Vance Vance Revolution

Speaker 1 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a full design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 1 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 1 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 1 Learn more at kia.com/slash sportage dash hybrid, Kia movement that inspires. Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 3 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy. Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.
Or turn it down. It's time for something that's not too spicy.
Try Dorito's Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 1 Spicy.

Speaker 3 But not too spicy.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Levitt.

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 3 We're recording this on Wednesday night in beautiful Milwaukee, site of the Republican National Convention. We're going to be leaving soon for Charlie Kirk's After Party.

Speaker 3 In the name of Unity.

Speaker 3 I didn't get invited to that one. It's Unity.
You didn't get invited to that one. We're all Ben Shapiro's plus four.

Speaker 3 But before we go, we're going to talk talk about J.D. Vance's big speech and the rest of the highlights from night three of the RNC.

Speaker 3 We also found out today that the DNC blinked in the standoff over whether to rush a virtual roll call vote to officially nominate Joe Biden, who was supposed to be campaigning in Nevada today until he tested positive for COVID.

Speaker 3 Poor guy can't catch a single break.

Speaker 3 Also, all kinds of reporting about Pelosi, Schumer.

Speaker 3 They're all showing him bad polls. They're all showing him bad polls.
All the,

Speaker 3 yeah, so we'll see. We're going to talk about that later.
But first, we just watched J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance's speech here in a hotel room together, which is now how we watch all political performances we'd like to forget.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So we do go to a hotel, watch a.
This is now the second worst time I've had in a hotel with you boys recently.

Speaker 3 I don't want to talk about the worst.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 there's also Biden's speech.

Speaker 3 So Vance's speech was about 45 minutes.

Speaker 3 It felt like an hour. Yeah, it felt like an hour.
It felt longer.

Speaker 3 There was a lot of his bio, there was a lot of economic populism, there was a lot of Trump worship, but not necessarily in that order, not really in any order.

Speaker 3 But we do have some highlights. The first one is he started off the speech talking about Trump and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 I want all Americans to go and watch the video of a would-be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life.

Speaker 5 Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump, and then look at that photo of him defiant, fist in the air.

Speaker 5 When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him.

Speaker 3 I just wanted to play that one because it really made me mad that he is still, we talked yesterday about his tweet after the assassination attempt, where he basically blamed Joe Biden's rhetoric for the assassination attempt.

Speaker 3 This was, think about all the lies they told about Trump and now think about him putting his fists in the air after the assassin's bullet. Like he and other speakers have done this.

Speaker 3 There's been a lot of they tried to kill him this week, they, when you know, we're finding out more about the shooter. The FBI found his phone.

Speaker 3 In the phone, he was searching for Biden events, Trump events, date of the DNC, date of Trump rallies. It seems

Speaker 3 other officials. It's Merrick Garland.

Speaker 4 It does seem so far like this is a kid who hated politicians and was clearly disturbed and yet this whole our republican convention and then again with jd vance there is this they want to connect it somehow to trump that just really pissed me off i don't know what you guys think well he said he his whole line jd's line was trump called for national unity right after an assassin tried to take his life and okay sure but you pointed the finger right and you were saying things on twitter that were essentially incitement saying that joe biden's rhetoric is the reason donald trump got shot with no information, no evidence, just because, I don't, I assume probably because you're a right-wing hack and you desperately wanted to get named the vice presidential nominee and you knew that kind of outrageous attack dog shit would get you noticed by the Trump team.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, so then after he did his

Speaker 3 couple minutes of Trump worship at the top and then he finally got to his

Speaker 3 bio and sort of his message of, you know, he's trying out this sort of the MAGA version of economic populism. Let's listen.

Speaker 5 We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union, and non-union alike.

Speaker 5 A leader who won't sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry. The people who govern this country have failed and failed again.

Speaker 5 Where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.

Speaker 3 All right. So Lovett, what do you think of the speech?

Speaker 3 So I think a sign of a bad speech is you're not sure it's over till he just stops talking. That I really had absolutely, because it was, it was.
A couple different endings. A couple different endings.

Speaker 3 It really circles back. He hits the bio a lot in the speech, but not in a way that's particularly effective because the speech was so poorly structured.

Speaker 3 It starts with a whole section of just, you know, pledging fealty to Trump and all that is good about Trump.

Speaker 3 Then he gets into his bio, which was, I think, probably the strongest part of the speech, which is walking through his bio while talking about all the different policy positions Biden has taken that he views as being wrong.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he did this riff where he said, you know, when I was in fourth grade, Biden supported NAFTA, and NAFTA, you know, a lot of jobs left where I'm from and all across the Midwest.

Speaker 3 When I was in high school, Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal. Everyone voted for it.
When I was in college, he supported the war in Iraq.

Speaker 3 The war in Iraq, you know, so and then there was jobs sent overseas, kids sent overseas to die. And then he said, you know, basically that Biden was wrong on all these issues.

Speaker 3 Trump was right on all these issues, even back then. Right.

Speaker 3 So I think that was like, if that, if you were to take one section of his speech, I feel like that was like probably the part that I thought was the strongest.

Speaker 3 And I bet what we'll hear on the stump too, it felt like the start of a stump speech.

Speaker 3 But the problem is, it was in the middle of a meandering and hard-to-follow speech with a lot of lines, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of long pauses for applause that I felt like didn't really land, like none of it really

Speaker 3 landed that hard. Even the bio, I felt like this is, he has an incredibly compelling story.
He's on the ticket because of that story.

Speaker 3 You would think you would start with that story and use it to kind of frame the entire speech, but it felt really cobbled together, which was a relief. That's my feeling about it.

Speaker 3 It was strategic idiocy. The speech was, it was terrible.
This is, no one knows anything about J.D. Vance.
I know he had a best-selling book, but not that many people read it.

Speaker 3 You know who knows about that? Elite podcasters. Yes, exactly.
He had, he had a movie was made of his book. Almost no one watched it.

Speaker 3 And this is his one chance. There'll probably be about 12 to 15 million people watching this tonight.
It will be seen, the clips will be seen by more people.

Speaker 3 You chance, you stand up there and introduce yourself to the nation, right? The VP generally doesn't matter that much, but it's going to matter more in a campaign where the candidate is 78 years old.

Speaker 3 And so this was his chance to do it. He failed miserably at what should have been absolutely layup.
The only reason he's on that stage is he has a compelling personal story and tells it well.

Speaker 3 And he did not do that. His story is mixed up into a bunch of different places.
There's no coherence to it. And you have to credential yourself with your story before you make all the attacks.

Speaker 3 Like, I think

Speaker 3 the high school, middle school, Joe Biden thing, it's a clever way to get at Joe Biden's age. and separate him from working class voters, but you have to tell your story first.

Speaker 3 But he was confused because they were so enamored with the fourth grade, high school, college line that they made it the story instead of telling the actual story. It was terrible.

Speaker 3 It was, I'm, and I am shocked it was so terrible. We were at dinner before this, and I was like, this is going to be a great speech.
Yeah, we were all very worried about the speech.

Speaker 3 This should have been the easiest thing in the world for him to do because his delivery was fine. Some people have a good story, but they can't tell it.
His delivery was totally fine.

Speaker 3 It was the speech, it was fine.

Speaker 3 He gave a, he sounded, I wrote this note down. He

Speaker 3 wrote a book. He's been on the book circuit tour.
He's been on a, probably had a speakers bureau before he was in Congress. He did the speaking tour.

Speaker 3 He sounds like someone who's just been talking to like too many crowds of CEOs, other people, random organizations about his book.

Speaker 3 Like he didn't actually have the cadence that you need in a convention hall. He didn't, you're supposed to, and like he was waiting for the applause.
He doesn't ride the applause.

Speaker 3 The applause kills me.

Speaker 3 It never built, they don't build to anything because they just let the applause die down and then start up again.

Speaker 3 Like when Obama delivers his version of this speech, which is obviously famously far better, he's like rising through these moments and

Speaker 3 like building to something.

Speaker 4 That was a big point in speech prep in 2004 was you have to ride the applause. Don't stop.
Talk over it because, you know, it might sound loud in the hall, but at home, they will be able to hear you.

Speaker 4 This time, it was the reverse. You almost couldn't hear the applause at home, but JD was pausing and sort of awkwardly waving to everybody, and it just didn't work.

Speaker 4 And yeah, the bio has to be your anchor that explains who you are and informs your belief and gives you credibility. And you just didn't do it.

Speaker 3 They were also just like, it jumped all over the place.

Speaker 4 There was a point where he did this very corny thing where he talked about his three kids back home. And if you're watching, daddy says, says, put your butts in bed.

Speaker 4 And then he immediately did a hard pivot to fentanyl overdoses.

Speaker 3 Well, I guess that's probably why it's a good time to turn the TV off.

Speaker 3 I was like, how did we get here?

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 3 it's like such a cliche, even in like Emmy Award speeches, like, all right, mommy won. Now go to bed, kids.
Or daddy says, go to bed. Like, how are you, like, saying it out loud is an incredible feat.

Speaker 3 Process-wise,

Speaker 3 one guess as to what might have happened is the speechwriters wrote a speech that they needed to have for whoever the nominee was. And then once they found out it was J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance, then you insert J.D.'s story into the Trump messaging speech. And then the assassination attempt happens.
So then you add that topper in.

Speaker 3 So now you've got an assassination attempt topper into your bio, into the Trump worship. Classic structure.
By the way,

Speaker 3 this was my prediction for the Trump speech. This was that there would just be

Speaker 3 larded up toppers, which is so far happening.

Speaker 3 But just substance-wise, too, I think it's interesting that all of the issues that the Republican Party and Donald Trump have vulnerabilities on in this election, abortion, election denial, sort of all kinds of extremism, with the exception of immigration, which is sort of core to Donald Trump's political philosophy, weird word to say, Donald Trump's like politics and J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance's as well, and sort of this trying to present themselves as economic populists, even though they want to give tax cuts to rich people and deregulate everything.

Speaker 3 Those were like the two main issues. None of the other issues that really like trip up Republicans you heard in this speech as much tonight.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's always when they get to the working class politics, it's all just vibes, right? It's just working.

Speaker 3 They're doing working class vibes. They're talking about immigration.
They don't mention the corporate tax cut. The ruling class.
They mentioned the ruling class. That ruined everything.

Speaker 3 Never actually policies on that. This is a real liberal elite.

Speaker 4 comment or thing to notice, but I can't wait.

Speaker 4 It's just always striking to me that a speech that can begin with a long intro about an assassination attempt ends up at a place where you're bragging about your grandmother having 19 loaded guns in the house.

Speaker 4 And no one kind of sees the weirdness there, the disconnect between maybe our gun fetish in this country is part of the problem, not a thing we're proud of.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you what my reaction to that was, which is also like, my recollection of the book is it's a lot about how this kind of grievance and sense of being under threat is a way of avoiding facing up to the real problems.

Speaker 4 He's very hard on his community.

Speaker 4 It's not understanding. It's super harsh.

Speaker 3 And that's why that book became

Speaker 3 a liberal darling because it was actually like kind of being honest about the ways these places were supposed to be responsible for what had happened.

Speaker 6 At Eisner Amper, we are creative problem solvers that take a 360-degree approach focusing on you. We're an award-winning firm with decades of experience providing accounting and advisory services.

Speaker 3 Eisner Emperor Let's get you ready.

Speaker 7 At 1-800Flowers.com, we know that connections are at the heart of being human. Whether celebrating life's joys or comforting during tough times, 1-800 Flowers helps you express what words can't.

Speaker 7 For nearly 50 years, millions have trusted 1-800 Flowers to deliver thoughtful gifts that help create lasting bonds.

Speaker 1 Because it's more than just a gift, it's your way of showing you care.

Speaker 7 Visit 1-800Flowers.com slash SXM and and connect today. That's 1-800FLOWE.com/slash SXM.

Speaker 8 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.

Speaker 8 They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business.

Speaker 9 Quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Speaker 8 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers.
Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states states or situations.

Speaker 3 So we have had now a full day or two to digest all the J.D. Vance takes our eyeballs could handle.

Speaker 3 One notable subplot is that the Republican National Security Establishment isn't too happy with Vance's isolationist views, especially on Ukraine. That did not come up tonight.

Speaker 3 I don't believe he talked about Ukraine tonight. He made a reference to the big tent on national security issues.
Right. And America first, a lot of America first.

Speaker 3 Right, but sort of yada-yadded over Ukraine.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, he lied about Donald Trump opposing the war in Iraq, even though last month in an interview with Ross Douthett in the New York Times, J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance admitted that actually in 2003, Trump said something that said he said he supported the invasion of Iraq.

Speaker 4 So J.D., again, a month ago, said he knew Trump was full of shit on that front, and then tonight gave him credit for it.

Speaker 3 And apparently, some big Republican donors aren't too thrilled with his protectionist views, though they probably like that.

Speaker 3 Democrats are also pushing around videos of Vance saying he wants a national abortion ban. He said that in 2022.

Speaker 3 There was also a club with him on Tucker Carlson where he said that we're being ruled by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives. I remember when that happened.

Speaker 3 I remember that club.

Speaker 3 He's had this like real hard edge over the last couple of years when like Tucker and some other speeches that you're like,

Speaker 3 anything else stand out to you guys since Vance was announced that has made you either think

Speaker 3 he'll be valuable to the Trump campaign in this way, or, oh, actually, he's going to be, this is a real vulnerability now that Democrats can exploit. Dan, what do you think?

Speaker 3 I think that the whole discourse is probably overstated. I mean, the vice president generally doesn't matter very much.
Now, you can absolutely fuck it up like John McCain did with Sarah Palin,

Speaker 3 but then it's not really about the vice president, it's about what the vice presidential choice says about the person who made the choice.

Speaker 3 You know, the idea that they were going to park him in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and he's going to be some sort of Rust Belt ambassador for Trump. And he said all the states.

Speaker 3 He kept saying them over again. He said all the blue all states tonight.
Yeah, a couple times.

Speaker 3 I'm sure he'll go to those states a lot because those are the states that if Trump wins one of those states, the election is probably over.

Speaker 3 But there's nothing in Vance's record, his performance in Ohio, his policy positions that suggest that he has some sort of secret sauce that is going to help him with those voters.

Speaker 3 His populism, economic populism, and there's been all these annoying think pieces about how he and Josh Hawley and these cadre of Republican eggheads are coming together to try to create this policy framework around America-first populism.

Speaker 3 All it is is tariffs and mass deportations. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, and he does this performative bullshit where he's like, he said this in the Ross interview, where he's like, I'm more aligned with the Bernie bros than some people in my own party, but that doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 3 And he says a nice thing about Lena Khan once, and that seemed to be seen to be that he's some like transformative figure in the Republican Party. He's not.

Speaker 3 And the reason that it all doesn't really matter is his policy positions do not matter. Donald Trump's do.

Speaker 3 And at the convention on Tuesday night, Steve Scalise, the Republican whip, stood up, or the Republican leader, I guess, stood up and said, in the first hundred days, we are going to make the Trump tax cuts permanent.

Speaker 3 Right? Like that is the Trump Vance agenda is tax cuts for the rich.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the sort of populism of the tax policy is hating universal child care more than you hate a child tax credit, but trying to stop both.

Speaker 3 Before we move on from J.D. Vance, it was reported that J.D.
Vance reached out to Vice President Kamal Harris. They had this cordial phone call.

Speaker 3 And then the Trump campaign put out a response to setting the date for the vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 And their statement was, we don't know who the Democrat nominee for vice president is going to be, so we can't lock in a date before their convention. To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, J.B.

Speaker 3 Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate. Points for trolling.
Yeah, they're having fun. Points are having fun there, yeah.
Points of trolling.

Speaker 3 They're also scared, shitless that

Speaker 3 there might be a change.

Speaker 4 Can I just flag one other thing that jumped out at me about JD? I think he's so new on the stage that people are trying to figure out whether he's sincere or, you know, was the hillbilly elegy, J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance, the real one, or is today the real one? This anecdote jumped out at me from a New York Times profile of him. So they talked to a person named Sarah Nelson, who's a former classmate of J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance's, who's transgender and was once close friends with both JD and his wife. And Sophia Nelson recalled that JD delivered home-baked treats when Sophia Nelson had top surgery.

Speaker 4 And then they stopped talking in 2021 when he started embracing these vicious laws. There's an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors.

Speaker 4 So it's clear that a few years ago, before he was in politics, J.D. Vance saw the humanity in people first.
And he didn't care if you were transgender or not.

Speaker 4 He'd go to your house and bring you brownies or something. And now he is more than happy.
to be vicious and nasty and harm people who are his friends if it gets him on the ticket.

Speaker 3 He is a man driven by visible, palpable ambition and nothing else.

Speaker 3 Work for him tonight. Yeah, but it's funny.

Speaker 3 It's also why it's like that guy, maybe that, you know, you would never know seeing that guy on stage that he has that incredibly compelling story because he is ambitious and he did become what he needed to become to get there.

Speaker 3 And he looks much more like a tech guy in a vest at this point, doing an impression of a politician.

Speaker 3 And it speaks to actually his credit, how smart he is and how far he came, but it doesn't make him that much of a sense. It's also why he did so poorly in the restbelt parts of Ohio against Tim Ryan.

Speaker 3 People can smell that bullshit from a million miles away.

Speaker 4 The only time I laughed out loud tonight at all was during Usha Vance's speech, which was fine.

Speaker 4 She's J.D. Vance's wife.
She seemed a little nervous. It was sweet, but it wasn't great.
But she said he had one overriding ambition to be a husband and a father.

Speaker 4 And I literally, like, I broke out laughing because clearly he's the most ambitious person. Some other ambitions.
39-year-old vice presidential nominee.

Speaker 3 A few other notable speakers from tonight, Don Jr., his fiancé, Kim Guilfoyle, soon-to-be-obscure again, Governor Doug Bergham, got passed over.

Speaker 3 Former Trump aide, Peter Navarro, who got out of of prison today after serving four months for refusing a subpoena from the January 6th Committee. He brought the house down.
Brought the house down.

Speaker 3 Many people said it was the most applause of the convention since Trump walked in the room on Monday night. Love it.
Love a. Is this just still because fucking what's his name? Kushner Googled trade.

Speaker 3 He came up with his book. That guy goes.
Anyway, sorry, what we were going to say. No, no.

Speaker 3 It was,

Speaker 3 they love a convict, you know? Yeah. And then there were men with convictions.

Speaker 3 There you go. There you go.

Speaker 3 There was also a video that they played of Gold Star families who had lost loved ones during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was the families of service members who were killed at Abbey Gate in those final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Speaker 4 And there was a six and a half minute pre-taped video where they talked to, you know, moms, wives, you know, sister brothers of the families, talked about, you know, who these service members were.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 then they also talked about, you know, they showed footage of President Biden at the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover, looking at his watch.

Speaker 4 They talked about how things didn't go well in the conversation with Biden and the families. And then they said in this video that.

Speaker 3 Do you want to play a clip? Should we play this clip? Yeah, why don't we play the clip?

Speaker 10 The administration, the White House, our president has never once mentioned their names, not one of them.

Speaker 3 Honestly,

Speaker 12 I don't feel like Joe Biden cared.

Speaker 5 He just had no empathy for us at all.

Speaker 13 I do think incompetence played a huge factor in what happened.

Speaker 13 Bad decision, bad leadership, and it all starts at the top.

Speaker 11 Joe Biden should not be leading this country.

Speaker 10 There was no point in making that hard deadline August 31st. It was 100% a political stunt.
He let my son down. He let the 13 down.

Speaker 1 He let the 45 wounded down.

Speaker 10 He let those 174 civilians down.

Speaker 11 He let our country down. And then what it hurts of always is that they could be here.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And then after that, the parents of the fallen came on stage and they read the names one by one.

Speaker 3 And it was, I thought, an incredibly powerful, well-done, and brutal political hit. Biden did reach out to all those families, right?

Speaker 4 Well, he met with them at Dover. during the transfer of their remains back home.
But I think, you know,

Speaker 4 this was that really tough scene that Gensaki actually writes about in her book, where I think he tried to talk to them about his loss and losing his son.

Speaker 4 And I think that helped him connect with some of the families, but others were offended by it and it didn't go well.

Speaker 4 And I don't know, like, I'm not sure anyone can say anything that would make you feel better in that moment if you just lost a loved one. But

Speaker 3 so then there was Don Jr.

Speaker 3 He

Speaker 3 went up to speak. He then introduced his daughter.
Kai Trump, who's much better than him. By far, nine plus.
She did more to humanize Donald Trump, her grandfather, than anyone I had heard.

Speaker 3 And then Don Jr., unfortunately, got back on stage after she was done and continued speaking. He was doing some of his speech.

Speaker 5 Who's running things?

Speaker 5 Does anyone really know?

Speaker 5 Is it Jill?

Speaker 5 Is it Hunter?

Speaker 5 Barack Obama?

Speaker 5 Maybe it's the ghost of Corn Pop. Remember Build Back Better?

Speaker 5 Instead, we got broke bumbling Biden.

Speaker 3 What a good mistake. The corn pop thing is a real deep call.
I was going to say, you have to be the biggest junkie, left or right,

Speaker 3 2019, right? It's also the deep cut for political junkies. It's also logical nonsense.

Speaker 3 It's not like, it's not the colon, it's not a good, it's just not, what does it mean? Oh, maybe it's corn pop, this old story he tells. It doesn't make sense on its own terms.

Speaker 4 Yeah, a guy he argued with when he was a lifeguard in the 50s.

Speaker 3 Like, remember Build Back Better? No, no one remembers Build Back Better. That's the problem, actually.

Speaker 3 It almost

Speaker 3 called the IRA, and no one knows what that stands for either. Yeah, and nobody knows it happened, and nobody will ever know.
Have you heard about the chips that? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 And then, and then next year, if it'll all be turned into highway funding anyway. But the Don Jr.

Speaker 3 always has the energy of just like a coked-out, drunk, terrible customer at a restaurant calling a waitress sweetie.

Speaker 3 You know, like that's just sort of like his whole vibe forever, just the life of doing that. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 4 Donald Trump's granddaughter, Don Jr.'s daughter, 17-year-old girl, talked about him as a grandfather, calling her when she's at school, talked about the golf game, like all the humanizing stuff you'd expect from a family member.

Speaker 4 And then they bring out his son, and he just does this red meat screed that was, you know, probably should have been left on rumble.com or wherever he usually does his podcast.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Where does he speak from? His voice is. It's all up here.
He speaks up high. It's up high.
It's front of the throat. But it's hard.

Speaker 4 Lines like Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena has a name, and it's Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 I mean, every convention of both parties is just fucking chock full of way too many cliches, but the last couple of days have been really. Do you know our best days are yet to come?

Speaker 3 Have you heard that? It's also like maybe

Speaker 3 when they made, maybe when they went through and did their unity pass on all these speeches, they took out all the good lines. That's that, you know,

Speaker 3 I bet the division lines are probably the toughest. Ron Johnson's got to get his old speech pass.

Speaker 3 All right. We'll be be right back

Speaker 8 this episode is brought to you by progressive commercial insurance business owners meet progressive insurance they make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommer.com progressive casualty insurance company coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 14 Make this holiday season one to remember with Gold Belly, your one-stop shop for America's most iconic foods shipped nationwide.

Speaker 14 From the original turducken to the viral Pie Cake Inn with decadent layers of cake and pie, Gold Belly has everything to wow your guests with the click of a button.

Speaker 14 And with Black Friday around the corner, it's the perfect time to pre-order unique gifts that ship right to their door. Use promo code GIFT for 20% off your first order on goldbelly.com.

Speaker 14 The holidays have never been easier.

Speaker 15 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena.

Speaker 16 And I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 15 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 16 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 15 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 16 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 15 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 Yay! Woo! Aye!

Speaker 3 All right, let's talk about the upcoming Democratic Convention and Joe Biden, whose streak of luck continued today when he tested positive for COVID right in between campaign events in Las Vegas.

Speaker 3 White House said he's got mild symptoms, no fever. We'll be isolating at home in Delaware.
Hope he gets better soon. President's also dealing with more bad political news.

Speaker 3 Just before we recorded this, ABC reported that Chuck Schumer told Biden in a meeting on Saturday that, quote, it would be better for the country if he ended his reelection bid.

Speaker 3 We then learned this morning that Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries encouraged the DNC to move back the date of the virtual roll call to nominate Biden. This is what we were talking about last episode.

Speaker 3 In response, the Rules Committee put out a letter today saying that the voting won't start now until August 1st.

Speaker 3 So that buys some time, though not a lot, for the rapidly growing group of congressional Democrats who have publicly called on Biden to step down from the ticket.

Speaker 3 That faction officially grew by one big name today as Adam Schiff, who we talked about yesterday as well, said publicly what he was reported to have said in private.

Speaker 3 In his statement to the LA Times, Schiff praised Biden as a great president but said,

Speaker 3 I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November, and called for him to pass the torch.

Speaker 3 This all comes in a new Associated Press poll shows that two-thirds of all Democratic voters now want Joe Biden to withdraw.

Speaker 3 And a new Blue Labs analytics poll shows basically every other potential Democratic candidate running ahead of Biden in the swing states.

Speaker 3 Where to begin? Where to begin? Let's start with the Schumer news. Dan, you think it's as big as it seems?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it's a very big deal because there have been rumors for a long time that there's a bunch of senators who privately want Biden to step aside. Remember, it was like two weeks ago.

Speaker 3 It feels like 100 years ago when Mark Warner was organizing a meeting that then got canceled. We only, as of right now, have two senators who've come out.

Speaker 3 Well, I guess one senator and one senator to be Schiff and then Peter Welch of Vermont. This could lead to more.

Speaker 3 Schumer and Biden met privately on Saturday, right before the assassination attempt on Trump. So we never really got any readout on what happened in that conversation.

Speaker 3 We now know that Schumer was more direct than I think a lot of people assumed.

Speaker 3 You know what's interesting, though, is I'm thinking of the timeline now. Schumer and Biden meet on Saturday.

Speaker 3 Biden does the Lester Holt interview Monday in which he was no less defiant publicly about staying in.

Speaker 3 Unless now I'm now I'm rethinking it. Did I miss anything? Love it, what do you think? I think there's two ways to see it.
One is,

Speaker 3 as we talked about in the last pod, Joe Biden has to be defiant until the very moment he's not. There's no other option.
I think it is interesting. There's this dynamic.

Speaker 3 People really want Joe Biden to make the decision. And there's an understanding that Joe Biden is a proud person and so that he won't be pushed.
And so they're trying to pull him. You know,

Speaker 3 there was reporting that a lot more people were about to come forward calling on Biden to step aside and then the assassination attempt happened.

Speaker 3 It was just interesting that Schumer has this meeting, Biden is defiant on Monday, and now now we're getting the leak.

Speaker 3 It does seem like people are starting to come to grips with the fact that it's going to take more pushing than pulling, and they're going to have to be more public than maybe they had hoped.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think the initial strategy was to try to have these conversations privately and politely, and now people are going public with demands, not requests.

Speaker 4 I did see that Jeff Zeleny, a great reporter at CNN, just reported that President Biden is now more receptive to the push for him to leave the ticket.

Speaker 4 He's gone from saying Kamala Harris can't win to asking if Kamala Harris can win.

Speaker 3 So it does seem like seems like senior Democratic sources saying this to Zeleny.

Speaker 3 But in private conversations,

Speaker 3 he's sounding a little more receptive, even though he's not publicly. The other possibility here is that Schumer had this conversation with Biden, and Biden was not so receptive.

Speaker 3 And Schumer thought that maybe there'd be some movement on this, and there hasn't been, and then maybe that's when it leaked to John Carl.

Speaker 3 Now, officially, Schumer's office put out a statement that was sort of a non-denial that was like, unless the source is Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden themselves, this is just idle speculation.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay, well,

Speaker 3 what a strange way to introduce a new thought.

Speaker 3 And they also said that leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday. Not sure what that was clarified.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, and we know that most of the caucus at this point, I mean, there was reporting in the caucus meeting that John Fetterman asked everyone, okay, who's actually on board with Biden?

Speaker 3 And only four senators raised their hands. Wow.

Speaker 3 That was from last week.

Speaker 3 One of them was J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance and a mustache.

Speaker 3 And also Menendez was still there at the time. So where was he on this? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, it depends on who makes me a better author.

Speaker 3 So you got Schumer and Jeffries were both pushing the DNC to push back the roll call vote. Nancy Pelosi is working behind the scenes.
to try to get Joe Biden to step aside.

Speaker 3 So it does now seem that the entire leadership of the Democratic Party is

Speaker 3 working on this.

Speaker 3 What has ever given us less hope than the entire leadership of the Democratic Party working on something?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think

Speaker 3 it can mean that they are working on a to create a path for Biden to step down.

Speaker 3 It could also mean that no matter what happens, the best move for the party is to handle this virtual roll call in the most transparent, fair-minded way.

Speaker 3 Because if you if you even if Schumer, you know, you get a different report, Schumer didn't make that case to Biden, it's still in his interest to handle the virtual roll call better because it's going to lead to a massive uproar in the party if you were to go with the plan the DNC was pushing quite aggressively just 24 hours ago.

Speaker 3 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, so let's talk about that. So we talked about this last night, and it seemed like it could be as early as next week that they were going to start this thing.

Speaker 3 Now they're saying no voting can start until August 1st, and they do want to wrap it up by August 7th, which is the sort of

Speaker 3 fake-ish deadline in Ohio, the old deadline deadline in Ohio that we're still going with. If Biden does step aside, it doesn't seem like there's much time for any kind of mini-primary open convention.

Speaker 3 Certainly, there's enough time at that point. If Biden does just endorse Kamala Harris and the party unites behind Kamala Harris, then we're off to the races.
They can do the virtual roll call.

Speaker 3 She would have to pick a running mate rather quickly. Beyond that, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of time if they're going to start voting in August.

Speaker 3 Would they just maybe punt the whole virtual roll call altogether in that scenario? I think you would either punt it altogether or you would move it back. Right.

Speaker 3 Like we, based on everything you read and everything the Republicans in Ohio say, and I recognize we're taking that with a grain of salt, the odds that somehow they go back and change the rules so that Biden or some Democratic nominee cannot be on the ballot in Ohio seems quite low.

Speaker 3 And it doesn't see, like, that risk is not so high that you would short-circuit a process to pick our new nominee. So you can move it back.

Speaker 3 If you look at the deadlines of the other states that we talked about, like California and Washington, you can move it back a couple of weeks and either wrap it up right at the beginning of the convention or you could wrap it up at the convention and take on, like there's no good option, right?

Speaker 3 Do you want to have a good process to pick your best nominee? Do you want to, or do you want to manage the legal risks that come from low likelihood of success lawsuits preventing ballot access?

Speaker 3 You probably want to side with a longer process helps you pick a better nominee with actual voting in the convention. Yeah.
So let's talk about some of these, the polling.

Speaker 3 that Biden and others woke up to this morning. So this is from Blue Labs.

Speaker 3 And what they did is they interviewed 15,000 voters across seven battleground states to test different options for the Democratic nominee. That's quite a bit.

Speaker 3 Top line: alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. Nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the president.

Speaker 3 This includes Vice President Harris, who runs better than the president, but behind the average alternative.

Speaker 3 The top testing alternative candidates, aside from Harris and Biden in alphabetical order are Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona, Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan.

Speaker 3 And of course, we mentioned that AP poll that shows now two-thirds of all Democratic voters want Joe Biden to step aside, including every major demographic group.

Speaker 3 So what do you guys think about that blue lab polling? Look, I think it is everybody is sort of looking for polling to validate

Speaker 3 more confidence in this really uncertain moment.

Speaker 3 I think it is reassuring if you want to make a change that there's polling that shows even before a campaign is begun that these candidates start in a stronger position.

Speaker 3 I just think you have to take it with a grain of salt. You go into it, yes, because you are concerned about the swing state polling.

Speaker 3 You're concerned about the polling you're seeing about Biden, not just

Speaker 3 the top line head-to-head numbers, but the extreme concern people have about his age.

Speaker 3 But you go into it not because you think these other candidates are already polling better, but because you believe if you make this change, then you have a candidate.

Speaker 3 And that candidate can do the politics you need to do to ultimately overcome the disadvantages that Biden had.

Speaker 4 You know, all these alternative Democratic candidates are running ahead of President Biden. That includes Vice President Harris.
So she'll like that.

Speaker 4 Not great for the vice president is voters are looking for a fresh face according to this polling, and those closely tied to the current administration perform relatively worse than other candidates.

Speaker 4 So that's interesting and notable, and also probably tells you something about how Republicans would message a Harris candidacy.

Speaker 4 They would tie her to Joe Biden, obviously, and some of the challenges recently.

Speaker 4 Also, interesting, some of the gains for these candidates are coming from winning undecideds and those who are supporting third parties, but they are also pulling votes from Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Which is true.

Speaker 4 And you keep your base as well. So, you know, listen,

Speaker 4 there's a lot of data out there right now. Let's say on balance, it has been generally worse for Joe Biden than Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 There's a couple polls that have him tied or up a little bit, so it's noisy out there. But

Speaker 4 this polling from Blue Lab suggests that some alternatives could fare well in November.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, we have been obviously pretty vocal about

Speaker 3 why we think Biden stepping aside would give us a better chance of defeating Donald Trump. But we should be honest that none of the options in front of us are really great options right now.
And

Speaker 3 there's just so much uncertainty. And like you said, Lovett, like you cannot have the polling be the only determining factor in this decision.

Speaker 3 And I'm sure if Joe Biden makes the decision to step aside, it's not going to be just based on the polling. And I think there are obviously risks that come with a Kamala Harris nomination.

Speaker 3 A lot of those risks, I believe, are probably tied to the fact that she is part of the current administration.

Speaker 3 And there is this anti-incumbency vibe in the United States and all over the world right now. Can she overcome it?

Speaker 4 I think so.

Speaker 4 Racism and misogyny and all those other current states.

Speaker 3 I do think personally she gives us a better chance than Joe Biden does at this point. And then you think, well, what about these very popular governors? And it's a fresh start.

Speaker 3 And I think, but getting to the point of an open convention, figuring out which of those candidates is going to be, and then making sure the candidate that we ultimately choose can withstand the national spotlight.

Speaker 3 Like it's just, there's no sure things here, but we're just, we're in a tough spot. And it's about what do you think is the riskiest move and what's the, what's the least risky move.

Speaker 3 All those candidates other than Kamala Harris right now are basically generic Democrats, right? With a slight bio bio description, right?

Speaker 3 Generic Democrat who's a governor of a Midwestern state or generic Democrat who's a senator who is also an astronaut. And once they become the nominee, they will be defined.

Speaker 3 They have to define themselves and the Republicans will be racing to define them. And that is, so these numbers are very, they're interesting.

Speaker 3 They're not particularly instructive about what a race would actually look like. And I think just, this is the point to make is there's no candidate here who guarantees a Democratic victory.

Speaker 3 Not a one. There's no path that guarantees it.
This is still a pretty Republican political environment. There's an anti-incumbent environment.
We are the incumbent party.

Speaker 3 People are angry about the economy. They're angry about inflation.
We are the incumbent party.

Speaker 3 And so whether that candidate is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or one of these other people mentioned, we're still going to have to navigate those headwinds. It is just a real, and

Speaker 3 there's downside risk, too, that any of these candidates could do worse than Joe Biden is doing.

Speaker 3 I believe that they all have a lower floor, but a higher ceiling than Biden, because we know that the voters are screaming for someone other than Biden or Trump.

Speaker 3 And if we give them someone who passes some set of tests for that, you could have a good victory. But it's not a guarantee.
It's just a question of what risks you want to take.

Speaker 4 Well, yeah, I mean, I think the concern about Biden, where that's coming from, is that every candidate has vulnerabilities and you have to fight back against them.

Speaker 4 But I think the vulnerability of a large subset of the electorate thinking you are too old is an unfixable problem because once they have that belief, they know no one gets younger.

Speaker 3 And I do think that's why the Schiff statement, the Schumer statement, it's important because it creates pressure.

Speaker 3 but I also think it just underscores that that fundamental reality of what we're discussing is not changing.

Speaker 3 The other thing is the fact that some of these Democrats are pulling Trump voters, I think, underscores on the other side of what Dan's saying is Donald Trump is a weak candidate.

Speaker 3 You know, as part of this polling that said two-thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden to no longer be the nominee, a lot of Americans don't think Trump should be the nominee.

Speaker 3 These are both weak candidates. And voters have been saying for a year, not the elites, the voters have been saying this for a long time that they want a different option.

Speaker 3 Democrats have been saying for a long time that they thought Joe Biden was too old. It was the everybody else hoping they could get to the end of this process without having to face that reality.

Speaker 3 But the debate changed that. And I think the fact that there are people out there saying, I'm right now a Trump voter, but I'm open to an alternative, I think just.

Speaker 3 I think in that poll, it is 27% of Republicans want a, would prefer that Trump he replaces the nominee.

Speaker 3 And if we were in a normal election cycle, that would be a huge, gigantic number for someone who's at their convention, who won their primary easily, and one in four members of their party wants someone else to be the nominee.

Speaker 3 We would be, that is like a flashing red light, siren, weak candidate. But just because of the situation we're in, everyone's just throwing that number on.
Like, look how strong Trump is.

Speaker 3 Only a quarter of his voters hate him.

Speaker 3 The idea, too, is that, well, you know, all these Republicans want one Trump to set up aside and no one's clamoring for that.

Speaker 3 Luck, you know, obviously Donald Trump is an incredible threat to the country, but politically, they might be better off with somebody who wasn't carrying all this baggage.

Speaker 3 Nikki Haley might have been a stronger candidate than Donald Trump could ever have hoped to be. We'll never know.
And we'll never, we'll never know.

Speaker 3 Okay, one quick note before we go: check out the Crooked Store.

Speaker 3 You can shop our new collection of merch for the summer and feel good knowing that a portion of the proceeds from every purchase goes to support organizations doing incredible work across the country to ensure every voice is heard.

Speaker 3 Pick up an only you can prevent gender reveals tea.

Speaker 4 I support that. I hate that.

Speaker 3 For your next camping trip, and wear a hot people vote tea to your next canvassing shift. Show up new merch at cricket.com/slash store.
All right, that's our show for tonight.

Speaker 3 We will be back tomorrow night with the grand finale, Trump's 90-minute-plus speech at the RNC and everything else that happens tomorrow.

Speaker 3 What else could happen? The news. The news.
And by the way, you know, gender reveals aren't something that can happen with a cake for a baby.

Speaker 3 They're what happens when a California teacher keeps a secret from your parents.

Speaker 3 How's that? That is it? Have a good night, everyone. I bet that missing merch.

Speaker 3 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 3 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 3 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 3 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Reed Sherlin is our executive producer.

Speaker 12 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 3 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 3 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 12 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 3 Oh, you're just gonna go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 12 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 12 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 3 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 12 Every episode of the Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Dermatologists have long highlighted the benefits of indoor humidity for healthy, glowing skin. Dry air can start damaging your skin in just 30 minutes.
That's where Canopy Humidifier comes in.

Speaker 2 Recommended by leading dermatologists, the Canopy Humidifier is a completely reimagined humidifier with invisible clean moisture, the best kind for your skin.

Speaker 2 Go to getcanopy.co to save $25 on your purchase today with Canopy's filter subscription. Even better, use code Sirius to save an additional 10% off your Canopy purchase.
Your skin will thank you.