Trump Is So Beatable

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and lyric. Welcome to Pod Save America.
I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vitor.
Greetings once again from Milwaukee, where the only two political stories that matter right now are about Donald Trump, the convicted felon who just survived an assassination attempt to officially accept the Republican nomination for the third time in a row, and Joe Biden, the hugely successful president who will reportedly decide in the next few days whether he still plans to accept the Democratic nomination, even though most of the party's senior leaders are now urging the 81-year-old incumbent to pass the torch. Let's start with Trump, who just finished a record-breaking 96-minute nomination speech.
He broke his own record. The second longest speech was his speech in 2016.
The third longest was his speech in 2020. But boy, he blew those records out of the water with a 96-minute speech that lasted into the next day.
Technically a five-day convention. Congratulations, sir.
Thanks to the speech. So it started with a very long, detailed story about the assassination attempt.
Hard to describe here. You'll have to watch it for yourself, but we do have a clip.
The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body.
For whatever reason, the doctors told me that. I said, why is there so much blood? He said, it's the ears.
They bleed more. It is the ears.
That was not part of the prepared remarks. I want you all to know that this was something that I could relate to because I had my ears pinned back when I was 13 because they used to stick out.
And then I had a blood clot on my ear and I had to do surgery without anesthesia on my left ear. And it bled a lot.
Man. Wow.
What a personal anecdote. Sorry about that.
Trump started his speech with the story of his bleeding ear. you started this podcast the story of your bleeding ear i'm the trump of this podcast we've always on some level known that to be true you said it you said it i don't want to sound glib but it's really late and we've been drinking uh it's very hard to make a speech about narrowly avoiding getting assassinated boring but he managed to do it somehow A friend of ours described it as if a second grader were telling a story about a horrifying incident.
As I was listening to it, I'm like, it's really, he's somehow making, even though it's obviously a story about the assassination attempt on him. Like I went into the speech thinking that's gonna be a really, even for Trump, that going to be a moving moment telling the story and he somehow made it even more narcissistic than like you would imagine like at one point he was like the crowd and the and there were all these shots and the crowd didn't leave and you know why the crowd didn't leave because they were worried about me they worried about secret service had guns and told them not to leave that's why it was wild it was like and i and before they before the shooting i i started the speech and I was speaking so powerfully, so strongly, and it was such a big crowd, and there were so many stats, and the stats were about immigration, all the good things we did.
It was just, even that part, which people probably say was the good part of the speech, why did we get to the other speech, was a little weird. But you just delivered that with way more emotion than he did.
He told that story as if I was telling a story to my three-year-old to get him to fall asleep in bed. It is that same cadence.
So weird. It was bizarre.
It was uninteresting. And we actually learned truly nothing from his story that was not available on video.
Yeah, it was. Well, I just think it's, you know, stories saying that he's had some sort of spiritual awakening notwithstanding., um, the man has no interior life and that did not change.
And so he drew no lessons from it. He learned nothing about violence in America, the danger posed by guns, the, the rhetoric in our country.
At least nothing that we heard in this speech. Nothing that we heard in this speech.
Perhaps there's something floating around in there. I don't want to, I don't want to assign motivation to the man, but I'm only going by what I heard.
I say, like, I think we're pretty jaded, and also we were following the story very closely. I am like, I do think that was one of the most interesting things we've ever heard.
It was ultimately the most boring version, but like, it was the most interesting part of an otherwise very, very boring. What happened to him is like...
What happened is interesting, but show, don't tell. The image of you, like, avoiding the bullet, getting cut, punching your fist is on the screen.
You don't have to describe how you clenched your fist and punched- In mind-numbing detail that he described that picture that was in seven versions arrayed around his head on the big screen. On the Minecraft big boards.
So he tells that story, right? And you think, okay, that's what this is. And then he ends it by walking over to hug the uniform of the man who was killed, the firefighter who was killed in the shooting.
And then we're like, so then we're like 30 minutes into the speech. And then he starts acknowledgements.
Then he starts narrating what happened throughout the night. He's talking about Dana White who introduced him.
He's talking about Hulk Hogan. He's talking about Kid Rock.
And so he does all this thing. And then we get into what we were promised is going to be a unifying speech where his aides were also pushing that he was not going to mention the name Joe Biden at all.
And that it was going to be unifying and different. It was a new Trump because he's now spiritual, because he survived this.
And here is just a sample of what we heard for the rest of the speech. And we must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what's been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before.
In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy. Especially since that is not true.
In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country. Every week they get another subpoena from the Democrats, crazy Nancy Pelosi, the whole thing, just boom, boom, boom.
If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the 10 worst, added them up. They will not have done the damage that Biden has done.

Only going to use the term once.

Biden. I'm not going to use the name anymore.

Just one time.

We don't have fierce people.

We have people that are a lot less than fierce,

except when it comes to cheating on elections

and a couple of other things.

Then they're fierce.

Then they're fierce.

I am trying to buy your vote.

I'll be honest about that.

Thank you. couple of other things then they're fierce then they're fierce i am trying to buy your vote i'll be honest about that that was actually i would say him saying to wisconsin i want to buy your vote was actually one of the charming parts of the speech he finishes the assassination topper does a pay on to unity then does acknowledgements for about 15 minutes melanie good to see you i hope you had a great summer.
Spends a long time on Dana White's travel logistics. Yeah.
A surprising amount of time on Dana White's. A lot of time.
Went somewhere with his wife. Italy.
Dana White said it publicly. It was Italy.
Oh, okay. There you go.
Yeah. He wouldn't say it was Italy.
He wouldn't say why. But there was, you might think that we're going on about this.
He went on for a couple minutes at least about just Dana White and his travel plans. Eventually, acknowledges all the of his family and then gets to J.D.
Vance. So we get a couple shots of Usha looking absolutely fucking miserable.
Like Usha, I think, could pull up a chair and be the fifth host of this show. And then he just went into his stump.
So it really was an assassination attempt topper into not even that much of a revised version of his stump speech. So here's a, you know, I try to write questions ahead of time for this podcast for you guys.
Here's a hilarious question now that I'm reading it. What do you think was the goal of the speech? What audience was the Trump campaign trying to reach and what message were they trying to drive home? Not a clue.
Not a clue. Yeah, Dan.
I mean, I really thought there was going to be a plan. Me too plan me too i mean there has been all this talk and some of it warranted about how much better this version the trump campaign has been and how much and i use i i swear i'm doing this on a curve but how much more disciplined trump has been throughout this people like he doesn't want to go to prison right and it's either he wins he doesn't go to prison or he loses and goes to prison and so he has been more focused than in previous efforts.
But this speech was fucking insane. Just like the content is insane.
It makes no logical sense. But the convention speech itself is the easiest layup in American politics.
All the networks agree. We're just going to let you speak for an hour directly to tens of millions of Americans.
Just say whatever you want. deliver your message, here is free propaganda.
And he took that and he just could not do it. It made no sense.
He had no message. He was all over the map.
Most people went to bed. The convention, the people who produced the convention actually did do a good job of just spewing propaganda.
The rest of the convention was incredibly disciplined it was they even they made even the most the craziest of mega freaks kind of toe some sort of line there was no discussion of the 2020 election throughout four slash five days of this convention now did all of this and then donald trump gets up there in his moment and thinks he's at i don't a rally somewhere in like it was like it was like a long rotary club. He was honestly doing open mic night at Mar-a-Lago.
It was insane. It was heartening, actually.
And it was a reminder that this, I know we've been in a very hard debate about fears that Democrats have about losing, but this is a reminder about beatable. This guy is.
And what I thought while watching his speech is, fortunately for us, you can run the most disciplined campaign and disciplined convention in the world, but it doesn't matter if your candidate is one of the most undisciplined figures to ever grace American public life. Like that is their weakness.
He is their weakness. Yeah.
I think that's right. I think people like us who are sickos who watch the full speech are like, what was that? People in the hall are probably wondering.
Tim Alberta, a great reporter at The Atlantic was tweeting that even like the diehards in the front row were like, look at their phones, wondering when it was going to be over. I think most people turned it off.
And the takeaways from the week will be Trump is tough, he's a survivor, and he will sacrifice everything for you, his flock. It's always been this narrative that this rich man, he gave up fame and fortune and money, and he didn't need the aggravation.
And that was obviously bullshit because Trump's a narcissist and he only wants attention. And politics has been his vehicle for attention for many years.
But now the assassination attempt is the ultimate example for them of him sacrificing for you, the voter. And some of the voters hear that and think there was literally divine providence.
There's a lot of like, this was a gift from God talk throughout the four days. And then other people just think he's a badass and the core image is going to be that photo.
So, you know, I think the like takeaways will be like strength. They wanted it to be unity.
I don't know that they succeeded there, but you know. Yeah.
I think the most generous analysis of what happened tonight would be undecided voters. If, like if the whole, this is his flock thing, that's not going to work with anyone who's's not already voting for Donald Trump right but if you're an undecided voter you probably turned off the speech 20 or 30 minutes in if you made it that long maybe you thought that the assassination attempt story that he told was you know moving charming whatever but I do think that for him and I started thinking about this today because he definitely feels so confident that he is winning i mean he just this whole convention when he was sitting there he just exudes this confidence that he hasn't had in a while that like i am winning this race and when he is winning and he's doing well he gets lazy you know and he gets like oh i don't have to try that hard and i can just and he gets self-indulgent this was like a self-indulgent speech yeah like i can now do my stump say whatever i want i don't really have to try i'm beating this guy i'm gonna win so he just did whatever he want you can tell when his like backs up against the wall and he's in court and he's doing this he's like he's doing his fighting thing he he this is where his vulnerability now is he thinks he's ahead and And which means I do think he's, he's the Trump that we saw tonight was beatable.
Yeah. The, the, I do think he's like running on a post in his mind that the, the, the, all the talk from inside the campaign and the spin that, you know, he's had this, he's, he's different.
It's going to be more subdued. It's serene.
It's unity. He's not going to say the word Biden during the speech.
My expectation was like, that's a pretty, that's smart to me, right? It seemed to acknowledge that what we have talked about a lot, right? That, that, that the die is cast on Donald Trump. The country knows Donald Trump.
The reason he's up right now is because they have deep concerns about Joe Biden, but maybe Trump would take the assassination attempt as an opportunity to reset with the American people and present a slightly different version with this as a hinge point that could lead people to say, oh, like this is the narrative of this election. He decided to run a different kind of race and be a different kind of candidate.
And he just could not do it. Crazy Nancy, Democrats destroying the country, election 2020 stolen, the media is lying to you, China virus, evasion, mass deportations.
He couldn't stop himself from doing all the things that repel the kind of people he needs if Democrats can launch a better campaign. They had two goals with this convention.
What he said really wasn't going to matter that much. It was would he seem more normal., right? The whole point of the convention, all the humanizing stories, Dana White, reading the texts that Trump sent him, the granddaughter, all those things was about making Trump seem more normal, make him acceptable to more voters.
And I think cleverly have really pushed this idea that the assassination attempt changed Trump because people don't like Trump, right? They are looking for like, they don't like either of the candidates right now. They're looking for somewhere to go.
And the idea that Trump is different, like the Biden folks have a different theory that losing the election changed Trump and made him even crazier. Right.
And so they're trying to take the opposite of that, which is the shooting made Trump a more serious, a more serene person. And that was the part of the point of starting the speech with that story, which I will say he did pledge he would only tell once.
And I would bet $5 he tells at the rally in Michigan on Saturday with J.D. Vance.
100%. Yeah.
But then he went and as soon as he said that, he just went right to Trump, right? When we were watching the coverage beforehand, David Axelrod was on and he mentioned a voter in a focus group who said, having Trump as president for four years felt like having a neighbor who always had his leaf blower going, and he hated that. And this was leaf blower Trump, right? Just loud, wouldn't shut up, didn't make a lot of sense, talking about himself.
I will say the only, if you're the Trump team and you're looking at this and being like, was this, let's try to find the win here. It's, they're probably worried that he would come off seeming scary and threatening and he didn't necessarily seem as scary and threatening as he has been in the past he seemed boring incoherent and sort of weird um which maybe maybe they'll take that over the scary threatening and maybe people who tune in are like yeah he didn't seem like he's he's gonna come get us all you know like he seemed a little he he took took half his Xanax too many.
I'll tell you, I'll just say it, which is that what I thought is, I don't know if when you get shot in the ear, if you get a full weeks of Tylenol plus codeine. Like that was my question.
And I'm just going to leave that question out there. Just to bring people behind the scenes here for 96 minutes, minutes love it was debating whether to tweet that

so he's just sitting out careful after some careful consideration i'll just say to just say

but it's also it's like the all the love talk the meandering acknowledgements yes it's very trump

but there was a there was a if there is a new and serene trump i do think it came in a little bottle

that's just i'm just that's my i don't know i don't know before we move on the also it wasn't

a bullet no i'm kidding i don't believe that that's blue and on stuff that's not me three distinct all electric Cadillacs some drive them for the performance others drive them for the range and some drive them because it's the only way to make an entrance. Three different ways to turn every drive into an occasion.
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Before we move on,

other primetime speakers,

not anyone worth mentioning. Eric Trump was sort of angry.
rock sounded kind of crazy uh dana white was there tucker carlson was actually oh tucker carlson was early on and was sort of he told a personal story that i think really worked in the room i don't know about people back home but it works in the room yeah tucker carlson is the one where i was like i was i thought that jd vance would be that kind of scary, and J.D. Vance's speech sucked,

and I'm like,

Tucker Carlson's the one you can't do.

By the way, Trump, I think,

detailed Dana White's travel woes

before getting to J.D. Vance.

He did.

J.D. Vance came like 15 minutes later.

But then, there was also Hulk Hogan

who sounded like this.

So all you criminals,

all you lowlifes,

all you scumbags,

all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question, brother. What you gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you, brother? Well, I mean, Mitt Romney will run from them, and Mike Pence will try to escape before he be hung and nancy pelosi will call the vice president there'll be a long-term investigation can i just tell you even just hearing that clip because now we're hearing it a second time it really does light up the kid in me who saw hulk hogan after american gladiators i i still i saw no holds barred was a movie i was too young to see when it was on television.
And we got to get Stone Cold Steve Austin. He said he was in favor of gay marriage in 2014.
I think it's an opening. The Undertaker also donated to Trump.
I was Googling this during the event. And the Ultimate Warrior is fucking dead.
The Iron Sheik was attacking him. Iron Sheik we got, but I mean.
That is something like a consultant would say in a Democratic campaign meeting after this convention what's our ice bucket challenge

oh you don't want stone cold

I was googling

during the convention you're saying you don't want stone

cold Steve Austin at the

democratic convention you just want Lin-Manuel

Miranda you want the cast of fucking

Sufts I want fucking stone cold

Steve Austin

I know absolute

joke theft I took it to theft

I took it to Sufts

Dan do you have something smart to say

I'm sorry. That was my joke.
Steve Alvin. Yeah, he was literally Tommy's tweet talking absolute joke theft.
I took it to theft. I took it to suffs.
Dan, do you have something smart to say? Oh, please. Oh, please.
Like Obama once said, I am my best joke writer. Hulk Hogan will be what is on every social media platform tomorrow, though.
Yeah. He ripped his shirt.
It was so cool. Fuck.
And for the people who are pointing out some of the terrible things hulk hogan has done in his life yes he would very and kid rock and dana way the n-word it was very public it was awful it was the gawker trial came out it was a night for angry divorce deaths 100 i think most people probably will last like you to know that you tweeted this we're all trapped in the 80s all right well i was gonna say let's take a step back and talk about the convention as a whole now that it's over. Dan, you kind of talked about this already, but the overall strategy message of the convention seemed to be, hey, Trump is not as scary as you think.
He's a changed man. He's nicer than you think.
Don't be afraid. You don't want another term of Joe Biden, but you're worried because you think Trump's kind of scary and weird and we're going to soften him up.
Did I miss anything? No, I think that's right. And we're not going to talk about abortion at all because we know it's super unpopular for us.
I mean, this was a convention of a party that really wanted to win, right? Like this party is the party that passed all these abortion bans. They have spent their entire lives trying to repeal Roe and then to pass these sort of bans.
And they went four days without ever talking about it. And then Donald Trump never mentioned it.
And there was never, there was no fight about it. Like in a normal convention, there would have been a platform fight about it.
There would have been speakers who would have, no, no one, no one did it. The other thing, the other sort of takeaway for me from this is that this is now Donald Trump's party.
Even the last time, even in 2020, there was an actual convention. But if we think back to the Trump presidency, most of these yahoos were trying to just simply survive the Trump years without getting indicted and then just wait for the next person to come.
But now they are all true believers. Top to bottom.
The only non-true believer is Mitch McConnell. He stood up for one second and got booed, right? And everyone else, whatever Trump believes, they believe.
Whatever Trump wants, they won. And that is scary because win or lose this election, one of our two parties is now a MAGA extremist party going forward.
And that's going to make it really hard to govern in a two-party system. Yeah, that's what I, when I saw, it's, you know, that like, it's not a betrayal to turn on your friends and say you love Big Brother.
Like the actual betrayal is having Big Brother in your heart. And you feel like at this convention, even the Republicans that once like gritted their teeth and said they were for Trump, you can feel them having persuaded themselves to believe that this is actually the way.
Yeah. Like this is, it's not just that the old guard has been cast aside, though a lot of them have.

It's that they didn't just relent in their words.

They have adopted Trump.

They believe it now.

J.D. Vance is the perfect example of that.

Did the convention give you guys any new ideas about how Democrats should run against Trump in these next few months?

The convention did not. Trump's speech did.
It is a reminder that we want people to see Donald Trump. And they really haven't seen Donald Trump at all in this campaign, particularly over the last three weeks, as the focus has been, understandably so, on President Biden, right? And there's nothing new.
Conventions are not news, per se. It's just a show that gets put on.
And there's been a real conversation, a very important conversation that could lead to a historic decision that we'll get to with President Biden. But Donald Trump is incredibly vulnerable, just absolutely beatable.
He is a bad candidate. Voters do not want to vote for him.
They do not like him. Right? And it's just like when I sort of think about what Trump is trying to do, it's sort of like's like reverse permission structure.
Normally, you want to be for something, and you're just trying to give people permission to do what they want to do. Here, they don't vote for either of these guys.
You've got to give them permission to not vote for that person. There's a lot of ammunition that Trump gave us in that speech to accomplish that task.
I also think we've got to make sure we get get under Donald Trump's skin so we don't get the barred out chill version and we get like the really angry, ranting, raving person that everyone hates. Also, we need to make sure we're highlighting the freaky religious guy who spoke after Hulk Hogan, who wants to control your life and your contraception use and IVF and make like the younger males that they're going after worry about that guy being on the Trump train and not think about Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off and like the manly man, you know, kind of cool version of Trump who they think has emerged since the assassination attempt.
Yeah. I mean, what you got from this convention is they do not want to talk about abortion.
They do not want to talk about any of the policies and proposals in project 2025. They don't want to talk about their tax cuts for the rich with the exception of, as you mentioned last night, Steve Scalise.
They just don't want to talk about any of these things that aren't popular. And we need a campaign candidate who can prosecute the case and make sure that everyone is hearing about this all the time.
I also like the, there are moments in this convention where you have someone staying up there being like, Donald Trump shall be a champion for our values and the blood and spirit of this country shall reign supreme. We will have a country again that is the first in all the land.
And like, I can just picture like a, you know, even a George W. Bush calling something, saying like, this is some weird shit or Barack Obama kind of making a funny joke.
Like, hey, guys, your job is to pave roads and send out the Social Security checks. Can we tone it down a notch? Like, what the fuck are you going to do when you're in office? There was no policy agenda.
There's no details. It was a rambling, meandering set of grievances, attacks, lies, bullshit, and all the rest.
And just the incredible power that just new and normal would have. Like, I'm just here.
I want to do these 10 things. I don't care about all this other stuff.
Like, would be so powerful. So that brings us to the drama surrounding the Democratic nominee for president, which has really overshadowed the Republican convention this week.
Here's the latest from the New York Times. Quote, several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, though he has not yet made up his mind.
So the Times story matches all the other reporting, as well as everything we're hearing. Two senior House Democrats told CBS they expect Biden to make his decision within three to five days.
Of course, he's still recovering from COVID at his home in Delaware. But even since we recorded last night, there's been a flood of bad polls and leaks about how most senior Democrats now believe that Biden should step aside.
Congressional leaders, party leaders, House and Senate Democrats, John Tester of Montana became the second senator, put out a statement tonight saying that Biden should step aside. Strategists, donors, and of course, as the polls show now, at least half, if not more, of Democratic voters.
We should note, though, that the White House and the Biden campaign continue to deny on the record that the president's considering stepping aside. Those denials got more intense, I would say, as the day went on.
Tonight, a source close to Biden talked to Bob Costa at CBS and said that they're furious that while the president's trying to recover, a pressure campaign keeps picking up speed. So a little hard to tell.
There was also sources close to Biden that talked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC News. So it's sort of hard to figure out what's going on.
But it did feel like today, even since we recorded last night, was a bit different. There was speculation earlier this week that the combination of the assassination attempt on Trump and the convention would freeze or even end the effort to persuade Biden to step aside.
I certainly thought that might happen. What do you guys think changed? And what do you make of all the leaks from the last few days, especially today? I mean, I think it was what Seth Moulton told me earlier this week, which that people who are worried about Biden's candidacy became even more worried after the assassination attempt and felt more urgency to move quickly.
And then on top of that, it seems clear that a bunch of polling came back. Like, I think John Tester coming out and being the second U.S.
senator to call for a change at the top of the ticket tells you a lot because he's one of the most vulnerable senators up this cycle. I mean, it probably tells you where the polling is in Montana.
And so, you know, I think what has happened is, or at least what we're reading, is that people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are making an argument that this is bigger than Biden, bigger than the White House. This could be Democrats getting wiped out in Congress as well.
And that is kind of motivating the extra push. I think what happened is a lot of people try to do this privately.
We know that Hakeem Jeffries talked to Biden on Friday night. Schumer talked to him on Saturday, just hours before the assassination attempt.
At some point in that same period, Nancy Pelosi spoke to him at least once. They tried to do it privately.
A bunch of House Democrats did Zoom calls with the president. No one felt that they made any ground there, and they started going public.
I think the leaders particularly feel a tremendous amount of pressure from their members to try to get a better result because their members are scared shitless. They're all going to lose their seats over this, and we will lose our chance to take the House back and definitely lose the Senate.
And so when the private route did not work and Biden seemed, according to all reports, totally unopened to any sort of conversation about it, they started to go more public, to put more public pressure on them. And the truth is, we are now in reporting silly season.
Like these two House Democrats who are like three to five days, that's their guess based on like the calendar. That's not there.
There are by all reports, like five people talking to Biden right now. And I don't think any of those people are telling reporters that Biden is changing his mind.
They're the people who are on background, telling reporters he's not changing his mind. So we the political environment has shifted dramatically since we last podcasted about this.
But we just have no actual insight into whether the president's mindset has actually changed. I think some of the people in the outer circle, not the inner circle, the outer circle, have come to the conclusion that Biden should step aside and eventually will have to step aside, but we don't know whether that has actually gotten to the president himself.
Yeah, and we recorded last night. As we do every night.
I know. And while we were recording or right after, there was that story that Nancy Pelosi, I think the New York Times ran the story and then CNN ran a version of the story as well, that Nancy Pelosi got on the phone with Biden.
And then when Biden started saying, oh, well, there's polls, show me winning. And she was like, get Mike Donilon on the phone.
Mike Donilon is Biden's closest communications messaging advisor. And she was like, show me the polls.
Show me the polls. Because there's concern among Democrats that, you know, Biden and Donilon and other people keep saying that there's these polls showing that he's winning and that they don't really exist.
Yeah, we don't know what happened after that moment either. The story sort of ends there.
Yeah. Just imagine Biden trying to conference in Mike Donilon from his beach house in Rehoboth? But also Nancy Pelosi, just the best of what she does.
Like everyone else when the president of the United States says there are polls, they're like, okay, there must be polls. She's like, no.
Get your guy on the phone, calls the bluff, get your guy on the phone and show me the polls because I mean. But that's what like, everyone's like, I wonder wonder it's you know it's some strange bedfellows in the in the group of people who are worried about biden staying in versus the people who think he should stay in it's like really all the people from left to center to center left to wherever else where you fall on the spectrum the people who are concerned about biden are people who have been on campaigns who are currently in office, who are in competitive districts, who have had to run tough races, who've had to persuade voters, who have knocked on doors to talk to undecided voters.
Like, these are the people that are most worried about that because they are not, like, ensconced in a bubble on Twitter or in the White House or wherever it may be, hearing from people who are obviously going to vote for Biden no matter what, like us, right? Like when you actually go talk to the voters that you need to win, everyone who is talking to these voters, polling these voters, sitting in focus groups with these voters, they're so worried about this. And they've been worried about this for a long time.
I think that there is a lot of the people who are making the argument against a switch are doing it in denial of polling reality. They say all the polls are rigged, it's margin all of that without any evidence of proving that i think that there is a good faith argument to be made and some people are making it that the risk of a switch yes is greater than the risk of sticking with button and that's ultimately i think and like i i have come to not agree with that but i think it is completely fair fair.
Because no one knows what's going to happen. We just do not know.
And unfortunately, you have to make the decision now. It has to happen in the next couple of weeks.
But ultimately, it has to happen, really, in the next 72 to 96 hours to maximize the opportunity to have the upside that may be available in a second candidate. But it's a total unknown.
So you can have the opposite opinion in good faith, but it has to be based in the data, in a realistic assessment of where the race is. And I also do think that we are now at the point where so many people have come out against Joe Biden being nominee, wanting him to step aside, that it is hard to imagine a democratic convention under these circumstances that leads to like a Joe Biden sent out, like even if everybody comes together and says they're going to do everything they can.
Like we are now at the point where huge swaths of elected Democrats have called for Joe Biden to step aside. Like I think that the idea originally that the damage was not from the debate, but from the response to the debate, I think was not justifiable.
But it is hard to argue now that what is happening is not doing ongoing and irreparable damage to Joe Biden because the people stepping forward believe he cannot win. And so that what must happen is people coming forward and saying we have to make a switch.
I mostly agree with that. I think it's not clear in public opinion yet that ultimately people, the number of Democrats who think Joe Biden is too old has gone up, but it was really hot before and it's only gone up a few points.
I think it's like five points in the New York Times poll. But the point you're making is very important, which is how do you imagine the campaign going forward after this, right? What does the convention look like? How does he raise money, right? There are reports that fundraising has been cut in half since then.
There are people who are not giving, bundlers who are not raising money, they said they're simply focusing on House and Senate candidates instead. What happens when he goes to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, all the battleground states that also have Senate and House candidates? Are they going to simply avoid being with the president for the next four months? It's just, it is, and we're the president to continue, and it's certainly his choice, and he could do that.
It is just a death march to the end, an undignified, terribly damaging death march because the party will be running away from him. And look, this is awful and sad and shitty for Biden, his family, his staff, the entire party.
Like, no one is happy about this. No one wanted to be spending the summer arguing about this while we are currently losing to Donald Trump, but we are losing to Donald Trump.
And I think the RNC crystallized that reality for Democrats. And like, no one thinks to your point, Dan, that like Biden stepping aside will guarantee a win against Trump at all.
But, you know, a growing number of people, including Democratic voters, a majority of Democratic voters believe that it will give us a better chance against Trump. And like you said, if he doesn't, it's up to him.
If he stays, then like I can still make an honest argument for Joe Biden. Like Donald Trump presents a threat to democracy from the plans that he proposed, from the things that he said, from the party that he now runs.
Like absolutely, we'd be better off. And if that's where we're like 96 hours from now, that's where we are.
And everyone said, that's it. Joe Biden's it.
We've all agreed. Then I'll give money that day.
We'll go knock doors the day after that. Like we will be 100% in for that.
Well, I'm maxed out, Dan, so I can't do that. But just kidding.
For the general, too. I could do the victory fund.
But just so people know, like the data behind these anxieties, the Wall Street Journal reported today that a research firm called Blue Rose Research found President Biden losing in all the swing states, behind or even in New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia, and maine and leading by only 2.9 percent in new jersey so that is like not good panic button numbers not good people not good i also just like watching donald trump deliver this meandering and terrible address it is a it is absolutely mad it made me furious we should beat this guy we should fucking beat this guy. It's embarrassing if we lose to this guy.
I thought he was pretty good.

And one thing he said in his speech, which I'm, it was some version of build the wall, build with some version of, we should be excited about the future. Right.
Yeah. That was a good line.
Actually. I noticed that too.
He did. And I want you to miss it in the 96 minutes.
And we have spent weeks arguing about how or why we are most likely to lose. We have also, I think, even when we were hopeful that Joe Biden was the one who could defeat Donald Trump despite concerns about his age, we're constantly watching Joe Biden in these settings, hoping for the best version of them, hoping that he would, you know, holding our breath a little bit.
And watching this tonight, watching this

fucking terrible, ridiculous,

fucking dumb speech,

just imagining what it would be like to have a

candidate who could fucking make the argument

in a way that wasn't just good enough,

that wasn't just like, could get us over the

finish line, but to actually fuck this guy

up, you know, beat him.

Word choice.

Lower the temperature.

Rhetorically.

Rhetorically.

Three distinct

all-electric Cadillacs.

Some drive them for the performance.

Others drive them for the range.

And some drive them because

it's the only way to make an entrance.

Three different ways

Thank you. Some drive them for the performance.
Others drive them for the range. And some drive them because it's the only way to make an entrance.
Three different ways to turn every drive into an occasion. Whatever your reason, there's never been a better time to say, let's take the Cadillac.
The all-electric Cadillac family of vehicles. Escalade IQ, Optic, and Lyric.
Look, we know things don't feel great right now, but we can equip ourselves for the unprecedented months ahead without letting the news overwhelm us. Join us each week at Strict Scrutiny as we break down the cases that will decide the rules we all have to live by.
We'll supplement your daily news diet with a dose of necessary legal analysis and a healthy serving of our Real Housewives takes, some pop music, and 90s throwbacks because we believe there's no better way to unwind after an oral argument than by watching a stupid

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and don't forget to check out full episodes on YouTube. Let's say Biden does step aside.
One possibility for that candidate, the probably the most likely possibility is that Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic nominee, either because Biden explicitly endorses her or because party leaders rally around her and no one else jumps in the race or both. The Trump campaign and Republicans have clearly been preparing for this possibility.
Just listen to how many times they mentioned the vice president during this week's convention. Our border czar, Kamala Harris.
That means so bad. And we have enough bad, we need some good, we need goodness.

Democrats led by border czar Kamala Harris have allowed millions of illegal migrants

to invade our country.

President Trump did the job that Kamala won't and Joe Biden simply can't.

If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly

Thank you. can't.
If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse off. Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I've been alive.
39 years old. Kamala Harris is not much further behind.
Perhaps the greatest blame lies with his own vice president, Kamala Harris. She has not been truthful with us.
She has lied to us. She has put party above country.
And she is as unfit in character as Joe Biden is in body and mind. I'd love to get her name wrong.
I love it. Just a bunch of loons.
I'm not even going to talk about who. Maybe you recognize them, maybe you didn't.
It's unclear if the vice president is also preparing for the possibility that she may become the nominee, but she certainly sounded like one during an event in North Carolina today. Let's listen.
In recent days, they've been trying to portray themselves as the party of unity. But here's the thing.
Here's the thing. If you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word.
You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans of basic freedoms, opportunity, and dignity. You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are intent on taking reproductive freedoms from the people of America and the women of

America. You cannot claim to be for unity if you try to overturn a free and fair election.

Dan, what are the reasons Kamala Harris is most likely to be the nominee if Biden steps down? Well, she's the vice president to the stepping down president. She, in the polls that we've seen, and these should be taken with a grain of salt, she is the, by far, the first choice of Democratic primary voters.
Now, the Democratic primary voters don't have to say it'd be delegates, but that would be better to them. Logistically, Kamala Harris would be able to, most campaign finance lawyers believe, simply take over the existing Biden campaign operation, including the $91 million they had in the bank as of the last period.
So that solves a lot. It's also unclear to me that anyone would challenge her, and whether Biden endorses her or not, would step in there.
And it may be just the party is exhausted by the drama of the last few weeks and is looking for what would be the most likely outcome anyway. Even if you have some sort of process that we've talked about in the past, Harris would be a favorite going into that.
And so you could see just a coalescing around her right so we can get the general election going now. We only have about 100 days left.
And so if we spend a few weeks fighting amongst ourselves, you could see people thinking, let's just get our nominee right this second. And what are some of the reasons she may not become the nominee? Tommy? Thank you for that question.
UNITY, you got to let them know. I think she could get tagged with questions about Biden's mental acuity.
And the Republican line on this is that there's been a cover up, right? So she could get pulled into that debate. She could get tagged with immigration policy or Afghanistan or other vulnerabilities.
Delegates are political animals. They're not normal voters.
They're people like us. They could have concerns about her political vulnerabilities and ability to win.
They could be worried about misogyny or racism being a factor in this election and hurting her candidacy. So I think that she is clearly the front runner.
And also, you know, a lot of politicians might look at the political landscape right now and think Trump looks pretty tough. I'm not going to throw my hat in now.
Let's let Kamala Harris take this one. And if she loses, I'll run in 2028.
Right. I mean, that's kind of the like, yeah, consultancy version or advice you might hear.
Yeah. I guess there's a scenario that seems unlikely from all the reporting, but who knows where if Biden steps aside and doesn't explicitly endorse Kamala Harris, and then again, it's all up to other potential Democratic candidates to jump in.
If then they jump in, he hasn't explicitly endorsed her. And then there is some sort of mini primary open process before the convention.
And then the delegates start seeing polls and somehow they're performing better against Trump than Kamala Harris. You could see a scenario where she doesn't- Donald Trump is coming to silence this podcast.
You can hear the sirens in the back. Some sirens in the background.
Like you could maybe see that as a scenario, but I think the reason everyone says that she's most likely is for everything that Dan was saying, which is that would take some doing for a bunch of- It takes like a Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or a Raphael Warnock or a Wes Moore, Mark Kelly. Jamie Pritzker.
Jamie Pritzker to say, you know what? Gavin Newsom, I'm going to look at this race and I'm going to jump in, even though Kamala Harris is in the race and Biden either endorsed her or said really nice things about her. Yeah, I think that like the closer we get to the convention, the more it wouldn't feel like an open race and more like Kamala versus as the incumbent being challenged.
And somebody who has to make a decision to challenge her. And these are all the same people who decided they didn't want to challenge Biden.
There's a conservative, there's a cautiousness among this group of the vaunted Democratic bench that I find difficult to imagine being willing to do that. But, you know, who knows? But I do think, Tommy, to your point, the way the race would change if it's Kamala Harris versus Trump is they will try to tag her with the unpopularity Biden had, not just due to his age, but incumbency, right? So some of Biden's unpopularity, a lot of it is probably due to his age, but some of it is due fairly or not, and we would say not, to perceptions of how he's managed the economy, right? Persistent inflation or how he's managed immigration.
And so they would try to connect her with incumbency in a way that other candidates probably would not have to deal with. They can't do, she's old and weak anymore, so they will do radical leftist from San Francisco, right? They'll do all that.
You know, they'll try to, you know, accuse her of participating in a cover-up over Biden's age issues, right? I think the benefits, though, the way the race changes in her favor, in the Democrats' favor, is she gets to make this race now about the past versus the future. Time to turn the page.
Trump's entire campaign strategy from that Tim Alberta piece in The Atlantic was about strength versus weakness. And Joe Biden's age wasn't just about him being old.
It was about him being weak and frail. And if they can't run that campaign against Kamala Harris and they have to do the she's a radical leftist campaign, it's just not as strong as an argument for them.
I also, it's like, you know, we have been hammering this for months about the need for Joe Biden to make this race about the future. And just, I just don't believe Kamala Harris will fall into the trap that we've seen Joe Biden be falling into.
She will make this race about the future. She will, she will be able to pivot when asked a question, like she will do the things that need to be done to do the politics we need our candidate to do.
I mean, just listen to her in the clip we just played. Imagine that in three states a day, five days a week, right? A full bore campaign.
One that we know Joe Biden was not gonna run, but we also know Donald Trump can't run that campaign. And the concerns about Donald Trump's age, pale in comparison to the concerns about Biden's age, but they're still huge.
And now all of a sudden you have Kamala Harris, who's 59. Now Donald Trump is the candidate who's too old, who can't relate to people.
It really shifts it. And he is a VP candidate who only has a year and a half worth of political experience.
And no one is talking about it. J.D.
Vance is 39 years old and has been in the Senate since, what, 2023. It's insane.
A vice president older than me and a president younger than my parents. And to your Dan's point, if Biden remains president, there will be a push, I think, to get Biden to step down, but I think that's stupid.
He should stay. He should absolutely stay.
But Joe Biden remains president. Kamala Harris, the VP doesn't really have a day job.
You can just hit the road and campaign full time. She's not breaking any ties in the Senate.

Here's the other big difference, too, because I can see people who want Biden to stay and could say, well, Biden, when he's on prompter at those events, like we said, his speech in Michigan was quite good. Like he can do that for the rest of the time.
yeah perhaps but the big difference with a new candidate is i really don't think we're getting another debate if Joe Biden stays in the race. Like Trump has already said, I don't want to put him through that again.
Maybe he'll get so cocky and confident that he'll agree to it. And maybe Joe Biden will.
Okay. I know.
I'm just trying. No, I know.
I'm now playing the devil's advocate for the Biden side. But I think everyone should.
It's very unlikely we'll get another debate. If Kamala Harris is the nominee or another Democrat, I think it's going to be hard for Donald Trump to dodge another debate.
I really do. Because, and that gives her or whoever the nominee is a huge opportunity to speak to, you know, 50 million, if not more Americans in front of, in a debate setting.
And I think that's a big advantage too. Because we've had two geriatric candidates running against each other for a couple of years now, we've lost the thread of what a normal campaign looks like.
Yeah. Right.
When you're running for president, you wake up in the morning. And she can do interviews.
Right. This is my point, right? What are you talking about? And John, you know what? I'd like a candidate who can do interviews.
But think about this. We've all been on the road with a presidential candidate.
You wake up in the morning. You do drive time radio in battleground markets across the country.
Then you get up. You go to a first rally.
Then you go to another rally. Then you sit for an hour and do satellite local television interviews.
That's good stuff. Then you do another one.
And you get really mad at your staff for scheduling an hour. Yeah, yeah.
You do, but that's what you have to do. And then you wrap in the car.
You have a third rally. You were doing fundraising calls in the car, on the plane.
Like, there's a cadence to this that Donald Trump cannot keep up with. We know Kamala Harris or any other Democrat could do that.
And it would put Trump on the defensive, which he has not been on. And also, just him, all Trump has to say about Biden is criticize what Biden has done, which you would do against any incumbent, and attack his age, something that 70 to 75% of Americans agree with.
What happens when it's someone else, right? It's a woman, a woman of color, how he reacts. Trump reacts in ways that turns off swing voters.
Yeah. We have to take advantage of those opportunities if he gives them to us, but those opportunities will be there in a way they are not in a race with Biden.
But also, and Biden is rightly proud of his many legislative accomplishments as president. She can run on the popular accomplishments because she's part of that administration, but she also wasn't like, she can have some kind of distance, whereas she is the future and she is younger and she was the vice president.
So she doesn't have to own everything, right? Again, fairly or unfairly, and I'm sure the Biden folks would say unfairly, but like she gets to be her own person and she gets to be the face of the party and, and, and run a future oriented campaign. There's just a lot of to stand up there with a popular governor or a popular senator in front of a big sign that says, the future on it.
Yeah. Just to pick a VP.
She could pick Gretchen Whitmer or Governor Shapiro. That's what it would be.
Or maybe Beshear. And I think about going into that convention and the way in which people will rally behind this ticket.
It would be it'd be incredible what if she picked mike pence to be your bb that's also a possibility no it's a brain or hulk hogan okay we've talked enough we're done it's it's past midnight you could have said that three years ago i know i know we're now on the second day of this pod exactly uh let's close with this we don't know what comes next no biden anyone else but winning in november after the shit we saw this week and especially tonight is more important than ever not just at the top of the ticket but all the way down that's why we have vote save america's anxiety relief program you can set up a recurring monthly donation you can help down ballot candidates and grassroots groups vsa what's of america does the research and each month they direct your dollars to the grassroots organizations and candidates that need it most. Then at the end of the month, they'll tell you where your money went.
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Oof. Nice.
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Three distinct all-electric Cadillacs. Some drive them for the performance.
Others drive them for the range. And some drive them because it's the only way to make an entrance.
Three different ways to turn every drive into an occasion.

Whatever your reason,

there's never been

a better time to say,

let's take the Cadillac.

The all-electric Cadillac

family of vehicles.

Escalate IQ,

Optic,

and Lyric.