Fear and Unity in Milwaukee

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Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Levitt.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

On today's show, the Republican convention wraps up its second night with a parade of former Trump critics and opponents

bending the knee to their MAGA god.

Trump tries to get RFK Jr.'s endorsement with some anti-vax pandering in the leaked video of the two men chatting. The Trump campaign now thinks they can put states like New Jersey and Maine in play.
And the effort to convince Joe Biden to step aside appears to be coming back to life in response to the DNC's plan to officially nominate the president as early as next week. But let's start with day two at the Republican convention, where the theme was making people afraid of immigrants and making former Trump opponents compete to see who could get their head the farthest up his ass.
We'll let you be the judge. Here's some of what was said by Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley.
My fellow Republicans, let's send Joe Biden back to his basement and let's send Donald Trump back to the White House. If you want to make America great again, vote Trump.
God bless Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period. All right, under the heading of We Watch the Convention So You Don't Have To,

did you guys see or hear anything notable from the stage tonight? Tommy, let's start with you. Jim Justice, the governor of West Virginia, brought his dog out.
Really? Baby dog Justice. Interesting that he brought the dog out the night after Kristi Noem spoke.
Yes. You're the first person to make that joke today.
You know what? I've been trying to fucking- It's a good Dan slam. It's a Dan slam.
I've been trying to produce the show. I didn't even know.
I didn't even know that was a fucking joke. John, it was a good joke.
I was also reminded that Vivek Ramaswamy is a person who exists and he has a repellent personality. That came out today jim justice has the kind of we're going all in on the jim justice speech analysis huh it was the most interesting by far cnn went crazy for the dog it was the yes everything else is pretty boring on stage he has the kind of demeanor of the villain in a matlock episode where that's relatable somewhere somewhere Joe Biden goes finger on the cultural

pulse the villain in a Matlock episode? That's relatable. Somewhere Joe Biden gets a finger on the cultural pulse.
I just want to say, I think ideology, partisanship aside, the speeches are so bad. Boring.
It's very boring. So bad.
Paint by numbers. It's just like, I don't know, can people give a good speech anymore? No.
It's like, it's all recycled lines, all cliches, all shit that you've heard before. Not like the music back in our day.
They knew what rock and roll was back then. Even like George W.
Bush could give a good speech back in the day. Nikki Haley came like maybe the closest to giving an okay speech.

Eh.

Eh.

Eh is right.

Right.

You guys were out of the office.

Dan and I watched Carrie Lake.

She did a much more muted version of herself.

Everything was a little toned down.

You know, the previewing that it would be less crazy this convention than the last one has been true so far. Her rhetoric is now sepia-toned is what I would say.

Yes.

Yeah.

Her rhetoric is they're shooting the rhetoric through the gauze.

I mean, they did have placards that were saying like Biden border bloodbath.

And they're, you know.

They use it for... is now sepia-toned, is what I would say.
Yes. Yeah, her rhetoric is, they're shooting the rhetoric through the gauze.
I mean, they did have placards that were saying like Biden border bloodbath and they're, you know. They used the term weekend at Bernie's presidency.
They did. Well, that's, I'm talking about like, you know, sort of violence, right? Like they also, they talked about, Ted Cruz did a whole thing that basically said Democrats purposely released undocumented immigrants who went on to commit rape and murder because they wanted their vote.
So they all did the replacement theory. That's, you know, so that stuff was not very toned down.
Yeah. And then also just like the, it just, at least Stefanik getting up there and talking about the Biden crime wave.
And it's like, you know, we all know that crime has been going down since it peaked in 2020, but you wouldn't know it by watching it. But it almost seems like beside the point.
I mean, it was interesting that Donald Trump was in the arena again to watch. Of course he was.
Just sitting up there, like someone a wannabe Roman empire just watching his former. Yeah.
He wanted to thumbs down Ron DeSantis so hard. He enjoys nothing more than watching people just discredit themselves for him.
Yeah. Nikki Haley finished speaking and he stood up and he said, give it up for Birdbrain.
Give it up for Birdbrain, everyone. He loves it.
It's sort of, it is a conflict. Let's hear it for Tiny D.
It's a conflict, right? Because he enjoys people supplicating themselves before him, but he is also quite bored because he has to pay attention. So that was a struggle.
The most interesting moments were offstage. One was Matt Gaetz harassing Kevin McCarthy and then a bystander harassing Matt Gaetz and calling him an asshole.
And then Matt Gaetz turns and faces that guy and goes, I don't even know who you are. And that guy's like, I don't care if you know who I am.
You're an asshole. And Matt Gaetz just walks away with his sort of defeated by it, which I loved.
Good hit. And then Rudy Giuliani got into a fight with a row of folding chairs and lost.
You see this? He kind of just careened over a set of folding chairs and- There but for the grace of God. Well, that's sure.
But But I felt bad for you you see it did you it was it wasn't just that he fell over it was how long it took them to get

him back up and i've ever since he told someone at mario lago and and it was overheard by page six

that he feels as though he's trapped in a living nightmare i feel bad for him yeah well join the

club rudy um let's talk about nikki haley's speech So first of all, she got cheers. No booze for Nikki Haley.
She started off by saying Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period, which, you know, she had obviously said before that she was voting for him. It was not a full throated endorsement before.
So now she has decided to just leave it all behind. Just she's back.
She's back. She said, you don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him.
We must expand our party. Certainly the only speaker so far at the convention that has said anything like that.
Will anyone care? Will any swing voters tune in and hear that? What do you think, Ted? No, I don't think they will tune in. I don't think they care.
And Nikki Haley speaking at this convention is not Hillary Clinton speaking at the 2008 convention. It's not Bernie Sanders speaking at the 2016 convention.
Nikki Haley is nothing more than a basically generic vessel for anti-Trump Republicans. They don't care about Nikki Haley.
They don't have Nikki Haley signs in their yard. They don't have Nikki Haley bumper stickers.
Many of them can't pick her out of a lineup. Many of them didn't even know she had dropped out of the race when they voted for her.
A lot of them voted after she already dropped out. It was just a protest vote.
Yeah, the whole, the narrative,

like what will happen with the nikki haley voters like they'll probably vote for joe biden again like they did in 2020 we hope right yeah yeah that's that's i mean that's the best they're still a persuasion target but their affiliation with nikki haley tells you nothing about them right it's not like she has a hold on a section of the party like a Bernie Sanders did, like a Hillary Clinton did in 08. I think that goes to why the speeches feel so ineffective more broadly.
Even that statement, like he has my strong endorsement, period, as if she's saying that in defiance of some media campaign to say that she hasn't endorsed it. Well, she hasn't.
Right. She she hadn't actually endorsed him.
It was an open question as to whether she would. She did dodge it for a long time.
And there's a way in which both her and DeSantis and Ted Cruz, they're performing this version of themselves that is just so completely phony. And it leads to them with these kind of grandiose, overwritten speeches that all feel pretty empty.
Because none of them are saying what they really think. They're putting on a show for Jabba.
Yeah, all I could think when I saw Ron DeSantis come out was he might be the biggest loser of the J.D. Vance pick in terms of people getting leapfrogged for next up to be president.
is just like, he just, he is not cut out for this. He's not cut out for the, for the, for the, for the big stage, like a bunch of lines.
You can tell that like some consultants or advisors or speechwriters wrote him like, you know, he did our, our enemies don't consign their designs to between 10 AM and 4 PM. Right.
America can't afford four more years of a weekend at Bernie's presidency. so he did but he's like his voice still with the voice too fast too annoying too yelly he's yelling the whole time he's a little sweaty he's just not the one that doesn't have it the one thing I thought watching this convention is they are so lucky that they have Donald Trump because so far there's not one other Republican that's taken the stage that you're like, oh, I'm worried about that person.
That person has gravitas. Like they just, it just, no one has it.
Yeah. In fairness, we left right as Eric Schmidt started speaking.
The heretofore unknown Senator from Missouri. Not the Google guy.
Who was like, who was like, my presence on this stage is unlikely. I'm a tall white guy from Missouri.
What are you talking about? Seems like this spot has been held for you your whole life. It's the likeliest presence of anyone.
All right. So another group getting speaking slots today were the Republican Senate candidates in key races.
We've talked a lot about Democratic Senate candidates and how they're all polling ahead of Biden. But it also seems like the Republican Senate candidates in these swing states are polling behind Trump.
Dan, what do you think is going on there? In most cases, they are polling behind Trump because they are thoroughly unknown. Yeah.
Right. Right.
Eric, Eric Hovde. Is that how you say his name? In Wisconsin, Sam Brown in Nevada.
David McCormick, a little more well-known because he at least had run the Republican primary. But they're just.
He lost once already. So they's...
They don't have any real name ID. And so there are a couple of different ways to look at these races, right? You have a handful of incumbent Democrats like Sherrod Brown, John Tester,

Tammy Baldwin, Bob Casey, who have independent, strong brands, and they are running well ahead

of Biden. Their coalitions look much like a traditional Democratic coalition.
They don't

have Biden's same struggles with young voters or independent voters or black voters or Latino voters, whatever else. They look like a 2020 Democrat.
Then you have Jackie Rosen in Nevada and Alyssa Slotkin, who is running for an open seat in Michigan, who are basically running as generic Democrats, right? Jackie Rosen, not well-known. They are still pulling ahead of their Republican candidates, but they are pulling at about Biden's level, right? Their top line number is in the low 40s.
There is a poll out today, which has one poll that has Slotkin up in the high 40s, but that's the first one that's like that. And then you have the Arizona Senate race, which is unique because Ruben Gago, who's not super well-known, but he is running against Carrie Lake, who's incredibly well-known and incredibly unpopular.
And so she's sort of functioning as the incumbent and anti-incumbent race there. And so there's a bunch of different things happening there.
There's reasons in some of those incumbent races to have hope for Democrats, no matter what happens at the top of the ticket, where you have a lesser known Democrat, that's where there could be drag if Biden doesn't perform strongly in those states. And you would imagine that once the Trump campaign and Republicans really start spending money in some of these Senate races on TV, that like at least Trump's number in these states is achievable for a lot of these Republican Senate candidates who aren't like a Carrie Lake, right, who is well known and crazy.
But some of these were just, you know, the Republicans did a decent job getting the, I want, they're all, they're still pretty crazy. And they're still pretty extreme.
A lot of these Republican Senate candidates, but they didn't do a 2022. They're more generic than they have been in the past.
And it's worth remembering that in the states that are swing states in the presidential, Joe Biden has been on TV fairly heavily and Donald Trump has not. So tonight's theme was making America safe once again.
We're doing once. We haven't talked about this yet.
Everything is making America wealthy once again, making America safe once again, make America great once again. I think you don't need the once.
You could have gone make America great again, again. They tried that.
Well, they tried that. It felt, it was tough.
That was that, yeah. No, what was 2020? I think that.
Make America, keep America great. Oh, yes.
He did roll out Make America Great again again. Caga.
Caga. Keep America Great Again which also makes it No it was just Cag right? Just Cag.
So tonight's theme featured a bunch of quote everyday Americans talking about things like immigration and crime it you know got really dark and awful. How persuasive do you guys think that was for voters beyond the MAGA base? The Ted Cruz took a lot of this, right? He told, he kept doing every damn day.
And then he would tell another story of someone who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Tommy? Well, it's a grizzly crime stories are a feature of most Donald Trump events.
I'm not totally sure how effective they were tonight. It's worth noting just for context.
I mean, in November of 2023, there was some polling on this, I think, from Gallup that found 77 percent of Americans said they believe there was more crime in the U.S. than a year ago, including 55 percent who said the same about their local area.
So it's a national issue in their mind and a local issue. Now, again, since 2002, that annual poll has found that a majority of Americans think crime is on the rise every year, even when it's falling, usually sort of in the 60% level or not.
So it's not clear to me how much of a vote driver crime will be this year, as opposed to every year. It may be that we Americans just always think crime is a problem and on the rise.
In reality, violent crime has decreased year over year, but those statistics aren't as lurid as the stories you were hearing out of someone like Ted Cruz. So I just, I don't know how salient the issue is compared to a year ago or two years ago when crime really spiked.
I mean, the rubric that Donald Trump wants in this race is strong versus weak. And that only works if people are scared, right? It's the famous Bill Clinton line about someone, you would rather have someone who's strong and wrong than right and weak.
And that works when people are scared and insecure and afraid. So you have to gin up fear, right? It's basically the entire reason that Fox News exists is to scare the living shit out of people that a terrorist, an immigrant, some other person is going to come to your community and your family is at risk so that you will then put aside other things you may care about like higher minimum wage, more fair tax system, access to abortion in order to vote for the candidate you think of multiple criminal convictions to vote

for the candidate that you think will keep you safe fear and unity that's the those are the themes that's actually basically but it is unity is that is fascism like right that's what i'm saying it's a unity for us and then be afraid of the people who aren't like us and to your point minimum wage abortion those issues haven't really made an appearance yet you don't hear about those a lot at this convention.

So they have done,

I mean,

boiling it down

to just strong versus weak it also reveals like there's do you hear anyone talking about like policy what john what donald trump's gonna do what to do about the immigration broken immigration system what to do about inflation last night no it's just like donald trump is strong he will get in there and things will be better we heard some build the wall chants yeah there was there was some talk of mass deportations right yeah but but not not a lot of uh not a lot of solutions from this crowd i would just say watching this for two days now um one i want to apologize to myself for that but is this is a party that desperately wants to win oh yeah they are on script like the uni thinks mostly bullshit but they have tempered the crazy from like a 15 to like a seven. I don't think I've heard a single thing about the 2020 election in any of these speeches.
Me either. Right.
They know that is a massive vulnerability for Trump and they're not talking about it. Like they, they want to win.
Donald Trump wants to win and stay out of jail. And that sort of discipline is throughout the speaker line appears.
boring and lame as many speeches are, they are not doing damage to the effort to elect Trump. Right.
Yeah. Like I don't know necessarily that they're moving voters to their side, but you're right that they're not doing any damage because to the extent that they're saying crazy stuff, which they all are in their speeches, it's, it's all language and rhetoric that we've heard before from them.
It's not anything new and extreme or new and right. Like it's all sort of warmed over crazy.
Well, they feel like they're winning and it's not, and that is, and that's pretty unifying. Nothing brings a team together, like a feeling like they're, they're winning.
There've been a bunch of reporting from different, from different places about reporters being surprised by just the feeling of being on the ground in Milwaukee, that they expected a kind of darker, scarier version of Republican politics. But after the assassination attempt, given how poorly Joe Biden is performing and the fact that the polls look so good for him in these swing states, it's a joyous affair.
They're having a fucking blast. Well, we'll be the judge of that because we'll be right back.
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 reality TV argument.

Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts and don't forget to check out full episodes on YouTube. Speaking of polling, here's some interesting convention.
News Politico reported that on Tuesday afternoon, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio talked with the Florida delegation about just how good the campaign thinks the map looks for them. Fabrizio said that the Sunbelt states are locked up for Trump, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida.
But he also said that they now think Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico, and New Jersey are toss-ups. He claimed that the campaign might even make a play for Maine.
Fabrizio also reportedly bragged that the campaign is this competitive without having done much in the way of TV ads, which is true. And he said, quote, get ready, they're coming.
How much of this, Dan, do you attribute to Trump world cockiness and how much of it do you think is real? It's not Trump world cockiness. Like there is a strain of thought in Republican politics that goes back to Lee Atwater, which is you should always look like you're winning, right? It is a theory, it is a wisdom of crowds approach to politics.
It's why Bush sent Cheney to Hawaii in 2004, right? To make it look like you're winning. You're always on offense.
I do remember that. And also claimed New Jersey was in play.
Yep. We're always claiming New Jersey is in play in every election.
And who knows? I don't know if it is here or not, but it's worth remembering that Phil Murphy barely beat a heretofore unknown truck driver, I think, new to politics in the 2021 gubernatorial race.

I don't want to like depress people or scare people,

but what Tony Fabrizio was saying

about New Mexico, Maine, Virginia

is showing up in private polls

that Democrats are passing around everywhere.

Yeah, yeah.

We haven't talked about Martin Heinrich,

who's the Democratic Senator from New Mexico

and people associated with their, they're worried about his race because Joe Biden's polling so poorly there. You look at all the polls, we can debate the size of the margin and all of these, but there is a consistent theme, which is that Biden struggles with a certain number of groups, Black and Latinos, primarily men and younger men, Republican-leaning independents, the Trump-Biden voters, and young voters.
And the states that we're talking about here are ones that over-index on a lot of those groups. It's why Virginia is in play, even though the reason that it turned Democratic for Barack Obama in 2008 became a safe Democratic state years after that are the same reason that Joe Biden is struggling with it, because it's a demographic change in that state, which used to benefit Democrats and is now us if those biden continues to struggle with those groups do you think democrats will have to spend money to defend some of these states like new mexico minnesota we shouldn't i mean if we do it's a huge deal yeah that's what folks need to understand is there's not unlimited money out there you're budgeting you're budging for really expensive ad spends in a lot of major cities.
And all of a sudden, if you're putting ads on air in Washington, D.C. or the Twin Cities, that is going to impact everything else you do.
You can't, right? I may be the only person who will remember this, but in 2012, when we were running for re-election, we knew we were going to be massively outspent by the right because it was the first post-Citizens United presidential campaign, and the right had raised hundreds of millions of dollars in the super PACs. We did not have that apparatus.
So we knew the Republicans would outspend the Democratic side. And so Plouffe and Axelrod and others made the decision that we were not going to run ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
because if we, because we had to get to 270, we had to get Ohio and Virginia. And there's no way, the states are correlated.
And so if you are losing Pennsylvania, you're not winning Ohio. And so in order to husband our resources so that we could compete in these states, including Florida, which was a big, important state for us, we said we were not going to spend money in the states.
And we did not do that other than one brief period of time when we had to go up in either Michigan or Wisconsin at the very end briefly. And so if you're in the Biden land, you can't afford to be in all those states.
So you're going to have to spend all your money on the blue wall states because that seemed and the second district in Nebraska. If you were losing Maine or Virginia or New Mexico, you're winning nowhere.
Look, ads don't just fall out of a coconut tree. They exist in the context of all that came before.
But no, if we are talking about spending money in those places, we are talking about Senate candidates and House candidates who are running away from Joe Biden and trying to save themselves. We were talking about Joe Biden after having spent tens of millions of dollars in ads that haven't seemed to change the dynamic in this race, suddenly facing an influence of Trump money, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in money from Trump's backers.
There's been story after story in the past couple of days of all of these people from Elon Musk on down deciding they're going to pour money into this race. So, you know, if we're talking about the Biden campaign and whether or not they should be spending in Virginia, we're talking about senators everywhere desperately trying to save themselves and running away from the Democratic ticket and saying how they will be a check on Trump.
Like that's the world we'll be living in in the fall. And these things sometimes change over the summer, right? A lot of these states that are traditionally Democratic or Republican revert back to the mean as more people to the race, right? In that undecided pool.
So we may be just like Trump may certainly outperform his 2020 numbers in all of these states and Biden might still win all of them. And by like a couple of points.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not, just to be clear, I'm describing a scenario. I'm not claiming it as what's happening.
So Trump's apparently feeling confident enough he uh took a crack at getting rfk jr to endorse him the two reportedly met in milwaukee on monday trump also called kennedy on sunday and kennedy took the call on speakerphone while his in-house videographer according to kennedy was rolling for something else you can hear trump saying on the call that the bullet going past his ear sounded like quote the world's largest mosquito that he had a nice call with Biden, where the president asked him how he managed to duck out of the way. Trump also asked for Kennedy's endorsement and then told Kennedy how much he agrees with him on childhood vaccines.
Let's listen. I said I want to do small doses, small doses.
When you when you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that has like 38 different vaccines,

and it looks like it's been for a horse, not a 10-pound or 20-pound baby.

And do you ever see the size of it, right?

It's just massive.

And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically.

I've seen it too many times.

And then you hear that it doesn't have an impact, right? But you and I talked about that a long time ago. Is Trump like a pediatrician? I didn't know that.
He's seen it all the times. He watches them get the vaccines, then he watches the babies change.
You know babies, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. Just babies.
Look, I've seen babies by the hogshead dealing with this kind of problems metric tons of baby experiencing these kinds of problems so rfk junior's son posted and then deleted the video with an apology uh the biden campaign put out a statement saying the video is proof that trump can't be trusted to protect americans health care kennedy reportedly declined to drop out and endorse trump at least for now uh trump was talking in that same video about like maybe there's a big job you job you can do a big, like he's trying to give him a job, get an endorsement. He's trying to do something here.
Let's start with Trump's anti-vax pandering, which he's also been doing in his stump speech. It's not like we needed a secretly recorded video.
He's out there saying, I'm not giving a penny to any state that has, where schools have any kind of mandates, not just mask mandates, but vaccine mandates or anything. Have you interpreted that to not mean COVID vaccine, but for all vaccines? He said it repeatedly.
He has said it repeatedly. He will no vaccine mandates of any kind, have funding for education, get rid of the Department of Education.
Like that is his position. He is not characterized it as COVID and I don't think we should do any work for him.
If he ever sat down... I'm mad at the situation.

Well, if he ever sat down for an interview with

a reporter that was not like a right-wing

reporter, maybe they would ask him that.

Perhaps if he had debated someone

who could have brought that up at the debate, we could

have learned it there too. But yeah, no, he will not.

He has tried to skate over this by

just making it seem like it's COVID

vaccines for people like that, but also

nodding to and pandering to the anti-vax crowd, which is what he did here on this call with RFK. Dangerous, obviously.
Also kind of dumb in a general election, although I don't know. What do you guys think? To just be out there doing vaccine, being against all kinds of childhood vaccines.
Well, first of all, just my reaction is like, whenever you hear Trump in context where he doesn't think he's being recorded or it's for public assumption, he's just like I gotta call that fucking RFK guy. What is he like? Oh yeah, he's crazy about the vaccine.
So I'll just tell him the vaccine thing. See if that works.
Maybe try to get him a job. Just very transactional.
Very simple. Back to that speech where he was like, oh see I just talked about tax cuts and no one's clapping.
And then I was talking about this trend stuff and you're all clapping and applauding. That applauding that used to never be like that a couple years ago i guess i'll keep saying it right it's fucking it's just like is the most yeah it's like pure cynicism we're losing to a skinner box he is actually more of a politician yes any politician i'm a big outsider no it's like you know you just tell any single fucking person exactly what they want to hear and then you do not deliver in any way, shape or form.
That's it. That's like, that is Trump to his core.
I think the anti-childhood vaccine stuff is like a marker of extremism for a lot of voters. And so it's good to do.
It's also just funny, like what it's like to work on a campaign is like the Biden folks have to put out the same one. They want to just say it's like, that shit's weird.
Well, I do think like, I think the reason Project 2025 took off is that it plays into something we don't often get to plan to. There is a secret recording of Donald Trump colluding with one of his opponents to try to defeat the Democrats and to take away childhood vaccines from schools.
Like, I feel like we're not making enough of the secret leaks caught image. It looks bad.
It looks sinister. Yeah.
I mean, at the end of the day, I think the Trump campaign views all of the third party candidates as tools to help them. They're trying to get Cornel West on the ballot in various states.
They are clearly colluding with RFK's campaign and having him continue to run because it helps them. I think one of someone who a top person on RFK's campaign essentially said as much in another leaked video a few weeks back, which is basically like, we're all in this to defeat Joe Biden.
Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is a narcissist with a massive ego that wants to promote exactly these insane anti-vaccine views that we are now discussing. So win-win for him to stick around and, you know, do Trump's bidding until the time when they deem him no longer useful and maybe he drops out.
But clearly he's angling for some sort of elevation of the issues he cares about, some job for himself. I mean, this is working for him.
How much do you guys think a Kennedy endorsement of Trump would matter, change the race? I think it would matter. I actually do.
Like the Joe Rogans of the world will not have Donald Trump on the show, but he will have RFK Jr. And he believes and trusts Robert F.
Kennedy. RFK going on that show and endorsing Trump would be a big deal in my opinion.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, Kennedy's, he had been at as high as 15% in the polling average a few months ago.
He's down 8% now. That'll probably continue to go down.
But I mean, that's four times the margin right now. Right.
And there's probably some of his voters that don't like Donald Trump. But if, you know, they're parking their votes for Kennedy and if he thinks, he's telling them it's okay to be for Trump.
You know, obviously Trump's not gonna get all those people because they've already decided they don't like Trump. But get some.
You only need a lot. You know, and he's already.
So I think loose kooks go to Trump, but like, I also just, the political space Donald Trump has because of the support among Republicans that he has, like it is inconceivable to us that, that Joe Biden would call, and he shouldn't call RFK to get his endorsement. Like, it is such an assumption that Donald Trump can say whatever he wants, appeal to whoever he wants.
Like that, that like freedom to move is an advantage he has. And it just, I don't know.
It just sucks. Yeah.
Lying is an advantage in politics for sure. Right.
But also lying and the fealty he has of his base that just trust him no matter what he says or does. All right.
Just quickly before we go to break, like we said, we're going to be in Milwaukee Wednesday and Thursday, and then on

Friday, July 19th, we're hopping over

to Madison. Yeah, we are.
For a

live show at the Orpheum Theater

with co-host Aaron Haynes and guest Ben Wickler,

and on Saturday the 20th,

Love It or Leave It will also be in Madison,

joined by special guests Thomas Lennon,

Victoria Vincent, former Lieutenant Governor Mandela

Barnes, and State Representative Francesca

Hong at the Barrymore Theater.

I'm going to have four days of dairy and then I'll fly myself home.

Glad I'm not on that plane.

Glad I'm not on that plane.

Safer than a Boeing.

And more reliable.

Speaking of loose nukes.

Head to crookot.com slash events to grab tickets now.

When we come back, we'll be talking about the Biden campaign and why the DNC is planning a virtual roll call ahead of the convention. 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.
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Okay, last night we talked about whether the effort to replace Biden was dying out. Pretty clear after today that it has not.
The Times reported this morning that Congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for Senate in California, just told donors at a fundraiser in New York over the weekend, quote, I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose and we may very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House. That's according to someone who saw a transcript of the event.
He also told the crowd that the Biden team isn't listening to opposing views right now. An anonymous House Democrat also told Axios, quote, the replace Biden movement is back.
One member talking about this on the record is Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who Tommy interviewed on Pod Save the World today. Here's what he said.
Very early Sunday morning, the first phone call I got was from a colleague who agrees with me, as the majority of Democrats in Congress do, but like most, hasn't come out and said it publicly. And he just said, what do we do? It's even more urgent now.
I mean, Trump is going to ride this assassination attempt right into the White House. The only chance we have is a change at the top of the ticket.
Tommy, what did Seth say about what his colleagues are saying in private? And does he think more will come out? Yeah, I mean mean, I asked him, I think the question that we've all had, which was, it felt like there was growing momentum in Congress from Democrats calling on Biden to drop out. And I asked him if that momentum had stalled out after Saturday.
And he said, actually, no, in private, concerns have only increased. People are even more worried that Trump is going to ride this, you know, scary assassination attempt to victory and use it for political advantage and that people are talking about it even more.
They're just not all together right now. I think they're all home.
So this is happening on text. So I do think these efforts that we'll talk about in a minute to potentially move up the nomination vote have pissed off a lot of people.

There might be some more, you know, momentum might be picking back up in terms of people coming out publicly to call on Biden to drop out. But Seth's message to them was like, what's the point of being in politics if you're not going to say what you think? You know what I mean? Like, how can you possibly say your concern now and sit on your hands and then wake up after election day and live with yourself? Well, so let's talk about the development that also restarted this conversation, which is the DNC's continued push to hold a virtual roll call vote on the nomination, apparently as early as next week.
This is not a new plan exactly. And it originally had to do with making sure the Democratic ticket appears on the ballot in states like Ohio that have deadlines in early August before the Democratic convention.
All of this is because the Democratic convention is quite late this year. And some of these deadlines are in early August and obviously the Democratic conventions in late August.
But even though Ohio just passed a law,

Republican legislature, Republican governor,

to give Democrats more time to get on the ballot

after their convention,

the DNC is still moving forward

with the virtual roll call vote,

which is leading some Democrats in Congress

to believe that it's all about nominating Biden

as quickly as possible

in an effort to end the conversation

about him stepping aside. Congressman Jared Huffman, one of the members who's been vocal about the challenges that Biden presents, is now circulating a letter for other Democrats to sign that asked the DNC to call off the roll call vote.
We don't know how many members have signed on, but we do know that several frontline members, including Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, Mike Levin of California, Pat Ryan of New York, plan to sign it. Huffman told The Times the DNC forcing the roll call would be, quote, a power play of the highest order.
Former DNC chairs Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, and Terry McAuliffe sent their own letter today in favor of the DNC's virtual roll call vote. They don't mention Biden, but argue that this is the best way to ensure the Democratic ticket is on the ballot in every state.
Dan, who's right? Both, sort of, and no one. I mean, prior to the debate, the plan the DNC was putting in place makes sense.
Even if Ohio has changed the law, you want to be extra careful because it's not just Ohio. States like California and Washington have their ballot access certification deadlines at the outset of the Democratic Convention.
20th, 22nd, 23rd are some of those states. And there is a turnaround time between when Biden is actually nominated and you get all the signatures, notarized, et cetera, and filed appropriately.
What has happened in previous years is you basically send a pledge to that you're going to send the real stuff and and they will swap them out when you send the real stuff, like almost an IOU for notarized signatures. That's been fine.
People are very worried that in this new world of insane MAGA election interference, they're going to try to deny Democrats ballot access. So in a completely, in a world where Biden's obviously going to be the nominee, this is all pro forma, just do it early, get it done.
They came up with- And not because, not even because the concerns are like, it's better to be safe than sorry. Why not? Why would you even risk it? Belt and suspenders, right? And then, and the timing makes sense too, because it is a relatively complicated process to get all these people.
You have to get a majority of the delegates to vote. Their votes have to be certified in some way, shape, or form.
That takes time. So they're going to give themselves- Several thousand people.
It's almost 3,000 people. They gave themselves time to do it.
They put that plan in place. Debate happened.
Debate about the debate happened. And now they're proceeding with the plan as if they were.
And they're in this position that is very challenging because if you change the plan, you're acknowledging the legitimacy and possibility that there could actually be a change at the top of the ticket, which is very hard for the DNC, which is run by Joe Biden to do. But if you go with the old plan, you further inflame the division within the party that has come since the debate.
And so we are sort of- Which is why you get these talking points from DNC chair, Jamie Harrison and others that, that sound so bullshitty because they're only, what he has decided is, well, I'm going to blame the Republicans in Ohio and say that like, you know, even though they passed a law that to say that Democrats could be on the ticket, we're going to make people leave that maybe they'll change their minds and pass another law, you know, like it doesn't really pass the smell test. Now it's that republicans in the ohio legislature are not the only problem here there could be random conservative groups that file suit a number of legal scholars were like well i don't that that doesn't that wouldn't carry really carry any water but you know maybe the same people are an immunity they're letting the president do whatever they want so like yeah people are people are a little worried about that but but the other option here is to have the virtual roll call vote as close to the deadlines as possible and not starting next week or right well the thing that i have trouble wrapping my head around is okay so doing this next week feels like the worst possible option because it tries to silence a debate that isn't done in a way that will be as...
Yeah, and whether it's intentional or not, that's what it does. That's what it does.
And it will be, I just, to attend, like, I'm just looking at this Republican convention and the energy and enthusiasm we're seeing and imagining the kind of enervated slog that would be a democratic convention in which this debate was uh silenced by procedure um i think it's just it's not not a very optimistic experience but if you it's just a horrible anyway i'll see you guys in chicago this is just it's what it is i'm like we're we're fucking around it's it's horrible but so then it's like okay the virtual roll call roll call has to be later so there can be space for there to be this debate and the possibility of another nominee. But it seems hard to imagine that actually taking place until the convention actually begins.
Right. It's like it's just hard to wrap your head around how you can act like Joe Biden himself, whether aware or unaware of what the actual plan was, said, if you think I shouldn't be the nominee, challenge me at the convention.
The convention is the place where everyone's in everyone's mind, broker convention, that this is where it would play out. If the lawyers are saying that that's dangerous, it leaves everybody in a very confusing position.
That was rhetorical bullshit. No, no, I know.
I'm just I'm telling the listeners that was rhetorical bullshit. The thing that I do think complicates this conversation is I'm looking at a story in NBC News right now that's talking about the debate over whether Biden should drop out.
And here's a couple of lines from it. By the end of last week, the president and his team had settled on a strategy forward.
The five people familiar with the internal discussion said that strategy is described by multiple Biden aides and allies is to run out the clock. No shit, huh? And if you reduce the amount of clock outstanding, of course people are going to act like, okay, you're trying to rig the system.
It just, this continues to be part of the problem coming from some of the people advising Joe Biden right now is they seem to be so committed to being the nominee that they're willing to sacrifice being reelected president to do so. Because let's say Joe Biden had been challenged.
It had a real primary. This is the exact moment when you're doing what the Republicans are doing, which you're trying to unify the party.
You're bringing your opponents in the party into your coalition. It's when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, right? That is how it happens.
But because Joe Biden was not officially challenged, even though 50% and sometimes more percent of Democrats wanted a different nominee or didn't want him to run. And then he did well in these very low turnout, noncompetitive primaries against Dean Phillips and Williamson.
He and his team have been operating under the illusion of party unity because there had been unity before the debate, at least publicly, from all the elites in the party, all the elected officials, all the pundits, everyone else, but the electorate was not there. And so the process here, if Joe Biden is going to be the nominee, is not just to run out the clock, it's to unify the party behind him so as the nominee he can win.
And this is counterproductive to that. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know. And it sounds as of now that they're going forward with it, I could see them saying like, yeah, maybe we'll push the final date of the voting to like.
But like either way, we are running out of time. Right.
And Joe Biden's strategy of running out the clock is it's it's it's going to be effective. Right.
And I think the only thing like people have made their voices heard. We certainly have, according to every poll the voters have.
Democrats have at least at least half of Democrats in about every poll, registered Democrats, want him to step aside. A majority of black voters, a majority of Latino voters, a majority of women voters, a majority of young voters, that is not broken through.
Some members of Congress have gone through. I think the last play here is, back to your conversation with Seth Moulton, that if a bunch of House Democrats and Senate Democrats either go to Joe Biden

or publicly talk about this,

or Pelosi, who there's a lot of reports,

has been behind the scenes wanting him to step aside.

Pelosi goes to him.

Like there's one more play here, right?

Of people that Joe Biden has known for a long time

and respected senators too.

He was a former senator.

Go to him and make one last plea.

And then if he says no, then he says no. And we're, that's what we everyone did what they could but i do think for those representatives who want this you got to say in the meantime you gotta do it now and they gotta do now and by the way in the meantime i the like i think everyone making clear that the dnc moving forward with a roll call vote this quickly would be a fucking disaster i can't imagine something that will alienate more people that are the people that are very nervous about Joe Biden, but are also the people that will donate and knock on doors.
They are part of the 14 million that voted for Joe Biden because there wasn't an alternative. And by the way, would be proud to support him if he were the nominee who would feel so silenced and pushed aside by the decision to move ahead with a roll call vote this quickly.
It's just as terrible a decision as I can imagine. Yeah, I think it would feel sneaky.
All of this is why another member of Congress I was talking to yesterday said that's where they feel like they have basically from the day after the Republican convention ends till like Monday or Tuesday to get a bunch of people to come out publicly and say, you know, you have to step

aside. Because I think members of Congress feel like they try, I mean, Seth said this to me too,

they tried to privately get a message to him after the debate that they thought there needed

to be a change and that was ineffective. So that's why all these members are going public.

Tried to get a message through George Stephanopoulos, through Lester Holt,

through all those great reporters who ask questions during the NATO.

They're complex.

He keeps trying. They took Morning Joe off the air.
They silenced Joe. There's smoke signals.
There's polls. They silenced Mika.
We had to do like a kind of, to get through the inability to get, we had to drop flyers over the White House like we're trying to reach people. Like the North Koreans.
Yes. Kamala Harris has been walking by him drinking from a coconut.
I don't know if we're going to end this. This is a high note or not, but one thing we noticed, Chris Lasavita, Donald Trump's senior advisor, told everyone for his speech on Thursday night to buckle up because it's going to be at least an hour and a half.
An hour and a half? I was thinking about why this is. And here's why.
I think it's going to be at least an hour and a half an hour and a half i was thinking about why this is and here's why i think it's going to be an hour and a half because what we're going to get english and spanish i because i think what we're going to get is the post-assassination attempt unity topper like i think they're just two speeches we're getting a bolted on top and bottom and then the red meat division draft what i tape back together the peachy the peachy store up but yeah i do i do think it's gonna be we got there's no torn up speech donald trump does not start from page one he's not that kind of a worker so i think we get a new a new top and a new bottom and the same fucking american carnage right there in the middle. That's my prediction.

I'm going to predict something.

A 90-minute speech is terrible.

How much time do they have with the networks? Two hours?

Five days after Donald Trump was shot in the air. He could speak for 17 hours.
He could go full Castro. He could be there all night.

Gaddafi.

Yeah, for sure.

They got to get to modern family rewrites.

It's the last gasp of the... Plus, there's got to leave time for him to read the Get Well Soon card from Melania.
Not speaking. Not speaking.
Again, in any other time, be like, wait, what? Not speaking. Yeah.
90 minutes. Don't give...
Hey, just here's a tip. 90 minute speeches, don't do it.
60 minute speech, don't need it. Anything past 17 is...

Yeah, it's not ideal.

Honestly, 20 minutes.

20 minutes is your,

that's your outer perimeter.

I mean, in 1988,

Bill Clinton got destroyed

for giving a 33 minute speech.

He had a seven minute slot though.

17 minute slot.

17 minute slot.

Anyway, that's our show for tonight. We will talk to you from Milwaukee tomorrow night.
We hope. Yeah, we hope.
We'll see you there. Bye.
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Who knows just how many helpless sides of celery were

heartlessly thrown away. But this year, celery neglect can stop with you and irresistible Jif

peanut butter. Because you can make a snack to make a difference.
You can buy a jar of Jif to

save the celery. So please, don't let celery be decoration for wings.
Tap the banner to save the

celery.