Trump Wins New Hampshire, Rages at Haley

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

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 3 Gangs all here. Here we are.
Big night. Huge night.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary, though his margin over Nikki Haley looks like it'll end up being smaller than the poll suggested, somewhere between 8 and 12 points.

Speaker 3 We're recording this Tuesday night, so they're still counting some vote. But it was apparently enough for Haley to decide that she's staying in the race.

Speaker 3 Here's what she said shortly after they called it for Trump.

Speaker 6 Now, you've all heard the chatter among the political class. They're falling all over themselves, saying this race is over.

Speaker 6 Well, I have news for all of them.

Speaker 6 New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.

Speaker 6 This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go.

Speaker 4 I love the yelling guy.

Speaker 3 I love the the yelling guy. I love that guy.
Go, Nikki. I mean, are we political class? Because this member of the political class does not think it's over.
I want her to go stay all the way in.

Speaker 3 Go to the convention, Nikki.

Speaker 5 12 points? That's fucking... That's this.

Speaker 5 Some people might say that in any other election on earth, that that's a landslide. Not me.

Speaker 5 This razor-thin margin.

Speaker 3 11 points. The way to Milwaukee.
Come on.

Speaker 4 I wonder what the last primary is.

Speaker 3 I'll Google it. Yeah, you Google that.
Why do you guys think she decided to stay in? Dan? I don't think she did.

Speaker 5 What are you talking about? Wait, hold on a second. Dan, we watched this whole thing.
She put it, she, you know, she, she, she got dressed up. She went down there.
She said, here we go.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm going to flash you back to eight days ago.

Speaker 3 We sat in your office. Eight days ago, we watched Ron DeSantis give a speech.
That was not a stay-in-the-race speech. That was absolutely four minutes.

Speaker 5 No message.

Speaker 3 That was pathetic. Maybe she, maybe she will stay in the race.

Speaker 3 Maybe she will. But I don't think that matters matters one iota.
I find myself rooting so hard for her to stay in the race. I don't think it matters.

Speaker 3 Mika Healy's not going to win the Republican nomination. Not with that fucking outcome.

Speaker 3 What are we doing here?

Speaker 3 Unless we get the hamburger from heaven.

Speaker 3 But I think the longer she's in this race, attacking Donald Trump, pissing him off, absolutely. I'll take it.
I mean, maybe she will stay in. The month between...

Speaker 3 New Hampshire and South Carolina is traditionally a death march in Republican politics. George W.
Bush and some of the dirtiest politics of that time seems like, frankly, nothing now

Speaker 3 destroyed John McCain in that period to then essentially lock up that nomination in South Carolina.

Speaker 3 Nikki Hilly is going to be under a brutal assault for a month to go to her home state where she's pulling in the single digits and losing to Trump by about 30 points in an electorate that is so, and we talk about how it's so unfavorable to her.

Speaker 3 Maybe she will want to go through that humiliating process. I would be surprised.
What has she got to lose?

Speaker 4 Well, I think the big question is how much money she can raise in the next 24, 48 hours. If she can't raise money, she's got to get out.
There's just no two.

Speaker 3 Her campaign is billionaire-dependent.

Speaker 3 She has no grassroots fundraising base, and there's this fun, these billionaires are holding this fundraiser for her in a week, and we'll see if they're still holding it a few days from now.

Speaker 4 Apparently, she's going to campaign in the Virgin Islands tomorrow

Speaker 4 for their February 8th caucus, and there's Nevada. I figured it out the last primary is the June 4th, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota primary.
So that's how long this could last.

Speaker 4 June 4th.

Speaker 3 Oh, please. Tell me, when is the can you find the Virginia primary? Dan? That's

Speaker 3 the one primary she has a legitimate chance to win. Well, so they, she,

Speaker 3 their argument, the Haley team, they put out a memo this morning, sort of signaling that they were not going, she was not going to drop out.

Speaker 3 Uh, if it was the 20 or 30-point blowout that the poll suggested, maybe that wouldn't have been an operative memo.

Speaker 3 But their argument is basically, so we got South Carolina, our home state, is on February 24th,

Speaker 3 and Democrats can also vote. Anyone can vote in that primary.

Speaker 3 Unless you're a Democrat that votes in the February 3rd primary, the Democratic primary for Joe Biden, then obviously you can't vote again. But if you don't vote in that, you can vote.

Speaker 3 So that's an open primary in South Carolina. And then they go to Michigan.
Michigan is open. And then D.C.

Speaker 3 Good, good district for her. Then the caucuses in Idaho and North Dakota.
And then Super Tuesday on March 5th. And 11 of the 16 states on Super Tuesday have open or semi-open primaries.

Speaker 4 That is true, but it's far less important than the fact that the Trump team has completely rigged the rules so that now if he gets 51% of the vote in some of these states, he will take all the delegates, including states like California.

Speaker 3 It is true that some of these states have open primaries, but none of them have open primaries with a tradition of independent participation like New Hampshire.

Speaker 3 Half of the voters in this election were either independents or Democrats who re-registered as independents to participate in this process. Right.

Speaker 3 Almost sounds like independents and Democrats infiltrated to take a clean victory away from Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Who managed to stop the steal.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 it does seem as though, like, if your whole, if your campaign memo is about how don't worry, the Republican primary has lots of opportunities for people who aren't Republicans to vote, you do have a deeper problem that can't be overcome by the calendar.

Speaker 3 That would be the memo written by the campaign that lost Republicans by 50 points in this election tonight. So you didn't say

Speaker 3 she didn't do so well with Republican voters.

Speaker 3 She's running for the Republican that you're running for the Republican primary. Like at some point, right, presumably, she has to

Speaker 5 at some point she has to win Republicans to win the Republican primary. That would be sort of, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I'm not listening. This is what you guys pay the big bucks for.
Yeah, like I'm a speechwriter.

Speaker 3 I'm not a data guy.

Speaker 5 I'm not a data. It was more poetry than pose.
But I have to say, I also was a math person. And I do think at some point she has to win Republicans.

Speaker 3 I'm just trying to get inside the campaigns, her head, the campaigns. I think what they might be thinking is,

Speaker 3 as Tommy said, Trump has rigged the rules. So a lot of these are like either winner-take-all, or you hit a 50% threshold in the primary, and then you take all the delegates.

Speaker 3 But maybe she's thinking, if I can just keep picking up a few delegates here and there, and then March 5th comes along, or whenever Trump is tried in D.C.,

Speaker 3 then Trump is convicted. Suddenly, the polls start shifting.
We go to the convention. She's the only other one with delegates, except I guess Ronnie D has a couple from Iowa.

Speaker 3 He's got six from Iowa. No one else is going to get delegates except Trump and maybe her now.
So maybe she thinks then, you know, who knows what might happen.

Speaker 3 It's all crazy, but I'm thinking that's what must be going through their heads. I think what's going through their heads is everyone gets up in a campaign and they care passionately about it.

Speaker 3 And they can't make the decision to drop out between when the votes are counted and when she speaks. Yes.
So they do this. And then this is exactly what happened with DeSantis.

Speaker 3 Then over the course of time, the checks stop coming in. Start having to lay staff off.
People start, your endorsers start calling and saying, you know what?

Speaker 3 How many does she have? Like, it's a new new.

Speaker 3 He's just like stuck to her. It's a new new one, Ralph Norman.
She's got Norman. Yeah, not even.
I guess that's right. They start calling and saying, you know, I'm kind of thinking.

Speaker 3 Or the billionaires who are funding this thing say, it's time to get on board with Trump. And then you drop out.
Like, this is the process they all go through.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that that would help explain why she spoke so early. It's like, you know what?

Speaker 4 Let's just go out there, get it over with, give the speech we need to give for tonight, get to tomorrow, do some thinking, spend time with your family, and then really decide.

Speaker 5 I also think they must have seen the numbers and said, your lead is never

Speaker 5 Trump's lead is never going to get smaller than it is right now. Get out there before there's a one in front of that number.
That's right.

Speaker 4 Trump noticed that too.

Speaker 3 He's furious. We'll get to it.
The speech hit different when she was down seven, I suppose.

Speaker 3 Now when she's down 14 or whatever it is at this moment, I think she's going to stay in all the way to South Carolina. I'm pulling for her.

Speaker 3 What's my wish happen? Total wish passing.

Speaker 3 What we want and what we think we want.

Speaker 5 We all light a candle to Saint Isidore of content. But I look what I wanted to say in too.
I think, Dan, look, obviously you're making the right, like that's the most sensible, obvious path.

Speaker 5 But hey, we got to put something for the Helix mattress ads. And I feel.

Speaker 3 I just also think that. I also think people on camp, like you said, people on campaigns and people, when you're in it, you don't make sensible decisions.
Like, I don't, I just don't.

Speaker 3 Well, every campaign manager is to go tell their boss to drop out is saying, lay me off. Right? That's not a message people deliver that easily.

Speaker 3 And all these other people who've been in the trench with us for a year now, we're all going to become unemployed. And if you're possibly unemployable in trustworthy,

Speaker 5 if you are someone who is spending a ton of money, if you would put money behind Nikki Haley,

Speaker 5 you are a person who has deluded yourself into believing that at some point the Republican Party is going to come to its census.

Speaker 5 That is like the core, that is, that is core to your being, that you believe that something is going to shift, the fever is going to break. A year ago, it wasn't true.

Speaker 3 what's to say these people won't keep believing that for another three or four months you know that like the trials are coming she's also she's just she's bored she likes running for president she's you know she's getting some attention

Speaker 4 she likes it now in new hampshire where 48 of the voters are independent democrats i don't know where she's going to be able to wonder if she can't fill a uh fill event in south carolina i mean just one proof point i mean one of her big donors was the ceo of home depot uh ken langone i think is his name he said that his financial support for Haley would be contingent on New Hampshire results.

Speaker 4 So you're going to have guys like that deciding whether they're going to light 10 million more on fire and give it to a super PAC or not. And I think that's going to make the decision for her.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I believe he said at some point you stop throwing money down a rat hole,

Speaker 5 which begs the question why you ever start throwing money down a rat hole.

Speaker 3 And what's a rat hole? Yeah. And these guys also know

Speaker 3 that the longer they wait, The longer they support Nikki Haley, the more expensive it's going to be to get back in Trump's good graces.

Speaker 3 I will say,

Speaker 3 it's her home state. She can run a pretty lean campaign in South Carolina.
She doesn't have to go anywhere.

Speaker 5 You know, she makes a point in this

Speaker 5 in her victory speech. She's given two victory speeches, and she hasn't won a thing to make it.

Speaker 3 We're going to say it. Oh, it's not.

Speaker 3 We're acting like this is on the level and she's going to be like, oh, look at my, look at this data.

Speaker 5 John, I'm on your side of this fucking table.

Speaker 5 But in her speech, she makes this point. Like, you, you know, I'm from, she speaks, she's really, we were talking about this before, the, the pod, that, like, she really is just like,

Speaker 5 she's, she is just a quintessential politician. She's very, she's good at it, but she's just such a quintessential politician.

Speaker 5 But she gets up there and she says, now they can't come down to South Carolina and lie about me or whatever they can say about me because

Speaker 5 they, well, but also she's like, they know me in South Carolina. South Carolina is my home state.
Where you're polling, it's 6%.

Speaker 5 That, you know, the argument goes both ways. If they know you, they've already decided on you, right?

Speaker 5 Like, what, what story can you tell a South Carolina voter to convince them to go from Donald Donald Trump to Nikki Haley when you were the governor for eight years?

Speaker 3 She's going to wake up tomorrow and figure out.

Speaker 5 And you know what? And she can do it. And Nikki, I believe you can do it.

Speaker 3 So Trump was none too happy about Haley's decision to stay in the race. Gone was the low-energy, somewhat gracious Trump we saw during his Iowa victory speech.
Thank God. Instead, we got our guy back.

Speaker 9 I can go up and I can say to everybody, oh, thank you for the victory. It's wonderful.

Speaker 9 Or I can go up and say, who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and like claimed a victory. She did very poorly, actually.
We won in 2016.

Speaker 9 And if you really remember, and if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020

Speaker 3 by Moore.

Speaker 9 Ron beat her also. You know, Ron came in second and he left.
She came in third and she's still hanging around. And just a little note to Nikki, she's not going to win.

Speaker 9 But if she did,

Speaker 9 she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already.

Speaker 9 Not big reasons, a little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about, but she will be under investigation within minutes. And so would Ron have been,

Speaker 9 but he decided to get out. He decided to get out.
Now, Vivek, I don't think would be at all because he's perfect, right?

Speaker 9 I find in life you can't let people get away with bullshit, okay? You can't. You just can't do that.

Speaker 9 And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn't so fancy,

Speaker 9 come up, I said, what's she doing? We won.

Speaker 3 Just classic. Classic Trump.

Speaker 5 Can we just talk about one, before we get to all of it? Can we just talk about one piece of it, which is Did he forget that Ron DeSantis endorsed him one second? He just got mad and kept going?

Speaker 5 Or is it, what's going on there? He was supposed to be nice to Ron. Ron's emotionally on that stage with him now.
Did he forget?

Speaker 3 There are some legislators in Florida who are trying to pass a bill to give Donald Trump $5 million in taxpayer money to pay for his legal bills.

Speaker 3 And Ron DeSantis declared on Twitter that he would veto that bill. And that was that.
He also gave his, in his first interview, I think, with Steve Deese, he

Speaker 3 said that Trump's got a real problem with swing voters and he's going to have to fix it. Like, he kind of went after Trump today in his interview.

Speaker 4 They don't like each other.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think it's, I don't know if he forgot.
I think he fucking hates Ron DeSantis. He was in his flesh.
He was overshadowed. He was trying to play.
Yeah, he was in his flow. He was in his flow.

Speaker 3 He was trying to play that, like, oh, I'm going to be gracious and okay for Ron DeSantis. He fucking hates us.
Ron DeSantis offers him nothing.

Speaker 3 Like, Tim Scott could be a valuable asset in his campaign, right? Nikki Haley would actually, I don't think he's going to take advantage of this, but would be a potential asset in his campaign.

Speaker 3 Ron DeSantis brings nothing to the table for, he needs him for nothing, especially now that $5 million in taxpayer money is off the table.

Speaker 3 What did you guys think of the speech? What did you guys think of

Speaker 3 Trump's big victory speech?

Speaker 3 He was pissed.

Speaker 5 I mean, that came through loud and clear.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he suggested Haley would be investigated.

Speaker 4 He also suggested that Governor Sununu is on drugs. Yeah, he did.
You guys can't say that.

Speaker 3 He's got to be on something.

Speaker 4 He said this guy has got to be on something. There was the mocking of the dress, which was just petty, dickish stuff.

Speaker 4 Then he said to Tim Scott, you must really hate her about Nikki Haley because Tim Scott endorsed him.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, it was old school raging Trump. He also, yeah, he let all of his new supplicants

Speaker 3 give a quick little speech. Vivek did a minute, tight, tight 26 seconds.
60 seconds. Tight 60.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Vivek did a tight 60, and then Tim Scott was clearly not prepared that he was going to be asked to say something, and he got up there and sort of mumbled through. And then when Trump said,

Speaker 3 you must really hate her, he came up and he goes, no, I just really love you.

Speaker 5 I just, so

Speaker 3 that's your guy. That's Lovett Scott.
And you know what? What do you think? What do you think? Here's what I think.

Speaker 11 Here's what I think. Here's what I think.

Speaker 5 Do you want to live in a world where you don't open up your heart to somebody? And Even if you know, there's a chance you might get fucking disappointed. Yes.

Speaker 5 Am I disappointed that Tim Scott is not just a fucking failed presidential candidate, but a sniveling little fucking worm that Trump is now going to take out of the gimp box to march down to South Carolina?

Speaker 5 The GIMP box. It's from a film called Pulp Fiction.

Speaker 5 Learn film.

Speaker 3 Go to

Speaker 5 cinema.

Speaker 5 Tim Scott is out of the GIMP box. That's what we're talking about.
Okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm pissed about it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's frustrating to me to have Tim Scott there. But just like,

Speaker 5 he didn't, obviously, the Tim Scott thing was humiliating and embarrassing, but even the Vivek thing, he's like, I told Vivek he could speak, but no more than a minute, no more than a minute.

Speaker 5 Like, he's got these guys on

Speaker 5 a leash.

Speaker 3 But you know what? I was like, and I know MSNBC and CNN, after we complained about this, they did take Trump's speech tonight.

Speaker 3 Although then they cut away and they were like, see, this is the problem with taking Trump's speech because he lies so often. And it's like, yeah, there's definitely a lot of lies, crazy lies.

Speaker 3 They They had to fact check it. But I'm happy for all the voters in America to see the Trump that we saw tonight.

Speaker 3 More of it.

Speaker 3 That's why I want Nikki Haley to stay in so badly because Donald Trump talked about this. Dan, you've written a message box about this.
Like he is a strong man. He wants to appear strong.

Speaker 3 He made himself appear weak tonight because he was so pissed. Even though we fucking won, he was so pissed at Nikki Haley that he seemed like he was just angry.
He was agitated. Like it was great.

Speaker 5 I also, I just, I also, I, I was thinking about this too, too, because, you know, look, we've gone through so many fucking endless conversations around platforming and what, you know, you can't show Trump because it spreads misinformation, but if you don't show Trump, people forget how threatening he is.

Speaker 5 And I do think like what I was taking away from, because I heard you guys talking about it, and I agree, we talked about this before, but that it's like, yes, Trump is a vehicle for spreading misinformation and that can be dangerous, but also the lies that Trump spews, especially the ones that are just like not plausible, that most people don't believe, they are a vehicle for exposing Trump, right?

Speaker 5 Like we do, you do need to like, and I, and I don't know what's like, you know, I don't know what the best thing is.

Speaker 5 I don't think there's an easy decision there, but man, is it better to have people seeing Trump being at his most unhinged and angry and all the rest?

Speaker 3 I think we might be in a different place politically if Trump had not been essentially exiled from public view on January 7th, 2021. Yeah.
Because if he had been rage

Speaker 3 about being

Speaker 3 improperly persecuted for this and how the election was in that moment, as opposed to just disappearing for a few months and then being slowly welcomed back in, it'd be a very different world. And

Speaker 3 for a whole host of reasons that you've talked about offline, the information environment has changed so much since that time that now people just never see Trump.

Speaker 3 And now the one nights, the few nights when they might see him, we're like, don't show him. I think that, I just think that's.
Because he has been rage truthing and also

Speaker 3 doing these rallies the whole time, but the rallies aren't being covered and no one sees the truths, really.

Speaker 5 So, and as viewership of cable declines, we're an increasing share of the audience. So, we want to see it, so just give the people what they want.

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Speaker 3 Let's talk about the results in the primary. You guys see anything notable in the results or the exits or anything that might tell us something about the general election?

Speaker 3 We talked about in Iowa how Trump's win there might have showed some weakness since it wasn't a commanding win. Obviously, this was even less of a big win in New Hampshire.

Speaker 3 What do you guys think, Tommy?

Speaker 4 I thought it was interesting that Trump did best among the 18 to 29-year-old cohort.

Speaker 3 Did he?

Speaker 4 He got 61% versus 52 or 53% of the older voters? That was interesting and I think does say something about his super fans and the people who like him.

Speaker 5 And also it says something about the self-selecting sample of young Republican voters too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That they're the more radical, they're the sort of the TP USA types.
Also,

Speaker 4 the most important issues were the economy, 36%, immigration, 31%.

Speaker 4 Trump mopped up with immigration voters. 77% of that cohort went for him.

Speaker 4 No surprise there, but it does tell you what issues are really driving this primary and then the general election for Republicans.

Speaker 3 I think you can sum up how Trump won by these numbers.

Speaker 3 Is Haley won moderates by 50 points and Trump won conservatives by 42 points, but conservatives made up two-thirds of the electorate and moderates one-third.

Speaker 3 Do you think that

Speaker 3 portends anything for the general election?

Speaker 3 I mean, I thought if you're going to look for numbers that might say that Trump is a weaker candidate, they again asked in the exits, is Trump fit to be president if he's convicted?

Speaker 3 52% said yes, 44% said no. Your feelings if Trump wins the nomination, again, this is just the Republican primary, 59% said satisfied, 40% said dissatisfied.

Speaker 3 So for someone who's running as basically an incumbent, you know, probably not the numbers you want. There are many, many flaws in our presidential nomination process.

Speaker 3 One may be the fact that Trump is going to receive about 200,000 votes and basically be the nominee by tomorrow in a country with 80 million Republicans.

Speaker 3 Said something more about the Republican people.

Speaker 3 But one thing where the New Hampshire primary is useful for at least projecting forward for the general election is you do get a pretty significant sample of prototypical swing voters participating in this, right?

Speaker 3 It is suburban, college-educated, moderate. The largest group of voters in the state by far are undeclared voters.
And those are the exact voters that Trump lost ground with from 2016 to 2020.

Speaker 3 Those voters are overrepresented in some of the states he lost, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

Speaker 3 And if he is going to win, and we talk all the time about all the things Biden has to do, Trump has to do better with college-educated, suburban voters.

Speaker 3 And nothing that happened tonight suggests that he is doing not even better, anywhere near as well as he did in 2020.

Speaker 3 That is a big flashing light with a segment of voters that he has to improve with, and there is no evidence he has done so. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And we don't know if any of these Haley voters, we don't know how many of them are going to, if Trump's the nominee, vote for Trump or vote for Biden or not vote for either of them, but certainly it doesn't show a lot of strength.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I feel like there's two things that I took from this. One is actually just how strong and dangerous a general election candidate Nikki Haley would be.
That's one.

Speaker 5 But two, Trump in his rambling, infuriated speech, he, he, he didn't want to say it exactly like, don't worry.

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure, Nikki Haley is doing better against Biden than I am, but anybody can beat Joe Biden. But he basically got there.

Speaker 5 And, you know, Nikki Haley is making like, it's like a vaguely sophisticated point about how Trump costs people the House and costs people the Senate. Like it's a coattails thing.

Speaker 5 But Republicans want to win. And he made a point of saying, hey, don't worry, we got this thing.
You nominate me, we're going to win.

Speaker 5 And he's clearly like, there is an argument that Nikki Haley is making that he's not.

Speaker 5 totally unconcerned by, right? Like he is responding to it and making a point that's like, oh, Joe Biden is so frail and weak. Don't you worry about that.
I'm going to beat Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 Nikki Haley, any of us could beat Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 That's not important.

Speaker 5 That's not important.

Speaker 4 It's also notable that they asked in the exits, would you favor or oppose a federal law banning most or all abortions nationwide? And only 27% of voters favor banning most or all abortions nationwide.

Speaker 3 So a couple, one, one concerning point in that number is that Trump only lost the people who opposed. a nationwide ban by 10%.

Speaker 4 55, 44. Yep.

Speaker 3 And then, but here's one other thing on the electability number.

Speaker 3 Yes, I do think it gets under Trump's skin because down deep in his very dark soul, he knows he lost the 2020 2020 election and that haunts him.

Speaker 3 But only 15% of voters in the exit poll listed defeating Joe Biden as their top quality, the quality they cared most about in a candidate. And Trump won those voters overwhelmingly.

Speaker 3 So there is, this is Nikki Haley's argument. There is zero audience for that argument in New Hampshire and nationally.

Speaker 3 We talked about this the other day, is that they asked Republicans in this YouGov poll, who do you think is going to, regardless of who you support, who do you think is going to win?

Speaker 3 84% of Republicans think that Donald Trump's going to win the election.

Speaker 3 But then what's the point? Tells everything about why he's walking away with it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but there is this sort of like, you know, voters aren't good at telling you how they're going to feel about something in the future. I think, and that could be a double-edged sword.

Speaker 5 But we are in this strange scenario where a bunch of Republicans voted for Donald Trump today and also told a pollster that if he's convicted of a crime, he's unfit and they won't vote for him again.

Speaker 5 And he is on track, you know, to our minds, to be convicted, hopefully before the election, but we don't know. And so it's like,

Speaker 3 we know they think you wouldn't be fit, but we don't know if they wouldn't vote for him because they didn't ask, would you vote for him? Which they did ask

Speaker 5 in CNN's poll, right?

Speaker 3 No, they asked him in the Des Moint Register. Des Moines poll.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 But even, and I didn't look at it in the New Hampshire poll, and I just got a text from Reed that said, who we work with, who said, organic polar coaster pitch, which I think means right now I'm supposed to mention that we're going to dig deeper into these exit poll numbers in the episode of Polar Coaster that's coming out in two days.

Speaker 3 Amazing. Wow.
That's how the magic is.

Speaker 5 I just felt like it was right there part of the conversation.

Speaker 3 All right. Well, let's talk about the Democratic primary in New Hampshire.
There was one. And Joe Biden won it despite not appearing on the ballot.

Speaker 3 Again, he did not appear on the ballot since Biden and the DNC decided that South Carolina will be the Democrats' first primary.

Speaker 3 New Hampshire went ahead with their primary anyway, so they are not going to have any delegates at stake. So Joe Biden didn't go on the ballot.
Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson did.

Speaker 3 The Biden allies in New Hampshire, Biden supporters in New Hampshire, did not want Joe Biden to be embarrassed. So they organized a write-in campaign.
And boy, did it work.

Speaker 3 So he won over, so far right now, he's got over 70% of the votes.

Speaker 3 The write-in votes. We'll find out the final number when everything's counted and they read all the write-in votes.
Dean Phillips only won around 20%

Speaker 3 and Marion Williamson took 4%.

Speaker 3 What do you guys think? The Mercury is in retrograde. I kind of think that Biden, look, they were hoping to avoid embarrassment, but I think they also demonstrated some enthusiasm.

Speaker 3 I don't think it's easy to organize a write-in campaign. And like, if you're a Democratic primary voter and you know there's not much of a primary to

Speaker 3 get up, walk out of your house, go to the polls, write in Joe Biden's name, that tells you something. Yeah, I think it definitely demonstrates some enthusiasm.

Speaker 3 But I think it demonstrates even more is organization.

Speaker 3 And for all of the Democratic complaining and worrying and everything about the state of the Biden campaign, whether Biden can win, one thing that the Biden campaign has been very, very good at from the very beginning, right?

Speaker 3 Going back to the primary when they out, when they overperformed in the Nevada Caucasus, is organization.

Speaker 3 And so this is something that I think that they, I, that they would be very good at helping engineer is something like this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Dean Phillips and Dean Phillips affiliated Super PAC spent $5 million in New Hampshire for his 20%.

Speaker 3 Here's what he said tonight about his loss. What I'm saying is this, I don't know what my name recognition is.
It was zero just 10 weeks ago.

Speaker 3 I would imagine in this country right now, it's probably 5% to 10% tops. I was a brand builder before this in the private sector.

Speaker 3 It takes recognition of a name or a brand in order to actually test it. I need some months to do that.

Speaker 3 And so basically he said he's going to take a few more months and once polls start testing Dean Phillips against Donald Trump, he's going to look at those numbers and then he's going to make a decision.

Speaker 3 This is just a whole race. It's a whole campaign based on polls.

Speaker 3 He got in because of polls. He's going to get out because of polls.
He's going to stay in because of polls. Whatever the polls say, that's what Dean Phillips is doing with his life.

Speaker 3 I'm going to suggest that perhaps Dean Phillips' strategy to campaign in a state relentlessly, to move to a a state where the president

Speaker 3 where he did go to summer camp he did go to summer camp where he discovered it that's where he discovered his passion for america and public service at summer camp as one does yeah to go to base the entirety of his campaign and this 10 million dollars whatever spending in a state with no delegates was not the right choice yeah i i will also say too like we we have worried a lot about Joe Biden as the nominee.

Speaker 3 Like is what if another Democrat challenge him? Another Democrat challenges him in New Hampshire and Joe Biden's not even on the ballot.

Speaker 3 And the Democratic voters in New Hampshire went out and said, no, I don't want Dean Phillips. I want Joe Biden.
They had the alternative.

Speaker 3 They saw his ads, spent $5 million in the state, and they just, you know,

Speaker 3 that's part of the reason this primary has turned out the way it is, because Democratic voters, when they get the chance, they wanted to vote for Joe Biden. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I don't know. It's like, I do think like, oh, you know,

Speaker 5 you know, we look back on this moment. If a year from now and Donald Trump has won, we look back in this moment, I want to make sure that like,

Speaker 5 you know, were we too cavalier about

Speaker 5 this specific challenger? And I actually think the answer is, is no. Like, there are legitimate and very real concerns about Joe Biden's ability to get re-elected.

Speaker 5 And the issues that made Dean Phillips so anxious about the polls to get in are not

Speaker 5 invalid. Like, they are very real concerns that I think we all share.
It's just this wasn't the candidate. And

Speaker 5 there was no amount of, I think. He also did a terrible job.
Like, if you really had these concerns, you had to get in a year earlier.

Speaker 4 You had to actually run hard. You had to know when deadlines, like, getting on the ballots in various states occurred.
And instead, he waited too long. He fucked it up.
He hired all the wrong people.

Speaker 4 And now he's just left with this sort of embittered message where he's complaining about the DNC and the process and trying to whine his way to the White House. And it's just, it's not going to work.

Speaker 3 It's a lot easier. It's not hurting.
It's not a president. It's not helping.
And perhaps you should not decide to run for president because you get a DM on Twitter from Steve Schmidt.

Speaker 3 Which is how this happened. Yeah.
Good advice, Dan.

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Speaker 3 So, speaking of Biden, he kicked off the general with a campaign event in Virginia on Tuesday focused on abortion rights, just a day after the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Speaker 3 He was joined on stage by Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and Second Gentleman Doug M. Hoff.
Here's a clip of Biden in Virginia.

Speaker 7 In the United States Congress, extremists are trying to pass a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state.

Speaker 7 But what they need to know is that if Congress passes a national abortion ban, President Joe Biden will veto it.

Speaker 9 Donald Trump is betting

Speaker 3 you won't vote on this issue.

Speaker 14 But guess what?

Speaker 14 He's betting we won't hold him responsible either for taking away the rights. He's betting you're going to stop caring.

Speaker 14 We We have daughters. By the way, that you'll get distracted and discouraged and stay home.

Speaker 9 Well, guess what?

Speaker 14 I'm betting he's wrong.

Speaker 3 Campaign also released a new ad that features Dr.

Speaker 3 Austin Dennard, a Texas mother and OBGYN who was forced to travel out of state for an abortion after learning her pregnancy was non-viable and life-threatening.

Speaker 3 The White House also announced a series of executive actions aimed at protecting reproductive rights. What did you guys think about the event, the ad, the policies?

Speaker 3 Dan, we were talking about about this, I think, on the last pod. Obviously, this was them trying to get some attention, especially

Speaker 3 counter-programming a New Hampshire primary. Do you think they got the attention they were hoping for? I think they certainly got more.
You never get the attention you're hoping for.

Speaker 3 They certainly got more attention than any other.

Speaker 3 You're right.

Speaker 3 It's a daily grind.

Speaker 5 It's a campaign of inches.

Speaker 3 I mean, it got more attention than your typical White House event, right?

Speaker 3 There was, you know, we don't know what the audience was for television coverage tonight, but it's certainly more than on a typical political night, right?

Speaker 3 And even on some of the network stuff where you're going to see those clips, you're going to see that message, you're going to see the restore Roe banner that was behind them.

Speaker 3 And so, yeah, I think it achieves that goal for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So this is it. This is going to be the longest general election in history.
What a remarkable.

Speaker 5 There is an ongoing competitive Republican

Speaker 3 primary.

Speaker 5 I don't know what we're doing. Three pods a

Speaker 3 I know it was time because of the anniversary of Roe v.

Speaker 3 Wade, but I do think it was telling that as we kick off the general election, they started with the, I mean, he did the January 6th speech on the anniversary of that, and then he just did a series of events and ads around abortion.

Speaker 3 You know, I think that seems to be what they're going to, that's going to be

Speaker 3 the main message for the campaign. And I'm guessing there'll be an economic component as well soon.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think jobs, freedom, and democracy. I mean, it seems like the three things.

Speaker 3 Yeah, jobs, jobs, freedom, and democracy. I mean, that's the ultimate question here, right?

Speaker 3 They've called it jobs and democracy as their strategy.

Speaker 3 And the question is, how much do they have to narrow the gap on the economy to have that strategy work? And we don't know the answer to that. And I think

Speaker 3 it is the source of probably the biggest debate within the Democratic Party right now.

Speaker 3 The question is whether the larger general election electorate is going to place a higher premium on economic performance and economic approval than the midterm electorate who clearly voted on abortion, freedom, democracy, and those issues.

Speaker 3 And that we don't know how to and how persuadable

Speaker 3 those voters are.

Speaker 3 Even though there is technically still a Republican primary going on. Technically.
Yeah, technically.

Speaker 3 The Biden campaign did put out a statement tonight basically saying that like, you know, the general is here. We know Donald Trump's going to...

Speaker 3 Do we think that Biden's going to be out there now all the time? Is he going to go campaigning? Is he going to be freer to campaign?

Speaker 3 Should he in the next month or so while this is still, while Nikki Haley is still doing whatever Nikki Haley's going to do?

Speaker 4 I think they're constantly striking balance, right? I mean, they're doing official events in swing states. I imagine they'll continue to do a lot of those because it saves you money.

Speaker 4 But I don't know, Dan, you think they're going to do a big-ass rally in Michigan soon or something to really kick this thing off? Or do you wait till the post-state of the union?

Speaker 3 I don't know what they're going to do. I imagine it's going to be a relatively

Speaker 3 slow but steady ramp up.

Speaker 3 And just there's so much other stuff going on in the world that he has to attend to.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 there is a real

Speaker 3 asymmetry in terms of the kind of information people are getting right now.

Speaker 3 And that, whether it's through more Biden campaign events, more louder Biden message events from the White House or aggressive paid advertising, that asymmetry has to narrow right now.

Speaker 3 Because there's this very interesting poll that our friend Peter Hamby wrote about in Puck, which shows that people are getting a ton of information about Donald Trump and not very much information about Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 And that is alarming in two fronts.

Speaker 3 One, it's allowing Trump to define the four corners of the political conversation, but also part of the Democratic argument is that people aren't paying attention to Trump.

Speaker 3 Once they realize Trump's still around and still terrible, they will change. The election will change.
The dynamic, fundamental dynamics will change.

Speaker 3 This is a piece of data that suggests we have more work to do than just waiting for people to wake up from their political new slumber.

Speaker 3 And again, I don't think the Biden campaign has to choose between, do we go out there and have a positive message from Joe Biden and accomplishments and what he's going to do, or do we just go out there and hit Donald Trump every day?

Speaker 3 I think they could do a contrast message, right? And so every time they go out there, here's something Joe Biden did. Here's what he wants to do if he's going to get a second term.

Speaker 3 And by the way, here's what Donald Trump would do in the Republicans. And you just constantly drive the contrast message

Speaker 3 over the next couple of months. But yeah, I'd get out there soon to try to close.
I think it probably begins after the State of the Union.

Speaker 4 Yeah. That's my guess, too.

Speaker 3 Ideally, that's going to be his biggest audience.

Speaker 3 That, the convention, and then the debates.

Speaker 3 And hopefully, I think in the State of the Union, they'll lay out an economic agenda for the second term that they'll be able to then use on the campaign trail.

Speaker 3 So that'll be hopefully like the third, the third leg of the Democracy Dobbs stool, if you will. All right.
Well, that's it. Anything else?

Speaker 3 Any closing thoughts? Just go, Nikki. Go get him, Nikki.
Go get him, Nikki.

Speaker 5 Tim, you broke my heart.

Speaker 4 You got this, Nikki.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 5 And I don't know that I can love again.

Speaker 3 That may be it.

Speaker 5 I'm out.

Speaker 3 Congrats on the engagement. I don't know how that came from.
Congrats on the engagement.

Speaker 4 God, Trump can't say that without laughing. He just can't help himself.

Speaker 3 He just laughs.

Speaker 5 You know, it's, it's, we just talked about the fucking Tim Scott engagement.

Speaker 3 Charge.

Speaker 5 Just like the idea that, like, bonus.

Speaker 5 Like, you know, nothing says to me, nothing says love to me more than proposing to your girlfriend on Friday and then endorsing Donald Trump and going to a rally over the weekend.

Speaker 4 Auditioning.

Speaker 3 And then telling and then telling him you love him.

Speaker 5 And then telling him you love him. I was asking him.
I told Dupe. His heart is big enough for two.

Speaker 5 And the other thing, too, is it's like, I don't know Tim Scott's life. None of us does, right? Fine.

Speaker 5 But man, the idea that this sort of like slapdash engagement in a photo is going to like mitigate Trump's concerns about Tim Scott being weird. Like we were talking about this before record.

Speaker 5 Like Charlotte Birdie got duped by a kind of an evangelical right-winger who made him a little uncomfortable with all the Jesus talk, but he swallowed it to secure the right-wing vote.

Speaker 5 He's not going to do that again. He tried to kill the last one.

Speaker 3 Is that my favorite thing about that picture of Tim Scott getting engaged? The photo caption says this is Tim Scott getting engaged, by the way. Photo courtesy of Tim Scott.
Courtesy, Tim Scott.

Speaker 4 He's like, I really hate that this news broke, but here you go.

Speaker 3 Here's a pic.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he also did this interview where he's like, I'm such an introvert. It's like, are you such an introvert publicizing your engagement?

Speaker 3 You just ran for president.

Speaker 5 You just ran for president. What kind of, you're not really, you're fucking up being an introvert, Tim Scott.

Speaker 3 All right, we're out. Fucking

Speaker 3 pod over.

Speaker 3 Bye, everyone.

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