Donald Trump: Bible Salesman

Transcript

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 18 And I'm Sarah Longwell.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Sarah Longwell for joining me today.

Speaker 1 She's the executive director of Republican Voters Against Trump, publisher of the bulwark, host of the Focus Group podcast, and one of the smartest people writing, talking, and working in politics today.

Speaker 1 Sarah, thank you for doing this.

Speaker 18 That was a nice intro.

Speaker 1 Thanks. Well, you know, you see you co-host.
We flat, we'll flatter you, that's for sure. But thanks, seriously, thank you for doing this.
This would be a very interesting conversation.

Speaker 1 Great to be here. On today's show, a cash-strapped Donald Trump prepares to become the first former president to be criminally prosecuted.

Speaker 1 He hawks some Bibles to pay his legal bills, turns his back on Nikki Haley voters, and then Democratic strategist Liz Smith joins to talk about Robert F.

Speaker 1 Kennedy Jr.'s bizarre vice presidential choice. But first,

Speaker 1 let's start with some good news. Ever since his fiery State of the Union performance, Joe Biden has been on offense, barnstorming the battleground states, running ads, and taking Trump on directly.

Speaker 1 Yesterday, he and Vice President Harris were in North Carolina to talk about health care and point out that if elected, Donald Trump would repeal the Affordable Care Act, kicking millions of people off their health care.

Speaker 1 And it seems like, just maybe, all that good work is starting to pay off. There have been a number of polls in the last couple of weeks that have shown Joe Biden with a slight lead.

Speaker 1 And then yesterday, the Bloomberg Morning Consult swing state poll showed Biden making gains everywhere and pulling into a virtual tie in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, three pretty important states.

Speaker 1 Now, a lot of the data nerds and party poopers are saying this might just be statistical noise. Sarah, what do you think? Do you think Joe Biden is a little wind at his back right now?

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, look, if it's going to be noise, you want the good kind of noise, right? You want it to be noisy in your favor.

Speaker 18 Look, I think that some of this probably has to do with everybody. We've been waiting.
We've been waiting for the post-state of the union pickup here.

Speaker 18 People seeing a little bit more of Biden. They're also seeing a little bit more of Donald Trump, right? This is what happens now when

Speaker 18 people have to enter the acceptance phase of their five stages of grief over the fact that these two are running again against each other.

Speaker 18 And once you hit acceptance, right, you start having to make real choices. And you realize that you can't sort of, I listen to a lot of voters in the camp of, but Nikki Haley could still pull it out.

Speaker 18 Something could still happen. And once you hit the point of like, nope, guys, it is Trump again, I do think and have always thought that that would start to shift the dynamic.

Speaker 18 Because look, a lot of these voters aren't that pumped about Biden, but they're really not pumped about Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 And so I just, that's what I think we're starting to see as a very slow, but ultimately, I do think my hope is obviously that this is the way it starts trending.

Speaker 18 Um, and look, movement when the movement is consistent, and this is where I have not been willing to dismiss the polls that we've been seeing that show bad news for Joe Biden because they are directionally consistent.

Speaker 18 And we're starting to see a directionally consistent shift. So, that's how I take it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I look, I think the first step for Biden is to win back some of the people who voted for him in 2020, Democrats who are ideologically aligned with him, who are currently not supporting him in polls, either because they're saying they're not going to vote, they are open to third-party candidates or whatever reason, right?

Speaker 1 They're just not happy. And so those are the people you win back first.
That's how you get this back to a very close race. The one thing I think is

Speaker 1 important is prior to the State of the Union, I think it's hard for people,

Speaker 1 I mean, probably for people who like listen to this podcast or listen to your podcast or read the things we write, to just realize how absent politics is from most people's lives, and particularly Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 Joe Biden has just been, people don't see him, they don't hear from him. He's just not really part of the conversation.
To the extent politics is breaking through, it's largely about Trump, right?

Speaker 1 Trump winning primaries or Trump getting indicted for things and surviving it or whatever else. And since the State of the Union, Joe Biden gave a speech for 30 million people to see.

Speaker 1 He's been in the battleground states. He's been making news, attacking Trump, going after him, and they're running a million dollars of ads in a lot of these states a week.

Speaker 1 And so that just, that helps, right? There's now, there has been this just like cyclone force winds of negative Biden conversation. And now there's some pushback.

Speaker 1 And that's got to help somewhat with, with some voters, right, who are favorably aligned to Biden. And so like, you're not going to, one state of the union is not going to win this thing,

Speaker 1 but it's good progress. And it's been a while since we've seen progress.
So that is great. How much of this do you think is related to the economy?

Speaker 1 Are you hearing anything in your focus groups that show people that the dark clouds are starting to part? What do you think?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so green shoots. I won't go super far in far because what I've seen are basically people saying, I feel like things are starting to get better.

Speaker 18 And I want to tell you, in the focus groups, two of the biggest comments I get, one speaks to your earlier point, which is you'd ask them about Joe Biden. People would say, what is he even doing?

Speaker 18 I don't see him. They'd say, I don't see him.
They say that about Kamala Harris too, this idea of they are invisible. I don't see them.
That has been, I think, a big problem.

Speaker 18 And it has allowed sort of the dementia narrative to fester when people only see Joe Biden in Republican sort of montages of him looking old and feeble.

Speaker 18 And I think that is what the State of the Union really did. It cleared that dementia bar, started to, and Joe Biden being out there, that really helps.
So people are seeing him.

Speaker 18 And then there's the economy. So what people have said in the focus groups now for months is they really catastrophize about the economy.

Speaker 18 The opening question in every focus group I do is just, how do you think things are going in the country? And people tend to say pretty bad.

Speaker 18 And it's almost entirely related to the cost of food, the cost of gas, cost of rent, and the cost of trying to purchase a home.

Speaker 18 But in the last handful of groups that we've done, and we do at least one a week, sometimes two, you're hearing a lot more, especially from swing voters, and these tend to be these college-educated suburban voters,

Speaker 18 starting to say things like, I don't know, I feel like it's starting to get better.

Speaker 18 And that is, that's like, that's where Biden should be. Not the economy is amazing.

Speaker 18 Not you guys don't feel the hit of inflation. You guys don't feel the hit of higher prices.
But hey, we're turning things around. It is getting better.
Let's continue that momentum.

Speaker 18 And so that's the main green shoots I've seen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think one of the takeaways I had from the State of the Union was that in addition to just people seeing Biden being energetic and active, which is incredibly important.

Speaker 1 He just, I think he nailed his economic message the best there than he has in any other point over the last couple of years here, right? We had the Bidenomics period.

Speaker 1 We had, you know, these members of Congress, you know, tweeting out hashtag Biden boom every time there were good jobs numbers.

Speaker 1 It was just like a lot of Democrats, not just the president, he was actually better than most, but we're sort of missing where voters were.

Speaker 1 And I think there's been this alignment of better messaging from Democrats and Biden in particular to sort of say, look where we started. Look how bad things were when I got here.

Speaker 1 Look how much progress we've made. And the other guy is going to take us back.
And then people being more open to that because they are feeling optimistic, like the numbers are still terrible, right?

Speaker 1 I just saw a Navigator poll that came out today, I think, that showed, you know, two-thirds of the country is still pessimistic, right? And that's improvement.

Speaker 1 Like that's that, like, that's how bad things have been. But just the idea that we're headed towards recession, the number of people saying that is going way down.

Speaker 1 The number of people who say we're in recession is going way down. The number of people who say that we are losing jobs, which is obviously factually absurd, is coming down.

Speaker 1 So there is just, I think, a little more openness to this progress message, which is what is just much better than triumph. And I think that is, that has been good for them.

Speaker 1 And I think it's starting to help a little bit. All of this is on the margins, right? Like that, it's all we're talking about here.

Speaker 1 But people are, I sort of, you know, you say the five stages of grief when it comes to dealing with

Speaker 1 sort of coming to acceptance and making your decision in this election. I sort of feel like there are these various, there are a lot of voters who do not want Donald Trump to be president.

Speaker 1 And there's like various obstacles that are preventing them from taking the action to stop Donald Trump from being president. And one of those is immense frustration and anger on the economy.

Speaker 1 And when that just, that hurdle tumbles down a little bit, that helps Joe Biden. I think that's sort of happening here too.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but I also want to say there's two economies. There's the real economy and there's the VIBES economy.
And the VIBES economy has been incredibly out of sync with the real economy.

Speaker 18 And part of that is, and look, I'm not an economist and so I'm not going to go deep on this, but there are some of the economic indicators like unemployment, which should be, it's just boom times for Biden on unemployment.

Speaker 18 But there are other things like the high interest rates, which maybe don't get thought of as much when people, economists are thinking about how the economy looks, but it is keeping people from leveling up their homes.

Speaker 18 It is impacting people's choices.

Speaker 18 And so that genuinely has, you know, some real impacts. But there's also like Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 When he had, when his, when the economy was doing anything good, he would run out and all of his surrogates would do the same thing.

Speaker 18 And they would be like, best economy for black people best economy for women hey buddy how's your 401k doing and they would just pump in the positive vibes and i do think that democrats really worry about saying anything about the economy that might strike as um you know out of touch with where voters are and so they do a lot of sort of hand-wringing

Speaker 18 but there is a way and i think you just you said it for biden to really you know say look we're moving in the right direction let's talk about where we were uh that allows him to be optimistic and start putting out those good vibes.

Speaker 18 Look at, we're going in the right direction. Look how we're moving.
And you've got to send your surrogates out there with a positive message because you can have an impact on vibes.

Speaker 18 Part of what I hear in the focus groups and people are like, I feel like it's getting better. Some of it's because voters are a lagging indicator in terms of how the economy affects their real lives.

Speaker 18 And so they start to feel certain things themselves and start to say it feels better. But they also just hear economic news like in the world.

Speaker 18 Like, and Republicans were pumping the negative vibes about the economy so hard.

Speaker 18 And I think that Democrats countering that and Joe Biden starting to push that out and drive those narratives is really important because you got to be on the vibes as well.

Speaker 1 I'm really torn on this one because obviously I bear the battle scars of helping try to get Barack Obama reelected in the middle of the Great Recession.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we were, we would do focus groups and try to talk about positive movement in the economy.

Speaker 1 And including the use of term green shoots would cause focus groups participants to turn on the moderator like you have never seen, right?

Speaker 1 They just, they were so, they, I mean, they had been through a truly traumatic economic experience with the Great Recession. One day things are great.
The next thing their house is underwater, right?

Speaker 1 And millions of people have lost their jobs. And even if you had your job and you had your house, you were still locked into that house for as far as you could see.

Speaker 1 You know, how you thought of you were lucky enough to own a home, how you thought of your net worth had gone way down because housing prices had collapsed and you were afraid you you were going to lose your job, right?

Speaker 1 And so it's just this very hard thing about trying, you know, it was very easy for Trump at a time of incredibly low unemployment, zero interest rates and no inflation to say those things.

Speaker 1 Biden's obviously not in that position right now. And Trump had, as annoying as it is, this, you know, bullshit business person

Speaker 1 patina because of the celebrity apprentice that gave him some additional credibility.

Speaker 1 I think the right thing for Biden here is what he's saying. It's just like, we're making progress, right? And the other guy is going to make it worse.

Speaker 1 And you know, he's going to make it worse because he wants to give more tax cuts to the rich to pay for cuts to Social Security, right? And just like leave it that way.

Speaker 1 But I think that is, there was just too much triumphalism. And then we switched to too much doomerism.

Speaker 1 And I think we've kind of gotten to the Goldilocks version of economic messaging now and it's pretty good. Yeah, agree.
Okay.

Speaker 1 On Monday, New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Marchand announced that Trump's hush money trial will begin on April 15th. The former president seems to be taking it great.

Speaker 1 He spent much of the last two days ranting about how unfair it is, comparing himself to Jesus. And to pay his legal bills, he is now hawking Bibles in partnership with country star Lee Greenwood.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's actually happening. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 19 All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many.

Speaker 19 It's my favorite book. It's a lot of people's favorite book.
This Bible is a reminder that the biggest thing we have to bring back America and to make America great again is our religion.

Speaker 19 Religion is so important. It's so missing, but it's going to come back, and it's going to come back strong, just like our country is going to come back strong.

Speaker 1 All right. Before we get to the important stuff,

Speaker 1 what is up with the Bible thing? Do you think voters could possibly find this unseemly or is it just something for people like you and I to laugh about?

Speaker 18 No, it's stuff for you and I to laugh about. I mean, you know, every now and then, remember when he held the Bible upside down after he

Speaker 18 tried to clear those protesters, the peaceful protesters with the smoke bombs or whatever?

Speaker 18 You know, that in swing voter world, and I'll talk, this is a specific kind of swing voter where they're pretty tapped in.

Speaker 18 They are right-leaning independents, they're soft GOP voters, they're Nikki Haley voters.

Speaker 18 Those are the people where they like listen to the news and it grinds their gears that this guy is such a fake and a phony.

Speaker 18 But in terms of like his base or in terms of the majority, this is where Donald Trump, you talk about the celebrity thing. This was the big thing that I missed.

Speaker 18 And until I started doing focus groups all the time, I didn't understand just how much the celebrity just, that's the Teflon part because people expect him to sell stuff.

Speaker 18 They expect him to be fake on these things.

Speaker 18 They don't think for a second that he's religious, but they think that he is fighting for them if they're religious.

Speaker 18 They think he is injecting this into the conversation, putting religion back. I hear people unironically say that Donald Trump brought religion back all the time, his two-time Trump voters.

Speaker 18 And that is

Speaker 18 that like you, you look at it, you look at it, we look at it and think, man, this is so shameless. Not only, first of all, guys, the Bibles are free most places.

Speaker 18 Like if you want to get your hands on a Bible, you go to a church and they'll give you one. Like if you want to, if you want the Book of Mormon, they'll just come to your house and give you one.

Speaker 18 Like these are the kinds of books that people give away for free. But the way this one comes with, I don't know if you saw this, it comes with

Speaker 18 the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance,

Speaker 18 all sort of the Declaration of Independence, they're in there too.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, instead of separation of church and state, you can now get sort of the church-state bundle for $59.99 from Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah,

Speaker 1 this is a very important point you're making, right? Like it is,

Speaker 1 I mean, he's selling Bibles, he's selling sneakers, he's selling NFTs, he used to sell wine, steaks, merch, and the celebrity thing works for him in several ways, right?

Speaker 1 It's a permission structure to do all this ridiculous stuff

Speaker 1 because it's what celebrities do, right? He's been, he has been selling stuff to America since the moment America got introduced to him in the 80s, right? He's selling his books.

Speaker 1 He's showing up in comics. He's, he's everywhere.
But the celebrity thing also helps him. And I remember just being so struck by this in an episode of

Speaker 1 the focus group podcast that you did a while back on like the religious voters, they don't think he's religious, but they think he fights for them.

Speaker 1 And then voters who are more socially liberal think that Donald Trump is also socially liberal, like them.

Speaker 1 And I think I remember you saying that voters will, when talking about abortion in focus groups with about Trump, will laugh at the idea that he's actually anti-choice and will volunteer that he

Speaker 1 that he paid for abortions, probably, right? Like that, he's getting it both ways here. Now, I do like this is his face is never going to leave him.
And people, and I think the other thing that

Speaker 1 liberals, myself included, often miss with Trump is that a lot of his voters are in on the shtick,

Speaker 1 right? They, they get it, right?

Speaker 1 They're not, they're not being, they're not, like, as you say, they're not running around thinking, oh, he's a true Bible believer, and then we're going to unmask him as not being a Bible believer and the evangelicals are going to

Speaker 1 back away from him, you know, it's, that's just not how it is.

Speaker 1 But the way that I think we can use this to argue is that it's like I've come to think that just one of the best arguments about Trump is just he's in it for himself, right?

Speaker 1 He's not in it for you, right?

Speaker 1 He wants to get out of, he's running for president, get out of his legal troubles, to reward himself and his rich friends and make a bunch of money and seek vengeance on his enemies, right?

Speaker 1 And here's one example: he's just selling shit to you all the time, right? And the fact that he's raising money to pay his legal bills is another example of that.

Speaker 1 But it's not that all people are going to be like, oh my God, he's just a cheesy salesperson who doesn't really believe in God. Like, that's not the argument here.

Speaker 1 But if we get to laugh about it, great.

Speaker 1 But let's get to, now let's get to the more, the more serious part of this stuff, Sarah. Trump is obviously worried.

Speaker 1 Whenever he starts like rage truthing all the time and playing victim, it's clear that he is, he's evincing some insecurity about his position.

Speaker 1 You talk to more voters probably than anyone else in politics in recent years, particularly the exact voters that Donald Trump can't afford to lose.

Speaker 1 How big a deal are these trials and a potential conviction in this specific trial for Trump?

Speaker 18 Well, right now, I mean, I think the reason he's freaking out right now is a little less about the conviction and a little more that they're not sure that the money's going to line up.

Speaker 18 Like, I think he's been pretty worried about the money, not even, not just because of paying it, but because of what it means about who he is to voters.

Speaker 18 Him being a rich guy, I cannot tell you how much that is both important to him as his brand, but also important to voters. who see Trump weirdly as aspirational, right?

Speaker 18 They, one of the reasons he gets high marks is the economy. You said this before about him being a businessman, but it's also like he's rich and they would like to be rich too.

Speaker 18 And they would like him to run the economy in such a way that they get to be rich.

Speaker 18 And so I think he's genuinely freaked out because even if he makes this sale, which it seems like Jeff Yass and other, you know, Republican billionaires are lining up to try to help make happen to get him out of these financial problems.

Speaker 18 I'm not sure he can sell, like, his stock is up, you know, for this, the truth social stuff, but I'm not sure that he can sell it in time to make his bond.

Speaker 18 So I do think he's worried about the financial stuff. I also think

Speaker 18 I think they've been banking on the fact that the, once he's the presumptive nominee, that

Speaker 18 the judges are going to start to get really icked out by prosecuting and trying a guy who is running for president. It's never happened before.
We've never been here before.

Speaker 18 And I do think they thought at some point, that's why the delay tactics are all about getting people to be like, we're getting so close to an election. He's now the Republican presumptive nominee.

Speaker 18 You put gag orders on him. Any of this stuff now suddenly comes with a big tinge of, hey, you are keeping him from talking to voters.
This is a threat to democracy.

Speaker 18 I'm not sure that the judges are blinking the way that they thought they would in terms of they seem to just be moving forward and they're trying to delay and it's working to some degree, but also like it looks like the New York thing could have, you know, is going to start on April 15th.

Speaker 18 And so I do, and they're these, the, the, look, I've always felt a couple of different ways about the Stormy Daniels trial. It is an election interference trial.
It's about passing bad checks.

Speaker 18 It's about hush money.

Speaker 18 But also, you know, when everybody's talking about porn stars and you got two old dudes

Speaker 18 and Donald Trump gets to be talking about porn stars,

Speaker 18 I do think that that sort of helps him with a certain amount of voters because it seems like such an unserious case.

Speaker 18 He does have to be worried about these swing voters who, for whom convictions and by legal convictions, make a difference. And look, there's been a lot of

Speaker 18 people have been polled on this, and there's roughly 30% of Republicans who say that if Trump gets convicted of a crime,

Speaker 18 that makes them less likely to vote for him or they won't vote for him if he's convicted from a crime.

Speaker 18 Now, that number is way too high because once the conservative media, right-wing media starts working on him, that number is going to go way down.

Speaker 18 But his baggage with swing voters has always been a huge problem. The indictments are a problem for him with these voters.
I talk to them all the time.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, this is where, and there's analysis.

Speaker 18 I've been on TV with people and they've been, they're failing to make the turn between the analysis with base voters, where the legal troubles help him endlessly. That is true.

Speaker 18 Rally around Trump effect, very, very real. But everybody's saying, oh, well, if you convict him, you know, the Americans are going to elect him.
That is not true.

Speaker 18 They're, especially the college-educated suburban swing voters, they still have a lot of faith in the legal system. And if Donald Trump is convicted, it is going to hurt him.

Speaker 18 So I do think he is worried both about like just the sheer volume of the penalties that could be had in his way. Now, look, he's not going to jail before the election.

Speaker 18 He's not, uh, there's, there's a bunch of these cases in which, like, the docs case, that's not going to go before the election.

Speaker 18 Like, there's the January 6th case, it's not going to go before the election. Uh,

Speaker 1 that sound you hear as people, as listeners, the leading this podcast and throwing their phone into the ocean right now on that news. Like, this is what, this is what liberals are hoping for.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying you're wrong.

Speaker 18 This is, I'm sorry, it's true. Like, these are complicated cases where, like, like classified materials, it's, it's hard.

Speaker 18 But he's also, he is very likely going to, listen, this is, this is a good, listen to split screen right now. The other thing that's driving him crazy, Joe Biden is barnstorming swing states.

Speaker 18 Donald Trump is sitting in courtrooms and then he is trying to raise money to pay the legal fees for the courtrooms.

Speaker 18 And for right now, he can feel okay about that because he's been running hot in the polls.

Speaker 18 But as things start to shift, if they start to shift, which as we talked about earlier, I think they're starting to turn just a little bit, You will see him start to freak out more because he can't do the things.

Speaker 18 He doesn't even have enough money right now to hold his big rallies because they're expensive to put on.

Speaker 18 Don't throw your phones in the ocean.

Speaker 1 Well, it's too late. The phones are gone.
So there's only a small percentage. There's only a small percentage of people who still listen to this.

Speaker 1 Just out of curiosity,

Speaker 1 why do you think he's having so much trouble raising money relative to Joe Biden? Like he has been a cash machine in previous elections. What's happening here?

Speaker 18 Number one, he's been been asking his voters for money now for a really long time. A lot of them gave till it hurt.

Speaker 18 Yeah, right. And so I think some people might be a little bit tapped out.
Certainly with big donors, they know they're footing his legal bills.

Speaker 18 They just do. And so there's a lot of people who don't want to foot his legal bills.
That's like not how they want their money to be spent.

Speaker 18 And so I think, and look,

Speaker 18 go get your phones out of the ocean because I'm going to say something that's going to make you feel good that I even hesitate to say because I don't like to be overly optimistic because I'm not a poll denier.

Speaker 18 I do think that people have been super tired.

Speaker 18 Like there's real fatigue among the voters.

Speaker 18 But when I saw that 20% of self-id Republicans in Arizona still turned up to vote for Nikki Haley, even though she wasn't on the ballot and Donald Trump was the nominee, People are sitting around being like, I'm not, I know who these guys are.

Speaker 18 I don't care about, I don't like Joe Biden. He doesn't get, he doesn't get my mark when I'm doing approval ratings.

Speaker 18 But you give me, just tell me when the Tuesday is when I get to go vote against Donald Trump because I want to go vote against Donald Trump. And so I think that there is,

Speaker 18 I think there remains intense enthusiasm from people to keep Donald Trump out of office.

Speaker 18 And I think that the enthusiasm to put Donald Trump in office

Speaker 18 has been waning. Like, I just think people are, I don't think he's got the, look, he's got his hardcore people.
They're in there. They're good.
He can win any primary he wants.

Speaker 18 But like, can he get people to keep chipping in

Speaker 18 their $10? I mean, you aren't on these Republican lists. I don't know if you get them, but I, because I have given to Republicans in the past, I cannot get off the Trump texts.

Speaker 18 And his texts are insane. It's like, they're taking Trump Tower from me.

Speaker 18 And they're just like, they're bananas. And at some point, you run into a ceiling of how many people that that appeals to.

Speaker 18 And look, I could, what could also happen is that there's a lot of people who just go, I'm going to vote for Trump. I don't care about all the nonsense.
I just want the economy to be good.

Speaker 18 And I think he won't get us into wars. There are a lot of people like that.
A lot of people like that.

Speaker 18 But I don't think they want to give Donald Trump money. I don't think people are as invested in him winning.
I think he's going to have an enthusiasm problem as time goes on.

Speaker 18 And I think that the Democrats, it's not that Joe Biden's going to have enthusiasm for him, but I think the enthusiasm to vote against Donald Trump is still there.

Speaker 18 I just don't think people can sustain it all the time the way they could last time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's right. I think Trump has definitely burned through his list with some of the sketchiest tactics.

Speaker 1 I mean, like every text feels like it's the last text they're ever going to send based on the one, like I'm not on the list, but I see a lot of them, you know, from reporters and circulating on Twitter and such.

Speaker 1 And you, these lists have a, they have a half-life and you, you burn them to the ground. And if you're not adding new people to them all the time, then you're, this is, this, part of this will happen.

Speaker 1 You're right right about, you know, the rich people who don't want to give their money. Like he's going to have enough money to run this race.
I think that's an important thing.

Speaker 1 Biden will have more money and his money will be more valuable because Biden will certainly have, as Democrats often do, will have more money on the hard side or the campaign side where your dollars can go further than all these super PAC dollars.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 there is something happening there that Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 while winning a race under 91 filming indictments or being ahead in the RCP polling average, however you want to characterize it, is not able to raise even a good amount, a great, a good amount of money, let alone a great amount of money like that.

Speaker 1 I think that is notable and does speak to something because it what kept him, what kept him afloat before was the five and ten dollar donations. And that is a proxy for something, right? It really is.

Speaker 1 It's not the

Speaker 1 billionaire money, that doesn't tell you a ton other than maybe how some billionaires feel about their tax rates or their level of political engagement.

Speaker 1 But the small dollar stuff does say something and usually correlates to

Speaker 1 some measure of enthusiasm and success in the race. All right, a couple of quick things before we go to break.

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Speaker 1 Moving on here, it's been three weeks since Nikki Haley dropped out of the primary. The New York Times reports that Trump has yet to even call her or even court her supporters.

Speaker 1 And it should be said that though she's out of the race, she's managed to pull in a pretty big number of votes in the primaries, which could end up making a difference in the tight race between Trump and Biden.

Speaker 1 I know it's very on-brand for a guy who thinks the biggest asshole always wins, but are you surprised that even Trump is being this stubborn about Nikki Haley and her voters?

Speaker 18 No, I think that they have a theory of the case,

Speaker 18 the Trump folks, which is,

Speaker 18 and I criticize them for this,

Speaker 18 and I'm glad they're doing it. But this is what they think is going to happen.
They want to actively kick out the Mitt Romney rhinos and permanently bar the Nikki Haley voters, right?

Speaker 18 They want to make a show out of saying, you establishment Republicans are gone because they think that is going to help them with,

Speaker 18 they don't feel like those are their people anyway. They feel like those people hate them, those people drag them down.

Speaker 18 And so they want to push, actively push them out as a show in order to pick up more Hispanic voters, black voters,

Speaker 18 other, you know, the sort of, there's this weird, unholy alliance with kind of the bar stool sports bro,

Speaker 18 heterodox, you know, whatever, the, the Elons, the, um,

Speaker 18 Joe Rogan. Yeah, the Joe Rogan.
That's exactly right. Okay, so I think that this is on purpose.

Speaker 18 Um, I think that like the idea that like Nikki Haley was ever going to be his vice president, I don't think that was there. I do think they want to do something about suburban women.

Speaker 18 Like, I do think they might give that some thought at some point. But right now,

Speaker 18 I'm not surprised he hasn't called her. And if

Speaker 18 I understand why she did this, but like if she thinks he's going to come groveling to her,

Speaker 18 I think that is not going to happen. And my hope is that Nikki Haley learned through the process of running that she didn't understand the Republican Party or its voters and where they are now.

Speaker 18 And that now that she does,

Speaker 18 she opts, she understands that she doesn't have a future in the Republican Party because people like her don't. And just like Mike Pence, she opts not to endorse him.

Speaker 1 I get Trump being so petty as to not call her. And like, that is a very Trump power dynamic move.
I'm not going to call her if she calls me, right? That sort of thing.

Speaker 1 But it, you know, for all the talk of how much, you know,

Speaker 1 smarter and more savvy and more professional the Chris Lasavita Susie Wiles version of the campaign of this campaign is than the, you know, freaking dregs of the Fox News green room who ran the last two.

Speaker 1 It does seem insane in a race that you lost by 50,000 votes over three states to specifically say you don't want those votes as Trump has done in the past and to not try to get them on board.

Speaker 1 It is, I mean, it is, it is so self-defeating. Is it on brand for Trump? Yes.
You know,

Speaker 1 is there a world in which they think there, I don't think there's a zero sum between trying to win over some people who voted for Trump in 2016 and didn't vote for him in 2020 and maybe voted for Nikki Haley in the primary and also trying to activate some set of new voters through, you know, as you say, Barstool sort of toxic internet stuff or whatever, whatever it is, right?

Speaker 1 Like you can go find some other voters or, but you don't have to stick your thumb in the eye of someone who is getting, who's vote, you know, is getting 30% of the vote and 20% even after being out of the race.

Speaker 1 Like that seems like some voters you would try to get. So I think that's kind of crazy.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but it's like right now, they don't feel like they need anybody, right? They are, I think they are shocked by their own success and they're kind of high on their own supply.

Speaker 18 I think, look, if it's really tight, Biden's up by a couple points in all the swing states, uh, and they know that where they're bleeding is suburban voters come uh September,

Speaker 18 then then maybe he calls.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's yeah, that's fair. You know, who are these Haley voters, right?

Speaker 1 There's Nate Cohen in the New York Times is a piece out today looking at precinct level data in Georgia, which says that a lot of the Haley voters in the Georgia primary were Biden voters in the past.

Speaker 1 Who are they from what you've seen? I'm sure you've run into a lot of them in your focus groups, or maybe not a lot of them, given how the primary went, but some of them.

Speaker 1 And can they really make a difference in this election?

Speaker 18 Yeah, of course they can make a difference. I think they're the margin makers, and I think they're the people that lost it for Trump in 2020.
And look, there's kind of like you.

Speaker 18 You can tell me if you think I'm right about this, but the way I think about it, just to keep it simple, is that there's kind of two kinds of swing voters, right?

Speaker 18 There's the Obama Trump voters, which tend to be more working class,

Speaker 18 maybe like less sort of tapped into like following the news every day. I don't like to call them low info because sometimes I think people who opt out of politics,

Speaker 18 they're the same ones, like God bless them for not having to follow everything.

Speaker 18 And then there's then there's the college-educated suburban set, right? These are Romney voters, these are McCain voters. These they liked George W.
Bush. They tend to be,

Speaker 18 you know,

Speaker 18 they like like low taxes and they're also kind of social moderates.

Speaker 18 And they follow the news sort of generally. They're kind of like New York Times, Wall Street Journal,

Speaker 18 regular news followers. And they've never liked Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 And I think that that 30%,

Speaker 18 so and I've read Nate Cohn's piece today about Georgia.

Speaker 18 And I think that there's a difference in different states where you saw the mobilization of the anti-Trump coalition and where there was just kind of a vote.

Speaker 18 Right. Like, I think that

Speaker 18 where Nikki Haley in New Hampshire and in South Carolina, where she had a chance to mobilize voters, the self-ID'd Republican voters who voted for her were roughly 30%.

Speaker 18 It's very similar to the percentage of voters who do not think that the election was stolen, Republican voters who do not think the election was stolen, and who say that they won't vote for Trump if he's convicted with a crime.

Speaker 18 I have been kind of obsessed with this 30% number because I do think that that is the percentage of people who want to move on from Trump.

Speaker 18 And I think some percentage of those people are going to vote for Trump.

Speaker 18 They're Republicans and they're going to go home and they read the Wall Street Journal and they are persuaded by the argument that Democrats are worse. That is one subset of that 30%.

Speaker 18 Another subset already voted for Joe Biden. However, that doesn't mean that they weren't important.
They voted for Joe Biden not because they're Democrats.

Speaker 18 They voted for Joe Biden because they hate Trump.

Speaker 18 And as you noted earlier, holding on to that coalition is like step number one, because I've watched some of these people in the focus groups backslide, right?

Speaker 18 They've who have voted for Biden because they hated Trump, but now they're like, oh, the economy is so bad. I might just close my eyes, turn off the news and, you know, support Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 So that's another kind. And then you've got the Nikki Haley voters that I call the double haters, the double doubters or the pox on vote their housers, right?

Speaker 18 Again, right-leaning independents, soft GOP voters. They're not Democrats.
They're not Democrats. And

Speaker 18 that makes them want to support a Republican if you give them a good one, but they also will not vote for these extreme Republican candidates. They won't vote for Blake Masters.

Speaker 18 They won't vote for Kerry Lake.

Speaker 1 They won't vote for Donald Trump. They won't vote for Herschel Walker.

Speaker 18 And I think that Joe Biden, that's why he runs the campaign.

Speaker 18 That's why the next eight months matter so much, because he has got to take people who right now are frustrated with him over the economy, over immigration, and he's got to make them hate Donald Trump more.

Speaker 18 It's going to be a nasty campaign because the epox on both their housers, the double haters, it's going to come down to, man, the phrase that I hear all the time in focus groups, if it was a drinking game, we'd be dead, which is lesser of two evils.

Speaker 18 It's just, that's what people say, right? That's how they think they're evaluating this. And I think Joe Biden can win on lesser of two evils head to head.

Speaker 18 You can talk to Liz Smith about the third party stuff, though, because I think that is,

Speaker 18 I think that's incredibly perilous.

Speaker 18 When people say that lesser of two evils and you give them some third place to put their vote, that becomes really difficult. But head to head, I think Biden can really win over those double haters.

Speaker 18 And that's who I think the rest of that cohort is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that I mean, that's 2016 all over. You go back to 2016 and you look at focus groups from that year.
It was less or two, two evils all the time.

Speaker 1 And then the people who, the double haters, they heading into that election, they broke, they largely broke for Trump if they voted for either Trump or Clinton.

Speaker 1 And a bunch of them voted for enough of them voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson that Donald Trump became president with like less than 47% of the vote.

Speaker 1 I think you made a really, really important point here, which is when this has been a, you know, I have been very, much like you, very bullish on these Haley voters, Haley's showing in these primaries as a, as evidence of some real potential weakness for Trump as a general election candidate with swing voters.

Speaker 1 And the thing you get back all the time is these people are, you know, they voted for Biden. They voted for Ryan.
They're Biden voters.

Speaker 1 And that is interpreted by some people as these are Democratic mischief makers who registered to, who voted in these open primaries. And that's, there's some of that.
I'm sure.

Speaker 1 I'm sure there's a handful of people who do that. But really what they are is they're swing voters, right? They voted for Trump in 2016, Biden in 20, and Biden has to keep them.

Speaker 1 And Trump has to win them over, right? We often talk about this, how Biden has to keep all these voters. Trump has to persuade some of these people to vote for him if he wants to win.

Speaker 1 And he is not trying to do that. And so

Speaker 1 these are the voters who can decide the election. And Biden is making a pitch to them, right?

Speaker 1 When Nikki Haley dropped out, he made a pitch to their voters. I'm confident they're going to be advertising to them.

Speaker 1 They are going to be using some of the footage of Trump saying non-MAGA, you know, the rhinos are not welcome, only MAGA folks, all of that stuff, to make these people feel uncomfortable with being in, being with Trump in the end.

Speaker 1 And I think this is, we could look back on his approach to this. And yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 He has eight months to change it, but we could look back and say this was a fundamental strategic error born of Trump's absolute stubborn assholery, right? This is like, this is who he is.

Speaker 1 This is what he has done. And this is why he lost.

Speaker 1 All right, speaking of persuading these voters, Republican voters against Trump, the group you started, recently launched a $50 million ad campaign targeting, you guessed it, Republican voters.

Speaker 1 The campaign will highlight the voices of over 100 people who voted for Trump once or twice before, but now refuse to do so again. Let's listen to some of the testimony you've gathered.

Speaker 30 I'm Ethan. I live in Wisconsin, and I voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
January 6th was the end of Donald Trump for me.

Speaker 30 you know, could not believe what was happening before my eyes,

Speaker 30 watching what was an insurrection at the Capitol,

Speaker 30 which was, in my mind, unquestionably led by Donald Trump. I think what Donald Trump did on January 6th was dangerous for multiple reasons.

Speaker 1 In 2020, your targets for people who voted for Trump in 2016, who are you targeting this time? Is it the

Speaker 1 6% or so of Republicans that voted for Biden in 2020? Is it independents? Is it even some of these two-time Trump voters?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so it is exactly the Nikki Haley voters, right?

Speaker 18 So, and it's the double haters because, and sometimes people take this as a negative on Joe Biden when I make this point, but it's not how I mean it.

Speaker 18 But I tell people all the time, I am not building a pro-Joe Biden coalition, okay? Democrats, you go build yourself a pro-Joe Biden coalition, okay?

Speaker 18 I'm going to build an anti-Trump coalition because that is the largest coalition that you have access to.

Speaker 18 These right-leaning independents, these soft GOP voters, even these two-time Trump voters, or the people who voted for Biden holding their nose last time

Speaker 18 and you know have you know sort of struggling to stick with him

Speaker 18 you got to keep those people and you got to go get a few more because you're losing some other places right and

Speaker 18 and so you know you're off you need to offset some of your losses with black male voters and with Hispanic voters and so I think you can get them from

Speaker 18 I think there's been it's not a full political realignment but there's been a political shift and that accelerating can occur and this I'm going to say something that actually might sound a little bit crazy to people, but white voters over 65, you think of those people and you think, man, that's the MAGA target.

Speaker 18 That's the people that Trump, that love Trump. Actually, a lot of those people are the people who became Republicans under Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 18 They're the ones who saw Trump as maybe an aberration the first time, but voted for him holding their nose because they're like, I don't want a Democrat, who after January 6th, were appalled.

Speaker 18 Like, and I want to make it clear, we don't just have 100 testimonials. We launched with 100 testimonials.
We now have almost 200 testimonials.

Speaker 18 And, you know, but in 2020, when we were doing this, we had 1,000 by the time the campaign was over. And I hope we get there again this time.
We want to go after people who are really uncomfortable.

Speaker 18 Like, look, you can't talk about COVID to these people. You can't talk about Stormy Daniels.
You can't talk about anything that they already voted for Trump for in 2020.

Speaker 18 This is for people who saw what happened on January 6th, saw Trump's lies about the election.

Speaker 18 And man, for a certain kind of swing voter, the way that Trump talks about himself all the time, his own grievances, the election being stolen, even if they think there was something weird about the election, they're like, shut up, man.

Speaker 18 Who cares? Just like move on. And those people who hate Donald Trump, right? We are trying to appeal to the anti-Trump coalition and peel those people away.

Speaker 18 Even if some of them who voted for him twice stay home or don't vote at the top of the ticket, which a lot of Republicans did this in 2020, they left the top blank and they voted for Republicans down ticket.

Speaker 18 It's why the undercard of Republicans outperformed Trump in the 2020 election.

Speaker 18 And so our goal is to try to hold the people that we moved in 2020 who are Republicans who are against Trump and keep them more, and then peel away that other crowd of folks who say, I don't want a Republican Party that's dominated by Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 And also I thought what happened on January 6th was awful. And like, again, shift your analysis from what base voters are doing, which is saying January 6th was good.

Speaker 18 Let's like all lionize the January 6th

Speaker 18 people who broke into the Capitol and now have a choir and are martyrs or whatever. And think about sort of your average voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Maricopa County in Arizona.

Speaker 18 They're 45 years old. They've got a couple of kids.
They've always been kind of slight Republicans, but they're socially moderate. They don't want Trump again.

Speaker 18 Or even your older Republicans who are like, what is happening to this party? Because it's not just Trump anymore.

Speaker 18 This is the other thing that's happened since 2020 is they've watched a whole coterie of mini Trumps.

Speaker 18 Like it used to be that there was a sense of, okay, Trump's an aberration, but the rest of the Republican Party is normal. Nobody thinks that anymore.

Speaker 18 Like that, you know, they were running on sort of Republican fumes for a long time of like normality. And those are, those have been going away cycle by cycle.

Speaker 1 I love, I not just, I'm not saying it's just because you're here because I said it on Political Actions React with your colleague Jonathan last

Speaker 1 a couple of weeks ago. I love this ad campaign for so many reasons.
But, you know, people are only listening to the podcast who aren't watching it on video.

Speaker 1 these are basically selfie videos that people are taking right it is raw uncut it's very it's like just it is it's just people looking in their camera speaking just honestly and forthrightly and i think well and i think that's very powerful because

Speaker 1 it reflects how communication has changed in recent years, right?

Speaker 1 Political ads, as we've commonly known them, with their voiceovers and their graphics and all of that, were originally developed to be able to air on linear television between an ad for laundry detergent and an ad for McDonald's, right?

Speaker 1 It was supposed to look like that format. And that's just not how a lot of people communicate anymore.

Speaker 1 And especially with people cutting the cord and being able to fast forward through their commercials or anything else, like, especially, and this is why it was so powerful in 2020, is because we were all locked in our houses for the pandemic.

Speaker 1 That's how people were communicating, right? On FaceTime and Zoom and all of that. And so that's reason one.
I love the format.

Speaker 1 Two, and I think this is just so important: is that in a world where there's so much distrust of institutions, of the media, of politicians, that hearing from people whose life experiences seem like yours is so much more influential, right?

Speaker 1 You're a Trump voter who is wrestling internally with voting against them. And that is a, like, that is part of your identity, right?

Speaker 1 And given how geographically polarized we become, you probably, you may live in a community of primarily Trump voters, right? The people you go to church with may be mostly Trump voters.

Speaker 1 The folks on your softball team may be mostly Trump voters. And so to break with that requires a feeling of community somewhere else, right?

Speaker 1 And seeing someone who is having that same struggle and cross the Rubicon to do it is very powerful. So I absolutely

Speaker 1 love this. I think it's really good.
I think, and I said this when I was talking to Jonathan, but it's just there's a version of this. This is not your project.

Speaker 1 You have a different project, but for folks on the Democratic Party side, like. This is how you go get young voters, right? There's a version of this for Gen Z voters.

Speaker 1 There's a version of this for black voters who are frustrated with Biden or Latino or, you know, who whatever your group is, where you're just letting people hear from people whose life experiences are for them, who are like trusted messengers for them.

Speaker 1 So this is just great stuff. Sarah, if people want to support this effort of yours, how can they do that?

Speaker 18 You can go to rvat.org.

Speaker 18 And I'm not sure you've got a lot of Republicans maybe who are listening, but if you know a Republican who wants to make a testimonial, you send them there. You can upload it on your own.

Speaker 18 But Dan, can I just say what I appreciate about you? Cause you're a political and an advertising nerd. Like you see me, you see this campaign,

Speaker 18 like for real, for what it is.

Speaker 18 And the thing that you just said, like, I think a lot about tribalism, like, doing the focus groups, I just think about how we live as tribes and how important it is to us as a community.

Speaker 18 And people underestimate this about Trump. Those rallies that he's does, man, those are Red Solo Cup parties.
They are about people getting together. They like each other.

Speaker 18 They haven't, they have an in-group. They have an out-group.
There's an out-tribe that they don't like that they can all make fun of. They have in jokes.
That's what Let's Go Brandon is all about.

Speaker 18 Right. And so, you need to make your own tribe, and that identity is still important to them.
A lot of these voters, they still want to say that they're Republicans.

Speaker 18 They just want people to know they're not those kinds of Republicans, that they're against Trump, that he's anathema to their values.

Speaker 18 And the videos that are the most persuasive, and people are always like, Why don't you, you know, we want them to highlight how much they like Joe Biden? That's not these voters.

Speaker 18 Like, the reason these voters work authentically is because it shows Republicans who are struggling with their vote for Joe Biden.

Speaker 18 They say things like, I've never voted for a Democrat before, or I can't believe I have to vote for Joe Biden, but I will.

Speaker 18 And that resonates with the people that we are trying to get to because they are never going to love Joe Biden, but they might hate Donald Trump enough to vote against him.

Speaker 1 I think that is exactly right. I'm so glad you're doing this.

Speaker 1 When we come back, Liz Smith joins the pod to give us a reaction to RFK's pick for VP and tell us more about what the DNC is doing to counter the threat of third-party candidates.

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Speaker 1 Joining us now to talk more about what the Biden campaign is doing to counter third-party candidates like RFK Jr.

Speaker 1 and his new running mate is Democratic strategist and longtime friend of the pod, Liz Smith. Liz, welcome back to Pod Save America.

Speaker 31 Thanks for having me, Dan. It's great to be back.

Speaker 1 All right. You are the perfect person to have as our guest today because you have been advising the Democratic National Committee on their efforts to push back against third-party candidates.

Speaker 1 And today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
announced his vice presidential pick. And it was not Aaron Rodgers.
It was not Jesse Ventura. It was not even Mike Rowe.

Speaker 1 So, Liz, I think perhaps the most important question I can ask you is, who the hell is Nicole Shanahan? And why did RFK Jr. announce her as his vice president today?

Speaker 31 Well, that's a good question. And I think it's a question that a lot of people are asking themselves right now.
Nicole Shanahan is a very, very wealthy Bay Area lawyer, biotech entrepreneur.

Speaker 31 And, you know, it seems like she was chosen for two two reasons. One,

Speaker 31 everyone else that RFK Jr. asked to be on his ticket said no.
You know, people including Aaron Rodgers, disgraced self-help guru, Tony Robbins, Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaker 31 And two, she is very, very wealthy. And we know that Kennedy's campaign is broke and he needs money to hire staff to be able to get on the ballot in states across the country.

Speaker 31 And she has, you know, it looks like pretty unlimited wealth that she can give to the campaign. She's already given four $4.5 million to the Super PACs helping him.

Speaker 31 So this might be the first case in history where someone was able to, you know, buy themselves a VP slot.

Speaker 1 She helped fund, as I understand it, the Super Bowl ad that his Super PAC ran. Is that correct?

Speaker 31 Yep. She gave $4 million to run that ad and help.

Speaker 31 come up with the creative, which, you know, it was creative at the time, but then it did sort of have the effect of bringing a lot of the Kennedys out of the woodwork to

Speaker 31 say how they thought that was misusing the family name.

Speaker 1 And they are not, and which also then led them to point out in many ways that they are not supporting their brother, cousin, uncle, et cetera, to be president, right?

Speaker 31 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Calling his campaign an embarrassment, dangerous, all of that.
The people who know him best are not supporting him.

Speaker 1 His campaign needs money. Does his super PAC need money too? And who is funding this effort? Other than now, Nicole Shanahan, but to date, right?

Speaker 31 Well, and this is really, really, really important. The primary donor behind a super PAC is this guy named Tim Mellon, who is Donald Trump's largest donor this cycle.

Speaker 31 He's given $15 million to PAC supporting Donald Trump, and he's given $20 million to the PAC supporting RFK Jr. And that's really, really important.

Speaker 31 And that's a message that we are trying to get out there far and wide.

Speaker 31 Realistically, RFK Jr. does not have a path to victory in this race.
And he is therefore just playing the role of spoiler.

Speaker 31 And he was recruited into this race by people like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, who viewed him as a useful chaos agent. And now he is being funded by Donald Trump's largest donor.
And why is that?

Speaker 31 Because they believe that he can play a spoiler and help throw the election to Donald Trump in November. So we are trying to scream to the top of the rooftops so that everyone knows that

Speaker 31 he is being propped up by Donald Trump's largest donor.

Speaker 1 Do the polls show that RFK's presence on the ballot does more damage to Biden or to Trump? Because, you know, on paper, he is a conspiracy theorist, has anti-vax views.

Speaker 1 You know, some people have argued that he could actually hurt Trump more. What are you seeing in the numbers?

Speaker 31 Yeah, so right now, one, I would say that a lot of people say they know where his voters come from, and we don't really.

Speaker 31 But if you look across the public polls, I would say broadly, it looks like he takes from both candidates, but a little bit more from Biden.

Speaker 31 And, you know, why is that? I think the Kennedy name goes a really long way there.

Speaker 31 But generally, one thing we've seen about Kennedy's voters is that they tend to be lower information voters, less frequent voters.

Speaker 31 Today, I saw some polling that showed that a third of the people who said they're supporting Kennedy can't name anything about him, anything he stands for.

Speaker 31 So that, to us, signals that you know, there's a big information vacuum.

Speaker 31 And for the people who are just supporting him because of his last name, it's really, really important for them to know that his family members, his siblings, his children, his cousins, his aunts, his uncles, that they aren't supporting him.

Speaker 31 And if the people who know him best aren't supporting him, that speaks to a lot of who he is, both as a person and a candidate.

Speaker 1 You know, he obviously has a lot of support from high-level MAGA types, right?

Speaker 1 He's, he is the, you know, he's all over right-wing MAGA media, interviews with, you know, Tucker Carlson and, you know, as you mentioned, Steve Bannon helped encourage him into the race.

Speaker 1 What is he actually running on? What does he stand for? And where does it overlap with some of the supporters like Tim Mellon and other MAGA types?

Speaker 31 Yeah, so I, you know, I would say this is not a really big issue-centric campaign.

Speaker 1 No, it's not. He's not a policy guy.
Get out of here.

Speaker 31 And so, you know, generally he's trying to tap into people who are dissatisfied with the two-party system. And that's pretty fertile ground right now.
You know,

Speaker 31 I don't think I'm breaking any news by saying that there are a lot of people out there frustrated with politics in general, frustrated with both parties. One, he's trying to tap into that.

Speaker 31 Two, you know, he has a long history of spreading medical misinformation.

Speaker 31 And, you know, a couple decades ago, he hopped onto that anti-vaccine bandwagon, and he's made a lot of money pushing medical misinformation and anti-vaccine information over the years.

Speaker 31 And so he does appeal to people who are anti-vax.

Speaker 31 Yes, a lot of those people are on the right, but there isn't not an insignificant section, subsection of people like that on the left, you know, sort of in the new age left.

Speaker 31 And then when it comes to issues,

Speaker 31 well,

Speaker 31 I would say, you know, the next big bucket in his campaign,

Speaker 31 the guy has never met a conspiracy theory that he doesn't love.

Speaker 31 He thinks that Wi-Fi gives you cancer, that chemicals in the the water and in fish turn kids gay and transgender. He's questioned whether al-Qaeda is behind 9-11.

Speaker 31 And he's just spread a multitude of vaccine conspiracy theories.

Speaker 31 And the most harmful of them of all is at the height of the pandemic, he put out a documentary that was really targeted at the black community, meant to undermine trust in the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

Speaker 31 And that shows why, you know, his policies and his language is actually dangerous. Because that was at a time when there was already a lot of misinformation going around in the black community.

Speaker 31 And we saw

Speaker 31 low vaccination rates. Ultimately, those vaccination rates came up to parity with the white community.
But his words and his actions do have consequences.

Speaker 31 And it's really important that people understand it's not just him going out there saying wacky things, that there are real-life consequences for the dangerous conspiracy theories that he espouses.

Speaker 31 A couple things just on issues, I would say he's gone back and forth on abortion. You know, he's said that he's open to supporting a ban after three months.

Speaker 31 And on gun control, he said that he does not support doing any more gun safety measures and that mass shootings are the result of antidepressants, not semi-automatic weapons.

Speaker 31 So this is a guy who is generally pretty far outside the mainstream.

Speaker 1 All of this is for naught if he doesn't actually end up on the ballot somewhere. Where is he getting on the ballot and how is he doing that? And who's paying for it, frankly?

Speaker 31 Well, this is by far the biggest obstacle that his campaign faces.

Speaker 31 And this speaks to why he chose Nicole Shanahan to be his running mate, because he needs the money to fund his efforts to get on the ballot.

Speaker 31 Originally, he had planned to have his super PAC, American Values 2024, which is funded by Donald Trump's largest donor, Tim Mellon.

Speaker 31 He'd planned to have them do the signature collection, but then they realized there would be too many that they would run in violation of either state or federal law.

Speaker 31 So now the signature collection is going to be done by his campaign. Currently, they are only

Speaker 31 on the ballot in one state, Utah. They say they've collected enough signatures to get on the ballot in a number of other states.
But just yesterday, we learned that in Nevada, where they said they had

Speaker 31 enough signatures to get on the ballot, that

Speaker 31 they had missed that you have to have a named vice president before you start collecting signatures.

Speaker 31 So,

Speaker 31 we have a team that is devoted to keeping track of all this to make sure that they're

Speaker 31 playing by the rules, and that if they get on the ballot, it's in a way that's legal and ethical. But this is very much the biggest obstacle that his campaign faces.

Speaker 31 And the fact that he chose a donor with the ability to self-fund indicates that he understands that he's going to need to dump a lot of money into this if he's going to be able to make it onto the ballots in these states.

Speaker 1 How much more time does he have in some of the key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, et cetera?

Speaker 31 So

Speaker 31 I think the earliest deadlines are in May, and that's with some of the swing states like North Carolina. Some of the deadlines stretch out till September.

Speaker 31 So this is going to be a long slog and it's going to be something that we are keeping a close eye on.

Speaker 31 But obviously we're going to keep a close eye on states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, you know, the states where

Speaker 1 randomly selected six.

Speaker 31 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I know that, you know, as you said, you guys are going to watch this during his what seemingly seven-day

Speaker 1 speech today at this event. R.F.
K. Jr.
kind of took a shot, an oblique shot at what I imagine was at you guys at the DNC saying that the parties are trying to keep him off the ballot.

Speaker 1 What's your response to the people who sit like RFK Jr. or others who say that it's sort of anti-democratic to try to keep him off the ballot?

Speaker 31 Well, he's like Trump, he's a guy that thrives on grievance. He thrives on playing the victim.
We're not trying to keep anyone off the ballot.

Speaker 31 We are just trying to make sure everyone plays by the same set of rules. And when there are a lot of people, you know,

Speaker 31 very wrongly raising questions about the integrity of our elections, we just want to make sure that everyone who is on the ballot is on the ballot through ethical and legal means.

Speaker 31 And then, you know what, if he's on the ballot, game on.

Speaker 31 We are ready for that fight.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's because I live here in the Bay Area. I run into

Speaker 1 kind of a surprising number of people who are at least open to RFK Jr. They have, you know, they've, maybe they've seen some of his interviews on Instagram with wellness people.

Speaker 1 He's sort of, you know, maybe seen some of his YouTube stuff.

Speaker 1 What is your best advice based on your polling and messaging to someone who's trying to convince their cousin, friend, whoever else not to support RFK Jr.?

Speaker 1 What are the best talking points?

Speaker 31 Yeah. So if they are choosing between RFK Jr.
and Joe Biden, I think it's really important to make the the point to them that he has no path to victory.

Speaker 31 He is playing the role of spoiler candidate in this race.

Speaker 31 And he is being backed by Donald Trump's largest donor with the purpose of siphoning votes away from Joe Biden to throw the election to Donald Trump. One, that's really important.

Speaker 31 The second point I'd make is that the people who know him best, you know, Kennedy family members, are not supporting him.

Speaker 31 And generally, you know, these two points I think are the most salient with Democrats who are leaning his way.

Speaker 31 And third, to raise the stakes of what happens if

Speaker 31 he can play the role of spoiler. Do you really want another four years of a con man, chaos agent like Donald Trump in the White House?

Speaker 31 It's really important to raise the stakes, point out he's a spoiler, has no path to 270, and that we really can't afford another four years of Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 And if the person you're talking to is choosing between RFK Jr. and Trump, the talking points is obviously that RFK Jr.
is a visionary leader who's really tough on the border. Is that right? Right.

Speaker 31 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 31 He's too conservative for America.

Speaker 1 That's right. He's just like six inches to the right of Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 29 Exactly.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 as I mentioned at the top, you were working with the DNC on a whole effort that is focused on third-party candidates, not just RFK Jr., but whether that could include Green Party candidates, a no-labels candidacy, Cornell West, who's running.

Speaker 1 This is the first time in my memory that the DNC has had such an effort.

Speaker 1 Obviously, because of what happened in 2016, where the margin of some of the third-party candidates was larger than Trump's victory margin in some of the Battleground states, it's kind of obviously why you're doing, but what are you guys working on beyond RFK Jr.?

Speaker 1 What's the plan here?

Speaker 31 It's to really keep an eye on, you know, all the third-party independent candidates running in 2024. And, you know, after 2000, when Ralph Nader helped throw the the election to George W.

Speaker 31 Bush, after 2016, where candidates like Jill Stein helped throw the election to Donald Trump, I think it's really, really important that we do start to pay attention to candidates other than just the major party candidates.

Speaker 31 Because even though third party and independent candidates might not be able to win, they might be able to throw the election to the Republicans, to Donald Trump.

Speaker 31 And frankly, I'm almost surprised that it has taken us this long to do it, but it is really, really, really important. And

Speaker 31 so we're going to be watching who gets on the ballot where.

Speaker 31 We're going to make sure that we are communicating with voters who might be sympathetic, might be open to those voters, and laying out the choice ahead of them.

Speaker 31 That ultimately, this election is a binary. It's between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
And that

Speaker 31 a vote for Jill Stein, a vote for RFK Jr.

Speaker 31 versus a vote for Joe Biden ends up being a vote for Donald Trump. And we cannot afford another four years of Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Okay, last question for you, Liz. You are famously a huge Cincinnati Bengals fan.

Speaker 1 Were you a little disappointed that Aaron Rodgers would be spending his fall on the football field instead of on the campaign trail with RFK Jr.?

Speaker 31 You know what? I grew up a Jets fan.

Speaker 31 My brothers have season tickets to the Jets. And last year, I think he lasted like 11 minutes

Speaker 31 into the first game.

Speaker 1 It ruined several of my fantasy teams, yeah.

Speaker 31 And it broke my brother's heart.

Speaker 31 So, you know, I had really conflicted feelings about it, but I think overall, I am glad that we're going to see him on the football field and not on the campaign trail. And

Speaker 31 I hope, just for my brother's sake, that he has a better season than the last season.

Speaker 31 But there's no doubt that it would have been very, very entertaining to watch him as a vice presidential candidate. But again, this speaks to the type of campaign that RFK Jr.
is running, right?

Speaker 31 That these were the people in line. None of these people were serious candidates.

Speaker 31 It seems like all that he was attracted to was, you know, celebrity and their willingness to embrace conspiracy theories. And, you know, this is not someone who is a serious candidate for president.

Speaker 1 Liz Smith, thank you so much. Always great to talk to you, and we'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 31 Yep. Thanks for having me, Dan.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Sarah Longwell and Liz Smith, and we'll talk to to you all next week.

Speaker 32 and Farah Safari. Kira Wakim is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 32 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 32 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelavieve, and Molly Lobel.

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