Who won the first Republican debate?

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They'll be right back. Welcome to Pot Save America.
I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
And we will never get those two hours of our lives back, and just watch the Republican primary debate,

the kids table debate.

Consolation bracket. The consolation prize debate.
It was a doozy, but we'll tell you about all of it. We also watched most of Donald Trump's insane interview with Tucker Carlson on X, which is Twitter now.
Wait, do we say that? No, we don't. Okay.
I say Twitter. I don't say meta either.
I don't say any of these things. And then, because we know that our opinions or our gut instincts about what Republicans want are not always attuned to where the MAGA base is, we bring in Sarah Longwell, who has done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of focus groups with Trump voters to help us understand what tonight, if anything, might have changed the dynamics of this race.
Did you get the sense that we did not fully understand the Republican base when Pod Save America guest Chris Christie was ruthlessly booed off stage? Yeah, they're like people chasing him with pitchforks and it's like, I like that guy. I do too.
He seems great. I like to have a beer with him.
What are you going to do, Dan? Well, listen, the best part about the debate, I think, was for you being in the Crooked Media Discord, which all the listeners can join at crooked.com slash friends if you want to be in the Discord next time. So you don't have to watch this alone or on Elon Musk's site.
X. Twitter.
You get to be with friends. You get commentary.
It's a communal experience. We should all do it together.
And you get first access to upcoming live shows in places like Cleveland, Louisville, San Diego, and San Jose. End of plugs.
Dan, let's talk about the debate. Nine people on the stage, Fox News hosted.
What was your general takeaway? I kept thinking the entire debate about the scene in Billy Madison after Billy Madison gives his speech. And the principal judging it says, we are all dharma for having heard that and have may God have mercy on your soul.
That is part of the quote that gets left out a lot. Yeah.
I mean, it was terrible. It was stupid.
It was scary. The things that were cheered or should make us all worry about the future of our country or at least in segments of our country the from a perspective of just pure political strategy it was idiocy run amok i mean it was terrible it was a terrible experience and it had the feel of i used the term consolation bracket before but that's what it felt like where no one it's it felt like the like the consolation bracket like

in the world cup like after you've lost people kind of want to win they don't try that hard

and the stakes feel pretty low and that's what this felt like yeah playing for third it just

doesn't have that kind of same joy to it getting the bronze yeah i think the story of the debate

and we're going to go through all the candidates individually to the extent that they warrant it

uh the story of the debate was the vivek ramaswamy show he made the entire thing about himself

I'm sorry. And we're going to go through all the candidates individually to the extent that they warrant it.
The story of the debate was the Vivek Ramaswamy show. He made the entire thing about himself.
He managed to get attacked. He was attacking others.
He sucked up a lot of airtime. Although I did see someone just tweeted, you know how the reporters will do a summary of everyone's aggregate talking time? It does sound like Mike Pence had the most.
But I think that's just because he talks like a slow motion Westworld robot program to be Ronald Reagan. There's nothing that explains Mike Pence's struggles in politics more than the fact that he spoke the most when we thought he spoke the least.
I really didn't think he spoke the most. No one remembers a single word he said.
Not a single word. It was the, I'm just going to whine for a minute.
The stupid like extended drone shot and voiceover by Brit Hume for the first six minutes was bizarre. Starting the debate off with a bunch of questions about the Richmond, North of Richmond song was like the Fox News' new Joe the Plumber moment, which for you old heads out there, you might remember the 2009 campaign and Barack Obama got in a repartee with a guy named Joe the Plumber and it became this little cause salade.
But yeah, I mean, I think everyone was watching to see if Chris Christie was going to land some haymaker on Donald Trump. I don't think that happened.
A lot of people were watching Ron DeSantis to see if he would manage to catch up to Donald Trump in any way. I don't know that that happened.
So yeah, I mean, Vivek was kind of my big takeaway and not a lot else. Yeah, I think somewhere in Bedminster, New Jersey, Donald Trump is sitting at home feeling very happy about his decision to not go to the debate because there was no one on that stage did anything to make him think twice about skipping the next one or the one after that.
Yeah. Because they didn't put pressure on him.
They didn't attack him for not being there. They didn't do anything to try to alter the shape of the race.
They just tried to come in first among the people who were fighting for a second. It didn't really make sense to me.
Yeah. Somewhere in Bedminster, the ketchup and burgers are in his belly, not against the wall because he's a heavy camper.
He's so mad because there's nothing that he can T-vote a watch on Fox because it was all of his favorite shows were preempted by this. Although all the Fox hosts, they felt like it was like they were the section about Trump that we'll get into and whether, you know, he should be prosecuted.
Fox was so apologetic for even raising the question or asking about the issue. They were like apologizing to the audience, to the candidates.
They couldn't move on fast enough. No, I mean, he is, for all intents and purposes, their boss.
Yeah, he is their boss, the assignment editor. So we've mentioned how Vivek Ramaswamy dominated the night and was the story of the debate.
Here's a super cut of some of the things he said that might help explain why.

Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in

the middle of this debate stage?

President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century.

It's a fact.

And Chris Christie, honest to God, your claim that Donald Trump is motivated by vengeance

and grievance would be a lot more credible if your entire campaign were not based on vengeance and grievance against one man. And if people at home want to see a bunch of people blindly bashing Donald Trump without an iota of vision for this country.
They could just change the channel to MSNBC right now. But I'm not running for president of MSNBC.
I am running for president of the United States. And the reality is you have a bunch of people, professional politicians, super PAC puppets, following slogans handed over to them by their 400 page super PACs last week.
The real choice we face in this primary is this.

Do you want a super PAC puppet or do you want a patriot who speaks the truth?

Skinny guy with a funny name, Dan, it's a pretty good line.

It's not familiar though.

It does feel mildly familiar.

It's interesting to kind of rip off the incredibly popular

former democratic president,

Barack Obama and your kind of opening salvo in the campaign. I wonder why he did that.
It worked for Obama? Yeah, it did. If it ain't broke.
What do you think of those clips? What jumped out of you there? It's very hard to know how voters will interpret this performance. Yeah.
But the thing about being on a stage with a lot of candidates is you have to have a plan to get noticed. Yes.
Because if you just speak, if you just answer the questions you're asked, you're not going to have a moment. You're going to fade into the background and many, and we'll talk about some of many of these candidates faded into the background.
Not Doug Burgum's eyebrows. They were there all night long looking, staring into my soul.
That was, he, they actually went up three points. Caterpillars are falling high in Iowa.
Sorry. I mean, in credit to him, he did attend the debate with a torn Achilles.
That must be so painful. He seemed like he might've been on some painkillers.
He definitely seemed happy to be there. I mean, I don't have anything to judgment because I've never seen the man speak before.
I haven't either. So I don't know what he's normally like.
I can't remember his name. But Vivek came in with a plan to dominate the conversation.
And he did that quite

well. He owned the debate.
He picked fights. He had lines.
He was well prepared. He knew the

attacks were coming for him and he had a response to every one of them. And he might have sounded

like a slightly deranged carnival barker, but he didn't sound like a politician. And everyone else

on that stage sounded like a typical politician. So he stood out.
And I think the likely thing here is that

he at least has given himself an opening to make a move in this race. What does that mean in a

place where Donald Trump is 60% of the vote? Who knows? But the stories will be about him. Most

people won't watch this debate, but they will see clips of him. They'll just hear just that,

hey, do you hear about this guy? Because most people have never seen him speak until nobody looks like they don't know who he is. All of a sudden, he's sitting center stage and he's dominating the former vice president of the United States, the former co-frontrunner in Ron DeSantis, a bunch of senators you've heard of.
And he's sort of kicking their ass left and right. And so that at least will give him an opening with some number of voters.
Yeah. he'll dominate all the coverage tomorrow until Donald Trump turns himself in.
That is the small problem that we'll get to Fulton County. He might go to Fulton County.
Yeah. Attica, like wave a cup against the bars.
Yeah, I think the the your campaign is all about vengeance and grievance line against Chris Christie was pretty damn good. and I thought defanged Christie in that moment.
I think, like you said, Vivek benefited so much from getting attacked by Mike Pence, the most wooden, robotic, phony, typical politician sounding goober I've ever heard. Like the way he paused, he's like, I want to talk about the oath I made on January 6th, 2017.
And then I said a prayer. I put my hand on the Bible of Ronald Reagan.
Oh my God. And the way he paused, the place was basically groaning.
But yeah, I mean, he also, I'm not running to be president of MSNBC line from Vick wasn't bad. I'm like, hey buddy, you're not qualified for that job either, but probably played in the room.
The super PAC puppet was a hit I thought was coming. It would have been a good one if Vake had remembered to name who he was talking about.
You have to be a broken brain weirdo like us to know that there was a New York Times story about Ron DeSantis' super PAC releasing a memo for him about debate strategy. I mean, which is interesting.
We go back to that memo for the non-broken brain people who may be listening to this. The memo from the super PAC that was leaked online through idiocy, as far as I can tell, the strategy proposed to DeSantis was defend Trump and hammer Vivek.
He was sort of prohibited from doing that because the second he did that, he was going to come back with that line. And I think because DeSantis had not done it, he just tried to get it like- Yeah, he pre-budded him.
Well, Vivek came in with a list of moments, which is how you're supposed to prepare for a debate. And he realized that like the clock was ticking, he hadn't done the 400 page super PAC memo.
So he just like swerved out of his lane to do it. But I think the big takeaway from him

is he is an interesting experiment.

He believes none of this.

He didn't even vote in 2016 or 2012.

He voted for the libertarian candidate in 2004.

This is some sort of experiment

in reverse engineering a candidacy

where you go see what the voters want

and then you build a campaign platform to fit that. Identity.
Yeah. Yeah.
You build an entire identity around what you think people want to hear. It is, you know, usually because politicians enter presidential races at a point at which they have a record, what they're really doing is taking, you know, to sort of use a bad business metaphor, they take a product and see if it fits with the market.
Well, Vivek did it, he looked at the market and they built a product that fit the market. And that's what all of this is.
He knew there's a constituency for America first, anti-Ukraine aid, pardoning Donald Trump, the fracking, the anti-climate change stuff. And he says it in a way that doesn't sound like a politician, which the last time someone did that, that was Donald Trump.
I'm not saying he's going to have that level of success, but he understands what better than I think the rest of these people, other than maybe Trump, what the electorate wants, which is an outsider who's not a politician who wants to burn the system down. And that's what he sounds like.
Yeah. It's hard to remember how different Trump sounded from everybody else when he first emerged on the scene in 2015.
But I think Vivek was trying to recreate a bit of that kind of feeling and magic for the Republican electorate. Not that I agree with it.
Like you said at the top, I don't know that he's going to come close to defeating Donald Trump in this election. In fact, I would bet big money against him, but I do think he drastically improved his name ID, his standing amongst the base by defending Trump and probably did himself a lot of good in this campaign.
It's not a strategy to win. You're not going to beat Trump by being a mini Trump.
You could possibly win if Trump were to go away somehow, but I don't think that's going to happen. But it is a strategy to make yourself a star in the Republican party, which will allow you to either of some sort of MAGA media personality and then run in 2028, which I think is probably how he's thinking about this.
So everyone was watching Ron DeSantis at this debate. It was seen as kind of a make or break moment for him.
If he did not do well enough, people wondered, well, will donors stop giving him money? Will his supporters just fully turn away and look elsewhere? I don't know that I buy the donor piece of this that much. He's sitting on a hundred million dollars in a super pack, but you know, look, he's, he's not had the best run.
What did you think about Ron DeSantis in this debate? I didn't really think about Ron DeSantis. Yeah.
I mean, he, he had, he didn't, here's the nice kindest thing I can say about him, which is he exceeded the exceedingly low expectations everyone had from this debate. He didn't like have of those moments where his brain snaps and he just laughs awkwardly in a random moment.
He didn't make any mistakes, but he didn't demonstrate anything that would make you think that he was a guy who could beat Trump or beat Biden. His whole pitch was he was a better, more disciplined, more talented Trump without the baggage.
And he didn't really show that. He just sort of seemed like a politician who had some views that probably have some appeal in the MAGA base.
And that was sort of it. And I don't feel like he probably survives another day.
Because I do think that there's been a lot of reporting that some of the big Super PAC donors who gave some of that initial money were not going to keep funding a super pack they're the ones who were calling glenn youngkin and brian camp trying to get them in the race so if he had had a really bad debate i think or made some real mistake or been sort of memed coming out of it that would have been a huge problem for him and i think he probably he did nothing to help himself but i'm not sure he hurt himself either yeah i think he muddled through um he have one moment. He tried to manufacture a moment.
Actually, Tim Miller recommended he do this where he like- Good job, Tim. Jump on the moderator, kind of push back against the question when there was a show of hands question asked.
And he was like, we're not children. We can talk about the issues.
But then he just got bigfooted by Vivek, who was like, I think climate change is a hoax. Well, he raised his hand, that moment just explained the differences between those two candidates, which is Ron DeSantis seems like a politician because he doesn't want to answer the question.
He doesn't want to put his hand up because he's thinking about the general election, and he knows that putting his hand up there is going to look really, really bad. And not to mention, climate change is literally drowning his state.
Like, parts of it are going away every day because of climate change. And so he tries to do this thing, and then Vivek just puts his hand up and says, no, why don't you just raise your hand like a normal person instead of trying to be a politician? And it stepped on him.
It didn't look good. I think all of us think that were Ron DeSantis to win the nomination, the issue that would be the most likely to defeat him would be his position on abortion.
He signed into law a six week abortion ban in Florida. He got asked about that tonight.
Here's a clip. I'm going to stand on the side of life.
Look, I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas. I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to do different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.
So I viewed that answer, Dan, as him continuing to refuse to sort of take a real position on whether he supports a national abortion ban. You had a different view of what you might do if you were running against him.
Yeah. As the self-appointed fact checker of Crooked Media, I declare that what Ron DeSantis said there when he said, I will defend life as president.
Is he endorsed signing a national law similar to the abortion ban in Florida? I think that is, we know that's what he's going to do. Are you giving me Pinocchios for my position here? I'm just, I'm trying, that's not how we do it here.
We're not trying to judge all lies on a four cartoon character scale. Thank you.
I want to persuade you as to why I think what he did is he essentially was trying to send a signal to the evangelical voters,

particularly in Iowa, and the groups that have been pushing Republicans to be more aggressive

on abortion bans, the ones who pushed him to sign this ban, which he did, I think,

pretty gleefully, in Florida to do the same thing nationally. And Nikki Haley had this whole thing

in here where she tried to adopt a moderate position where her thing was, well, we need 60

votes. We've never had 60 anti-choice votes in the Senate.
You don't need 60 votes because I can

I'm proud of how you interpret his comments about abortion tonight at this debate, I agree with you that if he were to win the nomination, I would tie his views on abortion around his neck and do it every single day and make that the primary thing I ran against. I did think the one moment where he did seem to get the crowd going was he was asked about crime in Florida and he sort of fact-checked Brett Baer, whoever had asked him the question, and then said, you know, I'm the one who's done something about these George Soros-funded radical left-wing prosecutors.
We had the Soros, we had some Soros DAs elected. I removed them from their office.
Now they're gone. And he got like big applause for that.
And, you know, it's sort of a corny canned thing. But I think, you know, look, I think that talking to Republican primary voters about crime and, you know, the Soros boogaboo is probably working better for him than like picking another fight with Disney, but low bar.
Yeah, I think you could. He seemed DeSantis, who seemed somewhat uncomfortable throughout the whole debate, which is kind of his natural vibe.
But he seemed his least uncomfortable talking about crime. And then in the education section where he started going off about banning critical race theory and quote unquote gender ideology and all like that's his comfort zone are things that are.
The shittiest culture wars. That are bigoted, right? That is where he is most comfortable.
If you're picking on gay kids and trans kids and you're making racist accusations against teachers and all that, that's where he is. That's his happy place.
Yeah. Yeah.
He is. There was some very weird, there's some clips worth checking out on Twitter of him attempting to smile after answers that just show how unbelievably awkward he is as a human being that are worth watching.
Obviously, it doesn't work in an audio medium. Mike Pence, this is becoming a theme, Dan.
Mike Pence was a little like he was the Reaganagan westworld robot but he was also like a feistier mike pence i think we've seen previously he went after vivek ramaswamy too here's a clip of that now is not the time for on the job training we don't need to bring in a rookie we don't need to bring in people without experience So, I mean, maybe a compelling argument against Vivek Ramaswamy, but from Donald Trump's vice president, does that work? I don't know. The whole Pence thing is, it was Mike Pence.
It was totally not memorable. He's just mayonnaise.
Yeah. Right.
You kind of know he's there there you don't really pay that much attention to it people who hate it really really hate it no one really loves it it's just it's not it even the crowd like there were some cheer it was unclear what they were cheering or booing whether this was a very bizarre crowd and sort of the reactions but for most of the debate even in his canned applause lines no one clapped no one the main time people laughed is when he invoked Jesus's name. Yeah.
And the rest of the time, they sort of just ignored Mike Pence. Jesus got tepid applause.
They're either ignoring Mike Pence or they're trying to murder him. Those are the two ends of the spectrum in the Republican Party.
I would love to know who the audience was because sometimes it's a bunch of donors and the campaigns buy tickets. That might've been the case here.
Yeah, I think that's what I think. It almost certainly is.
Donors, political leaders. It's not base voters.
Yeah. There was one moment where the candidates were all asked about Mike Pence's conduct on January 6th and Chris Christie jumped in to defend him and say, Mike Pence stood for the constitution.
He deserves not grudging credit, but our thanks, blah, blah, blah. And it was just notable that Christie defending Pence gets you a combined 113 unfavorability rating in Iowa.
So I think it tells you about all you need about that moment. The last thing Mike Pence needs is Chris Christie defending him.
I know. He's like, oh, this fucking guy.
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Our next sort of bucket of folks are Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott. We kind of bucketed them together because they didn't do that much.
Chris Christie in particular, I think, you know, he's been feeling himself when people talk about his performance against Marco Rubio in the 2016 primary. He really kicked the shit out of Rubio in that debate when Rubio was kind of glitching like a robot repeating the same line against Obama over and over again.
But Christie, instead of going after Donald Trump, the person we all thought he was going to go after, decided, like everybody else, to go after Vivek Ramaswamy. Here's a clip.
I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like chat GPT standing up here. And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama.
And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing stage tonight give me a hug just like you did the same type of amateur and you'll help elect me just like you did the obama too give me that same type of amateur i don't totally get what it means to sound like chat gpt like it means nothing groundbreaking new technology yeah i don't know i know what it means. Yeah, like a kid cheating on his homework? It's a line written by a middling debate advisor.
Yeah, I assume what he meant was someone who was learning about all the issues in the world for the first time in the last six months, which, by the way, is something Vivek said on Hugh Hewitt's podcast. You would know that, Chris Christie, if you listen to Pod Save the World and not this Pod Save America bullshit that you come on.
But yeah, I know, like, he just seemed like he got annoyed with Vivek. That was sort of the theme of the night.
It seemed like all of them were genuinely very annoyed at Vivek Ramaswamy in kind of like a, who is this kid attacking us tone. Yeah, for sure.
And the, just for some context, for people who may not be nerds of a certain generation like us, what Vivek is referring to with the hug is that in 2012, in the waning days of that campaign, Hurricane Sandy hit New York, New Jersey, the East Coast. Obama visited New Jersey during the campaign, came out the campaign trail, started dealing with the response of the hurricane, visited New Jersey, and Chris Christie hugged Obama right as they were getting on the plane to thank him for all the work the federal government had done to help New Jersey.
That was the moment that Chris Christie's 2024 presidential campaign died. Sadly, yes.
His approval rating among Republicans went in the toilet after that because the Republicans blamed him for electing Obama. Obama would have won without the Chris Christie hug.
But, and so this goes to why Chris Christie can't win because Republicans hate him. Yeah.
And why Vivek was quite well prepared because he knew someone, but probably Christie, was going to do the Obama line because Christie's probably done it somewhere because he does all media and was prepared to do it and nailed him. Yeah, he really did.
Yeah. I mean, come on, Chris, you're like your whole promise was you're going to get up there and you're going to take the Donald Trump and that's why we need you on that stage.
And you just didn't even try. He didn't know how to operate.
Two things I think happened. One, he had no plan for what to do without Trump on stage.
And second, I think he really reacted. You could see in his face when he got booed.
The first time he went after Trump and said, whether you think it's criminal or not, his conduct is beneath the office of the president. And the crowd just basically booed him into silence.
He backed off then. And they all backed off then.
There was never a critique of Trump after that. And he did, I mean, I don't, he did nothing to help himself and probably hurt himself.
And he may owe all the Democrats who gave him money to get him on that stage a refund. Who, who would have recommended the Democrats give him a dollar to get on that stage? I don't know anyone that would do that.
Yeah. In his defense, it is kind of hard to figure out how to pivot from a rich man North of Richmond question into a trumpet But we digress.
So Nikki Haley was also up there, former ambassador to the UN. She fancies herself a foreign policy expert and is really focused on foreign policy in this campaign.
She also went on the attack against Vivek Ramaswamy. Here is a clip.
Putin has said, if Russia, once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. That's a world war.
We're trying to prevent war. Look at what Putin did today.
He killed Pergozin When I was at the UN the Russian ambassador suddenly died This guy is a murderer and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-american country First of all First of all, Mr. Ramaswamy, you have 30 seconds.
Mr. DeSantis, I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.
That's a pretty good hit. And one that his staff previewed in Politico today, I believe.
By the way, Haley's referencing Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is a Russian oligarch slash, uh, head of the Wagner mercenary group who was killed when a, uh, Russian air defense missile hit his plane today and killed everyone on board. Do you know of any place tomorrow morning you'll be able to learn more about that? I do Dan pod save the world.
It's a great podcast comes out on Wednesdays. Um, someone tell my wife, she only listens to keep it.
Look i don't haley i respect her for waving the flag here and fighting for supporting ukraine because i do think it's the right thing to do and i do think like i'm really concerned about where the republican party's going in terms of general isolationism but also the on this issue but um you know it's an electoral loser It It's gotta be really challenging. And to, to make this, the thing you focus on in the debate against arrival.
I mean, she really went after Vivek on him saying that he would essentially get rid of, uh, USA to Israel by 2028. He has a whole bunch of conditions for how he would do that, but that was the attack she wanted to go after here, but he didn't back down on that front.
He just went right back at her. She did not do a very good job of explaining that attack.
Not at all. No one really got it.
And it is a potentially potent attack because there's obviously a lot of support for Israel in the Republican Party, but particularly among the evangelical community that dominates the Iowa caucuses. And so you're going to see a lot more about that in the coming days if, as we suspect, Vivek has a little bit of a moment here.
It's going to get pretty nasty pretty quick on some of those things. A lot of it's going to be racist and religiously bigoted and all the above.
Yeah. Dan and I were talking about this before the show.
What these candidates say on the air at a debate or what they say in interviews is usually a highly sanitized version of what shows up in people's mailboxes in the form of direct mail pieces. That's where these campaigns get really, really, really nasty.
The other thing about Haley, and this is true of a lot of the candidates who try to run on their foreign policy experience and knowledge is twofold. One, they assume a base of knowledge about foreign policy from voters that greatly sees, like, what does killed Pergozin mean to anyone who has not yet listened to the forthcoming episode of Pots of the World? That's one.
And then two, they explain why these things are good for the world and not why it's good for American families. And so there is a very strong argument.
The Biden folks have actually made this on multiple occasions about why supporting Ukraine is good for American security and how it protects the interest of American families. But none of the Republicans did that last night.
It's very, it's all like Mike Pence did. It's all Reagan-esque short version.
It doesn't connect with anyone's lives. Yeah.
Pence tried to make the case that, look, we want to arm Ukrainians so they can fight the Russians and not allow Russia to steamroll through Ukraine and then go next to a NATO country like Poland, which means Article 5, part of the NATO charter, means that we, the United States, has to respond militarily. That's a compelling case, but boy, is it complicated.
It's also going to be hard to explain to people why we'd have to stop the invasion of Poland. Yeah.
We should, obviously, but not a lot of people know what Article 5 is or why that would be a thing. And Donald Trump famously flirted with not supporting it.
Senator Tim Scott, South Carolina, also on the stage tonight. Scott is, in some polls, he's in second place or third place in Iowa.
He's at 9% in Iowa in the Des Moines Register poll. He's got a ton of money because he's, you know, a lot of the donor class like him.
He's an incredibly conservative voting record, deeply religious individual, but I think has sort of a kinder, gentler presentation on some issues. But I don't know.
It just seemed like he kind of disappeared up there tonight. Yeah, he did not have a plan to get attention and he missed a moment and the clock is taking on all of these people.
They are not making progress. Trump is gaining ground on them as a collective.
Individually, they're swapping around the 40% that exists for the non-Trump vote. And you can't pass these moments up.
You have to, and there aren't enough debates.

Like when Obama struggled a little bit early on in 2008, being one of 10 people on stage,

as he would say, he's Midwestern polite. And so he'd really struggle to interrupt or speak when

it was not his turn. We really had to beat him up to be able to get him to do that.
Scott and Haley,

I think, suffered from a similar thing, which is they just didn't seize the moment at any point. And so they got there a lot of amount of time.
None of it was that memorable. They didn't do anything to help themselves.
And that's a loss for them. Yeah.
Finally, we get kind of our also ran category, our Bergams, Doug, our Hutchinson Ada. Slash Ada.
If you're Donald Trump, we'll get to that in a second. Like, I don't remember a word they said.
Do you? I think that their presence on that stage is a full on indictment of the Republicans debate requirements because they should not be there. Yeah.
You got really just, it makes the whole thing worse when you have eight people up there, nine people or whatever it was. I mean, usually you're like, well, you know, only six of the people on that stage got a chance to be president.
I want to, why are we wasting time with other people? I was really sure you can say that. Yeah, that's fair.
Okay. So the person who wasn't there tonight was Donald Trump.
He obviously no showed at the debate because his view on this was basically I'm kicking everybody's ass. Why would I bother to show up? And he hates Fox News.
Fair points. Instead, he did an interview with Tucker Carlson on his new show on Twitter.
Here is a super cut of some of the things they talked about. Do you think Epstein killed himself sincerely? A case could be made.
Look, I'm not going to get involved in it. The Panama Canal, we built it.
And we gave it away for $1. Think of that.
How stupid are we? We have done the stupidest things in this country. You have states, many states, most of the states have so much water.
You know, it comes out of heaven, right? The water pours down, and you have it. It's not like a big problem.
Now, in some states, they have a problem. You know, you have some desert areas and all, and for that, it's okay.
But they have sinks where no water comes out. You turn it on, no water comes out.
I call him Ada Hutchinson. It's Asa, but I call him Ada.
Why do you call him Ada? You know, I could tell you, but I don't want to get myself in a little trouble. Probably not a friend of yours, Chris Wallace.
He was the moderator. Not a friend.
I said, why is it? He wants to be Mike, but he doesn't have the talent.

It's one of those little...

He's a bitchy little man.

He wanted to be his father, but he didn't have the talent of his father.

His father was the greatest father.

He's a little fussy man.

I...

It was just a weird 45 minutes.

Like, Tucker Carlson, he just asked really strange questions.

Like, did Epstein kill himself?

He followed up three or four times.

He suggested that Attorney General Bill Barr covered up Epstein's murder. Trump was like, I think he probably committed suicide, man.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. Tucker asked Trump if he's worried that the Democrats are trying to kill him.
They asked if Joe Biden was going to make it to election day. Tucker suggested that Kamala seems senile also uh yeah it was just weird yeah it the ostensible purpose of this i guess there are two purposes in the interview one was to try to quote unquote take viewers away from the debate to step on the debate i don't think that worked it's not a live broadcast yeah mean, but you can just pause it.
But they, yeah, right. That's true.
They have invented the capacity to pause television and record things and watch them later. Or Twitter.
Yeah. It is.
So that part didn't really make sense. The other reason was pure spite.
Yeah. Like it's just a giant fuck you to Fox News to do this with Tucker Carlson who they fired who is in violation of his non-compete agreement doing this other show where he just shits on Fox News all the time.
I don't know what was gained from it. I don't think it, there's just nothing big enough happened in the debate that it's stepping on it.
The bigger thing that's going to happen is when Trump surrenders to the authorities and is arraigned and has his mugshot taken

tomorrow tomorrow's the news that will step on the i don't even know what it's stepping on what is it like coverage of vivek for armeswami i don't think you think that matters to trump yeah and vivek will probably do a hundred sunday shows tomorrow because that's what you do to seize these moments and he'll do more importantly morning shows sorry but he'll do the morning shows but more importantly he will just do every right-wing podcast YouTube show there is.

Yeah, he'll be co importantly, but he'll do the morning shows, but more importantly, he will just do every right wing podcast, YouTube show. There is co-hosting Jordan Peterson show for six months.
Politico had a really couple of months ago, weeks, I don't know, time means nothing. A really smart story about his media strategy and how he is everywhere all the time doing everything he possibly can.
It's very, I hesitate to make this comparison, but it's very reminiscent of how Pete Buttigieg built name ID to give himself the opportunity to take off. So he had a press strategy to go everywhere, do everything, introduce himself, go bottom up.
And even around the media who weren't, the traditional media weren't paying attention to him. And so we'll see how Ramoswami takes advantage of this, but he's going to be, and he's in a good position because he's running as mini Trump who wants to pardon him.
So he actually has something that is on his message to say about this tomorrow that is helpful to him. Yeah, no, there was another piece in Politico.
Adam Ren wrote a profile of Vivek today. That's basically about how his campaign office is just, they built a studio.
They built a TV and podcast and media studio for 80 grand in the campaign office. He has another podcast studio in his basement.
He says yes to everything, 11 PM, 6 AM. It doesn't matter.
He's also got no job. He's got a private plane so he can get everywhere he needs to go whenever he needs to get there.
So like, yes, he's, he's super energetic and active and out there, but back to this, this Tucker thing, like even Trump was kind of like, it's kind of was like, I don't really know what this format, I don't even really know what this show is, but we're going to get better ratings. But my favorite part of the night was you and I were watching some of the pre-debate coverage and Sean Hannity was on and he just had that like scorned, jilted lover kind of vibe.
You know, he like had to suck up to Trump for like six years, take his calls late at night, do every softball

interview. And then Tucker Carlson, you know, gets the, gets the big bracket interview tonight and screws him over.
Like he looked genuinely hurt by the whole thing. I mean, Sean Hannity was an active participant in trying to overthrow the government while Tucker Carlson was texting his producers how much he hated Donald Trump.
It's like, I hate this guy. Yeah.
And then maybe Hannity got lucky and scored a Pence interview tonight. Who knows? Good for you, Sean.
Yeah. I I don't think this interview did anything for anyone.

Like,

by the way,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I,

I, Yeah. And maybe Hannity got lucky and scored a Pence interview tonight.
Who knows? Good for you, Sean. Yeah, I don't think this interview did anything for anyone.
Like, by the way, Twitter is such bullshit. The little ticker under the interview claimed it had 80 million views.
I don't believe that for one second. Yes, more people watch it than the Super Bowl.
Yeah, exactly. Just like whatever Elon's bullshit.
Okay, we are going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear from Sarah Longwell from The Bulwark.
She has done hundreds and hundreds of focus groups of Republican voters. She knows what they think for better, for worse.
So stick around for that to get her reaction to the debate. Girls Jr.'s new snack stash was made for munchy madness.
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Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest of the other two.
We dive deep with guests that you love,

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We are so excited to welcome to the show the co-host of the Next Level podcast and the Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell. Sarah, it's great to see you.
Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.
So we, you might not know this, but Dan and I are giant libs. And what we think about Republican primary debates probably doesn't matter.
So I wanted to name this segment Check Your Lib Bridge. But Dan told me it was bad.
So we just really want to know what you thought of the debate. If anybody, based on the hundreds and hundreds of focus groups you have done, moved the needle tonight in terms of the Republican primary electorate? Yeah, so I watch this stuff with two parts of my brain.
There's the me part. And so my reaction, as Sarah Longwell is, that was terrible.
That was very stupid. I can't believe I was ever a member of that political party.
Anybody who said something sane got booed. Anybody who said something insane got cheered for.
But then there's the other part of my brain that watches it through the eyes of voters that I listen to week in, week out, these two-time Trump voters. And I don't know.
I mean, it was such a weird debate. DeSantis left almost no impression.
I was, you know, just just the sheer number of them on stage and the way that Vivek was just chewing up time cost DeSantis a lot. He wasn't fighting to get in.
And so it was easy to forget he was there. And so I'm not sure he did himself any favors with voters.
I'm not quite sure how to assess Vivek's performance because

on one hand, he got himself a lot of time. He just was on camera a ton.
He was fighting with Mike Pence. But he was equal parts, the crowd was with him cheering and then the crowd was getting pretty annoyed with him.
He was a foil for some of the other people's best moments like Nikki Haley when she was beating up on him.

But whenever I find somebody deeply repellent,

I know... for some of the other people's best moments, like Nikki Haley, when she was beating up on him.

But whenever I find somebody deeply repellent, I know now that I need to adjust and assume

that them being repellent to me means they're probably going to get a five point bump in the

polls from base voters. And so Vivek, probably people who didn't know who he was, probably

there's people out there who like him, like how hard he defended Trump.

He really took the air out of DeSantis being the one to defend Trump.

I mean, every canned line that DeSantis had that he really wanted to hit hard, Vivek had said like five minutes prior.

And it was just really like, yeah, taking the wind out of DeSantis's sails um it was like a there's a little bit of a weird crowd there um I couldn't get a bead on it's I think maybe like half the room was cheering sometimes while the other half was booing like Nikki Haley was getting these big applause lines when she's going to bat for Ukraine but I know that Republican-based voters are not excited about sending more money to Ukraine. So I couldn't quite understand exactly where everybody was.
But I do know that the Asa Hutchinsons, the Chris Christies, the people who were explicitly expressing anti-Trump sentiments, Pence, when he did it, they were getting booed and shouted down. The crowd did not like that.
So those are sort of my, that's my top line thought. No one in the room other than Christie and Hutchinson, that you met in, made any sort of argument against Trump.
Last I checked, Trump is winning by a lot of points. He, and if we stay on this trajectory, all these people are going to get their ass kicked.

Based on what you've seen with voters, what is the size of the anti-Trump lane? And what's the best way to get there if you're going to get shouted down for making a case against Trump? Is there some other better way than Christine Hutchinson tried to do it? Or do you just have to hope Trump collapses under his own weight? Yeah. So the way that I break up the Republican Party right now is sort of there's 30 percent always Trumpers, 30 percent maybe Trumpers, 30 percent move on from Trumpers and then like 10 percent never Trumpers.
And so Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson have like a 10, you know, a ceiling of 10 percent from the never Trumpers because the move on from Trumpers, those are DeSantis people or Vivek people. Those are people who worry that Trump can't win.
They have electability concerns, but they're not anti-Trump. There's just not, and that's the thing, there's a difference between the always Trump base and then being anti-Trump.
And I would say 90% of the party is open to Trump in some way. Like they will, the move on from Trumpers who prefer a DeSantis, let's say, they'll still vote for Trump in a general election.
And so they're not anti Trump per se, they're just don't think he's the best person to go forward with. The problem is, is they're not consolidated around anybody.
And I'm not sure there was anyone tonight who made them say, oh, let's all consolidate around this person. They're the obvious person jumping, you know, jumping off the stage.
So I'm I was watching old debate clips from 2015 and 2016. And it took me back to just how different Trump felt on that debate stage.
You know, everyone else was kind of black and white. He was showing up in color.
He was dominating the stage and he was sort of loving the chaos. And I felt a bit of that tonight with Vivek, the way he made the entire debate about himself.
But I was a little bit surprised. Like, I kind of thought that he knew he was going to get attacked.
Everyone was telegraphing, like Haley was telegraphing that she was going to go after him on, you know, funding for Israel and that he would respond, but kind of do it with a smile. Instead, he got hit that first time he got called chat GBT or whatever it was by Chris Christie.
And then he just started lobbing attacks

at everybody. And I'm just wondering, do you think that plays? Because we always hear from

all swaths of the electorate, they don't like the negativity in politics. They don't like the attack, but they do like Trump.
So I'm just kind of trying to sort out in my own mind, like what to make of what we watched. Yeah.
They're lying about not liking the attack or the negativity. They, I mean, that's just a thing everybody says.
Like they are, it's a revealed preference, the Trump stuff that, that they actually do want. And some of it is that they want people to signal that they are the fighter for them.
Right. And so they want somebody that they think is going to go really hard.
The Vivek stuff, though, I was also trying to figure out because there's some of the time it felt like, oh, this guy's stealing the show. He's jumping off the page.
But then there were other times where people, the crowd seemed actively annoyed with him, like not some of the other candidates certainly seemed really annoyed with him. And so I couldn't quite I couldn't quite figure out how people were reacting to him.
I will say, as I've done focus groups, especially in Iowa, where he is showing up a lot, there are a lot of voters that are very vivid curious. And the way that they talk about him is the way that they used to talk about DeSantis like eight, nine months ago.
We're like, oh, he's got really good ideas. I really like him.
I'm really interested in hearing more from him. But he was a chaos agent tonight.
And I guess I've seen Trump be a chaos agent, and that worked for him. I'm not sure if it works for Vivek, but it might.
I mean, just the sheer volume of time, like the sheer amount of time that he got tonight to showcase himself versus, I mean, the two other, the two people who are, you know, even remotely in contention, Tim Scott for the donors and Ron DeSantis for the move on Trumpers, they were both surprisingly just in the back. Like he overshadowed them.
Tim Scott in particular. Tim Scott, he just was gone.
And even now, right, we're talking about Vivek. We're not talking other than talking about how the Santas didn't really pop.
I think that Vivek's the one who tomorrow is the name that everybody hears for better or worse. Right.
And I think we know that when you're trying to just get your name and your brand idea up, that that kind of thing can work for you. Another argument that was not made really on stage at all was any sort of argument about electability as it relates to Trump.
It was no one has brought it up. There's been sort of conflicting anecdotal accounts of how important electability may be to Republican voters.
In some polls, they'll say beating Biden is the most important thing. I think that's kind of a dumb question, because why would you pick a candidate who couldn't win? But also, those polls showed that a lot of people think Trump can win.
Then there was this New York Times story the other day, which basically tried to undermine the electability argument by saying, and this was really anecdotal. So I'm curious if you've seen this in your focus groups, that people who watch Fox News or sort of in the right-wing media ecosystem have been fed so many clips and stories about Joe Biden being too old or not mentally competent that they think he can't win.
Is that a real, are people concerned about electability? Do they think that about Joe Biden? Is that giving Trump more permission? Yeah, the reason I like to break the party up into those buckets is because the move on Trumpers, they do care about electability. That was their whole thing about DeSantis to begin with.
You know, he's Trump without the baggage. He's Trump, you know, not on steroids.
And so they still saw they liked the Trumpiness of him, but they thought he was electable. The problem is, is that for the Trump base and even the maybe Trumpers, those are the people who are really deep in it.
And they think that Joe Biden sits in the Oval Office drooling on himself while somebody spoon feeds him, you know, oatmeal. And so why wouldn't they think that Donald Trump could be him? Also, especially the always Trumpers, but by a lot of measures, up to 70 percent of the Republican Party, they believe that Donald Trump won last time.
And so, you know, they think that he didn't lose to Joe Biden. It was rigged against him.
And so revenge tour, another shot. He deserves it.
And the other thing voters say all the time, and this includes the move on from Trumpers, they think he was a great president. They think he did a great job.
And I think that's one of the difficulties these candidates are having is that they don't want to go after Trump's record because the voters like Trump's record and they think he did a good job. But the fact that nobody went after him, period, tonight, the moderators had to set up a segment in which to talk about Trump and the indictments.
And then it broke wide open with a rousing defense from Vivek. I don't know what these guys are thinking.
I just don't know what Donald Trump is beating DeSantis by 30 or 40 points in most of these polls. And everybody decided to not say, including Chris Christie.
Like they had to be set up to say anything.

Pence was kind of waffling. Where was Chris Christie's big attack? I mean, I've been a kind of a defender of him ready to say, like, let's unleash this guy.
He was nowhere on Trump. And so anyway, back to your question.
I do think that the electability matters to a portion. I don't think it matters to a big enough portion.
And I also think that it is true that, yeah, people think Trump is perfectly electable against senile Joe Biden. Which is so funny, since he lost to, quote unquote, senile Joe Biden two years ago.
Again, again, a big chunk are not so sure. Right.
Which is why Rhonda, I can't understand why Rhonda stands to refuse to take my advice where he should say that Donald Trump let sleepy Joe steal the election from him. Problem solved.
That place. Yeah.
I hate to keep bringing up Vivek, but you know, he said the most interesting things. I mean, he said, the climate change agenda is a hoax.
The anti carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy. More people are dying because of bad policies than because of climate change.
I'm wondering if, A, you hear views that extreme reflected in the voters you talk to, or B, whether I'm overthinking this and voters might like that because it tells annoying libs like me who care about climate change where they can shove their electric vehicle charger or whatever. And your paper straws.
Exactly. Yeah.
Again, it's a little bit of both. There's going to be there's going to be an audience for the climate change is a hoax stuff because he's just this is the thing that Vivek was doing.
Right. DeSantis, when he was asked to raise hands or whatever, give a straight answer, he he let you, you know, worked himself into a pitch.
Vivek just comes out with climate change is a hoax. Now, the crowd seemed to boo him, unless I'm mistaken for that.
And there are a lot of voters in the Republican Party that will think that that's ridiculous. It's actually the environment is one of those things that you get a lot of voters, including Trump voters, that are real squishy.
You know, they want the Nikki Haley was closer, actually, to where a lot of people are. We want clean air.
We want clean water. We just, you know, then Republicans can do this.
That being said, you know, there's definitely 35 percent of the party who will be like, hell, yeah, he just got up and said it straightforward and it'll be memorable.

And so that's why I just think when it comes to this undercard, you know, how do we shuffle

things around for second place? Vivek probably did himself the most favors by just being an

insane person that appeals to the section of the party that likes insane people.

Yeah. Are we just wasting our time here? Is there a path for anyone to beat Trump? There's a slim, like, here's the thing.
It would take a bunch of things to happen. One, the big exogenous event of something happening to Trump or something happening that, like, really kneecapped him going into the general that people believed was a real deficit.
I don't exactly know what that would be. But it would have to be that the problem is, and it has been the problem all along, you can't beat something with nothing.
And these guys are showing us nothing, right? There's nobody, if you, the problem that that you can you can talk yourself into, well, this could happen to Trump.

This could happen with the legal stuff. But can you talk yourself into, boy, what I just saw from DeSantis shows me that he can consolidate 40 percent of the party around him, 50 percent of the party.
I don't think so Did we see Tim Scott?

Did we see Nikki Haley?

Nikki Haley did herself some real

Some real favors with the donor class. I think that people who are writing Tim Scott checks are going to start writing her checks.
But like yeah, which one of those people on the stage looked like they were gonna beat Trump? Yeah, I didn't see it either.

I will say though, what is Trump?

Did he do his Tucker thing?

I saw people were, at least our people,

the tweeters were watching the debate.

Dan and I watched 30 minutes of 45 on 2X speed

and it's just weird.

There's like a rant about the Panama Canal

and Epstein being dead.

And I don't know that it did him any solid. We turned it off.
Well, you would libs. I mean, don't you know how important the Panama Canal is to face voters? Listen, Jimmy Carter gave it away and I've celebrated that decision ever since.
Sarah, thank you for staying up late to help us better understand an electorate that We definitely to understand. Let's be honest.
We really appreciate your time and hope to see you soon. Yeah.
Thanks, guys. Thanks again to Sarah for joining the show.
Thanks to everyone here on the Crooked Media team who's sitting in a studio that's about 105 degrees. It's so hot.
There's not one drop of breeze. I'm so tired.
We've been awake for so long. My daughter was teething and woke me up at 4.30 in the morning.
I've been up since 4.30 myself. Because we're weirdos.
Yeah, I have to beat my children up. What? I'm sorry.
Rephrase that. That's right.
Leave it in. I've been up since 4.30.
I have to beat my children to who gets to be awake first. To the breakfast table.
Okay. We probably shouldn't talk anymore on a microphone where it's recorded.
Thanks to everyone for listening. Talk to you next week.
Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
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