Transcript:
Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
Erin Phillips: And I’m lead producer Erin Phillips, filling in for Colin Seeberger. Daniella, I feel like it’s finally fall. I don’t know if you feel the same, but is it pumpkin spice latte season, or—
Gibbs Léger: So, no.
Phillips: Well—
Gibbs Léger: It’s still too warm for me. It’s like 85 degrees today.
Phillips: I had to put on a jacket this morning, so to me, that’s giving fall.
Gibbs Léger: You know what? OK, that is fair. I will give you that.
Phillips: Thank you. Well, while we were thinking about fall delights, Colin, who couldn’t join us for the news this week, did have a great conversation earlier this week with Amanda Becker from The 19th. They talked about her new book, You Must Stand Up; how everyday people are mobilizing in support of abortion access; and what the legal landscape of reproductive rights could look like in the near future.
Gibbs Léger: All really timely, as abortion is clearly going to play a big role in the upcoming election. And speaking of, before we get to Colin and Amanda, we’ve got to get to some news.
Phillips: Why, Daniella? Did something big happen this week around politics and the election?
Gibbs Léger: Oh, you know, nothing big, just the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
And while I was a little nervous going into this one, candidly, Vice President Harris really commanded the stage and put Trump on the defensive time and time again. He was off the rails, taking her bait left and right, rambling about racist conspiracy theories like this one that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s dogs or pets, or that Vice President Harris is forcing undocumented immigrants in prisons to get gender-affirming surgeries.
Phillips: Off the rails. Unhinged.
Gibbs Léger: Unhinged! Like the wildest stuff I have ever heard anywhere, let alone a debate stage. And looking past their presentations, Vice President Harris was the only candidate on that stage who outlined clear policies to address the issues that Americans actually care about.
She talked about her plan to help spur small business growth. She talked about her plan to give first-time homeowners a $25,000 tax credit and create 3 million new affordable homes. She talked about how her economic plans are favored by economist after economist and how she’d restore Roe v. Wade if elected president.
She made it clear that the government—and Donald Trump in particular—shouldn’t be able to tell a woman what to do with her body. What a concept. Meanwhile, on abortion, Trump dodged on whether he’d veto a nationwide abortion ban. He lied about IVF [in vitro fertilization], even had the absolute audacity to suggest that he was somehow a champion of IVF, despite the fact that his party has ripped away IVF rights and vetoed bills that would protect IVF left and right.
I also found it astounding that almost nine years after he first ran for president in 2016, we learned that Trump still doesn’t have a plan for health care. All he could come up with was, quote, “a concept of a plan.” A concept of a plan? Really?
Our listeners will no doubt remember that the last presidential debate we watched was between President Biden and Trump in June, a few months ago. That literally feels like it was a hundred years ago.
Phillips: Yeah, it’s pretty astounding when you compare the clear policy positions Vice President Harris has formed in a matter of weeks to the undefined, ever-changing stances Donald Trump has taken over, as you said D, nine years. Speaking of failing to answer the important questions, though, Trump was repeatedly asked if he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, and he wouldn’t answer.
He did, however, tout that he had the backing of Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán. I guess that shouldn’t be a big surprise from someone who’s still saying he won the 2020 election, when we know that, as Vice President Harris put it so eloquently last night, 81 million Americans fired him.
The “big lie” was just one of a steady stream of falsehoods Trump spewed on the debate stage. He was fact-checked multiple times by the moderators. Chris Wallace—who you may remember moderated a 2020 presidential debate where Trump just went off the rails yet again—called this debate the worst performance he’s seen in American history. Even conservative commentators were calling it a bad debate night. [Sen.] Lindsey Graham (R-SC), of all people, called it a disaster.
Gibbs Léger: Uh oh, you know you’re in trouble when Lindsey’s saying something bad about you, Trump.
Phillips: Yeah. Instant reaction polls show viewers thought Vice President Harris won the debate by far, and the reason is clear: She spoke to the American people, while Donald Trump spoke to himself.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention one more big win for Kamala Harris on debate night, Daniella: She earned the endorsement of one Taylor Swift. Have you heard of her?
Gibbs Léger: Maybe once or twice. I heard she put somebody named Travis Kelce on the map. Now, as much as we love Taylor Swift here on the pod, we also need to talk about Trump’s doubling down on the “big lie” on Tuesday night, and why it’s not all that surprising if you’ve been paying attention.
The media doesn’t seem too interested in reporting this, but he’s been ramping up this nonsense for weeks as Vice President Harris has been showing up more and more competitively in the polls. So in recent days, he has pledged to jail officials who don’t help him steal the 2024 election if he loses, including election workers and donors.
He’s making it clear he won’t accept the results of the election unless he wins, and that he’s again willing to do anything to gain power. He also said he’ll weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his perceived enemies should he be reelected. And he’s also repeatedly said that he’ll free January 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their attempts to organize an insurrection—an insurrection, I might add, that resulted in several members of law enforcement losing their lives.
Some of these felons have been sentenced to serve 18 years in prison for their crimes, yet Trump has said that he would consider, quote, “free[ing]” them as one of his first acts in office. He lionizes these criminals as, quote, “patriots,” yet describes the people protesting the conflict in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis in that region as, quote, “thugs.” He has also regularly used that word to describe people who protested George Floyd’s death in 2020, along with other groups that he doesn’t agree with, like progressives.
Phillips: Yeah, it’s a really concerning double standard from a presidential candidate, and it’s one made all the more concerning by the fact that he said he’d deploy the military against U.S. citizens. He really will stop at nothing to gain and cling to power. He hasn’t ruled out stoking political violence if he loses the election, just like he did in 2020.
These are not the actions of a strong democratic leader. These statements are an example of authoritarianism in our own backyard. And they put Trump more in line with people like Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, who recently lost his reelection, according to the U.S. government, yet is clinging to illegitimate power there. They also sort of ironically make our elections less secure by undermining our democratic systems.
During the 2022 midterms, groups in military gear monitored ballot boxes in Arizona, while far-right activists in North Carolina went door to door harassing voters about their registration information. We’ve also seen threats to election workers sharply increase in recent years. CBS reported this week that more than one-third of all top election officials have quit or retired since the 2020 presidential election.
The erosion of democracy as a result of Donald Trump’s politically violent, authoritarian rhetoric is why a growing number of prominent Republicans are now disavowing him—everyone from former Vice President Dick Cheney to Trump’s own former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, I’ve got to say, I realize there’s a lot of nonsense that the former guy spews, but this is big news. If the vice president ever said anything to this effect, I can guarantee you it would make headlines, and people would be talking about it nonstop. But the media moved on after he pledged to jail officials who don’t help him try to steal this election if he loses.
We saw Trump on a debate stage on Tuesday night. The man is untethered to reality, and it is incumbent on the media to hold him accountable when they report on him to the public, just like they would any other candidate.
Phillips: Hear, hear, Daniella. You know it’s bad when even Dick Cheney is drawing a line in the sand.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Well, that is all the time we have for today. If there’s anything else you’d like us to cover on the podcast, please hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, or Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod. And stick around for Colin’s interview with Amanda Becker in just a beat.
[Musical transition]
Colin Seeberger: Amanda Becker is the Washington correspondent for The 19th and author of the new book, You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America.
She previously spent eight years at Reuters, where she covered the 2020 Democratic primary and was embedded with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Before that, she worked at CQ Roll Call covering lobbying and influence.
Amanda Becker, thanks so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Amanda Becker: Thanks so much for having me.
Seeberger: And on the release week of your new book!
Becker: Yes, I’m actually here with you on release day of the book.
Seeberger: We are so honored. We are so honored. Thank you.
Becker: Yeah. I’m very excited.
Seeberger: Yes. So speaking of that new book, You Must Stand Up—which follows everyday people, doctors, lawyers, patients, volunteers who have joined the fight for abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—can you talk about the book, some of the activists you follow throughout, and what really inspired you to write from their perspective?
Becker: Yeah, so it opens on the day Dobbs was decided in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at a clinic there, and that’s actually where it ends exactly a year after the decision. I decided to do the book actually after hearing oral arguments in the Dobbs case because it was clear to a lot of people who listened to that that either Roe was going to completely fall, or it would be so circumscribed it would have the practical effect of no longer being in place.
And I’m a political reporter, and I knew there were other books in the works, including one by my colleague, Shefali Luthra, Undue Burden. She’s our health care reporter. And so she was really focused on the health care side of the story and what this meant for patients and following patients this year.
And my background is covering politics, and I started to think about this as not only a major political story, but what I think is the political story—not just of right now, but potentially of my career. It’s one that has the potential to cause a realignment in this country. It has the potential to remake even what it means to be an American and the rights that we have, and whether our political processes are going to continue to function in a way that allows our democracy to be healthy and thrive.
So I started to find the characters, and while the two primary settings, I would say, are a clinic in Tuscaloosa that I mentioned and another one in Phoenix, Arizona, and I chose clinics in those places simply because I knew that they would be dealing with dramatically different realities over that first year. Because in Alabama, abortion was illegal pretty much across the board immediately after Dobbs. In Arizona, it was going back and forth over that summer. And then even into this year, we saw the state Supreme Court say that a pre-statehood-era law from when Arizona was a territory was in effect instead of their 15-week ban. And so I knew that that would capture the chaos element—
Seeberger: Yeah, the whiplash.
Becker: —of what was happening in places around this country.
And so once I found them, and I was already thinking about it as a book about politics, I started to realize it’s actually a book about democracy. And it’s about abortion and Dobbs, yes, but I think it’s actually telling the story of democratic erosion and how we got to a point in this country where we have laws in place in half of the country that the majority of the electorate—even within those states, in almost all cases—doesn’t support.
And so I thought a book about democracy was really the space that I wanted to be in because I knew women journalists who I really admire were working on other components of the story. And that’s how I settled on that. And then that helped me find some of the other settings. For example, I use Massachusetts as an example of a state where a vast majority of people in Massachusetts want legal access to abortion. Only Nevada and the District of Columbia are actually ahead of them in terms of support for legal abortion. And that had been a state where—on all levels—the activists, the state-level organizations—places like the state ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], as well as repro orgs, as well as LGBTQ orgs—had already actually codified a version of Roe ahead of the Dobbs ruling, anticipating it. But then when a law in Texas known as SB-8 passed, and it had the potential, they feared, to come across state lines, they said they got the band back together that had passed the ROE Act to try and figure out what else they could do to protect access because that is what the citizens in their state wanted.
And so I use that as an example of a democracy in a state that is representing the people and what they want and what the majority wants. And so I chose settings based on that, in terms of showing the places where our democracy seems to be healthy and the places where it seems to be getting distorted.
Seeberger: Yeah, where it can be a tool to actually represent people’s interest.
Becker: Yeah.
Seeberger: So in the years following the Dobbs decision, we’ve really seen a drastic shift in the legal landscape. You kind of touched on this somewhat in talking about Arizona and its state Supreme Court’s decision, right?
What are some of the most important ongoing legal battles involving reproductive rights right now? And based on what we’ve seen from the far-right Supreme Court’s majority, where do you think these legal fights could go in the next several years?
Becker: So there’s several different kinds of legal fights right now happening. There are, of course, people still challenging laws and how laws are interpreted in terms of, “We need clear standards about when a parent’s health is at stake or their life is at stake.” So there’s that kind of litigation going on.
There is litigation going on from the anti-abortion side attempting to restrict access in ways that would apply nationally that would help them make inroads in states that have protected abortion. So I’m talking about efforts to kind of bring back enforcement of the Comstock Act, which is from the 1800s and is related to shipping obscene materials in the mail.
They’re trying to use that to restrict access to abortion, specifically medication abortion. Medication abortion is now used for about 65 percent of abortions in this country. It’s the abortions that are happening early in pregnancy. And the thing is, medication abortion are little pills, right? It’s easy to take them across state lines. It’s easy to order them. And so it’s become a top priority of the anti-abortion movement to figure out how they can restrict that either using the Comstock Act or potentially by litigation to reclassify or undo the FDA [Food and Drugs Administration] approval in 2000 of mifepristone, one of the two major drugs.
So that’s some litigation coming from the anti-abortion side. Also, there are ballot measures in place right now that are going to be on ballots in 10 states, as of now. And actually today, we’ll find out by the end of the day today whether a court is going to allow a lower court in Missouri to knock that off of the ballot. So by the time you’re listening to this, we’ll know whether that has happened or not. You can Google it and look it up.
So it’s these kind of efforts that we’re seeing in the states among not just anti-abortion groups, but anti-abortion state lawmakers who know that their electorate is probably about to approve an abortion rights amendment for their state constitution, and are trying to get in front of that and do this anti-democratic end run around the process and make arguments about language—like in Missouri’s case, the lower court judge said it was because the language was too broad.
But in my home state of Ohio last year, we saw them bring back a special election that they’d just gotten rid of because of low participation in order to make it harder to pass a ballot amendment because they knew a few months later, Ohioans were likely going to pass an abortion rights measure.
Seeberger: Yeah. I mean, we’re seeing it this week play out, actually.
Becker: Yeah.
Seeberger: There were reports out in Florida that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) election integrity team is dispatching people out to knock on people’s doors and confirm whether they signed petitions to put Florida’s voter referendum to secure abortion rights that’s going to be on the ballot this November—whether they ended up signing those forms.
Becker: Yeah.
Seeberger: It’s like the most fascistic fever dream of the right, I feel like, to try to marry these threats to democracy, this policing of people’s personal behaviors, and also trying to undermine the integrity of our elections. It’s so crazy to me, but I feel like it is the perfect example of how all these things are coming together—
Becker: Intertwined.
Seeberger: —and representing the threat of what you just talked about earlier, about the minoritarian lurch in terms of rolling back people’s rights, while also, at the same time, really being a reflection of the minoritarian rule that we’re seeing embraced by the right wing in this country right now.
Becker: And I would expect to see some counter legal challenges down in Florida as well to what is happening with Gov. DeSantis because there are some people who were pointing out that you’re not supposed to use state taxpayer-funded resources for political projects.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Becker: And so I would absolutely expect that to be challenged and come up through the courts. We’re kind of seeing a war on all levels in states, in federal courts—local, state, federal—right now related to reproductive rights.
Seeberger: I’m curious, talking about these 10 different voter referendums that you mentioned where abortion is going to be on the ballot this fall—what sort of political impact do you see these ballot initiatives have? Do you anticipate that they’ll be a major motivating factor that’s going to boost turnout? Do you think they are potentially going to see a lot of crossover voters, folks who may be voting one way at the top of the ballot, but may be voting on some of these questions differently? I’m just curious for your perspective on that.
Becker: Yeah, so that’s kind of the question right now, right? So what we saw in the midterms—because there were, I think, six or seven. There’s so many numbers I have to look at before I have any conversation because they keep changing, that it’s hard to keep them all in my brain at once.
Seeberger: Totally.
Becker: Essentially in the midterms, there were ballot measures to protect abortion rights, and there were ballot measures to add anti-abortion language into state constitutions. What we saw was every time one was put before voters, abortion rights won. The side of abortion rights won. So they were either defeating, like in Kentucky, a measure to make anti-abortion part of the state constitution, to, in other places like Ohio, which wasn’t at the same time, to protect that.
So we only have an incomplete picture about what effect this will have on candidate races, and I really think it’s going to depend on the state. So in a state like Arizona, the electorate is a third Democrats, a third Republicans, a third independents.
Within independents, these are not just middle-of-the-road voters. They are libertarian types, who came from California looking for a climate that was a little bit more friendly to them. There are Green Party voters, who are very far to the left and vote on climate issues. And then there are people who just either don’t identify with either party, don’t feel that partisan, or are just fed up with both parties.
And so in a state like Arizona, which has a 15-week ban in place right now and also has a ballot measure in November that would protect it up to the point of fetal viability by adding it to the state constitution, I would expect to see increased turnout, just like we saw in the midterms, and it’s believed that that increased turnout, while it didn’t help Democrats keep the House or anything, it’s certainly, I believe, contributed to them losing many fewer seats than initially projected to.
But it really depends. If you’re a voter who feels an allegiance to a party but supports abortion and your party doesn’t—so if you’re a Republican—voting for that ballot measure might allow you to still vote, then, in your head for the candidates on your party’s ticket because you’ve hopefully removed that one issue on which you disagree.
But I would say that I don’t think you can look at reproductive rights in a vacuum. Like I was saying, I’ve been looking at it from a democracy standpoint, essentially. So I think that Democrats are certainly hoping this will help them. It could in some places, it could in others.
I’m not as convinced, for example, that Florida is in play for Democrats in statewide races—to the extent that other some other people are—while I do think the ballot measure has a better chance of passing than perhaps Democrats in statewide races, simply because they’re making a concerted effort to recruit crossover voters who identify as Republican, specifically Republican women.
Seeberger: Interesting, interesting. I’m also curious—obviously, there’s been a lot of change in American politics over the last few months. Democrats have Vice President Harris as their nominee headed into the fall. I’m curious to get your perspective, as somebody who covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, you also were embed with the [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren (D-MA) campaign in 2020 during the Democratic primary, I’m curious to get your perspective on what your view is of how the media is handling its coverage of Vice President Harris’ candidacy as the leading Democratic woman in politics right now and as a major party’s presidential candidate. This is obviously only the second time that we’ve ever seen this happen.
How do you think they’re doing? And what do you think they should be keeping in mind as we go through these last 7 1/2 weeks or so?
Becker: It’s wild how close we are already. And actually in 2020, I was covering Warren, but I was covering all the women who ran that year on the Democratic side. And they were just getting knocked out one by one. And she was—
Seeberger: The last woman standing!
Becker: —the last woman standing, so I was with her by the end.
But yeah, so a couple things. So I have to say, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually. I was at the Democratic National Convention. I was standing on the floor. I stood in place for eight hours, so I didn’t leave and miss the vice president’s speech that night. The U.S. Virgin Islands kind of adopted me—so thank you, U.S. Virgin Islands—and gave me a place to hover where security wasn’t telling me to move. They even gave me some Sour Patch Kids, so I really appreciate that.
Seeberger: You’ve got to stay fueled up.
Becker: Yeah. So I have been trying to piece together in my mind what is different about this moment because it felt different at the convention. I was at the convention in 2016 as well, also on the floor, also with Clinton’s campaign, on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis in that case.
And this year felt different to me. I don’t know if it’s a generational change. I don’t know if it is people in this country who had doubts about Clinton, or who had doubts about a woman leader. I don’t know that if it’s now after Dobbs, we’ve seen the very real impact that elections can have on our lives.
Seeberger: Mm-hmm.
Becker: But something is different right now.
In terms of the media coverage, one thing that has been on my mind is she was in at the top of the ticket for it felt like hours—maybe it was a couple days—before you started seeing stories and people on TV saying things like, “Well, where are her policies? When is she going to release her policies? We all need to see her policies. People need to know where she stands. If you go to her website, there’s no policies.”
And the RNC rapid response team during her speech at the convention was like, “Kamala doesn’t have a policy page, so we made one for her.” And it directed you to this thing about how she’s extreme, yada yada yada. And if you go to Trump’s campaign page, and if you go to his policy platform page, it is a bullet point list—
Seeberger: Twenty items.
Becker: —of 20 items.
Seeberger: Yes.
Becker: And then—they’re very short, and they’re very broad, things like “Make America Great Again” and rich and prosperous and things like that. There’s nothing about repro in there, specifically, and then it links to the RNC policy platform. And so—
Seeberger: Which they bothered to put out this time, after in 2020—
Becker: After not doing so.
Seeberger: —refusing to put out a presidential platform.
Becker: They did not do so last time.
Seeberger: Yes.
Becker: And so if we’re going to be asking one candidate in the race, who’s been in a short period of time, “What are your policies?”, we should also be asking Donald Trump that and focusing on that, in my opinion, because the American people deserve to know what both of their policies are. And hopefully we’ll start to see details from both of them. Vice President Harris did update her policy section recently.
Seeberger: Recently put out her policy page on her website.
Becker: Yes.
Seeberger: She’s also been rolling out multiple planks of her opportunity economy agenda over the course of the last several weeks in some major speeches focusing on housing and health care and other issues.
Becker: So I would love to see, in the weeks ahead, people in my profession really try and clarify for the voters what these policies are and where they stand, and I would like to see them do that for both of them, not just one.
Seeberger: To their credit, we did see a little bit of this last week: Donald Trump and JD Vance were actually both asked about their solutions to address the exorbitant cost of child care in this country, to which Donald Trump replied—
Becker: Tariffs.
Seeberger: —Child care is relatively “not that expensive.”
Becker: Yeah.
Seeberger: So it does seem like there is much more to do there, but it also seems like not all candidates that are running here have fully fleshed out policy agendas to tackle many of these major problems that are stressing families out.
Becker: Yeah. Now I will say, JD Vance did end up—he was also asked a question about child care.
His answer, which was in front of a friendly audience from a friendly interviewer at the time, was, grandparents or aunts or uncles, essentially. He did follow that up later on with more details on Twitter. Now, whether you support those details or not, you should go read it and look at what he said. But it still wasn’t coming from the top of the ticket.
“Trump said ‘child care is child care’” was essentially the headline out of that answer. And it’s like, “OK, what does that mean?” At The 19th, we obviously focus on issues that disproportionately affect women and LGBTQ people in this country. Women still—in heterosexual households, that are parents—bear the brunt disproportionately of child care, and it affects their economic opportunity in a way that it doesn’t always affect the man in the house. And so we are very keen to hear the answers from these candidates about an issue like that.
Seeberger: Not to mention their physical, emotional, mental health as well. Well, on a more positive note, which we like to end on here at “The Tent,” I’m curious about how you were able to strike such a positive tone in your book given the dire landscape that we’ve been facing over the course of the past several years as it relates to abortion rights. And what do you hope other abortion advocates might take away from the stories you share?
Becker: So I didn’t realize I was writing such a hopeful book from the point of restoring abortion rights until I finished it, really. And I was on a panel over the weekend with other women who have written books about abortion, and someone asked us this question, but it was phrased as, “Do you think abortion rights will be restored, federally?” I said yes, with some qualifiers that I’ll get into in a minute. Another author said no.
But my qualifiers were these: Undoing Roe was a 50-year project of the anti-abortion movement. And so I do not think that you can expect to reverse something like that in one election, or even in two elections. It’s going to take commitment on behalf of the people who want to see that happen.
And what I was doing in the book was showing that—I did a fellowship last year, and I was able to take a lot of classes about democracy and authoritarianism. Despair is a tool of authoritarian regimes. And I think it’s very important, when you live in a democracy, to realize that you have to tend to your democracy and you have to participate in it—to a greater degree than just showing up to vote, if you’re able—in order for it to be healthy and thrive.
Our government systems were set up in a way that I think the founding fathers who set them up expected a populace that was going to be very engaged, and so they put into place all of these things to be a check on the people. But now we’re in a point where one of the reasons we have a bunch of laws right now that don’t reflect the will of the people is because people aren’t always participating.
And all of the people that I feature in my book have figured out, beyond showing up and voting, what their role is to play in having a healthy democracy. Because I think that if we continue to have a healthy democracy, at some point, abortion rights will be restored. Because that’s what happens in a democracy when 70 percent of it wants something, right? If they’re never restored, I fear it will be because our democracy has failed.
Seeberger: The broader project is done. Well—
Becker: So that’s not exactly positive, but I do think there’s a path to get there.
Seeberger: We will take that positive spin—
Becker: Yes.
Seeberger: —as we can. Well, Amanda Becker, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent,” and congratulations again on the release of your new book.
Becker: Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. Everywhere that there’s books.
Seeberger: You Must Stand Up.
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Gibbs Léger: Well, that’s going to do it for us this week. Please be sure to go back and check out previous episodes. Before we go, Erin, we got to talk about the two reigning queens of music right now.
Phillips: We do.
Gibbs Léger: Yes. Let’s start with one Taylor Swift, as we mentioned.
Phillips: Look what you made her do!
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. If you have been perhaps living under a rock, Taylor Swift did endorse Vice President Harris after the debate. She did it by posting one of the pictures in the Time magazine spread of her and one of her cats—I believe it’s Benjamin Button—and she wrote, I thought it was, really moving and thoughtful words about why she was endorsing them and encouraging people to do their own research, make their own choice, make sure they’re registered.
And then she signed it: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”
Phillips: I love it. Did you—
Gibbs Léger: I cackled.
Phillips: Did you see Gov. Walz’s reaction to that, though?
Gibbs Léger: It was so pure, and it was so wonderful, live on air. I love that man so much.
Phillips: He has the most dad energy.
Gibbs Léger: He really does. It’s so great. And it’s just funny because in recent weeks, a lot of people were wondering when was Taylor going to come out and endorse. And I thought she picked a really good time to do it—
Phillips: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: —and I love the way that she did. Now, I wonder if she will be doing anything else? I don’t know, but she has, what, 250 million Instagram followers?
Phillips: I’m just gonna say, when former President Donald Trump said that he wasn’t a Swiftie—I don’t know if that was the best way that he could have combated that endorsement. I think there could have been more effective ways for him to do that than to say that he didn’t like Taylor Swift’s music. I think that’s going to make a lot of people angry.
Gibbs Léger: Probably, and I feel like he is contradicting himself because I feel like he once said he did like her music? I don’t know. That man is all over the place.
Phillips: You’re telling me if you played a Taylor Swift song for him, he wouldn’t bop his head along? Like, I don’t believe it.
Gibbs Léger: Well, the thing is, though, I don’t know that that man derives joy from anything, so I don’t know that he would.
Phillips: Maybe you’re right.
Gibbs Léger: So in less great news, we got to talk about the other queen: that’s Queen Bey, Beyoncé. Oh, the CMAs, what are you doing? So the Country Music Awards dropped their nominations, and not a one for “Cowboy Carter.” Now—
Phillips: It was the best country album of the year!
Gibbs Léger: —I could even overlook—OK, you don’t want to give album of the year? Fine. You don’t want to give artist of the year? Fine. How is she not nominated for song of the year when it was the most popular country single, period?
Phillips: I feel like it also got a lot of people into country.
Gibbs Léger: Absolutely.
Phillips: I feel like country is having a little comeback moment. It’s having a little moment of popularity among people who weren’t previously country fans, and I feel like Beyoncé helped bridge that gap.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, 100 percent. And the fact that—it’s almost like we’re going to double down on the way they treated her when she performed with The Chicks years ago, and they’re like, “Nope, we’re not going to do it.”
So you know what? Beyoncé obviously doesn’t need their accolades. She is just fine living her very best life, dropping whiskies and all types of new things. But it’s really ridiculous, and I wouldn’t blame her if she was angry, like, a little bit angry. And she talked about it on the album too, right? She almost predicted that this would happen.
Phillips: Yeah, I feel like in a way she kind of knew that was going to happen, and that was a little bit part of the choice, maybe? To call out some of the hypocrisy of some of the music industry enclaves. Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, Tennessee, Nashville, country music: Do better.
Phillips: Well when is the Grammys? I don’t know when they happen.
Gibbs Léger: They usually happen in February.
Phillips: OK, well, we’ll see what happens.
Gibbs Léger: We have time.
Phillips: Knock on wood.
Gibbs Léger: Listen, I am stressed about that already because you’re going to have “The Tortured Poets Department” up against “Cowboy Carter.” And like, they’re both good albums. I think “Cowboy Carter” is better.
Phillips: I’m not going to say which I’m picking, but I have my choice.
Gibbs Léger: “Cowboy Carter,” I think, is a much better album.
Phillips: I agree.
Gibbs Léger: So, OK. We’ll circle back on that. All right, folks. Take care of yourselves. It’s allergy season again because it’s fall. So if you’re like me, Godspeed, and carry your tissues, and we will talk to you next week.
“The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer and guest host for this episode. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Hai Phan, Matthew Gossage, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.