Biden and Haley Tag Team Trump

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favre.

I'm John Lovett.

I'm Tommy Detour.

On today's show, Nikki Haley hits Donald Trump hard and promises to stay in the race through Super Tuesday.

Hell yeah.

And Joe Biden gives a fiery speech in South Carolina and puts together a campaign strategy that includes Taylor Swift.

That's right.

We're going to include Taylor Swift in the opening just to get those numbers.

Get those numbers up.

Get that Kansas Chitty Chief.

Have you guys seen that there's a whole conspiracy theory that the Super Bowl was scripted because an Outback Steakhouse had a poster that said Kansas City Chiefs versus San Francisco 49ers a couple weeks ago?

I did not know that about the Outback.

Was that a poster from 2020 when they played each other in the Super Bowl?

I don't know.

I obviously don't know.

They were pushing on an open door with this.

There's a lot of NFL-rigged conspiracy theories.

There was a rumor out there that there was an actual script written that someone had gotten their hands on.

Vague thinks it was a deep state thing that

the Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl and Taylor Swift.

I don't think it's rigged, but the NFL is definitely like, whoa, yeah, thank God.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

For sure.

Yeah, sure.

Well, that's capitalism.

That's not

which is also offensive.

And she can get here in time from Tokyo.

Yeah, she can.

She gets a private plane.

Tokyo Saturday night.

She's got to fly right after that, and then she's got to go right to Vegas.

Okay.

But first,

the big issue in Congress and the 2024 campaign right now is immigration.

We talked last week about Trump trying to kill the bipartisan deal to secure the border so that Republicans can run on that issue.

The whole party's doubling down on that.

After President Biden endorsed the deal, said that it would give him emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed, and promised to do that the day he signed the bill into law, Trump called the deal a political gift to Democrats, told a crowd in Las Vegas that he wants the blame for killing it, and praised Speaker Mike Johnson for saying the deal would be dead on arrival in the House.

Republicans are instead attempting to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for not addressing the border crisis, even though he's the guy who helped negotiate the bipartisan deal to address the border crisis.

Meanwhile, the lead Republican negotiator in the Senate, Oklahoma's extremely conservative James Lankford, who was condemned by his own state party over the deal, went on Fox and called out his colleagues for playing politics.

It is interesting.

Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel, and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy.

So we actually locked arms together and said, we're not going to give you money for this.

We want a change in law.

And now it's interesting a few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, oh, just kidding.

I actually don't want to change in law because it's a presidential election year.

We all have an oath to the Constitution, and we have a commitment to say we're going to do whatever we can to be able to to secure the border.

So we'll get into the politics in a second, but what's your take on the deal based on what's been reported so far?

I know we don't have text of the deal yet.

Well, yeah, we don't have, first of all, the Oklahoma Republicans are denouncing him for a deal they have not seen.

It doesn't exist on paper.

We've only seen, like we were right before recording, like looking around to find if there was anything with more than a few sentences and kind of passed on descriptions of it.

Like Biden refers to it in a statement.

Reporters have vague details in their stories that they've probably gotten from staffers and senators.

So, you know, basically all we know is that there's what amounts to a conservative border proposal that has been sort of negotiated between Democrats and Republicans.

And, you know, we have like the vaguest of details.

Yeah.

He got in trouble for the sin of negotiating with Democrats.

I mean,

we sort of know the broad streams of the deal, right?

They're going to, that if border crossings get to a certain level, then Biden would be required to shut down the border.

If it gets over an average of 5,000 people a day for a week, or I think if it spikes to one day of 8,500 crossings, you can suspend asylum screening at non-official ports of entry.

And that's a rate that's been hit most days in the past month.

Yes.

Yes.

And there's also just going to be funding.

They might change the

timeline for getting your asylum hearing.

Right now, it's like up to a year, but they're going to try to bring that down to six months because part of the problem is there's just not enough judges and the hearings are taking too long.

Well, up to a year, years.

Yeah, years.

They want to get it down from years to six months.

Yeah.

They're going to try to do more work permits because another issue that's happening is when people claim asylum and then they are released into the country.

They can't get jobs anywhere because they don't have work permits.

So that's an issue they're trying to fix as well.

So that's sort of the

broad strokes of the deal.

The Republicans are saying that because it's up to 5,000

a day to close the border down, that

basically

that Biden and the people supporting this deal want to let in 5,000 a day.

Yeah, that is a permission.

That is a number.

And even like

the idea that we're saying to be like, Langford, a right-winger, has been, and they sent him to do this.

They sent him to his death.

To go do this.

The American Conservative Union in 2020 named James Langford the second most conservative senator in the United States Senate.

This is the squish.

This is the liberal liberal squish who's betrayed the Republicans on this deal.

Yeah, I mean,

look, I don't know the guy, but he does seem like he's sincerely trying to lead a process to solve the problem.

You know, I heard him talk about what his final bill would look like, and he basically thought he could put together something that would get half Democrats and half Republicans to get to maybe 70 votes.

But he's talking about something there.

It is a real problem.

I mean, I heard Lankford say in an interview that in 2010, 21,000 people applied for asylum on the southern border.

The U.S.

now sees that number in two days.

So you can understand how the system is just completely overwhelmed and overtaxed.

And you have this perverse incentive where people know that if you apply for asylum, you can get released into the U.S.

and basically wait out your asylum hearing for years and years and years.

But that has led to you'll have people flying from like Uzbekistan to Mexico to pay a cartel or a trafficker to take them to the border.

And no one thinks that that's how the process should go because if you're coming from Uzbekistan, you're going through all these other countries where you could seek asylum if you actually had a a political concern or need.

Yeah, it's tough to understand the

extent of the crisis because for so long, Republicans have

used Fox and everything else to make people think that we're getting invaded by immigrants, right?

That's their whole shtick.

But last month, illegal border crossings from Mexico were the highest ever recorded.

in history, over 300,000 in December.

And so border patrol, immigration courts completely overwhelmed.

Migrants and asylum seekers waiting forever for hearings.

They're getting bused to cities that do not have the resources to help them.

They cannot get work permits.

So the current system isn't working for anyone, including migrants.

Right.

People have sincere asylum needs who can't get a hearing.

Yeah.

The Biden administration also put in place this, they had an app so that you could, instead of coming to the border, like in your home country, you could try to schedule at a port of entry an asylum hearing.

And the wait times just for that app, like sometimes three, four months just to get through because the demand is so high, because there's just so many people.

So it's just, it's just a mess.

Yeah, it was also a mistake, I think, to push that U2 album as part of the app.

Timely, timely joke there.

Wow.

Okay.

Aging, aging millennial.

Well, everyone's aging, John.

Find me a person who isn't aging.

He's got a good point.

That is a good point.

So immigration activists are angry with Biden for saying he'll shut down the border.

I would say that, as Tommy mentioned, they're still going to allow people to apply for asylum at ports of entry.

And because there's a Republican House, the choice is not between a deal and a better deal.

It's between this deal and the status quo, which the vast majority of Americans, elected officials of both parties, people in border communities and now big cities, do not want.

They want to get control of the border.

The polling is very terrible.

By the way, and the polling shows that, like, I think it's like between,

it depends on the poll, but like, let's say between 55 and 60% when asked, prefer Republicans to Democrats on the border.

Like, it's also an issue in which Republicans feel like they have an advantage.

And like

having Biden in a position to be making this deal

is one we'd prefer than

Donald Trump making this deal.

There's also a lot of money in there for Border Patrol, but also immigration judges, asylum officers, so people to actually process these claims and try to help people get heard.

There's also,

it would provide green cards for refugees from Afghanistan who are in the U.S.

So that's another important wrong the administration is trying to right through this process.

Yeah.

And just to come back to the polling for a second, it's because it's wild.

I was surprised by this too.

So immigration, when you ask people what their top issue is, immigration has always been sort of up there for Republicans, at least in the last several years in the Trump era.

It's now getting to be the top issue for voters.

In a couple of polls, it was the number one issue.

It's now like overtaking inflation as a big issue.

And YouGov just was out with a poll today, and this was not a small sample, it's 40,000 adults, and they asked the question, do you support or oppose building a wall?

Oof.

Support 50%, oppose 33%, with plurality support from the following groups.

18 to 29-year-old voters, black voters, Hispanic voters, basically every single demographic group they tested, except for registered Democrats, it wants a fucking wall, which is, first of all, is bad and would not solve the problem and is just like ridiculous.

But so if that's the question, if that's the polling on the wall, imagine the pulling on, well, at least secure the border.

Yeah.

And I do think like on this issue and a bunch of other issues, I do think there is a broader,

a broader recurring theme, which is

the more people feel like a problem is out of control, not well maintained, that there's a sense of danger, the more conservative their responses get on other issues related to it.

If people feel that crime is high, they want more funding for the police.

If people believe the border is a mess, their immigration positions move to the right.

And so there is a connection between wanting a long-term, humane, compassionate, open, welcoming society and a set of policies that put Biden in a position to say the border is more under control or on the path to being kind of protected, whatever.

Aaron Powell, I bet people also support the wall because it's the only policy solution they've heard about for the past decade, right?

Because our immigration system is this confusing, dated patchwork of laws and processes.

And Trump is offering them a very simple one, a simple fix.

We're going to build a wall and we're going to lock people out, right?

And like that kind of populist demagoguery is highly effective, especially when you're demagoguing groups or just attacking, you know, government that's not working.

And again, people's views on the border are very different than people's views on legal immigration and what to do about the tens of millions of undocumented immigrants who are already here and who've been here for a while.

The majority of Americans still want a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are here and they want more legal immigration.

It's just that the border

and now that the border problem has not just become an issue for border communities, but for cities all across the country, that has pissed a lot of people off and they want it fixed.

So I don't see how this gets done now because Johnson said it was dead on arrival in the House.

I don't even know if it will pass the Senate at this point because I don't think a lot of Senate Republicans might not want to take a hard vote if they know that it's not going anywhere in the House.

But I don't know.

Do you guys see any way this gets done?

First of all, it's just amazing that this has become a hard vote.

I know we should talk about like this, the Trump of the United States.

This is fucking wild.

Like this border debate is a concession to a concession.

This is a border debate that was made necessary by Republicans insisting on it in order to pass funding for Ukraine.

Now what has become then, and then inside of that border negotiation, you have Democrats and the Biden administration conceding on a number of grounds to get to a bipartisan compromise that can conceivably pass both houses.

And the idea that that, like a border control measure that they sought out, that is ultimately like, you know, I am sure that Democrats that are part of the negotiation are fighting hard to make it as humane, compassionate, you know, as much funding as possible to fix the judicial process, to fix the asylum system and what have you.

But ultimately, like this is the nation of laws laws part of the immigration reforms.

There's also the nation of immigrants part that is not even, that is not, that is mostly outside of this conversation.

And the idea that that's become a hard vote is just such a testament to the kind of like control Republicans have had and why you've seen Romney, but even people like Langford, who are normally not this outspoken against Republicans, saying like that this is a joke.

Well, a lot of them have realized that saying, we don't want to do this deal because it would help Joe Biden and Donald Trump wants to, our boss Donald Trump wants to run on it, they realize that that's probably not the smartest thing to say.

That's a quiet part of that.

Yeah, some of them have realized that.

Others have not, including Donald Trump.

But now their complaint is, and Mike Johnson said this in his statement, that,

and Trump's been saying this too, Biden doesn't need a bill.

to close the border, that Biden should be able to do this on his own, which is just a lie.

During the Trump administration, Trump and Johnson both wanted Congress to pass legislation that gave Trump the authority to close the border.

Most of the executive actions that Trump took on his own to deal with the border were overturned by the courts.

And also, by the way, while Trump successfully reduced legal immigration during his four years, thanks to Stephen Miller, he didn't really succeed at reducing illegal immigration by much at all.

And partly because he tried to do all these fucking executive actions on his own, didn't work with Congress, the courts overturned them, and that was that.

And by the way, before they've discovered this idea that the president could have solved this on their own the whole time, even though this is a decades-long problem that no president's been able to solve of either party, you had Cornyn going out there

saying Greg Abbott

wants a bipartisan bill to pass because he can't wait a year for there not to be these policies in place.

Like they knew, like before they discovered that the president could do this without legislation,

the critique they were trying to dampen was the idea that Trump could do a better deal.

And so before they even got to the idea that they didn't need a law at all, they thought that they had to do is convince people they couldn't get a better deal under Trump.

So this is an idea they've come up with in the last, what, week and a half?

It also just doesn't make sense.

It's like, oh, if you think the president doesn't need the authority, then what's your problem with the bill?

Just pass the bill.

If you want to do a stronger bill, Donald Trump, if you become president, then you can do a stronger bill then.

Like, what are you fucking talking about?

It doesn't make any sense.

So Biden and the Democrats want to flip the politics on this issue by making sure Trump and Republicans get the blame for refusing to help do something about the border.

You guys think that's doable?

Any ideas what they should be doing?

I mean, it's going to take a huge messaging push.

I think it's doable.

I mean, because you have the Trump comments, right?

You have Lankford saying what he's, we heard the clip earlier that he's basically saying Republicans are changing their minds on this.

There was a Republican congressman from Texas who said he's, quote, not willing to do damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden's approval rating.

Again, reading the state directions there.

There's all these reports about Mitch McConnell's comments that Trump is trying to kill the bill.

So the challenge is it's going to be an uphill climb for.

Biden because of the political context we talked about earlier.

There was an ABC News Washington Post poll that had Biden at an 18% approval rating on the issue of immigration.

So people are disinclined to trust him on this.

And you will have to convince some very skeptical people that you care about the issue, that you're on it, that you're sincerely trying to fix it.

But I do think you have to try because Republicans have handed you a political gift here by being so ham-handed and stupid about their actual motives.

Yeah, I agree.

Like I'd lean in really hard on this because a lot of most people only think that, you know, Trump and Republicans are tough on the border and Biden's just presided over a mess.

That's all they think.

And they're not following the details of this.

I would run ads.

I would give speeches.

If I was Joe Biden, I'd call them out in the State of the Union.

That's a pretty big audience.

And they're sitting right there.

Yeah, have them yell back at you.

Absolutely.

And make it a moment.

Like, they're giving us so many quotes.

Like, some of the ones Tommy read, J.D.

Vance said,

we're going to take a vote that only harms us politically.

That's why he doesn't want to do it.

Donald Trump has been saying it.

You've got Lankford, the clip that we played of Lankford being like, yeah,

my fellow Republicans are just not solving the problem.

Nikki Haley has been doing it.

And this is not the first time these cowards have seen the politics on immigration reform and then decided to cave.

In 2013, there was a big bipartisan effort led by Marco Rubio until, uh-oh, he saw the politics and decided to blame it on Obama and say he was walking away from the deal because he didn't trust the administration to implement the policy that he didn't have the courage to try to put forward anymore.

The difference between that 2013 proposal and this proposal, like these are light years apart.

That was a comprehensive immigration plan that had a path to citizenship as part of it.

And so they did, and the politics had shifted.

This was like the post-autopsy where Republicans thought they were going to appeal to moderates and Hispanics by shifting on this and a bunch of other issues.

And then Donald Trump shows up and they realize they can't.

We are so fucking far from that.

My hope, too, by the way, is that some of these Republicans in the Senate are so fucking pissed that they still bring this to a vote and go along with passing it.

Because I do think it matters.

Because I am sure there's going to be a lot of pressure to make sure that this is just a Democratic vote, right?

And that no Senate Republicans go along with it.

And maybe they would rather not, right?

It's an easier vote.

If they're at the point where this is going to be dead in the House and you have whatever, 38, 39 Republicans willing to vote against it, like, you know, can't they get Republican votes?

I don't know.

Yeah, I guess they need 10 because it's, you know, it would be filibuster.

You need to, you'd have to deal with the filibuster.

So.

Right.

What I'm saying is if they look, if they're at the point where they think they have four or five, six or seven.

Right.

Are they going to?

I just don't think they'll get all the Democrats.

There's a bunch of Democrats that already said they're opposed to this.

In the Senate that are going to vote now?

I don't think Bernie would vote for this.

I mean, there's a bunch of progressives that think this is too draconian.

Yeah, it's going to be tough.

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So one of the few Republicans who's attacking Trump for killing the deal is Nikki Haley, who's hitting Trump on everything these days.

She's apparently decided to make the next month as miserable as possible for Trump, which we love.

Haley said over the weekend that she's staying staying in the race through Super Tuesday on March 5th and that she doesn't need to win South Carolina, her home state, just show improvement.

Sure, whatever.

I love it.

That's great.

But she also.

Maybe she's a millennial.

But she also spent the weekend laying into Trump.

She weighed in on the Eugene Carroll verdict and accused him of being an insecure, overly sensitive establishment insider who's in decline and can't stop throwing tantrums.

Let's listen.

He was a bit sensitive, and I think his feelings were hurt, but he threw a temper tantrum out on stage, seriously, threw a total temper tantrum.

Look, I mean, he can't bully his way through the nomination.

I think that, you know, it's not surprising that he is surrounded by the political elite, but let's keep in mind, the political elite has gotten nothing done for us in stopping the wasteful spending, has gotten nothing done to secure the border, has gotten nothing done to keep us more safe as we see wars around the world.

I absolutely trust the jury, and I think that they made their decision based on the evidence.

I just don't think that should take him off the ballot.

I think the American people will take him off the ballot.

I do think that he is in decline, and I think that he needs to know to step away.

I do think that he surrounds himself in chaos and we can't be a country in disarray and have a world on fire and be in chaos.

Isn't it sad that it's like quite notable breaking news that an elected Republican trusts the justice system?

Also, Trump absolutely can bully his way to the nomination and she definitely needs to win something.

He may already have.

As much as I enjoyed that super cut.

Come on, Nikki.

I mean, mean, what do you think she's up to here?

Do you think she thinks she can actually win?

This is the part of the campaign, the kind of like pre-South Carolina moments where the candidates, they unburden themselves and they let rip.

And I think part of it is go for broke.

Let's see if this harsher message works.

Part of it is probably just cathartic, right?

I mean, this is around when

in late February of 2016, Marco Rubio started cracking jokes about Trump's penis, for example.

That was

a very high-minded policy debate.

Trump has also screwed up a lot recently.

He's given her some fodder here.

I mean, confusing her with Nancy Pelosi is not normal.

A rare miss for Trump.

A rare miss.

Some of this is just an amped up version of what she's been saying.

Like she's been making an age argument.

She's been talking about the chaos, but it's a lot more pointed now.

Yeah, I was going to say, the chaos used to be the chaos follows him around.

Now it's like Cassidy loves chaos.

So it's interesting.

That was so strange about it is that like

that.

You know, there's parts where she sort of still has the kind of careful avoidance of certain lines.

Like when she describes the Eugene Carolberg, she says she trusts the jury.

But in her campaign speeches, she makes it much more about, you know, when he's out there talking about this verdict, he's not talking about inflation.

He's not talking about the jobs, whatever.

And so it's less about the moral and ethical horror that he represents and more like the politics and the distraction, right?

So there's still those lines.

But then she says he's in decline.

And not only that,

I don't know, like, I don't know if it's purposely going further, if it's just organically gone further than she was before.

She now said in the speech, the country cannot afford four years of Biden or Trump, that the country won't survive it, right?

That is going much further.

So she's...

Is that a debt argument, though?

Is that like a literal debt thing?

She's thinking I'm on debt.

That was a broader, that was a broader point that leads into when she says the part about President Kamala Harris.

So it was like.

She's trying to get Simpson and Bowles.

That's fair.

No, no, that's good.

Hey, hey, that was good.

But so it's like, you know, she's, that's a new, to say the country will not survive four years of Trump is like now, but you also won't say that you're following the cases closely.

It's strange.

So I feel like she is smart enough to know that she simply cannot win more delegates than him at this stage.

Like, I know that one would hope.

Yeah.

But if she doesn't want to win South Carolina, then probably.

But if she goes through Super Tuesday and picks up a bunch of delegates and he gets convicted before the convention and his polls versus Biden crater,

then she's the candidate with the next most delegates and maybe she thinks she wins it there.

It's basically the Dean Phillips strategy.

It's basically what he told us, you know, that he's like, we'll see what happens in the convention if the polls are all, you know.

There were two other things that, that, that came across.

One is, it's really interesting when she talked about all the South Carolina politicians that endorsed Trump.

And she said, oh, like the governor, like the person I beat.

Oh, like the legislators who I came after for not recording their votes and for being basically corrupt.

Oh, and Tim Scott, well, I'm not going to talk about that.

He has to live with his choices.

And so she's like, I'll let you all deal with Tim Scott.

Yeah, I'll let you all deal with that.

I don't know what that meant.

But what I took is like, made fun of Lindsey Graham too.

Yeah, so like, who cares?

Who wants Lindsey Graham on their side?

So, like, there does feel like a little bit of like a like a local, like, fuck these people.

I am pissed and this is my state.

That was the first thing.

The second piece of it is

it was true when she declared victory in Iowa.

Also true when she declared victory in New Hampshire.

There is a like

there.

She is sharp and she is sharpening.

And like, I watched the speech she just did in South Carolina.

It is a, like a ton of like details facts numbers she's like on her game she's hitting her points the audience is like really engaged with her there's there does feel i do think she's getting feedback and because i think she's sharpened her message it no longer feels like a politician's slog and a set of message points you do feel like there's a genuine like kind of purpose to the campaign even though it's a you know all likelihood a fool's errand but like i do think that's like propelling it a little bit there's like a real thing happening lose by 20 Sure.

You know,

special purpose.

But she's making that electoral, that, that, that electability argument.

And like, yeah, maybe she's hanging on for a bad verdict, but maybe also like a couple bad polls that start to make that electability argument get a little bit more purchase.

I don't know.

I do want to talk a little bit more about her answer on the Eugene Carroll verdict because we haven't been able to talk about that yet because it happened late last week.

Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist who a jury decided owes the woman he assaulted $87 million for defaming her.

That plus the ruling in New York State's

the civil trial, the business fraud that the New York AG has brought against him, could put a serious dent in his net worth.

Yeah, that one can go up to $370 million.

I was talking to a friend who was a clerk in

the New York City courts and dealt with some of these punitive damages.

And he was telling me a story about how basically, you know, these jurors get so pissed and it's not their checkbook.

And so they write big checks.

And he was saying that

one time there was a trial and someone had lost a leg and the jury had awarded, I think, like $200 million or $300 million for a lost leg.

And he said to my friend as the clerk, he said, if I gave you $250 million,

would you give me your leg below the knee?

And he's like, hell yeah.

He's like, that's why I have to lower this.

It shouldn't be a deal you'd take.

I mean, it is a bold thing for her to conclude.

Yeah, that helps.

That analogy helps.

It's an article of faith among Republican voters, in part because of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and everyone who ran against Donald Trump, that all these trials are unfair and that the justice system is rigged against him.

But I bet this is what she really believes.

And I think she's making an important point here, which is that this is not just a handful of liberal judges going after Donny T.

These are juries, grand juries who are awarding damages, who are deciding if they should issue charges against him or not.

And so, yeah, like some of this is like liberal people in liberal cities, but there's a grand jury in southern Florida who thinks Donald Trump did some bad things.

And maybe she's kind of like going to spell that out a little more.

Yeah, I do think leaning on the jury, I think that tells us something too about

we've all seen these polls where when they ask people, you know, if Donald Trump is convicted, what do you think?

And will you vote for him?

And then suddenly like Joe Biden's winning the race, right?

And I think that there is still widespread trust in juries, even if Donald Trump has radicalized the Republican Party against the the justice system, courts,

saying that everything's like, you know, Joe Biden and his DOJ trying to go after everyone.

And I do think that as he, as juries start finding him liable or potentially guilty on some of these charges, that, you know, it's not going to be as easy to just blame Joe Biden and Merrick Garland and the DOJ on this kind of stuff.

And I think that's why she said that.

And also don't think that Donald Trump helped himself too much.

You know, he's stormed out of court.

His lawyer's yelling at the judge.

Like you're sitting there as a, he thinks that his like tough guy.

I'm I'm strong.

I'm going to yell at everyone.

Like that might work with like Republican-based voters.

I think just like a jury sitting there listening to E.G.

and Carroll and listening to Trump's lawyer and listening to all the evidence, like they're,

they're going to think differently.

Yeah.

I also, it's, you know, he

right now.

Like, yes, this may not ultimately redound to Nikki Haley being the Republican nominee, but on like Trump is getting it from Joe Biden and the democrats and nikki haley is hitting him pretty hard on this stuff and i do think like that together if that can keep going over the next couple months that'd be nice i like it now i like it do you think uh you think she's veering too heavily into chris christie territory or uh or is this the right message from an analysis point i mean we obviously we you know how we feel about chris christie's message but i mean the old message had her taking third in iowa and losing by 30 points so maybe switch it up i support that i mean like the writing might be on the wall but let's we'll see you know maybe it's the the hamburger from heaven.

Maybe it's the court cases.

I also think that's like, when in doubt, make the strongest argument and tell the best story.

I think she is not doing what Chris Christie, like, look, she's going much harder, but there is a care.

Chris Christie was not playing for

a majority.

He just wasn't.

But like, you see when Chris, when, when Nikki Haley is on stage, you watch her couch things based on conversation she's had or polling polling she's seen.

Like there's a there's a discipline to it, even when she's going really hard.

Like she always throws in like, I don't want to disparage anybody, but, or when she goes after, I mean, it's ridiculous.

When he's in decline.

But like, it's very clearly like.

I'm not going to get defamation training.

Yeah.

What I've heard is.

She'll end Dorson by the convention.

Are we kidding?

I hate that I'm asking this question.

Did you guys read that Ross Duthat column?

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, John.

I didn't save you because moments ago, I almost said, we've all read the Ross Dooth It column.

What was interesting is

Ross Duth wrote a column basically that said she is veering too heavily into Chris Christie territory.

Dooth it or doubt it?

I've never known.

And I'm just going for it.

Didn't mean to interrupt.

Sorry, Ross.

Don't mean to disparage you.

So, and he basically said she is veering too much into Chris Christie territory and that she should try to actually expand her coalition if she wants to win.

And his advice is to like, she should be focusing on issues and criticizing Trump for like not getting enough done while he was president.

My view of that is like, Ron DeSantis tried that.

It read like the thing that Ross wrote read like a Ron DeSantis stump speech.

Yeah.

You already had that.

And no, I agree that Ron DeSantis' loss was overdetermined because he was terrible in every way humanly possible.

But the other thing I took away from the Ross Douthit column, with which we're all familiar, is

the part where she does either she, either it's great minds or she read the column.

She's making an elitist argument.

Yeah.

I I was wondering if she got that from me.

Listen, everybody's reading this column.

Tommy, what do you think of Ross Daffett's column?

Oh, bullshit.

New York Times columnists should go to some Trump events and talk to the people there because they think he was a great president.

Yeah, who accomplished great things in literally every poll and every focus group you'll ever watch says this.

We'll tell you that.

Loved his presidency.

Loved the policies.

That's amazing.

Think he won the election.

That's for sure.

But if they have any complaints about him, it's the complaints that Nikki Haley is making, which is that he like throws tamper tantrum and can't control himself, stuff like that.

That's the only thing that they might not like about him.

And that's like a smaller percentage than you'd hope.

Okay, before we go to break, quick housekeeping notes: Washington, D.C.

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Okay, let's talk about Joe Biden.

He campaigned in South Carolina over the weekend.

The first official Democratic primary takes place there on Saturday, though the president was mostly focused on his likely general election opponent, Donald Trump.

The New York Times has a story about Biden's battle plan for the campaign, which apparently includes a focus on Trump, democracy, abortion, as well as a big surrogate operation of social media influencers, fundraisers with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and a hoped-for endorsement from Taylor Swift.

Biden.

For 10,000, you meet Bill Clinton.

For 20,000, you don't have to.

Wow.

Wow.

Just kidding.

Biden went pretty hard at Trump during his speech in South Carolina.

Let's listen.

Have you noticed?

He's a little confused these days.

He apparently can't tell the District Gene Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi.

Folks, the bottom line is our economy has grown more in the last six months than it ever did at any point in Trump's entire four years in office.

Donald Trump refused to visit a cemetery, a U.S.

cemetery, outside of Paris for fallen American soldiers.

And he referred to those heroes, and I quote, as suckers and losers.

He actually said that.

He said that.

How dare he say that?

How dare he talk about my son and all of us just like that?

Look,

I call them patriots and heroes.

The only loser I see is Donald Trump.

And you're the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president.

You're the reason Donald Trump is a loser.

And you're the reason

we're going to win and beat him again.

What did you guys think of the speech and the message?

It's good to see him in a rally, you know, get some energy.

You're not in the Rose Garden.

You're not stuck at that terrible briefing room podium.

That was good.

Decided to unload the opo clip on Trump there.

You know, he also hit him for saying Trump said he wanted to see the economy collapse for political reasons.

He called him Donald Herbert Hoover Trump.

Nice singer.

That's going to stick.

I like hitting him on the Pelosi-Haley confusion.

I think that's.

Did you view it?

Yeah, you want to call me senile?

It's broken.

How about that?

How about this?

I'll call you senile.

I'm rubber.

You're glue.

You old fuck.

Did you think that there was a sentence that was supposed to come after the Haley-Pelosi line?

He just sort of made reference to it, but he didn't describe it.

He just.

Well, if you listen to the speech, it's a hard transition to the border right after that.

That's what I know.

It's a really hard transition.

It felt like there was something missing.

Maybe there was more to the hit.

He skipped it.

I don't know.

There was a a couple times where there was some assumed knowledge.

Like at one point, he said to the crowd, Did you see that article about Snickers?

And they were like, No, it's about shrinkflation.

Do you know about inflation?

I do know that.

It's not bad at the New York Times.

Anyway,

it was right next to the Rust dude.

I probably was.

No, listen, hey, the shrinkflation is real.

All right.

They're making these peanut butter jars.

They're making these peanut butter jars.

They're hiding it.

You know, they make the divot on the bottom bigger so the jar looks bigger, less peanut butter inside.

And the reason he asked about Snickers is that apparently Snickers bars are a little bit smaller now, but the same price.

I also think that part of that op-ed was about how the prices of things like a Snickers are not going down as fast as the price of a TV.

So if you're buying a Snickers, you're seeing it's a buck 20 now and it used to be a buck, and you're still kind of pissed off about inflation, even though we're broadly inflation's decreasing anyway.

And it's the corporation's fault, right?

Because there's no supply chain issue.

It's making Snickers

shrink their bars.

No, it's not that we know of.

But a lot of people.

There's one thing this country needs.

It's gigantic Snickers bars.

You got to be satisfied.

That's his platform.

All right.

I'm in.

I had a Snickers this weekend, and it was great.

Okay.

So, I mean, were you going to say something?

No, I mean, broadly, I mean, a lot of the speech was focused on accomplishments.

There was a riff on promise made, promise kept.

It wasn't a ton of, here's what I'm going to do if you re-elect me in a second term as compared to what Trump would do.

But, you know, that's going to take some time to flesh out, I think.

Yeah, I think.

First of all, it was just nice to see just like a hard hit on Donald Trump.

I do think it was a bit of like a catch-all without like, there was not, there wasn't a story to the hits on Trump.

Like Haley goes out there, the other, the other person giving speeches across the country hitting Trump this week, but Haley goes out there.

She starts with Trump right away and she says, you know, Trump's out for himself.

He's thinking about himself.

He's not thinking about you.

And then she kind of goes into it.

There wasn't that kind of cohesive story to the critique of Trump and it didn't tie back to the promises made, promises kept section.

It felt like just a few chunks of different things they were putting together to try out.

I liked the parts that they were trying out.

Yeah,

I agree with both of you.

I mean, what I liked about the speech, delivery, lively and energetic, great to see.

It was a tight 24-minute speech.

Love a sub-30-minute speech from anyone.

He went hard at Trump.

That's great.

I think it was focused too heavily on reciting a list of his accomplishments and too heavily on Trump's character, too heavily on what Trump's done in the past.

Like, I don't, I think that it's great to do the troops line, but like, that's from years ago in Atlantic piece, and it just seems old now.

What is missing is a story about what Biden's trying to do for the country versus what Trump's trying to do to the country.

Like I really like Biden's finish, let's finish the job slogan, but now he's got to talk about the job he wants to finish and talk about how he's going to finish it.

He had a, there was a tweet last week where he talked about on the anniversary of Roe v.

Wade and on abortion, his message is great.

It's very specific.

Give me a bigger Democratic majority.

I will codify Roe v.

Wade.

That's simple.

People get it.

That can go for the entire agenda.

And you should say, like, we've done a lot.

Trump has Republicans in Congress blocking everything for politics, even a border deal that they wanted.

Get rid of Trump.

Give me a bigger majority, and we can solve a lot of our problems.

And that also speaks to some of the disappointment that some voters might have that he didn't do more, he didn't get more done.

You have a whole Republican Congress to blame that is being led around by Donald Trump.

You got to tell us, it's got to be about the future.

One of the write-ups of their plan around this speech is there were some Biden advisors basically saying that they want to fight on the economy to a withdraw so that they can be more on their turf where they feel like they can win, which is democracy, extremism, and abortion.

And I think that's, I felt like that's what this speech was about.

Like the promises made, promises kept, I do think that they must be seeing, we're all seeing it, a ton of polling that shows people have, forget the stuff that Republicans blocked.

They have no idea what Joe Biden got done in the last few years.

I see it myself.

Like there's a ton of misinformation around like student debt, for example.

Like one, you know, the last week he made, issued that decision that would cancel another $5 billion in debt.

And there's a ton of stuff circulating on social media that says, oh, Biden has only canceled $5 billion of student debt.

That's like less than half a percent of the outstanding debt, which just isn't true and misses the billions and billions and billions he's canceled for millions of people.

And so I don't know what the answer is there.

I agree with you.

Like Tim Waltz spoke to some reporter and said that

the choice is democracy and freedom versus extremism and chaos, right?

Like that to me is like a simple frame

that is clearly running through this speech, but wasn't laid out in this speech.

And you have to get to the choice.

But

they clearly want more people to understand what he got done.

Even on the student loan stuff, he started to tell the story of what he's been doing and what he hopes to do, right?

He was like, I wanted to cancel all student debt.

The Supreme Court blocked me.

I said,

fine, I'm going to just do as much as I can on my own, but

give me a bigger Democratic majority.

They can send me a bill and I'll cancel the rest in the second term, right?

Like you've got to, even the accomplishments are fine to talk about, but you got to put the accomplishments in the context of what what your vision is, what you're trying to do, so people understand the story.

Because otherwise, it's just a list of policies that people are going to be like, what?

Yeah.

I think the ship has passed, and I think getting credit for the things he feels like he didn't enough credit for.

I do think Biden's got a nail biter coming up.

Emerson poll in early January had him at 69%, Dean Phillips at 5%,

Mary Ann Williamson at 3%.

So he's got to get that

fine.

Did you guys see?

So Dean Phillips also spoke at this event that Biden was at because it was a Democratic primary.

And the guy was, it's a painful clip.

It was him trying to get everyone's attention because everyone's like walking out of the room and eating.

And he's like, can I just get your attention for two minutes, just two minutes.

It was like trying to sell you a car.

For two minutes of your time, I'm going to refer to some New York Times polls you may not have seen.

What you guys make of the time story?

You guys feeling good about the battle plan?

Any other advice you want to give from here in the cheap seats?

Listen, my favorite part of that story is that they had to tell people applying for social media jobs to stop telling them that they wanted to get Taylor Swift's endorsement and basically just sort of like, we agree.

It would be nice.

We've heard enough ideas on that.

Please do not reference that in your strategy deck.

What's your posting strategy?

Yeah.

Don't tell me about your Taylor Swift strategy.

Tell me about your posting strategy.

People want Taylor Swift on board.

Everybody wants Taylor Swift in the tent.

It's tough for the people who applied.

I was glad to hear that they're staffing up quickly.

The campaign team now is 100 members and they have staff in six swing states and South Carolina for the primary.

It also sounds like the surrogate focus is beyond just Taylor Swift.

It's not just elected officials, but it's like micro-influencers and, you know, people who have Instagram followings that you've never heard of, but matter a lot in their community.

So that'll matter.

You know, they're betting that concerns about Trump outweigh concerns about Biden's age.

We'll see.

I don't know.

I do, you know, Democratic candidate X should have a better surrogate operation is like one of the oldest complaints in politics.

I do think it's especially important this time

since Biden is so unpopular and there will likely be third-party options for people to go to.

And it's also going to be really tough to get people's attention just because of the way the media is and because everyone's like, oh, are we having this rerun race again, right?

So I do think you need the biggest coalition possible of notable people who can build a permission structure for different groups of voters to think it's okay to vote for Joe Biden again, even if they're not super thrilled about it.

Taylor Swift for young people who aren't sure if they're going to vote.

Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney for Republicans who don't like Trump, but are like not so sold on Joe Biden.

Like AOC and Bernie for disappointed progressives.

Like you just need as many people out there on the field as possible saying like, we need to do this.

This is good.

This is for us.

It's not about Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

It's about for the it's about the country, you know tip a canoe had Tyler too, you know, the original

Tommy's been waiting to unleash that one.

You're playing the bongos over there, man.

Hammering.

Sorry, sorry.

No, no.

I thought it was funny.

Audio file over here.

This guy.

This guy.

You got that guy in that podcast.

How come responding aggressively to my

other response was aggressive?

I really hope Biden wins.

Taylor Swift did endorse him in 2020.

Yeah, she did.

She endorsed, and she's also used her Instagram to get a ton of people to

register to vote.

So she's been out there.

Yeah,

she sort of does the more like

I'm voting.

She did it more subtly in

Tennessee.

And I think for this time around, she'd want to be like the Biden campaign probably wanted her to be a little more forceful.

Yes.

And by the way, like, it's not like it.

I hope the Biden campaign figures out how to convince to coax Taylor out of her den like a a scared, lost puppy.

But like, it's also on Taylor Swift.

Like, hey, you just did the biggest tour ever.

You made

some references to politics in some places as part of the tour, but it was a largely apolitical tour and you built up a ton of goodwill.

And it's like, it's time to spend it.

You know, the country needs you.

And it's like, that's a, and like, you're the black mirror of the people yelling at her for ruining the NFL.

I like this.

It's just, it's just a heap of things.

Those are called responsibility on this woman.

Well, yeah, I think with great power comes great responsibility.

Do you not agree with that that statement?

There's like loud, annoying voices on social media.

Like, most people are like, oh, I love Taylor Swift, or I love football, and they watch it.

That's it.

Yeah, I do think that's most people in the country.

And he's mad.

Anyone mad about Taylor Swift appearing in their screens for like 15 seconds over the course of a three-hour game?

Biggest babies in the world.

Yeah.

Go outside and maybe ask your mom what it's like to be a woman.

So that's the campaign.

One challenge every president running for re-election has to deal with is unexpected events that divert attention from your message and campaign plans.

That has obviously been happening to Biden with the war in Gaza.

It just escalated over the weekend when Iran-backed militias killed and wounded American troops in Jordan.

Biden said in South Carolina on Sunday when he was in church that the U.S.

will be responding.

And a lot of Republicans are already demanding that he hit Iran hard.

I think Tom Cotton said he'd be a coward if he didn't hit Tehran.

Sounds right.

And Lindsey Graham's been going after him.

Trump's been going after him on this.

Tommy, what's your level of concern over what might happen next year?

Extremely high.

I mean, over the weekend, this was the first time that U.S.

troops have been killed, and 30 were wounded.

So this is like a big attack.

But it's just the most recent of, I think the last count was 150 attacks on U.S.

troops by these Iranian-linked proxy groups in Iraq and Syria.

And then on top of that, you have the Houthi rebels firing at ships all through the Red Sea.

The U.S.

has been hammering targets in Yemen itself since January 11th, basically a daily basis.

So this, you know, because of these Iranian proxy group responses to what's happening in Gaza, the tensions in the region are going up and up and up and up.

And I think the White House is probably deciding, okay, do we hit like IRGC bases, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Syria or Iraq, or do we actually hit targets in Iran itself?

And that is a pretty scary, terrible choice to have to make.

Or not, frankly, they don't have to make it.

They could not respond if they want to, but I suspect they are going to, and they're going to do so in a pretty heavy way.

Man, this unyielding supporter of Bibi Netanyahu is really paying dividends, huh?

Yeah, I mean, I do think that's the frustrating part is,

you know, I know that they're working very hard to get a ceasefire in Gaza.

There's all these reports that they're like close to getting a one-month or two-month ceasefire.

But,

you know, I think we should take the Houthi rebels and some of these other groups at their word that part of the impetus for this increase in attacks on U.S.

forces is because of what's happening in Gaza.

And if you can get a ceasefire there, hopefully a permanent one, and get the hostages back, then you could ratchet down tensions everywhere in the Middle East.

But we'll see.

And of course, Trump's critiques on this are all bullshit, right?

He's like, this never would have happened if I was president.

I mean, who knows, right?

It's just like the simplest, stupidest thing to say.

He also said today or yesterday that the stock market is up because I'm doing so well in the polls that it's for me.

Investors are saying Trump's going to win.

And so we're all excited.

So that the money is going to be.

When the stock market's up, that's Trump.

When the stock market's down, that's Biden.

When the jobs are up, that's Trump.

When the jobs are down, that's Biden.

Yeah, I mean, Trump likes to pretend that the Iranians weren't doing very similar things when he was president.

They absolutely were.

He's just, you know, he's exploiting everything he can for maximum political gain, including the death of U.S.

troops.

Going to be a fun year, guys.

It's going to be a fun campaign.

Well, that's all we have for today.

We will talk to you again on Wednesday, and that's it.

See you at the movies.

See you at the movies.

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