Trump's Shooting Upends 2024

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Levitt. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vitor.
Well, quite a bit has happened since Friday's show, and absolutely none of it has been good.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally. His hand-picked judge threw out his classified documents case.
He picked MAGA heir J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance as his running mate on the opening day of the Republican convention.

Speaker 3 And new swing state polls give him an even larger lead over Joe Biden, who spent the last few days giving a number of high-profile speeches and interviews as he tries to convince Democrats and all Americans that he's still the best chance to beat Trump.

Speaker 3 But let's start with the assassination attempt. Words that still feel just awful and shocking to say out loud.
The investigation is still underway.

Speaker 3 Here's some of the new details we've learned as of this recording, Monday night.

Speaker 3 Head of Secret Service did an interview with ABC News today where she said, quote, the buck stops with me, but she's not resigning.

Speaker 3 So far, the picture that's emerging of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, does not suggest he was a Trump hater, a Trump fan, or even that political.

Speaker 3 It looks like he once made a $15 donation to one of those scammy progressive groups that fucking emails you all the time.

Speaker 3 But after that, he registered as a Republican, and neighbors just told a Pittsburgh news station they've seen Trump signs around the family's house.

Speaker 3 Some classmates have said he was conservative, others said he was bullied, others said he liked guns.

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, the wife of Corey Compratour, the rallygoer who died, told the New York Post that President Biden did reach out, but she didn't take the call because her husband was a Trump guy and wouldn't have wanted her to.

Speaker 3 But even though she's voting for Trump, she said that she doesn't blame Biden for her husband's death and that President Trump has not yet contacted her family.

Speaker 3 So before we get to all the politics, obviously just terrifying, horrendous news for the country. I heard about it from you, Tommy.
You texted. Like, how did you hear it?

Speaker 3 How did you learn about this whole thing? Were you watching the rally?

Speaker 4 I was just sitting at home. I was with James, my two-month-old, and doing nothing, sitting on Twitter.
And all of a sudden, it's just coming through, shots fired at a Trump rally.

Speaker 4 I turned on the news and I think watched it live like a lot of people did.

Speaker 3 It's just wild that the footage was just there for everyone to see and playing over and over again. Dan,

Speaker 3 you were like not home, right?

Speaker 3 I was coming, driving back from a trip with my daughter, and the last text before I got in the car was from Tommy.

Speaker 3 It said, shots fired at a Trump rally, which I thought just there were shots at the rally, right? And not someone had shot at Trump.

Speaker 3 And then I didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half, got home. to one million texts, mostly from you guys, about everything that happened.
I couldn't believe that

Speaker 3 had shot at Trump, Trump had been hit, that he was fine. But then there was the, you saw the image of Trump with his fist in the air, the bloody image.

Speaker 3 Some of the photos of the one from Doug Mills, who we used to, we know from the White House. Great guy.

Speaker 3 Where the incredible, great guy, incredible photographer of the bullet like near, right at Trump's head. Just

Speaker 3 like almost an impossible thing to process, to learn all about like in one fell swoop. Yeah.
Yeah, I just sort of felt sick

Speaker 3 because I was like, what, what is going to happen now?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I felt sick. I really did.
That was my instant reaction. I felt sick.
I was

Speaker 3 instantly worried,

Speaker 5 even after we knew that it was only an attempt, about the implications, about the potential for retaliatory violence, about what we might learn about the shooter. I also

Speaker 5 just was instantly worried about what it would be like for this to be processed by social media. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And the other strange worry. Good concern.

Speaker 3 Because it turns out that was the right. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And the other strange piece about it, too, was

Speaker 5 in the same way, you know, you see, oh, you see the shots fired at a Trump rally. My first instinct is, oh, this is some kind of false or overblown

Speaker 5 made-up story on.

Speaker 3 Probably because you want it to be.

Speaker 5 You want it to be, and you expect it to be because there's so much misinformation, there's so much sensationalism out there. So you at first, oh, it's just an airsoft gun.

Speaker 5 Oh, it was shrapnel from a teleprompter. Oh, it wasn't actually a shooting, right? All that is circulating.

Speaker 5 And then it's slowly becoming clear from real sources what's going on.

Speaker 5 And I really did, I had a pit in my stomach the whole day, even after we knew that it was, that it was only an attempt, because of,

Speaker 5 and angry, and I was angry, just because it takes control of our ability to talk about politics, about our ability to talk about anything, and just takes it away from us in favor of what a random mass shooter or or assassin wants us to talk about, which is whatever their intention or act is.

Speaker 3 Tommy, just quickly, what do you make of the Secret Service's laps here in their response so far?

Speaker 3 I mean, it seems like having eyes on a shooter who was on top of an elevated building within sight of the president is like the most basic part of the job that Secret Service does to protect any event with either a president, next president, or whoever they're assigned to protect.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the idea that an elevated position 140 yards away with a sight line, a direct sight line to the candidate, was not covered by someone somehow is shocking to me. I mean, there might have been.

Speaker 4 So, Secret Service, there's a bunch of different parts of it. There's PPD, who are the men and women around the president, the personal protective detail for the president.

Speaker 4 What you saw on TV was them reacting and dive on him pretty quickly. And those people are incredibly brave.

Speaker 4 You know, those individuals literally threw themselves in front of a bullet to protect the president, and they did their job, and they did it pretty quickly.

Speaker 4 but then there are you know they partner with local law enforcement it's not at all clear if local law enforcement was supposed to be securing this building it's not clear to me why the sniper teams that were on other elevated positions didn't see the gunmen sooner so we'll figure it out there will be an investigation um i think it's a massive fuck-up i mean obviously yeah i'm surprised that the secret service director is not offering her resignation.

Speaker 4 If a candidate, if a president or candidate got shot on my watch and I was running Secret Service, I would feel like I'd failed on my job and resigned.

Speaker 4 I'm sure there will be independent investigations. There will be internal investigations.

Speaker 4 Biden's in a weird place on this because he's standing by an agency that he is in charge of through Homeland Security. But I mean, I hope that, you know, Congress will get involved.

Speaker 4 Maybe there'll be some sort of select committee set up to look into what happened because the Secret Service has had a bunch of near-misses and a bunch of bad scandals. And I think as an organization,

Speaker 4 they are not doing great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that's been true for a while. Yeah, I mean, that was true when we were in the Bible.
I mean, even though we knew a lot of secret services, they did an incredible job, but

Speaker 3 I was at the White House when the guy made it into the White House, the guy who jumped the fence. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 I was there when they found the bullet holes at the top of the White House that no one knew when they came from. So this has been a problem for a while.

Speaker 3 Biden did ask for an independent investigation of this, which I think becomes the basis for making a decision on the future of the head of the Secret Service.

Speaker 3 So after the shock passed and it was clear Trump was okay, the first understandable reaction from a lot of folks in politics and media was that, you know, everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric and lower the temperature of the political debate in this country.

Speaker 3 Biden said as much a number of times over the weekend. Trump himself posted, Unite America and All Caps.

Speaker 3 And he did a print interview with Selena Zito of the Washington Examiner, where he said he tore up the draft of his convention speech that he said was the original draft was a humdinger

Speaker 3 and was rewriting it about bringing the country together. Axios ran a piece Sunday evening about how Trump advisors are planning a more unifying convention.
A piece quoted Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 3 They interviewed him. He said, quote, getting shot in the face changes a man.
And an unnamed Trump advisor said that Trump's view is, quote, Now Democrats can't come after me anymore as a fascist.

Speaker 3 So what are they going to do now?

Speaker 3 So lots to unpack there.

Speaker 3 Let's start with the timeless classic. Can Trump pivot to become someone who's unrecognizable to those who've watched him for the last 77 years? Dan, what do you think?

Speaker 3 I'm going to go on a limb and say no. No.
I do not think he's become a uniter and not a divider.

Speaker 3 I do think that the press seems very thirsty to believe this narrative in a way in which they haven't with Trump in a very long time. It has been very credulous.
COVID. COVID was the last time.

Speaker 3 Remember the beginning of COVID? Even that lasted like six seconds, right? Yeah, the first six seconds of his first press conference.

Speaker 3 No, I think it was the moment when he went and got into the secret service vehicle with all the secret service agents infected with COVID for the driver on the block. Oh, yeah, there's that too.

Speaker 3 Well, that was later. That was when he had, I was saying when COVID initially hit

Speaker 3 the in March, the first couple of weeks, everyone was like, oh, he's a new president, he's great, blah, blah. Then he became crazy.
Then he got COVID.

Speaker 5 But then there's the point being, whether it was our collective near-death experience or his personal near-death experience, we have yet to see a fucking change.

Speaker 3 I do think he can

Speaker 3 be

Speaker 3 just less divisive enough to get a disproportionate amount of undeserved credit in his speech on Thursday night.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's can you hang on for four months? And we, before the shooting, we were saying this about his, how he reacted to the trials.

Speaker 3 And like, he, the fear of potentially going to jail has really driven him in this campaign to be.

Speaker 3 slightly more disciplined than usual, not because it's out of the goodness of his heart, but because he's like, this is how I'm going to win this thing.

Speaker 3 I've got to just be a little normal for a little while longer.

Speaker 5 Well, it already brought, I mean, he already says, like, what does unity mean? It means dropping all the charges against me.

Speaker 3 So it's given up.

Speaker 5 He's given up the game pretty quickly.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I think in 2016, was it Super Tuesday when he won the election and then did like a giant product placement thing where he had all the Trump products he'd ever made on a table before?

Speaker 4 I'm like, the stakes have gone up since that time, to your point. Very much so.

Speaker 6 Getting out of jail.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And again, like you said,

Speaker 3 already in this campaign, he has said,

Speaker 3 i mean every day has said something that would sink any other candidate for office and it just completely makes him unfit to hold the office just want to put that out there but relative to trump and what people expect of trump it's been a little different what um

Speaker 3 what do you guys think about the whole democrats can't call him a threat to democracy anymore thing level

Speaker 5 political violence is uh destructive in a democracy for a lot of obvious reasons. But one reason is that it gives control over our ability to make decisions to random bad actors.

Speaker 5 We should not give to a random person, whatever their motivations, whatever we discover, we should not voluntarily give up what that person wasn't able to successfully take by force, which is our ability to make a decision about the fate of the country.

Speaker 5 And that requires being honest about the threat Donald Trump poses,

Speaker 5 that requires being honest about what it will take to win this election. That is, you know, the fact that this event took place does not remove Trump's menace or the challenge Biden faces.

Speaker 5 And the sooner we get back to having that debate, the more of a failure this assassination attempt will be.

Speaker 3 Tommy, go ahead.

Speaker 6 No, that's a good point.

Speaker 4 I may also think like politics is how we resolve differences without resorting to violence. And those debates are inevitably going to get emotional and heated at times.

Speaker 4 And they should, because that's our release valve. That's how we settle differences.

Speaker 3 But that said, like, there are limits.

Speaker 4 You can't encourage violence. You can't condone violence.
That's why what Trump did on January 6th is unforgivable in my mind.

Speaker 4 But I do think people take cues from leaders, and it's important not to take it too far because once political violence starts, it can be very, very hard to stop and it can just get out of control.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump told his supporters to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies. He has amplified calls for violence.
Remember the video of one of his supporters?

Speaker 3 This was after George Floyd's murder. And one of his supporters said in a video, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.
And then he posted that.

Speaker 3 That's one thing he did. He told police and the military to shoot protesters in the legs, to shoot immigrants who cross the border, to shoot suspected shoplifters, suspected shoplifters.

Speaker 4 Rough up suspects. We were putting them in the car.

Speaker 3 Rough up suspects. He, of course, sent a mob of his armed supporters.
He knew they were armed. We know this now.

Speaker 3 He sent them to the Capitol so they could intimidate our representatives into throwing out our votes. He refused to do anything to stop the violence.

Speaker 3 Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House, calls him. He says, they're trying to fucking kill me.
Do something.

Speaker 3 And Donald Trump said in response, well, Kevin, I guess they're more upset about the election than you. That's what he said.
Like, and then now he wants to pardon them.

Speaker 3 Has Joe Biden done any of those things? Has any Democratic official done any of those things anywhere close to those things? No.

Speaker 3 So, of course, you're going to talk about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy that you have to oppose through democratic means, peaceful means, at the ballot box by convincing other people to vote against him.

Speaker 3 It's just such, it's so stupid.

Speaker 3 Also, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. He's a threat to freedom.
For all those reasons. But also, don't, you don't take my word for it.
He says it himself.

Speaker 3 He's the one who said to be a dictator on day one. Over the last couple of weeks, the media, people in politics, us have not been paying as much attention to Trump.

Speaker 3 He has been truthing about how he thinks that various people should have military tribunals. Yeah, Liz Cheney, military tribunals.
Yes, he has talked about jailing his opponents. He has talked about.

Speaker 3 Is that how democracy works? Is that not a threat to democracy? I guess that's just democracy, right? And military tribunals for Liz Cheney. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so the idea that after this horrible thing happened, and it is...

Speaker 3 It would be wonderful that if we could lower the temperature on politics in this country, we could get back to sort of normal debates. But Donald Trump is an abnormal candidate.

Speaker 3 He has offered dangerous, a dangerous policy agenda. He has been a danger to democracy.

Speaker 3 And the press cannot all of a sudden become the civility police and try to chastise Democrats into not saying what is true about Donald Trump. And by the way,

Speaker 5 one of the reasons that's actually important

Speaker 5 is because it gives...

Speaker 5 To allow

Speaker 5 this act of violence to dictate what we can or cannot say, even when it is true, is to give power to this person and potentially to inspire people in the future to think they have the power at any moment to change the landscape of American politics.

Speaker 5 The reason, like I am very, look, if people

Speaker 5 want to say, oh, this is an opportunity for all of us to come together and turn down the rhetoric, great, that's fine.

Speaker 5 But the reason we talk about the danger posed by violent rhetoric is not because it creates some miasma of risk that leads, it's because it it can inspire people.

Speaker 5 It's because people will take it literally and act on it. We have seen that happen multiple times.
We have seen right-wing violence in multiple places and multiple times. We have seen mass shootings.

Speaker 5 We have seen what happened in Charlottesville. We've seen what happened at the insurrection.
There is a trend.

Speaker 5 The reason you worry about the rhetoric is because you start to see it manifest in a trend of violence.

Speaker 3 We don't know anything yet about this versus motive, but there is no evidence as of yet that they were motivated by some sort of political rhetoric, right? Let's, if...

Speaker 3 If that evidence comes back and shows that, we should talk about that.

Speaker 3 But as of right now, everyone is just jumping to the conclusion, especially people in the media who love this conversation are jumping to the conclusion they want. But also, yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Even if for some reason it did, like there are going to be people who are inspired by political rhetoric, whether it's on the right or left, to commit violence.

Speaker 3 And what you can do about that as a political leader is to condemn that unequivocally and to do everything in your power to avoid inciting or condoning that kind of violence, which I think most leaders in this country and previously the Republican Party before Donald Trump, a lot of elected officials would would take care to do that.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump has not taken care to do that at all.

Speaker 5 Even worse, he's joked about and mocked when there has been violence, like the attack on Paul Pelosi

Speaker 5 or the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer, right? All of that was something they either

Speaker 5 claim is some sort of false flag or make fun of or mock, claim

Speaker 5 it was a lover's quarrel, right? When this guy was, when Paul Pelosi is like, nearly beaten to death.

Speaker 4 Or when his VP was almost hung.

Speaker 4 That's cool with that, too.

Speaker 3 That was very, very cool with that, apparently.

Speaker 3 So swapped him out.

Speaker 3 We're not in the prediction business. We don't have a lot of polling numbers yet.
It's only a couple of days in, but I'm sure you guys were getting this message from friends.

Speaker 3 You saw it online, like when he, the picture of Donald Trump that's now the cover of Time magazine, fist up in the air. Is it cover of Time? Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, both candidates did do lengthy interviews with Time Down.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 3 Even though you're shitting all over the magazine on the polls in the 1986 election just shifted six points.

Speaker 3 Anyway, we all know the picture now. We all know the picture, everyone who's listening to this.
And a lot of people are like, oh, that's it. It's over.
It's over. He's won.

Speaker 3 This is like a show of strength. And so that was some of the more extreme.
Then there's other people like, oh, this is going to help him.

Speaker 3 There was a quote from Axios on Sunday that immediately was everywhere on the internet. It was about Democrats feeling worried that Biden's going to stay in the race and then lose.

Speaker 3 And then it also combined with the assassination attempt and Trump, you know, looking strong and surviving an assassination attempt.

Speaker 3 And the senior House Democrat said anonymously to Axios, we've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency. Thoughts on the political implications, Tommy?

Speaker 4 I mean, that person is a defeatist idiot. And I, please just don't talk to the press.
If you have those thoughts, keep them inside your head.

Speaker 4 Like, Donald Trump's instinct, he has some political genius in him. We have to be honest.
Like, his instinct to stand up and pump his fist after getting shot in the ear.

Speaker 4 It's incredible because it created this iconic image. And if you want to run an entire election where you're arguing, I'm strong and my opponent is weak, it's pretty powerful.
You know, that said,

Speaker 4 I think what will likely happen is it will make the people who support Donald Trump even more certain to turn out for him. Right.
They seem to have inspired the bass. It's certainly

Speaker 4 the image is traveling in U.S. culture in ways that Donald Trump doesn't usually go.

Speaker 4 Like 50 Cent put up a photo of his Get Richard Die Try and album cover at his concert a couple nights ago with Donald Trump's head on it. It's probably the first time that's happened.

Speaker 4 So you're seeing people talk about Trump calling him a badass. There was, you know, the Barcelon Sports affiliates were selling t-shirts with the image on it right away.

Speaker 4 So I'm sure it will appeal to a subset of people. But four months is a lifetime in politics.
That's just what everyone has to remember. We have no idea what could happen between now and then.

Speaker 4 So giving up and giving up in a background quote to Axios on July 14th is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 Yeah, go to Politico, you know?

Speaker 3 Dan, what do you think? I think we have had major events in this race already, right? Donald Trump was convicted of a crime like 60 days ago. Amazing.
The polls moved like about a point and a half.

Speaker 3 In front of 50 million people, Joe Biden had the worst debate performance of any presidential candidate in modern history. The polls moved two and a half points.

Speaker 3 The idea that this will dramatically shift the race is absurd. It belies everything we have seen to date.
And there's no real

Speaker 3 obvious historical precedence here. Like Reagan went up in the polls after he was shot in 1981.
He was a freshly elected president at the time.

Speaker 5 And And he was, by the way, and he was seriously wounded. Yes.

Speaker 3 And it was a different era where you would get,

Speaker 3 with much less polarization, where you would get Democrats and independents who did not like Reagan to approve of him in a moment like that, right?

Speaker 3 Which we, you saw that up until just a few presidents ago.

Speaker 3 It does matter, I think, that this happened in Pennsylvania, the single most important state in both Biden and Trump's Electoral College calculus. But

Speaker 3 the race is

Speaker 3 basically where it was before this: is Trump has an advantage nationally and the Battle of Ground States. That advantage is slight but steady.

Speaker 3 And I would be shocked if this were to dramatically change the equation. We're never really going to know because this happened basically.

Speaker 3 No poll can really go into the field that won't include the Republican Convention as well. It's very hard to untail.

Speaker 3 Because you're going to have a convention bounce, which is usually two to three points. I would be surprised if it was that big this time around because the race is so steady.

Speaker 3 But happening at the same time, those are usually very temporary. So we're never, Trump may go up in the polls to the next week.

Speaker 3 Whether that'll stay or not, I'm not sure, but we're not going to vote from the shooting, the convention, or something else.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's polling and then there's just trying to think about the person who was like, I think I'm going to vote for Joe Biden, but then Donald Trump, you know, survived an assassination attempt and put his fist up in the air.

Speaker 3 Like, I have a hard time imagining that person saying, oh, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump now.

Speaker 3 I have an easier time imagining someone who's like leaning Trump, and then this gives them like a permission structure to be like, yeah, it's okay. He's like a badass.
I'm going to do it.

Speaker 4 I think they're going after young men. They're going after men like 18 to 29.
It's like you see that image. You're like, oh, this guy's a badass.
Maybe I'll vote for the first time.

Speaker 3 I think you had to have, I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
We'll see. But I think you had to have leanings that way anyway.
And I wonder if those people were already like sort of priced into this.

Speaker 3 I think that is, you're moving someone from undecided to Trump, not from Biden to Trump. That's what I was going to say.

Speaker 3 And that's really how most of the movement is going to happen in this race is there is this small, but still significant pool of undecided voters. And Trump may pick some up from that.

Speaker 3 Will those people stay with him? Will they actually vote? Open question. What happens with the the next four months will decide that.
But he may get some of those votes.

Speaker 3 And also, by the way, it's an open,

Speaker 5 this is why it is so important that this debate not be about Trump as a person versus Joe Biden as a person. That has to be at the stakes.

Speaker 5 Because if someone's thinking about abortion and taxes, I don't think Trump's fist pump is going to matter. The other, you know, I add the same.

Speaker 5 reaction to the photo that Tommy did, but I also, like, there's been reporting over the years about how much Donald Trump has actually thought about this, that he has thought, that he is, he is afraid of this kind of thing.

Speaker 5 He has thought about it

Speaker 5 about assassination, about being in crowds. He has thought about this in the past.

Speaker 5 And I have no doubt that Donald Trump, who is a creature of the 80s, is very aware of how Ronald Reagan said, honey, I forgot to duck. That there's this video,

Speaker 5 I think it's years after, but Ronald Reagan is at an event and a balloon pops and he goes, they missed me. And the whole crowd goes wild.

Speaker 5 He is a showman in the same way Reagan was a showman. And I think he, in that moment, that part of him that's been worried and thinking about this moment his whole life

Speaker 5 there, and he made the most of it.

Speaker 3 And he's like, I'm okay now.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I would have been thinking about a second gunman myself

Speaker 4 before I got up there and Jersey short it, but you know, I guess what do what works for you, Don.

Speaker 6 Maybe, yeah,

Speaker 3 well, GTL. But yeah, resigning ourselves.
Come on, people. It's like we're not resigning ourselves just like, yeah, if you do that, you're definitely going to get another Trump presidency.

Speaker 3 I'm guaranteed.

Speaker 3 If you try, at least, to avoid that by going talking to voters who are undecided or who haven't made up their mind whether they're going to vote yet, then we have a chance to avoid a second Trump presidency.

Speaker 3 So let's do that. Don, is there a place that people who would take you up in your call to action could go to undertake such activities? You could go to Vote Save America.

Speaker 3 And what we will do is make sure that your time and money is spent on the most efficient candidates and organizations and places to make sure that you have the biggest impact on politics. How's that?

Speaker 5 I thought it was pretty good. It was unclear.
Was that quote saying we should resign ourselves to Trump winning because of the assassination attempt?

Speaker 5 Or we should resign ourselves to Trump winning because the assassination attempt means we can't have an honest conversation about Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 And therefore, because we can't have that conversation, Joe Biden is gonna.

Speaker 3 It was unclear from the question. It was a story about both, so it was sort of all mixed up.

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Speaker 3 One of the weirder strains of post-shooting we need to tone down our politics reactions came from people like Senator Mike Lee, who wrote right afterward that the Justice Department now needs to drop all charges against Trump.

Speaker 3 That's that's unity. That's how we come together.
Sure enough, after Mike Lee tweeted that on Monday morning, Judge Eileen Cannon did just that.

Speaker 3 She dismissed the classified documents case entirely, basically out of nowhere, saying that the appointment of a special counsel violates the Constitution, which also Clarence Thomas had said in the immunity case.

Speaker 3 He was like the one justice that said that in one of his concurring opinions. Jack Smith is appealing.

Speaker 3 Experts think the dismissal is almost certain to be overturned on appeal, particularly because none of the other justices signed on to Thomas's concurrence, not even Alito. But who knows?

Speaker 3 Trump seized on Cannon's ruling, writing on Truth Social that all the other judges should now do the same thing, framed, of course, as a way, again, to unite the nation.

Speaker 3 Here's what I can't figure out. Cannon had already made sure there was no chance that this case was going to trial before the election.
It was not going to happen.

Speaker 3 She succeeded in delaying. Why did she do this? Was she just like feeling emboldened? Is she just, as some legal scholars have said, not that bright? Well,

Speaker 5 it seems like Clarence Thomas gave her an idea. Yeah.
I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. She had not thought of that before.

Speaker 5 Clarence Thomas gave her a roadmap for what she could do to get out of this. She's like, well, I better copy his work.

Speaker 6 He's a smart guy. In his descent.

Speaker 5 I'm just some schmuck who got confirmed during a lame duck.

Speaker 4 In his dissent in the immunity case that came out, what, two weeks ago? So she saw that, read it, and was like, ooh.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think she wanted to get rid of this case.
Not just for Trump.

Speaker 3 As you said, she'd already delayed it past the election. She'd already done him the favor.
But

Speaker 3 also, this is a way to not have to deal with this every single day. Yeah.

Speaker 3 She's also, though, been, she's been playing this game where she didn't want to give Jack Smith anything to appeal to the 11th Circuit and then ask that she be removed from the case, which, like, it really has to be pretty extreme.

Speaker 3 He can now, like, so a lot of the legal nerds think this is getting overturned for sure, like, that she's not going to be able to throw it out.

Speaker 3 But they think it's now possible for her to get booted from the case for doing this.

Speaker 3 Not probable, but possible. So it's a little risky.

Speaker 4 Did you see Matt Gates' tweet? He said future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.

Speaker 3 Good troll.

Speaker 3 Good troll and possibly a solid prediction.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and also future middle judge decider.

Speaker 3 She's the swing boat. She's the swing boat.

Speaker 5 I'd like to ask Joe Biden. I couldn't think of the term.

Speaker 3 Swing boat. Swing boat.

Speaker 3 Anyway.

Speaker 3 I shouldn't go on.

Speaker 3 Speaking of way too young MAGA leaders, the other huge news on Monday was Trump's announcement that his running mate will will be J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance of Ohio, the 39-year-old senator, author of Hillbilly Elegy, and former CNN contributor who went from calling Trump America's Hitler to becoming the MAGA heir apparent and one of Project 2025's best friends.

Speaker 3 Here he is talking to Sean Hannity at the convention on Monday night, giving us a preview of what his potential debate with current vice president Kamal Harris might sound like.

Speaker 15 First of all, the Democrats want to try to run from this, and they're saying that, you know, Joe Biden has to step down or Joe biden can't run for president that's not public spiritedness that's political cynicism because they should have been saying it three years ago kamala harris has allowed america to be saddled with a president who clearly doesn't have the mental capacity to do the job it is not public spiritedness to call for him to step down when he's about to lose an election they should have been doing it years ago and it's not just kamala harris it's nancy pelosi the entire democratic apparatus lied about this guy and look i just want you guys to know we did add that music

Speaker 3 Every time we will play a JD Vance clip, we will be playing that music behind it.

Speaker 5 That's Tommy's weekend dad band.

Speaker 6 That's

Speaker 4 a cover band called Six Wire, and they're just shredding at the army.

Speaker 3 He's always doing the research. Yeah, he's always

Speaker 6 doing the research. To Google just now.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 3 What do you guys think about the Vance pick? What's your take on why Trump took a pass on our boy Doug Bergham, Lil Marco Rubio, and dozens of others in favor of JD? Dan?

Speaker 3 Well, I think in the interview that Trump did that you and I talked about on the pod last week, Trump kind of answered these questions. Doug Bergum, it was the abortion legislation in North Dakota.

Speaker 3 They have gone to great lengths to try to

Speaker 3 essentially lie about what their abortion plans are and their abortion policy is. So that takes Doug Bergamo off.

Speaker 3 Marco Rubio, one, the Florida residency thing, I think was probably a little bit complicated. Also, he doesn't like Marco Rubio.
He doesn't want to spend time with him. He doesn't trust him.

Speaker 3 He thinks he's a huge wuss and not that bright. So that probably takes him off.

Speaker 5 Marco Rubio talks about Gabe now, but a couple years from now, you're going to have to hang him.

Speaker 3 That's what he's thinking.

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 3 Right?

Speaker 3 Is he a good hang?

Speaker 3 He's not a good hang. He's a good hang.

Speaker 3 J.D. Vance is a good hang.
Pod title. Yeah.

Speaker 16 J.D. Vance is a good hang.

Speaker 3 Rubio is going to be someone you're going to hang good. Can we put in the civility alert, please?

Speaker 5 Guys, guys, can we please lower the temperature?

Speaker 3 What have you done to lower the temperature?

Speaker 3 So you think it's process of elimination then? It's process of elimination because there's no good political argument for J.D. Vance.
He adds almost nothing to the ticket.

Speaker 3 There is no,

Speaker 3 he doesn't has no geographic appeal. He doesn't moderate the ticket ideologically.
He doesn't address a specific weakness, right?

Speaker 3 If you go through people's picks in the past, they either bring a state into play. That's a little more pre-politician, but that was a typical reason.

Speaker 3 They appeal to a group that the nominee is weak with, like the reason Trump picked Pence, the evangelicals, or they address a weakness, right?

Speaker 3 Bill Clinton picked Al Gore because Bill Clinton was scandalplaged, and Al Gore had a reputation as the most ethical and, frankly, boring member of the Senate. And so he picked him.

Speaker 3 But what is Vance offers nothing in that way, right? He's just, he's doubling down.

Speaker 3 The only group that Vance has appealed with are the voters that Trump already has, which are hardcore MAGA voters.

Speaker 3 He doesn't even, like, Rubio at least would have given some signal to like normie Republicans that there's like an establishment person there. Vance doesn't do that either.

Speaker 5 I would say two things. I think one, I think, I think one, one thing he does do is he signals to a certain set of rich Republicans or libertarian types that Trump's fully on board with their program.

Speaker 5 And then I think the second thing is J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance can articulate, he does it with Sean Hannity, he can articulate a version of Trumpism that is more sophisticated and rational sounding than it sounds when it comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.

Speaker 5 And I think that is of some utility.

Speaker 3 My thought on the political aspect, I don't think it's about necessarily winning a state or even winning the election. First of all, I think J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance is a pick Trump made because he is confident that he is ahead. Yes, I get exactly.
And so he felt like he could take a little bit more of a risk. We'll see whether that's right.

Speaker 3 But if you read Tim Alberta's interview in The Atlantic with Susie Wiles and Chris La Civita, a very long interview, spent a lot of time with them about their strategy.

Speaker 3 They're running the Trump campaign.

Speaker 3 And they basically say in that interview that they don't care that much about losing suburban women to either Dobbs or Trump's character, things like that, and that they are going after younger voters, particularly younger working-class men, white, black, Latino.

Speaker 3 And when you talk to these younger working-class men, when you listen to them, and I just thought about this because we did our wilderness focus groups with a whole bunch of young people a couple of weeks ago, all over the place.

Speaker 3 And what do they talk about? They talk about how they're struggling financially. They blame corporate greed, but they also blame government.

Speaker 3 They talk about spending too much money on foreign aid and foreign wars. They're more isolationist.
They talk about, some of them talk about immigrants taking their jobs.

Speaker 3 So there's this weird sort of populist anti-establishment. It sounds like J.D.
Vance's version of MAGA and Trumpism. And Trump doesn't really articulate.

Speaker 3 Trump has like a sort of gut instinct about it. J.D.
Vance actually, whether he believes it or not, it's a whole conversation for another time, but

Speaker 3 he articulates it, right?

Speaker 3 And I do think that if you are the Trump campaign they're thinking, we're going to go, we're not trying to, to bridge the gap with the Nikki Haley old establishment part of the Republican Party.

Speaker 3 We're changing the party. This is a new party and we want to go after younger, a new generation.
This is now the first millennial on a ticket, right? J.D. Vance is 39 years old.

Speaker 3 And obviously, Ohio is not going to matter as much because Donald Trump will win Ohio. But maybe they think Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,

Speaker 3 those three states are Joe Biden's last chance. And maybe whatever appeals to Ohio voters about J.D.
Vance could similarly appeal to him in those Midwestern states.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I also wonder, I mean,

Speaker 4 Donald Trump Jr. is extremely close to J.D.
Vance. And it's interesting, look, we kind of make fun of the Trump relationship with his children because he's a narcissist and only cares about himself.

Speaker 4 But I do think having your son constantly in your ear about this one person and his charisma and his political abilities is probably powerful.

Speaker 4 And look, Doug Bergham, he's not necessarily lighting up a room. He's got a lot of money.
And I assumed that Trump would like the old rich guy, but

Speaker 3 he put all that time in with Tiffany. That was stupid.

Speaker 5 I do think also the Don Jr. piece of it, too, is what Don Jr.
is loyal, and he's saying, this is our guy.

Speaker 5 Bergum, maybe, but Rubio is never going to be your good hang. But

Speaker 5 Vance did this long interview with Ross Dathett, in which he lays out.

Speaker 3 Close listeners of the pod would know that I already brought up this long interview and everyone made fun of me for it. Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Love and I I specifically made fun of you.

Speaker 5 Well, first of all.

Speaker 3 And Tommy brought it up literally three minutes ago.

Speaker 3 Did you bring it up on the pod? You said, do the

Speaker 3 takeout than that.

Speaker 5 But first of all,

Speaker 5 I think we should embrace Republican politics in which hypocrisy is a sign of strength.

Speaker 3 But anyway,

Speaker 5 you go through that interview and he is articulating a populist economic message and it's a reminder too that when Donald Trump wins in 2017, the biggest worry was that he would pursue a more economically populist agenda.

Speaker 5 And instead, he embraced repealing Obamacare and tax cuts for corporations and the kind of Paul Ryan style of governance. And it was to our benefit.

Speaker 5 And so I think it is very, like, this is a kind of, it's a scary version of Trumpism because I think it is a far more sophisticated version of it.

Speaker 4 Look, just in simple terms, he's got a compelling personal story. Like Hill Billy Elegy was a good book.
It just was. I enjoyed reading it.
He's a veteran.

Speaker 4 And I think J.D. Vance can talk about how, look, liberals loved me.
You know, they, Rob Ryan, was it Rob Ryan or someone? Ron Howard. Ron Howard made my book into a film.

Speaker 5 Gun close and a mumu. Hollywood loved me until I came out for Trump.

Speaker 4 And then Trump can point to how J.D. Vance used to criticize him, but he came to love him, and now he bent the knee.
So I think there's a compelling story there.

Speaker 4 The one thing that's just worth pointing out is that the Washington Post had a good analysis of J.D. Vance's political weakness in Ohio.

Speaker 4 In 2022, Vance won by six points, but he underperformed every other statewide official. Mike DeWine won by 26 points.
The Attorney General won by 20 points. The Secretary of State won by 19.

Speaker 4 Even the Supreme Court nominees won by double digits. J.D.
Rance had the closest race in part because he had extreme views on a lot of policy areas. So there could be some risk here.

Speaker 3 And Tim Ryan. Yeah, and Tim Ryan.
A lot of credit to Tim Ryan there.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, it was Ohio.

Speaker 6 I mean, he basically ran. J.D.

Speaker 3 Ran even. He ran behind him.

Speaker 3 I think, John, you are right that this is a pick that is made from my confident view of the Trump standing in the race. I just think it is more about

Speaker 3 what J.D. Vance does after they win, not what J.D.
Evans can do to help them win. Because if they really try to

Speaker 3 go for the kill shot here, you really would pick Rubio or Tim Scott or Byron Dallas. Because

Speaker 3 if you can make real inroads, or even the inroads the polls suggest right now with black and Latino men, that's the difference between a narrow victory and a landslide, right?

Speaker 3 That's the kind of thing that could be

Speaker 3 alignment. I think their view is probably, again, no idea if it's right or wrong.

Speaker 3 Their view is just because he picks a black or Latino candidate does not mean that's going to make it easier to get younger black and Latino men.

Speaker 3 Like that, that it's just as possible with a younger white man like J.D. Vance.
Again, who knows, but I'm sure that's their view. Yeah, I just think J.D.
Vance is the pick.

Speaker 3 you make if you want to turn the MAGA agenda into an actual policy agenda.

Speaker 3 Which is why he's so scary. Right.
I think I said this. I never know what we say on mic and off mic, but at some point in the last week, around the time you and I recorded popular.

Speaker 3 You heard this Ross do that calling?

Speaker 4 Oh, he writes for the Times, right?

Speaker 3 Did you talk to J.D. Vance recently? God, it's so fun.
By the way, shame on us. None of us know how to say the guy's fucking name.
I don't care. No one does.
That's his fault.

Speaker 3 I didn't name him. I think it's Dalthy.
Yeah. I think that, I think that's correct.
That's correct.

Speaker 3 I thought that J.D. Vance was the best case scenario in terms of the election because he has less upside than the other ones and some risk because he's so extreme.

Speaker 3 But the worst case scenario if Trump wins. And I think that's correct.
So the Biden campaign statement about J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance said that Trump picked him because he'll, quote, do what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6th, bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, enact Trump's Project 2025 agenda.

Speaker 3 And then they also said this is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors.

Speaker 3 And he has admitted he wouldn't have certified the free and fair election in 2020. What do you guys think of that message? Is that the most effective message? Because

Speaker 3 you can do the hypocrisy thing. You know, he used to criticize Trump and now he doesn't.
But then there's also, he is for all of these extreme positions.

Speaker 3 If you do the hypocrisy thing, wherever you are, I'm going to come and find you. Because it is

Speaker 3 the least effective message possible. You just threaten the audience.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Look, turn the temperature down. Turn the temperature down, Dan.
Get that alarm going. I am going to give you a hundred.
I need to give you a hug. Where's the red head?

Speaker 3 They already played it earlier.

Speaker 5 Dan, Dan's putting a bullseye on those

Speaker 5 on

Speaker 5 those kinds of talking points.

Speaker 3 I'm going to come to your house for a civil discussion of why your message is terrible.

Speaker 3 And it's because we should say, every poll, every focus group, every time you talk to voters, here's the problem. Voters think all politicians are hypocrites.

Speaker 3 So when you go after a politician on hypocrisy grounds, it just doesn't land. It doesn't land with the voters that you need.

Speaker 3 They don't care about hypocrisy.

Speaker 5 Hypocrisy is about the person. Policies are about the people they affect, right? Like hypocrisy is about the person's values, what they represent, it's about their story.
And by the way, J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance is very happy to talk about this and how he evolved on Donald Trump and how it actually came to realize that Trump was the vehicle for taking on the villains that he talks about in Hillbilly Elegy.

Speaker 5 He has a story ready to go about how to turn that into a feature from a bug. So yeah.

Speaker 3 We should at least say that J.D. Vance is absolutely more full of shit than anyone in American politics.

Speaker 5 Yes. His position this week is prayers up for Hitler.
So we should just be clear about that.

Speaker 5 That's where he's at.

Speaker 3 Well, I was just going to say, I don't know how he squares, you know, calling Trump America's Hitler, even though he has evolved on that position, with what he tweeted.

Speaker 3 To me, the reason he is completely unfit for office is hours after the assassination attempt, before we knew almost anything,

Speaker 3 he tweets that President Biden's rhetoric, quote, led directly to Trump's attempted assassination, which is just baseless. It's not true.
Baseless. Didn't know that was true.

Speaker 3 Even if he suspected it, why would you say it without any other information? It's crazy. And also, it doesn't quite fit with the convention's unity message.

Speaker 5 Ron Johnson apparently called Democratic policies a clear and present danger to the nation. And then he was asked by a porter, hey, what happened to the unity message?

Speaker 5 He goes, oh, that was accidentally, actually, the old pre-unity speech that was loaded into the prompter.

Speaker 3 They accidentally loaded the division speech and not my unity speech. He got an anchor man.
You know, they accidentally loaded in what we all believe, not what we're doing.

Speaker 3 Not what we think that we have.

Speaker 3 We're doing this because we want to win. We're close.
They want unity. We want to give them unity.
This is all November. There's no more unity.

Speaker 3 Well, then there'll only be unity. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Unity.

Speaker 5 Yes, that's a scary kind of unity. But

Speaker 5 this is also, I think, like why the

Speaker 5 post-assassination attempt turned down the temperature conversation is a little, it's kind of twisted, because

Speaker 5 that's a good example of just right-wing rhetoric has become completely divorced from reality.

Speaker 5 Even when it's not inciting direct or even indirect violence, it is ascribing views, policies, and outcomes to Democrats in ways that just are not true. They're just making it up.

Speaker 5 They're saying things. They say whatever they want to make the Democrats seem as evil and terrible as possible and Republicans as the saviors.
And that is part of why we are so divided.

Speaker 5 That polarization, right-wing propaganda, is why we are so divided. It is what is raising the temperature, even if you can't point to any specific example.

Speaker 3 I didn't get to see a lot of the convention.

Speaker 3 Did the unity thing work out? What did you guys say?

Speaker 4 It was awesome. It was a good time.

Speaker 3 I was just sort of

Speaker 3 prepping for the show. No, it didn't.
I mean, let me put it this way. I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech that I was like,

Speaker 3 it was bad, but it wasn't bad because it was as extreme as she usually is, but she wasn't softening it. It was just sort of lame.
It was like, it was like Matt. It was like Marjorie Taylor Green went.

Speaker 5 Well, they cut her big finish, which was burning Nancy Pelosi in effigies.

Speaker 3 For unity.

Speaker 4 I thought she was just going to do like CrossFit.

Speaker 3 Nothing really stuck out at me as either super unifying or really me. I mean, some pretty gross, disgusting attacks on trans people.
I didn't see anything. I've read Marjorie Taylor Green.

Speaker 3 I missed them.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I did see an image of Joe Biden falling up the stairs.
They did that one. They did do that.
But I didn't really hear, I don't know. Nothing too exciting

Speaker 3 this first night, right? I'm shocked that the night where the primetime matrix speaker was Tennessee Senator Marshall Blackburn.

Speaker 3 I was waiting for a big reveal. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Anyway. Sort of a tough hit on Glenn Young.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, he was there too. Well, I mean, he had to open for Marcia Blackburn.

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Speaker 3 Let's talk about Joe Biden. Obviously, up until Saturday afternoon, most of the focus has been on Biden and whether he's still the party's best chance to beat Trump.

Speaker 3 The assassination attempt stopped that chatter for now at least.

Speaker 3 President Biden gave an Oval Office address about the attack on Sunday night, and he had a previously scheduled primetime interview with Lester Holt at NBC News on the books for tonight.

Speaker 3 He went ahead with it, and the attack was a big focus there, too. Let's listen to a clip of the Oval Office Address, followed by a clip of Biden's interview with Lester Holt.

Speaker 18 for any violence ever. But in America, we resolve our difference at the battle box.

Speaker 18 You know, that's how we do it, at the battle box, not with bullets. On a call a week ago, you said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye.

Speaker 18 There's some dispute about the context, but I think you appreciate that word. I'm not saying crosshairs.
I was talking about focus on it.

Speaker 18 Look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trump's agenda. Yeah, the term was bullseye.

Speaker 18 It was a mistake to use the word.

Speaker 18 I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye.
I meant focus on him. Focus on what he's doing.
Focus on

Speaker 18 his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate.
Focus on. I mean,

Speaker 18 there's a whole range of things that look.

Speaker 3 Crosshairs just coming out of nowhere there. So what do you guys make of Biden's overall response to the shooting, Dan?

Speaker 3 I think he has met the moment with the sobriety and seriousness that it deserves. Right.
He did what he's supposed to do.

Speaker 3 He went out and addressed the nation after it happened, after getting briefed by his team, returned immediately to Washington, met with his team in the situation room, then came out and updated the country on what he had learned.

Speaker 3 And then in an attempt, I think, to

Speaker 3 bring the temperature down

Speaker 3 and return to what I think he believes is his sort of core political identity to try to give a call to unity in the wake of this. Like that is...
That is what you want the president to do, right?

Speaker 3 At a time of great stress and tension and fear and concern for the public, the president should be out there. We put aside the election, the debate about his political future.

Speaker 3 That's what you, this is exactly what you would expect him to do in that moment. And he did all of those things.

Speaker 16 Love it. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 5 I think Dan is, what Dan is saying, I obviously agree with. I think he did all the things that he was supposed to do.

Speaker 5 I think what is, I think, so troubling in moments like this is the best you can hope for from President Biden is that he does no damage.

Speaker 5 rather than going out there and I think doing anything particularly inspiring or excellent. There's a lot that could be said about what led to this moment.
There's a lot that could be said about

Speaker 5 the politics and culture as we head into this election that he, I don't think, can be a voice for. The best we can do is to have a short, to the point statement.
Violence bad. I'm hearing a briefing.

Speaker 5 But for the most part, you know, there's the Oval Office address was halting.

Speaker 5 He manages to respond defensively to every question from Lester Holt, even where he shouldn't be in a way turning every question into a kind of gotcha question where he feels as though he is, I think, reacting from a place of weakness.

Speaker 5 And the whole thing is very dispiriting.

Speaker 3 I kind of want to separate what he did basically from the shooting on Saturday through Sunday night in the interview. Because I think those are two separate things.
Yes, of course, right?

Speaker 3 There is a long history of presidents rising to rhetorical heights in times like this. Bill Clinton after the

Speaker 3 Oakland City bombing, Reagan after Challenger, Obama after Newtown. Like we've seen that before.

Speaker 3 Joe Biden has given a pretty inspiring moving speeches around January 6th. I think his inaugural address.
I think his address on the anniversary of January 6th, he rose to the moment for sure. Yes.

Speaker 3 Sunday night was not that. I thought the message was appropriate and fine.
Like, yes, he stumbled over some words, but he, like,

Speaker 3 he did, he did, he did fine. He did fine.
And I think that like we should at least point out when he does fine, right? There are times when

Speaker 3 he landed the plane. He landed in the Oval Office at Russia.
The interview, Lesky. A few bumps on the way down.

Speaker 3 He was in the Oval Office.

Speaker 4 I mean, I really like Lester Holt, but I felt the questions at the top that suggested that Biden's rhetoric had anything to do with the shooter felt pretty baseless and unfair.

Speaker 4 And I could see why Biden was annoyed at those questions in particular.

Speaker 5 But the frustration really came through.

Speaker 4 And I think I counted two or three times where he kind of got annoyed and defensive and lashed back Lester and was like, why aren't you guys covering Trump's lies? Why aren't you covering this?

Speaker 3 And like, I just don't think that that, that doesn't,

Speaker 4 it didn't land great at times in the interview.

Speaker 5 It felt defensive.

Speaker 3 The question about the bullseye is extremely annoying question.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 what would have been the very easy answer is like,

Speaker 3 what do you mean? I was talking about putting the focus on Donald Trump, right? That's what I said about his policies. I said it at a fundraiser with a bunch of people.

Speaker 3 That's when I'm going to, that's when I'm going to incite people at a fundraiser where I'm going to say it's time to put the focus on Donald Trump. That's what we should put the focus on.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's just such an easy response to an unfair, annoying question.

Speaker 5 He could even, by the way, say, you know what, Lester, if people found that term to be wrong, I won't use it again. But I think everybody knew exactly what I mean.
You know,

Speaker 5 there's a lot of things a person who is, I think, has more of a capacity to respond quickly and effectively to a question could provide in those moments.

Speaker 5 But instead, you get just a very hard to follow, defensive, confusing response. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, Lester also asked Biden about the debate and the call for him to step aside. Let's listen to some of that.

Speaker 18 Last TV interview, you were asked if you had watched the debate. Your answer was, I don't think so, no.

Speaker 18 Have you since seen it?

Speaker 18 I've seen pieces of it. I've not watched the whole debate.
And the reason I asked, because I guess the question is, are you all on the same page?

Speaker 18 Are you seeing what they saw? Which was moments of, frankly, that appeared to be, you appeared to be confused.

Speaker 18 Lester, look,

Speaker 18 why don't you guys ever talk about the 18, the 28 lies he told?

Speaker 18 Where are you on this? Why didn't the press ever talk about that? 28 times it's confirmed he lied in that debate. I had a bad, bad night.
I wasn't feeling well at all.

Speaker 18 And I had been, without it,

Speaker 18 I screwed up.

Speaker 18 I just asked a question because the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen. You're not on the same line.
I'd have to see I was there.

Speaker 18 I'd have to see it. I was there.
And by the way, seriously, you won't answer the question, but why didn't the press talk about all the lies he told?

Speaker 18 I didn't know anything about that.

Speaker 18 We have reported many of the issues that came up during that debate. No, you haven't.
We'll provide you with them.

Speaker 18 God love you. Okay.

Speaker 18 But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then,

Speaker 18 is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

Speaker 3 I'm on the horse.

Speaker 18 Where have you been?

Speaker 18 I've done 22 major events, but thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening.

Speaker 3 A lot is happening.

Speaker 3 Tommy,

Speaker 3 what did you think of the interview?

Speaker 4 I think Lester's question, are you seeing what they saw? Is kind of the core question that a lot of people are asking about the election generally.

Speaker 4 Like, does Joe Biden know how bad the debate was, or does he really think it was 90 minutes that didn't go well, but four great years of policy?

Speaker 4 Is Biden seeing the bad polling that's out there, or you know,

Speaker 4 polling from swing districts from

Speaker 3 people that don't work for him?

Speaker 4 Is Biden hearing unvarnished concerns from down-bout elected officials? And again, I think what you heard was a response that just felt very defensive and

Speaker 4 angry at the question more than looking to find an answer to kind of assuage those concerns more broadly.

Speaker 5 There's another part in that,

Speaker 5 towards the end of the interview where Biden says, when he talks about the events he's doing, I'm out there proving to people that I have my faculties. So I have my faculties.
And it's sad to see it's

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 5 if that's the threshold, right, if that's what he's out there proving, then we have a,

Speaker 5 that's not enough. It's a massive problem, right? The fact that we all, that, that he doesn't respond, Lester Holt's question, right, like, do you, do you know what we saw? Like, were you confused?

Speaker 5 We don't, it points the fact that we still don't feel like we have gotten an adequate answer from joe biden about what happened that night and it it just means that maybe he's right that the polls are are closer and that people are sensationalizing gaps that are closable but the question is can he close them and if and and the fact that we're going to get questions like this about Joe Biden over and over and over again and that the answers he provides doesn't feel like they give us the space to move on is why people are so concerned.

Speaker 5 It's not just what the polls are. It is the fear that he does not have the capacity to close them.

Speaker 3 Dan, I keep trying to think about like when

Speaker 3 you're advising a president or presidential candidate and they keep screwing things up in interviews, right? Like let's put the like age coherence question aside.

Speaker 3 Let's just talk about his message, right?

Speaker 3 So you see after the first couple of times, he's getting very defensive. He only talks about his accomplishment.
I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this.

Speaker 3 Why aren't you reporting about the lies? The 28 lot, all of which we know from research polling, I'm sure his advisors know this, are not effective responses, right?

Speaker 3 Even if you said them like super coherently and crisply.

Speaker 3 And after the first time you do that, like maybe in the Stephanopoulos interview, I would imagine everyone gets together with Joe Biden before the next interview and say like, hey, less defensive.

Speaker 3 You don't want to be so defensive. You want to talk about the choice in the election.

Speaker 3 You want to pivot to the, and then what do you think is, do you think that's what they're telling him and that he's just not doing it? Do you think he's stubborn?

Speaker 3 Like, I can't figure, this is what I can't figure out. It's like, why can he not just get to the right message when he has these same questions over and over again?

Speaker 3 And you know, they're going to be annoying. You know, you're going to get questions about what was happening at the debate.
Why was this bad? Like, that's just how reporters are.

Speaker 3 And you just have to like figure out how to deal with it.

Speaker 3 I am not sure he is getting all of the information and advice that he needs. Yeah.
It's like there have been multiple stories. There's one in the Washington Post tonight about

Speaker 3 Biden shrinking his circle of advisors, right? Some of the people who we know, we even know the people on the inside of the circle, and they're all very smart.

Speaker 3 But I think that there is a process to manage the president here, right? And it does not include necessarily giving him information he does not want to hear.

Speaker 3 And that includes that your answers are not working. Right.

Speaker 3 Because there is just no basis in research, strategy, or recent political history to suggest the approach he has taken to answering the questions. Put aside the delivery, right?

Speaker 3 Let's just say he's delivered the...

Speaker 3 That's what I wanted to do. Yeah, let's just put that aside.

Speaker 3 The answers are almost a masterclass in how not to persuade a swing voter. Yes.
Right. And that is, it is just, he is making the election all about himself.

Speaker 3 And there is, everyone knows in the strategic imperative of their campaign, when they say is what they have to do is why they had that first in the, they had that early debate in the first place, was to try to shift the focus to Trump, to make it about Trump.

Speaker 3 And Biden has been incapable of doing it. He's unwilling to do that in his answers.
Right. He keeps saying, I'm the guy who did this.
I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this.

Speaker 3 And not, he doesn't even talk about Trump in this interview or the future, by the way. Right.
I mean, he gets, like, I will say

Speaker 3 on Friday, I think that was, he went to Michigan and he gave a great speech. Yeah.
Right. It was well delivered.
It was energetic.

Speaker 3 It was one of the, it was the one of the best speeches he's delivered in many months. Yep.
And both in delivery and content. Yes.
Right.

Speaker 3 It had a proactive, really impressive, very progressive second-term agenda. It put the focus on Trump.
It took his age.

Speaker 3 The word is focused.

Speaker 3 Yes. The word is focused.
And it used his age as an asset, right? He took it on with some humility and

Speaker 3 handled it. And that is not translating off the prompter.

Speaker 5 But that, to me, that was what I was, that's why I brought up the future.

Speaker 5 Because what you want is for Joe Biden to take the speech he gives, right? That everyone's reviewing and saying, finally, he's doing it. He's making the case he needs to make.

Speaker 5 Get in front of Lester Holt and say, Lester Holt, like people are worried about what you're going to do,

Speaker 5 what's going to happen in the next four years of whether you're up to it. Not only am I up to it.
Here's what we're going to get done. Da, da, da, da.
Here's what Donald Trump wants to do.

Speaker 5 Da, da, da, da, da. But he does not do that.

Speaker 3 he just doesn't in these interview settings he he's he is in a he's very defensive right now he's in a defensive crouch since the debate and i because frankly every conversation he's having with any person who is not in his immediate inner circle is a lester holt interview right it just he had these meetings with

Speaker 3 members of congress it is a nightmare terrible yeah i mean he did these uh zoom calls with a bunch of members of congress all the reports are they went quite poorly quite poorly and he people are raising

Speaker 3 people yelled at jason crow who was a representative from Colorado, who asked him about like, how do we make sure that foreign leaders have confidence based on reporting? And he said, stop with that.

Speaker 3 Enough with that. Don't give me.
And then he like walked, and then he left the call. He has a, like, he could be right.
His team could be right. We could all be wrong.

Speaker 3 But he has just a fundamentally different view of where the race stands, the state of his campaign, and the state of his candidacy.

Speaker 4 And I think it's challenging when the people closest to you, and it's a very small circle, are telling you you potentially what you want to hear. Like, I remember a story in the 2004 campaign.

Speaker 3 Barack Obama went to some event.

Speaker 4 We were running against Alan Keyes at the time. We were winning by 30 points, 40 points, right? It was not a real race.
And Obama let Alan Keys walk up to him.

Speaker 4 They got in some sort of verbal exchange, and it became a thing. It was on all the news.

Speaker 4 And Obama gets back in the car, and Robert Gibbs is sitting behind him and just silently staring daggers into the back of the seat. And Obama kept turning around, being like, what? What? What is it?

Speaker 4 You got something to say? You got something to say to me?

Speaker 3 And Gibbs goes, you didn't just take the bait. You swallowed the whole goddamn hook, right? And it's like got in its face and was like, You fucked up, man.
Don't do that.

Speaker 3 I don't care that you're up dirty. When you say that to the candidate, the candidate doesn't say, Thank you.
You're right. I hate you.

Speaker 3 I hate you for dating. But you're like, I'm just going to do it because it's the important thing to do.
And look, I'm not saying none of us are saying this that, like, this is not happening at all.

Speaker 3 We don't know. Like, it could be happening.
And Biden could just be saying, fuck you. I don't care.

Speaker 3 I just, knowing the people around him, I cannot imagine that they are all telling him what he wants to hear. That's what I'm saying.
We know all that. We know them.

Speaker 3 I like some examples.

Speaker 4 Well, there's some there's some reporting that like some of his closest aides are saying that they don't believe in polling.

Speaker 4 And maybe that's where kind of the rejection of polling language you're coming from.

Speaker 3 But even then, like I read that today, and it said, like, it's the quote that post, there's some anonymous person quoting the post.

Speaker 3 So take this for what it is, but it says that Mike Donnellin and Steve Roschetti, his two of his closest advisors, do not believe in polling.

Speaker 3 That is going to come as a gigantic shock to the several pollsters on the Biden campaign. Some of the best in the Democratic Party on the payroll, especially in a general election.

Speaker 3 You get like, this is what this is putting on Kerry and Obama, you get like a collection of five or six pollsters just so you have different

Speaker 5 strategies.

Speaker 3 But yeah,

Speaker 3 you want a big, diverse crew of pollsters. I think that they are managing Joe Biden's moods right now.
I think he is

Speaker 3 a very prideful person. And I imagine this debate.
knocked him for loop. He also hates to be called old.
He prides himself. Like the aging.

Speaker 3 You see this in a lot of reporting. He bristles at being, because he's been the youngest person.
He says this, but he's been the youngest person his whole life.

Speaker 3 And now he is the oldest to the point where people are saying to him. And so you are trying, because if you push, and I've worked, Obama was a great boss to work for.

Speaker 3 I've worked for more challenging bosses where you have to,

Speaker 3 you want to tell them what they, you can't, yell, you can't do what Gibbs did to Barack Obama there because you'll get, you will get the opposite effect. With Biden.
Right. So you got to,

Speaker 3 I can't say whether that's how Biden is right now, but sometimes you have to just sort of like take every inch you can get because you push too far, it's going to go the other way.

Speaker 5 I do remember that when there was,

Speaker 5 we were working on a speech for

Speaker 5 President Obama, and in the speech, it said something about how you can't make decisions based on the polls.

Speaker 5 And as we were having that conversation with David Oxerrod, there was a giant binder on his desk that said polls on it. And they were like, hey, how.

Speaker 5 How big is the binder when you do make decisions based on polls?

Speaker 5 And he shouts out to his assistant at the time, now state legislator, Eric Lesser, Eric, get in here and change this binder to say research.

Speaker 3 research.

Speaker 3 I remember that. It was so funny.

Speaker 5 I did just jump, but like, I do think like this is about politics. We care about this because of the stakes for politics, but it is, what is happening with Joe Biden is not political.

Speaker 5 It is psychological. It is human and personal.
And I do think that is really, really hard. And it's hard, I am sure, for the people around him.

Speaker 5 whatever they are trying to do to make the situation better.

Speaker 5 It is an incredibly difficult situation.

Speaker 3 Well, well, there was some a lot of discussion over the weekend. You know, does this sort of stop the conversation about

Speaker 3 whether Biden should step aside in favor of Kamala Harris or another candidate?

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 now we've gone through this assassination attempt and now we have the Republican convention. So all the attention now is on Trump and the Republicans for the week.

Speaker 3 Based on, it's Monday, but based on some of the polling that came out today, there was some New York Times Sienna, you know, A-plus polls, swing state polls. He's down

Speaker 3 four in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 Three in Pennsylvania, and he's only up three.

Speaker 3 Biden is only up three in Virginia, a state that he won by 10 points. That would be a seven-point swing to the right.

Speaker 3 He won Pennsylvania by one point, so that would be a four-point swing to the right. In those polls, there was a number of other swing state polls.
YouGov polls came out in every swing state.

Speaker 3 He's behind four or five in every one.

Speaker 3 You know, you can square some of this polling with the Biden campaign theory of the case that was laid out in their memo last week, which is they said, you know, we are, it is a margin of error race in the battlegrounds we need to get to 270.

Speaker 3 So Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. And, you know, margin of error, error in those states could be three points, four points behind.

Speaker 3 So yeah, they might just be three or four points behind in those blue wall states.

Speaker 3 But the question is, again, How do you make up three or four points in an incredibly polarized electorate where both candidates are at 100% name ID?

Speaker 3 And every time he goes and does one of these interviews,

Speaker 3 people who watch the interviews, forget about listening to us or anyone else, people who watch the interviews are seeing this.

Speaker 3 And if he just went out and gave the Michigan speech every single day between now and November, it's like, yeah, fighting chance for sure. But I just,

Speaker 3 you know, maybe polarization gets you there. Maybe you get close enough just based on.

Speaker 3 People not liking Donald Trump, people thinking and knowing that Joe Biden is a good man who's done some great things as president, and that gets you close enough. And if he wins, that's how he wins.

Speaker 3 But it's certainly not because he is communicating well or making the case as a candidate.

Speaker 3 Like he obviously did not have some dramatic improvement as a candidate or a stay in the race since the shooting. Like nothing changed there.

Speaker 3 But something did change in terms of how people, how things happen in Washington, even before the shooting, in my head, my sort of deadline for whether Biden would stay in the race was today.

Speaker 3 It was Monday.

Speaker 3 That if he could make it through the weekend and make it to the Republican Convention and the VP nomination, that he would have survived long enough because these things have momentum and momentum peters out.

Speaker 3 And it's just people, people were feeling pressure because the media was focused on this intently. That is not the case.
There are no stories about this now. It's not as big a deal.

Speaker 3 And so maybe something else will happen. But this is Joe Biden's decision.
It's only Joe Biden's decision.

Speaker 3 And it's what has been abundantly clear is that nothing that any other person says to him is going to change his mind. And you know, he met with Hakeem Jeffries on Friday and Schumer on Saturday.

Speaker 3 We don't know how those meetings went, but Joe Biden said he is 1,000% still in the race. And so this is just, this is where he is.

Speaker 3 He is, at no point do we have hit one piece of reporting or evidence that he has ever seriously considered or been open to the idea of stepping down. And that hasn't changed.

Speaker 3 And if he does, if that, and I, I hesitate to see what will change his mind because there's, I don't, I think it's. I feel like you see like.

Speaker 3 You know, the New York Times Sienna polls show him down five or six points in those swing states. And like, is that going to do it? I know.

Speaker 3 Unless like Pelosi, unless like there's, you know, there's reporting that Nancy Pelosi does really want him to consider stepping aside and is working the phones on this.

Speaker 3 Maybe if Pelosi goes to him, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 4 I think I talked to a member of Congress today and asked this question, like, has the momentum stalled out? And this person said no.

Speaker 4 The only difference between a couple of days ago and now is that the conversation has quieted because of the assassination attempt.

Speaker 4 But I've read in many news reports and heard from this person that Pelosi still thinks there needs to be a change and that she's working behind the scenes.

Speaker 4 And this person, you know, is worried that Biden's strategy is basically a run-up the clock strategy. Yeah, clearly.

Speaker 4 And that, you know, it might be hard to do anything through the RNC. But I think what could change his mind is

Speaker 3 a

Speaker 4 big number of elected officials coming up publicly and saying you need to go. Obviously, these Zoom calls, private conversations, gentle cajoling, none of that works.

Speaker 4 This person thought that, you know, firm, harsh, sort of like very public pressure efforts might actually change things. But I don't know.
I'm just repeating what I was told.

Speaker 5 I also, look, I don't know that Joe Biden can be like pushed out of the race, right? It seems like he can't, but I

Speaker 5 do wonder of what happens in the quiet.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, I just,

Speaker 5 I don't know if I'm using this term correctly, but taking the under on Dan's point, that, of course, Joe Biden has to be defiant.

Speaker 5 The second he is not defiant, the second he leaves any opening to the idea that he might not be in the race is the moment he's going to have to step down. That's what Rokana said, basically.

Speaker 5 The second he would even say unto a member of Congress, I'm thinking about it, is the second we're all talking about that and it's happening before his eyes. So the moment

Speaker 5 it will go from, I will never, I will never not be running to I'm out.

Speaker 3 Much like Joe Bryan's interviews, the words you used were incorrect, but I got your meaning.

Speaker 3 Not even going to be.

Speaker 3 The over-under would be like. He wouldn't score score 100 points in a game.
100 points? Over under, yeah.

Speaker 5 Oh, I'm saying. Oh, I see.
I see. So the odds.
I'm saying I think the odds are that higher.

Speaker 3 Than I say it is. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 5 So that's why, wouldn't I then take the under?

Speaker 3 No, no, no. But that's about the spread.
The under.

Speaker 3 Okay, we've gone on

Speaker 3 long enough.

Speaker 3 People love this shit.

Speaker 3 Again,

Speaker 3 just

Speaker 3 another factless assertion. Which advisors around Love It will tell him the truth?

Speaker 3 Is he getting good information? This is the kind of thing. How many podcasts have to come to you publicly?

Speaker 3 I will not step down.

Speaker 4 Axio says Pelosi wants you to shut the fuck up.

Speaker 3 I will finish the job. That is our show for tonight.
We'll be back tomorrow with reactions to all the latest and night two of the Republican National Convention.

Speaker 3 What a good time we have coming up this week, boys. Good times.

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Speaker 19 Being an American right now is a wild ride. The headlines come fast, but what do they actually mean for people's lives?

Speaker 19 I'm Alex Wagner, and on my new crooked media podcast, Runaway Country, I'm talking to people across the nation to uncover how political chaos is shaping their everyday realities.

Speaker 19 Join me and some of the smartest thinkers in politics to ask how we take back the reins of a runaway nation.

Speaker 19 Listen to Runaway Country with Alex Wagner every Thursday, wherever you get our podcasts or watch full episodes on YouTube.