Chapter 1: Why is the DNC withholding the 2024 autopsy report?
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. So yesterday I interviewed Ken Martin, the DNC chair, and for scheduling reasons, we had originally planned on just keeping it on our YouTube channel, but because the interview turned out to be much spicier than we had anticipated, we're dropping it here for all of you.
Just to set up what happened, Ken reached out last week asking if he could have a chance to respond to criticism coming from some of us here at Crooked about the DNC's finances. after it was reported that the Democratic National Committee ended March with $13.9 million in cash, $18.3 million in debt for a total of negative $4.4 million.
The RNC, by contrast, has $116.7 million in cash with no debt. Ken had also mentioned our past criticism of his decision not to release the full 200-page report that the DNC had conducted on what went wrong in the 2024 election, which he had promised to do when he ran for DNC chair and again when he sat down with me last August.
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Chapter 2: What criticisms did Ken Martin face regarding DNC finances?
That's why we've been focused in on actually putting those lessons into action. And there's nothing that I told you in August that is inaccurate. We've been sharing those lessons out with donors. We've been talking about this with party leaders and activists and others and organizations and campaigns. It's no surprise to, and I get it.
I get why people are obsessed with it, because there's various groups and organizations and people who think there's some sort of smoking gun in there. Guess what, Sean? In the third closest presidential election in the last hundred years, everything mattered. There's nothing that can impact that election.
Why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff, and doing this report in the first place, if you weren't going to release the full results of it? I don't get why just you and some of the senior DNC people get to see it, but not most of the DNC members who are... You know, state party chairs.
I mean, you know, more than a dozen DNC members told NBC just the other week they want to release, including Congresswoman Delia Ramirez and North and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. And Anderson said, quote, genuinely, what did you all find that we did not? How did you answer that question?
what we've found is the things we've been telling them, both Anderson, Delia, other folks who have concerns about it, we've shared all of the lessons with them, right? And so again, I think, John, the reality is you're proving my point here, right? People are obsessed about this in a way that
continues to turn them away from wanting to focus on the lessons and instead thinking that there's some sort of smoking gun in here that's going to give them the one single reason that Kamala Harris lost the election or the one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to actually help us win in the future. There is no one single thing that costs Kamala the election.
There is no one single thing that we can do to help us win the upcoming election. There's a number of lessons for sure that will help us win in 26 and beyond. But again, I understand what you're saying, John. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this because we have already started to put those lessons into action. I'm proud of the results of
What we've seen over the last year and a half since I've been elected, we have significant wind at our back, and we're going to continue to move forward. And we're going to continue to put those lessons we've learned into action, and I hope others will start to do the same.
Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out, because it certainly doesn't seem like anyone's looking for one single silver bullet, because it's a 200-page report. So I feel like on a 200-page report, there's a lot of lessons for everyone to take.
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Chapter 3: What are the fundraising challenges faced by the DNC?
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Chapter 4: What lessons were learned from the 2024 election according to the DNC?
And that's because I took out a loan last year to make sure we can make deep investments. You know what we've been doing, John? We've raised a record amount of money, $105 million. It's the most raised for the first year chair of any DNC chair in the history of this party. And you know what's great about it?
We raised in 2017, which is an analogous year, a year right after a presidential loss, Tom Perez raised $40 million less than what we raised this year. He didn't have the debt that you're Yes, he did. He had $76 million in debt. And so my point to you is this, John, okay? I mean, we can trade in all of this, but let's actually trade in facts. $105 million was raised.
$85 million of it came from grassroots donors, which is a record amount of grassroots donations raised in the history of the Democratic Party. That shows the energy that's out there. The average contribution is $51, by the way, John. And we raised more than any of the other committees last year, the DS, the DCCC.
And I will just tell you this, all of the Republican committees raised more than the DNC. And so that's just a reality of coming out of a year when you lose the presidential election. When you're the party that's out of power, of course you're going to not raise as much money as the Republicans. But to suggest that we're not raising money is inaccurate. We raised $32 million in the first quarter.
But what we're doing that's a little different, John, is we're spending it. We're raising it and we're spending it.
Because one of the lessons we learned- So that's roughly negative $4.4 million. And I know it's a tough environment for the party out of power, but the DSCC and the DCCC and the Senate candidates have plenty of money. They're all doing great. So it seems like this is an issue unique to the DNC. That's not accurate, John.
What part is not accurate? The reality is we're spending money. as we raise it, to win elections and to build infrastructure.
We have invested significant amounts of money, record investments in Virginia and New Jersey, investments in Mississippi in their state legislative races to help them flip the Republican supermajority in their state legislature, investments in the Miami mayoral race to help us win a Democratic elected mayor in the first time in 30 years.
Investments in the PSC races in Georgia to help us win the first two non-federal elected races, statewide races, in 20 years in their history. Investments throughout the country, up and down the ballot.
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Chapter 5: Why did Ken Martin change his stance on releasing the autopsy?
I've never contemplated layoffs at the DNC. I haven't laid anyone off since I've been a DNC chair. And so I just want to be very clear with you again and your listeners because you're just repeating garbage pot shots at the DNC. I'm used to taking the pot shots, by the way. And I think the mistake that you and others make is somehow I just don't care.
I came to this job for one thing, which is to win.
But you think the state party allocation to Guam and everything is a worthwhile allocation of funds?
I think it is a worthwhile allocation because when we organize everywhere, we can win anywhere. And it's important for us not to just focus on federal power at the expense of state and local power. This is where I'm challenging the conventional wisdom of all these smart people in Washington, D.C. here, which is that the only thing that matters is control of Congress and the presidency.
My job is to help us win everywhere, to build power up and down the ballot throughout the country, including in our territories. And so you and I can just disagree on whether or not those are investments that are worthwhile. I believe they are worthwhile.
It's important for us to actually build power for our party, and our party values everywhere there's Democrats, and we're going to continue to do that. Whether you think that's a worthwhile investment or not, that's fine. You can take your check back if you don't believe it's a good investment, John. But let me just say this.
The role of the Democratic Party is to build infrastructure everywhere so that we can win. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that infrastructure is. Our voter file. and our organizing tools and our data, every candidate, whether they're running for school board or president, relies on that. We spend over $10 million a year on that, John.
That's a critical piece of the infrastructure that people rely on. Without the DNC, they would have to do that on their own, all of these candidates. Our voter protection and legal infrastructure that we build Every committee and every candidate relies on us to be out there filing lawsuits and protecting the vote.
We filed over a thousand lawsuits, which is a record number of lawsuits over the last year alone, right? Including being lead plaintiffs in many of the big lawsuits challenging Trump's executive orders. This is a piece of the infrastructure people rely on.
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Chapter 6: What specific lessons has the DNC been sharing?
John, we do. Because at the end of the day, we can pay that debt off whenever the hell we want. I could hold that debt until the end of the year. So the reality is there's nothing that's holding me back in terms of the cash on hand I have to spend it on elections. I can carry that debt all the way through the end of this year and beyond if I want. So that's just inaccurate.
I know you know campaigns, but you're just spewing stuff out that's just wrong. I'm just I'm saying that I saw that talking point about 50 percent more and it's based on it's not a talking point. We raised thirty two million dollars in the first quarter. OK, we have 15 million dollars on hand. We're able to spend that money on continuing to build our infrastructure and to help us win elections.
OK, and we're and we've continued to raise money. Nothing has slowed down. In fact, the fundraising has picked up significantly since even the last November's elections in 2025. So listen.
And I know the grassroots fundraising has been great. I know that I can see that for sure. I just there's plenty of reports about this. I've talked to plenty of people about this, that that a lot of the big donors still have not come off the sidelines. And part of the reason is that there's a trust issue based partly on the autopsy.
Yeah, I'm just not seeing that, John. And I appreciate that. And I don't believe that to be the case. Maybe you're talking to donors that I'm not. I highly doubt it. But the donors I'm talking to who are holding back, they're not holding back because they're frustrated with me. and they're not holding back because they're frustrated with the DNC. Just the opposite.
And so I think people see that we are actually putting into action the lessons we've learned. We're actually building the infrastructure we need. We're competing up and down the ballot. We're making the investments throughout the country to make sure that we're organizing everywhere.
Part of the challenge, John, we've talked about this on the show before, that this party for years, and this is why I ran for it, has had a very myopic vision of just focusing in on one campaign cycle, one candidate, one campaign at the expense of a long-term strategy. And for us to break out of that, we actually have to have a long-term strategy.
And that requires us to build through the lens of building long-term infrastructure. And so you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you throw all your eggs into one basket, which is one campaign or one campaign cycle, then you've built nothing permanent.
Or if you do as I am, right, which is to start building the permanent infrastructure we need to have a long-term strategy, then you get blamed because you don't have enough cash on hand to compete with the Republicans. Well, the reality is we've been competing with the Republicans and building the long-term infrastructure at the same time.
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