turning these points of crises into transformative moments, we've been able to really have people change their minds and talk about how immigration is going to be what drives their vote in November. What happened at that plant is brings to mind another challenge that undocumented people have all the time, which is the workers, many of the works that were being under minimum wage, but plant owners were not held criminally responsible for underpaying their workers. How can people advocate for fair and safe working conditions for undocumented workers without putting them at risk of deportation?

Yeah, so the reason that this meat processing plant got on the radar of ICE to begin with is because the owner was in under investigation for not paying taxes, certainly for underpaying the workers. Meat packing plants are already one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and this man operated one of the worst. He broke nearly every labor law. People worked in incredibly dangerous conditions.

They weren't paid fairly. And they put in, again, several years of honest labor at this factory. Not only was the plant operator undercutting businesses by treating workers this way, but people's immigration status can be held over their heads when it comes to reporting these dangerous conditions. There's a piece of legislation that's been introduced in Congress, again this year and for several years, that would allow undocumented workers protection to report these kinds of violations called the Power Act.

So we need something like that. Of course, fundamentally, we need to make sure that workers have a chance to apply for citizenship, and to be able to work lawfully. But the thing that should really outrage everybody is, although it was the plant operator who was under investigation, although he was the one who was violating all of these conditions. No, Sam, he didn't get scooped up in the rain.

The plant is still operating, right? He has yet to face any charges. The plant is fully operational at this point. I'm sure at some point charges will be brought against him.

But any of this rhetoric that the administration is looking after American workers is completely undercut in being stationed. And again, the Trump administration, we have to remember that they have policy choices that are making. They could have chosen any number of ways to go after this employer. They could have audited him.