Who won the first Republican debate?

Speaker 1 Hey weirdos!

Speaker 2 I'm Elena and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 8 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 13 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 11 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo! Aye!

Speaker 17 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 17 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 17 Monitor their driving habits see if they're using their phone speeding and more these reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety plus with weekly updates you can track their progress over time help keep your teens safe sign up for greenlight infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast

Speaker 18 Welcome to Potsday of America. I'm Tommy Vitor.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And we will never get those two hours of our lives back, Dan.
We just watched the Republican primary debate, the kids' table debate.

Speaker 19 Consolation bracket.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Do we say that?

Speaker 19 No, we don't.

Speaker 18 Okay, I say Twitter. I don't say Meta either.
I don't say any of these things.

Speaker 18 And then, because we know that

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 Did you get the sense that we did not fully understand the Republican base when Pot Save America guest Chris Christie was ruthlessly booed off stage?

Speaker 18 Yeah, they're like people chasing him with pitchforks. And Loan's like, I like that guy.

Speaker 19 I do too. He seems great.
I like to have beer with him.

Speaker 18 What are you going to do, Dan?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 So you don't have to watch this alone or on Elon Musk's site.

Speaker 19 X. Twitter.

Speaker 19 You get to be with friends. You get commentary.
It's a communal experience. Yes.
We all do it together.

Speaker 18 And you get 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.

Speaker 18 Fox News hosted.

Speaker 18 What was your general takeaway?

Speaker 19 I kept thinking the entire debate about the scene in Billy Madison after Billy Madison gives his speech.

Speaker 19 And the

Speaker 19 principal judging it says, we are all dumber for having heard that

Speaker 19 and have, may God have mercy on your soul.

Speaker 18 That is part of the quote that gets left out a lot.

Speaker 19 Yeah. I mean, it was terrible.
It was stupid. It was scary.
The things that were cheered

Speaker 19 should make us all worry about the future of our country, or at least in segments of our country.

Speaker 19 From a perspective of just pure political strategy, it was idiocy run amok. I mean, it was terrible.
It was a terrible experience.

Speaker 19 And it had the feel of, I used the term consolation bracket before, but that's what it felt like. Where

Speaker 19 no one, it's, it felt 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.

Speaker 19 And that's what this felt like.

Speaker 18 Yeah, playing for third. It just doesn't have that kind of.
Same joy to it, getting the bronze.

Speaker 18 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. The story of the debate was the Vivek Ramaswamy show.

Speaker 18 He made the entire thing about himself. He managed to get attacked.
He was attacking others. He sucked up a lot of airtime.

Speaker 18 Although I did see someone just tweeted: you know how the reporters will do a summary of everyone's aggregate talking time?

Speaker 18 It does sound like Mike Pence had the most, but I think that's just because he talks like a slow-motion West World robot program to be Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 19 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 least.

Speaker 19 No one remembers a single word he said.

Speaker 18 Not a single word.

Speaker 18 It was,

Speaker 18 I'm just going to whine for a minute. The stupid extended drone shot and voiceover by Britt Hume for the first six minutes was bizarre.

Speaker 18 Starting the debate off with a bunch of questions about the Richman 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 reparte with a guy named Joe the Plumber and it became this little cause celeb.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 So yeah, I mean, Vivek was kind of my big takeaway and not a lot else.

Speaker 19 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 bait because there's no one on that stage did anything to make him think twice about skipping the next one or the one after that.

Speaker 19 Because they didn't put pressure on him. They didn't attack him for not being there.
They didn't do anything to to try to alter the shape of the race. They just tried to

Speaker 19 come in first among the people who were fighting for second. It didn't really make sense to me.

Speaker 18 Yeah, somewhere in Bedminster,

Speaker 18 the ketchup and burgers are in his belly, not against the wall, because he's a happy cancer.

Speaker 19 He's so mad because there's nothing that he can TiVo to watch on Fox because it was all of his favorite shows were preempted by this.

Speaker 18 Although all the Fox hosts, they felt like it was like they were the section about Trump that we'll get into and whether

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 They couldn't move on fast enough.

Speaker 19 No, I mean, he is, for all intents and purposes, their boss.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Here's a super cut of some of the things he said that might help explain why.

Speaker 20 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?

Speaker 20 President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century.

Speaker 19 It's a fact.

Speaker 21 And Chris Christie,

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 But I'm not running for president of MSNBC. I am running for president of the United States.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 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?

Speaker 18 Skinny guy with a funny name, Dan, is a pretty good line.

Speaker 19 It's not familiar, though.

Speaker 19 It does feel mildly familiar.

Speaker 18 It's interesting to kind of rip off the incredibly popular former Democratic president, Barack Obama, in your kind of opening salvo in the campaign.

Speaker 19 I wonder why he did that. It worked for Obama? Yeah, it did.

Speaker 19 But it ain't broke.

Speaker 18 What do you think with those clips? What jumped out of you there?

Speaker 19 It's hard. 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.

Speaker 19 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 them.

Speaker 19 Many of these candidates faded into the background.

Speaker 18 Not Doug Bergham's eyebrows. They were there all night long, staring into my that was he, they actually went up three points.

Speaker 19 Caterpillars falling high in Iowa. Sorry.
I mean, in credit to him, he did attend the debate with a torn Achilles.

Speaker 18 That must be so painful.

Speaker 19 He seemed like he might have been on some painkillers.

Speaker 18 He definitely seemed happy to be there.

Speaker 19 I mean, I don't have anything to judge me because I've never seen the man speak before,

Speaker 19 so I don't know what he's drawing from. I can't remember his name.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 So he stood out. And they're, you know, I think the likely thing here is that there's that he at least has given himself an opening to make a move in this race.

Speaker 19 What does that mean in a place where Donald Trump has 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.

Speaker 19 They'll just hear just that, hey, did you hear about this guy? Because

Speaker 19 most people have never seen him speak, don't know what he looks like, don't know who he is.

Speaker 19 All of a sudden he's sitting sit or stage and he's dominating the former vice president of the United States, the former co-frontrunner and Ron DeSantis, a bunch of senators you've heard of.

Speaker 19 And he's sort of kind of kicking their ass left and right. And so that at least will give him an opening with some number of voters.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he'll be he'll dominate all the coverage tomorrow until Donald Trump turns himself in.

Speaker 19 That is the small problem that we'll get to. At Fulton County, he'll probably.
He might go to Fulton County. Yeah, and

Speaker 18 Attica, like wave a cup against the bars. Yeah, I think the

Speaker 18 Your Campaign is all about vengeance and grievance line against Chris Christie was pretty damn good. And I thought defanged Christie in that moment.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 I put my hand on the Bible of Ronald Reagan. Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 And the way he paused, like the place was basically groaning. But yeah, I mean, like, he also, the, I'm not running to be president of MSNBC line from Vivek wasn't bad.

Speaker 18 I'm Like, hey, buddy, you're not qualified for that job either, but like probably played in the room.

Speaker 18 The Super PAC puppet was a hit I thought was coming. It would have been a good one if Vaik had remembered to name who he was talking about.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 He, I mean, which is interesting. We go back to that memo for the non-broken brain people who may be listening to this.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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 his like.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he pre-butted him.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 So he just like swerved out of his lane to do it. But I think the big takeaway from him is he has an interesting experiment.
He believes none of this. He didn't even vote in 2016 or 2012.

Speaker 19 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

Speaker 19 campaign platform to fit that. Identity.

Speaker 18 Yeah. Yeah.
You build an entire identity around what you think people want to hear.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 What Vivek did is he looked at the market and they built a product that fit the market. And that's what all of this is.

Speaker 19 He, he knew there's a constituency for America first, anti-Ukraine aid, pardoning Donald Trump, the like the fracking, the anti-climate change stuff.

Speaker 19 And he says it in a way that does it sound like a politician, which the last time someone did that, that was Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 And that's what he sounds like.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's hard to remember how different Trump sounded from everybody else when he first emerged on the scene in 2015.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Like you said at the top, I don't know that he's going to come close to defeating Donald Trump in this election.

Speaker 18 In fact, I would bet big money against it, 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.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 But it is a strategy to make yourself a star in the Republican Party, which will allow you to either become sort of some sort of MAGA media personality and then run in 2028, which I think is probably how he's thinking about this.

Speaker 18 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 a donor stop giving him money?

Speaker 18 Will, you know, his supporters just fully turn away and look elsewhere. I don't know that I buy the donor piece of this that much.

Speaker 18 He's sitting on $100 million in a super PAC, but look, he's not had the best run. What did you think about Ron DeSantis in this debate?

Speaker 19 I didn't really think about Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 He didn't like have one of those sort of like moments where his like brain snaps and he just laughs awkwardly in a random moment.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Like his whole pitch was he was a better, more disciplined, more talented, Trump without the baggage. And he didn't really show that.

Speaker 19 He just sort of seemed like a politician who had some views that probably have some appeal in the MAGA base.

Speaker 19 And that was sort of it.

Speaker 19 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 PAC.

Speaker 19 They're the ones who are calling Glenn Youngkin and Brian Kemp trying to get them in the race.

Speaker 19 So if he had had a really bad 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.

Speaker 19 And I think he probably did nothing to help himself, but I'm not sure he hurt himself either.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think he muddled through. He did have one moment.
He tried to manufacture a moment. Actually, Tim Miller recommended you do this where he like,

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But then he just got bigfooted by Vivek, who was like, I think climate change is a hoax.

Speaker 19 he raised his hand that was the like that moment just explained the differences between those two candidates which is ron de santis seems like a politician because he didn'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 yeah and so he tried 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?

Speaker 18 And it stepped on him. Yeah, it didn't look good.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 He signed into law a six-week abortion ban in Florida. He got asked about that tonight.
Here's a clip.

Speaker 20 I'm going to stand on the side of life. Look, I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas.

Speaker 20 I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to do different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 You had a different view of what you might do if you were running against it.

Speaker 19 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

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 Are you giving me Pinocchios for my position here?

Speaker 19 I'm just, I'm trying, that's not how we do it here.

Speaker 19 We're not trying to judge all lies on a four

Speaker 18 cartoon character scale. Thank you.

Speaker 19 I want to persuade you as to why

Speaker 19 he, why I think what he did is 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.

Speaker 19 And Nikki Haley had this whole thing in here where she tried to adopt a moderate position where her thing was,

Speaker 19 well, we need 60 votes. We've never had 60 anti-choice votes in the Senate.

Speaker 19 You don't need 60 votes because I can promise you this, that if the Republicans have a trifecta, they will end the filibuster to sign a national abortion ban.

Speaker 19 They will not be able to sustain the pressure from the base to avoid that. Nor will they try.

Speaker 18 Nor will they try. I totally agree.
Yeah. Like, I think regardless of how you interpret

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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 Lobar.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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 words that are bigoted, right?

Speaker 19 That that is where he is most comfortable.

Speaker 19 Yeah, if you're if he's if you're picking on gay kids and trans kids and you're and you're making racist accusations against teachers and all that, that that's where he is. That's his happy place.

Speaker 19 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 He is uh there was some very weird uh 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.

Speaker 18 Obviously, it doesn't work in an audio medium. Mike Pence, this is becoming a theme, Dan.

Speaker 18 Mike Pence was a little like he was the Reagan West World robot, but he was also like a feistier Mike Pence than I think we've seen previously. He went after Vivek Ramaswamy, too.

Speaker 18 Here's a clip of that.

Speaker 22 Now is not the time for on-the-job training.

Speaker 20 We don't need to bring in a rookie.

Speaker 21 We don't need to bring in people without experience. And guessing.
We need to bring

Speaker 21 it up.

Speaker 23 In 30 seconds.

Speaker 18 So, I mean, maybe a compelling argument against Vivek Ramaswamy, but from Donald Trump's vice president?

Speaker 19 Does that work? I don't know. The whole Pence thing is,

Speaker 19 it was Mike Pence. It was totally

Speaker 19 non-memorable. He's just mayonnaise.
Yeah. Right? You kind of know he's there.
You don't really pay that much attention to it. People who hate it really, really hate it.
No one really loves it.

Speaker 19 It's just, it's not.

Speaker 19 Even the crowd, like there was some cheer. It was unclear what they were cheering or booming about that.
This was a very bizarre crowd and sort of the reactions.

Speaker 19 But for most of the debate, even in his canned applause lines, no one clapped.

Speaker 18 No one.

Speaker 19 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 tempted.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 I would love to know who the audience was because sometimes it's a bunch of donors and the campaigns buy tickets and that might have been the case here.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think that's what I think. It almost certainly is.
Donors, political leaders. It's not.
base voters.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And it was just notable that Christie defending Pence gets you a combined 113 unfavorability rating in Iowa. So

Speaker 19 I think it tells you about all you need about that moment. The last thing Mike Pence needs is Chris Christie defending him.

Speaker 18 I know he's like, oh, this fucking guy, are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 2 I'm Elena and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 8 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 13 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 11 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo! Aye!

Speaker 17 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 17 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 17 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 17 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast.

Speaker 24 With TikTok ads, our revenue went up $10 million year over year during back-to-school season. Penn Foster is online education.

Speaker 24 TikTok is great because the reach is incredible for finding a lot of different types of audiences on the platform. Creator content at scale allowed us to easily develop and distribute creator-led ads.

Speaker 24 Our return on ad spend for TikTok is 21% higher than the Nexbus channel.

Speaker 20 Start growing your business today.

Speaker 25 Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 18 All right. Our next sort of bucket of folks are, you know, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott.
We kind of bucketed them together because they didn't do that much.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 22 Here's a clip: I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like Chat GPT

Speaker 21 standing up here.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing on stage tonight.

Speaker 22 Give me a hug just like you did to Obama.

Speaker 21 Same type of amateur. And you'll help elect me just like you did to Obama, too.
Give me that. Same type of amateur.

Speaker 18 I don't totally get what it means to sound like chat GPT.

Speaker 19 It means nothing.

Speaker 18 Groundbreaking new technology.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 I don't know. I don't know what it means.

Speaker 18 Yeah, like a kid cheating on his homework.

Speaker 19 It's a line written by a middling debate advisor. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I assume what he meant was someone who is 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.

Speaker 18 You would know that, Chris Christie, if you listened to Pod Save the World and not this Pod Save America bullshit that you come on.

Speaker 18 But yeah, I know, like, he just seemed like he got annoyed with vivek that that was sort of the theme of the night it seemed like all of them were genuinely very annoyed at vivek ramaswamy and 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

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Obama visited New Jersey during the campaign, came off the campaign trail, started dealing with the response to the hurricane, visited New Jersey, and Chris Christie hugged Obama

Speaker 19 right as they were getting on the plane to thank him for all the work the federal government had done to help New Jersey.

Speaker 19 That was the moment that Chris Christie's 2024 presidential campaign died. Sadly.

Speaker 19 His approval rating among Republicans went in the toilet after that because the Republicans blamed for electing Obama. Obama would have won without the Chris Christie hug.
But, and so

Speaker 19 this goes to

Speaker 19 why Chris Christie can't win because Republicans hate him. Yep.

Speaker 19 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 them.

Speaker 19 Yeah, he really did.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, come on, Chris. 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.

Speaker 18 And you just didn't even even try.

Speaker 19 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. Yeah.
And second, I think he really reacted.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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

Speaker 19 he did,

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 Who would have recommended the Democrats give him a dollar to get on that stage? I don't know anyone that would do that.

Speaker 18 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 Trump hit.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 She also went on the attack against Vivek Ramaswamy. Here is a clip.

Speaker 23 Putin has said,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 When I was at the UN, the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer over a crude American country.

Speaker 21 First of all,

Speaker 21 Mr.

Speaker 26 Ramaswamy, you have 30 seconds.

Speaker 21 Mr. Deset.

Speaker 20 I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

Speaker 18 That's a pretty good hit, and one that his staff previewed in Politico today, I believe.

Speaker 18 By the way, Haley's referencing Yevgeny Progozhin, who is a Russian oligarch/slash head of the Wagner Mercenary Group, who was killed when a Russian air defense missile hit his plane today and killed everyone on board.

Speaker 19 Do you know of any place tomorrow morning you'll be able to learn more about that?

Speaker 18 I do, Dan. Pod Save the World.
It's a great podcast. It comes out on Wednesdays.

Speaker 18 Someone tell my wife she only listens to Keep It. Look, look, I don't, Haley,

Speaker 18 I respect her

Speaker 19 for

Speaker 18 waving the flag here and fighting for supporting Ukraine because I do think it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 18 And I do think, like, I'm really concerned about where the Republican Party is going in terms of general isolationism, but also

Speaker 18 on this issue. But, you know, it's an electoral loser.
It's got to be really challenging.

Speaker 18 And to make this the thing you focus focus on in the debate against a rival, I mean, she really went after Vivek on him saying that he would essentially get rid of U.S. aid to Israel by 2028.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 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...

Speaker 19 There's obviously a lot of support for Israel in the Republican Party, but particularly among the evangelical community that dominates the Iraqaucus. Yes.

Speaker 19 And so you could that 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.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 Yeah, Dan and I were talking about this before the show.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 That's where these campaigns get really, really, really nasty.

Speaker 19 The other thing about Haley, and this is true

Speaker 19 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 exceeds like

Speaker 19 what does killed pergozin mean to anyone

Speaker 19 who has not yet listened to the forthcoming episode of Pod Save the World.

Speaker 19 That's one. And then two,

Speaker 19 they explain why these things are good for the world and not why it's good for American families.

Speaker 19 And so

Speaker 19 there is a very strong argument.

Speaker 19 The Biden folks have actually made this on multiple occasions about why supporting Ukraine is good for American security and how it protects the interests of American families.

Speaker 19 But none of the Republicans did that last night. It's very,

Speaker 19 it's all like Mike Pence did. It's all Reagan-esque short version.

Speaker 19 It doesn't connect with anyone's lives.

Speaker 18 Yeah, Pence tried to make the case that, look, we want to arm the 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.

Speaker 18 That's a compelling case, but boy, is it complicated?

Speaker 19 It's also going to be hard to explain to people why we'd have to stop the invasion of Poland. Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean, we should, obviously, but not a lot of people know what Article 5 is or why that would be a thing.

Speaker 18 And Donald Trump famously flirted with not supporting it. Senator Tim Scott, South Carolina, also on the stage tonight.

Speaker 18 You You know, 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.

Speaker 18 He's got a ton of money because he's a, you know, a lot of the donor class like him.

Speaker 18 He's an incredibly conservative voting record, deeply religious individual, but I think has sort of a kindler, gentler presentation on some issues.

Speaker 18 But I don't know, it just seemed like he kind of disappeared up there tonight.

Speaker 19 Yeah, he did not have a plan to get attention, and he missed a moment. And the clock is ticking on all of these people.
They are not making progress. Trump is gaining ground on them as a collective.

Speaker 19 Individually, they're swapping around the 40%

Speaker 19 that exists for the non-Trump vote. And

Speaker 19 it's, you can't pass these moments up. You have to.

Speaker 19 And there aren't enough debates. Like when Obama struggled a little bit early on in 2008,

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 And really, we really had to beat him up to be able to get him to do that.

Speaker 19 Scott suffered, 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 spoke, they got their allotted amount of time.

Speaker 19 None of it was that memorable. They didn't do anything to help themselves.
And that's a loss for them.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Finally, we got kind of our also ran category, our Bergham's Doug, our Hutchinson's ASA, or ASAPA. If you're Donald Trump, we'll get to that in a second.

Speaker 18 Like, I don't remember a word they said. Do you?

Speaker 19 I think that their presence on that stage is a full-on indictment of the Republicans' debate requirements because they should not be there.

Speaker 18 Yeah, you got to really just, it makes the whole thing worse when you have eight people up there, nine people or whatever it was.

Speaker 19 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 those other people?

Speaker 19 I was really sure you can say that.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Here is a supercut of some of the things they talked about.

Speaker 6 Do you think Epstein killed himself sincerely?

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 26 We have done the stupidest things in this country.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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

Speaker 26 no water comes out. You turn it on, no water comes out.
I call him Ada Hutchinson. It's ASAP, but I call him Ada.
What do you call him Ada?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 I said, why did, why is it he wants to be Mike, but he doesn't have the talent?

Speaker 18 It's one of those bitchy little man.

Speaker 26 He wanted to be his father, but he didn't have the talent of his father. It was great as father.

Speaker 21 Little fussy man.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 He suggested that the Attorney General Bill Barr covered up Epstein's murder.

Speaker 18 Trump was like, I think he probably committed suicide, man. Like, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 18 Tucker asked Trump if he's worried that the Democrats are trying to kill him. They asked him if Joe Biden was going to make it to Election Day.
Tucker suggested that Kamala seems senile also.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it was just weird.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 the ostensible purpose of this, I guess there were two purposes in this interview. One was to try to, quote unquote, take viewers away from the debate,

Speaker 19 to step on the debate. I don't think that worked.
It's not a live broadcast. Yeah.
I mean, but it... You could just pause it.
But they, yeah, right.

Speaker 19 It's true.

Speaker 19 They have invented the capacity to pause television and record things and watch them later. Or Twitter.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 It is. So that part didn't really make sense.
The other reason was pure spite. Yeah.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 The bigger thing that's going to happen is when Trump surrenders to the authorities and is arraigned and has his mug shot taken tomorrow. Tomorrow is the news.

Speaker 19 That will step on the I don't even know what it's stepping on. What is it like?

Speaker 19 Coverage of Vivek for Armaswami. I don't even think that matters to Trump.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 And Vivek will probably do 100 Sunday shows tomorrow because that's what you do to seize these moments. And he'll do

Speaker 19 the 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.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he'll be co-hosting Jordan Peterson's show for six months.

Speaker 19 Politico had a really, a couple months ago, or 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.

Speaker 19 It's very,

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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 who weren't paying attention to him.

Speaker 19 And so we'll see how Ramosami 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.

Speaker 19 So he actually has something that is on his message to say about this tomorrow that is helpful to him.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I know. 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.

Speaker 18 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 p.m. 6 a.m.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But back to this this Tucker thing. Like even Trump was kind of like

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 You know, he like had to suck up to Trump for like six years, take his calls late at night, do every softball interview.

Speaker 18 And then Tucker Carlson, you know, gets the gets the big bracket interview tonight, screws him over. Like, he looked genuinely hurt by the whole thing.

Speaker 19 I mean, Sean Hannity was an active participant in trying to overthrow the government, while Tucker Carlson was Texas producers, how much he hated. I loved this guy yeah

Speaker 18 and 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 twitter is such bullshit the 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 uh okay we are gonna take a quick break when we come back you'll hear from sarah longwell from the Bulwark.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 1 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 8 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 13 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 11 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 17 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 17 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 17 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 17 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 24 With TikTok ads, our revenue went up $10 million year over year during back-to-school season. Penn Foster is online education.

Speaker 24 TikTok is great because the reach is incredible for finding a lot of different types of audiences on the platform. Creator content at scale allowed us to easily develop and distribute creator-led ads.

Speaker 24 Our return on ad spend for TikTok is 21% higher than the Nexbest channel.

Speaker 20 Start growing your business today.

Speaker 25 Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 27 Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Speaker 18 So we,

Speaker 18 you might not know this, but Dan and I are giant libs. And what we think about Republican primary debates probably doesn't matter.

Speaker 18 So I wanted to name this segment Check Your Lib Rage, but Dan told me it was bad. So we just really want to know what you thought of that debate.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 27 Yeah, so I watched this stuff with two parts of my brain. There's the me part.

Speaker 27 And so my reaction as Sarah Longwell is,

Speaker 27 that was terrible. That was very stupid.
I can't believe I was ever a member of that political party.

Speaker 27 Anybody who said something sane got booed. Anybody who said something insane insane got cheered for.

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 I don't know. I mean, it was such a weird debate.

Speaker 27 DeSantis

Speaker 27 left almost no impression.

Speaker 27 I was, you know, 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.

Speaker 27 And so I'm not sure he did himself any favors with voters.

Speaker 27 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,

Speaker 27 but he was equal parts. The crowd was with him cheering, and then the crowd was getting pretty annoyed with him.

Speaker 27 He was a foil for some of the other people's best moments, like Nikki Haley, when she was beating up on him.

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 from base voters. And so Vivek probably, people who didn't know who he was,

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 It was like, there's a little bit of a weird crowd there.

Speaker 27 I couldn't get a bead on it.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 But I know that Republican-based voters are not excited about sending more money to Ukraine. So I couldn't quite understand

Speaker 27 exactly where everybody was, but I do know that the Asa Hutchinsons, the Chris Christie's, the people who were explicitly expressing anti-Trump sentiments, pence, when he did it, they were getting booed and shouted down.

Speaker 27 The crowd did not like that. So those are sort of my, that's my top line thought.

Speaker 19 No one in the room other than Christie and Hutchins that you met in made any sort of argument against Trump. Last I checked, Trump is winning by a lot of points.

Speaker 19 He, and if we stay on this trajectory, all these people are going to get their ass kicked. Based on the kind of what you've seen with voters,

Speaker 19 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?

Speaker 19 Is there some other better way than Christie and Hutchinson tried to do it? Or do you just have to hope Trump collapses under his own weight?

Speaker 27 Yeah. So the way that I break up the Republican Party right now is sort of there's 30% always Trumpers, 30% maybe Trumpers, 30% move on from Trumpers, and then like 10% never Trumpers.

Speaker 27 And so Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson have like a 10, you know, a ceiling of 10% from the never Trumpers because the move on from Trumpers, those are DeSantis people or Vivek people.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 who made them say, oh, let's all consolidate around this person. They're the obvious person jumping, you know, jumping off the stage.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But I was a little bit surprised. Like, I kind of thought that he knew he was going to get attacked.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Instead, he got hit that first time. He got called chat GBT or whatever it was by Chris Christie.
And then he just started lobbying attacks at everybody.

Speaker 18 And I'm just wondering, do you think that plays? Because we always hear from all swaths of the electorate that they don't like the negativity in politics.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 27 Yeah, they're lying about not liking the attack or the negativity.

Speaker 21 They do, I mean,

Speaker 27 that's just a thing everybody says. Like they are, it's a revealed preference, the Trump stuff,

Speaker 27 that they actually do want. And some of it is that

Speaker 27 they want people to signal that they are the fighter for them,

Speaker 27 right? And so they want somebody that they think is going to go really hard.

Speaker 27 The vivaq stuff, though, I was also trying to figure out because there's

Speaker 27 some of the time it felt like, oh, this guy's stealing the show. He's jumping off the page.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 And so I couldn't quite. I couldn't quite figure out how people were reacting to him.

Speaker 27 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 Vivek curious.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 I'm really interested in hearing more from him.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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,

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 18 Tim Scott in particular. Tim Scott disappeared.

Speaker 27 He just was gone. And even now, right, we're talking about Vivek.
We're not talking, other than talking about how DeSantis didn't really pop.

Speaker 27 I think that Vivek's the one who tomorrow is the name that everybody hears, for better or worse, right?

Speaker 27 And I think we know that when you're trying to just get your name and your brand ID up, that that kind of thing can work for you.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 There's been sort of conflicting anecdotal accounts of how important electability may be to Republican voters.

Speaker 19 Some, you know, in some polls, they'll say it's the beating Biden's the most important thing. I think that's kind of a dumb question because why would you pick a candidate who couldn't win?

Speaker 19 But also, those polls showed that a lot of people think Trump can win.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 Is that a real are people concerned about electability? Do they think that about Joe Biden? Is that giving Trump more permission?

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 The problem is, is that for the Trump base and even the maybe Trumpers, those are the people who are really deep in it.

Speaker 27 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 beat him?

Speaker 27 Also, especially the always Trumpers, but by a lot of measures, up to 70% of the Republican Party, They believe that Donald Trump won last time.

Speaker 27 And so, you know, they think that why he didn't lose to Joe Biden. It was rigged against him.
And so revenge tour, another shot. He deserves it.

Speaker 27 And the other thing voters say all the time, and this includes the move on from Trumpers,

Speaker 27 they think he was a great president. They think he did a great job.

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 And then it broke wide open with a rousing defense from Vivek.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 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?

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 I do think that the electability matters to a portion. I don't think it matters to a big enough portion.

Speaker 27 And I also think that it is true that, yeah, people think Trump is perfectly electable against senile Joe Biden.

Speaker 19 Which is so funny since he lost to quote-unquote senile Joe Biden two years ago again again a big chunk or not so sure right which is why ronda i can't understand why rondez would refuse to take my advice where he should say that donald trump let sleepy joe steal the election from him

Speaker 19 problem solved that place

Speaker 18 yeah um i 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

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 In your paper straws. Exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 27 Again, it's a little bit of both.

Speaker 27 There's going to be

Speaker 27 an audience for the climate change as a hoax stuff because he's just, this is the thing that Vivek was doing right

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 It's actually the environment is one of those things that you get a lot of voters, including Trump voters, that are real squishy.

Speaker 27 You know, they want, Nikki Haley was closer actually to where a lot of people are. We want clean air.
We want clean water. We just, you know, and Republicans can do this.

Speaker 27 That being said, you know, there's definitely 35% of the party who will be like, hell yeah, he just got up and said it straightforward.

Speaker 7 And it'll be memorable.

Speaker 27 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

Speaker 27 by just being an insane person that appeals to

Speaker 27 the section of the party that likes insane people. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Are we just wasting our time here? Is there a path for anyone to beat Trump?

Speaker 27 There's a slim, like,

Speaker 27 here's the thing. It would take a bunch of things to happen.
One,

Speaker 27 the big exogenous event of something happening to Trump or something happening that like really knee-capped him going into the general that people believed was a real deficit.

Speaker 27 I don't exactly know what that would be,

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 And these guys are showing us nothing, right?

Speaker 27 There's nobody, if you, the problem that you can talk yourself into, well, this could happen to Trump, this could happen with the legal stuff, but can you talk yourself into,

Speaker 27 boy, what I just saw from DeSantis shows me that he can consolidate 40% of the party around him, 50% of the party.

Speaker 27 I don't think so. Did we see Tim Scott? Did we see Nikki Haley? Nikki Haley did herself some real

Speaker 27 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,

Speaker 27 yeah, which one of those people on the stage looked like they were going to

Speaker 27 beat Trump?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 18 I didn't see it either.

Speaker 27 I will say, though, what is Trump? Did he do his Tucker thing? I saw people were, at least

Speaker 27 our people, the tweeters were watching the debate.

Speaker 18 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 solids. We turned it off.

Speaker 27 Well, you would, Libs.

Speaker 19 I mean,

Speaker 19 don't you know how important the Panama Canal is to me? Listen, listen.

Speaker 18 Jimmy Carter gave it away, and I've celebrated that decision ever since.

Speaker 18 Sarah, thank you for staying up late to help us better understand an electorate that's challenging to understand, let's be honest. We really appreciate your time and hope to see you soon.

Speaker 27 Yeah, thanks, guys.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 19 I'm so tired. We've been awake for so long.

Speaker 18 My daughter was teething and woke me up at 4.30 in the morning.

Speaker 19 I've been up since 4.30 myself.

Speaker 18 Because we're weirdos.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 I have to beat my children up.

Speaker 19 Sorry. That's the thing they got.
Rephrase that. Sorry.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 Okay, we probably shouldn't talk anymore on a microphone where it's recorded. Thanks, everyone, for listening.

Speaker 28 Talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 28 Hot Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 28 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 28 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 28 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefco, and David Toles.

Speaker 28 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 1 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 2 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 8 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 13 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 11 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 17 Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

Speaker 17 With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Speaker 17 Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Speaker 17 Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com/slash podcast.