Trump’s Recklessness Will ‘Haunt Us for a Generation’

17:53Jamelle Bouie:Sure. So it's the Save America Act. So the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility America Act is Trump's sort of current obsession. Was it two weeks ago that he said he would not sign any new bills unless this was passed into law? And what the Save Act ostensibly is meant to do is protect the integrity of American elections from voter fraud and non-citizen voting. Now, this raises kind of a natural question, well, how serious of a problem are voter fraud and non-citizen voting? In part because the provisions of the SAVE Act, and in particular, a pretty strict requirement to prove your citizenship in person, registering to vote, could potentially disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans.

18:36Jamelle Bouie:So if that's the risk, disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans, keeping them from exercising their right to vote, their constitutional right to vote, which although is not explicitly written out of the Constitution, I think it's heavily implied by the Constitution's amendments. How big is this problem? It turns out that this problem doesn't exist. It's a fake problem. I'll put it this way. The Heritage Foundation conservative think tank, very conservative think tank, has a database that purports to show all the examples of voter fraud over the course of several decades across all 50 states.

19:12Jamelle Bouie:And what the Heritage Foundation finds is that it happens, but effectively, it's not an actual problem. And the times when it does happen, most often than not, it's a mistake. It's someone who thought that they could register to vote and they registered to vote. So it's most often just kind of like simple administrative mistakes, not malicious activity. and certainly not as the president portrays, as Speaker Mike Johnson portrays, an organized effort to defraud Americans of their votes by hundreds of thousands of millions of people going to illicitly and illegally vote. So for Trump to say back, and he has said this, this is a means to reduce the electorate so that Republicans have an easier time to win.

19:53Jamelle Bouie:I'm not sure that's how it actually work out in practice, but that's the intent. And I do think it's just vitally important to say that there is simply no world in which it is justifiable to deprive, potentially deprive tens of millions of Americans of the right to vote in order to prevent a non-existent problem. It's like going to someone in Rhode Island and saying, you know, do you want to spend a million dollars on volcano insurance?

20:22Michelle Cottle:Why are you against volcano insurance, Jamal?

20:25Jamelle Bouie:Aren't you worried about volcanoes? Do you want molten rock to destroy your home? A sensible person would pay for the volcano insurance. Jamel is pro-lava.

20:37Michelle Cottle:That's right. He is pro-lava. So here's one thing that is, there's a couple of things that are driving me crazy about this debate. Number one. Just a couple? Go ahead. Just a couple. Well, it was just the two top two things. Number one, this is not, when somebody describes this as a voter ID bill, They are being deceptive. You know, first, let me just say, I have zero objection to a normal voter ID requirement. In other words, you have a driver's license, you walk in, you show your driver's license or your state ID to show that I am the person I claim to be. I've done that for years and years and years, voting in Tennessee, show my ID, no big deal.

21:17Michelle Cottle:This is not a pure voter ID bill. It is not. It is saying that when you're registering, you're going to have to prove citizenship. Now, how do you prove citizenship? Well, there's a list of approved ways to demonstrate citizenship in the bill that includes things like a passport, which a lot of Americans don't have, or it includes a birth certificate, which tons of married women, for example, don't have a birth certificate that matches their current last name. And, you know, your driver's license in most states, even your real ID driver's license isn't going to be enough. Now, there are a few states, there's a handful of states where the driver's license is also effective as proof of citizenship.

22:02Michelle Cottle:But there's a specific list that is not just show up with your driver's license. And so this is something that is adding layers. It is adding hurdles that I think the vast majority of Americans aren't even aware of because it's been presented to them as a voter ID bill. And they've got a driver's license in their pocket and they don't think a thing about it. They don't realize that there is this extra requirement for registration different from what they've experienced before and that millions of them do not currently have access to the necessary documents. and to get access is going to cost money and it's going to cost time.

22:46Michelle Cottle:The second thing that's really interesting, and Jamel, in your latest piece, you touched on this. Have Republicans thought this through? Because - That's what I want to know. You know, if you look at the numbers in 2024, Kamala Harris won college-educated voters by more than 10 points. Trump won non-college voters by more than 10 points. And there were more non-college voters than college voters. Okay, fast forward to right now. Who do you think has their citizenship documents squared away more? College voters or non-college? It's college voters by a mile.

23:27David French:Well, one of the things that would be interesting to see how it panned out is I think mail-in voters would have to start submitting copies of their identification. Now, if you're me and you have a printer at home that you can easily copy your driver's license with, that's not a problem. I think that Republicans are working on the – and to clarify, most Republican lawmakers are not that keen on doing things that would throttle mail-in voting. This is Trump's personal obsession. He's still bitter about 2020, the blue shift, all that stuff. But I think Republicans, to some degree, aren't factoring in the fact that used to they were seen as the party who had the most reliable voters.

24:11David French:voters, you know, but if you have switched to being the party that has to rely on voting to be easy enough that non-regular voters are going to put you over the top, you should really be doing a gut check on what it means to just all of these things are geared at making it less convenient for people to vote. And I'm not sure that's going to pan out how they think it's going to.

24:39Jamelle Bouie:I'm sort of tied. I have a very maximalist view of voting and voter participation. I think it should be as easy as possible. Like if we're not going to have universal voting, of which I think I have been persuaded of, would be desirable, where you just kind of, you kind of have to go out and vote. You don't have to necessarily cast a ballot for a candidate, but like you, as a civic ritual, we all go out and vote. But short of universal voting, I think it should be as easy as possible. You want to mail in a ballot? Go for it. You want to vote 10 days, two weeks before the election? Go for it. It doesn't matter to me.

25:15Jamelle Bouie:If the trade would be an ID requirement with IDs being readily available, that you can easily go obtain an ID to prove your identification, and then you can vote, it's amazingly easy, the barriers are incredibly low, I would take that trade in a heartbeat. But if what you want to do is disenfranchise a bunch of working class white voters who are the bedrock of your coalition, I'm also not necessarily going to stop you. I'm going to say you shouldn't do it for ethical and moral reasons. But if you if you insist on it, you know.

26:00David French:All right. So the Safe America Act is not supposed it's not expected to pass the Senate. So what is the point of spending so much time in political capital trying to push it through? You know, not to be put into a final point of it, but especially when it seems like there are better uses of this president's attention and time, Jamil? I mean, I'd say this is Trump's obsession, right?

26:27Jamelle Bouie:As you noted, Michelle, he is still incredibly bitter about the 2020 election. He still complains about not winning the popular vote in the 2016 election. It's sort of it's a like a fundamental injury to his ego that he has lost an election and he blames everything but but himself. And so it's it's his personal obsession. And the Republican Party as it exists, it's just not, it has built itself around satisfying this guy's ego demands. And so I have no doubt that Republicans with their right minds, not all of them, but Republicans with their right minds understand the points you've been making about the basic counterproductiveness of this legislation.

27:10Jamelle Bouie:But also the muscle of opposing the president on one of his priorities is just something they've never exercised. And so they're going to go through this. They're going to waste floor time on the Senate. When you're right, there are better things they could be doing. There is a whole war that they're fighting. They might want to eat up floor time talking about that, debating that, dealing with legislation with that. But the president wants it and he's pouting and holding his breath and stomping his feet. And so they are going to humor him. I love a good tantrum.

27:47David French:David, it seems like it could be not so hot for their political fortunes in a year when voters seem to want to talk about other things and they're concerned that their leaders aren't focusing enough on ways to make their life better. I mean, do we really think that this is what is driving the majority of the American public crazy?

28:10Michelle Cottle:You raise a really good point, and that is that we've been having this pattern in American politics where the vast bulk of voters are saying, hey, guys, I want prosperity and stability. This is what we want, prosperity and stability. And every two years they come forward and they vote for prosperity and stability according to their best assessment of the time and then sort of recede back and get back in their lives. In the meantime, the activist base never recedes back anywhere, and it just keeps hammering away at its pet issues. In this case, the president of the United States and his MAGA activist base have this same pet issue.

28:50Michelle Cottle:And so they are hammering away at this when they're about to experience a general election electorate that's going to come forward and say, where is my peace? Where is my prosperity? Where is my stability? and I think they're going to experience a tremendous electoral consequence.

29:07David French:And I feel like, you know, I live in D.C. I feel like I should just go down and stand on the Capitol steps waiting for the Republican lawmakers to come through and just start screaming, he's not on the ballot. He's not going to pay for this. But you guys are really risking getting your butts thumped this year because he can get away with things even when he is on the ballot that this team cannot. His team does not do that well when they are answering for what he has been doing. And it just everything we're looking at with the midterms suggests that they are in trouble and he's not making it better.

29:53David French:I mean, a war in Iran is definitely not what people signed up for. much less all of this weird conspiracy mongering and clinging to 2020, which is just beyond ill. And instead, like they're clogging up some housing bill that the bipartisan housing bill that they were very interested in waving around as an achievement. No, that's that's just sitting there stuck because he can't quite get past his pet obsession. It just boggles the mind that so much important stuff is going to get left to wither because he is just he can't let go. Man can't let go.

30:38Jamelle Bouie:It's astonishing. The generic ballot right now for Republicans is devastating, right? Like Democrats are up plus eight, plus nine in the generic ballot. But even if the Iran war were not causing a global energy spike, the cost of energy going up, it would be an anchor on the president and the Republican Party. But the fact that, you know, I drive an electric car, so I'm a little bit, you know, gas prices, don't think about them too much these days. But I do notice them. And I've noticed gas go up like 50 cents in a couple of weeks, right? Like diesel has gone up to like$5 a gallon. And if anything, people were voting for, it was cheaper gas.

31:22David French:Well, rural America is going to feel it much more than, say, me or David, because we're in urban areas. We have public transportation. But that's...

31:32Jamelle Bouie:He's literally taking money out of people's pockets with decisions he's making. And this is going to trickle down to Republican lawmakers. People are not going to respond well to this. And that's on top of the fact that Democratic energy around the election is sky high. So you're going to have lots of Democrats motivated to vote. You have lots of Republicans discouraged. You have lots of infrequent voters who are just angry and not going to come out to vote. And it could be a total collapse. And I do not understand. I just cannot get into the psychology of a Republican lawmaker who looks at the objective political conditions of this year and says to themselves, I'm going to hug the president even closer.

32:14Jamelle Bouie:It makes no sense.

32:16David French:I think let's leave the doom and gloom there and the predictions and move on to everyone's favorite piece of this, which is recommendations. Jamal, what do you got for show and tell this week?

32:32Jamelle Bouie:I watch a lot of movies with my kids. That's how it goes. And I recently showed them a movie that I liked a lot when I was their age. And it is the 1990 Teenage Mutant Turtles film directed by Steve Barron. But more more relevantly for our purposes, the production company is Golden Harvest, which is a Hong Kong production company, did a lot of martial arts films. And so, you know, I have fond memories of this from when I was a little kid and I'm watching this again with my kids. And I'm like, OK, first of all, this movie much darker than I remember being. It's kind of like it's it's actually like quite the Ninja Turtles is dark.

33:06Jamelle Bouie:The first Ninja Turtles movie is quite gritty. And then the fight choreography is excellent. It's exceptionally well made. The suits, the puppets are by the Henson Company, so they look great. So, yeah, I don't know.

33:20David French:I've never seen that.

33:21Jamelle Bouie:It's fun for kids, but also it's a legitimately good movie. The sequels are terrible. The kids will lap up any slap we'll give to them. But the first movie is quite good.

33:32Michelle Cottle:Okay. David? So I'm going to go in a completely different direction here to anything I've ever recommended before. I'm going to go food. All right. And I'm going to ask Americans to reconsider the McDonald's double cheeseburger.

33:50David French:What? No, no.

33:52Michelle Cottle:Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so when you travel as much as I do, and you begin to reacquaint yourself with what are the sort of good fast foods to eat that are the sort of like the perfect size of meal and stick-to-itiveness. And I just want to say, I think too many Americans sleep on the McDonald's double cheeseburger. It is the perfectly sized sandwich. It is perfectly flavorful. And then when matched with, of course, the medium fry, it really is the most efficient, high quality lunch food that like consistently reliable, always good. I just, I want to present it to the listener. If you have written off McDonald's, give the McDonald's double cheeseburger another try.

34:45David French:Okay, I'll back you on the fries, but that's as far as I can go.

34:48Jamelle Bouie:Also, shout out to the Taco Bell bean and cheese and rice burrito grilled. Yeah, okay. I can do me some T-Bell. If you order from a kiosk, you can get any kind of modification you want. So you have to request it grilled, and it's terrific.

35:01David French:Okay, okay. Well, I'm going in the direction of music. for reasons that I can't even remember why, I have of late just been revisiting Lucinda Williams. Basically, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 1998, complete masterpiece, can't recommend highly enough. But the nice thing about talking to my phone is I can just say, play me Lucinda Williams, and it'll just go through all of the catalog, whatever I want. And then by chance, I discovered that she is going to be in D.C. for a concert or two in May. I've rounded up a bunch of women. We're going to crash this. It's going to be fantastic. But it's been a while.

35:45David French:I want to recommend just going back, listening to her greats, and remembering a time when, you know, we were all more naive and optimistic. Love it. And with that, we're going to land this plane. Guys, thank you so much. I couldn't make sense of all this without you. Let's do it again.

36:06Jamelle Bouie:Thanks, Michelle. Always happy to chat.

36:38David French:Transcription by CastingWords Eric Arthur, Vishak Adarba, Victoria Chamberlain, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Jillian Weinberger, Jasmine Romero, and Kari Pitkin. Mixing by Afim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, Afim Shapiro, and Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.

37:38You