Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Meltdown

Transcript

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Speaker 29 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 29 On today's show, Kamala Harris takes the lead in the race for the White House just three weeks after announcing her candidacy, but now she's got to reintroduce herself to voters in the lead up to the convention while the Trump campaign throws everything they have at her and Tim Walls.

Speaker 29 And later, our pal Brian Tyler Cohen is here to talk about his brand new book and play a round of take appreciators with me and Love It.

Speaker 29 But first,

Speaker 29 remember Donald Trump?

Speaker 29 Since the debate on June 27th, he's held only eight campaign rallies, and we haven't seen him on the trail all week.

Speaker 29 The Washington Post reports that he's, he's, quote, upset and, quote, complaining relentlessly about Kamala Harris's surging poll numbers and massive crowds.

Speaker 29 He's posting fantasies about Biden crashing the Democratic Convention to take back the nomination.

Speaker 29 And all of this might be why the old man decided to shuffle out of his beach club on Thursday and yell at the cameras for a while. Here's some highlights from Trump's press conference.

Speaker 30 In history, for any country, nobody's had crowds like I have, and you know that. And when she gets 1,000 people and everybody starts jumping, you know that if I had 1,000 people,

Speaker 30 people would say, that's the end of his campaign. I have hundreds of thousands of people, but she has 1,000 people or 1,500 people, and they say, oh, the enthusiasm's back.
No, no.

Speaker 30 The biggest crowd I've ever spoken before was that day. And I'll tell you, it's very hard to find a picture of that crowd.

Speaker 30 You see the picture of a small number of people relatively going to the Capitol, but you never see the picture picture of the crowd.

Speaker 30 The biggest crowd I've ever spoken, I've spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody's spoken to crowds bigger than me.

Speaker 30 If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything,

Speaker 30 same number of people, if not, we had more.

Speaker 30 And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people. But when you look at the exact same picture, we actually had more people.
I'm not complaining. I'm saying it's a

Speaker 29 Comparing his crowd on January 6th to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech during the March on Washington. I was driving.

Speaker 29 I had to go pick up Kyla from basketball camp during that press conference, and I was driving with it playing in the car.

Speaker 29 And I almost swerve off the road at Martin Luther King because I did not see that one coming. I should have, but I didn't.
That was a compilation of all the times he talked about crowd size.

Speaker 29 I actually think there were some more.

Speaker 29 First of all, the press conference lasted over an hour. He continued to bring it back to crowd size and polls.
It was a wild press conference.

Speaker 29 I feel like we say that every time he does a press conference and we're like, this one is really wild. This one, I'm trying to think of what was different about it.

Speaker 29 He seemed, first of all, he's very angry. He's very frustrated.
He does seem upset. I hope he does.

Speaker 29 And so, yeah, I do think that Washington Post story is true about him complaining relentlessly because we all heard him do it. What'd you think? What were your takes on the press conference?

Speaker 29 I mean, I agree with that. He cannot get over the state of the race.
Like, he is a lazy, entitled human being, and he thought he was cruising to the White House, and now he's not.

Speaker 29 And he is mad about it. The other thing he kept bringing it back to was how he was definitely not mad about Kamal Harris being the candidate now.
He was definitely not a bad person.

Speaker 29 I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining, but the Democrats destroyed the Constitution by Joe Biden stepping down.
I mean, in his vehement defense of Joe Biden, who he repeatedly said he did not like.

Speaker 29 He doesn't like his brain. He said, I don't like his brain.
But I just think, just think about this. He has not done anything all week.

Speaker 29 He has a rally in the core battleground state of Montana later tonight. Tonight, right? Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. And Thursday night, yeah.

Speaker 29 Whatever, yeah, Thursday night, the night we are recording this at the night. You were listening to this.

Speaker 29 It's always tricky for me. And so here he is.
He's got the whole press in front of him, and he does nothing to advance his message. No message.

Speaker 29 No No policy.

Speaker 29 Later today, which you can tell, one of the things his advisors told him to do was to talk about his proposals on taxation of tips and no taxation on social security because he's been truthing the hell out of them afterwards, like to try to clean it up.

Speaker 29 Did he talk about Kamala Harris's record? Not really. Did he talk about Tim Walls' record? Not really.
Did he talk about

Speaker 29 any of his plans, anything he's going to do? Nope, not really at all. No, it's just it.
Did he talk about how the economy was great when he was president? Did he talk about what the economy is now?

Speaker 29 Did he talk about influencing?

Speaker 29 He started out the press conference by saying we are headed toward a depression. It's going to be worse than 1929 and also a world war.

Speaker 29 And the country is an awful place and everything, everyone's laughing at us.

Speaker 29 And then he just sort of went off on a tangent that lasted for about an hour about himself and how he's angry with Kamal Harris and himself and his poll numbers and his crowd size and all the rest.

Speaker 29 Here's what I'd say. Get out there more.
More press conferences, more rallies. Every day.
I would every single day. Let's do it every day.
There were some newsy things.

Speaker 29 He was asked whether he would restrict access to Mifipristone. And they really caught him because instead of saying the abortion pill, they said Mifipristone.

Speaker 29 And he clearly has no idea what Mifipristone is. Because his response was, you could do things, absolutely.
Those things are pretty open and humane.

Speaker 29 That's what he said. Would you restrict, would you, would you ask the, would you have the FDA restrict access to Mifipristone? We could do, you could do things, absolutely.
Yeah.

Speaker 29 He also, someone asked him how he'd be voting on the constitutional amendment in Florida to protect abortion access and he said he'd be holding a press conference about that and and he'll have a more liberal answer than you think

Speaker 29 sure I guess we're holding our breath for that press conference I'm sure you know when his staff learned about that press conference during his press conference yes just then um he said he was off the trail when someone asked him why he wasn't campaigning he said he was off the trail because of the democratic convention which is in two weeks i would just note, I would just note that for a long time, for decades, there was a tradition where you did not campaign during the other person's convention.

Speaker 29 I think we actually, yeah, there was. We actually broke that.
I think Obama was one of the people who tore down that norm.

Speaker 29 But it is definitely not a tradition that you don't campaign for the month before the convention.

Speaker 29 That's not how you do this. He once again questioned Kamala Harris's race.
Someone asked him a question about why he did that, why he said that at the NABJ.

Speaker 29 And he said, whether it's Indian or black, I think it's very disrespectful to both.

Speaker 29 And then when he was asked about her surging in the polls, he said, well, she's a woman and she represents certain groups of people. That was his response.

Speaker 29 He did some really in-depth poll analysis of the impact she would have in the race about who would help him with and who to hurt him with.

Speaker 29 Yeah, he really started going into demographic groups like he was on Polar Coaster.

Speaker 29 He's not invited. Do not come on Polar Coaster down.

Speaker 29 Have we talked about

Speaker 29 the fact that it's clear now he has confused insane asylums for asylum seekers? Have we talked about that on this podcast? I can't remember. You and I have not talked about it.

Speaker 29 Have you talked about it with anyone else on another podcast? I don't know. I don't think so.
I don't know what I say.

Speaker 29 What's a meeting?

Speaker 29 What's a podcast?

Speaker 29 But it is clear that the reason he's always talking about other countries dumping out their mental institutions around whenever he's bringing up immigration, it's now clear that it's because he thinks insane asylums are like asylum seekers, and he has conflated those two terms.

Speaker 29 It is much like in 2016, when he tweeted no cuts to Medicaid, what he meant to tweet no cuts to Medicare. You need to know the difference.
Right. And of course, he did propose very large cuts.

Speaker 29 He plans to basically eliminate Medicaid or just completely eliminate the federal guarantee for Medicaid and then also cuts to Medicare. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 29 Also, he's really into, he said this when Tim Walls was first selected. He said it again.
Transgender has become such a big thing, and he's really into transgender.

Speaker 29 He's really into everything transgender. So he doesn't really know.
He doesn't

Speaker 29 know much about stuff. And so he can sort of skate on the surface of a lot of these words.
Like, he knows the words. He hears the buzzwords in the background when he's watching cable.

Speaker 29 He's watching his favorite shows. So he can say, you know, a couple sentences, but he really can't go beyond that.

Speaker 29 He has the public affairs knowledge of a regular cable news watcher who does a lot of two screening.

Speaker 29 Yeah, that is about right. So the other newsy thing, he said he's now agreed to the ABC debate on September 10th.
He is, that debate is now on.

Speaker 29 Kamala Harris afterwards said she's in, so that is happening. We are headed towards a September 10th debate.
Donald Trump, Kamala Harris. Exciting stuff.

Speaker 29 He said he's also agreed, of course, to the Fox debate on September 4th, which Kamala Harris has not agreed to because he wants it to take place in a MAGA Thunderdome with like a bunch of

Speaker 29 a huge audience. They're like all his people.
And then a new one, he said he wants a debate with NBC on September 25th. She said she's open to that one.

Speaker 29 We're going to get by that first September 10th debate first to see.

Speaker 29 Why do you think Donald Trump changed his mind? Because

Speaker 29 she's surging and he's sagging. Right.

Speaker 29 A week ago, I mean, you guys talked about this on Tuesday, but last Friday night, he pulled out of all the debates, pulled out the ABC debate, doesn't want to do it.

Speaker 29 Seemed like the last thing in the world he wanted to do was debate Kamala Harris, but she's on a glide path right now, right?

Speaker 29 She was, she gained, and then she passed him in the national polling average. All these states are toss-ups.
He knows she's heading into her convention in two weeks.

Speaker 29 That is more momentum for her. And he's got to do something to stop.
But he cannot just sit on his ass in Mar-a-Lago and win this election, right?

Speaker 29 It's finally come to, he's finally come to that conclusion. And so he wants to do many debates.
And he seems to be trying to, he wants to, he looked weak.

Speaker 29 I think he recognized he also looked weak and scared this past week from not wanting a debate. So he's trying to go back on the offense here and seem like he's the one pushing for debates.

Speaker 29 Can't wait. Can't wait.
Would you do more debates if you were her? If I was her? Yeah.

Speaker 29 Depends on how the first one goes, right?

Speaker 29 Like,

Speaker 29 I mean, you know, there's a scenario where she absolutely crushes it in that first debate, and then it's like, why do you do another one? Then there's almost any other scenario, even a scenario where

Speaker 29 she wins, but, you know, enough people say that maybe he did okay or and then he starts like pulling even or pulling ahead in September, then maybe you want to do another debate.

Speaker 29 Or if she does poorly, then you probably do want to do another debate. I mean, you.

Speaker 29 The calculus for Biden to want the debate,

Speaker 29 something that we'll not to go back. Yeah.
Yeah, the history we'll wonder about about for a long time. But the original calculus was

Speaker 29 we need the elector to focus on Donald Trump to win. That was Joe Biden's calculus.
That's not necessarily, we'll get to this, but that's not necessarily Kamala Harris's calculus. But I do think

Speaker 29 she's largely undefined, which we'll also get to, but getting on stage and kicking his ass, I think has real value and doing it multiple times, I think, probably also has real value.

Speaker 29 But I think your approach is probably right.

Speaker 29 You could theoretically agree to two, and then after you kick his ass on the first one, say, I don't want to put Donald through this again, like he did about Biden.

Speaker 29 To me, it feels a little bit like the Obama-McCain debates in 08, which is like, I think that voters, you know, like Obama was ahead.

Speaker 29 Voters still just needed to know that he could do the job, that he was ready. And all it took was sort of like one or two debates with McCain.

Speaker 29 And they're like, okay, even though everyone's saying he's this like new, inexperienced young guy, he stood up there on stage. He held his own.
He knows what he's talking about.

Speaker 29 He gave as good as he got. And like, that was it.
Yeah. She shouldn't have to do that because she's the vice president of the United States.
Like, it's basically interchangeable. But she.

Speaker 29 But again, everyone has the memory of a goldfish now. And people don't, and the media is fractured, so people don't know her as well as they should.

Speaker 29 And like with Obama, you're asking people to make history in this case

Speaker 29 in several different ways. And so that the burden is unfairly on Kamal Harris in the way it wouldn't be on a on a white man candidate.
Yeah.

Speaker 29 But it is, I think for voters, it's probably more of a reassurance and who is she and what is she for than can she really kick Donald Trump's ass?

Speaker 29 Though for the press and the way it's going to be covered, people will want to see that she can kick Donald Trump's ass. Kicking Donald Trump's ass is not about beating Donald Trump.

Speaker 29 It's demonstrating strength on her behalf in an election where, and because you also, that is the emperor has no clothes moment for Trump, right?

Speaker 29 If you're running as a strong man and you get your ass kicked in a debate, like that that is very hard for you. And that did not happen in either of the two elections, even though

Speaker 29 just the way it would play out, I think, is different than it would be with Biden or Clinton because of just how those politicians were perceived and how unknown Kamala Harris is to people.

Speaker 29 So I think it's just a very fascinating strategic calculus for them. It's different than it was for Biden in a similar situation.
Yeah, for sure. Polling, big source of Trump's anger.

Speaker 29 Kamala Harris is now leading by two points nationally in the 538 average, as you mentioned.

Speaker 29 That includes a whopping 53 to 47 lead in the latest Marquette poll, which is one of the highest rated polls out there.

Speaker 29 She's also got a point lead in their Wisconsin poll, has seemingly tied it up in Georgia, closing the gap in Arizona.

Speaker 29 Our friends at Split Ticket also found a one-point lead for Harris in the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Speaker 29 Their late July poll just a couple of weeks ago found Biden trailing Trump by seven in those states. Quite a swing.
Seems like a long honeymoon for Harris, huh?

Speaker 29 What do you make of all the polling? Care to rain on our parade at all?

Speaker 29 I know that would be that's what I go to you for.

Speaker 29 But you know what? I'm not going to do that today. I'm not going to rain on anyone's parade.
Oh, Dan's just guaranteeing a win. I'm not guaranteeing anything.

Speaker 29 I'm just saying let's just revel in the positivity right now. Think of where we were three weeks ago.
Right?

Speaker 29 Three weeks ago, Donald Trump was cruising for an electoral landslide that would have brought him the House and the Senate at the same time.

Speaker 29 Georgia, Arizona, Nevada were off the map and no longer competitive for Democrats. Biden was behind in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The odds of victory were quite long.

Speaker 29 The states of Minnesota, Virginia, and New Mexico, and New Jersey were becoming competitive. Here we are now, three weeks later, new ticket, toss-up race, right?

Speaker 29 All six states are within the margin of error in toss-ups. Joe Biden had one path to 270 if you squinted as hard as you possibly could.

Speaker 29 Kamala Harris has as many paths to 270 as Donald Trump does right now. She has momentum.
She is surging. That doesn't mean it's in the bag.
There's a ton of work to do.

Speaker 29 We have to remember that the country is more Democratic than Electoral College. So even a two-point lead in the popular vote

Speaker 29 is about

Speaker 29 probably.

Speaker 29 a tie, if not a slight deficit in the battleground states. But like we are, the Democrats, Kamala Harris, Tim Walls, we are in this in a way that seemed impossible to imagine three weeks ago.

Speaker 29 So we should, there's a ton of work to do, a ton of work to do to define her, to win this race, to make sure that the voter, voters turn out, but to get back, even though she's made huge improvements with young voters, black voters, and Latino voters over where we were three weeks ago, there's still work to do to get to the numbers that we had in 2020.

Speaker 29 And we probably have to exceed them because if you look deep in the poll, you see some.

Speaker 29 some bleeding with older white voters. And so we're going to need more young voters, more black voters, more Latino voters to make up that deficit and win.
But

Speaker 29 we can be happy right now. We can be excited and overjoyed at where we are because it's not anywhere where we thought we would be just three weeks ago.
I know.

Speaker 29 And I think if you look under the top lines of these polls, what has happened, what she's been able to do is essentially consolidate the Biden 2020 vote in a way that Biden could not or was not when he left the race.

Speaker 29 And so

Speaker 29 his weakness with younger voters, black voters, Latino voters who had not necessarily said they were voting for Trump. Some had, but were flirting with a third-party candidate or not voting at all.

Speaker 29 It seems like she has consolidated that vote. But of course, that still brings you to a 2020 race that was decided by 40,000 votes across three states.

Speaker 29 So

Speaker 29 super close. And, you know, you can hear it in some focus groups too.

Speaker 29 The sort of Trump Biden voters, the Trump voters from 16 who switched over to Biden in 20, you know, there's still work to do with them. them.

Speaker 29 Like you said, there's still work to do, you know, registering and turning out more Democratic-leaning constituencies and voters. And, you know, it's going to be close.

Speaker 29 And Trump will still get, you know, never, one lesson since 2016 has been like, never underestimate Republican turnout when Donald Trump is on the ballot. And it always breaks records.

Speaker 29 So that's something that we have to think about in the next couple of months. One quick housekeeping note before we move on.
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Speaker 29 We are recording this exactly two weeks before the vice president delivers her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Speaker 29 The next 14 days are a window for the Harris Walls campaign to frame the race and define the candidates on their terms.

Speaker 29 A new blueprint poll found that voters are more responsive to informative pro-Harris messaging that focuses on her biography, record as a prosecutor, and commitment to economic populism and immigration reform.

Speaker 29 They are less persuaded by anti-Trump messages because 71% of all voters say their minds are already made up about Trump and there's nothing you can do to change their mind, whether they're against or for.

Speaker 29 Obviously, Harris goes after Trump pretty hard in her stump speech right now, but especially this week, she's been leaning into a more positive message.

Speaker 29 Here she is accepting the UAW endorsement in Detroit today.

Speaker 34 We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are by heart and home, and not have their government telling them what to do.

Speaker 34 Our campaign is about saying we trust the people.

Speaker 34 We are a nation of people who believe

Speaker 34 in those ideals that were foundational to what made us so special as a nation. And we know we are a work in progress.

Speaker 34 We haven't yet quite reached all of those ideals, but we will die trying because we love our country and we believe

Speaker 34 in who we are.

Speaker 34 And that's what our campaign is about. We love our country.

Speaker 34 We believe in our country.

Speaker 34 We believe in each other.

Speaker 29 So how would you balance the anti-Trump pro-Kamala message if you were the Harris campaign? There has been a theory all along that if this election is about Donald Trump, Donald Trump will lose.

Speaker 29 That was certainly the theory when Biden was the Democratic nominee.

Speaker 29 Do you toss that theory aside and say she needs to define herself, she needs to define her agenda, and she needs to tell people what the Democratic Party is for? Or do you do some kind of a mix?

Speaker 29 What do you think? It's a little bit of a mix.

Speaker 29 You do have to throw the previous model aside because we have been analyzing this race in the context of an election that was the present versus the recent past.

Speaker 29 And now it is the past versus the future.

Speaker 29 And that's a very different and Kamala Harris is the vice president to the incumbent president, but she does not represent the status quo in the way that Biden did.

Speaker 29 She represents change from change from Biden, change from Trump, change from these sort of grinding

Speaker 29 politics we've been in since Trump came down the escalator 10 years ago. It is a different, more hopeful future.

Speaker 29 And so the way to do it, I think, is to, she has to educate people about herself, like that all the polling, all the focus groups, the public stuff, the private stuff all shows the same thing.

Speaker 29 The single most important thing is to educate people about her biography, her positions, and her values. She has high name ID.
People know almost nothing about her.

Speaker 29 And the persuadable voters know less than everyone else. And so you have to do that.

Speaker 29 And that's why that's what the ads that the campaign and the smart people who run the super PACs have on the air right now. It's all bio stuff.
Now, in your sub speech,

Speaker 29 you got a crowd of people who hate Donald Trump there, right? You got to give him some stuff. And so you got to do it contrast, right? I think

Speaker 29 her best riff is the prosecutor-perpetrator one because it's her bio against him, right? And against what he stands for and who he is.

Speaker 29 And so all of the testing I have seen this cycle shows that the best ads are contrast ads.

Speaker 29 Now, for Kamala Harris, you have this urgency that you need every second of that 60-second ad to educate people about her because

Speaker 29 no nominee has ever been this, this seems crazy for the vice president of the United States, but this

Speaker 29 less known at this point in the race.

Speaker 29 Everyone else has been through a year primary, right? They've campaigned in 40 or 50 states or they're the incumbent president.

Speaker 29 She just, for most people, popped up on their screen two and a half weeks ago. And now she is the nominee with 88 days or 87 days, whatever it is they go.

Speaker 29 And so you have to do a lot on her bio and who she is and what she stands for.

Speaker 29 And there's a way to do that where you're not just like reading your Wikipedia page, but you're tying, you take every aspect of your bio.

Speaker 29 And this is in this great ad they have up Target Latino voters that talks about her position on immigration as someone who is a children of immigrants.

Speaker 29 And so like it's that way, like use your bio to as the reason why you have certain policy positions and then use Donald Trump's bio to why he has certain policy positions, right?

Speaker 29 It's sort of, it's not exactly Scranton versus Mar-a-Lago or whatever that sort of frame was, but it's kind of in that realm.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 29 And I think, I think that the prosecutor versus convicted felon Riff was like very useful at the beginning of the campaign to show fight, to take on Donald Trump as she was still sort of consolidating the Democratic Party.

Speaker 29 I would imagine that as she goes forward and she's already doing this.

Speaker 29 that sort of morphs into using the elements of her bio that show her as a fighter who can take on powerful corporate interests on behalf of people and Trump's only for himself.

Speaker 29 And so, you know, an element of her bio that's particularly effective when she talks about it is, you know, she was attorney general for the fifth largest economy in the world in California and took on the big banks on behalf of homeowners.

Speaker 29 And when she was vice president with Joe Biden, she took on pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of insulin. And so I think she'll be introducing herself on those terms.

Speaker 29 And, you know, we heard her do this this in the clip that we just listened to. They are going to try to other her, right? And

Speaker 29 they're doing it to her and Tim Walls, right? Like, she is not like us. She is,

Speaker 29 whether it's Donald Trump implying that she's, you know, she's a phony. She's, is she biracial? Is she just changing who she is, right?

Speaker 29 Not pronouncing her name correctly, not spelling her name correctly, right? This is what they did to Barack Obama, too. So they are going to try to other her and say that she's not like us.

Speaker 29 She's not like your typical American. And she can get up there, as she just did in that clip, and talk about how much she loves this country.

Speaker 29 And, you know, she and Tim Wall said this at the event where she introduced him and announced him. A couple of middle-class kids.
She's from Oakland. He's from Nebraska.

Speaker 29 And she's the middle-class daughter of immigrants who has lived the American dream. And now she's going to fight to make sure every single person in this country can live the American dream too.

Speaker 29 And you contrast that with Donald Trump, who has had everything fucking handed to him and only cares about himself. It's a great contrast.

Speaker 29 The Republican MAGA version of the American story is like you fell off

Speaker 29 the Mayflower and you just arrived on Plymouth Rock.

Speaker 29 But the true American story that everyone knows, because that's everyone's family, is at some point, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents are immigrants from somewhere.

Speaker 29 And telling that story is like, I mean, that's Republicans looked askance at Obama's version of his story, right? With a single mom and a father who wasn't from this country.

Speaker 29 And they're like, that's not the American story, but that rings true to everyone. And her story is truly a sequentessential American story.

Speaker 29 And so there's a way of telling it that that informs your values, that inform your policies going forward. Yeah, for sure.
How would you spend these two weeks leading up to her convention speech? And

Speaker 29 what do you think the goals of the convention itself should be? So for the next,

Speaker 29 at least the next week, right? The week of the convention, it makes sense to sort of do some stuff a little bit lower key so that your

Speaker 29 convention is getting the attention, right? Because Tim Wallace is going to speak one night. President Obama, I assume, will speak one night, President Biden will speak one night.

Speaker 29 Like you want that to drive your message. But next week, normally you would sort of just like glide into the convention just doing your stump speech.

Speaker 29 And I think, I think going with Tim Wallace and introducing yourself and giving us the same version, a version of her stump in each of these battleground states is the right choice.

Speaker 29 This is her first time in most of these states and certainly her first time with Tim Wallace to do that. But you got to continue to be on offense.
So you're going to have to like start.

Speaker 29 We're now at the point in the race starting next week where you got to mix in a new hit on Trump every day. And

Speaker 29 I would think about doing some policy rollouts next week.

Speaker 29 I know that sounds crazy, but because her convention speech needs to be so much about introducing her, I worry about a convention speech that's introducing her, but also laying out her vision for the future.

Speaker 29 We're going to get into like some sort of, you know, horrendous version of a state of the union, right? That's not what you want. You want it to be tight.
You want it to be good.

Speaker 29 You want to be powerful.

Speaker 29 Honestly, that was our 08 convention speech right right up until like two days before and we just kept cutting and cutting and cutting and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger with policy it is you have to there's a lot of business to get done in any convention speech and her specifically no one cares about the policy part of it right and so they care about they care about it in terms of who you're gonna want to know what who she's gonna fight for and what she's gonna do for them and i think if she has a like a real tight section on lowering costs, affordability, what she plans to do, like that's gonna take care of it.

Speaker 29 Right. But what you can, you give yourself, she's in the position where by the time Brock Obama gave that speech, he'd given 700 economic policy speeches on the campaign trail.

Speaker 29 So you could reference it here. She has given no economic policy speeches as a presidential candidate.
So if you, I'm not saying

Speaker 29 I know the speech writers, I like the speechwriters personally too much to suggest a major economic policy speech she makes for the convention.

Speaker 29 I'm not saying that, but just do, but just, I would do that to you. I would not do that to them.
But

Speaker 29 just like you can just, you can put it in it. You can just insert it into a speech in Michigan next week, right? Just like one proposal here, one proposal there.

Speaker 29 Even just like, I think she even said this at one point, like on day one, I'm going to appoint someone to go after price gouging, right? There are some things you can do like that.

Speaker 29 They're just easy that you can then reference in the speech. The main thing here is she has succeeded by being on offense the whole time.

Speaker 29 And you can already see the press, not that the press matters that much, but it still matters some, is going to get bored with this quickly and they're going to start putting pressure on her.

Speaker 29 I'd also, she did this today. She took questions.
The press is already freaking out. She hasn't talked to them enough.

Speaker 29 And so she took a few questions today before leaving Detroit, I think. Do that a couple, do that all week.
Just a couple here, a couple there.

Speaker 29 Of course, one of the questions was, why aren't you taking more questions from us? Why aren't you doing an interview?

Speaker 29 She did say,

Speaker 29 I knew that would get you.

Speaker 29 But she said, I talked to my team. We're going to schedule an interview by the end of this month, like a sit-downs thing.
So she, she, which was.

Speaker 29 But I would even, I just like, just the, the thing we'll always hear is let the air out of the balloon slowly, right? So that when you do, like I do some local TV interviews next week, right? Yeah.

Speaker 29 I know, I know the Washington press won't count those, but they kind of, they have to pretend like they count. Um, yeah, and just so what you don't pull shit all over the local media.

Speaker 29 I would just take that, you want that out of the way before the convention speech so you can roll out of the convention speech.

Speaker 29 And I don't know what they have planned, whether it's like a bus tour or a boat tour or what, just like a barnstorming tour, where you can just really build all that momentum for a few days without the press screaming at you every time you turn around, why won't you talk to us?

Speaker 29 So just like take care of that business now so that you can maximize the convention moment going forward. I hope it's a boat tour and just go through the Great Lakes.

Speaker 29 Yeah, who did the boat tour?

Speaker 29 I did not do a boat tour. Did John Kerry do a boat tour? Either John Kerry did a boat tour or Brock Obama did a boat tour.
I think it's John Kerry. Yeah, John Kerry did like a Sea to Shining Sea

Speaker 29 tour after the convention because it was in Boston. So he went right across the country.
He went all the way to Oregon, I think. Like he was fucking Lewis and Clark.

Speaker 29 Didn't work.

Speaker 29 I hope he didn't get dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

Speaker 29 Harris's new running mate, Tim Walls, is also in a race to define himself before the Trump campaign can do it for him.

Speaker 29 Their senior advisor, Chris La Cavita, was the person who led the swift boat attack against John Kerry's military service way back in 2004. God, 20 years ago.
Woof.

Speaker 29 And now he's doing the same thing to Walls. J.D.

Speaker 29 Vance kicked off the attack this week by accusing Walls of lying about his rank in the military, his service, and leaving the National Guard before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

Speaker 29 One other Trump campaign line of attack on Walls has blown up in their face after ABC unearthed a recording of Trump praising Walls for his response to the George Floyd protests. Let's listen.

Speaker 29 I know Governor Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and

Speaker 29 I fully agreed with the way he handled it the last couple of days. I asked him to do that, and the whole world was laughing.

Speaker 31 Two days, three days later, I spoke to the governor. The governor's, I think, on the call, and he's an excellent guy.

Speaker 29 These dummies. They're like, from the moment Walls gets picked, they're telegraphing like, oh, his handling of the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, this is going to be the main line of attack.

Speaker 29 We're going to get him because he didn't send the National Guard out, you know, with they wanted it in one afternoon and he sent it out the next morning, and that was going to be the whole thing.

Speaker 29 And then they got Donald Trump being like, great job. We love you.
Excellent guy. I'm sure he just loves Tim Walls because his last name is Walls.

Speaker 29 I never really thought that that line of attack was going to be that salient only because

Speaker 29 I feel like as again, we all have the memory of goldfish now and that's gotten worse over the years.

Speaker 29 I feel like talking about something that happened in 2020 in one city in the country feels like it has limited limited effectiveness.

Speaker 29 The only thing it does is that it gives like MAGA Republicans who go on TV something to say. There's really nothing else to say about Tim Walls.
Right. He is incredibly successful, incredibly likely.

Speaker 29 Oh, no, no. He had the audacity to

Speaker 29 have tampons in school bathrooms.

Speaker 29 That one did

Speaker 29 rocket around the Magasphere pretty quickly. They're very upset.

Speaker 29 They want to call him Tampon Tim, and they think that that's going to be, that's it. He's done.

Speaker 29 I mean, I would stipulate one, that almost any time spent focusing on Tim Walls is probably a win for us because it's not.

Speaker 29 I was going to say, this whole thing of like, why are you going this hard at the, I mean, I know we've done our share of JD Vance attacking, but I do think that there's, again, there's limited value in that as well.

Speaker 29 Well, I mean, we, I think we've been pretty open that that's mostly catharsis. Like it's, it's amusing, like we deserve that, right? Like, like

Speaker 29 you don't see the Harris campaign spending all their time on J.D. Vance.
You're right, right. I mean, you have to say the J.D.
Vance part that was useful was his connections to Project 2025.

Speaker 29 Like that was a helpful, that drove a larger narrative.

Speaker 29 The things about Tim Wallace's handling of something in Minnesota four years ago does not drive any sort of message about Kamal Harris.

Speaker 29 And once again, the guy is a veteran gun-owning football coach from rural Minnesota. Like you're not going to make him into some sort of radical.
Like this is not, that is not feasible.

Speaker 29 Well, what are your thoughts on the

Speaker 29 attempt to swift vote him of tacking his military record? I mean, it's disgusting and despicable and totally unsurprising from Trump and the people running his campaign.

Speaker 29 And it's complete and total bullshit.

Speaker 29 He filed paperwork for Congress a month before there were even rumors that his unit could be deployed. He announced for Congress a month before his unit got orders.

Speaker 29 There's no evidence that he ran for Congress to avoid going to Iraq.

Speaker 29 It's complete bullshit. He served 24 years in the guard.
You only had to serve 20 to get retirement. He served 24 years.
He was also deployed during the war in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom.

Speaker 29 He was stationed in Italy at the time. In an ad, he was talking about assault weapons bans, and he was saying, I've carried weapons of war in a war.
And so they're attacking him on that.

Speaker 29 But, you know, as the campaign said, he has carried, fired, and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times.

Speaker 29 And he was stationed in Italy doing security missions during Operation Enduring Freedom, which was the war in Afghanistan. So it's like, what are we talking about?

Speaker 29 Yeah, this is, it is just absolutely ridiculous. Like, it's, it's, it's totally absurd.

Speaker 29 I think the stuff like people are going to hear this because these are the kind of things that will rocket around the internet.

Speaker 29 Like in your text exchange with your uncle, you're going to get the tampon thing and and you're going to get the veteran thing.

Speaker 29 And so the things that we just laid out here are the talking points to respond to that.

Speaker 29 Once again, attacking Tim Walls' service record and attacking his gubernatorial record for one period of time that Donald Trump praised four years ago is not a particularly constructive use of time from the Trump's campaign.

Speaker 29 But if you want to win the argument with your MAG uncle, these are the points you need.

Speaker 29 Yeah, and also there's a guy who served with him in his unit who's a Republican and said doesn't like his politics, not going to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walls, but he's like, he was a fantastic soldier loved serving with them and of course he did not leave the guard to avoid iraq he left the guard so he could run for congress the other argument here is that he has inflated his rank because in

Speaker 29 he sir he rose to the rank of command sergeant major but he did not retire with that rank because you have to serve for three years of that rank to retire with it so he retired at a lower rank and there have been a couple of times in pieces of paper including one from the harris campaign that said retired ass as opposed to rose to.

Speaker 29 But like we are. That's it.
That's the whole

Speaker 29 controversy.

Speaker 29 It is a semantic argument that is absolutely absurd. And just the fact that we're having this conversation speaks to what an amazing pick Tim Wallace is because this is the best they have, right?

Speaker 29 And it's also, well, it's also a sign that they are flailing right now and they are desperate. Like you said, they think that the press might be a little bored.
The honeymoon has gone on too long.

Speaker 29 She's gotten a lot of good press.

Speaker 29 So like they see an opening to just latch on to something, which i think by the way you know they might have had some traction had donald trump not gone out today and for an hour just fucking had a a breakdown on national television

Speaker 29 because now once again he made himself the story so we're going to deal with that for another another news cycle and then we got next week and then we got the convention so yeah it's um they are uh they are running out of time but obviously lots of work to do uh for kamal harris and tim walls and the whole campaign and all of us when we come back we will talk to our friend Brian Tyler Cohen about his new book, Shameless Republicans' Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy.

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Speaker 29 Joining me now, our good pal Brian Tyler Cohen.

Speaker 29 YouTuber, podcaster, and now author, his book, Shameless, Republicans, Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy, comes out on August 13th.

Speaker 29 You can pre-order it now wherever books are sold. Brian, welcome.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 32 Look at this.

Speaker 29 Look at this book. I love it.
I love the cover.

Speaker 29 We got Abe Lincoln here. We got the Lincoln Memorial, but he's got his hand on his face.

Speaker 32 Cowering in shame.

Speaker 29 He is embarrassed.

Speaker 32 Cowering in shame. Well, let me just say, first off, it's awesome to be here.
And a big part of why I do what I do is because of what you guys do.

Speaker 32 You are a huge part of my media diet and a huge inspiration for me.

Speaker 29 So to be here is really exciting and i i appreciate it too nice of you that's how you catch that's how you get good questions in the interview now let's go yeah you know what i mean it's uh it's gonna be some

Speaker 29 hard-hitting shit here

Speaker 29 so as someone who uh just wrote a book with the help of three other people and still complained the whole time why'd you do it Why'd you do this to yourself?

Speaker 32 I guess I just have like,

Speaker 32 I just wanted my life to be as miserable as humanly possible. Here's the thing.
This was written between the hours of 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.
every night in the aftermath of all of the work.

Speaker 29 When do you sleep?

Speaker 29 What are you doing?

Speaker 32 There's very little sleep, and thank God I don't have kids. I just have a chihuahua who's fine with me sitting there and writing all day.
But yeah,

Speaker 32 a lot of it happened. It's an impossible news cycle to find free time in.
It's not like we're done at 6 p.m. Yeah.

Speaker 29 What made you want to write the book? You obviously have this huge platform where you can say whatever you'd like all the time. What made you want to put a book together?

Speaker 32 Yeah, I think it's important to reach different people where they are.

Speaker 32 I mean, so much of what you guys do at Crooked in terms of your strategy is not just podcasting, but branching out into books yourself and YouTube as well.

Speaker 32 So it's important to reach people where they are. It's also just personally, it has been a dream of mine for my entire life to actually publish a book.

Speaker 32 I was an English major in college, so the book is like

Speaker 32 the top of the mountain here.

Speaker 29 So a big theme of your book is the lessons that Democrats can learn from operating in this sort of unbalanced political landscape where Republicans are constantly lying, spreading misinformation, tough field for Democrats to play on.

Speaker 29 What's your take on how Democrats can sort of balance the field?

Speaker 32 I think the most important thing is not to confer all of our, all the legitimacy onto the mainstream media as if they're advocating for us. I mean,

Speaker 32 they are so not on our team that they bend over backwards to... to show deference to Republicans.

Speaker 32 I mean, there were, I think, something like 69 Hillary's email stories in the lead up to the 2016 election.

Speaker 32 And so like, these are people who are not only not on our team, but they're broadcasting that they're not on our team. And yet,

Speaker 32 we have independent, progressive media like Crooked Media, like what I do, and like so many others in this space who are showing that we are willing and able to pick up the mantle for where the media is dropping the ball.

Speaker 32 And we have to

Speaker 32 be able to combat what the right has done.

Speaker 32 I mean, from the days of Rush Limbaugh all the way to today with Fox News and OAN and Newsmax and Daily Wire, and just the vast ecosystem of the right, we have to be able to push back.

Speaker 32 And by relying solely or only legitimizing mainstream media sources, we're not going to get there.

Speaker 29 Yeah. I don't even think that they should be on our team because they're like, look, their job is to report the news.
Their job is not to help Democrats win elections.

Speaker 29 And I mean, one of the reasons we started Cricket Media was not even like a frustration with the mainstream media, but just like, you know, people are getting their information from different sources.

Speaker 29 People have like strong opinions about politics. And if you have strong opinions about politics, like, you know, decades ago, you would like join your local Democratic committee, right?

Speaker 29 But now people get their information on their phones, and it's good to have sort of a community to go to. Is that how you think of your YouTube channel? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 32 I mean, we're so lucky right now to be able to reach people instantly, to get instant feedback, and to have an actual connection with people. And I can see what resonates.

Speaker 32 By the way, as a content creator, I can see what resonates with people, what messages are working, what messengers are working. I can see who my audience wants to hear from.

Speaker 32 I can see who my audience is deathly bored from hearing from. And I won't name any names, but there are people out there in the Democratic Party.
And

Speaker 32 we have that advantage, especially from a persuasion perspective, that we need to know what works and what doesn't work.

Speaker 32 And having the internet at our fingertips and having those analytics at our fingertips helps us do exactly that.

Speaker 29 What messages have been working lately?

Speaker 32 Well, right now, I think it's been great to watch the whole weirdness narrative set in because for so long,

Speaker 32 it's kind of been bizarre that we haven't been able to land on that. And it is so weird.

Speaker 32 And it seems so obvious in retrospect now that these people are so obsessed with everybody else's lives that they're trying to insert themselves between a woman and her doctor, insert themselves between where Americans can travel, insert themselves between what Americans can read and what they get.

Speaker 32 I mean, the whole thing is just so weird.

Speaker 32 And like now that we finally landed on it, and because we have a growing progressive media ecosystem and these campaigns are strong, that message is able to actually resonate.

Speaker 32 Whereas before, the left-wing media ecosystem kind of just felt like scattershot.

Speaker 32 attempts at trying to make something stick and it never really did and it always felt like Republicans went into the morning meeting every day and they came out with with their talking points and they were always so organized And to finally see the tables be turned and it's actually the left that's better organized while the Republicans are dissembling and figuring out whether they're going to hammer away at Trump's message of killer windmills or hammer away at Trump's message of imaginary cannibals or hammer away at sharks or whatever it is

Speaker 32 has been great to see.

Speaker 29 We've all been coconut pills here. We've all been walls pilled.
We've taken all the pills. How are you feeling about the election now?

Speaker 29 Now that we are in this just

Speaker 29 crazy, crazy moment where three weeks ago we had an entirely different Democratic nominee, entirely different Democratic ticket.

Speaker 32 It feels so weird to feel hope. Like as a Democrat in the last decade, hope has been has been so fleeting.
And

Speaker 32 you find what moments you can, few and far in between.

Speaker 32 But look, obviously we have to be vigilant as we head toward November, but I think at the same time, we can kind of enjoy the moment that we're in.

Speaker 32 And I think that it couldn't be going better right now, which as a Democrat is a very foreign concept.

Speaker 29 Knock on all the wood. Knock on all the wood.

Speaker 32 A very foreign concept to me, but it could not be going better than it is right now. And the fact that Trump is falling apart to the extent that he is right now

Speaker 32 has been a testament to that, I think.

Speaker 32 And even with this debate stuff, has put it especially into particular focus because Donald Trump's whole shtick thus far has been that he's that he's a strong man, right? That he's tough.

Speaker 32 And he's not particularly adept at policy or foreign like domestic policy foreign policy he's not a good speaker he's he's not good at governing he's not good at managing people but what he had was was the the the toughness the strongman vibes and when he refused to debate kamala harris on september 10th for abc news and the harris campaign leaned in on this and that kind of enveloped the narrative for days and days and days.

Speaker 32 It showed that she took away the last thing that he had left and what he was left looking like was just deflated and defeated and weak.

Speaker 32 And I know that you guys talk about this a lot and this is especially, you know, Dan Pfeiffer's focus here with MessageBox and whatnot. But like our job is not to

Speaker 32 always point out that Trump is trying to be a strong man because that actually plays into his hands.

Speaker 32 It's that in fact he's weak and this was the first time that was really, really put on full display to the extent that the entire country was able to see it.

Speaker 29 Yeah, and he doesn't love being mocked mocked either, as most strong men do not.

Speaker 29 Before we go, one of my favorite anecdotes comes near the end of the book.

Speaker 29 It's about how you convinced your mother, who never had any interest in politics and believed the entire system was corrupt, to vote for the first time in 60 years during the 2020 election.

Speaker 29 Not only that, she voted for Joe Biden and Democrats down ballot.

Speaker 29 What advice would you give listeners who want to encourage someone in their life who might be cynical about politics or skeptical about politics to go out there and vote.

Speaker 32 So the story I like to tell is actually about Wisconsin. And Wisconsin is oftentimes the tipping point state.
In 2020, the difference between a Biden win and a Trump win was two votes per precinct.

Speaker 32 That's it.

Speaker 32 And so if you're looking for a proof point that we have agency here, it's that all it would have taken for Donald Trump to win Wisconsin in 2020, the tipping point state, would be flipping two people per precinct.

Speaker 32 And everybody has somebody in their lives who doesn't vote. When I asked my sister, I think it was in 2018,

Speaker 32 when there was the gubernatorial race, if she was voting for governor, her response was, what's a governor? And if somebody in my family

Speaker 32 can be at that position, then I know that there are people listening and watching who have those people in their lives too.

Speaker 32 So look, I'm not asking everybody to do everything, but we are asking everybody to do something.

Speaker 32 And in that case, it's just a matter of finding one or two people in your lives who wouldn't otherwise be able to, you know, wouldn't think that it was worth it, that it would have have any impact to participate in this election and make those people your responsibility.

Speaker 29 You want to stick around for a game of take appreciator? Let's do it. I think we're doing the blind ranking test.
Let's do it. We're going to be right back with Lovett to play a game.

Speaker 29 And we're back.

Speaker 29 Hi. Hi.

Speaker 29 I'm John Lovitt.

Speaker 31 I'm here because we're going to play a game. Yeah, we are.

Speaker 31 So welcome. So welcome to Blind Take Rankings.
Here's how it works. I'm going to read you five takes.
Pretty shameless takes, if you ask me.

Speaker 29 Oh,

Speaker 29 see what you see what you did there.

Speaker 31 Brian and John, you must rank these takes from least egregious to most egregious. So five is the least egregious.
One is the most egregious. Here's the catch.

Speaker 31 You must rank the takes as they come, and you don't know what's coming next. So try not to use that number one spot too early.

Speaker 29 All right. Are you ready? Let's do it.
All right. So ready.
Take number one.

Speaker 31 And here it is. Tim Walls is an MSNBC anchor's idea of a folksy politician who can appeal to middle America.

Speaker 31 Quite a take about a man who tricked us into believing he wasn't a coast elite by being born in Nebraska and raising a family, coaching a team, and serving the country in Minnesota.

Speaker 32 Just playing that long game, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 32 What makes this even more egregious is I think it was written by a writer for the National Review.

Speaker 29 Oh, yeah. Yeah, Rich Lowry is a big channel.

Speaker 31 They both know the take.

Speaker 29 They know where we're, that's, I mean, come on.

Speaker 29 Elijah's like, like oh that's an easy one you can well it's not about it's about it's not about guess the take it's about ranking the take i know sometimes we just like to show off our knowledge i know and it's impressive it's impressive i'm there for yeah

Speaker 29 i think we're going to be floor it's not that it's it's it's kind of a lazy it's kind of a reach it's kind of a lazy uh also and i'm stealing this from someone else but you know who's uh who's uh msn msnbc idea of no what how what was it again an msnbc anchor's idea of a folksy politician who can appeal to medical america he's a jd vance jD vance yeah someone someone put a picture of JD Vance up, which I thought.

Speaker 29 All right.

Speaker 31 Take number two.

Speaker 31 The best thing that can happen for long-term supporters of the Democratic Party is for this election to be a massive loss for the party. That's the only way the party will reform itself.

Speaker 31 Consider how the party shut down competition in the primary, misled the public about the health of the president, chose its nominee without a democratic process, and ultimately today selected its VP.

Speaker 31 When something is totally and fundamentally broken, the best thing to do is to start over. We won't see a reboot of the party unless it takes a massive loss in this election.

Speaker 29 That is such poor concern trolling. Yeah.
It's just not. I'm like giving that a.

Speaker 32 I would say three for that one.

Speaker 29 I'm giving it a five because I feel like they did such a poor job of trying to have a really like to piss you off with a take. Like it doesn't even piss me off.
It's just stupid.

Speaker 32 I would agree with that. I think this is something that Trump is trying to shoehorn into the narrative, that Republicans are trying to shoehorn into the narrative.

Speaker 32 First of all, to like undermine the whole coup narrative. It's like, well, you think we did a coup.

Speaker 29 Right. That's a coup.

Speaker 32 I know. But it's also like, we're good.
We're fine. It's them who are, it's them who are mad about it.

Speaker 29 That's why they're so mad. They're mad that they're mad that we're so happy.
You know,

Speaker 29 they hate to see us happy.

Speaker 32 They don't want to see us in array.

Speaker 31 They don't want to see us in array.

Speaker 29 So I needed an agreement here. Three or five.
I'd say five. You're ready to five.
Okay.

Speaker 29 We're saying five.

Speaker 31 We're saying five.

Speaker 29 That was Bill Ackman. You remember

Speaker 29 he spoke at the Republican National

Speaker 29 Net I might have bumped it up to a three.

Speaker 31 Next up, this is a headline.

Speaker 29 Here it is.

Speaker 31 Democrats could regret calling Trump and his supporters weird. Could regret it.
Could come to regret it.

Speaker 31 I'll read you a passage from the op-ed.

Speaker 31 I don't know what is sufficient for Harris to win, but I sure know what is necessary. A message that is dignity-affirming for working-class Americans, not dignity-destroying.

Speaker 29 Oh.

Speaker 31 If this is a campaign that descends into name-calling, no one beats Trump. In that arena.

Speaker 29 Two, two, two.

Speaker 31 I agree with that. That is getting a two.

Speaker 32 These are one of these takes that comes in a vacuum. Like

Speaker 32 they haven't been around or awake for the last eight years, and all of a sudden

Speaker 32 it's the Hillary Clinton or it's everything.

Speaker 32 It's the Michelle Obama when they go low. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Yes. Well, dignity affirming.

Speaker 29 Much like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump.
Right.

Speaker 32 The whole attack was that

Speaker 32 they're out there using their voice for workers.

Speaker 32 Was that what it was?

Speaker 31 I think it was more that,

Speaker 31 you know, it's sort of, I think, of more of a they go low situation and that comes from thomas friedman thomas freedman that's right

Speaker 29 of course it does tough take of course it does tough take heard that one in an uber it's also it's also like in jakarta it's also

Speaker 31 it's also just like the kind of thing where it's like you know that thing that seems to be um making republicans insane while delighting every democrat from joe manchin aoc i don't think it's working

Speaker 29 uh all right also also like they're going to regret calling them weird.

Speaker 32 What skeletons are in our closet that haven't come out yet that would make all of a sudden Kamala Harris and Tim Wall seem weird relative to someone like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump?

Speaker 29 Also, we may lose this election. If we do, I'm not going to go back and be like, it was the

Speaker 29 weird thing. We shouldn't have done that.
No. No.

Speaker 31 It was not picking Josh Apiro.

Speaker 29 Just kidding.

Speaker 29 You know where my head's at. You know where my head's at.

Speaker 31 Next up,

Speaker 31 this is a short one again, just a take, not a headline. It's in response to to the walls pick.
The quote is, no Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 29 This is quite a take. What do we have left?

Speaker 32 We have one and

Speaker 29 three, I think. Three?

Speaker 31 One and three. I think it's one and three.

Speaker 32 We have one and three.

Speaker 29 I feel like it's got to be three.

Speaker 32 Yeah, I would agree with that. Also, like, no Jews at the top of the Democratic Party.
I think Chuck Schumer even quote-tweeted that. When Chuck Schumer is dunking on you.

Speaker 29 It's a good dunk.

Speaker 31 Yeah, Chuck Schumer saw that. Bagel fell out of his mouth.
I can say that.

Speaker 29 That's allowed. Also,

Speaker 29 he saw that and was like, we got to get tweeting before Doug Emhoff does it first.

Speaker 31 Yeah, you got to do it.

Speaker 29 Because there's a little

Speaker 29 friendly rivalry there. Who's the.

Speaker 31 And if it wasn't Saturday.

Speaker 29 He's really at the top of the title.

Speaker 31 And if it wasn't Saturday, Josh Shapiro could have been at it, too, because he's, I guess, no, not top.

Speaker 29 He's not top of the party.

Speaker 29 Remember when there was that article? Second gentleman versus Senate majority leader.

Speaker 32 To your dismay.

Speaker 29 Chuck probably wins that one. Yeah, no, for sure.

Speaker 31 For sure. Well, there was that.
There were that article.

Speaker 29 There was a profile. There was a profile that called it Doug.

Speaker 29 that although you know what doug's moving up i was well if doug's first gentleman first gentleman first gentleman versus senate majority leader yeah it's you know it's you know it's it got the got the president's ear you know

Speaker 31 it's a powerful powerful job edith wilson round the country much like jill is doing today

Speaker 29 jesus

Speaker 29 what it's over

Speaker 29 next you and christy jackson still fighting the wars

Speaker 31 if if walls just kidding here buddy if walls is running against Obama, he totally do a birth certificate joke.

Speaker 31 At no time in living memory has there been any such thing as going lower than Democrats are willing to go. It's not possible.

Speaker 29 Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 29 This is about the

Speaker 29 couch joke.

Speaker 31 Can't go lower than that.

Speaker 29 That is the lowest. That is the bottom.
I'm so glad we saved one. I'm so glad.
I feel so safe.

Speaker 32 You said the birth certificate thing, right? That was part of it?

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 32 So the example that they use is literally an example that they use.

Speaker 29 And is worse.

Speaker 29 And that's a good point.

Speaker 31 That's a good point. Philosophically, he's saying Democrats could not go lower than this.
It is equivalent of the things Republicans do.

Speaker 31 That's such a good point.

Speaker 29 Here's what's driving me. I have not talked about this yet.
Like,

Speaker 29 the couch joke complaints.

Speaker 29 If Tim Walls had got up there and was giving a riff and said something about a couch and be like, you heard about the couch, right? You heard about J.D. Vance and the couch.

Speaker 31 J.D. Vance fucked a couch.

Speaker 29 Oh, yeah. Or even insinuated that he did.
That would be one thing. I'd still think it was a funny, but like, we we could at least have that debate.

Speaker 29 He just, he just, he, he said a word that was like a signal to a certain group of very online people, us,

Speaker 29 the coach. And like, that's it.

Speaker 32 The fact that they got so mad is also telling on themselves.

Speaker 29 But he didn't, he didn't spread the disinformation. Right.
He just nodded to a joke that's out there.

Speaker 32 And it was smart because if you didn't know the joke, it would still work. It just sounds like he's lazy.

Speaker 29 If you didn't know that, he was not spreading any kind of misinformation or disinformation because if you hadn't heard it, you would have had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

Speaker 31 But it still makes sense. You're just saying, oh, the guy must be on his couch hanging out.

Speaker 31 And I think the reason it drove them so crazy is because

Speaker 31 if somebody doesn't understand it and hasn't heard it, to explain it, you sound unhinged.

Speaker 29 And you have to.

Speaker 29 Someone made up a story about JD Vance fucking a couch. So he said he talked about him getting up off a couch.
I think the reason that it hurts so much is

Speaker 29 that getting you angry?

Speaker 32 The reason it hurts so much, too, too, is, yes,

Speaker 32 it's not true, but like the fact that so many people believed it could be is a pretty poor reflection on J.D. Vance.

Speaker 29 But it's like, yeah, of course Democrats shouldn't also spread disinformation, right? Like everyone's like, whoa, now you think you should. No, we shouldn't.
That's not what he did.

Speaker 31 That's not what he did. Yeah, I mean, look, the fact that J.D.
Vance was born in Canada is not even something we've been bringing up.

Speaker 29 No, no, we've been very, we've been, we'll let them fight that out. Yeah, that's their, we're not going to

Speaker 29 be able to do that.

Speaker 29 Maybe Trump will drop him from the ticket when he finds out.

Speaker 29 Don't say that too much. They don't actually want it to happen.

Speaker 31 Well, let's do a let's.

Speaker 31 So that's it.

Speaker 29 Did anybody, did any of the many people in this room keep track of the rankings?

Speaker 31 Anybody? Did a single person in here...

Speaker 31 I see four laptops. Did anybody type out the order?

Speaker 29 I think I remember. I think I remember.

Speaker 29 Okay. Number one.

Speaker 29 No, we'll start with five. Okay, well, I'm just trying to go with my fucking memory.

Speaker 31 The fifth was your first. You said folks.
No, no, no, that was no, you didn't. No.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 31 In fifth, you said the concern trolling was fifth.

Speaker 31 Tim Walls being a folksy politician in the minds of an MSNBC anchor was fourth.

Speaker 29 Fourth.

Speaker 31 Democrats could regret calling Trump and his supporters weird.

Speaker 29 That's two. That was two.

Speaker 31 No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 29 Three.

Speaker 31 And number one.

Speaker 29 Nice job. Number one.

Speaker 31 Democrats can never sink lower than this couch illusion. It's the Democratic equivalent of a joke Republicans constantly make.

Speaker 29 And that's going to be number one.

Speaker 32 I'm totally fine with that list. That's exactly what I would have done.

Speaker 29 That's a good list. Hey, everyone.
Go buy Shameless. Brian's book.
Please go buy the book. You can get it anywhere books are sold.
You get your books online or in real life. August 13th.

Speaker 32 August 13th. It's out, but it's available for pre-order now.

Speaker 29 All right. Help our buddy Brian out.

Speaker 29 Thanks for coming by. Love it.
Thanks for that fantastic game. What a delight.

Speaker 31 Thanks to Elijah on the ones and twos.

Speaker 29 Everyone, have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.

Speaker 29 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at cricket.com/slash friends.

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Speaker 29 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review to help boost this episode or spice up the group chat by sharing it with friends, family, or randos you want in on this conversation.

Speaker 29 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.

Speaker 29 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 29 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Heringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 29 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 29 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

Speaker 1 October brings it all: Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.