Corruption Trials and Election Protection

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Corruption Trials of Donald Trump, Bob Menendez, and Henry Cuellar

  • Kathy Boockvar on Securing our Elections

  • Outside of Politics: Coming this Summer: The Nuanced Life

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EPISODE RESOURCES

Join us on May 30th for The Nuanced Life Live to kick off our summer series with a virtual workshop on work-life balance.

Corruption Trials and Indictments

Kathy Boockvar

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:00:30] Thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to talk about corruption. Between the trials of Donald Trump and Senator Menendez, both taking place in Manhattan this week, and the new charges against representative Cuellar from Texas, we are both struggling with how to think and feel about our government when stories of corruption are everywhere. So we're going to talk about that first, and then we're going to share a conversation Beth had about scams of another kind with Kathy Boockvar that we know you're really going to enjoy. Kathy is the president of Athena Strategies. She is the former Pennsylvania Secretary of State and has dedicated her career to securing our elections. And with so many of us headed to the polls and primary elections this month, we thought it was the perfect time to share that conversation. Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about (drum roll please) the return of The Nuanced Life. If you have been with us for a while, you know that we usually depart from our normal programing during the summer. We've done series on infrastructure. We've talked with all of you about the partisan divide, and this year we are thrilled to announce that we are reviving our podcast, The Nuance Life.  

Beth [00:01:36] Beginning in June, every Friday, we will share a new episode of The Nuanced Life here in the Pantsuit Politics feed. So we're going to tell you today all about The Nuance Life, what led us to start that podcast, why we stopped it, and why we're bringing it back for a limited run this summer. Spoiler, it's mostly because so many of you ask us to. And to kick off this special series, we're going to do something else that you've been asking us to do, which is have a conversation about work life balance. We get questions from you all, all the time, about transitioning to new phases of life and how we handle that. How we handle having kids and full time jobs and friendships. And not insignificant percentage of our inbox sounds like, "How do you manage all of these things?" So we are going to host a virtual ticketed event on Thursday, May 30th at 8 p.m. eastern. It will be called The Nuanced Life Live, and we're going to talk about all of that, take your questions, chat with each other. I think we're really going to solve some things. You can get tickets starting today at the link in our show notes. We are so excited about it.  

Sarah [00:02:41] Tickets will be $25 for this event and with a ticket you can join us live. You can watch it after the fact. And if you're a premium member or a paid Substack member, we will be sharing a special promo code for you to get a discount on those tickets. Okay, next up, let's talk about corruption.  

[00:02:56] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:03:05] Beth, this is a big week for corruption trials. I had not put together that both of these big corruption trials are taking place in Manhattan. First, we have Michael Cohen beginning his testimony this week in the hush money trial of Donald Trump. He told  

jurors that he conspired with then candidate Trump and the National Enquirer publisher to suppress stories about Trump's sexual encounter with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which Trump feared could damage his 2016 campaign. And then also my former boss, Senator Robert Menendez, heads to his corruption trial along with two new Jersey businessmen who the government charged with being a part of an international bribery scheme involving gold bars and the Egyptian government. Menendez's wife will be charged separately in July. Then, on top of all that, we have charges against Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who, along with his wife, is charged with being involved in a bribery scheme involving a Mexican bank and an oil company owned by the Azerbaijan government. So there's a lot there. I know you did a More to Say on Cuellar that was very informative. It does track pretty closely with the More to Say you did on Senator Menendez. And so I think it adds up, if you're following the coverage of Trump and then you see this trial starting with Menendez and you see charges against Representative Cuellar. It all gets it all gets to you.  

Beth [00:04:28] I think it has gotten to me. And the cumulative effect of it has made me try to think about how does the world see the United States with these stories piling up. Over the weekend, I read an editorial by Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times about campus protest and her perspective as someone coming here from Turkey when she was a college student versus now. That lens of how does the United States see itself versus how the world sees the United States has been important to me taking in this coverage. Because we talk a lot about corruption in Ukraine, we've talked about corruption in the Italian government. There are many, many places in the world where we would see a senator and a representative and a former president on trial-- that's a lot here. And I don't know if I should feel a new sense of confidence that so much of this is being unearthed and people are being held to account, or if I should feel really down about the high profile people-- some of them quite popular. Representative Cuellar is well thought of by his colleagues. It's just very tough.  

Sarah [00:05:41] Yeah, I think it is easy to feel discouraged by stories of corruption. We have a negativity bias. And so when we hear all these things, it can feed a narrative we already have in our head that our institutions are broken, that everywhere is corrupt. And, look, to a certain extent, everywhere is corrupt. If you have human beings present inside a system or an institution, then you will have human beings wanting to exploit that power, usually through money, for their own personal gain. Anywhere, not just in America. Anywhere. And so to me, if you have corruption that's being prosecuted, that's a win. Because what you read in other countries is that it goes untouched, unprosecuted, and that the populace struggles under a sense of empattement. It's just there. There's nothing you can do about it. And so I think that watching the prosecutions-- while I understand this is not the average reaction for me-- it's it's always encouraging. Someone being held to account even if they're not found guilty. The trials matter. Saying, no, we are going to charge you with this because this is unacceptable. That matters. I've been thinking a lot about-- again, get your bingo card out, I'mma bring up that Hubert Humphrey biography one more time. Because they talk about how Hubert Humphrey was not rich, and running for public service from such a young age was really, really difficult for him and his family. And there were times where he struggled financially just to pay his bills. And over time, he formed friendships with powerful CEOs who supported him and wrote him checks and flew him around the country and gave him vacation homes and all this stuff. And it was just sort of the way it was.  

[00:07:43]  And then you had Watergate happen, and people started examining these campaign finance laws and these these relationships. And he came under an enormous amount of scrutiny. And as a person that felt he was an ethical, dedicated public servant, it was really difficult to get caught in this sort of shifting standard. And it was just interesting to read about that shifting standard, that we've gotten tougher on public servants, that we've said this thing that the party bosses where they would just control the city, that they would hand out political favors, not to mention like our reexamination of the patronage system, we've come a long way. And I think it's easy to feel like, ugh, there's always all this corruption. But over the course of history, especially as Americans, we've come a long way in addressing this and asking more of our public servants and paying closer attention and requiring that sort of transparency where you can say, "No, you you actually cannot accept massive amounts of money from foreign governments in order to give them favors through your very powerful committee membership." And I just think that that's good. I guess what I'm saying is, as an American, I always feel like we're heading in the right direction. We're never going to get rid of it, but it always feels like we have gotten stricter and better at addressing it over time. Then what happens, I think, in other countries which you get strongmen in any sort of corruption, accountability just falls away.  

Beth [00:09:11] I think that underscores your point as well, that the trials are important, whether or not they result in conviction. It is important to have a jury system where people can be acquitted. We would not want it to be easy to prosecute sitting senators and representatives and former presidents. It should be very difficult. It should be difficult to convict anyone in our system. So these folks are not above the law. But as to the Menendez and Cuellar trials, those issues are going to be thorny. Whether Representative Cuellar would have been an advocate for Azerbaijan versus Armenia, absent the flow of funds coming through shell companies to his wife for consulting services never rendered, allegedly, is a hard question. The level of advocacy that Senator Menendez would have done for Egypt but for all of these gifts and connections, it's hard to say. So these are going to be really difficult trials, tough cases to prove. Department of justice has a lot of evidence- they wouldn't take these shots if they didn't. But it will still be hard to get to conviction. And I would not feel discouraged by not guilty verdicts in these cases because I do think they're incredibly complex questions.  

Sarah [00:10:29] Well, and I just think they're important moments to ask ourselves bigger questions than about just the senator or representative involved. Obviously, I know more about Senator Menendez's background being a former staffer of his. But Representative Cuellar has sort of a similar biography. And I kind of brought up Hubert Humphrey for the same reason. When you have people in power who have come from very, very little, I don't think we pay enough attention to what fertile ground that is for corruption for a lot of reasons. One, I think we don't pay representatives enough. Nobody wants to hear that, I get it. But there was that great exit interview we were talking about that they did with so many representatives leaving at the New York Times where they were saying, look, I know I make more than my average constituent salary. I get that. And, also, they're not trying to live in D.C. and our home districts at the same time. That's enormously expensive. And so the first thing you have is this sort of just basic arithmetic of doing this job, which is expensive to do and we don't want to acknowledge. And so if you have someone coming from less for a long time-- like Senator Menendez was the poorest senator on every list, who's at the bottom of every single list. So I think just the math is tough.  

[00:11:50] I think you see some of this with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. That was not a family that came from a lot of money. I'll never forget that profile I read of Hunter Biden where it was like, well, [inaudible] is going to be president; Hunter has to figure out how to make money for our entire family because we don't have generational wealth. So I think it's just the basic math of it is hard, and then you are coexisting with people who do have generational wealth. And you think, I'm working just as hard as they are. I'm doing the same job, and I'm supposed to coexist and stay on the same level with these people who are billionaires? So do we want just billionaires up there or do we want to continue to fertilize this ground for corruption, where people who don't come in with generational wealth feel that they are owed something. And I'm not saying that that's the ethical reaction, but I do think it is a very human reaction. I really do. It doesn't happen over and over again by accident. And so I think we need to ask ourselves these tough questions, like, instead of just villainising the people on trial, asking like what situationally, what systematically, -what institutionally contributes to corruption? Not just people making bad choices, which is absolutely a part of the equation. I'm not trying to defend either of these men.  

Beth [00:13:10] They also aren't just trying to have two places to live. They are trying to dress like people who can go on television, who can attend fundraisers, who are frequently with celebrities, who are written about sometimes as though they are celebrities. Their fashion is critiqued the way they present themselves. It's they are trying to fly at an altitude by virtue of the office that some of them just do not have the personal wealth to sustain. And it's so important that we have people in Congress who represent lives that are not at that altitude. I think that this is some of what is so gripping about John Fetterman and his willingness to be himself in a situation where everybody is flying at that altitude. I think that he could be so groundbreaking in a number of respects, because he doesn't seem to be trying to do that thing, and I hope that he will never try to do that thing. Now, that has made him a celebrity in his own right in a different way. And maybe he has a different set of incentives because of that. But I think that you're right, examining all of the incentives more than just degrading the character of the people involved is important. Both things are true. If we want to continue to make progress, we do have to look at the incentive structure. This is even truer at a state level. When you start talking about state legislatures like ours that are part time positions that, do not pay well that, require tremendous amounts of time away from home. Traversing in a car across the state. You can't fly from every corner of Kentucky into Frankfort where our legislature meets. And that's true in so many states. We're asking an awful lot of people who serve and not giving them much to work with on the other side of it sometimes.  

Sarah [00:15:04] It's true at the local level. I made $19,000 being a city commissioner. It was technically a part time position. I made $19,000 and I got health insurance that was worth a fair amount of money. But there was just this sense-- especially when I was running, I didn't make anything when I was running. Do you know how much time I dedicated to knocking on 5000 doors? It was an enormous amount of time. I didn't get paid to do it. They just had added (I think right after I ran) the idea that you could use campaign expenses for childcare. That was like a brand new thing because you had to pay for childcare if you're a woman running for office or man, depending on the age of your children. And I could only do that basically because I had enormous privilege, because I had flexible work, because my husband was well compensated for his professional life. And ultimately it didn't work for my life long term. Ultimately that that wasn't going to work because of my age. Especially we've talked about this in Paducah, unless you just want wealthy and retired people as your elected officials, we need to change this. We need to work on this. You're asking an enormous amount of public servants all up and down this ladder.  

Beth [00:16:16] And then proving the point that individual character does matter is the fact that Donald Trump entered office with tremendous wealth, and that certainly did not serve as a bulwark against corruption because it is so clear that he used the office to try to enrich himself. And it is so clear that he lived at an altitude before going into office that he expected people to do things like kill negative stories in the press for him. And I think the testimony unfolding in his trial this week is just more of a demonstration that this is a person who has consistently, for decades, micromanaged the people around him to do only his bidding for only his gain at the expense of absolutely everyone around him, with no moral concerns about that whatsoever.  

Sarah [00:17:13] And it's just mind blowing to me because not only do we have this trial where we're seeing that again-- I think you're 100% correct-- he's always been trying to fly at a different altitude. He's both existed there, never been fully accepted there, always wanted to be at a higher altitude. And has used all kinds of tools at his disposal, including we finally got the results of this IRS investigation that we've been talking about for years, that he was basically double dipping on tax deductions. Big ones. Double dipping is not quite enough big enough verb, I think, for the amount of money involved here. And, to me, it's like we're talking about this, you're watching Michael Cohen's testimony, and all these people who want to be his vice president are coming to the trial, sitting there, listening in detail to how he treats people who work for him in an effort to audition, to work for him. It is mind bending to me. I thought that the consistent thing among all these stories was truly an ounce of self-preservation. Now, some people apply that in really messed up ways, but I can't even see the thread of self-preservation in this desperate attempt to be his vice president. When the last guy about got hung, they tried to kill him and you are going out of your way to get that job by going to a trial where you hear how he treats people who are "loyal to him." I just a struggle.  

Beth [00:18:44] I struggle as well at Mother's Day brunch with my parents. We were talking about the brief window this weekend where it seemed like Nikki Haley was on the short list.  

Sarah [00:18:53] That was wild.  

Beth [00:18:54] And I said at the table, if that happens, just send me to the moon. I can't live here anymore. I cannot stay in this atmosphere, if he asks Nikki Haley and she says yes to do this job. I can't stay here anymore. I can't do it. And so we were discussing the Marco Rubio push. Marco Rubio seems ready to move out of Florida and give up his Senate seat to be Trump's vice president. The JD Vance, the Doug Burgum who I thought just wanted to be energy secretary, seemed like a reasonable play to me. That seems like a place where you could maybe fly under the radar a little bit, but no. And Chad said, "I just think every single one of these people tells themselves he's old, and I would be right there and that's enough." That thought of themselves getting to step in is enough. And that makes me sick. I cannot relate to that kind of ambition in any way. I think it's something deeper than ambition. I don't know if we have a word for it. But that's the only reasonable explanation that I have.  

Sarah [00:20:03] I guess that's true. That's a good point. He is very old and he does not take good care of himself. So they're just thinking I'm a heartbeat away and then I get to be president. But, again, that's a lot of putting your chips in one square or whatever the gambling analogy is, I don't know. It does seem like a gamble to me because it could very easily go a different direction. Even the articulating "I won't accept the election results" as this other type of test, this other part of the audition, knowing how that played out for Mike pence-- it's not like Mike pence was up there going, I think the election was perfect. And still they about hung him and he had to run for his life. Maybe they just weren't paying close attention to the January 6th trials as we were, Beth. That's that's the only thing I can make my peace around.  

Beth [00:21:05] You have to do an awful lot of mental gymnastics to get here. And so I try to step back and do with these folks what we did with Cuellar and Menendez. What do the incentives look like?  

Sarah [00:21:19] Right.  

Beth [00:21:20] Because it can't just be that these are all terrible people. Can it?  

Sarah [00:21:25] I don't know.  

Beth [00:21:26] I don't know. So you have to step back and say, what are the incentives here? And I think that the continuous theme for the past almost 10 years now has been that base voters in the Republican Party will not check this. And it's not just that they won't check it, it's that they continue to reward it. And I hope that Nikki Haley still taking a significant percentage of the vote in a place like Indiana, is a prelude to the fall when people say, no, I really am willing to split ticket vote. I really am willing to take a Democrat this time just to say I've had enough of this, but I don't know.  

Sarah [00:22:14] Well, and there's so such interesting polling that their split ticket behavior is happening around the Senate, where you have Joe Biden polling terribly, the Democrat senatorial candidates polling so well. I mean, I do think if I look at Tim Scott and Elise Stefanik and JD Vance, the through line of their biography to somebody like Bob Menendez and Henry Cuellar is there. That there's not generational wealth, that there's not family privilege, that you're coming from nothing. I can pull that thread and tie it together. But I don't know.  

Beth [00:22:47] And the retrenchment. Once you've been attacked, the doubling down, the tripling down, the Menendez still saying maybe I'll run again, Cuellar saying, yes, I'll run again. Elise Stefanik fully adopting this new persona, JD Vance, after people were mean about his book, there is the victimhood deepening my sense of identity. There's no softness with any of these folks anymore.  

Sarah [00:23:16] Yeah. And there's definitely a victimhood narrative surrounding Donald Trump. I mean, if you feel that way, then yes I can see why you identify with him as a voter and as a vice presidential candidate. Well, this is all some heavy, dark stuff. And we're moving on to some heavier, darker stuff around the election. So we wanted to take just a brief moment, a brief pause, and celebrate the northern lights that so many of us got to see and experience and delight in. I didn't even know about it till Friday night, Beth. It was Axios mentioned at the end of their email. I was like, wait, I'm sorry, what? There's a solar storm that could disrupt communication and I'm just now finding out about it. I felt like it should have been on the level of the solar eclipse, which we also got to experience together this year. What an embarrassment of riches.  

Beth [00:24:11] No, the Northern Lights passed us by too. Chad surprised me with a little anniversary getaway this weekend, which took us out of a place where we would be able to see them. And all weekend he was like, ugh, I wish I had thought about this. Because the pictures that we saw were just gorgeous.  

Sarah [00:24:27] Any future solar storms need the PR of the solar eclipse, I think. I don't know who's in charge of their PR, who they have hired, but it was interesting. Nicholas said he read an interview with a space person who said, number one is a total solar eclipse, followed closely by the northern Lights as far as seeing and experiencing that. And I had seen all over Instagram that this was a good year for it. We are planning a trip in September up to Isle Royale and Voyagers to try to see them up there, because there's all kinds of stuff about how this year and I think next year too is a really good year to see the Northern Lights. When the world feels like a lot, and you could look up to the sky and see this beautiful, amazing thing that just puts you in your place-- I'm tearing up. I literally looked out my window. I'd forgotten about it. My friend texted me a picture her son took and I was like, oh my gosh. And we kind of walked outside for a minute. And then something about the angle through my window, the sky was purple and green- just incredible. And that's nothing. They say when you go up to like Iceland, the lights are dancing in the sky. And just this little taste was so magical.  

Beth [00:25:40] And I was sad that we didn't get to talk together about the eclipse because of the timing of our breaks. When we saw the solar eclipse in totality, I was just totally unprepared for how that would feel in my body. I cried through the whole thing and for a long time after we're driving down the road, Chad's like, you okay over there, friend? And I said to him, the only words I could get out were, "It's amazing that anything works." That's the feeling that I got. It's amazing that anything works. Because when the sun was covered and you looked around and it's like 360 degree sunset, and you felt the serious change in temperature that light makes, and you consider what it would be like if they always lined up like this, or if they lined up just a little bit differently than they do. It's kind of the way that I felt when I read that book, The Body: A User's Guide, and you read about just how everything happens and you think it's a miracle that this works ever for any length of time. And maybe that's the universe telling us to have some grace as we take in our politics, too. That it's amazing that any of it works. So it's amazing that we find out about the corruption. We aren't all just constantly transactional. We do have some standards. And anything that we pull off in this crazy, wild world is really something.  

Sarah [00:27:08] Well, listen, I'm just going to take this and I'm going to push us all because I did read an article this morning about the cicadas. We have these broods aligning for the first time in 200 years. And they were like, look, this is as amazing when you consider it as a Northern Lights, as a total solar eclipse, because these creatures live underground for decades and then they come up and they're incredible and they're loud and they're smart, they can count. And it's like all this stuff. And I thought, yeah, you know what, I'm not going to be like, ugh, at the cicadas. Any sort of moment where things align in nature and something out of the ordinary happens, man, let's just lean in. So I delight in the Northern Lights. I want to try to delight in the cicadas, too.  

Beth [00:27:57] Well, that out of the ordinary just makes you perceive the ordinary so differently. And I hope that we can use the bizarre politics of our time to appreciate the ordinary, too.  

Sarah [00:28:10] Amen to that.  

Beth [00:28:18] I'm so excited to share with you now a conversation I had recently with Kathy Boockvar. A mutual friend introduced us, and when I read her name in an email, I thought, why does this name sound familiar to me? And then I realized it's because I had read it in Supreme Court documents, because Kathy Boockvar was the Pennsylvania Secretary of State in the 2020 election, when Pennsylvania's votes went all the way to the Supreme Court. She has spent her life as an election professional, and has an unbelievable amount of expertise and wisdom to share with us about how our elections are conducted. And I hope that you really enjoy this conversation with her, and that you will share it with people around you, as we all try to better understand how to keep our election safe and secure. Secretary Boockvar, we are so honored to have you here at Pantsuit Politics and delighted to be able to discuss election security with you.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:29:10] Well, thanks so much for having me on. I'm really happy to be here. And please call me Kathy.  

Beth [00:29:14] Thank you so much. Well, I want to start knowing that you have had experience at every level of elections. I've heard you talk about how you began as a poll worker at the local level. And so you have really worked on administration of elections at the county level, the state level, and now you are thinking about it at the national level. Can you talk to us, given this decentralized web of elections occurring in the United States, about how we think through election security just in a physical sense, that we go to our polling places and have confidence that what we do there works and is safe and secure.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:29:54] I think it's not intuitive to most people how decentralized our elections are in this country. I think people have this image that I'm an American, and so the way that an American votes in one county in Tennessee, I think people assume is the same for another county in Illinois. And the truth is nothing could be further from the truth. And so we don't have one election, we don't have 50 elections, we actually have about 9000 different election jurisdictions in this country. And I'm not exaggerating. There's 1900 or so in Wisconsin. There's about 1600 in Michigan, 500 in Maine. I thought it was decentralized in Pennsylvania with 67 counties. But as it turns out, that's nothing compared to how we run it. And I'll say that though it feels counterintuitive, the truth is the decentralization add security. Because think about if you were, say, overseas adversary who is trying to influence our elections or hack into some system, it's not just one system. It's 9000 different jurisdictions that an adversary would have to impact in order to make a difference in an election. So it adds security. And the ways that things work basically are like this, there are certain federal laws that apply to everyone. So you've got the Help America Vote Act, which makes sure that voters with disabilities, no matter where they are, can have an accessible voting system in their location. Overseas and military rules apply everywhere. The Voting Rights Act applies everywhere, but then each state sets its own laws. And even beyond that, these individual local jurisdictions have their own authority. And what that really does is it makes sure that we're taking into account the people in a local jurisdiction. And it also means that our election officials are getting to the trust building and how people can feel connected to how it works. We want it to be a local community procedure process. We just had our primary election on Tuesday in Pennsylvania. And when you walk into the polling place, it's your friends and your neighbors who are there staffing the polls. It's people who coach our kids on our soccer teams, who sit next to us in church. And so it's actually those folks who run our elections and make sure that every one of us can exercise our fundamental right to vote. And that's a really critical piece. There's not some sorcerer in a back smoky room waving a wand.  

Beth [00:32:54] Or uniformed guard. Like it's a very different vibe than in many places in the world.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:32:59] Exactly.  

Beth [00:33:00] I think that's so helpful. I love to go vote because it's at a local elementary school, and we do see people we know every time we go to vote, and the same folks usually are doing the poll work and they're so kind. The teachers at the school always make sure there are interesting art pieces from the kids where we're standing in line. It's a great experience. I know that for the poll workers it is not always a great experience. That especially in the last couple of elections there are reported stories. And I'm sure that this is a small slice of those 9000 jurisdictions. But there are reported stories about how difficult that work has become. So I'd love to hear you reflect on that and talk to us about how we can improve that position.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:33:43] Thank you for talking about this because I think it's a critical issue that we're facing. I wish that this were not something-- election officials have always had a tough job, right? I mean, this is the fundamental right to vote, and there are so many layers and layers of security, integrity built into every step of it. And now, on top of all the security and integrity pieces that they have to know how to run and manage people running, now we're finding that those folks that are literally the heroes of our democracy are getting threats to themselves, to their families, to their staff, to their infrastructure. And it's apparent. It's also something that I think most Americans if they understood that our election officials are being threatened, would say that's something I thought maybe happened by our overseas adversaries in a very repressive government. That's not what America is based on. But the reality is it has become that over the last five years. I started in the Pennsylvania Department of State in 2018. In 2018 and 2019, it's most of those kinds of fears, whether it was cyber security attacks or other kinds of disinformation which we may get to. Any sort of threats were generally coming from overseas adversaries. And I think what's shifted in 2020 is that it became our own domestic actors who were engaging in that. And I had to leave my home and be in an undisclosed location for over a week. I didn't stay alone in my apartment in Harrisburg, which was usually where I lived during the week. I didn't stay there for probably a month and a half. My mother got threats. My daughter got threats. I mean, it is incomprehensible that the guardians of our democracy, rather than being put on a pedestal and celebrated for their remarkable dedication, instead they're having to worry about having cameras and lights and police contacts.  

Beth [00:36:16] Do we see a light at the end of the tunnel around those kinds of threats, or do we anticipate that will continue? And if so, what kinds of solutions should we be thinking about? That sort of problem seems especially daunting when you have 9000 jurisdictions and multiple polling locations within each of those.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:36:35] Yeah, it's a great question. So what I would say is this: unfortunately, it's gotten worse. So I think a lot of us thought that once 2020 died down, or at least 2021 died down, that it would get better. And instead, 2022 brought more really across the country threats. In 2023 as well, including of local election officials, county officials. Who, again, these are some of the most incredibly dedicated working human beings on the planet. And like one in New Mexico having his house shot at, literally shot at. So that's the bad news, is that it hasn't gotten better. The good news is our protections and resources have gotten better. So one of the areas of work that I do a lot with is there's an organization called the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which is a bipartisan cross-sector collaboration of current and former election officials, current and former law enforcement officials, some nonprofit organizations in the space, as well as the federal agencies that touch election security. So DOJ, EAC, and CISA.  

[00:37:56] And this has just been a phenomenal collaboration where we've been doing a number of things. Going across the country, going to election director conferences to national sheriffs and state sheriffs conferences, really hitting every opportunity to forge connections between election officials and law enforcement, as well as processes and understandings ahead of time. You don't want to be having to figure out in the moment an emergency who to call, what the procedure is. You want to do that ahead of time, and you want to be able to look people in the eye. You want to know that they understand what's the normal, what's not normal in each of their worlds. And we've also been creating resources. This pocket guides is one of the things that I've been working on, which is basically state by state reference guides that help everybody understand in each state what laws already exist on the books that can help protect election officials and infrastructure and voters, of course, who are at the mercy of a lot of this.  

Beth [00:39:11] I can imagine it being daunting to even figure out who's responsible for the security of a polling place?  

Kathy Boockvar [00:39:19] The thing is, it it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So I think in 2020, one of the things that was tricky was because we had not broadly had this experience of officials being threatened and particularly to the degree that they were, but there wasn't clarity on who was the right level of official to be dealing with this. And so for me personally, it's sort of like a good illustration of the issue. So I live in one county, which is a little over two hours from Harrisburg, which is in Dauphin County. I cross through probably, I don't know, two or three counties in between those two counties. So when I was in Harrisburg, when things were bad, I was being driven around by the Capitol Police. There was a time that I was being driven by state police between the two. But then when threats came, do you call the local law enforcement? Do you call the state? Do you call the federal? And so, basically, I was fortunate. I had good relationships with all the levels of law enforcement. So even though nobody really knew whose responsibility any of it was at any given time, I would at least know that I had the ability to call folks at every level. But there's not clarity on that. And in the polling place-- to your point-- on election day, it varies a lot from state to state. So some states say there are constables, election constables that are the only one say that could be in the polling place. And some states have specific rules that say police officers have to be X feet away from a polling place unless the election official calls them in to keep the peace. So, again, as we've talked about the decentralization, it's another area where most people haven't had to figure out those details. And we're trying to make sure that those foundations are laid ahead of time.  

Beth [00:41:36] Before we move beyond the physical polling places and that very granular realm, I want to make sure to ask you what we do exceptionally well around our elections? Because I think the more people can understand the specifics when they're told you should feel confident that your vote is counted correctly, the better we can have that confidence.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:41:58] So a lot of times when I talk about why people should have faith in their elections, I talk about the people, the science and the math. Which is people have no idea what goes into it. So I've already talked about the people, right? The people who are our friends and neighbors. They're incredible human beings. The science and the math. So when I talk about science, what a lot of people don't realize is that, yeah, I mean, we've been holding elections for a lot of years. And the processes that have been built in both-- what I sort of refer to as process science and hard science. So the process sciences is when you think about, for example, there's all these false allegations about let's just talk about vote by mail since that's one of the ones where you often find a lot of misinformation. Like in Pennsylvania, for example, we don't mail ballots to voters unless they apply. So they have to apply. They have to have their either Social Security number or their driver's license number checked against the Social Security database or the driver's license database. We also have to be checked against the election databases. All that has to show that they're eligible before they're even sent a ballot. Then they're sent a ballot that has a barcode on the outer envelope, and that barcode is tied only to that person who has already been approved. So it's not like somebody else could cast that ballot and do it in their name. Because if that person hasn't already been approved and validated as qualified, they would never be able to cast that ballot. And so then when the ballot is received by a county-- and this is similar processes across the country-- with these barcodes that very specifically are only tied to a particular voter.  

[00:43:49] And if there's no barcode-- you've heard, I'm sure, allegations of truckloads of ballots driven in from one state to another. If you took a truckload of ballots and they don't have barcodes on them that are not tied to an approved voter, the county would not count those ballots, period. Because they scan them. It's the first thing they do. So this is an example of the type of very detailed, layered process that makes sure that only eligible voters have the opportunity to cast ballots. And on top of that, there's cybersecurity trainings and protections. We have system controls. We have network protections at every layer so that nobody could hack into it. And that's all in the science section. And then we've got math. And my secret that I share in these moments are that elections are all based on math. It's like I used to joke that I was mathematician in chief when I was Secretary of State, because 67 counties would follow all their processes, make sure that eligible votes were counted. They would literally tell me how many votes one candidate got versus the other, and then we would add it all together. And the candidate with the most votes wins. And then on top of that, we've got reconciliations in every polling place. We've got audits in Pennsylvania. We happen to have two different audits that sample ballots to make sure that they reflect the same result as what was reported. And all those layers, the people, the science and the math. Every state across the union does some version of that to make sure that we have the strongest security and integrity in our elections.  

Beth [00:45:42] I love that point about the science and about how we've been doing this a long time. I think it's easy to forget that there are people working on the next election when we've forgotten about the last one, and that we are always trying to integrate the lessons. Okay, what were our vulnerabilities this time, or just what was inefficient? What could we be doing better? And that you're constantly considering elections as election professionals instead of just, oh, it's time to do this again. Let's pull our equipment back out.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:46:11] That's exactly right. I mean, these really are professionals who take it very seriously. And in 2018 and 2019, cybersecurity was sort of this thing getting all the headlines. It sort of made me crazy because every reporter was putting out these headlines that said there's going to be chaos because of cyber attacks and all this stuff. It's kind of like AI's 2024 version of the cyber threats from 2018 and 2019. And so on top of what was really a hard job, we added tons of cyber security training for election officials. And most of them, again, as we've said, they're members of our community. They don't come in with built-in cybersecurity. Some of them do. But it's certainly not the norm. So they've added that and they're amazing at it. They train their staffs. They get the tools. The federal government has been funding more and more tools so that election officials, regardless of their funding, have access to those. But it's exactly what you said, the people who are running our elections, they're professionals and they take it very seriously.  

Beth [00:47:26] A thing I struggle with in talking about election security is under what umbrella to put mis- and disinformation, because it is almost always folded in with election security. And that feels to me like it's not helping us. That it is related to elections, but it sounds like the election professionals should be able to do something to help with that. And I wonder how you think about that, because in my mind sometimes I wonder, do we need to just kind of draw a line and say, look, there are threats to the process, and that's where we build cybersecurity, and we secure the physical space, and we train the volunteers, and we work the people, the science and the math. But then there are threats to the citizenry and to what you know when you go to vote. And that is a much harder problem to get at.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:48:16] You are asking the million dollar questions, Beth. I'll say this. I think mis- and disinformation are one of the pivotal issues of our time, and it has a million different tentacles to it. The problem has a million different tentacles to it, and so any solutions have to have a million different tentacles to it. And I find that a lot of times there are folks who are like, what's the answer? And, of course, there's no one answer because when we talk about our electorate, what an 80-year-old woman from Alabama both is exposed to and also how she processes things, it's going to be different than an African-American 20-year-old man from New York, and every other background of human being on our planet. Because this is also not just an American problem, this is happening internationally. What I've been doing is looking to other countries that actually are really interesting models to look to, who are sort of ahead of us in what I think of as a whole of society approach. Because this can't be just an election official solution. It can't be just a federal government or a state government or a local government solution. It's literally going to take every one of us to reach people where they are. We need to be in the libraries, in the schools, and community centers, and churches, in barbershops and on TikTok-- if TikTok continues to exist.  

Beth [00:50:00] It'll be something else, if not. I don't think short form video's going anywhere anytime soon.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:50:05] I think you're absolutely right. Do I think it is an election security problem? I do, but that doesn't mean that I think that it's an election official solution problem, if that makes sense.  

Beth [00:50:18] That makes sense. That helps me with that delineation, because you have this speech layer on top of mis- and disinformation, and you don't want your election officials to feel compromised in any sort of Partisan way as they're trying to find solutions to this problem.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:50:35] That's exactly right. And trusted voices take a lot of forms. Like somebody's minister might be the trusted voice to them. And somebody's teacher might be the trusted voice and barber. I mean, like I said, I'm serious about barbershops because that's where people talk about the issues in their life. And I oftentimes talk about I was on a flight to Salt Lake City in 2020, and the woman next to me struck up a conversation. And all I knew about her was that she was going home to Salt Lake City, and she was asking why I was going to Salt Lake City. When I told her I was there for work, she what I did, and I told her election security. And I told her that I had been secretary of state during the 2020 election. And she said, like, tell me what happened? Like, did it happen the way it was supposed to? Like, you hear so many things. So I started telling her about the people, the science, and the math. And, of course, all the legal challenges and recounts and audits and everything else. And she kept asking more and more questions. And when we sort of got through everything-- which was most of the flight, really, we talked-- when I got to sort of the end, she said, "Oh, good. I'm so glad because you hear so many things." And she said, "I'm a member of the Church of Latter day Saints, and I would love to talk to my friends and my neighbors and my family about everything you just told me. But I don't have the words. If you could give me the words, I would be happy to do that." So the last couple of years, I've really been thinking we need to empower people to be ambassadors in their own communities, however they define those communities.  

Beth [00:52:38] All of those spaces that you mentioned, I'm thinking about church, when I get my haircut, and all those kinds of spaces, the conversation right now to me feels like we're talking about scams everywhere. The the text message, the email, the thing that came in the mail, the call that you got that sounded sort of legit, but you had a feeling that maybe it wasn't. And that makes me concerned about where this will go coming into the election. But it also makes me feel like there is an opening to have this conversation about mis- and disinformation not so close to November and start warming people up around these scams, because I do think everyone is concerned.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:53:19] You're absolutely right. And AI is making that worse because it's democratizing these tools. You know how it used to be when we taught about phishing, it was sort of easy to spot a phishing email because you could say there's all these misspellings, and it sounded like English wasn't their first language. And it's getting much harder because with AI, they can really better mimic what feels real to you. And we've all gotten it. I just got a text the other day that said, "Hey, Kathy, is this still your correct number?" And somebody would do that, right? Sure. I deleted it and reported as junk because, like you said, we've been talking about it. There's still a lot of people, particularly seniors, who are being targeted very directly. And my mother has just told me about several of her friends, who not only very smart, smart women who have been targeted, but who have actually carried out the requests of some of these scams. And so that is very likely going to play out in election security. And so we are worried about that people are going to be using AI to generate texts that maybe mislead people about violence in a polling place. Or to your point about calls, we do genuinely expect that by fall that the ability to create AI generated voice and calls using call lists that we know are out there to make somebody think that it's somebody who knows their life circumstances, is telling them, don't vote today, there's a problem and we're extending polls till tomorrow. So one of the organizations I work with is called The Future U.S., and we've really been working with partners to start to get to expand the message. As we're talking about take advantage of the fact that we're already talking about scams, let's expand it to make people understand of what they may see in the election space, and so that when they do see it, they'll be able to say, "Hey, I think that's probably not real."  

Beth [00:55:50] Is voter suppression where you expect most of that action to be here?  

Kathy Boockvar [00:55:54] Yes.  

Beth [00:55:56] So people need to be on the lookout. This is something that your friend on the airplane could tell her community. If someone is telling you don't go vote today and you know it's voting day, you should be very suspicious of that message.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:56:08] Exactly. And so both that piece of it. And then we also need to do better at telling people where they can find the accurate information. First of all, expect that if a call or text comes in like that, it's probably not real. And if it is real, if you go to your Secretary of State's website or your county election director's website, it will be there if it's real. And if it's not there, it's not real. And so don't retweet it. Don't re-post it. Assume that those things are how it's going to play out. And here's the tools for actually checking to see whether it's in fact real.  

Beth [00:56:54] Are you seeing fake secretary of state websites come up? I know that some people really struggle with how to get to those official resources, and I worry that there's like a vulnerability in that, too.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:57:06]  I think at the state level it's been okay, particularly because of the dot gov URLs. In case anybody doesn't know, if you see a dot gov, it is an official government website because only governments are eligible for that. That doesn't mean that dot coms records are not secure. But if you see dot gov you're good. You know it's official. So people should definitely be informed that. The problem is that there are still plenty of local election official websites that haven't transitioned over to dot gov yet. Again, not because they're not secure. As I mentioned, there are 9000 election jurisdictions in this country, and dot gov has been a push probably over the last six years and not everybody has gotten there yet. So I'm hearing more about these kinds of problems on the local level. So, for example, some county election director reached out to me to say somebody created-- let's just call it Smith County-- a Smith County election director Facebook page that's false. And because the social media companies are taking sort of ten steps back because they're worried about the political implications of being accused of suppressing speech, he hasn't been able to get the social media company to respond to a blatantly false set of misidentification. That's easier than a deep-fake where you've got analysis and attribution to even prove that it's false. So AI is going to add a whole other layer of issues with that.  

Beth [00:59:04] Can you give us a little bit on the who's, the somebodies who are out there trying to circulate this bad information? I know that's a big question.  

Kathy Boockvar [00:59:18] Yeah. Well, what I would say is this-- and I think I said to some degree earlier, I think what's sort of incredibly frustrating is that it has shifted so much over the last many years. Because, again, I remember in 2018 or 2019 being in a room full of secretaries of state, bipartisan, and I was a very conservative Republican who was giving a presentation about disinformation. And because it was 95% being conducted by overseas adversaries, it was much less controversial. Everybody was united in saying, this is our overseas adversaries. This is bad. And and there was very clear evidence even back then that the Russians, China, Iran were all heavily involved in researching divisions in our country, from American to American, and then planting false to fake videos, Facebook pages, staged protests to really inflame our divisions. So it was all targeting coming from overseas. And what's different now is that it's our own domestic actors who are doing it to ourselves. Fanning those flames of division from American to American. And so that's part of why it's very much a national security issue, because every time we do that to ourselves, we are literally handing a gift on a silver platter to our overseas adversaries because they get stronger the more we make ourselves more vulnerable.  

Beth [01:01:02] I think that's so important for people to hear. It's easy to believe, well, this country prefers this candidate, and that's what it's about. But for many actors, it's just about the chaos. It's just about the mistrust, right?  

Kathy Boockvar [01:01:17] Exactly. And they're thrilled with what we've created here, that we are tearing down our own faith rather than them having to do it for us.  

Beth [01:01:29] Well, so as we are rebuilding that faith-- and I'm trying to track our calls to action here. We've talked about making sure that you are skeptical of texts and emails about elections. That you're going to the official dot gov websites to get your information about voting. You're telling your friends and family to do that. I would just recommend that you share this episode with them. So let me ask you this, what have I not asked you about that is a frequently asked question when you're on the airplanes and you're out with groups? What do people want to know that we've not talked about?  

Kathy Boockvar [01:02:00] Well, I'm going to first put in a plug of something that I want to talk about, which is if folks haven't ever volunteered to be a poll worker, now is the time. And I got to tell you, as you mentioned, my first job in elections was as a poll worker, and it completely changed my life. It had never occurred to me before somebody asked me to serve, and I said, sure. And whether you're a skeptic or a you're completely strongest trust in the world and our systems and everything in between, you will never feel more like you're part of the wheel of democracy as you do when you're a poll worker. You are literally helping people exercise their fundamental right to vote. And on top of it, you'll get to see the people, the science, and the math. So it really helps you understand. And then you could be an ambassador in your community to others. So I want to urge everybody, we have a desperate need for poll workers. And if you can do it, please, please, please. And you can go to either the EAC or your Secretary of State's website to to sign up to do that, or your county as well. What are others asking about? I think people are afraid. They're afraid of the divisions and distrust being fueled. So I probably get questions about that and how we rebuild, almost more than anything else. I think people have come to this place where they feel, like, how do we dig out of this? And I think the answers, as I mentioned earlier, there's there's so many tentacles to the problems, and so there have to be tentacles to the solution.  

[01:03:45] But there's a role for every one of us. So one of the things I've been suggesting is there are really good templates of information out there. We need to do more. I've been saying that we need to create the 2024 rendition of Schoolhouse Rock. Which Schoolhouse Rock took boring, complicated material, math and history and science, and put in music and imagery. And most of us can still recite at least half a dozen of those songs and can picture the videos even now. And so we need to be better at speaking in sticky short, tweetable, TikTok segments so that people can understand. If you're somebody who's never been in an elections before, but you're in marketing or communications, there's plenty of-- you could go to athena.strategies.com. By the way, I've got a resource library. I would love to talk to anybody who's got ideas about how to get the message out, whether it's audio, video, TV, radio, whatever, and take that information that you learn and translate it to your community. It literally is going to take every one of us to get through this, which is the bad news and the good news is every one of us can play a role.  

Beth [01:05:18] Well, I am so grateful for your time and for all the work that you're doing. I think it is remarkable that you are in the eye of the storm in 2020, and you came out of it and said, even though I couldn't sleep in my own apartment for over a month, I still want to work on elections. And your passion for it really comes through. So thank you for everything that you're doing and for spending time with us.  

Kathy Boockvar [01:05:40] Thanks again for having me on. I really appreciate all you're doing as well.  

[01:05:43] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [01:06:21] Beth, I'm the designated Pantsuit Politics origin storyteller, but The Nuanced Life really was your baby, so you were definitely the designated The Nuanced Life origin story teller. So as we prepare for this revival, a limited series this summer where everybody's going to get to hear The Nuanced Life in the Pantsuit Politics feed every Friday, tell us where the idea for the show came from.  

Beth [01:06:47] That feels like a lot of pressure, because you tell our origin story so often that you've got it nice and tight. And I don't know that I've ever told The Nuance Life origin story. So everybody bear with me as I work through a draft here. Sarah and I have always had wide-ranging conversations to the point where it's a little bit of a joke in our team, characteristically wide-ranging. From the beginning of our conversations about politics, part of what made them so interesting to me was especially, Sarah, the way that you would introduce pieces of life Outside of Politics. I'll never forget the conversation we had about health care, where we're talking about policy and then you say, "Well, now you really have to know what a good death is to understand how you want your health care to work." And I thought, okay, well, this is the kind of room I want to be in. I'm so excited to continue talking with her. And listeners have taken that approach in your communications with us. We didn't just hear people's perspectives on our abortion conversations. We heard about the church that you grew up in and what they taught you about, and how that's informed your politics. And then we did start to get questions about things far afield from politics.  

[01:08:02] And so all that richness just had me thinking, maybe we should spend some more time on life and family and culture. And I remember texting you that I just had the phrase The Nuanced Life in mind, and we decided to start a show. And when we started it, we really didn't have a tight formula. We did some interviews. We would talk about different subjects. Often we would take an article as a jumping off point for a conversation. And we kind of worked our way towards listeners as the center of the episodes, where we were commemorating things that don't get celebrated often enough. So we had a lot of discussion over there about how if you're not getting married or having a baby or having someone graduate, you kind of get left out of the party scene, and that doesn't make a lot of sense. So listeners started sending us commemorations about changing jobs, or buying a new house, or moving to a new state, or losing a friendship. Just big markers in time, those sort of before and after moments in life that don't get a lot of attention. And they led to some really rich discussions. And so we started making The Nuanced Life once a week, and we did it for several years. And then it kind of felt like it reached an ending point. What did I miss, Sarah, since we haven't workshopped this telling a lot? So what did I miss in all of that?  

Sarah [01:09:29] Didn't we have a series of questions we worked through in the first few episodes? I remember sitting somewhere-- maybe in that Nashville Airbnb-- and recording several of the beginning episodes, and I felt like we had like a list of questions, but I don't remember where they came from.  

Beth [01:09:45] That rings a bell with me too. And I also don't remember what they were or where they came from.  

Sarah [01:09:48] It was a long time ago, guys. That was like a lifetime ago.  

Beth [01:09:52] So many things have happened since then.  

Sarah [01:09:56]  I really loved the commemorations. They were so vital and important and life giving. And we loved it. But I think what coincided with the nuanced life kind of wrapping up is this just became such a business. I think it was around the time we hired Alise and we really started speaking more widely. And so when you're starting a business like a podcast, and any kind of content creation, there's always this [inaudible] to just make more content because you kind of like fall in love with the content creation component. And so you're always like, let's do this and let's do this and let's do this. And every idea sounds like a good idea. And then you're like, I'm tired and there's so much content. And now we actually have to do businessy things. And I remember having a conversation with our executive producers where they were like, hey, we're here for Pantsuit politics. This always feels like a lot. It feels like it's exhausting you. And I don't think it's an accident that we wrapped it up during the pandemic. We were just so overwhelmed. It didn't feel like there was a lot of nuance in life in 2020. And so I just remember it feeling important, particularly to the story of The Nuanced Life, which did not only involve transitions and beginnings, but endings. When to end something, when to wrap it up. And it felt like, well, we could illustrate that here with the show.  

Beth [01:11:15] I think that I reached a point distinctively where sitting down to record it felt much heavier to me than sitting down to record Pantsuit Politics. I think we got into such a good rhythm with how we prepare for recording Pantsuit Politics, with how we think about our editorial calendar. I always feel really clear about what we're here to do. And I had lost that sense with The Nuance Life that I knew what we were there to do.  

Sarah [01:11:46] We were doing so much personal stuff on Pantsuit politics. We were recording every night during the pandemic on the premium channels, and we were talking about our homes and our marriages and how they were affected by the politics of the pandemic. And so there wasn't a lot of breathing room to separate stuff out. It felt like everything was all consumed politically by the pandemic, which was the danger zone we were all in at the time. But I think as we've gotten more space since that time, in particular, the moment at our fall show when a listener came up and said, "You commemorated my struggle with infertility," and hugged us with her big pregnant belly, and I wept. I thought, oh man, my favorite, favorite Oprah show episodes was Where Are They Now? And so I'm so excited to revive The Nuanced Life. It feels like a good time to do that this summer because right now we're the opposite. Everybody's exhausted with politics. Everybody wants to talk about personal stuff. And so to bring it back, to revisit some of the stories we shared, to see where people are now, it just felt really appropriate and important and life giving.  

Beth [01:12:48] I totally agree, this is the election that no one wants. And in summer we always experience a shift in the audience. What you all are paying attention to, what you care about, what you need and want from us. And so all of the pieces just came together this year where it felt right to do this. And it's been so much fun thinking through how this can be of service this summer.  

Sarah [01:13:12] Well, and I just feel like we have more to share. We've lived a lot of life since 2020, and so we have more to bring to the conversations about early parenthood. We're both fully out of that stage now and we weren't in 2020.  

Beth [01:13:25] Yeah.  

Sarah [01:13:25] And to talk about caregiving elderly parents, which we've both experienced since then. So there's a lot more nuanced life experiences that we both live since 2020 to bring to these conversations. And I'm just really excited.  

Beth [01:13:43] And because we haven't been making it constantly, there's been more space for reflection. You know, that kind of naturally happens in the political cycle where you sort of take a break from a subject. You get to think about it more, and then you come back around to it. I did not have that flow in this more lifestyle oriented space. There were lots of times where I felt like I've said everything. There's nothing else interesting about me. There's nothing else to share about my life. I don't have any further thoughts. I'm just in it. And I think some space really alleviated some of that feeling.  

Sarah [01:14:18] Yeah, so we're very excited. Thank you so much for joining us today. As we've talked about this new revival of The Nuanced Life. And, of course, we hope you'll join us on May 30th for The Nuanced Life Live. I love to take questions live, Beth. I find it exhilarating.  

Beth [01:14:33] Me too.  

Sarah [01:14:34]  And also, it's always fun because people are there in the chat adding their own perspectives, and you're like, yes, what they said. We have a constant experience of that sensation where you feel like you didn't get to say what you wanted to say, or you thought of something after the fact because you guys send us so many emails and so much feedback and we're like, dang, I wish I'd said that. But in the live events, when we're all there together, that alleviates a lot of that sensation, which I really appreciate. So you can get your tickets now by following the link in our show notes. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[01:15:03] Music Interlude 

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

Maggie PentonComment