Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to StayTuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

His White House is more invested in the DNC than Obama’s was, but also to not make it all about politics all the time. And what Biden’s thinking is that if he can get something like the infrastructure bill passed, then that makes much more of a difference in people’s lives that will benefit Democrats than pretty much anything else he could do.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Edward-Isaac Dovere. He’s a political correspondent at the Atlantic where he covers the White House. He’s also the author of the new book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Dovere spent three years leading up to the 2020 presidential election following the democratic candidates closely, joining them on the road, going backstage after debates, and documenting their challenges on the campaign trail. Now, as we make our way through the first year of Biden’s presidency, Dovere joins me to discuss the souls of political parties, and if a post-Trump world is upon us. That’s coming up. StayTuned.

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in an email from Hailey who asks, “What if Jeffrey Rosen hadn’t refused to sign Jeffrey Clark’s letter, spieling election fraud conspiracy theories. How close did we get to a successful coup in this country?” Well, Hailey that’s an excellent question, and that’s a horrifying hypothetical that you present. Just to take a step back and give some background on what you’re asking about. Jeffrey Rosen of course, was in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, the acting attorney general after Bill Barr left.

Preet Bharara:

Jeffrey Clark is someone that most people had never heard of until recently, he was the Chief of the Environmental Division at the Department of Justice. And in the final weeks doubled as the acting Chief of the Civil Division. So a high position, but certainly a couple of rungs below the top level of the justice department. And as Jeffrey Rosen has reportedly been testifying about to the Inspector General and to Congress, in the waning days of the administration after the election was over and after Donald Trump was deemed to have lost the election. This department of justice official was among other things, was having private conversations with Donald Trump about the big lie and how to perpetrate the big lie, although they didn’t use those words.

Preet Bharara:

And among other things he did, was he drafted letters on behalf of the acting Attorney General to officials in various states, not to federal officials, not to election authorities, but in the case of Georgia, to the Georgia State Legislature itself, giving them grist to say that the election had been unfair and corrupt in that state without any evidence. In Jeffrey Clark’s draft letter, he wrote, “The governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter. And if he declines to do so,” and this is stunning, “We share with you our view,” meaning the view of the department of justice officially. “We share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of presidential electors.”

Preet Bharara:

Basically saying, under the authority and auspices and prestige of the justice department’s highest official, that the Georgia legislature could overturn the election. To go back to your question, it is to the credit of Jeffrey Rosen that he said, “No way, no how.” And that letter was never sent. Had it been sent, who knows what kind of mischief could have been caused? The big lie is something that we have talked about, we have fretted about and led ultimately to the insurrection of January 6th, but it could have been even worse had a letter like this, been sent to Georgia officials and to others.

Preet Bharara:

The thrust of the letter should remind you, as it reminds me, of some of the other tactics used by Donald Trump and the chilling phrase he used with acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, which was something like, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.” Now, this issue of Jeffrey Clark and the obscenity of his actions was actually the subject of our own Ellie Honig’s note last week in which he sketches out how terrible this action was and how Jeffrey Clark deserves his place at the top of the list of Donald Trump’s worst enablers.

Preet Bharara:

And he quotes as I will now, one of our colleagues at Vox Media, Aaron Ruper, who commented as follows when he learned the news of the draft Jeffrey Clark letter, “A reminder that the prospect of a second Trump administration staffed by people who follow his orders is an existential threat to American democracy.” So to me, that’s the best answer to your question, what would have happened? I think we would have had an existential threat to our democracy and that threat persists so long as Donald Trump has a chance of coming back to office and installing in all the top positions, people like Jeffrey Clark.

Preet Bharara:

So of course, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the resignation of Andrew Cuomo. I’m recording this on Wednesday morning. It’s about a day after he stepped down or said he intends to step down in two weeks. The dust has settled a little bit, and I have a couple of quick reactions further to what I’ve said on the Insider podcast. One is, I think that Andrew Cuomo did the right thing. It’s the right thing for him, it’s the right thing for the state, it’s the right thing for democratic politics, it’s the right thing for the people. Kathy Hochul, the Lieutenant Governor, the long-serving Lieutenant Governor is widely respected, will take office and will become the first woman governor of the state of New York.

Preet Bharara:

But I want to say something else about why this accountability was good. And it’s because of the people who came forward courageously, the 11 women, who told their stories, found credible by the independent investigators, that there was some measure of accountability with respect to sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. And that I think is a good thing, no matter what party you’re from, no matter whether you’re a liberal or conservative. And I know that there are people who are upset, who say on Twitter and social media and in other places, “Well, what about Donald Trump and the credible allegations against him? What about Matt Gaetz? How come if you’re a Republican,” it seems to these particular folks, “There’s no accountability?”

Preet Bharara:

And that’s a hard question to answer, but we need to be careful in engaging in a certain kind of what about-ism? If the facts support accountability for a particular person, then that person should be held accountable, whether they’re a Democrat or Republican. Political science professor, Miranda Yaver, posted something the other day that I think is important and bears repeating and bearing in mind, “If you only care about sexual assault, when it’s committed by a member of the opposing political party, you don’t really care about sexual assault.” And I think that’s true. That’s true of people in the left, that’s true of people in the right.

Preet Bharara:

This is from a writer at the Bulwark, Ben Parker who wrote, “New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned thereby demonstrating once again, the benefits of political party accrues from not being a cult.” I think that’s food for thought as well. But my favorite reaction, my favorite response in the last 24 hours comes from my own daughter who’s 20 years old and working for a professor on her college campus, who after hearing all the news and seeing the back and forth texted me the following, “We’ve never had a female governor?? Big yikes.” Well, we’re going to have one now. Stay Tuned, there’s more coming up after this.

Preet Bharara:

My guest this week is journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere. He’s been covering Washington for over 10 years and now writes for the Atlantic. Before that he covered local New York State and city politics. So there’s new book, Battle for the Soul, retraces the Democratic Party’s journey to winning the presidency, amidst internal divisions and as the nation faced unprecedented challenges. Edward-Isaac Dovere, thanks for being on the show.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

Congratulations on the book. It’s called, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump. So I guess it’s obvious from the subtitle, but I’d like to begin by asking you, Battle for the Soul of what?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I mean, it’s Battle for the Soul of the country, but Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party, Battle for the Soul of politics. This phrase you may remember is one that Joe Biden started using after Charlottesville in 2017. And he said, “We’re in a Battle for the Soul of the nation,” but when he got into running and it was this idea that he had initially about getting in that was, he just needed to get Trump out of the way

Joe Biden:

As love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation. And this is a battle we will win and we’ll do it together.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

This was deeper than politics and Republicans or Democrats or policy, whatever it is. There was something fundamental going on, that was before we knew all of what 2020 would hold, and even all of what the rest of the Trump’s presidency would hold. And you think about all the things that ended up being in the balance in the course of the campaign, there’s a quote in the book from Tom Hanks, who I turn to for all my political advice-

Preet Bharara:

Life is a box of chocolates?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Exactly. But it was Tom Hanks, not playing a character, he was doing a fundraiser for Biden in August of last year. And of course he was the first high profile person who got COVID, he recovered. But he was saying at the fundraiser, when you think about all the things that are going on in this election and this year, the public health crisis, the economic crisis, this was a little bit after George Floyd. And then so the racial reckoning that had been set off, all these things he said, and that it happens to be in a year when as a country America got to say, “This is what we want versus that.” Tom Hanks said, “You have to think that maybe there’s something bigger going on.” Whether or not you subscribe to the Tom Hanks theology of this, it is kind of amazing how many things ended up being in the middle of this.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And then you pile on more stuff, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying six weeks before the election and the Supreme Court balance changing. All of it just going on. And so the book ends with this interview that I did with Biden at the beginning of February, about 10 days into his presidency. And I said to him towards the beginning of the interview, “So Mr. President, I should tell you that we were bouncing around in a couple of different titles, but we finally landed on in the last couple of days and finalized it, and it’s going to be called Battle for the Soul.” And he said to me, in his sort of sarcastic way, “Yeah, well the difference between you and me pal is, I actually believe it.” And-

Preet Bharara:

I want to get into whether or not you believe it.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, and I said to him, “No, I think you, you may have been on to something, because I think with all this stuff, it’s hard to deny that there was something fundamentally right there.” I guess the last point I’d make on this though is that, when Biden started using this phrase in the campaign in 2019, when he first got in, a lot of his aides told him to stop using it and that it wasn’t polling well, and people weren’t responding to it. And what happened with him seems to be, that he met a moment that he didn’t even realize he was going to meet. That the moment wasn’t there when he got into the race, but certainly was by the time that November came around.

Preet Bharara:

And it certainly wasn’t there in 1988 when he first ran for president. And sometimes as he notes as a student of history and also a politician, the timing is everything. But I want to ask you a philosophical question about this. Do political parties have souls? What does that mean? I understand when we talk about people, and people have different theological views about souls and what they are. I can even understand that a nation rooted in particular values and that draws its power from foundational documents like the constitution and other founding documents. You can talk about the soul of a country, I guess. What does it mean for a political party that many people would view as just being a sort of accretion of different factions, with different interests who are left of center, and have different views about a lot of different things. How can you rightly say that a party has a soul and there could be a battle for it?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, I think that in years past the conglomeration of interests, idea of a party maybe made a little more sense than it does now. And Republicans and Democrats it seems have for most people, it’s become part of an identity in a much deeper way. And when we see these studies that are done of Republicans and Democrats generally living in different places, or not being in relationships whether a romantic relationship or a Republican is with a Democrat, or where even on the friendship level, Democrats and Republicans don’t tend to be friends with each other. There’s a much bigger sorting that’s going on, and it seems like it’s a fundamental question of what we want in a broad way America to be. But the question you’re asking is internally about the Democratic Party.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, first, I’m going to ask you about the Republicans too, but first the Democrats, what does it mean for there to be a soul?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I think that it’s what soul… I mean, I did not write this as the former Hebrew school teacher than I am.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you’re a good person to answer it, given that background, Isaac.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I taught ten-year-olds mostly. So we didn’t get this deep, but I did major in philosophy in college. So maybe that gives me a little bit more-

Preet Bharara:

Now you’re building up a lot of pressure for yourself. You keep adding to your credentials for being able to answer the philosophical question. So I hope you bring it home, Isaac.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I do think that what we are seeing is whether there is a… what it means within this sense of, “Okay, this is who you are, identified as who you are as a person,” more and more so for people as Democrats and as Republicans. Okay, so then what does that mean? Does that mean, so for example, in the first primary debate that the Democrats had in Miami, and it was the first night of the debate, so that session is mostly remembered for Kamala Harris going after Joe Biden, but that was actually the second night. That first night, there was a question as to whether people wanted to treat border crossings as criminal behavior.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And a lot of the people on stage raised their hands to say they didn’t want to treat it that way. That’s a fundamental thing, it’s a value that goes beyond PAX policy and goes into thinking about how we relate to each other as human beings, that obviously intersects policy. So it’s not as easy as like a soul in any kind of a religious setting thing. But how we define ourselves and how we think even now during the pandemic, whether the right way to approach coming out of the pandemic is to move much more toward the communal way of acting, the what I think a lot of people on the left flank of the Democratic Party want to identify as a more democratic socialist approach, or whether it is more of a pragmatic approach. What Joe Biden would say was his approach before and is even his approach now it’s just in a different moment kind of pragmatism.

Preet Bharara:

So it’s kind of a struggle or a scuffling over fundamental values and aspirations of a party. Is that fair?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. And I think in this moment, because it’s mixed up with the two parties reacting to each other, what kind of America we want this to be, and what kind of an approach to government, a thinking of the role of government in our lives we want it to be. It does not seem just happenstance that over the last four years, there was a rise in hate crimes. That kind of thing flows out of our politics, and certainly seems to have some connection to Donald Trump’s rhetoric.

Preet Bharara:

So is that about politics, not so much our culture?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, I mean, those are, especially that we’ve just come from having a cultural star be our president, those are interconnected. And I do think that one of the funny things that is true of America is that when someone is succeeding in a big way, we start talking about them running for office, right? This happened with you, right? But it’s also, we talked about that as, “Oh, the top thing would be to run for president.” It doesn’t seem like that’s true in a lot of other countries, but here was Donald Trump is really popular, people are telling to him, “Maybe you should run for president.” That in itself is sort of crazy.

Preet Bharara:

It’s very funny you say that, and I hadn’t thought about it in this way, but it’s true. Somebody gives a big speech, “Wow, they should be president,” if they’re already in office, if they’re not in office and they give a big speech, “Well, they should run for something.” Even though folks have no idea what that person’s views might be, have no idea what that the  cause might be. I often tell the story of a prior guest on the show, Cyrus Habib, extraordinary individual, a blind Lieutenant governor, former blind attending governor of the state of Washington. And he tells a story along these lines, he gave a speech once and people were very impressed and they had not known who he was before. And on the strength of that speech said, “You should run for president.” He’s like, “Why? You don’t know anything about me.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And that’s a guy who left politics for something that is completely from politics, right?

Preet Bharara:

To become a priest. I’m going to try to have him come and explain that because I think it’s an extraordinary thing, both his prior career and what he’s chosen to do now, to minister to people, StayTuned for that. But how can it be the case that in the United States of America, there is a lot of disdain for politics and politicians. I haven’t recently looked at a poll, all institutions in America have less credibility and have less favorable ratings than they used to have, including the Supreme Court, the press, lawyers, medicine, you name it. How can it simultaneously be true that all of that respect for politicians has waned and the second that somebody shows any kind of success or pinache, people immediately imprint upon them political ambition. And not just political ambition, but a desire for them to rise in politics.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I don’t know, because there’s something pretty wrong with us, probably deep in our heads-

Preet Bharara:

That’s your answer?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

No. I mean, look, I wrote, I remember in the beginning of 2018 a story about Oprah and whether she would run for president, which was prompted by a really great speech, she gave at the Golden Globes, it made people start talking about it. And then it became an assignment that I got from an editor. I wrote the piece, but Oprah doesn’t want to run for president, Oprah actually has a pretty good life. And that was part of what I heard back. As it happened in the Democratic race, the two people who were the most successful, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are people who have been in politics their entire lives, right?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Joe Biden won his first election in 1970, Bernie Sanders won his first election in 19, I think it was 81. It might’ve been 80, but it’s a long time before being in a position to be the Democratic nominee. So part of what maybe is going on or was going on in the Democratic Party is looking to a little bit more experience all of a sudden and not thinking that something would be interesting just because they got flashy and were able to go ahead. But I remember sitting at one point in April of 2019 in a coffee shop in Concord, New Hampshire with Pete Buttigieg right at the moment when his campaign was first starting to take off. And I had known Buttigieg from when he decided to run for DNC chair at the end of 2016, and everybody thought that was crazy because, “Who’s this guy? He’s just the mayor of South Bend.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And all of a sudden, “Who is this guy? He’s the mayor of South Bend,” and yet he was starting to be a real factor in presidential polls. And I had gone around New Hampshire and I’d said to people, “Okay, I know you think he’s interesting, but president Pete Buttigieg?” And the people were all saying to me, “Yeah, that seems right.” And I was trying to be the skeptical reporter. And one of these conversations is in the book where I say to someone, “Okay, but there’s some kind of emergency disaster, we’re watching TV, that that famous shot of the presidential seal is on the screen, and then it fades away, and then it’s Pete Buttigieg behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And this woman said to me, “Yeah, well he’s impressive, and my daughter’s impressive. And I think that he is impressive, and so why not?” Which is such a strange thing. I’m glad we should all be proud of our kids and all but… And I said to Buttigieg then at that coffee shop, “I mean, is this because of Donald Trump?” And he said to me, “Well,” in this very Pete Buttigieg way, “I’d like to think not a lot of it is.” But of course, some of it was.

Preet Bharara:

Well, but Donald Trump has accelerated, because Donald Trump himself, who was the entree for him? Nobody.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

He’s like the guy that you could have made these comments about when he decided he was going to run and nobody thought he could win. And the last number of years in politics has reminded me of what William Goldman said, famous, perhaps the best screenwriter of all time, “No one knows anything.” And I appreciate that you and other smart people opine on these things, but you can’t always predict. Now, can we pause on the Democrats for a second, and switch to the Republicans, and then we’ll go back to the Democrats for equal time.

Preet Bharara:

So which party is facing a more serious and existential Battle for the Soul, the Democrats that you write about mostly in this book, or the Republicans? And in showing your work in answering that question, consider addressing also the question of whether or not Liz Cheney is a Republican, is Donald Trump a Republican?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, I think that it’s a bigger question for the Republicans because it comes down to at this point, whether or not they believe in America and they believe in the constitution, whether they believe in elections, these sorts of things, or whether it’s just about winning? And winning for, it’s not quite clear what reason other than to beat the other guys. And even if that means questioning and cheerleading, and cheating, should there be the opportunity, that’s a real different thing.

Preet Bharara:

What you’re saying, is it just based on what you said a second ago, within the Republican Party, is the battle over one conception of the soul versus another conception of the soul, or is it a battle between having a soul or not?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Maybe closer to the latter. And you see then where Liz Cheney, she is not a liberal, she is not-

Preet Bharara:

Right. You giggle. I want the record to reflect that you began the sentence, a declarative sentence about Liz Cheney with a giggle. Where’d the giggle come from?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, I’ll tell you, I was talking to Liz Cheney recently and I was talking to her about Hakeem Jeffries who is one of the leaders in the house on the democratic side, and might end up being the next speaker of the house. And she and Jeffries had developed a pretty good working relationship around the second impeachment of Trump. I was getting her to reflect on him a little bit, and she, at the end of the conversation said to me, “I just want to be clear, I don’t agree with him on any kind of policy. And I think he’s a partisan, but he does believe in the constitution, and he does believe in Congress as an institution.” She did that inadvertent rhyme herself, so that’s why it’s in my head.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And I started laughing then, and I guess I’m chuckling because I’m remembering laughing to her. And I said, “Isn’t that weird Congresswoman, that you have to say that now?” Like, “Yeah. I mean, we disagree on everything, but we do both believe in the constitution.” But that is where we are as a country at this point, which is really bizarre. And it’s not that we’re there because Democrats and Republicans are fighting with each other, it’s because of what’s happening within the Republican Party.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And it’s what happens when Cheney says, that Donald Trump seems to have been involved in instigating some of the action that was involved with the riot, which is just a factual statement. And for that, she is pushed out of her leadership post. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader is now saying that she’s a Pelosi Republican, whatever that means, because she took a spot on the commission to investigate the riot. Then it becomes that this is not about, the Republican Party at this point is not looking like it’s a party, but is a cult personality around Donald Trump, that what is defining it is not what Liz Cheney believes on social policy, or international affairs, or tax policy, or whatever else.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

It’s whether she is fully in allegiance to Donald Trump and to his insistence that most Republicans, and certainly most Republicans off the record and leadership positions will say, they know isn’t true, but that they are continuing to hold to. And that’s a really dangerous thing because what I think we can see from the riot is, that there are a lot of people who don’t realize that this is in the minds of some Republican leaders, just a thing that they’re saying to get a political advantage, that it’s real, that they really were there to break down the doors of the Capitol and go looking to stop the certification of the election.

Preet Bharara:

So Isaac, I want to talk about parties a little more, and then we’ll get to some particular things. One of the criticisms that people level to you, and that I think is your criticism also, but it comes from your conversations with other people that you describe in the book, is the degree to which Barack Obama did not do much for party building for the Democratic Party. And I think various people refer to the way he treated the party as benign neglect. And that’s generally treated in your book as a negative thing, and it’s one of the reasons why some people speculate Hillary Clinton lost and Obama was focused on other things.

Preet Bharara:

And I guess why is that necessarily a bad thing? When today we’re talking so much about the crisis of tribalism and we’re constantly saying things, and you were alluding to this a moment ago, that there are people who are putting party over country and spending too much time on their tribe. The fact that Obama spent more time thinking about the kinds of legislation he wanted to pass and had an attitude of benign neglect towards parties, in the current atmosphere, is that not a good thing?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I think to qualify good or bad is not the argument that I was making in the book, but at the beginning of the book, I’m trying to explain what are the circumstances that led to Trump being elected, that led to the weakness there that he was able to capitalize on-

Preet Bharara:

But now take it as a normative question now, going forward, we’re talking about battle for the soul, there’s obviously something normative in that question and in that struggle. Going forward, should Biden be spending a lot of time building up the party as a party and should the Republicans be doing the same? Is that our fate, building a party so they can fight with each other as opposed to building up some other thing?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, there’s a balance that seems like it needs to be struck here and Biden is certainly searching for it, right? Where some of it is to not engage in the fights with Trump and in the political fights back and forth. I’ve referred to this in an article I wrote recently as a pre-Twitter approach to politics that Biden has. But because this is going to be fought out in elections and will be determined by who wins and who loses elections, there does need to be an investment politically for Democrats, if they want to have any of their objectives to have a chance, that it goes through campaigns, when we get to the midterms next year. And if the Republicans win the majorities in the House and the Senate, it doesn’t matter how high minded Joe Biden wants to be, his agenda is finished. It’s simple.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And that’s why there’s this push to approach things like the voting laws in states that have been passed on a level of policy, whether that’s Democrats fighting them at the state legislature level, or with the bills that they want to pass in Congress, before the People Act, the John Lewis Act. And by the way, there’s a legal aspect to this, but there are lawsuits that are going on to try to stop some of them, but there’s also a political aspect to it. If the Democrats had had a better November last year, and it should be said, obviously Joe Biden won, that’s a big thing for the Democrats, but it did go as well as they were hoping and thinking it would go on pretty much any level, House level, Senate level, State Legislature level. Then it would have been much harder for these laws to get passed in some of the states, in Texas it’s a very different thing, obviously there’s a large majority for Republicans.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But this is a question where it’s entangled and Biden is trying to figure out how to have a political approach that is stronger than Obama’s, and so far he is, and his White House is more invested in the DNC than Obama’s was, but also to not make it all about politics all the time. And what Biden’s thinking is that if he can get something like the infrastructure bill passed, then that makes much more of a difference in people’s lives that will benefit Democrats than pretty much anything else he could do.

Preet Bharara:

So I think you said earlier that one of the ways you can describe the Battle for the Soul, and sort of the pragmatists arrayed against Democratic socialists or however you want to describe them. There’s something that’s been interesting to me for a while, I had Congressman Richard Torres on the show a few weeks ago, who actually now is a rising star in the Democratic Party, representative who represents a large swath of the South Bronx, poorest district in the country, median income, $28,000 or less. And we talked about how Democrats should be addressing issues of poverty, very famously Bobby Kennedy, who was kind of a tough minded, pragmatic Democrat a long, long time ago, half a century ago.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

He’s one of the greatest legislators ever to serve in the history of the United States Congress. He was a prolific legislator. And even though he had passionately held progressive principles and convictions, he was always able and willing to build coalitions in order to pass legislation.

Preet Bharara:

That was important part of his campaign. And I’ve read recently people describing how Biden has criticized Democrats for emphasizing the plight of the poor at the expense of society’s middle rungs. I worked for Senator Schumer who talked about the middle-class, wrote a book about the middle-class, it seems to be a mantra of folks. Obviously the middle-class is important and needs to be built up. In this battle for the soul, do you have a view or an inkling as to where issues of poverty arise and where they’re placed?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah, it’s tricky because one of the things that I mentioned in passing in the book, but I spent a lot of time on at the time was in the run-up to the 2014 midterms, the Obama White House was focusing on trying to raise the minimum wage. And one of the things that stopped that from happening is they got a lot of polling back that said that most voters were hearing raising the minimum wage as something that didn’t affect them. That meant that poor people would get more money, “Then what does it do for me?” And what Biden want to try to figure out is how you do things that will help people who are in poverty, and there’s certainly stuff in the American rescue plan that does that. But that it’s not just that, and if you look at the Child Tax Credit, for example, that that’s up to $600 a month for almost all American households, right? Not all, and the people who are out of it are the people who are very, very wealthy.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But if you get a couple of hundred dollars a month, even if you’re an upper middle class family from the government, all of a sudden, then that’s something that’s happening for you. And I do think that a big part of what left the space there that Trump capitalized on was this feeling that people had that they were getting left out, no matter who they were. That things were being done for other people and whether that was the government was taking care of the poor, or even after the Wall Street Crash, the bankers seemed to be doing great. They got their bailouts, and a lot of people in the middle just felt like, “I’m working harder than I ever worked, and I still can’t pay my mortgage,” or, “I still can’t figure out how to send my kid to college,” or whatever it is. “And no one’s doing anything for me.”

Preet Bharara:

And now you’re going to give money to poor people so they can eat. I mean, this is fundamental problem that I have with all of this, and maybe one of the lessons that is sort of policy-related consequence of that is to the extent you do things for the poor, there has to be either no or very little means testing. So you have popular programs like social security, otherwise people think someone else is getting a handout and they’re not. Although at the same time, there’s this interesting controversy over the push to forgive college loans, which affects not the poor, but a different wrong in the socioeconomic spectrum. And you have people saying, “Well, that’s not fair either.” And maybe any time you target a particular rung, folks in the other rungs get upset. And is that just inevitable? And we have to deal with it?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, as you’re talking about this, it’s making me think about how Biden thinks about this. So I did, there are sort of two full interviews with Biden in the book. And one of them, as I said, is when he was president already. But one of them was about a week before Trump’s inauguration, and we’re sitting in his office in the West Wing, the VP’s office, a couple doors down from the Oval Office. And I said to him, “So what do you think a Democrat is?” And so it goes to what you were talking about a few minutes ago, what is this party? And that was at the moment when everybody in the Democratic Party was in true existential crisis.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And what he started talking about is, “Oh, this needs to be speaking to people that we’ve forgotten, that we lost the connection to, the working class, people who are in the middle class and are trying to raise themselves up.” And he said to me, “What I’ve learned in my entire career in politics, you can do anything with somebody and get them to move along as long as you don’t change their standard of living downward.” And that’s core to Biden, that’s who he is in the essence, right? If you give people a little something, then maybe you can get them to be more open when it comes to, I don’t know, immigration policy or to your point, if they feel like they’re getting something, then they will be more willing to help other people too.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But if they always feel like they’re getting left out of the equation, then what we’ve seen is, certainly in 2016, is that it makes people say, “You know what, screw it. I want somebody to do something for me.” And when they looked at Trump, what a lot of voters saw was, “Hey, I get it. He’s a sexist, or he says racist stuff sometimes, he seems crazy, but at least he is angry, like I’m angry.” And I mean, you can laugh at it, but it was really powerful, right?

Preet Bharara:

Although, I feel that, and tell me if I’m naive and I very well may be, another reason why politics may not be for me, that there are times, I wonder if there’s a failure of imagination on the part of politicians, because there are times when Americans band together and get angry, in fact, the word you just used, about issues and policies that actually don’t affect them and don’t hurt them. But they have a sense of moral outrage about them, case in point, family separations at the border. That’s not something that an affluent family in Armonk, New York had to really worry about, but there was a moral outrage. People wanted something done about that. I’m not comparing that necessarily to issues of extreme and persistent poverty in the South Bronx or in other places. But isn’t there a mode of politics that allows people not to have to choose the middle-class over the poor?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. But I mean, human beings are self interested. And they often want to know what’s going to happen for them. I mean, a better example maybe than even the family separation response, which was a big thing, is what happened last summer with the protests after George Floyd was killed. And I remember talking to a guy named Mark Pocan, who’s a Congressman from Wisconsin, big progressive leader. He’s white. And he said to me that the way that he knew that something was different in what was going on is that there were protests in the cul-de-sacs in the suburbs, right?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

That people, black or white or whatever, that it was not about what color your skin was, or your socioeconomic status, there was this bigger uprising of people saying, “Enough. That’s too much.” But it did take a video that was almost nine minutes long of somebody being slowly strangled to death for that to happen. Despite years of other black men being killed by police. And it’s not like, it should be said, that has to date generated a bill that is signed into law to change anything.

Preet Bharara:

You interviewed and talked to a lot of these candidates who you had varying degrees of success until they all fell by the wayside and Biden became the nominee. And I’ve a couple of questions for you about that process of observing these people and talking about them and taking notes, and then writing this book. Did you see any moments of nobility or grace in the 2020 campaign that stood out to you?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah, I think maybe more than most people would expect. So I started working on this book. I signed the contract just about three years ago in 2018, thinking that this was going to be a crazy election worth keeping track of, obviously not knowing just how crazy. And I went to all the campaigns and said, “Hey, I’m going to work on this book. It’ll come out in the spring of 2021. It would be great to have access to the campaign, to the candidate in a way that you wouldn’t give day-to-day under the agreement,” in journalism, we call it an embargo, that it wouldn’t come out until then.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And a lot of folks agreed, including a bunch of the candidates, and that gave an insight into these people because I was able to talk to them in the moment and say like, “What are you really feeling right now? How’s it come across?” And sometimes through that, or sometimes just being on the trail, you’d see things that would sort of surprise me, or surprise me by how unsurprising they were in a way. So like the night before the South Carolina primary, I was in this college gym where Biden had just given a speech and it was pre-COVID, it was pre secret service protection for him.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And he is walking, doing the rope line, talking to people, and there’s a woman there holding a piece of paper, shaking. And she is encouraged by the staff to go up and talk to Biden and she’s clearly so nervous to do it. And she gets there, and she hands him the piece of paper and tears are starting to stream down her face. And the piece of paper talks about how she has a daughter who had a medical condition, and she’s just frantic, doesn’t know what to do. And Biden holds it down in front of him, and he just says to her, “Let me make sure that we get your number, maybe I can do something.” And this is 12 hours before the voting starts in South Carolina, what ended up being the beginning of his route on the way to winning the nomination, and obviously the presidency.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

That’s that moment where he didn’t know that I could hear that, he wasn’t doing it for hat, but that’s who is. You see that sometimes, Bernie Sanders has a reputation for being pretty abrasive and he often lives up to that reputation. But sometimes he also, when he sees somebody who’s really struggling, he’ll connect with that person, and he’ll zone in completely on that person. Buttigieg, bring him up again, I was sitting with him the night of the Iowa caucuses, again, under one of these embargoed conversations. And it was about an hour before the voting started we didn’t know then that the caucuses were going to be a disaster, and we certainly didn’t… He was hoping that he would win, but it felt like it could go kind of either way.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And he had just had a week before that, he’d been at a fundraiser in Chicago, and there were some protesters who showed up with signs that said, “Queers against Pete.” And they had criticized him for his college tuition plan not having enough to deal with, this very specific situations about child privilege who was gay and came out to his parents and was kicked out and then needed assistance, and attacked him for how he handled the shooting. A police officer had shot a man in South Bend, if you remember in 2019, and how he’d led the department that led to those circumstances.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And watching Buttigieg, who is, as your listeners will know, pretty analytic about things, wrestle with those things, wrestle with being the most successful, openly gay candidate in American history, but have it not be the point of pride for a lot of gay people because gay activists who were saying that he wasn’t doing enough, right? “Queers against Pete.” And how he was fighting with that internally to process it, or again, how when he spoke with that protester about the man who was shot in South Bend, these moments where you think like, “We want politics to be not just about super ambitious people, elbowing each other out of the way to see who can get a primary delegate one way or the other.” And often that is what happens.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But if you spend enough time with people, I think anybody who’s going to throw their lives into a presidential campaign, you’ll get moments like this out of people. And those are three stories. It’s often through these campaigns, you’d see something where it’s just like, that connection you think, “Oh, that’s why this person is spending endless amount of time and money in Iowa, far from the family and doing this,” Andrew Yang once referred to me as the candidate Olympics, right? All the things that they have to do, a flip burgers, try this food-

Preet Bharara:

There’s harder things than flipping burgers.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. I did actually watch him flip burgers at one stop. So, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a particular phenomenon you described in the book where Obama post-presidency is not particularly vocal publicly, but people are making the pilgrimage to come see him, people who were aspiring to be president in 2020, including Elizabeth Warren and some others, Kamala Harris also. And Obama put it in a particular way that I found striking. He said something like, “Don’t do it unless you feel like you really, really have to do it.” And I guess he was talking about some inner fire or burning feeling that someone needed to possess. He didn’t quite call it ambition, maybe it was that, but if you don’t have that need to do it, absolute need to do it, then you shouldn’t do it. What do you make of that?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. Well, part of what you’re getting at is Obama and this role that he had, and yes, there’s a lot of criticism from folks about how he wasn’t more invested in the Democratic Party as president. But then what I get into in the book is, how he was actually pretty involved as in his post-presidency in trying to figure out how the party moves forward. Somebody who was talking to him, described it as, “Like a parent who is teaching his kid how to ride a bike, who sees that it’s a little wobbly, puts his hand back on the seat for a little bit.” And he was having these meetings with most of the people who ended up running for president, in addition to a bunch of other people. Most of them had not been reported on before.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And what he’s talking about, he gave that same advice to people, to whether it was Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren, anybody who said, “I think I’m going to run for president.” What he’s really saying is like, “Don’t do it unless you really feel like you need to do it.” Because it’s hard and it stinks, and you’re away from your family, and you give the same speech a million times, and you have to go make nice this local political Pumbaa, Poobah, not Pumbaa. This local Poobah-

Preet Bharara:

No, the Pumbaas you can ignore. It’s the Poobahs.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

There may be too many cartoons in my house at the moment. And try to make them feel like they’re a big shot. And the story that when Obama was running for president in 2007, probably this was when this happened, he’s driving around and he says, David Axelrod, his political consultant, “This would be really interesting if I wasn’t in the middle of it.” And there’s another story that he likes to tell that he it’s right before the Iowa caucuses in 2008. And of course, he’s fighting [inaudible 00:47:57] hard with Hillary Clinton. And he is going in between stops in Iowa and they get in the car and they hand him a list of people to call. And he says, “Who are these, county chairs?” And they say, “No.” And he says, “I’m just too tired, I don’t want to do it.” And they say, “We have to make this call, Senator.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And he says, “Well, are they donors?” And they said, “No, they’re high school students,” because high school students can caucus if they are going to be 18 by the time of the election. And so he calls one up and he says, “Hi, it’s Senator Barack Obama here.” And there’s a girl on the other side and she says, “Oh, hi Barack.” She says, “I’m in the middle of a yearbook meeting right now, can I call you back later?” And he-

Preet Bharara:

He was not yet the Commander in Chief, he was on inspiring so much awe.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. And so you have to be ready to do it.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned this in recent writing about Joe Biden, and there’s a parallel in your book. And in both cases, neither Joe Biden nor you in the book, obviously for different reasons, don’t spend a lot of time talking about Donald Trump. I wonder if you think with respect to the Biden strategy, that’s wise, that’s pragmatic, that’s tenable, given that, Trump is still out there, Trump still is so far winning the battle for the soul, such as it is of the Republican Party. He may run again, some people think it’s very likely, he could win again.

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of the strategy to sort of ignore him? Because on the other side of the coin, I know there are people who say, and I’ve heard people recently talking about how, if you want to persuade people about something in politics, or policy, or anything else among the most polarizing words you can use are Trump or Obama, or the names of people who voters and other folks immediately sympathize with or hate. And so if you want to get your point across, don’t mention those people, what do you think?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

So my strategy in not including a lot of Trump in the book was because I felt like there were a lot of books about there by, or certainly were going to be about Donald Trump by reporters who covered him in and out. And you should go read those if you want another Trump book. This is not another Trump book at all, was my feeling, and I hope it holds up that there was a lot going on in the Democratic Party and trying to figure it out, that obviously Trump was the context for, but that required a real look that didn’t get caught up in the day-to-day of Trump stuff. And of course, those are the people that ended up in power, at least for now.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

The Biden strategy is about how he approaches fights, which is that his instinct is, if you get into a back and forth with someone, then it’s going to get worse. And that there is a way to deescalate things by not engaging. And what I’ve reported on recently is that the strategy of the White House flowing from him on down is to treat Trump, one of his aides said to me, like a crazy person who believes in conspiracies, right? Who’s not an equal, to sort of dismiss him, put them off to the side. Sort of the way that Tom Brady kind of made fun of him indirectly, right?

Preet Bharara:

People referred to that as Donald Trump’s worst day ever.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah, because he’s often talked about Tom Brady and wanting to be a supporter. And then Tom Brady is standing at the Superbowl and makes a joke about how, “Hey, 40% of people think we still didn’t win the Superbowl,” which just treats the election conspiracy stuff as the ridiculous crap than it is, and just makes fun of it.

Tom Brady:

We found our rhythm, we got on a roll, not a lot of people think that we could have won. And in fact, I think about 40% of the people still don’t think we won.

Joe Biden:

I understand that.

Tom Brady:

You understand that, Mr. President?

Joe Biden:

I understand that.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Donald Trump hates being made fun of, he hates people laughing at him, but that’s what was going on there from someone that he wants to have a connection to, and making the joke to Joe Biden. And Biden laughing along and saying… the Brady line is like, “You get what I’m saying, right? And Biden says like, “Oh yeah, I get it.” So I think that what the Biden folks are watching at the moment is when they have to get more engaged, if they do. And some of that is going to come back to seeing what the election results are starting in the fall of this year and going into the primaries next year, how big of a factor really is Trump? How defining is he? And if he is defining, and it seems like he’s going to be the force that is dominating the Republican Party, as he certainly is right now. And if he’s going to be the likely opponent in 2024, I think you will see Biden engage more.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But one thing that I’ve noticed about how Biden is able to succeed in the way that he goes about this is, I’ll give you the example of what happened with the All-Star Game, the Baseball All-Star Game when the Major League decided to move the game. After those voting laws were passed in Georgia, moved it out of Atlanta. Biden was asked about this in the period where it wasn’t clear what MLB was going to do. And they said, “Do you think that that’s something people should look at?” And he said, “Yeah, I think they should consider it.” And if you think about the response that that generated, people did seem to say like, “Maybe that’s something they should consider.” Now, imagine if Donald Trump had said that, or if Barack Obama had said that it would have just erupted as a huge political craziness back and forth, everybody to their different barricades. And it wouldn’t have been the same kind of conversation. But when Biden-

Preet Bharara:

And why is that?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I think it’s because Biden has this calmer way of talking about things. People feel a different kind of personal connection to him and he doesn’t light up the same kind of response. We see that, whether it’s that, clearly there’s a lot of things that have been written at this point about how conservative publishing is finding a really hard time selling any anti-Biden books, right?

Preet Bharara:

Well, there are some people who say that, with respect to the comparison to Obama, who also, pretty calm guy, pretty calm temperament, it has to do with something other than their temperament.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yes. Something in the skin color area.

Preet Bharara:

In the pigmentation. Yes.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Yeah. And I think that that’s really true too. And obviously Trump is a reaction in part to the anxiety that people felt about the country changing that a guy named Barack Obama, who was half African, half Kansan seem to embody, right? The whole idea of Make America Great Again, is the again there. It’s to bring it back to something. And so that is for sure an advantage that Biden has that Obama has, and I don’t mean advantage in… It’s just the reality. Politically, people looked at Obama and some people said, “This is different and that’s great.” And some people said, “This is different and it’s scary.”

Preet Bharara:

Let’s talk about somebody else that you’ve written about also important, and presumably will be on the American political stage for a while. And that’s the vice-president, Kamala Harris. How hard is her job, particularly given the tasks assigned to her and how will that help or hurt her in future politics? I believe you have a view.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Her job is almost impossible, it seems like, because of all-

Preet Bharara:

But how can an unimportant job, that prior political figures have referred to as not worth a bucket of spit or something else, how can a job that is not so important, be so difficult?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Well, number one, there is the expectation that she will be running for president pretty soon. And that’s either in 2024, if something changes. And it should be said, Joe Biden is for sure every intention, every plan, everything, there’s no anything other than he’s running in 2024, but let’s see what happens, right? Things as you said, nobody knows anything. So I wouldn’t get fully into the predictions on this, but if not, she’s going to be running for president in 2028. And there’s also that she is a historic first, obviously in a lot of ways, right? You think all of the vice presidents that we’ve had until this point in history have been white men, right? And she is the first woman, she’s the first black person in that, she’s the first person of South Asian descent there.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

That’s a lot that’s on her, a lot of expectations that are there. And Republicans who either just because they want to win an election and see her as the future opponent, or certainly and there’s a strain of Republicans who likewise are having a reactionary response to her effect on things and want to get things back to not being someone who looks and sounds like her. There’s a lot of pressure there. And meanwhile, you think about the fact that she’d never been to the White House before she was inaugurated as vice-president. She’d only been in Washington for four years, right? There’s a lot to learn about this job, and Biden has taken this approach of making her the apprentice, sort of pun intended there, and-

Preet Bharara:

But why is he giving her, just to cut to it, one of the most difficult portfolios, you can give someone on some of the most intractable issues?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

His theory is that what she is doing, for example, on being the diplomatic lead on the migration crisis is the assignment that Obama gave him as vice-president, and that she should get the same treatment. A lot of people look at this, and I had a quote from John Cornyn, the Senator from Texas, who’s Republican, very opposed to the Biden approach on immigration. He said to me, that it feels like he handed her a grenade, pulled the pin out and walked away. And that’s not somebody who’s hoping good things for Kamala Harris’s political future.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And so you’d think that maybe he would give her things that would be easier to solve or that would provide clearer wins. And certainly if she is going to run for president again, she’ll need to have some things that she can say, “I did this, this is my accomplishment.” But so much of what’s going on from the president and his top aides at this point is about making sure that Biden is the star of the show and making sure that every accomplishment is primarily a Biden accomplishment, that it hasn’t left lot of room for her to do that. That may change as we get further from the beginning of the presidency.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

And certainly if Biden runs for re-election with her as his running mate, which is what would happen, and they win and come 2025, and then the positioning would start for her to run for president, you could see things moving in that way. But so far it hasn’t been there. I think you’re right, he’s been giving her a lot of things that are really tough. One thing that may be the exception to that, depending on how she plays it as this assignment to do stuff on voting rights, which is not going to be that successful, it wouldn’t seem if her main task is trying to negotiate in the Senate, but would be more successful perhaps if she were to go around the country and raise the political pressure to do this.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Which is something that a lot of people who want good things for her, like William Barber, the Reverend, the Poor People’s Campaign leader said to me that he feels like this is not the time to have power and not use it. That he wants her going around in the south and every place else that can drum up political pressure here to do something to motivate the votes, which again, ties back to what we were talking about earlier of, this connection between politics and legislation.

Preet Bharara:

All right. I have one final question for you, Isaac. No pressure, but your answer to this question will determine whether we even run this sucker at all.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

All right. Okay, you ready?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

All right.

Preet Bharara:

Is it Mary’s dress waves or Mary’s dress sways?

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

What I will say is I’m surprised-

Preet Bharara:

Oh, just answer the damn question.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

No, no. This is what I was going to say, there area bunch of Springsteen’s references in this book and I’m actually shocked that this whole interview wasn’t about them. The fact that Joe Biden thought that his launch rally should have Springsteen playing at it before he was talked out of it.

Preet Bharara:

I read those portions of the book, but I wanted to save this question for last.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I don’t know. I think we got to go with sways. It sound right.

Preet Bharara:

Nice having you on the show. I spent some time addressing this recently, and I’ve always thought it was waves. My listeners are sick of me talking about this, I’m sure, given how much more important stuff is going on in the world. But there is considerable evidence for the proposition that it was intended to be sways, but I’m still going to sing it waves because that’s my right as an American.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

But what I want to know is, and of course, you’re a good lawyer who’s made a lot of hay in your career out of finding a little bit. What difference does it make to the song itself?

Preet Bharara:

It doesn’t really. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, because you can listen to it. And I think there were occasions, as someone pointed out and I don’t appreciate any criticism of Bruce, generally. But it’s true, he’s not one of the great annunciators in music history.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I think that’s fair. I think he would grunt at that in agreement.

Preet Bharara:

And David Remnick has a piece, he’s one of the people who got to the bottom of this, such as it is, battle for the soul of thunder road, I guess, you could call it. That there are a lot of lyrics that we didn’t know for a long time. Jimmy Hendrix, excuse me while I kiss this guy.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

That could be sky or guy. And it doesn’t really matter.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I feel like, just coming at it from a writer’s perspective, I guess, I would not think of a dress waving, I wouldn’t think of a dress swaying. But he’s also-

Preet Bharara:

I think the better argument is that the next line it’s a better, sways rhymes with plays as the radio plays.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

There you go. All right.

Preet Bharara:

But again, it doesn’t much matter.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

I look forward to future episodes being committed completely to this topic. And Springsteen’s doing all those podcasts with Obama, get them on now, have it out with him.

Preet Bharara:

I turned that down, I didn’t have time. I was busy. Edward-Isaac Dovere, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, pick it up.

Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Thanks a lot, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Isaac Dovere continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Isaac Dovere. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.

Preet Bharara:

Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at (669) 247-7338, that’s (669) 24-Preet. Or you can send an email to staytuned@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE Studios and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Your host is Preet Bharara, the Executive Producer is Tamara Sepper, the Senior Producer is Adam Waller, the Technical Director is David Tatasciore. The CAFE team is, Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, and Sean Walsh. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.