Did Trump's Iowa win change anything?

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USAA! Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett.
I'm Tommy Vitor. This is a new Wednesday edition of Pod Save America.
We'll be releasing three episodes a week as the campaign season begins in earnest with a rotating crew of hosts and friends of the pod. Today on the show, Nikki Haley finishes third, declares a two-person race, and refuses to debate anyone but Trump or Biden.
Trump fresh off hisout, is back in court, and the reality of Trump being on track to win the nomination could finally set in for Biden's coalition. And Ron DeSantis defies the media by continuing to exist.
Joining Tommy and me to break down what's next in this campaign from the Bulwark, host of the Next Level podcast, A Man Without a Party, it's Tim Miller. Hey, y'all.
I've got some really bad news for you about this new three day a week podcast what uh the republican primaries already dude we're not saying that shut the fuck up like you're adding more content but but we're not you know my former party's not giving you any new any more material we'll be the judge of that tim uh so uh let's let's get into that all right i'm not ready to face it i'm gonna i'm an i'm a I'm a low information voter who doesn't yet accept that Donald Trump is going to be the

nominee.

Let's do it.

We talked about the Iowa results with John and Dan earlier this week, but we'd like to

get your overall reaction.

Yeah, I listened.

I thought that you guys were pretty right.

There were some of you that somebody had a positive DeSantis take that I didn't that i was not uh i didn't share it was dan not dan it was dan in desantis's defense dan dan was uh spinning for for old tiny d um look i i just want to look at polk county um in polk county donald trump had 38 of the vote all right uh ron desantis finished second with 27 nikki always below that this is where des moines is the most urban part of the state. All right.
Ron DeSantis finished second with 27. Nick Haley is below that.
This is where Des Moines is, the most urban part of the state. This is where Des Moines is.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Tommy's been there. You can have a nice Italian dinner at Luca.
Okay. You can get an avocado toast there.
Oh, my God. All right.
I've been to Iowa dick measuring contest. No, there are millennials that went to college that live in Des Moines.
I mean, like, this is not, we're not out there in rural northwestern Iowa and Steve King country. This is not places where people are consuming Bannon's war room.
This is just metropolitan Iowa. Donald Trump wins there by 11 points.
11 points was previously the biggest win in Iowa caucus history. So if the whole fucking state of Iowa was Des Moines, Trump still would have won the landslide in the history of the Iowa caucuses so there's it's not like there was a demographic group out there he did poorly with it's not like that that Iowa that Iowa you know was not as non-re it is Iowa is non-representative but but even in the representative elements of Iowa uh he dominated so sure there are ways you could spin it and squint and say well know, he only got 51 or whatever when he was a quasi-incumbent and was quite as good as Gore versus Bradley in 99.
You could spin it all you want, but like Donald Trump won an overwhelming landslide in every demographic group. And like the Republican Party is almost united.
We have one good silver lining that I can get to, but the Republican Party is almost united behind a wannabe autocrat. And that's pretty fucking maddening and disturbing and sad for me.
Tommy, do you have anything you've seen in the last 48 hours as you've digested? Yeah, it's all passing through me. The Polk County numbers jumped out of me, Tim, where Des Moines is.
But that was repeated in Cedar Rapids, which is Linn County. Trump had 43% there.
Davenport, another city, Trump had 49%. Dallas County, one of the fast growing suburbs, a little west of Des Moines.
He just dominated everywhere. There is no spinning this result.
The only spin I have, Tim, or at least piece of context, is yes, Trump won Polk County, but he won it he won it with 6600 votes so we're still talking about a tiny group of people like 110 000 people turned out in this high school basketball game level turnout um yeah no so there are two positives okay so here are my two silver linings um you know as i assess the carcass with the party that i used to work for um and it's this and One is barely anybody showed up at all. Okay, not just.
So there were 56, something like this, thousand fewer voters in Iowa than in 2016. So this whole notion that Trump is bringing in these new low-info voters and people who just listened to Joe Rogan and they were never Republicans before.
And now Trump's bringing them in. There is no evidence that that happened.
The turnout was down across the board. So I think that could speak to a lack of excitement.
It could speak to the fact that it was cold. So I guess we'll learn a little more in New Hampshire.
But there's not like an influx of red-hatted, excited MAGA loyalists that showed up. So that's- And it's a caucus too too.
Oh, by the way, Ron DeSantis spent $4,200 per vote in Iowa. Okay, I would like to talk about Ron DeSantis' strategy in a second.
But one other positive, really quick, the Nikki Haley voters, both anecdotally and quantitatively, seem to really hate Donald Trump, like really hate him, and be open to voting for Joe Biden. If you just talk to reporters on the ground who are at, you know, talking to Haley voters at the caucus, if you look at the Ann Selzer numbers, if you look at the entrance poll numbers, you know, like the people that were there for Haley do not like Donald Trump are open to voting for Joe Biden.
And I think that is also very encouraging. And I think that speaks to potentially a lag in the Biden number when you look at the national election polls, that there are some of these people who are Haley voters who just haven't come to terms with reality yet, like Lovett.
And maybe once they do, that might tick Biden up a point or two. And so those are my silver linings for you.
Yeah, it was interesting in the Haley victory speech in Iowa, or third place victory, how the crowd was there was a kind of like anti Trump energy, even in the crowd, like kind of like an amen chorus that I think was like, it made it it gave it more of a feel of a real campaign, like a real campaign with an enthusiasm that you hadn't seen before. I have one more I have one more.
I went looking I went hunting, I went squinting. So Politico did this analysis.
Trump made big gains with older voters. All right.
You look at 20 turnouts down fine, but you look at the change from 2016 to 2024, huge consolidation, right? Across the board. Trump made big gains with older voters over 2016, roughly 30 points better among voters over 45, but he was flat with voters under 30, which may not be a sign of weakness you're putting tommy in the older voters i'm sorry i just was trying to count i was like wow i'm there wow what a swerve what a swerve hey hey these are three millennials just three millennials having a great time believable your hat doesn't make you younger okay under 30 thanks Carrie.
Under 30 and over 45 for what we're talking about here? Yeah. Sorry.
When you said older in my head, I was thinking like elderly, but over 45. So roughly the same.
So from voters 45 to say 65, he improved by about 30%. Voters over 65, he also improved by about 30%.
I think he did a little bit better with the older voters. But regardless, the younger voters, flat, 3%.
So the number of young voters turning out for him did not improve even though he's consolidated the rest of the party. I'm going to...
Hey, come on. Come on.
I don't know about that. Love it.
I mean, A, there aren't that many people under 30 in Iowa. So I don't know.
I got to spend caucus night partially with the New York Young Republicans Club in New York City. And I got to tell you, the under 30s there were very excited about Mr.
Trump and very enjoying the defeat of the DeSimps and Nikki Haley. And I just, I don't know.
I mean, sure, I guess like on the margins, like Donald Trump's not bringing in excited new young people. So I guess that's a positive.
But I would say on the negative side is that the young people who are showing up now to Republican events, like they are opting in because they like Donald Trump with the exception of like a handful of super nerds, you know, who are still like reading God and Man at Yale. And I love those super nerds.
I love them. And I'm just I'm happy and I like, you know, and I can pick them out of a lineup as soon as I walk into a Republican event, but, but, but that's not, that's not what the party is.
So, you know, I, that's not that encouraging for me, but I'm happy that it made you happy. Has the, um, has the demographics of New York young Republicans shifted from a bunch of, uh, anxious closeted gay libertarians as MAGA fully taken over? Is it over? Yes.
Is the era of the gay, closeted New York Republican done? Yeah, the demographic of the anxious, closetedly gay libertarians meeting up with the kind of Wall Street guy, you know, who is just excited about his carried interest tax cut. You know, that little, those kind of meetups that we used to have, you know, on the, on the Upper East Side.
Yeah, that has changed. Uh, a lot of, a lot of Queens, a lot of Staten Island, um, you know, uh, a lot of accents, uh, were in the room and, uh, and they had a very different attitude than the types of parties I used to attend.
Yeah. Sounds like cocaine is the one constant here.
I did not see any cocaine at the party, but I don't know that they would have invited me. I was a clear interloper.
I think there's a lot of people listening and only halfway through realized you were talking about people from Queens, not drag Queens, which is what I think. Oh, I got that wrong.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think there's just, North Jersey.
It's different. Long Island City, not Stonewall.
I think it's sort of the. Right, right, right.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think there's just New Yorkers, North Jersey. It's different.
Long Island City, not Stonewall. I think it's sort of the right.
DeSantis went to every county. Trump won every county except the commies in Johnson County.
Does the nationalization of politics mean that the kind of campaigning that used to allow, as Tommy pointed out in his Iowa specials, would allow like social conservatives to make their mark to kind of use Iowa as a place to push back against an establishment candidate or a national figure. Are those days over? Is that just not possible anymore? I mean, Tim, I thought your old colleague David Cajal had a good line, which was DeSantis had to go to all 99 counties to meet Iowa voters, but Iowans from all 99 counties would travel to events to see Trump.
And I think that gets to the unique figure that he is in our politics because of his celebrity and the cult-like attachment from the base. So maybe this is a one-off.
That said, I mean, I'd like to know what you think. If I was advising a 2028 candidate, let's say, running in the 2028 primary, I would probably advise them to spend a whole lot of time on MSNBC and other progressive outlets.
Because what I've heard in the last two cycles is that the national narrative was far more important than anything these candidates were saying in the town hall meeting in Waukee. Yeah.
And I started to wonder if it's ever true. Donald Trump, I do think, upended a lot of conventional wisdom that was never really challenged about these sorts of things.
Did Iowans ever really need to see somebody in their living room, or were they just looking for somebody to give them a thrill up their leg, and Donald Trump did that, and other people could have done that Donald Trump's way had they tried? I guess we won't really know, but I think that a lot of that early state early state narrative kind of nostalgia that we have for that kind of campaigning, I don't know that it ever really mattered that much. And I think that now if you look ahead to 2028 in a presidential race, the way people are consuming news and information these days, people know these candidates so well now.
right? I mean, you know, you know, the types of supporters they have, you know, you know, the social media influencers that support them, you know, you get to listen to your favorite fucking podcasts about it, right? Like the way that people consume information about the presidential primary is just not, is very unlike the way that they consume information about other political campaigns. And so I just – I think that like if you look at the DeSantis campaign, they ran a campaign that like might have worked if it was for a state senate race or maybe even a senate race in a state like Florida where you don't, you know, have an expectation of knowing a lot about the various candidates.
Like that was not going to be the case when you're running against Donald Trump, who these people like have shrines to him in their home, right? Like they've been following him for a decade now. And to think that like, if you were going to put one door hanger on somebody's door, or you're going to run a 30 second ad about how great of a job you did keeping the beaches open during COVID, and then people are going to be like, okay, I'm for you now.
I just think it totally misunderstands how people consume like information about a presidential race now, particularly one where we have somebody like Trump in it.

So I,

to me,

I don't,

yeah,

I think that all of that was just a waste.

And like Ron DeSantis was just totally,

um,

you know,

Ron DeSantis donors,

like just lit seven figures on fire.

I know what it was 35 million on TV,

but then all of the ground game,

like all of that was for nothing.

Yeah. But his big consultant, Jeff Rowe got paid and that's what's important.
Yeah. The, uh, yeah, my God, the, uh, I, you know, I don't know.
I don't know how it's hard to tell, right. It's an overdetermined situation because you have Donald Trump is a unique figure.
Ron DeSantis was, I think, shockingly inept. I remember we, we, you know, when, pod, one of the very early pods when Ron DeSantis was just announcing and, you know, all these conservatives were lining up behind DeSantis as like the one true hope.
And Dan was like, nobody's heard him speak. No one ever has heard him give a speech.
Let's see what happens. And if he gives a speech and he's like, oh, it's it's fucking terrible.
Yeah, I don't know if retail politics is dead, but I do think that when your candidate can't communicate with voters or give a speech, you should rethink whether that person should go to 99 counties and do a lot of town halls. I guess, but look at the Democratic side in 2020.
I mean, Joe Biden did win because of retail politics. No, he won solely because of electability.
Yeah, electability and narrative. Like all of those voters, and you guys know this better than me, but all those voters, they jumped from, it's the same people.
Like they're for Warren, and then they're for Pete, and then they're for, like obviously each candidate had their super fans, but if you just look at the numbers, people are just very educated about a primary race now, and they're making decisions like in a very nuanced way that 30-second TV ads and door knocks are just not, it's not the same. But Biden doesn't win Iowa, right? It's what makes possible for someone like Pete or Bernie to win Iowa.
It's what makes possible for someone like Obama to win Iowa. I think like when you have someone like Trump whose support is wide and deep, it doesn't make sense.
If you reverse it, right? If you have someone who has, if you have someone like DeSantis as the presumed national figure, but whose support is shallow because people haven't really gotten to know him, and you have an insurgent candidate with political talent in a place like Iowa. I just, I just don't know.
I don't know whether to learn the lesson or make sure we don't overlearn the lesson. I don't know.
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All right, let's talk about New Hampshire. Tomorrow night's ABC GOP debate was canceled due to a lack of interest.
On Tuesday, Nikki Haley said she wouldn't debate unless Donald Trump or Joe Biden would join her. Trump continues to demur.
DeSantis is willing to participate. He said Haley was too afraid to debate him.
DeSantis then doubled down on this at a CNN town hall where he said this. I'm the only candidate that actually agreed to come to New Hampshire to debate.
And what does that say? We have four candidates for president now, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and me. I'm the only one who's not running a basement campaign at this point.
Tommy, what do you think of this argument? I think he sounds like a whiny loser, first and foremost. I'm a little bit torn on the skipping the debate question.
I watched the last debate on CNN, unfortunately, the Haley versus DeSantis one-on-one. I think the takeaway from anyone who watched it was I disliked both of them by the end.
It was constant accusations of lying. Haley was dropping her stupid like Ron lies website at all the time.
Like my, my, um, my bellwether on a lot of these things is when Hannah walks through the room to the kitchen to get something before walking back into the bedroom. So she doesn't have to listen to this crap that I consume all day, every day, if she comments on it or not.
And she was just like, this is horrible. So I don't know that that debate being repeated would have benefited anyone.
I don't know if Hannah's a target New Hampshire primary voter. Yeah.
Well, listen, you know, we'll see. We might move.
So that said, the debate was going to be broadcast on WMUR, which is far and away the biggest TV station in the state. It was an opportunity to reach a lot of people and do it in a high profile way at this moment when people are making up their minds.
So if you went in and had a great debate, it would be an excellent strategic choice. But look, would I want to debate a guy at 4% when I'm actually trying to beat Donald Trump? No.
Tim, what do you think? I mean, I just find it, DeSantis is just always casting about

for some kind of line, some kind of hit, but it never fits into any kind of broader message he's

trying to deliver. Now Nikki Haley's a basement candidate.
Who is that for? Who finds that

plausible? Especially because she says no to this debate and what does she get instead? She gets a

CNN town hall, which I don't, who in New Hampshire is going to be turning on a CNN town hall

and I'll tell you, I don't understand why Ron DeSantis is running and I don't know that Ron does. So I just, I can't answer that.
Like I just, he has, he's not given a rationale and I don't know what the,

he didn't give a rationale before Iowa

and he certainly doesn't have one now.

So it's kind of unclear what his motivations are.

Nikki Haley, on the other hand, not debating.

Like I'm of two minds of it.

On the one hand, it's like, okay,

I'm okay with you not debating Ron DeSantis

and giving him oxygen when you're trying to make this

a mono, a woman-o thing in New Hampshire. That'shire that's fine strategically but like do you have to do something what is what what is she doing instead and if the answer is going back to kind of the last question oh i'm going to do some town halls in peterborough and i'm just going to say the same talking points i've been saying since october well it's like well you lost by 32 in the first contest okay so you have to do something to change it up and while her speech i agree love it there's some energy in the room again she didn't make any new news she didn't she didn't break any new ground um you know uh your old boss tommy pluff was like ranting um and the other night um and msnbc about how like she leaves iowa and then doesn't land in new hampshire and do an event that morning like create news she doesn't do any so it's like like where is the fucking urgency all right like you don't have to debate around the santas if you don't want but like give me some this is it like it's all over in six days right so like give me something punch trump in the mouth either rhetorically or physically or i don't you't know what exactly it is, but, but she has to do something to change things up because she's not winning New Hampshire right now.
Um, I think that Christie obviously gives her a boost, but, but, uh, you know, Trump is still in the high forties and, and she's got to win. Haley didn't event yesterday.
Dave Weigel, a great reporter at 7 before tweeted this, it lasted 23 minutes and she no Q&A. It's just like a bizarre way to spend your finals.
Obama's schedule between Iowa and New Hampshire was a frenetic pace. It was a bus tour.
It was tons of events in the north country or in southern New Hampshire and the Boston media markets and in the coast. How did he do in New Hampshire? I don't remember.
You know, I don't remember. It was closer than what we've been seeing this time.
He should have skipped the debate. That's the answer here.
He should have skipped the debate. Or maybe Nikki Haley should cry.
And I'm kind of being snarky, but I'm kind of serious. Crying would maybe...
Well, it's probably a different electorate. I might cry.
Different electorate. I don't know.
Listen, I cry every night, and I'd like to see politicians cry more. I'd like to see Krista Nunu cry, too.
Well, Krista Nunu, who is the governor of New Hampshire and endorsed Nikki Haley, was doing a round of interviews saying, like, Nikki Haley's here. She's answering questions.
She's showing up. Trump's just dropping in on his plane, which, A, is deja vu with the argument that didn't work in Iowa, but, B, is a shitty thing to introduce a candidate who then leaves without taking any fucking questions.
It doesn't make any sense. So a poll by American Research Group showed that Haley and Trump are both at 40, which was a rise from 37 for Trump and 33 for Haley as the race consolidated, the Christie bump, as you said, though a new poll out this morning from Suffolk and the Boston Globe had Trump at 50 and Haley at 36 36 ron still cruising in the uh the singy digis uh uh hailey has spent 26 million dollars on ads hailey plus her packs and to trump's 12 million she's doing this electability argument uh tim it does seem like she's sharpened her rhetoric a bit she's been she's i i'm not i'm not a vote i'm not a nikki hailey voter i'm just saying like She made the age argument.
She called them both nearly 80. Trump does not like to be referred to as being nearly 80.
Tommy hates it too. Yeah.
Love it. She sharpened, I guess.
I don't know. From what? It's like she had a dull spoon.
It's a spork. It's approaching spork territory.
It's just she spent – the ad thing is what drives me crazy. She spent $26 million on ads and like to provide no meaningful contrast to Donald Trump.
Look, I'm not asking Nikki Haley to go full bulwark Trump derangement syndrome and start crying about the state of the democracy. Even though that's – I mean I would love that.
I might go up and volunteer for her if she did that. I don't think that would help her in the end.
You could look at Chris Christie's number. But you do have to offer a contrast with Donald Trump that is meaningful, that tries to get people to change, or you have to change the electorate.
Like, or you have to bring new people into the electorate. Like, my colleague, Sarah Longwell's focus group, like, I was just watching focus groups of these people in New Hampshire, which are the undeclareds, and they don't even like her.
And it's like she's got to either motivate those people to turn out to vote, undeclared types that would have been for Christy, and change the makeup of the electorate. Or she's got to win over some of the soft Trump voters, some of the DeSantis voters, by offering a legitimate contrast with them.
She's doing neither of those things. She's doing nothing.
She's betting on the demographic change, right? Independent voters account for more than 343,000 of all registered voters in New Hampshire. There's about 268,000 registered Republican voters in the state.
What is her message for them, the undeclared voters? I'm not done. She's making an elect saying she's she does this thing where chaos follows Trump around, which is obviously embarrassing.
But she, you know, she made this argument in her speech. She's making it in her ads that these are both candidates of the past.
They're both focused on grievance, which is her way of saying Trump is focused on grievance because whatever. But and then she makes it like a electability argument, which is a strong argument, right? That like between Trump and biden is a toss-up but i win in a landslide right that is an argument here's yeah sure it's an argument here's why it's not a strong argument there are two groups of people that are voting in new hampshire one is the undeclared voters like we're talking about in the moderates my people okay they don't most of them aren't even sure they want her over biden so so like electability isn't that strong of an argument for them most of them are kind kind of toss-up voters in a Haley Biden thing.
All right. And then the other group of people, the Republicans, as we saw from the entrance polls in Iowa, they think Trump won.
Okay. They think Trump is still the president.
So you can't make an electability argument against somebody that has diluted the entire voting base into thinking that he is an invincible winner that was robbed by the deep state. So again, if we had a time machine, if we went back to the end of the midterms in 2022, and if her and DeSantis had actually run a campaign and spent those $50 million they've spent on TV, $100 million, and on TV reminding people that Donald Trump's a loser and that he lost in 2020 and that he cost them the 2022 midterms and that they are both winners because Ron won in Florida and because whatever, polls show that people like her, then okay, then yeah, sure.
I think that would have been a good argument in December of 2022, but it's January of 2024. The Suffolk poll only has her up six on Trump among independents, so not great.
The Trump, well aware of the divide between the independents and Republicans, had this to say about Nikki Haley. The era of gracious Trump didn't even last 12 hours.
Hmm. Shocking.
Iocking. I thought that when he wrote Brickman on stage, I knew it was maybe a sign that gracious Trump was going to survive.
But let's see what he said about Haley now you're not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure if you're think she watched her speech last night. I thought it was inappropriate.
But because it's bad for unity, it's bad for the party, what she said.

But you'd almost think she won.

She came in third.

And she lost to not a particularly great candidate, obviously, as you've seen.

She lost to somebody that beat her by about two and a half points, Ronda Sanctimonious.

Tim, too subtle?

Or do you think voters are going to understand what he's trying to say?

I fucking hate him so much, guys. i don't know if you know that i just i really hate him um and so i have to say that before i say the next thing which is like he had a point every once in while the fucking asshole has a point and uh you know he's he's right on both points ronda sanchez was a terrible candidate she still lost to him.
She needed to beat him to get the momentum going into New Hampshire. And it is also true that in order to beat Trump in New Hampshire, she's going to need undeclared voters and Democrats to cross over and vote for her.
And this is what gets us to the broader point about why this is also frustrating. It's like undeclared voters and Democrats aren't a path to winning the Republican nomination, right? So even if that does happen, even if Nikki Haley does win because there's a surge of undeclareds in New Hampshire, and it's like, then what? Great.
Congrats. South Carolina is going to be tough.
Yeah. Let's talk about the then what.
All right. So you're Nikki Haley.
What is the story you're telling yourself about how winning New Hampshire creates a path to winning the nomination? Because there's a story. They are telling that story at the very least to each other.
Yes. Okay.
Here's the story. I can tell you.
It goes something like this. It goes, I win New Hampshire and I have a glorious victory.
And I get to bask in the lights of all the cameras and people around the world will get to see me. And I will feel very great about myself.
And then immediately when I give that speech, Donald Trump's armor of invisibility and winningness will be punctured. People will take another look at this race.
And people will start to say, wow, maybe Donald Trump is not invincible after all. And the whole dynamic will change.
And then there'll be a month to South Carolina and Donald Trump will be going to court. And people will say, well, man, did you know that Donald Trump's been indicted four times and has 91 felony counts and he's not a winner anymore?

Maybe I should reconsider Nikki Haley.

And then we'll get to South Carolina and that's what they're telling themselves, which is mean which is a preposterous fantasy or maybe they're hoping for you know the hamburger from heaven um that uh is the end of that's tim's code for death yeah the listeners who don't know or maybe oh the other thing is maybe it's like well uh if i win that allows me to stay in long enough to accrue some delegates.

And if Donald Trump goes to jail and Jack Smith saves us, then this summer in Milwaukee, I'll have some delegates to horse trade with. But I think all of that is very secondary.
I think the main thing is just this kind of fanciful theory of the case that if Donald Trump is defeated, then that will somehow change. If it becomes a two person race and she sticks around and the some sort of larger dynamic shift happens around electability plus conviction that she'll be the person standing there.
You know, the Seinfeld that, you know, being after a breakup, like first you go from being there for you to just being there. It's like that's it's breakup strategy.
You just got to be there when the breakup happens. So Tommy, the DeSantis team is now saying they're hoping for a Haley loss in New Hampshire so that he has a narrow chance of staying in the race through South Carolina.
I guess that involves Haley dropping out. if she does and she gets out does it matter for Ron? No.

Like

he that involves Haley dropping out. If she does and she gets out, does it matter for Ron? No.
Like he secretly wants her to win New Hampshire so he can get out and end his baton death march of humiliation across South Carolina for a month. There's not, like Tim, you've probably experienced this in a visceral way with Jeb or other candidates.
I mean, there is nothing worse in continuing a month. There's not, I like Tim, you've probably experienced this in a visceral way, uh, with Jeb or other candidates.
I mean, there is nothing worse than continuing a campaign. Once you know, it is over.
It's horrible. And which is why it's, it's, uh, kind of a question about why he's still doing it.
Uh, you know, I don't know. Uh, I think there's some inertia in this, um, having people around him, but it's brutal.
Uh, it's a real long slog in slog. And the time between New Hampshire and South Carolina is long.
Like a month is forever in a death march campaign. Like because every hour is painful, you know? I had an old boss I used to work for that was like, he signed up for boot camp.
And he was like, I didn't realize how long boot camp could be until I had to experience it one second at a time. And that's kind of like how it is on a losing campaign.
It's just every second is painful. So I don't exactly know why they would want to stay around for a month.
JVL at the Polar, he wrote about how they've achieved catastrophic success.

Yeah.

It's just like they're doing well enough that they have to stay in.

And so... about uh he wrote about how they've achieved catastrophic success yeah it's just like they're doing so they're doing well enough that they have to stay in um and so uh you know i don't i don't know if he's necessarily rooting for nicky but um i you know he has no he has no rationale i mean you know all the great and good supporters of him on the internet clay travis tommy laran you know all your favorites, they're all telling him to get out.

Even his troll posters have abandoned him.

His donors will too soon.

His staff will tell him, preserve your dignity, preserve your political future, endorse Trump as soon as possible.

The pressure is going to be just enormous.

Yeah, there was some donor.

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USAA! All right, let's talk about what this could mean for Biden. For a lot of Americans, not our dear listeners, but for a lot of other people, it hasn't actually sunk in that a Trump-Biden rematch is on the horizon.
An AP poll from mid-December found that just 20% of respondents were paying attention to politics. And according to recent reporting, internal polling from the Biden camp showed that around 75% of the campaign's targeted undecided voters do not believe trump will be biden's opponent in november so uh you know boy we got a surprise for them yeah all right they're not gonna like it but some of your listeners still holding out hope for that for jail yeah i guess i'm one of them there's that yeah there's that jail thing would be be cool.
Yeah. Tommy, Biden's weaknesses exist in the present.
He is old. He is the incumbent.
People have frustrations that exist right now. Trump's weaknesses are more prospective.
The danger he poses to democracy, the possibility he might be convicted of federal crimes, the damage his policies might do. Does Trump's emergence as the nominee change this dynamic? I mean, we all better hope so.
I mean, Trump is his favorability in the 538 average is still 10 points underwater. And that's having been sort of off the stage for a while.
Now, Biden's is worse. Biden is 15 points underwater, but he's been in the shit actually running the country.
So the hope is that the return of Trump will wake up Democrats in particular, bring back folks maybe drifted away for biden for whatever policy reason maybe it's gaza maybe it's something else uh and and steady the ship i know i think sarah longwell your co-host over there the the bulwark thinks that we might be at the nadir of the biden polling era is that a fair characterization yeah yeah she's um she's an optimist though you know i bring a little bit more of the rain uh oh we noticed the discussion um we'll make it rain tim but uh well i to me i think the most optimistic case is kind of like that maybe a low biden approval rating isn't that it doesn't actually matter if the Trump approval rating continues to get lower, right?

That would be my optimist case.

I always compare it to the Macron-Le Pen race in France.

Like Macron's popularity was just as well as Biden's,

even worse.

Wee wee, Tommy knows about this on pod.

He does.

He does on his other highly rated podcast,

Pod Save the World.

He discusses the Uruguay,

the upcoming Uruguay elections.

But Macron-

What the fuck is that all about?

It was Ecuador and Guatemala. And he looks good doing it.
Make your point, Tim. He does.
I love that. I'm a worldo.
Anyway, Le Pen and Macron, I think, is the Biden model, right? Macron is unpopular, but they're like, we don't want the crazy person. The problem that I have is I worry about Trump seeming not as insane as we all know him to be.
I think that there's a big checkout factor right now, another race between these two guys. A lot of more casual voters are just, I think, for good reason, going to want to not fucking pay attention to the rerun.
And Trump, when you see him, while Tommy was suffering through Nikki and DeSantis' low-rated debate, I watched Trump on Fox. And like, I know, you know, the listeners know that he is a total lunatic that has lost his mind and has dictatorial aspirations.
But like, he's still a reality TV host, right? He can still kind of fake it. And if you're only half paying attention, and you kind of think that he's just, that is the part that worries me the most.
That I think that if the theory of the case for Biden rests on the fact that people change their views of the economy, because the economy is getting better, fingers crossed, and that people come to terms with Trump's lunacy. I think those are rational things, but I don't know that necessarily that everyone's going to have a rational reaction.
Yeah, we're sort of counting. I do like, you know, like Tim, if I like whispered in your ear, you have to be a Bernie bro for the next 45 minutes or you're going to be in jail for the rest of your life.
And I pushed you out on stage. I think, I think you'd be convincing, you know, I think you could get it done.
But, uh, but, but I do think it's like millionaires and billionaires. It's like, if you ever hung out with a rich guy, I could just channel all my rage against Bill Ackman and 30 minute thing.
And I'd listen to that. Yeah.
That's, that's Tommy. Didn't know you did voice work.
The, yeah, so it's like there's the parts that we can't control, one of which is, does Donald Trump understand? And can he maintain enough discipline to be normal enough to lowers the way in which he is sort of unacceptable to the majority of Americans when they're paying attention? I think the other part that's hard to know and hard to control for is are Biden's liabilities surmountable, right? Like we're like we go into we go into this thing. We know that if we if it's assuming it's Biden Trump, these are two candidates that come to the table with new weaknesses.
And we're betting on the fact that Biden's weaknesses are surmountable and Trump's aren't. And I do think like that is just an uncertainty, right? Our job is to make the Biden weaknesses surmountable.
Our job is to make sure that Trump seeming less crazy and more energetic does not make Biden's age an insurmountable problem. And on the other hand, our job is to make sure that Trump's efforts to seem normal does not allow for voters.
The fact that he did an insurrection, overturn Roe v. Wade, would be far worse than he was in the first term.
And in the first term, he caused incalculable damage to the country, that that does not fade enough for people to get over it and view them both as sort of unfit. And this will be my rant throughout the year.
But since you're saying that it's your job, it kind of is. And I appreciate that.
And it's my job. And it's our job to pull work.
But the people whose job is really going to be to just get in the face of all those folks and make them know how unacceptable Trump is is Mike Pence and Chris Christie and John Kelly and Jim Mattis.

Like all these people that have let us down before and fucking Bill Barr and his jowls.

Like all these people that – I think they're going to play an absolutely crucial role here because you just can't – I think that in the same way that the primary campaign, I said the TV ads were totally worthless. I just think that there's going to be a cap on the ability of TV ads to get the job done.
Hopefully, the Biden people can break through. I do think that there are a lot of things people don't know about Trump or that they've forgotten that can be pushed through paid.
But it's going to take people that can be surprising and can break through and can shake the Wall Street Journal reader from their torpor and be like, really, if you're worried about the stock market, really, an autocracy is not the way to go. I think, yeah.
One more optimistic point, too, is I think in the same way that, you know, so the normies, they don't believe that they're not on board with Donald Trump really won the election. But I also think sometimes we may undercount that, like, if you in a country that does not trust its institutions, institutions that have incredible amounts of trust are like the military, law enforcement, and that for people that aren't paying attention, the idea of a president being elected after being on trial and convicted, I do think maybe even more anathema to people than we're currently understanding, especially because like we are, we are people that pay attention.
We believe that, but I think we've been so knocked around by the way in which Donald Trump defies gravity that maybe we're not seeing that like that actually is, and we see it in the polling, right? There are plenty of voters, including Republicans who say being convicted makes you unfit, being convicted makes you unacceptable. But I think we've been so kind of bullied by reality that we're not sure we can trust it.
Yeah, that number was surprisingly high at the Iowa entrance poll. That was like another silver lining.
And that spoke to like the silver lining I gave about like the Nikki Haley voter seems to really not like this guy. And if 30% of them, even if it's not 30, like let's say that that's double the reality and it's's 15% of people who, if Donald Trump is on trial and he's convicted or he looks to be convicted, they would not vote for him.
I mean, that's a death knell, right? So I do think for Trump, I do think that that is, you know, maybe some optimism. I can see a little light in the cloud for you.
I love it. Tommy, last night, Ron DeSantis said this in his town hall.
If Donald Trump is the nominee, the election will revolve around all these legal issues, his trials, perhaps convictions if he goes to trial and loses there, and about things like January 6th. We're going to lose if that's the decision that voters are making based on that.
From his lips to God's ears, a lot of conversation about the legal jeopardy Trump is in and what a threat it poses to his political viability. Why is he spending so much time in court when he doesn't have to? It's so strange.
It's really strange. He went to the jury selection for his second defamation trial, time he could be spending in New Hampshire.
And nearly got thrown out, I believe. He was threatened with expulsion from the civil trial because he repeatedly ignored warnings to keep quiet while Eugene Carroll was testifying.
I mean, he has one speed, right? This man just attacks everyone all the time. That includes political opponents.
It includes a disabled journalist. It includes a gold star families.
Remember that because your con fight playing the hits, yeah, playing the hits 2016. So I guess I'm not surprised he's in court.
I don't think that makes it smart or savvy. Um, I don't know how, what people will think of it.
I mean, I think Trump also intuitively knows that we live in a misogynistic country where victims are often blamed and he's going to try to bludgeon her in the court of public opinion as part of a political strategy. So that's, I assume what he's doing.
Yeah. I mean, I do, I think part of this is pathological Trump and there's no sense kind of getting inside his brain.
It's not a healthy place to be, but I think that as a strategy, I do think that, and hopefully this is a mistake and hopefully for ones around DeSantis is right. And I do think he sees himself, despite the fact that he's the former president, still as like, I'm an outsider against all of these pencil headed elites that you don't like.
And so for him, some of the court thing is like his own animus against Gene Carroll or against the guy that are saying that he wasn't as rich as he was. But some of it I do think is this show that he's putting on.
Like I am the outsider. I am the businessman.
I'm taking on all these people that you hate. And so I think that is like the logical side of it for him.
And that is obviously working in the Republican Party to tremendous effect. I think it's probably unlikely to work in the general election, but I'm not ready to be absolutely 100% sure about that.
Yeah, I think it's more feral than genius. But it is part of also making all these different cases a kind of like miasma of I'm under attack.
A potential juror in the defamation case said they were a Pond Save America listener, Tim. Oh, really? Yeah.
The judge seemed not to have ever heard of it and wondered if she said god save america um we got to fix the fucking judiciary gotta find this person i have to tell you the my favorite fact about the uh was it the gene carol with the previous gene carol uh jury was that there was a tim pool listener and so every time anybody all and any of the right-wingers and the mega folks bring up the're like oh these liberal juries in new york and dc and they're coming you know obviously like the deep states were gonna go it's like no a fucking tim pool listener listened to the evidence and they came away with the view that donald trump was liable i like that super right-wing uh youtuber former kind of lefty guy got famous covering occupy wall street went full horseshoe uh and now just wears his little beanie and does events that's where the case of viva

kramaswamy and that's where this this this person so you know have faith in your fellow americans

you know uh speaking of last question because i did not want you to uh leave before you had a

chance to address this um marco rubio endorsed the morning of the iowa caucus ted cruz last night

Thank you. not want you to leave before you had a chance to address this.
Marco Rubio endorsed the morning of the Iowa caucus. Ted Cruz last night, Sean Hannity endorses Donald Trump.
Couldn't wait any longer. What do you make of it? These people are such little fucking bitches.
I just hate these people so much. They're so cowardly.
And I just, I had to tell you, it wouldn't have made me any happier. And you could have had me on an April after the primary is over and after Marco endorsed him and I would have done the same rant about how he's a coward and a supplicant and how embarrassed he and his family should be of him.
But it's especially embarrassing now. We know that Marco Rubio would rather have Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis be president.
We all know that. The fact that none of these people had the cojones to actually try to challenge him is so maddening and is so enraging and like gets me that I will never forgive any of them for it.
And like that Nikki Haley, who I don't really like, as you could tell from this podcast, but would obviously be better than Donald Trump. The fact that her endorsers are just Chris Sununu and Larry Hogan, two kind of Tim Miller, squishy, moderate Northeastern Republicans.
That's all she has. Like none of these other people have at least tried to try to beat Donald Trump.
Like just pisses me off. And it really,

it really sucks.

Imagine having been in the Capitol on January 6th,

personally under siege,

and then going out a couple years later

and endorsing the man who sent that riot

to try to kill you.

Good stuff.

You don't even have to yet.

It's not even a binary choice.

And Mike Lee's out there going,

well, it's a binary choice.

It's like, it's not a binary choice yet. You could Lee's out there going, well, it's a binary choice.

It's like, it's not a binary choice yet.

You could have been an Asa Hutchinson supporter up until two days ago. There was some reporting, I can't remember, was that, I think it was Puck, that Trump's team is telling donors, like, you need to get on board now before this big event I have coming up at Mar-a-Lago.

I'm sure there's a similar call going out from his political staff saying, you need to endorse before New Hampshire or else you will be on some, you know, sort of shit list. Now I'm not saying that's compelling.
I find that pathetic, but I assume that's why these are all kind of nobody's going to primary Marco Rubio. All these people, I'm not saying your excuse making for him, Tommy, but that is the excuse making the people get up.
They're like, Oh, I called Marco Rubio's consultant. I was like, why is he doing this? They're like, well, it's inevitable.
He's got to.

And I'm like, or what?

Or what?

Somebody's going to primary him?

Matt Gaetz is going to primary him?

Is that what he's worried about?

I mean, Marco Rubio's finding his six-year Senate terms.

He gets to do whatever he wants.

Also, God doesn't care if you faced a primary challenger at the very end.

That's a great point, John.

I just think, you know. God doesn't care.
At the pearly gates. No, doesn't care.
Not a good reason, but God cares about ending this podcast. Masterful pivot.
Well, Tim, cause Tim's got to go. Tim, thank you so much for joining us.
This was great. We will be back.
John and Dan will be back and yeah, is there, they're going to be back. We're going to kill them.
What do you want? What do you worry about back john and dan will be back and yeah is there they're gonna be back we're gonna kill him what do you are what do you worry about you john and dan will john and dan will be back with an episode in your feeds on friday morning uh we're we're here now tuesday wednesday friday that that classic rotation people can't miss it three days it's just so much good material this was great we filled a fucking podcast and we'll do it. We'll do it again week after week.
Republicans may be cowards who give up, but not us. Thank you.
That's right. Thank you for having me, gentlemen.
Always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.
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