Summary 48: Breaking The Frame with Billy Ray | Jen Rubin's Green Room (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Jen Rubin This is Jen Rubin, and this is Jen Rubin's green room. It's Tuesday, so we must have another excuse from Donald Trump as to why he cannot stand trial next week. The only thing left is, you guessed it, bone spurs. He is gonna use every excuse in the book. Why?
Jen Rubin Because he fears, quite rightly, that he will be convicted. The law is pretty clear. If you falsify documents and you're doing so to help commit a crime, you are guilty. And that's what we have here. We have a lot of witnesses.
Jen Rubin We have a lot of documentary proof. We have a judge who knows what he's doing, and there's no nonsense. We have a prosecutor who is determined to get it right. And that's why Trump is freaking out. That's why you have these nonstop rants on truth soldier.
Jen Rubin This is why every day is a different motion to throw them out, to transfer venue, to get some other excuse to delay to delay. And now he's trapped. The walls are closing in. He can't do anything about it. So fingers crossed.
Jen Rubin I think this time next week, we'll probably be still in various selection, but we'll be getting closer to an actual trial. Meanwhile, in other news, Donald Trump is now furiously backpedaling because, oh, turns out that abortion bans, a nationwide abortion ban, is really stinky politics. It's terrible. People don't like it. It's cruel.
Jen Rubin It's inhumane. It's dangerous. Women around the country are suffering where there are bans, and there are absolutely intolerable restrictions on the right to make health care decisions. So what does he do? He makes a little video, and he sorta punts.
Jen Rubin He says, well, right now, it's determined by the states. We like the states. The states are gonna decide. And you know what the media does? They say, oh, he's given up on the nationwide ban.
Jen Rubin He's saying the state should decide it. Woah. Reading comprehension, guys. Listening comprehension. Listen to what he said.
Jen Rubin He didn't say any of that. All he said was what the current law is, which states can decide and the most irrational, most extreme states can actually ban an abortion before a woman knows she's pregnant and can leave out any exception for rape and incest. But he's not saying what you think he is saying or what the press is applying he's saying. He's not saying he would veto a nationwide ban. And what do you think he's gonna put on his desk if Republicans are in control of Congress?
Jen Rubin They're gonna put a nationwide ban on abortion on his desk, and, of course, he's gonna sign it. That's the people that brought him to the dance. He's not gonna spurn them then. So I think, again, we gotta be really absolutely on our toes when we're looking at how the media portrays something he has said or done. It's to the point where you really have to go watch it for yourself and listen to it for yourself because what he says and what they say he says are really 2 different things.
Jen Rubin Meanwhile, we still do not have a bill on the floor of the US House to provide aid to Ukraine. And we're getting really close to the point at which there may be a point of no return. Meaning, already, they've had to give back territory. Already, lives have been lost. Cities have been turned over.
Jen Rubin Because the darn Republicans cannot figure out how to do the right thing and put on the floor a bill to support Ukraine. They don't even have to vote for it. They just have to put it on the floor and let the people who are the grown ups, the people who are pro democracy, vote for it. So we'll see if that changes at some point this week. I tend to think not, unfortunately.
Jen Rubin Now in other news, it's very interesting. The abortion issue, although it is absolutely bedeviling Donald Trump, has really, I think, energized, galvanated both the president and the vice president. They are very sharp on this issue. And that leads to a very nice development, which is a really good, quick response, a instantaneous response Shattered Biden administration and the Biden campaign have put together when Trump says and does these things. So when he gives this mealy mouthed explanation for what his newest position on abortion is, they respond.
Jen Rubin They do a rapid response. They say, oh, no. That's not what he said. This is what he said. When Donald Trump behind closed doors is promising billionaires more tax cuts, they are there.
Jen Rubin When behind closed doors, he is saying we only want nice immigrants from Denmark and Norway. In other words, whites. They are there, and they are making the point. And that level of aggression and the level of, energy that we are seeing is something new for the Biden team. And we're also seeing the great imbalance in money.
Jen Rubin They have the organization and the ability to do that, to respond day Shattered day after day. And as a result, the message finally, I think, will get through. We are just getting to the point where maybe some people are beginning to pay attention. I know you've been paying attention for 4 years. You've been paying attention since Donald Trump rode down that escalator, but the average person doesn't.
Jen Rubin The average person tunes into a presidential election a little bit before the presidential election, looks around, makes a decision, then goes back to his or her life. That's not a negative thing. In a democracy, we have the luxury of worrying about our own lives and not making everything about politics. But you have to appreciate that repetition, a quick response, a definitive response is absolutely critical for the administration and for the campaign. And I will close on this, which is Israel.
Jen Rubin We had the great tragedy last week, which was the killing of the World Central Kitchen personnel, Jose Andres' angels. And the administration came down very hard on Bibi Netanyahu. They said, you must change, or we will change our position on the war, meaning they might cut off support. Wouldn't you know, immediately, there was a ramp up in aid getting through. Immediately, there were plans being put into place, finally, for deconflicting.
Jen Rubin And, oh, by the way, there are very few Israeli soldiers that are still left in Gaza. Why is that? Well, for 1 thing, they've gotten a lot of the fighters out of there. And for another, I would keep your eye on this never ending refrain about Rafa. This is this great maneuver that they're gonna go in.
Jen Rubin They're gonna clean them out once and for all. Listen. Phoebe has been saying this for weeks and for months. This is a way of perpetuating his own stay in power. This is a way of keeping his right wing coalition together.
Jen Rubin This is a way of inciting progressives around the world to criticize him, which in turn makes his support at home stronger. I don't know that he's gonna do anything in that regard. And we still have talks going on with the Egyptians, with the Qataris, with Hamas, with Israel, and various incarnations, not all obviously in the room together. But I wouldn't give up entire hope that there may be a peaceful, a long and coming, and overdue diplomatic solution, and that's because the president carries a lot of weight. And using that voice, using it in a particularly sharp, emphatic way, I think has had an impact.
Jen Rubin At least, we hope it has. Democrats, I think, have gotten much better at communicating a message that Americans really care about. And in particular, I think they have really learned to talk about abortion. Thanks in large part to Kamala Harris, who I think set the tone perfectly right after Dobbs. They talk about this as an issue of freedom.
Jen Rubin And their recent ad in which they portrayed 1 of the tragic stories that comes from Donald Trump and his appointment of right wing activist to the Supreme Court shows a Texas woman who had a miscarriage, but she almost died because of the ban in Texas and the fact she couldn't be treated until she was at death's door. And I think it's that understanding that an election is an emotional connection to the people you need to persuade, as self evident as that might seem that Democrats have begun to figure out. Listen. If it were a battle of white papers of 13 point plans, Democrats would win every single election, but it really isn't. It's about an emotional connection that gives voters something that they want.
Jen Rubin That might not be a policy. That might be a sense of belonging. That might be a sense of security. That might be a sense of self determination, but it's a connection. And people who are very good at understanding this because they do it for a living are writers, directors, producers.
Jen Rubin And we are so fortunate today to have 1 of them who not only is a great writer, director, producer, but also spends a lot of his free time trying to save democracy. Billy Ray is the screenwriter, among other things, of Hunger Games, of Captain Phillips. He is the artist behind the Nicole Kidman ad on AMC. He is a brilliant filmmaker, but he's also a brilliant message artist. And that's what we wanna talk to him about today.
Jen Rubin Billy, welcome to the show.
Billy Ray It's really a privilege to be here.
Jen Rubin My absolute privilege to have you. And you are the writer and director, I believe, of a film from a number of years back. Lots of films, actually. But 1 in particular that I love because I'm fascinated by the Cold War, by spies, by counter spies, and that was Breach, which was the story of Robert Hanssen, who I find, of all of the spies, the most bizarre character because he was this super Catholic religious, almost fanatic, and yet he was a spy for the Soviet Union. How did you come to understand him when you were doing this film?
Jen Rubin What what was the key to understanding him?
Billy Ray I don't know that someone like that is actually understandable, in the way that you and I could understand each other. Part of writing a character like that is to make the decision that our actions define us. In other words, we are what we do. At the end of the day, what he talked about was, piety and and strict adherence, to faith, and an almost, obsessive interest in safeguarding our country. And a very puritanical, position on sex.
Billy Ray And it turns out that he was spying for the Russians for 22 years, and making a lot of money doing it. He was sending off sex tapes of his wife to a friend of his in Germany. He was risking other people's lives, and and we know of 3 people that were killed absolutely, provably, as a result of his actions, but the number may be 50. He was a just an absolute contradiction. So once you embrace that, you decide that his his dialogue will be 1 thing and his actions will be something else.
Billy Ray And the audience, if they ever want to, can turn off the sound and then figure out who he really was.
Jen Rubin Fascinating. Now he was spying. There was overlap between him and Ulrich Ames. So there was a little bit of difficulty in figuring that out that there were actually 2 spies. But 1 of the things that struck me, and I just read a great book about a Cuban spy, Anna, Mortez, who was within the Defense Intelligence Agency for, like, 20 years spying for the Cubans.
Jen Rubin Are we incapable of figuring out who's a spy and who's not? It's really kind of gotten to me. We have all these spy agencies. They have all kinds of super duper equipment. They have light detectors.
Jen Rubin They have all kinds of
Billy Ray I tend to be drawn to stories about American institutions. And what fascinates me about them is that, of course, the FBI or the CIA or the Atlanta Journal Constitution or the New Republic Magazine, or NBC News, they're not actually institutions at all. They're groups of people who are stewards of an institution. And those people can have good judgment or bad judgment, good intentions or bad intentions. But it's not the buildings that are making the discusses.
Billy Ray It's the people in them. You know, the the Department of Justice is a very different thing, when run by Bill Barr than it is when run by someone who believes that we should actually follow the law. Right. And it's a and the post office is a very different thing run by Louis DeJoy than it is, when it's being run by someone who believes that the post office should not be, used as a political weapon. Again, it's the people.
Billy Ray And so I look at a case like, like, Hansen's, and I remember that he was the guy that was put in charge of finding the spy.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray He's the reason the FBI kept looking towards the CIA, that and a certain institutional arrogance that the FBI was suffering under at that point. Remember, you know, the American government is made up of Americans. And and Americans, like all people, you know, they can be wrong. And in the case of Robert Hanssen, similarly, in the case of Stephen Glass, who was another person that I had written about who, was a a journalist in New York Public Magazine who made up a bunch of the stories he was writing about, they were able to deflect, suspicion by being the most rigorous about detail and the most punishing of people around them if there was any suspicion of those people having, had a lack of candor. They they earned such medals for being, rigorous about that that no 1 would have the nerve to think that they might be the problem.
Jen Rubin And that is fascinating. I had not, till I looked at your filmography, made the connection between Robert Hans Henson and Glass. What do you think are the commonalities among the people who are duped by these sorts of personalities? Are they too trusting? Are they too willing to take, people's background or training as a proof of their, worth?
Jen Rubin What are the common mistakes that people make who have been essentially defrauded in 1 way or other in the people they have hired?
Billy Ray I think they all suffer from confirmation bias.
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray In the case of Hansen, in the case of Steven Glass, and I could extrapolate in the case of Donald Trump and what he was saying to voters in 2016, he was making a case that the people around him wanted to be true, and therefore, they required less convincing. In other words, you know, I'd spend a lot of time in the political space. It's it's the unpaid half of my day, And I I do messaging for about 85 sitting members of the House and Senate and another, I don't know, 35 that are running in this, cycle. And I talk to them a lot about public perception and messaging and storytelling. It's astonishing to me how few politicians are good storytellers.
Billy Ray I see that it's so essential to what they do, but they just don't seem to fall into it easily. But, again, go look at what Donald Trump was saying in 2016 and who he was saying it to. Essentially, what he was doing was he was validating the hatreds that a certain section of our population had for the media, for institutions, for the coasts, for the liberals, and in some cases, for black people. And he was Breaking, you're absolutely right to feel that way. Don't let them shame you for feeling that right.
Billy Ray That way, those people are condescending to you. Those people are disadvantaging you. They are making fun of you and laughing at you and calling you deplorable. That was a story that that audience wanted to hear, so it wasn't tough to convince them. And I think that Robert Hanssen and Stephen Glass worked in the same way.
Jen Rubin That's fascinating. And once you believe, once you have bought the overarching message and the persona, you don't really care about the details so much. So even if you prove that the economy was worse under Donald Trump, that our, alliances were worse. You give them all this data. It's not gonna make a difference because on an emotional level, it's not everyone, but the segment of his core supporters are glued to him not because of policy positions, but because of this kind of call and recall cycle that they're in with him, where he reflects back their hatreds, their anxieties, and makes them feel powerful and makes them feel that they're part of something bigger than They otherwise would
Billy Ray I I think that's absolutely true. I think there's another part of it, which is very human too, which is once you have bought in, it's really painful to step out. Yeah. It's very difficult to, to take that off ramp and say, oh, I could have been wrong about this guy because nobody is so so on Donald Trump. You're either all in or you're not.
Billy Ray And if you've been all in to then say, oh, I was that wrong, that takes a pretty special kind of person, to be a a a very, very hard thing to do. And, and and the group of people that have put him or or that did at 1 point put him in power, Some of them have fallen off. Yep. You know, understanding, in 2016, he won 80% of the evangelical vote in Michigan. And then this group called, Vote Common Good, 2 pastors who gave up their, their parish in order to just go to evangelical voters and try to give them an off ramp, try to talk to them 1 Christian to another about Trump and what Trump actually represented.
Billy Ray They just started hitting that state in a bus, despite the pandemic. And 4 years after 2016, they had knocked Trump's evangelical vote down in Michigan from 80% to 71% in 2020. And if you look at every other demographic group in Michigan, it all stayed the same.
Jen Rubin Fascinating.
Billy Ray Just losing 9% of the evangelical vote swung that way.
Jen Rubin It's huge. It it is huge.
Billy Ray That's how thin Trump's margin is. It's why I am not afraid of Trump as an electoral force in in November. Obviously, we're gonna work hard, to make sure that people understand what the stakes are, But I I feel that if you can just get a percentage of the people who supported him to reexamine, That's all it takes.
Jen Rubin Right. You know, it's interesting your comment about people not wanting to, in essence, own up to the fact that they've been conned. There was a apocalyptic cult of some type. Maybe it was like the Mayan calendar people, and they had picked a date that was the end of the world. And the end of the world came and went, so researchers and other people went back to them and said, well, do you now, like, have you given up on the cult now that it's passed?
Jen Rubin No. No. You have to understand we miscalculated and they will give a involved explanation. Even then, when the world was literally supposed to end, they would rather double down, come up with some cockamamie other explanation than simply say, okay. Maybe it wasn't like the end the end of the world.
Jen Rubin That's just, I think, human nature. So there's certain people who are not gonna be weaned off. But I'm intrigued by the 1 on 1 mechanism. How much do you think, since you've spent a lot of time in politics, of politics is broadband, TV, online, free media? And how much do you think is really much more localized person on person, parish by parish, neighbor to neighbor?
Billy Ray Well, I think you I think both are vital. I have a friend who, was trying to help Doug Jones when Doug was running against Roy Moore. Yep. Was that 2017, 2018? I forgot which
Jen Rubin 2017. 2017. A special utterance. Yeah.
Billy Ray Right. Okay. So Roy Moore had been accused of of, all sorts of sexual,
Jen Rubin Misconduct.
Billy Ray Misconduct. That's the perfect word for it with, you know, 13 14 year old girls. So, my friend got into, an online chat group with a bunch of Alabamian, evangelical women posing as 1 of them.
Jen Rubin Yep.
Billy Ray And they just talk to each other all day.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray And and he never said a word about Doug Jones. Never said a word. He just validated their feelings. And then 3 days before the election, he wrote into this chat group, you know, y'all, I'm really starting to get troubled about Roy Moore. I mean, those girls were 14.
Billy Ray And I think I'm just gonna write in the name Jesus Christ on the ballot. And they all wrote back, me too. Wow. Okay? That's powerful.
Jen Rubin Yes.
Billy Ray That's powerful. That's local. And that is 1 of the ways in which you have to wage a campaign. But then there's a much bigger picture thing, and it's something that I talk to candidates about all the time, which is what is it that makes a conservative conservative? And that's important, of course, because you're trying to win independent voters.
Billy Ray Right? 25% of the electorate's still movable. Independent vote voters tend to lean conservative, and they tend to be cranky towards the party that's in power, which right now is nominally the Democrats.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray Okay. So you need to find a new language to speak to people who think like conservatives do because Democrats tend to speak in a frequency that only Liberals can hear. Right. And then they're mystified that they don't win independent votes. Right.
Billy Ray So here's here's the 411 on this. Okay? What makes a conservative a conservative on a psychological level, what binds them together as a political group is their shared fear of chaos. That is what has been aimed at every single, Republican voter and independent voter for as long as I've been, alive by republican candidates. And by the way, it's the reason why those people are clinging to the Mayan calendar.
Billy Ray It's the reason why QAnon stays QAnon and keeps recategorizing, and repurposing its own failed theories, and it's why people vote conservative. By that, I mean, that in 1988, the Willie Horton ad, which ended Michael Dukakis' campaign, essentially said if you vote for Michael Dukakis, a black convict on furlough is gonna come murder your family. Right? Democrats are soft on crime. Chaos.
Billy Ray Then after 911, democrats are soft on terror, chaos. Now it's democrats are for open borders, democrats are for burning cities, democrats wanna defund the police, democrats don't care if your son becomes your daughter, Chaos, chaos, chaos. If you give a conservative the choice between authoritarianism and what they perceive to be chaos, They will pick authoritarianism every time. They're doing it right in front of us. And so what Democrats need to understand is that conservatives, because they are frightened by chaos, they like borders around things.
Billy Ray They like borders around countries. They like borders around gender. They like borders around sexuality. What democrats must understand is that in order to reach that voter, we have to rebrand who we are so that we don't look like agents of chaos, which means we have to redefine what chaos is. That chaos is actually people showing up at a, polling place when they are 15th.
Billy Ray Chaos is January 6th. Remember when there were 30 cars backed up in that hospital parking lot because Trump didn't have an answer for COVID? That's chaos. We just want it covered. We're the guys where when the I 95 collapses in in Pennsylvania and they say it'll take a year to fix, we get it done in 16 days.
Billy Ray That's what we do. We just build bridges. We're not here to reinvent the world. We're just here to govern robustly and effectively so that you can be free to live your lives. That's the opposite of chaos, and that's what Democrats need to sell.
Jen Rubin That is fascinating. And, of course, when you look at the 3 stools of the original Reagan coalition, which is essentially the modern political, conservative movement, it was fear of communism, chaos. It was fear of a regulatory, aggressive state that was gonna take all your money away and make your business fail, so chaos. And it was traditional family values because we were undergoing a period, an ongoing period since the 1960s, of social change, reinvention, cross culturalism, multiculturalism. And so in a sense, all 3 of those, although they had a policy name on them, speak to your issue of chaos.
Billy Ray That's right. I mean, that that's the thing that look. I've been studying this since the the night that, that, Trump was elected when I went into the tank so hard.
Jen Rubin It was just
Billy Ray I couldn't eat more sleep. I needed to be It was pretty bad. And I've been studying this ever since. I put myself at the feet of people who understood political messaging, and I learned it. And it really comes down to something very simple.
Billy Ray All elections come down to 2 things. What do people want? What are they afraid of? Okay? What people are afraid of right now is chaos, and every poll is telling us that the issue in this election will be stability, security, whether that's border security, whether that's neighborhood security or paycheck security.
Billy Ray People are feeling a little out of control despite the fact that the economy is absolutely roaring. They are feeling they have been fed a lot of bullshit for for the last 8 years, and it's had, you know, it has accrued. Okay, so once we know that, that's the thing they're afraid of. Okay. We need to talk about how republicans I'm sorry.
Billy Ray I don't use the word republican anymore. How the radical right actually keeps promoting and propagating that chaos. And then we have to then we have to supply the thing that they most want, which is freedom. If you poll Americans on what virtues mean the most of them, freedom is number 1, and it's not close. Freedom out pulls justice as a virtue in America by 22 points Yeah.
Billy Ray Which will come as no shock to any black person who's been saying forever, hey, justice, justice. While white America's been saying, well, yeah, justice. I mean, it's important, but what I really want is the freedom to say stupid shit and not be called a racist. Right. Right?
Billy Ray Freedom every just just to finish the point. Yeah. Instead of guns stopped being a safety issue and started being a freedom issue, well, someone could walk into Sandy Hook and shoot 20 kids and not change the law. The second mask and vaccines stopped being a health issue and started being a freedom issue, things got really weird. Americans don't want their freedoms taken away, and it's why, abortion is the issue to run on because it is a freedom that was taken away by conservatives.
Jen Rubin Absolutely. And that's where I was going. I said it when Dobbs came down. I've said it since. I think there has been just a grotesque underestimation of the power of that issue because a mostly male media, mostly male political structure does not understand the level of panic, the level of anger of women who look at this and say, I'm gonna get pregnant accidentally, and I'm not gonna be able to do anything about it.
Jen Rubin That is the ultimate loss of control. That is the ultimate sense that you are not your own person, that you are a victim of other forces. And it's interesting. The first person to pick up on that dynamic and to use the freedom model rather than the choice model or the health care model was Kamala Harris. She got it.
Jen Rubin And if you look back, her first speeches right after Jobs were freedom, freedom, freedom. And I do think that interested in your take, that the pro choice movement has sort of figured that out. They were so tongue tied for so long in terms of how to talk about it. Did they wanna say abortion? Did they not wanna say abortion?
Jen Rubin Were they saying reproductive freedom? What the heck is that most people would say? That they kind of forgot this is about freedom, like, the most incredible kind of freedom, whether to have a child or not. So I think they have gotten better. What do you tell Democrats about the abortion issue in terms of messaging, in terms of highlighting that it is the ultimate loss of control, the ultimate loss of freedom, when the government can run around saying when you can have kids and when you can't.
Billy Ray What I say to them is that if I were debating a Republican candidate, in a televised debate, let's just say that I was, Sherrod Brown.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray I was running against I forget the name of that dipshit that he's running against.
Jen Rubin Yes. Who apparently faked being shot in the arm. But, you know, yeah.
Billy Ray But if I were Sherrod Brown, I would say, hey. Will you take my 90 seconds on this 1? Because I need you to explain something to me. I literally don't understand what it is that you're proposing as policy. Can you please tell me how government mandated pregnancy is going to work as as policy?
Billy Ray Because that's what we're talking about now. That's what that woman in Texas was dealing with.
Jen Rubin Yes.
Billy Ray She didn't wanna have the child. The state of Texas was gonna make her have the child. That's government mandated pregnancy. Remember, we don't have to defend abortion anymore. We spent 50 years playing defense.
Billy Ray Now they have to defend taking it away. So if I were Sherrod, I would say, okay. Let's take my 20 year old unmarried niece. She's pregnant. It's too late to have a conversation with her about abstinence.
Billy Ray Okay. She's not ready to have the child emotionally, mentally, or financially, but the state of Ohio is going to make her have that child. Tell me how that works as policy. Are we going to take, are we gonna create a new layer of police bureaucracy to follow women like that around and make sure they don't cross state lines or go into Canada to get the health care that they want. Okay.
Billy Ray That sounds expensive. So how many bridges aren't we gonna build? How many schools aren't we gonna build? Which is ironic because the kids are gonna need schools. Oh, wait.
Billy Ray Okay. So you're saying we're not gonna create a new layer of bureaucracy to do that? We're gonna take existing cops, pull them off of what they're doing now so they can follow my 20 year old unmarried pregnant niece around? Okay. Okay.
Billy Ray Well, then how many rapes aren't they gonna investigate? How many robberies aren't they going to solve? Because they're busy doing this. Can you just tell me how it works because I don't get it? And then the opponent will say, well, sanctity of life, then you interrupt.
Billy Ray You go, wait a minute. I didn't ask you to defend it. I asked you to explain it. Because when you write a law like that and you institute a policy, you need to say how it's gonna be paid for, who's gonna be in charge, what are the regulations that are involved with it, can you please take my 90 seconds and just explain to me what the world of government mandated pregnancy looks like?
Jen Rubin Exactly.
Billy Ray What is that candidate going to say?
Jen Rubin Yes. And that's why, as often as I can, so long as my editors don't get frustrated with me, I use the term, not abortion ban, but forced birth because that's what it is. You are forcing
Billy Ray Shattered pregnancy. That's what it is.
Jen Rubin Yes. And I think the Republicans this is the proverbial dog that caught the bus. It was so helpful for them when it was out of reach because they could say these things. They could rail at Republicans. They could make up all this hullabaloo about, you know, abortions the minute after birth or the minute before birth or whichever it was.
Jen Rubin But now that they have it, I think the reality, which I give Democrats credit for, usually they're not this adept, in bringing forth these women, in bringing forth the chaos that they have created, I think has been effective. Listen, we've never had a higher percentage of people supporting no restrictions on abortion or, same question, different answer, no or fewer restrictions on abortion. In other words, the purest position, never been higher, and the general pro choice position, never been higher. And that's because people don't like this. They don't like this crap.
Billy Ray I I would I would actually argue that it speaks to a much bigger picture in America. There are so many lies in American politics. And, you know, we talk about, 2020 and the big lie
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray That that that has fueled MAGA. But I actually think there's a bigger lie in American politics, which is that we are a divided nation. We're not. And it's and it's actually not close. You know, when they put, when they put minimum wage on the ballot in Florida, it got 60%.
Billy Ray This core democratic idea. They put it on the ballot in Arkansas, it got 62 and in Missouri, it got 67. This, again, a core democratic idea in states where democrats routinely get their asses kicked. Americans, 2 thirds of them agree with us on on choice. They agree with us on guns.
Billy Ray By the way, if you stop calling it universal background checks and start calling it violent history checks, 95% of
Jen Rubin the experts
Billy Ray come with you, including 73% of NRA members. They agree with us overwhelmingly on protecting Social Security and Medicare. They agree with us on the environment. They agree with us on, decriminalizing cannabis. They agree with us on everything by 2 thirds.
Billy Ray So why are we not winning 2 thirds of the elections? I I think there's a really, really simple reason for that, which goes back again to 2016, if I may. There were 6,200,000 Americans in 2016 who had voted for Obama and then voted for Donald Trump. 6,200,000 flip voters. 1,300,000 of them lived in 3 states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, which is why the blue wall crumbled.
Billy Ray 1,300,000 flip voters in those 3 states. So somebody very smart did a deep dive and said, okay. Who are these people and why did they have such a massive swing?
Jen Rubin Right. Here's
Billy Ray what they found out. On average, that voter, that flip voter works 2 and a half jobs, commutes 3 hours per day, and thinks about politics 4 minutes per week. K? Per week. So, no, you're not gonna get them on an argument about, the filibuster or the debt ceiling.
Billy Ray K? Yes. That's not where they are. You go up to that voter in Scranton, in Eau Claire, in Lansing. Right?
Billy Ray Pick a city, the hardscrabble city in any of those states. He's working 2 and a half jobs. He's commuting 3 hours a day. He's thinking about politics 4 minutes per week. Right?
Billy Ray I guarantee you he's taking his medication every other day to make 30 pills the last 60 days. His kid's school is falling apart. His mom's in a nursing home. You go up to that guy and say, You've got white privilege, and I don't like your pronouns. What do you think he's going to say to you?
Billy Ray Yes. Whether he has white privilege or not, whether you don't like his pronouns or not, it's got nothing to do with his life. And you're gonna send him running, screaming into the arms of the nearest Republican because we, as Democrats, insist that people celebrate things that they've just learned how to tolerate, and they're not the same thing. Like, if you were to ask that same voter gay rights, he'd say, okay. I don't care.
Billy Ray I know a gay guy. He works in HR. He's fine. I'm fine. It's fine.
Billy Ray But don't tell me if I don't march in a parade that I'm a homophobe.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray But we, as democrats, say, oh, wait a minute. You said pregnant women instead of pregnant persons? You're done. Right. We're canceling you.
Billy Ray Wait a minute. You said breastfeeding and not chest Breaking? Done. We right? So the way Shattered democrats have to deal with that, in my personal opinion, is that they have to call out the left more often.
Billy Ray They have to throw the flag themselves. When the San Francisco Board of Education says something as absurd as we're not gonna name schools after Abraham Lincoln anymore, He wasn't woken up. That's when democrats need to say Shattered doesn't speak for me. The left is a part of my party. It's not the sum of my party.
Billy Ray It shouldn't be the face of my party. If you do that, if you aim for the big middle where the votes are, then you get power, and then you can do whatever you want for anybody.
Jen Rubin Right. This is, of course, straight out of the Bill Clinton handbook. He was the 1 who said it's better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. That for a segment of the American population, strength being in control, being an authority figure Shattered. And he, of course, was famous for his sister soldier message, and he was the 1 who brought welfare reform because Republicans had railed about welfare queens, and we could say that's racist and it was.
Jen Rubin But he was the 1 who said, yeah. Working's a good idea. I think we need people working. And he was 1 of the most successful Democratic presidents in my lifetime. So it's not like you and I are suggesting some weirdo kind of crazy formula that has never worked.
Jen Rubin No. In fact, whenever Democrats win, this is what they do. Who are the 2 of the most successful Democrats who win Breaking 30 points below the ticket, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester, because they talk like normal human beings. Jon Tester is a real farmer with 3 fingers that he's happy to show up. He talks.
Jen Rubin He acts like a real human Breaking, and he talks about things that his neighbors understanding, and he doesn't make a pretense of being woke or being, perfect in the eyes of his far left, that's a danger for him. He would love it if AOC called him out every day.
Billy Ray He would
Jen Rubin love it.
Billy Ray Listen. I think, personally, if you are a man trapped in the body of a woman and you want to and you become pregnant and you call yourself a pregnant person, I would fight for your right to do so. Of course. I've got nothing but empathy for that circumstance. But I don't believe that we as Democrats should tell other people, oh, no.
Billy Ray No. No. No. You must say it this way. Yeah.
Billy Ray Because then we are condescending. Yeah. And and when you break down what most house elections come down to, most voters in swing districts will tell you it was really simple. The republican was an asshole, the democrat was an elitist, and the asshole never made me feel dumb. Yeah.
Billy Ray And we have to embrace that. You have running for office is not unlike writing a movie. You have to locate where your audience is emotionally and then guide them to where you want them to be. And and it's it's nuanced, but it's really not that difficult
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray If you're paying attention to it.
Jen Rubin Now is this something I think that was really, really important, which is you have to redefine chaos.
Billy Ray Mhmm.
Jen Rubin And Trump is a chaos machine, of course. What are some ways listen. He's on trial in 4 courtrooms. He has had these massive civil judgments. He goes off the deep end 18 times a day on Truth Social.
Jen Rubin He let COVID get out of hand. He orchestrated January 6th, and yet a whole bunch of the country thinks, okay. He's fine. He's stronger than Joe Biden. What do Democrats do to turn that around?
Jen Rubin How can they confront the fraudulent Trump and point out he's a crazy, out of his mind, uncontrollable force of nature that will blow away your house and your job and your life.
Billy Ray Well, first of all, any conversation about Trump is a good 1.
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray If we're talking about Trump, Biden's gonna win.
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray That's that's where we focus. But let me give you sort of a a a big frame here. There's a a brilliant novelist named Greg Hurwitz, who is a good personal friend and and a colleague of mine. And he wrote a book once about a cult, and he spent a lot of time in cults and learned about the deprogramming of people from cults. And the the golden rule, which democrats do not fucking get, is that when you're dealing with a cult member, you never say the word cult.
Billy Ray Ever. Because 1 of the tenets of a cult is, hey, anyone not a cult. Anyone who disagrees with you is gonna tell you you're in a cult. That's how you know that they're a danger. Okay?
Billy Ray And it backs them into tribal corners. So the first thing you do is you don't say you're in a cult and I wanna help you. What you say to someone like that is, hey. 5 years ago, where did you picture your life going 5 years ahead? Are you there?
Billy Ray Are you where you thought you'd be 5 years ago? And you start there. Okay? So the way that I talk to candidates and electives about Donald Trump is to say, listen. I get what was fun and what was funny about Donald Trump in 2016.
Billy Ray I get it. You didn't feel seen or heard by your government, and along comes this guy running for president who says, I'm gonna blow the government up. I get why that was appealing. I I totally understand. Here's the problem.
Billy Ray He ran on 4 promises that he made to you. Your health care will get better and cheaper. I will bring back manufacturing. Mexico will pay for the wall. I will drain the swamp.
Billy Ray Those were the 4 promises. Okay? He had a Republican Supreme Court, a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and he went o for 4 on those promises, o for 4, which either means they were bad ideas or he was the wrong executive. But either way, you deserve better. Right?
Billy Ray So it's all about that same idea of, is this where you thought this would all go when you were voting for him? It's the same way that you would talk to a cult member.
Jen Rubin Now there are I talk to this about this to readers all the time, there is a certain segment of the population that is unreachable for Democrats. We get that, just like there is a segment of the Democratic Party which is unreachable. But the area of contentious, free articles that are shifting around is larger than some people think. And Sarah Longwell, who I think is brilliant at this, has come up with the idea of a permission structure, giving Republicans a permission structure to shift over. So she has ordinary people, not Hollywood actors, take little videos explaining that they voted for Trump once or twice, and now they're not going to.
Jen Rubin Is that an effective way? Do you need people from within the cult to deprogram, or can you do it from the outside? Can you come at them from someone who did not vote for Donald Trump and think Donald Trump is terrible?
Billy Ray I think you need to separate 2 issues. 1 is I believe that 30% of our country has always been crazy.
Jen Rubin Yes.
Billy Ray Always. Go back and look at what Americans were saying before the Civil War. 30% of this country was nuts. Go back and look at what Americans were saying before World War 2, the America First Movement, 30% of the country, nuts. Yep.
Billy Ray Richard Nixon, the day he left office, his approval rating was 29%. Yep. There's a group of people that cannot be moved, and it's a waste of time to try. Donald Trump can have that 30%. It's fine.
Billy Ray That means 70% of the electorate is reachable. The people that you can reach who are, like I said, independence who lean conservative or republicans who were republicans because, they loved Reagan and McCain and Eisenhower. You can absolutely reach those people with people who have stepped out because it's not like they're leaving a cult. These are people who are just like you. You know, there's this great candidate running in in California, in Riverside County in Palm Springs.
Billy Ray His name is Will Rollins. He's running against, a Trumpy dinosaur named Ken Calvert who's been there for 32 years.
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray K? Ken Calvert's personal wealth has gone up $21,000,000 in the 32 years that he's been serving in congress. Okay? That's an issue. But Will Rubin's put out this ad which said, hey.
Billy Ray My grandparents were Republicans. My grandparents loved Eisenhower. They loved Reagan. That was those were their heroes. And they taught me that what the Republican party stood for was smaller government, law and order, personal accountability, and hawkishness on Russia.
Billy Ray I'm a Democrat because the Republican party now stands for none of those things.
Jen Rubin Right. Right.
Billy Ray And that's the argument to make. If you are a Republican because you liked Reagan and McCain, you need to look at the Democratic party. Will Rollins as a candidate, I believe that's California 41. Will Rollins as a candidate is closer to that Republican ideal?
Jen Rubin Absolutely.
Billy Ray Than Ken Calvert is?
Jen Rubin Absolutely.
Billy Ray And that's a reeducation too that, yes, I do believe conservative leaning independents and former Trump voters, they can create that permission structure in the same way that Vote Common Good did in Michigan in working with evangelical voters whose who had conflated their religious identity and their political identity and believed that voting for a Democrat at any time was a violation of their belief in Christ. Right. And they needed someone who was just as Christian as they were to say, let's look at it a slightly different way.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray That can be done.
Jen Rubin There are innumerable examples because the 30% of a country that is crazy has elected about a 100% of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, thanks to the gerrymandering, of those people who are bat shit crazy. And that's they're not minor figures. They're central to the Republican Governing Coalition. Republicans used to use the San Francisco Francisco liberal and put Nancy Pelosi on everything. Does it work the other way where you put Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Johnson and all the crazy bunnies and say, that's the Republican party when you're running against a Ken Calvert, when you're running against a whoever the guy is in, Ohio that Sherrod Brown, does that work, that association?
Billy Ray It works for fundraising, but it doesn't bring any, independent voters over towards you, because it just sounds like you're screaming.
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray I I think it's really, really important, again, to locate the audience emotionally. Right? Where are they? If you're that guy in Scranton or Lansing or Eau Claire, you're not thinking about politics. Every time I talk to, someone who's running for the house or or someone who's already a member of the house, who's running for reelection, And I talk to a lot of them.
Billy Ray And I say to them, how often when you knock on doors, when you're talking to people on their front porches or in their living rooms or at a county fair or a town hall or a fish fry, how many times do they say to you, it's really important to me that you win I wanna make sure Democrats take back the house. And they say never. Yeah. They're always talking about local issues. Right.
Billy Ray Right? It's water rights or it's fill in the blanks. Right. Given given, given a a a particular district. Right?
Billy Ray People aren't thinking about politics in the way that DC thinks about politics. And so, yeah, I could I'm in Los Angeles. I could walk into any living room in West in West LA Right. And Breaking about Marjorie Taylor Greene and and raise some money for somebody. Yeah.
Billy Ray I can do that. But I'm not gonna that's not how we're gonna win Michigan. Right. It's not how we're gonna win Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and I think we're gonna win all 5 of those states, by the way. But we're not gonna do it by screaming about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Billy Ray What we're gonna do is and I tell this to every single 1 of my, my candidates. If you frame your election as a as a a a race between a democrat and a republican, you can lose. Right. If you frame it as a race between an American and an extremist, everybody knows what bucket they're supposed to be in. Right.
Billy Ray So you've gotta be talking about extremism as an extension of chaos. What is the thing that we are actually pitching? It's the thing that we actually believe in. Right. Community over chaos, votes over violence, laws over lies, books over bans, truth over tantrums.
Billy Ray I I could alliterate all day Yes. But you make my point. We are actually where the middle is, and we have to make sure that America understands that.
Jen Rubin I think that's absolutely indisputable. The Reagan folks put out a ad that shows the woman from Texas who is literally going through the baby things that she wasn't able to use and Forget whether it's a just on screen or a audio that explains that she nearly died because Texas had outlawed abortion. It was extremely powerful and gripping. Is that too much to get those swing voters? Is that too geared to the assumption of progressives, or is that the right place to be?
Billy Ray I haven't seen any data about the effectiveness of that ad, so I would just be guessing on this 1. This is not something that I have any, you know, polling on. Right. That sounds pretty good to me.
Jen Rubin Yep. I thought so too.
Billy Ray I I just think in general, if we're talking about choice, we're in the right place. You know, 25% of this electorate is still movable. And of that 25%, 81% is really pissed off about Dobbs. Yeah. So you keep talking about that.
Billy Ray They have nowhere to go but the Democratic party.
Jen Rubin Right. And And
Billy Ray and by the way, I would also say there's this thing called breaking the frame. Have you ever Yes. Yeah. Breaking the frame essentially means that when someone, asks a question of you that's a trap, you don't answer it. You reject the premise of the question.
Billy Ray Right? So, famously, 2,002, 2003, w wants to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. He sends Dick Cheney out on all the Sunday morning talk shows to defend it. On every single talk show, Cheney's asked the same question. What's the cost of going in terms of men, materiel, and money?
Billy Ray And every time Cheney breaks the frame, he says, what's the cost of not going? Right?
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray Now conversely but by the way, had he answered the real question, it would have been, I think we've been 20 years. I understanding $7,000,000,000,000 and losing 5,000 American lives. Who's in? Yeah. Right?
Billy Ray You didn't wanna make that. You didn't wanna tell the truth, so I broke the frame. Conversely, go back to October 7, 2016, the Access Hollywood tape. Right? Couple days later, Hillary's on a debate stage opposite Trump.
Billy Ray They ask her the first softball question about, the Access Hollywood tape. She does 90 seconds on sexual predators and doesn't change anybody's mind. Right. Imagine if she had broken the frame. Imagine if her answer had been, I'm not gonna comment on the Access Hollywood tape.
Billy Ray The world can make up its own mind about Donald Trump because my focusing on that tape won't get 1 of you a job, won't get 1 of you health care, it won't build 1 school or clean 1 river, and that's what my administration is gonna be about. That's what I'm gonna spend my 90 seconds on. She wins by 10 points. Yeah. But she couldn't fucking do it.
Billy Ray Yeah. Right? Yeah. And by the way, it's hard for fair minded people to break the frame because they believe if they're asked a direct question, they're
Jen Rubin They should answer it.
Billy Ray Yes. A direct answer.
Jen Rubin Exactly.
Billy Ray But in their business, like in my business, if you're explaining, you're a loser.
Jen Rubin You're a loser. You know that So
Billy Ray We need to keep breaking the frame when they keep trying to drag us into conversations that are false Right. That we wanna have. We gotta break the frame.
Jen Rubin That's so funny. In my prior life, I was a lawyer, and when I talk to political types or I talk to media types, I say to them, you know, a media interview is not a fucking deposition. You're not under oath, and you don't have to answer the question. No 1 is gonna say, objection. He didn't answer the question.
Jen Rubin I mean, sometimes they will Shattered, like, the 10th time, but you're gonna get everything you want to say in there. This, I think people have more control over the message by people, I mean, candidates, advocates, than they think they do.
Billy Ray Agree.
Jen Rubin Because the questioners and the forum that they're in is so weak, it cannot control them if they're really bold. That's why Trump was so effective when he did the debates in 2016. He not only broke the frame. He broke the picture. He broke the furniture.
Jen Rubin He broke the house. He broke the roof. He broke everything. So I think Democrats really can take control of their message. And I will tell you, I saw it in 2018.
Jen Rubin Simon Rosenberg and I, I think, were the only humans on the planet who never bought the red wave because we both saw the actual data, and we saw what women were doing and saying. I interviewed 6 democratic women in swing states. Shattered I called 6, the 1 who didn't respond wound up losing. I'm not gonna tell you who they are. The other 5, all I talked to, interviewed, and all 5 of them were leaning into the abortion issue.
Jen Rubin This was right after Dobbs. And that's how you went. That's how
Billy Ray you went. Of course, it's how you went. And so I'll give you an example. Okay? Because I was just I I had, Zooms with 2 separate candidates yesterday, both running in California.
Billy Ray And we talked about breaking the frame, and we talked about how the women that these 2 candidates are running against, will both try to tag them with some sort of pro trans
Jen Rubin Yeah.
Billy Ray Polls. Okay? And they're gonna try to make it look like Democrats are fixated on this issue, which, of course, is the opposite of the truth. We don't care.
Jen Rubin They're the ones who keep Breaking it.
Billy Ray Republicans are completely fixated on this issue. So here's how I would answer it. Okay? If I were running against oh, let me just pull some names out of my hat. Young Kim or Michelle Steele.
Billy Ray Right. 2 bananas, MAGA candidates, running out here in Orange County.
Jen Rubin Right.
Billy Ray If I were in debate stage opposite them and they started to throw some trans bullshit at me, I would say, you know, Michelle, you know, Young, I've had the privilege of during campaigning, of seeing every corner of this district. And people talk to me on their porches, in their living rooms, you know, at town halls, which you guys don't do, by the way, but people talk to me about the cost of living and choice and, how our environment looks and the cost of prescription drugs. They talked to me about all kinds of things. They talked to me about border security. No one's ever asked me about trans issues ever.
Billy Ray But you think that your job as elected representatives, instead of dealing with those issues which will meaningfully affect the lives of your constituents, you think that the best use of your time is to go with Jim Jordan and follow a bunch of middle schoolers into their locker rooms to inspect their genitals. Okay. I don't get that as a fixation. I don't know why it seems so important to you, but that's what you wanna do? Your you think your job is to keep somebody off the swim team?
Billy Ray Okay. When you're ready to talk about the cost of living, border security, our environment, choice, and healthcare, come join the conversation. We'll be happy to have you. Until then, stay in your fixation and your obsession. We'll talk after November.
Billy Ray That's how I would answer that question, and I think Democrats get that now.
Jen Rubin I think they do. I think they've come a long way. They've got a long way still to go, but, it sounds like they're getting some good advice. I look forward to hearing Democrats break the frame and say the right things from here on out. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jen Rubin It's been great, and, I think Democrats should listen to you.
Billy Ray It's such a privilege, and, thank you for letting me come on here and just opine so wildly and freely.
Jen Rubin That's what we're here for. Good seeing you, Billy.
Billy Ray Thank you, Jen.
Jen Rubin And that was Billy Ray. Wow. Really powerful, wasn't it? I think he has nailed the issue, which is if Democrats don't talk like crazy people, they will win this election. And the good news is they have a president who doesn't talk like a crazy person.
Jen Rubin They have exactly the right candidate for the message that he is advocating, which is safety, security, normalcy, freedom. That's Joe Biden. That's what Joe Biden is running on. He is running on the freedom to decide when you want to have a child, not when the government's gonna force you to have 1. He is running on defending against our enemies, not allowing Putin to run around the world attacking his neighbors.
Jen Rubin He is running on an economic recovery that allows you to not only get back to your office, get your paycheck, but actually outpace inflation with the wage increases that you're getting. He is the perfect candidate to convey the sense of security, of confidence, of normalcy. And Donald Trump is the perfect candidate to be the chaos candidate. That's what he is. He's chaos nonstop.
Jen Rubin His tweets are chaos. His court appearances are chaos. The kind of government he wants, firing everyone in the civil service, using the military to suppress dissent, Breaking the justice department on his enemies. All of this stuff is crazy, out of control, scary stuff. And if Biden adequately conveys that he's the guy who reopened the schools from COVID, He's the guy who made everyone who could get a shot and let them go back to work.
Jen Rubin He's the 1 who's gonna stand up to the thugs around the world, then he will win, and I think he will win comfortably. If we get into some arcane argument about an issue that Americans don't really care about or that Republicans have managed to ridicule, it will be very hard to win. And I think Biden has been handed a couple gifts. He was handed a bipartisan tough immigration bill. That's what they wanted.
Jen Rubin That's what they keep saying they want. Biden was for it. Trump was against it. That is a gift from the political gods, and he should talk about it every single day. When we are including a battle for democracy around the world, and we can give arms and support to Ukraine.
Jen Rubin So not a single American soldier has to lose his life in Ukraine. And we, by the way, can help decimate half of the Russian military. And Trump wants to emulate Putin, wants to emulate his thuggish buddies, well, that's also a gift from the political gods. So be optimistic. I think this 1 is gonna go well, perhaps better than you imagined.
Jen Rubin And I think Billy is right. Time to break the frame. Time to talk about things Americans care about and time to get off the couch and not be immersed in scrolling and polls and doomsday scenarios, but actually go out and work for some of these candidates. If you enjoyed this program and you enjoyed our other programs please tell your friends they can follow and subscribe at YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever they get their