Awkward Americans For DeSantis

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

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 3 Dan, you and I haven't potted in a while.

Speaker 3 It's good to see you.

Speaker 4 My vacation, you took took a couple times off. You haven't.

Speaker 3 And I'm about to go on vacation.

Speaker 4 If we had this, I was nervous that if we did not pot it today, we would go six, like six weeks without podcasting, which has not happened. We haven't gone like three weeks without podcasting in

Speaker 3 six years.

Speaker 4 Since we started the stamp thing? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, we're going to make this one count.

Speaker 3 We have a fun show today.

Speaker 3 Our pal Jen Saki is going to be joining to preview the first Republican debate, laugh about Ron DeSantis' ongoing struggle to appear human, talk about how Joe Biden and the Democrats can handle Trump's courtroom campaign, and play around of two takes and a fake.

Speaker 3 But first, the Republican candidates are preparing for next week's debate, with the notable exception of the frontrunner, who's preparing to turn himself in at the Fulton County Jail.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump and the 18 co-defendants who are part of what District Attorney Fonnie Willis calls a criminal enterprise have until August 25th to surrender after being charged with 13 felony counts for trying to overturn the election in Georgia.

Speaker 3 There's reporting that suggests Trump will surrender at the jail next week, where he'll be fingerprinted and have a mug shot taken.

Speaker 3 But before anyone gets too excited, just know that Trump will be holding a press conference on Monday.

Speaker 3 Or at least he says he'll be holding a press conference on Monday, where he promises to present evidence of election fraud that is so, quote, irrefutable that, quote, all charges should be dropped against me and others.

Speaker 3 Here's Steve Doocy hyping it up on Fox and Friends.

Speaker 6 And apparently the document focuses on voting anomalies in the state of Georgia. And Ms.
Harrington has been on

Speaker 5 X,

Speaker 6 formerly known as Twitter, and said,

Speaker 6 kind of giving us a preview, it said, Georgia has been among the most corrupt elections in the country, and they haven't gotten any better since 2020. They've gotten worse.
Tune in Monday.

Speaker 7 And he said on Truth Social, Donald Trump, they never went after those that rigged the election. They only went after those that fought to find the riggers.

Speaker 7 And in this indictment in Georgia, in all these indictments, it allows him to have discovery. So his lawyers will have discovery and will find out information.

Speaker 7 And I heard this morning, Brian, an attorney said, I think it was on Fox and Friends First, was saying the best argument he has is to tell the truth.

Speaker 7 And if he finds out that something did happen in the election, then he would have proof and then maybe he could exonerate himself. What he has, we don't know.
We'll find out.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 3 Before we get to this year's version of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference,

Speaker 3 let's talk about the indictment itself because we haven't yet heard your reaction.

Speaker 3 We obviously did the Tuesday pod late once the indictment actually dropped. We now have a total of four indictments and 91 felony charges.
How'd this one hit for you?

Speaker 3 Did they save the best for last? Or in the words of Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post, is George's case against Trump one case too many?

Speaker 4 I love it when people specifically audition to Beyoncé Appreciator.

Speaker 3 I was like, is that a real, I saw someone said it, I was like, is that a real headline? And then I read the piece. It's not a good piece.

Speaker 5 I love Ruth Marcus, but spoilers.

Speaker 5 Not every day is a great day.

Speaker 3 No, that happens. We all have misses.
All right, what'd you think? What do you think of Georgia?

Speaker 4 If you're asking me in terms of the political significance or the legal severity or my own personal enjoyment, this one

Speaker 4 hit different in terms of my personal enjoyment.

Speaker 5 Like, what more could you ask for?

Speaker 4 You got all of the MAGA goons we love to hate, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, who did not get paid for committing these crimes, which I find to be quite amusing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 All involved. You have cameras in the courtroom for the trial that we hopefully will have someday before the election.

Speaker 4 And the way, because it's a, you guys talked about this, Melissa on Monday nights last Tuesday morning, but the fact that this is a RICO case, it allows the prosecution to tell the real story of what happened, not just focus on individual violations of specific statutes.

Speaker 4 It is the whole story. And that is enjoyable to me for sure.
How much political impact it will have, that is an open question that we can discuss.

Speaker 3 It is an open question. I mean, I think most of the time.

Speaker 5 Or is it, I guess?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, we'll see. Most people, I think, probably aren't familiar with the legal details of a racketeering charge.
Of course, we're now experts after a couple of days of reading some pieces.

Speaker 3 But I think the story of what Trump tried to do in Georgia is pretty well known and easy to understand.

Speaker 3 I had not, I don't know if you have, I had not gone back and read the entire transcript of Trump's call with Raffensperger since like 2020.

Speaker 5 That call is wild.

Speaker 3 It is not just him being, I mean, because the headline of the call, of course, is like, find me 11,000 votes, right?

Speaker 3 But when you really like read the transcript or listen to the call, he's like,

Speaker 3 there is threats too. He's like, if you don't do this, you could be committing a crime.
And that would be bad for you. If you don't do this, the people of Georgia will be very, very angry.

Speaker 3 Bad things could happen.

Speaker 3 And I mean, it's, and then he's like, forget the, and then Mark Meadows, his, his co-defendant in this indictment, one of his many co-defendants, is on there being like, can't we just not go through the court, the legal process?

Speaker 3 Let's get away from the courts. You can just change the numbers yourself.
You can do this. Like, it is just so fucking blatant.

Speaker 3 And I think that's like talking about, again, we don't know what the political impact is going to be, but just

Speaker 3 in terms of what most people can understand, I do think this one is pretty easy to grasp.

Speaker 3 There's also like, you know, we have orders drafted in the White House to seize voting machines, and then that's connected to some fucking Yahoos in Coffee County, Georgia, who just like let Trump's lawyers in and some other goons to just access sensitive voting information, just breach voting systems against the law.

Speaker 3 There's people like, there's like Kanye West publicist threatening poll workers

Speaker 3 and saying, like, I don't know, I can't tell you what, this is on video. I can't tell you what's going to happen to you, but this is a party with a lot of loose ends that it needs to tie up.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is,

Speaker 3 it is just, it feels much more like dramatic and severe than even some of the other indictments.

Speaker 4 Oh, for sure, compared to obviously the indictment around the hush money payments or the classified documents, but that indictment is also chock full of delicious morsels. Yes.

Speaker 4 But it is, and the polling has shown this, that the

Speaker 4 voters take more seriously and are more concerned about the insurrection-related crimes than the other two indictments.

Speaker 4 The other thing that's just,

Speaker 4 I had not like you read the

Speaker 5 transcript of the call until you told me to read it the other day.

Speaker 4 And it is,

Speaker 4 it's a reminder that Trump, when the cameras are not on, talks exactly like a character in a poorly written episode of Sopranos.

Speaker 5 It is mafia cosplay.

Speaker 4 It is what he does. It is, it is threats.

Speaker 3 I don't need to know. I don't need to know what you're doing.
I just need, you just, you figure it out. You figure out the right people, the right thing.
I don't need to know.

Speaker 3 He says that like a couple times. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, he, he,

Speaker 4 even though he, those he's talking behind camera, he does talk like someone who thinks someone in the room might be wearing a wire at all times, where it's, here, I'm giving you the crime orders, but then I'm also going to say a few things that my defense lawyer can hang on to try to keep me out of jail.

Speaker 4 It is, I mean, it's not like he's particularly careful in what he says in public, but there really is a difference when he thinks the press is not in the room.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think the other notable part of the Georgia indictment is that all of these co-defendants are going to have some real trouble here.

Speaker 3 Like there is still, you know, if Trump is able to delay this and if Trump is able to win the election, you know, there's a lot of legal analysts think that, you know, even though it's a state prosecution and not a federal,

Speaker 3 the Supreme Court would, you know, side with Donald Trump in saying he's a sitting president. He can't be charged here, right? But

Speaker 3 he can't pardon these 18 co-defendants. They're pretty fucked.

Speaker 3 And a lot of them are either going to have to flip on Trump or serve time. And that's Rudy, that's Jenna Ellis, all the people that you mentioned.

Speaker 3 And that is, that's different than some of these other indictments.

Speaker 4 And a bunch of these lower-level people we never heard of, the former Republican Party chair of Georgia,

Speaker 4 and these other folks who may have seen less of a future in themselves as a MAGA media martyr than the Jenna Ellis and Sydney Pals of the world.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So Fonnie Willis wants to try these goons on March 4th, which is the day before Super Tuesday and a week before Georgia's primary.
It does seem ambitiously optimistic.

Speaker 3 Trump is, of course, going to try to delay. Mark Meadows has already filed a motion to move the case from state court to federal court.
Trump will likely try to do the same.

Speaker 3 How are you feeling about the chances

Speaker 3 we'll get this one in before the election?

Speaker 4 I was feeling good, and then I googled how long does a RICO case take?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 4 it seems like it takes a long time.

Speaker 8 The

Speaker 4 other ongoing high-profile RICO case in Fulton County, Georgia is the YSL case. That case has gone on for well over a year.
Jury selection took alone, took many months.

Speaker 3 And so it's still happening. They still haven't been seated.

Speaker 3 The case started in May of last year. They've been doing jury selection since January.

Speaker 4 And if you think it's hard to get a jury of people who don't, who don't have an opinion on young thug, wait till you get to try to ask about Donald Trump and

Speaker 5 Thug. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Old Thug.

Speaker 5 Oh, man, that's something.

Speaker 3 There was another racketeering case. Fonnie Willis brought about teachers in Georgia cheating on tests.
That took two years. So, I mean, now, look, circumstances are different.

Speaker 3 She obviously knows what the calendar is, and so she's probably prepared for this, but it is, you know,

Speaker 3 it's going to be tricky. And it's also tricky to get like 19 defendants all coordinated together because they could all be, you know, filing motions to delay.

Speaker 3 Okay, so this is the part where we talk about how all the previous indictments haven't changed people's opinion of Trump in any significant way, especially Republican voters.

Speaker 3 Any reason to think this indictment will be different?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 Just, I think we have to level set our expectations here.

Speaker 4 There is not some Aaron Sorkin moment here where a large swath of the public or the Republican electorate just wakes up and says, you know what? Four crimes is too many.

Speaker 4 Or I was with him for the first 81

Speaker 4 felony charges, but once he got over 90, I'm out. Like it just doesn't work that way.

Speaker 4 And there's a ABC Ipsos poll out this morning that charts the percentage of people who think Trump should be charged with a crime after every indictment.

Speaker 4 So they did one after the first, second, third, fourth, and it has stayed. I'd like to say it stays setting.
It actually has gone down.

Speaker 4 It was 54% of people thought that after the first one and it's down to 50% now.

Speaker 4 And, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. That's an important thing is that whatever in a period, in a period of high polarization, the changes are going to happen on the margins.

Speaker 4 And so there are specific groups of people we ought to look at to see how this impacts them.

Speaker 4 And also it's just, I think, we have to have some humility about these things, which is charges covered in the news is one thing.

Speaker 4 When Donald Trump's actually sitting at a defendant table for weeks at a time, or he gets a guilty verdict or any of those things can have impacts in all kinds of ways.

Speaker 4 Getting off in one of these trials can have a massively negative impact for the political direction we want to go. And so

Speaker 4 the change, it can still have an impact. It's just we're not, there's not a damn breaking here where the whole political electorate shifts because of how one of these cases go.
It's my best guess.

Speaker 3 I think the polling right now is very noisy. And, you know, also polling is a snapshot in time.
And it's usually a snapshot of like what has happened a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 3 So I think it's going to take some time for all the polling to sort itself out.

Speaker 3 And, you know, like you mentioned, mentioned, the Ipsos poll, there was a Quinnipiac poll out yesterday that said like 54% think Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn 2020, including 57% of independents, 12% of Republicans.

Speaker 3 It also said nearly seven in 10 Americans think that if a person is convicted of a felony, they should not. be eligible to run for president of the United States, including 58% of Republicans.

Speaker 3 Of course, Trump's name wasn't in the question, right? So probably those numbers would change if it was.

Speaker 3 But I do think to your point, like, I think the only exception here, and it's, as you said, all of these changes are going to be on the margins.

Speaker 3 Like, if you somehow, if Fonnie Willis can get this case going and we know that there's going to be cameras in the courtroom and people are seeing Trump sitting in a courtroom for weeks on end.

Speaker 3 even in, you know, February, March, and somehow he's convicted,

Speaker 3 you could see it, even in the Republican primary, that's the only possibility that you could see it on the margin, right?

Speaker 3 We keep talking about the 25% of Republican voters who say like they're not going to vote for Trump, the like 37% MAGA base that's all in.

Speaker 3 Those middle persuadable voters, if Trump is convicted in Georgia of a felony and he's been in a courtroom, maybe some of them, maybe some of the college-educated ones are like, eh, I'll give whoever a shot, you know?

Speaker 3 But I still think it's unlikely, but that is the only scenario I could imagine it changing the primary.

Speaker 4 The timing is very challenging here because you would really need the Jack Smith case to start on its original early January proposed timeline to have any impact on the primary.

Speaker 4 Given how Republicans allocate delegates in their primary, by the time you get to March 4th, the most ideal day on which this trial could possibly start, it's likely over or pretty darn close to over.

Speaker 4 So we're not in a world, I don't think we're living in a world where there's a Georgia verdict before

Speaker 4 a candidate, most likely Donald Trump, as we sit sit here today, has amassed the necessary delegates to be the nominee. Yeah.
Now,

Speaker 4 just to get a little into where some of the changes could happen, probably in ways that matter more in the general election in the primary, is in the New York Times Sienna poll, there's currently,

Speaker 4 I think it's about 10% of voters, of Trump voters think he committed a crime. So they will tell a pollster they think Trump committed a crime, but then they will say, I am also voting for Trump.

Speaker 4 There are 17% of voters who think Trump committed a crime and thinks that his actions endangered democracy and they're also voting for Trump.

Speaker 4 Trump's vote number in that poll and in almost all the polls exceeds his approval rating by five to seven points, depending on the poll. Those people are all potentially gettable in this world.

Speaker 4 And I do think we make the kind of political conversation a little overly narrow. We focus only on what is technically illegal.

Speaker 5 There is just this world in which the full,

Speaker 4 just the whole thing, the chaos, the corruption, the criminality is just too much for them. And so you could think, man,

Speaker 4 I don't think it's a crime. I think that Biden's weaponizing the government.

Speaker 5 All these people are corrupt political folks, but that's a lot, right?

Speaker 4 Do we really need this?

Speaker 4 How is this going to help me? And so there is something in that world where it has an effect that goes beyond sort of the narrow question of, did he commit a crime?

Speaker 3 Yeah, when we're talking about the general election, if you really start like squinting at all the polling, you you can start to see how this could really weigh on Trump.

Speaker 3 There was an AP poll this week that has 64% of Americans saying they would definitely or probably not support Trump in a general.

Speaker 3 Now, that's combining definitely and probably, but that's still a pretty big number of people who say they won't vote for Trump.

Speaker 5 Of course, there's only one poll.

Speaker 3 It's interesting, too, in the Q poll. I noticed they asked people the most important issues to them, and obviously the economy was at 32%, but democracy was right behind at 28%

Speaker 5 and preserving democracy. That's a great question.

Speaker 3 What's that?

Speaker 4 The problem with that question is both sides think democracy's at risk. They just think it for different reasons.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Although I think that I haven't seen it that high in a list for a while.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that's because the Republican.

Speaker 4 I haven't looked at the time series on the Q poll, but the way I've seen this in some other polls is the number has crept up as Trump is being prosecuted for more things because because the Democratic number is Trump is a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.

Speaker 4 The Republican view about democracy is democracy is at risk because Donald Trump is being prosecuted.

Speaker 4 And so you get you a number that is high.

Speaker 4 You'd have to, you would need a larger sample size, I think, to understand if there's a group of people in the middle who, you know, are not partisan D's, partisan R's, who are having increased concern about democracy.

Speaker 4 But that's a very trickily worded question in a lot of polls, I think.

Speaker 3 I mean, I do think we can also be complicating the simple here. Like, we are heading in to a presidential election where one of the major candidates will be in court for

Speaker 3 like a good amount of the beginning of the campaign, maybe even deep into the campaign.

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 5 all of the campaign.

Speaker 3 Certainly the spring of 2024, he's going to be in court. And

Speaker 3 because there's going to be inevitable delays, you could easily see it stretching into the summer of 2024 and the fall of 2024. And, like, what is that? I mean, we have no idea.

Speaker 3 We have no idea what impact that is going to have because there are, we are paying close attention to this right now.

Speaker 3 If you're listening to this, you're paying close attention, but there are so many people in this country who just are not tuning into politics right now.

Speaker 3 And when they tune in in a presidential election year and one of the two major candidates is sitting in a courtroom being tried for one of his 91 felony counts, who knows?

Speaker 5 Who knows? Maybe it won't matter.

Speaker 3 Maybe it won't matter. But if, you know, common sense.

Speaker 4 That is an important point: is that most people and the people who are primarily going to decide, really not just the general election, but also the primary are not dialed into the news yet.

Speaker 4 They're not paying attention to this. There was a Farley Dickinson University poll from last week where they ran a test

Speaker 4 and they asked people if they were open to supporting someone other than Trump. And then they reminded them about the indictments and then re-asked the question.

Speaker 4 And the number of Republicans open to supporting someone other than Trump went up by 11 points after that.

Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 That's they also pointed out that that was not enough to win,

Speaker 5 but it was.

Speaker 4 But it does show that.

Speaker 3 Small victories here.

Speaker 4 Yes,

Speaker 4 it does show that

Speaker 4 a reminder of the biggest casup in politics is not between Republicans and Democrats, between the politically engaged and the people who pay less attention to politics.

Speaker 3 Yes. All right.
Let's talk about what Trump's calling his large, complex, detailed, but irrefutable report that will prove once and for all that the 2020 election was rigged for Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 he's planning this press conference and he's going to finally finally release the evidence that Georgia was rigged. But before we recorded this, I saw ABC News report that

Speaker 3 his legal advisors are telling him might not be a good idea. And now there's serious doubt about whether he'll hold the press conference because they're a little worried.

Speaker 3 I mean, which that was like an instinct of mine when I heard this news.

Speaker 3 Like, isn't he just making Fonnie Willis and Jack Smith's jobs easier by going out there and continuing to lie about like the election being rigged?

Speaker 4 I don't want to pretend to be a lawyer, but just as a point of fact,

Speaker 4 even if he were, and he is not going to, but even if he were to prove some election irregularities, that would not make the crimes go away.

Speaker 3 I mean, I guess he's going to, like, I guess he's just trying to be consistent here and he's going to go with the insanity defense that he genuinely believes all this shit, all the kooky conspiracies, right?

Speaker 3 He just, he just, he's in. The Hugo Chavez changing the voting machines, the Dominion stuff, the laser, all of it's real.

Speaker 4 And once again, despite all the press coverage to the contrary, it is not true that if Donald Trump can prove he believed the election was stolen, that he was allowed to commit a bunch of crimes.

Speaker 4 If you truly believed that your neighbor stole your lawnmower, you were not allowed to break into their house and try to steal it back.

Speaker 5 Like, you can't do that.

Speaker 3 But when you look at their defense, it's like, what other options do they have? They have that. They're basically saying, also, my lawyers told me it was okay to steal the lawnmower.

Speaker 3 And I didn't know. I thought the lawnmower, I didn't think it was the neighbors.
I thought it was mine. I thought it was mine.
And my lawyers told me it was mine. So I took the lawnmower.

Speaker 3 Your defense?

Speaker 3 This is not a good defense, but I'm saying I actually don't know what else, what, what other defense there is.

Speaker 4 I think their legal defense is going to be their political defense, which is these are a bunch of politicized investigations trying to target someone for political reasons.

Speaker 5 And that has been a lot of money.

Speaker 3 It might work in the electorate, not going to work in that.

Speaker 5 It only got to work on one person.

Speaker 4 It only got to work on one person.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 The jury is the electorate. We have said this before.

Speaker 3 Okay, so these, the, this, and the other thing about this, I just want to, before we get to the press conference, if it happens, like, of course, he's doing the press conference next week.

Speaker 3 And we're going to talk about the debate when Jen gets here. But, like,

Speaker 3 just imagine all these fucking bozos who are preparing for the debate.

Speaker 3 And then Donald Trump on Monday or Tuesday, whenever he decides to do this, just wall-to-wall coverage of Donald Trump doing this bullshit press conference.

Speaker 3 And then he forces everyone to talk about him and his press conference and his like fake evidence at the debate. It's perfect.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't also be surprised, by the way, if Donald Trump decides to turn himself in at the jail on the day of the, on the day of the debate. I mean,

Speaker 3 of course that's coming, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, the day of or the day after. Either way, just step on everyone's, if everyone's news.

Speaker 4 The press conference is this great. I really feel like we're at an unstoppable force and an immovable object because Donald Trump has would never promise something and then not deliver.

Speaker 4 But he would also never not listen to his attorneys.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 4 So where is this going to go?

Speaker 3 Yeah, not listening to his attorneys has gotten him here with 91 felony charges, or I guess listening to some of them who are also his now co-defendants.

Speaker 3 All right, so the small handful of Republicans not named in the Georgia indictment are not pleased that Trump is quadrupling down on his

Speaker 3 election fraud claims.

Speaker 3 Dave Carney is a longtime Republican strategist. He talked to Politico and he said it's a terrible position to be in for anyone trying to win 2024 in terms of Republicans.

Speaker 3 He said, if our party is talking about 2020, we're going to lose. Do you agree?

Speaker 4 Going to lose is a strong statement, but

Speaker 4 there is ample evidence from 2022 that

Speaker 4 re-litigating 2020 is a huge problem for Republicans.

Speaker 4 We've mentioned this before, but there's a Sanford Business School study, which showed that the candidates who ran on a platform of the big lie or were prominent election deniers did nearly three points worse than other Republicans.

Speaker 4 And that happened in several key states. It's probably the reason, almost certainly the reason Democrats still have the Senate and they came so close in the House.

Speaker 3 Yeah, again, there's like

Speaker 3 a significant delta between Republican voters who like Donald Trump and Republican voters who think that Donald Trump lost the election.

Speaker 3 You know, most Republicans buy his bullshit on this, but by Trump talking only about 2020 or making that his central message, he's sort of cleaving his own base here because there are enough Republicans who do believe that Donald Trump lost

Speaker 3 that just by running on re-litigating 2020,

Speaker 3 it's a tough message for a general electorate.

Speaker 3 Good for the primary. Again, good for the primary, but it's or maybe good for the primary, debatable if it's good for the primary.

Speaker 3 But it's like, here's the thing is he can get get the whole base together by saying like oh we should all fight joe biden right like if it's you know biden should lose in 2024 that's going to be more effective for him than biden lost in 2020

Speaker 4 would you believe me if i told you that the percentage of republicans who think the 2020 election was illegitimate is 20 points larger than donald trump's vote margin in the primary right now so what is it now it's 70 of people who think 70 of republicans has been pretty consistent for you know going on two and a half years now think the election was illegitimate in some way.

Speaker 4 And Trump's getting something like 52% or something in the polling average.

Speaker 3 But even that, it's like that's 30% of Republicans that in a general election don't think that the election was stolen. And that's not enough to win.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 it's also a little bit of a tricky question because saying the election was stolen is a is a part of people's Republican identity.

Speaker 4 That does not mean they think that should be on the first 17 pages of the Republican platform or that it should be the focus or that's what they want to talk about.

Speaker 4 It's just, how do you distinguish yourself from a bunch of deep state liberal cucks you say the election was stolen, right? Even if you truly believe it or not.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's just, yeah, you, I mean, I'm sure all these Republican consultants are just looking at all the data and it's like, case is a lot easier if we're just like, hey, Joe Biden should lose.

Speaker 3 Wait, Joe Biden, if you don't like Joe Biden, here's Donald Trump. He's the best way to beat Joe Biden.
He's our only way to beat Joe Biden. It's much easier message.

Speaker 5 But Donald Trump's going to be be out there being like, no, no, let's talk about 2020.

Speaker 3 Great, fine.

Speaker 3 All right. Before we bring on Jen, two quick housekeeping notes.
Vote Save America is turning five.

Speaker 3 And thanks to all of you, over the last five years, VSA has raised more than $55 million and mobilized 500,000 voters and volunteers to support progressive causes.

Speaker 3 Needless to say, we are very proud of VSA, but none of it would be possible if you all didn't keep showing up the way you have.

Speaker 3 If you want to help VSA with a very big and terrifying 2024, head over to votesaveamerica.com now.

Speaker 3 Also, on the occasion of Trump's fourth indictment, a reminder that you're going to want to grab our totally impartial potential juror t-shirt to signal that you are totally unbiased and ready to serve in New York, D.C., Florida, or Georgia.

Speaker 3 Pick a state.

Speaker 3 Hillary Clinton has one of these t-shirts. A little disappointed she didn't wear it during her interview with Rachel Maddow

Speaker 3 the night of the Georgia indictments, but that's okay. I'm sure it was just in the wash.
But you can get your t-shirt. It's cricket.com/slash store.

Speaker 3 So go get one now.

Speaker 3 Okay, when we come back, Jen Saki will be joining us to talk more about the Georgia indictment, the first Republican debate, and how Joe Biden and the Democrats should handle the trials of Donald Trump.

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Speaker 3 We're back and we're joined by our former colleague and good pal, Jen Saki, who's now the host of Inside with Jen Saki on MSNBC. Hey, Jen.

Speaker 11 Hi. How are you guys?

Speaker 3 Good. Thanks for doing this.

Speaker 3 We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about.

Speaker 11 I know. My favorite governor, Ron DeSantis.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 We'll get to him.

Speaker 3 We'll get to him. So I'm sure you've been on MSNBC for like a hundred hours this week talking about the latest and probably final Trump indictment.

Speaker 3 From a political standpoint, do you see anything different or noteworthy about the Georgia case? How do you think the average voter is processing all these indictments right now?

Speaker 11 Well, I mean, I do think that it's different because it kind of goes back to Trump's obsession with Georgia and the fact that he was the first person to lose Georgia since George W. George, H.W.

Speaker 11 Bush, George W., I mean, decades, right? So he was obsessed with it. It's also a state that he then Democrats won two Senate seats in.
So it's kind of, I mean, it's like a little bit of a,

Speaker 11 it's been beating him for a while, defeating him for a while. But then you also look at some of the Republicans in the state, like Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger.

Speaker 11 They've also been pushing back on Trump, too.

Speaker 11 They've not exactly been aligning themselves with him, and they don't seem to be coming to his defense or even be willing to help him in his efforts at this point in time.

Speaker 11 So that's kind of significant. And then, of course, there's the piece.
And I don't know if this is the politics, although I guess it's like significant on its own, that because it's a state case,

Speaker 11 I mean, he can't pardon himself, right? The governor can't even pardon him, not that Brian Kemp wants to. And you can't even seek a pardon until five years after you've served your time.

Speaker 11 So, there do feel like a lot of differences, but to me, the politics of it and like Republican officials, people who we've never even heard of until now, who seem like big targets to flip.

Speaker 11 They're like, I didn't want to be involved in this, and now I'm involved in this. Plus, the fact that it's a state that he needs to win in order to win the presidency.

Speaker 11 So it does feel a little different politically to me. Maybe not yet, but it feels like it will be.

Speaker 3 Maybe Misty Hampton and Kanye's former publicist will take him down, which is what we all would have guessed.

Speaker 11 People were like, I wasn't intending to be a part of this whole journey exactly, but here we are.

Speaker 3 So I imagine the indictments will certainly be a topic at the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee next Wednesday. Whether or not Trump actually shows up, we still don't know.

Speaker 3 Ron DeSantis' super PAC, which we are going to talk about in a second, has released this ad

Speaker 3 sort of taunting Trump for not showing up at the debate. Let's listen.

Speaker 4 I hear he's afraid to debate. Is that true? I hear he's afraid to debate.

Speaker 15 He's too cowardly to even show up and debate.

Speaker 15 You've suggested you may skip the early Republican primary debates. Why would I let these people take shots in me?

Speaker 16 We can't afford a nominee who is too weak to debate.

Speaker 4 See, these debates are just brutal.

Speaker 16 We need a nominee with stamina, a nominee who's sharp.

Speaker 16 Republicans deserve a candidate who earns our vote.

Speaker 4 But I probably won't bother doing the debate.

Speaker 16 I'm not one who demands it. What happened to Donald Trump?

Speaker 3 Do either of you think there are any risks for Trump if he skips this thing? Dan?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 I said that. I talked to him about this Alyssa last week.
He'd be a moron for debating.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, here are his choices.

Speaker 4 Stand on stage with a bunch of people who are not within 20 to 30 points of in the polls and have them attack him relentlessly or stay home, order in some McDonald's and watch them all attack Ron DeSantis, the guy closest to him in the polls.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, or the third choice, which is turn himself in, which he thinks is maybe politically palatable. I know this is like the crazy world we're living in.
Can we just have a moment on this?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 11 The whole debate between Republican strategists, many of them on background, seems to be not whether or not all of these indictments are bad for him, but whether it's better for him politically if he turns himself in the day of the debate or the day after the debate, right?

Speaker 11 So that's like the debate that they are having among themselves at this point.

Speaker 3 I mean, I kind of wonder, I agree with you guys that the first one he can definitely skip.

Speaker 3 He's going to skip the second one because he has a problem with the people associated with the Ronald Reagan library.

Speaker 3 But like, how long can he get? He's going to, does he have to debate at some point? Or could he like go through the whole primary season without debating?

Speaker 11 If he continues leading by this much, why would he debate? I mean, also, I mean, these people are going to have to still keep qualifying.

Speaker 11 They're going to have to still have money to be in the race, right? Is he going to get up on the debate stage with Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley and Mike Penn?

Speaker 11 I don't even know who's going to be in the next rounds of this. It seems like kind of why would he to Dan's point, unless the dynamic changes massively.

Speaker 4 There is no way in which which being in the same room with Doug Bergham is going to elevate your campaign. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 4 Like the thing that Trump

Speaker 5 is your favorite chosen candidate.

Speaker 11 Doug, it's nothing personal.

Speaker 11 If you're listening.

Speaker 3 My second favorite Doug.

Speaker 4 You and Tommy and Lovett talked about this on Monday on the first version of the podcast before the indictment came about

Speaker 4 whether Trump would pay any price for not flipping pork at the campaign and why he in Iowa and why he doesn't do it.

Speaker 4 But what Trump understands, and maybe the only thing he understands is power dynamics and he knows there's a huge stature gap between trump a former president who's leading in the polls and is famous and adored by the republicans and a bunch of these guys trying to beat trump so he and he very carefully avoids doing the parts of campaigns that are very minimizing standing on a soapbox in the iowa state fair and being yelled at performatively eating fried food and all these other things.

Speaker 4 So the debate is the core of that. Once you stand on stage with those people, you can be seen as equal.

Speaker 3 And i think he could go the whole as long as the dynamic as jen said the dynamics are the same he can go the whole way he can get through iowa new hampshire without debating there's risk in that strategy but he could pull it off yeah i could plan his entire wednesday he he goes and he turns himself in at the fulton county jail uh he you know he he gets fingerprinted mugshot he smiles on the mug shot and then he leaves and he goes he does a big rally in atlanta

Speaker 3 just outside or like cobb County or something, right?

Speaker 5 Coffee County. Cobb County's got Coffee County.

Speaker 11 Where's Misty?

Speaker 5 Come on up, Misty.

Speaker 3 Yes. And like, who's going to, and then, you know, they got the debate.
Fox is doing the debate. And then everyone else covers them at the rally.
I, I honestly, it's.

Speaker 11 Which, look, debates, especially at this stage, as we all know, are ultimately about the earned media coverage or about your moment. He doesn't necessarily really need it anyway.
Nope.

Speaker 11 But he gets it by a lot more if he does something like that than if he stands on the debate stage and they all attack him. And even if it's not successful, it's about the attack.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, speaking of the stage,

Speaker 3 we have to talk about this incredible New York Times story about the advice that Ron DeSantis' super PAC is giving him for the first debate. So super PAC.

Speaker 11 I'm really hopeful that you're going to quote exactly from some of the lines suggested because it really brings it to life when you do that.

Speaker 3 Jen, I am going to quote some, but I have like so many written down between the New York Times story and between the Washington Post story that is headlined, Awkward Americans See Themselves in Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 3 Which is a masterful piece by Ben Terrace.

Speaker 11 The Awkward American Caucus.

Speaker 3 It's a critical demographic. It's like the soccer, it's like the soccer moms of 2024.

Speaker 3 All right, so super PACs aren't supposed to privately coordinate with campaigns.

Speaker 3 So sometimes they make their advice public for campaigns campaigns so they communicate via the public because that's legal.

Speaker 3 But this is unusual because Ron DeSantis' super PAC dumped hundreds of pages of memos and polling on the website of Jeff Rowe's firm. Jeff Rowe is running the super PAC.

Speaker 3 And here's what it says about the debate. There are four basic must-dos for

Speaker 3 GRD, who's governor Ron DeSantis is in these memos. One, attack Joe Biden and the media three to five times.
Two, state GRD's positive vision two to three times.

Speaker 3 Three, hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. And four, defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.
Jen, what do you think? Good advice?

Speaker 5 Good advice for Ramaswamy?

Speaker 11 I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Let me start with a very small thing.
Yes. G, like, GRD.
Did we ever call him PBO, President Barack Obama?

Speaker 3 It's very weird. Very weird to do GRD.

Speaker 11 I didn't know who it was for a second.

Speaker 5 Same.

Speaker 11 The Vivek Ramaswamy thing, that should stick out to people for how far he has fallen, right? Yes, Vivek Ramaswamy, I guess, is having a moment or a surge of some sort. I don't know.

Speaker 11 But Ron DeSantis was like the guy who was going to take out Donald Trump six months ago, right? Or a little over six months ago. Now his objective is to take out Vivek Ramaswamy.
So that's two.

Speaker 11 The third thing, and this is where the line is so powerful, is the line that they suggest to him is something about how Donald Trump is so weak. He's not here.

Speaker 11 We shouldn't be aligning ourselves, and this is a reference to Chris Christie, I'm paraphrasing here, with somebody who's campaigning for a contract with MSNBC. That's part of the line, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 11 But I mean, no one thinks, people can think all sorts of things about Donald Trump. No one in the Republican electorate thinks he is weak.
He is a head by 20 to 30 points.

Speaker 11 So it's just such an odd attack. in my view.
But yes, there's a lot to unpack there.

Speaker 3 Well, it's also like, it's like, Trump isn't here. So let's just leave him alone.

Speaker 5 Oh, let's leave him alone.

Speaker 11 I'm sorry. I forgot that part.
That's why the language is so good.

Speaker 5 He's too weak.

Speaker 3 He's too weak to defend himself, but let's leave him alone, guys.

Speaker 11 He's like a gentle puppy who needs to be just treated with care and tenderness.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Dan, what do you think about this?

Speaker 4 Look, I think you guys are being overly harsh. When has playing for second not been a great strategy?

Speaker 4 The entire thing about attacking Vivek Ramaswamy is according to the internal New Hampshire polling data they posted on their chief consultant's website.

Speaker 5 That's true.

Speaker 4 Ramoswamy is coming within shouting distance of DeSantis as the second place. So you're going to try to take them out.
This is the exact same strategy that all these Yahoos used in 2016.

Speaker 4 We went into this campaign where Ron DeSantis was pitching himself as Donald Trump without the baggage. What we've discovered, he's actually Jeb Bush with lots of baggage.
That's the same strategy.

Speaker 4 That's exactly, he's running the Bush campaign, but with less charisma. And that's saying a lot.

Speaker 3 Can I just say this whole thing? This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 3 Like the fact that the super PAC dumped all this stuff out on the website, just hundreds and hundreds of pages, they have damaged him, Ron DeSantis, so badly because now imagine that Ron DeSantis says anything close to any of the stuff they told him to say.

Speaker 3 Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, anyone else now has like a ready-made response to anything Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, well, we all read the story in the New York Times about how your super PAC ordered you to say this or like ordered you to be tough ordered you to be likable because one of the instructions is tell a tell a story about your family and then

Speaker 11 show emotion show emotion I feel like I'm just gonna give like a slight counter object point sure let's do it

Speaker 11 debate I love it okay so Ron DeSantis I don't think anyone thinks he's going to light the world on fire with his charisma at this debate, right?

Speaker 5 Agreed.

Speaker 11 I think that's safe, right?

Speaker 11 The most comprehensive coverage he may get is of this memo and his strategy.

Speaker 11 Meaning, like, he might be not a memorable figure at this debate. That's very possible.

Speaker 11 And the only memorable part might be Nikki Haley and others taking a bite out of him, which they might do regardless.

Speaker 11 So I'm not saying I I think we've all picked apart the absurdity of a lot of these strategic lines, but maybe the tactic of this is like, why the heck not?

Speaker 4 The other thing is maybe he's so stupid, he's smart.

Speaker 11 Well, the other thing is, I also wonder the dynamics. We don't know this, but let's just go down a rabbit hole here.

Speaker 11 The dynamics of his, of his super PAC and whether they don't have confidence in like the strategy of the campaign. Like, are they actually trying to send him a message?

Speaker 11 Or are they like, what's the strategy here?

Speaker 3 Are they just trying to get this dump this out so Jen that was my first thought when I read this when I read the headline my first thought was like is this just like a head fake but then when you read the story which Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and Shane Goldmacher wrote they have this line in there that the the so it was on the website it was brought to the New York Times attention not by anyone connected with the DeSantis campaign right and and then once they it was discovered if you go to the website now there's still some there's still a bunch of like oppo on all the other candidates that's up there and the Iowa and New Hampshire polling, but they took down the, they took down the actual strategy memo and they took down some other stuff.

Speaker 3 So they, it does feel like they got caught, it became public, and then they took some stuff down because it was, because it's embarrassing. It's so embarrassing.

Speaker 11 But meaning maybe they were trying to tell them, here's what to do, because you guys clearly don't know what to do.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I have, that is definitely true that they are saying that.

Speaker 4 And DeSantis has, while campaigns have been relying more on super PACs over the years, since in the last decade, since 2012, DeSantis is doing something unprecedented.

Speaker 4 DeSantis' David Axelrod works for the Super PAC.

Speaker 5 Super PAC.

Speaker 4 So his chief political advisor, the big guy he hired beating out all the other Yahoos to get, including Donald Trump, to get Jeff Rowe to work on his campaign, is legally prohibited from speaking to DeSantis.

Speaker 4 Now, the reason why I don't think that this was an intentional move on their part, which, and I have swum in these waters before, but the way this normally works, there are two ways that super PACs and campaigns communicate with each other.

Speaker 4 One is through the press. And the super PAC will know, because someone will have told them, that if so-and-so is on the record, that is someone who is telling you what you want to know.

Speaker 4 So if it was like in our campaign, if it was David Plough,

Speaker 4 there were no super PACs back then, but the Super PAC would know that he is telling you what the strategy actually is. And if that, and anyone else is given talking points.

Speaker 4 And so you do it through interviews, et cetera.

Speaker 4 The other way, in the much sketchier way, and the way most of these people do it, is they they post these documents. What will happen is the campaign, it usually goes the other way.

Speaker 4 The campaign will post a document on a website with a secret URL that no one else could find, but somehow the super PAC magically stumbles upon it.

Speaker 4 And instead of doing that, and I think this was an actual mistake from

Speaker 4 the Axiom Strategies people, which is the Jeff Rose firm, they put it in the wrong place because it's on their latest news stuff. So I think they just miscoded where they put it.

Speaker 4 And then someone found it, probably someone who works for one of these other candidates, maybe, probably not Trump, and gave it to the Times. Because I think

Speaker 4 there was a very embarrassed intern or web administrator at Axiom Strategies today who made this mistake because you wouldn't do it this way.

Speaker 4 If you wanted, they would just do it because they need to raise money. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So if they wanted to send a full message, Jeff Rowe would just do an interview with Puck or something and give out all of the strategy.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I like that. I feel bad for this web administrator, but that is a very complex and intriguing theory.

Speaker 3 Can I just say, like, there's a lot of fawning profiles of Jeff Rowe in various places. I don't think his advice is worth that much.

Speaker 3 Like, so he's, he's identified that Vivek Ramaswamy is like gaining on DeSantis and all these polls and that you got to take down Ramaswamy.

Speaker 5 And Chris Christie. And Chris Christie.

Speaker 3 And Chris Christie. And so his suggestion for hitting Ramaswamy during the debate is

Speaker 3 you could either call him fake Vivek or Vivek the fake.

Speaker 5 That's it. That's the advice.

Speaker 3 That's what you're paying for for Jeff Rowe right there. That advice.

Speaker 3 He's got this really long winding thing about Donald Trump that Donald Trump was once a breath of fresh air that told the elite where to shove it and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 But now there's just so many distractions that he's facing. I don't think he can lead the country forward.
And Ron DeSantis is the only candidate who can keep the Trump movement going.

Speaker 3 Actually, there's someone else who can keep the Trump movement going who's running.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump. Yeah.

Speaker 3 He's like, why can't, like, if he really wanted to attack Donald Trump, the truth is he could just be like, I like Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump is a great president.
Donald Trump cannot win.

Speaker 3 He cannot win an election. And here's why.
Like, you know, you just, even the advice they give is dumb.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, maybe Jeff Roe is smart. Maybe he's not.
He, his, prior to 2021, his claim to fame in Republican politics was running Ted Cruz's campaign and losing to Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 So congrats on beating Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Let's put you in the consultant hall of fame.
Then he was the chief consultant for Glenn Youngkin.

Speaker 4 And that's what made him a star, that made it so every Republican would want it.

Speaker 4 We have seen this a thousand times where one person wins one expected race, the media and the party establishment anoint them as the next genius, and then they shit the bed the next time out.

Speaker 4 And that's kind of what Jeff Rowe is doing. And I think the reason is, and maybe he's smart, but his bigger problem is not whether he's smart or not.
It's that he's greedy.

Speaker 4 Because the reason he's at the super PAC is because that's where the money is.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you guys think that whatever DeSantis decides to do with the debate, he will at least reach those core voters that are his base, who are the awkward Americans that we read about in the Washington Post story?

Speaker 3 Jen, did you read that story?

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 11 he might reach the awkward Americans if he's authentic to himself.

Speaker 5 So we'll see.

Speaker 3 If he achieves that in the debate, Ben Terris goes and interviews awkward Americans

Speaker 3 who see themselves in Ron DeSantis. And some of the quotes in the story are truly amazing.
One woman says, like Ron DeSantis, I also spend every day trying to act like a human.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 3 he is referred to by different people in the piece as a robot put together from scrapped spare parts from Disney's The Hall of Presidents, an extraterrestrial in a skin suit trying to learn to be human.

Speaker 4 These are quotes from people. This is not Ben Terris's writing, to be clear.

Speaker 11 Oh, Ben Terris is an amazing writer.

Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 And the best part is, even the awkward Americans who see themselves in Ron DeSantis,

Speaker 3 then they turn around and say they don't want to vote for Ron DeSantis because

Speaker 3 he's an awkward person. And so they relate on that level, but they hate his politics.

Speaker 3 And so one of the awkward people says, Given the decision between voting for him and getting a pap smear from a girl I went to high school with, hand me the paper gown.

Speaker 5 That is for real.

Speaker 11 Did that person think of that quote in the moment or was that written

Speaker 5 in preparation?

Speaker 11 If so, I'm very impressed. If so, she thinks on their feet.

Speaker 4 Yeah, she should. Maybe that's their go-to quote about things they don't want to do.

Speaker 5 Maybe she should run. You want to go to Applebee's for dinner? I'd rather.

Speaker 3 Forget Jeff Rowe.

Speaker 5 She's going places.

Speaker 11 She's their girl.

Speaker 5 Hire her.

Speaker 3 This is the answer. This is the next shake-up.
All right. So let's get back to the debate.
The moderators are Brett Baer and Martha McCallum from Fox News.

Speaker 3 They told Politico that Trump will be part of the questioning no matter what, and that they intend to jump right in on the news of the day, which is the Georgia indictments.

Speaker 3 If they ask about Georgia or any of the other indictments, what do you say if you're a candidate who actually wants to win the Republican primary? Jen?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 given...

Speaker 11 Given only four of them have attacked Trump on his legal, shall we diplomatically call them,

Speaker 11 they don't think it's politically advantageous. I think it's not clear it is politically advantageous in the Republican primary, right?

Speaker 11 It's working a little bit for Chris Christie, maybe, because he's kind of moved up in New Hampshire and is ahead of DeSantis now, and his whole strategy is about attacking Trump on this stuff.

Speaker 11 But it doesn't seem to be moving Asa Hutchinson. Maybe he's got other issues.

Speaker 11 I would say, though, at this point, that going after Trump a bit on his,

Speaker 11 you know, not valuing democracy, not standing up for people's right to vote, trying to overturn an election,

Speaker 11 being a little loosey-goosey with classified information, whatever, there's pick your poison,

Speaker 11 would probably be to all of their advantage. Because if they don't mix it up,

Speaker 11 they're not moving, you know? So they're not going to attack him. They're not going to move.
So I would say if they want to move, they should attack him.

Speaker 11 But that's not necessarily what the polling is telling them. Okay, that's my long answer.

Speaker 3 Dan, what do you think?

Speaker 3 Do you have a better line for Ron DeSantis than what Jeff Rowe gave him?

Speaker 4 I think what Ron DeSantis and all these people should do is begin by attacking Joe Biden and the Democrats for weaponizing the government to attack all of their critics, from people who disagree with them online, for people who want to make their independent decisions about their family and Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 But make the point that the only way that they will be able to stop Joe Biden and the little liberal Democrats is to beat them in November.

Speaker 4 And for all the good he did as president, Donald Trump is the person least likely on the state or the person in this race, because he's not on stage, least likely to do that.

Speaker 4 And we know that because he's the one who lost in 2020. And it's going to be very hard for him to improve on that performance when he is in court for six months at a time.

Speaker 11 It is surprising to Dan's point that none of them have really embraced this argument that Donald Trump is a loser, right?

Speaker 11 That his argument in 2022 lost, that the candidates he endorsed lost, that running as a candidate who is denying the outcome of 2020 is not a winner.

Speaker 11 It's like they don't run on the baggage or the fact that he is, you know, Ron DeSantis kind of like skirts it, or it's like in his strategy memos that like all of a sudden people are going to magically wake up one day and realize like, it's Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 11 He's Donald Trump, but without the baggage, but they don't do the work to kind of point that out to people in terms of Trump being a loser in the electoral sense.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and that's because they let themselves get painted into this corner by Trump. And

Speaker 3 they were too afraid early on to say that the election wasn't stolen, that Joe Biden was a legitimate winner. And so they all had their like weird answers.

Speaker 3 And, you know, we were talking before you came on, Jen.

Speaker 3 Dan was pointing out that, you know, like 70% of Republican voters still think that, you know, Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election and Joe Biden's not the legitimate winner.

Speaker 3 And so if you believe,

Speaker 3 if these candidates know the voters believe that, then it's hard to call Donald Trump a loser because they're speaking to voters who don't think he lost. But like, maybe if they did this earlier,

Speaker 3 maybe if right after January 6th and they kept up, you know, some of them obviously were criticizing Trump then, but if they kept up the messaging that, yeah, Donald Trump really did lose, then maybe the electorate wouldn't think that.

Speaker 4 See, here's how you navigate that. Donald Trump was so distracted by his petty grievances as a political problem that he even let sleepy Joe Biden steal the election from him.

Speaker 4 We can't let that happen again. The Democrats are already mobilizing to do what they did in 2020 again.

Speaker 4 How is Donald Trump going to stop him if he is stuck in court the whole time and unable to be out there fighting against the deep state?

Speaker 11 Jeff Rowe, move over. Dan Pfeiffer, looking for a super PAC side.

Speaker 11 Okay, so Martha McCallum, to your point, and Brett Baer have been talking a little bit about their strategy, right? Or what they're going to do. And we'll see, we'll see.
It's Fox News, right?

Speaker 11 And they have talked, as you said, about, you know, bringing up Trump, voters need to know, like all routes through Trump.

Speaker 11 Now, what she said was kind of interesting, and maybe I'm overreading into it, is when she was asked about.

Speaker 11 whether they would talk, whether she, this isn't the vanity therapies, whether she thinks candidates' views on the 2020 election will be a focus point in the 2024 race.

Speaker 11 She said, I think there's a lot of desire to look forward. That being said, these trials and issues push that question into the forum.
It has to be dealt with and addressed.

Speaker 11 And, you know, and she was then, she then said, they all know they're going to have to be clear on where they stand on it. Now,

Speaker 11 I'm like, so what that led me to think, but I'm like, maybe jumping too far here into what's possible on the Fox News debate, is her saying, raise your hand if you

Speaker 11 Biden won the 2020 election.

Speaker 5 I was thinking the same thing.

Speaker 11 That's what that's pointing to, right? Which would be kind of a significant moment.

Speaker 11 I mean, I guess depending on what they do, maybe I'm being too overly optimistic. Although, DeSantis kind of

Speaker 11 was a little more clear on the reality there recently. So who knows?

Speaker 3 No, Jen, that would be the best way to ask that question too.

Speaker 3 I had the same exact thought, which is like, if you just ask them, they're going to do their talking points where they like skirt the, but if you just say, raise your hand if you think Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, just show a hand

Speaker 3 and make it make Donald Trump lost is even harder for them because they're not going to to want to was Joe Biden elect the legitimate

Speaker 11 elected president

Speaker 5 in 2020. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I wonder who raises their hands in that scenario.

Speaker 4 No one.

Speaker 3 Wait,

Speaker 3 no one says that Joe Biden was a legitimate winner.

Speaker 11 Probably, right?

Speaker 5 Legitimately won. Christy does.
Legitimately won.

Speaker 11 Christy.

Speaker 3 Christy will.

Speaker 11 Asa Hutchinson.

Speaker 3 Well, Pence is basically...

Speaker 5 I think it's tough. Well, Asa Hutchinson is...

Speaker 4 Legitimate is the out because they all argue that, yes, Joe Biden won, but there were there were a lot of questions and some shenanigans.

Speaker 4 Like how they were the question is going to matter.

Speaker 5 You're right. These yeah.

Speaker 11 Well, if they don't say legitimate.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what if they just say who? Yeah, if Joe Biden won or did it. Chris Christie is going to start.

Speaker 4 Here's what Chris Christie will start yelling at Brett Baer about how these hand-raising questions are bullshit and we're not going to do that.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to play your games and they're all going to just they're going to

Speaker 4 just co they're going to write his coattails to avoid doing it because Christie's smart enough to know that that's a terrible position for him to be in and he's not going to go by it, and they'll get out of it.

Speaker 4 I hope Chris Christie, PSA fan, probably is now going to do that because we've given him that advice.

Speaker 3 I think he'll raise it. I think he'll raise his hand and be and be proud of it.

Speaker 11 Contrarian?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 He will. I mean, he said it.
It's not like it's like some courageous thing for him to do just now with the debate. He's been saying it all for like the last couple months.

Speaker 3 He's been saying it everywhere he goes, including on Pod Save America.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 4 I hope you're right for the sake of.

Speaker 3 I even think you could get Mike Pence.

Speaker 4 You might get Mike Pence to raise his hand. I mean, Mike Pence is not going to understand the question.

Speaker 4 Mike Pence is going to go, like,

Speaker 3 Mike, Mike Pence is. By the way, Mark Short, Mike Pence's senior advisor, has this quote for in Politico and I know exactly the one you're talking about, and I didn't say it.

Speaker 3 You know what? We're so ready for this debate. It's let's get it on time.

Speaker 3 That's what he said. It's let's get it on time for Mike Pence.

Speaker 4 First time for everything for Mike Pence, I guess.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 11 yep, yep.

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Speaker 3 Let's talk about Joe Biden. He's been barnstorming the country this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Happy anniversary, guys.

Speaker 3 He gave a speech in Wisconsin where he criticized Ron Johnson for voting against the bill and supporting outsourcing, but he didn't mention Trump, Trump's indictments, or Trump at all.

Speaker 3 And it's not just Biden. Most Democrats have been pretty quiet about Trump's 91 felony counts.
Here's what a Biden campaign alum, could be anyone, said to Playbook about the thinking behind this.

Speaker 3 Quote, Americans know what Trump did. A lesson of every election cycle from 2018 to now is don't get mired in the endless details of Trump scandals.
Talk about values and agendas.

Speaker 3 So, Jen, you and I talked about this a little bit when you interviewed me on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was going to say now we're flipping it.

Speaker 3 What do you think? Is it, do you think it's feasible and or wise for Biden and Democrats to avoid talking about what will very likely be the biggest story of the 2024 campaign?

Speaker 11 So, I think it's there's a big gap between never talking about it and diving in and talking about the details of the indictments and cases in this moment to me. Right.

Speaker 11 So I think it's wise for them not to dive into the details of the indictment and the specifics right now.

Speaker 11 One, because it's already, people already say Republicans, not people are saying like Trump supporters already saying it's politicized. They're going to say that anyway, but that feeds into it.

Speaker 11 They don't need to do that in this moment.

Speaker 11 I do think whoever this Biden aid person was and granted Biden has been in public office and running for office for decades. So it could literally be anyone.
It could be anyone.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 11 what they're, I think what I'm hearing from what they're saying, the values argument is still likely talking about the cases without saying Georgia indictment, right?

Speaker 11 It is making the case on the contrast and the difference between Joe Biden is somebody who stands up for democracy, stands up for your rights, whether it's to vote or make choices about your own body.

Speaker 11 There's a big values argument to be made that is exactly about the cases that I think he will make. I also think right now, it's not the right moment.
This is all happening.

Speaker 11 I mean, there's 19 people are going to turn themselves in next week or not, I guess. I don't even know, right?

Speaker 11 I don't know that they need to be like throwing fire or whatever stuff on the fire in this particular moment, but that would be my take.

Speaker 5 Dan?

Speaker 4 The hard part about this, and it's the thing that the people screaming at the top of their lungs that Democrats should be talking about this, seem to miss, is the people we need to persuade are the ones who also are most likely to think that these are politicized investigations.

Speaker 4 In the CBS News YouGov poll, they asked voters what they're more concerned about, whether the investigations are politicized or what Donald Trump actually did to try to overturn the election.

Speaker 4 By 41 to 38, independents say they are more concerned about the investigations being political than what Donald Trump actually did.

Speaker 4 And so if all of a sudden every Democrat under the sun is talking about this all the time, that's not going to help that problem.

Speaker 4 But of course he has to talk about it. You can't not talk about your opponent.
And so the way to probably do it is something like, I I am not going to comment on these investigations.

Speaker 4 I would never comment on a criminal investigation. I've never talked to anyone in the Justice Department about it.
No one who works for me has talked to him about it.

Speaker 4 But you all saw what happened on January 6th. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I have said this from the very beginning, dating back to when I decided to run in 2019, that our democracy is at stake. People's freedoms are at stake.
And it is very clear. And you go from there.

Speaker 4 Just you got to dispense and make the broader argument about Trump that you would make, even if he wasn't

Speaker 4 facing 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions, right?

Speaker 11 Like similar to the 2020 argument in some ways.

Speaker 11 Just, you know, this is why Dan was in charge and I was the deputy because oh, you so surpassed me.

Speaker 5 It's not even funny.

Speaker 4 You took my job, you did it better.

Speaker 5 Then you decided to become the press secretary to steal doughnuts on the White House. No, I would just try to order you to show.

Speaker 11 And I'd like throw Starburst into the office when it was like a bad day.

Speaker 11 Say smart things and just do a smartness. Yes.

Speaker 4 you are a world-renowned Democratic communicator. You host a show on cable and I videotape my phone calls with John.

Speaker 3 Who was just in the basement? Who was just in the West Wing basement the whole time,

Speaker 3 you know, not told about big speeches until the last minute.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, you did four and a half years in the White House.

Speaker 5 Didn't have a single window. Right.

Speaker 3 I do think that's, I think this is like, it's simpler than the debate would suggest that's out there, right?

Speaker 3 Because people are going to say, oh, he's out there talking about the economy and kitchen table issues, but he should be talking about democracy bills. Like, first of all, he's got to do both.

Speaker 3 The persuadable voters that we're talking about do care a lot about the economy. He should be touting the accomplishments of the Biden administration.
He should be talking about the issues that,

Speaker 3 you know, kitchen table issues. He's going to be talking about abortion quite a bit, as he should.

Speaker 3 And he should be talking about democracy, which is not only because Donald Trump's on trial, because this was the basis for Joe Biden's entire campaign.

Speaker 3 You know, you guys were talking about the 2020 announcement, right?

Speaker 3 He said, if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. That is, that was from his announcement speech.

Speaker 3 That is a pretty tough attack on Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 Which has gotten scarier since then, right? That's scary to say. And this was, I mean, you know, I remember in 2016, during that transition, which was a wild toad ride of craziness,

Speaker 11 that was the concern of all of our former boss, Barack Obama, right? It's like, okay, it's like one term, we don't know what's going to happen.

Speaker 11 We didn't anticipate all of the horrible that was going to happen necessarily, some of it. But two terms is when things,

Speaker 11 there's no repercussions. You're not going to be held accountable by voters.

Speaker 11 You live by a different set of rules, and a second term is way scarier. That is still true.

Speaker 3 And I do think that the challenge for the Biden campaign is going to be painting a picture for voters about what a second Trump term could look like and doing it in a way that lines up with, you know, what people are concerned about, what they might be worried about, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 So I think that's when you're really sort of figuring out the frame of the argument, the negative frame about Donald Trump, I think you do have to push it forward and talk about like what he might do in a second term.

Speaker 3 And part of that's going to be on policy, but part of it's going to be what he might do to democracy or what he's likely to do to democracy.

Speaker 3 And by the way, you're all seeing him sit in court right now because he tried to overturn an election last time.

Speaker 11 Yeah, like say get rid of the Justice Department and make Jeffrey Clark the leader who also sits outside the Oval Office.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no. That sort of thing.

Speaker 3 Defense Secretary Mike Flynn, your QNON supporter, Mike Clynn.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's going to be great. All right.

Speaker 3 So, Jen, you have graciously agreed to stick around for a round of two takes and a fake.

Speaker 11 Oh, I love it.

Speaker 3 which Elijah is going to moderate right now if we can get Elijah on the areas hey Elijah hey y'all how's it going it's good it's good we're excited for we're excited to play two takes and a fake great let's get into it

Speaker 18 welcome back to two takes and a fake it's our take on the classic game two truths and a lie I'm going to read you all three takes two of them are real one of them is a fake John Dan and Jen you three will have to sniff out the fake.

Speaker 18 Thank you to our subscribers who sent these in. Sign up at crooked.com slash friends to join our community.
John, Dan, and Jen, are you ready to play?

Speaker 11 Ready? It does feel ready. 23 is a harder time to play this game, hence the reason to play it.

Speaker 5 I think you're going to do fine. Okay.
All right. Ready.

Speaker 18 Let's start with some MAGA pundit reactions to the Fulton County indictment. Here's take number one.

Speaker 18 If you say, I need to find 11,000 votes, that's very different from saying, I need you to find me 11,000 votes somewhere.

Speaker 18 Here's take number two.

Speaker 18 Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain. The glass has now been broken over and over again.
Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies.

Speaker 18 Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail on all sides.

Speaker 18 And here's take number three.

Speaker 18 The liberal media should keep comparing Donald Trump to Tony Soprano. every man wants to be tony soprano every woman wants to be with tony soprano oh

Speaker 18 which one is the fake

Speaker 11 i want number three to be real but i think number three is the fake because i feel like i know number two and i think i know number one okay that's yeah

Speaker 3 same same

Speaker 4 i'm with jen i i think i know the first two yeah i i want number three to be real and if elagi was playing the game then the way he normally plays it, number three would definitely be real.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 4 I will side with you guys.

Speaker 18 You guys are correct. Number three is the fake.
I mean, bonus points. Who said number one and number two? Number one, again, is the 11,000 votes is different than 11,000 votes.

Speaker 3 Does anyone know? I can take it if no one.

Speaker 3 I think it's our friend Janine Pirro.

Speaker 5 Oh. I'm so impressed that you got that.

Speaker 5 Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 3 I am an addict. I am a news addict.

Speaker 5 It's not healthy.

Speaker 11 I know number two.

Speaker 18 Ted Cruz. I thought you guys would know.

Speaker 11 I don't remember.

Speaker 18 Dan David. It's not Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 11 Ted Cruz?

Speaker 5 No. Not an elected official.

Speaker 3 I know it.

Speaker 4 Let's go for it. Ben Shapiro.

Speaker 11 Oh, Ben Shapiro. That's right.
There was a whole Ben Shapiro meet Ben Shapiro. Yes, that's what was happening on what is formerly known as Twitter and whatever we call it now, X or whatever it is.

Speaker 11 I'm not engaged.

Speaker 4 I think we call it Twitter on this podcast.

Speaker 5 We're not.

Speaker 4 Okay, I'm not giving it Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 By the way, Ben Shapiro is so full of shit.

Speaker 3 He writes an entire book in 2014, The People versus Barack Obama, where he suggests a RICO case against Barack Obama for the... This is going to trigger Dan.
The IRS scandal.

Speaker 3 That's what that was the whole book about.

Speaker 3 He wanted a racketeering charge against Barack Obama and the Justice Department of the IRS for the IRS scandal. And now he's like, I don't know.
We don't want to be charging presidents.

Speaker 4 I'm getting a sense this Ben Shapiro fellow may not be be on the level.

Speaker 3 No, he's full of shit. Full of shit.

Speaker 18 Well, congratulations on getting the first one.

Speaker 5 John, I'm impressed and also concerned for you that he knew both of those.

Speaker 4 Not only did John know it, he tweeted about it, which is a thousand times worse.

Speaker 3 I exed.

Speaker 5 You didn't retweet.

Speaker 4 You did an

Speaker 5 original content with this, with this.

Speaker 5 Yikes. All right.

Speaker 18 Let's move on to round two, which will be headlines. These are three headlines from pieces that ran in various publications this week.
Headline number one, is George's case against Trump one too many?

Speaker 18 Headline number two, how should the GOP respond to Fulton County? Indict the left.

Speaker 18 Headline number three, Jack be not nimble, Jack be not quick, how Trump is outmaneuvering Jack Smith.

Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 Well, we know one is real. Yeah.

Speaker 4 We've talked about it previously on this podcast.

Speaker 4 Would Elijah really do the fake one as a third one twice in a row?

Speaker 3 It also sounds like a Maureen Dowd column, the third one.

Speaker 11 But it sounds so long. That's what's like really getting me, which makes it sound fake, but also like the notion could be real.

Speaker 11 I still think three is a fake.

Speaker 4 I'm going to go with two, just to try to mix this up a little bit.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go with two as well.

Speaker 18 Jen, our guest, congratulations. You're correct.
Three.

Speaker 5 We have four points in drawing. You know, we got bonus points.

Speaker 11 How does the point system work?

Speaker 5 No, Jen wins.

Speaker 3 She won out, right?

Speaker 5 You are the winner.

Speaker 3 Congratulations. Your first time.

Speaker 5 Thank you. Well, we do have a third round, I will say.

Speaker 5 We have a third round.

Speaker 18 I know we talked about two, but there's good stuff out there.

Speaker 11 It's a big week in the two reels and a fake.

Speaker 3 This isn't television, Jen. We have all the time here.
We can just

Speaker 5 we can go for hours you can you're gonna just like edit out you'll edit out the part where i win i know where this is

Speaker 18 hopefully hopefully someone's got a long commute home today bonus bonus round here we go tough to protect that second one is from charlie kirk he's been on that kick for a long time okay okay

Speaker 18 sounds so these are these are quotes from voters on the ground These are just some fun things I ran into.

Speaker 18 Voter number one, they're trying to do so much with the indictments. The Democrats are so much worse, but they control the House so they can do what they want to Trump.

Speaker 18 Voter number two, Trump might say mean things that make all the men cry because the men are wearing your wife's underpants and you can't be a man anymore. But at the end of the day, you want results.

Speaker 18 Donald Trump's proved that at a national level.

Speaker 18 Voter three,

Speaker 18 Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. The witch hunts are making us stronger.
Go ahead and indict him again. It only makes me support him more.

Speaker 11 Two cannot be real.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Two.
I'm going to stick with a winner, Jen Socky.

Speaker 3 Two is absolutely real.

Speaker 5 I'm going to go with three.

Speaker 18 John is right. Two is absolutely real.

Speaker 3 It was from the New York Times. It was a voter in the New York Times Sienna poll.

Speaker 11 Oh my God.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 11 I feel like I can't believe I missed that.

Speaker 11 I think that that person and the person you mentioned earlier should form a bipartisan firm for messaging.

Speaker 5 That would just be amazing. Wild.

Speaker 3 Wild stuff.

Speaker 18 I think Jen still wins. She gets a guest point.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Absolutely.
Of course. Not even curious.

Speaker 3 Also, I'm terminally online and it's a problem.

Speaker 3 Jen Saki, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for watching.
Your fantastic show, Inside with Jen Saki, is also available. wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 So after you listen to this podcast, just start listening to Jen.

Speaker 5 That's perfect.

Speaker 3 And you're also hosting a special this Sunday at 7 p.m. I hear it's

Speaker 3 Inside with Jen Saki Special Report Decision 2024. What are you going to be talking about?

Speaker 11 Very lengthy title. We're going to be talking about the Republican debate next week.

Speaker 11 Perhaps the confluence of events next week that may take place at the same time, including Donald Trump potentially turning himself in the same day or the next day, but mainly the debate and also obviously lots of legal news as well.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's so exciting.

Speaker 3 What a week for me to be on vacation. Yikes.

Speaker 11 Put your calm down. Put your phone down.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I should put my phone down. I will not for the Republican debate, but otherwise I will.

Speaker 3 Jen, thank you so much for joining. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 3 Everyone have a good weekend. And

Speaker 3 I'll see you guys in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 But Dan and Tommy and Lovett will be here next week.

Speaker 11 Enjoy your vacation.

Speaker 5 Congrats on number two.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 11 As Dan can confirm, it becomes real with two children. One,

Speaker 3 yes,

Speaker 5 I feel it coming.

Speaker 4 My take on this is when you, when you have your first child, everyone tells you it's perfect and amazing.

Speaker 4 And then when you tell people you're having your second child, that's when they give you like real hardcore like

Speaker 4 appraisals of what it's like. And I'm not going to do that for you.

Speaker 3 Well, I've seen it because all my friends in LA who have two kids seem much more tired and harried

Speaker 3 than those of us with one child.

Speaker 11 The positive note is that the relationship between them is so amazing.

Speaker 5 It makes it all worth it.

Speaker 5 That's what I'm hoping.

Speaker 11 After you and Emily sleep, you know, however many months in, then that relationship is amazing.

Speaker 4 So there's last night for one straight hour, my kids, who are age five and two, played nicely together in a room with no conflict.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's so cool. No violence.

Speaker 4 It was truly wonderful.

Speaker 4 But only the problem is I couldn't really do anything because

Speaker 4 every moment I thought it was was going to come to an end and I was going to have to run in there. But it was sweet and wonderful.

Speaker 11 And my kids who are eight and five sleep insist on sleeping in the same room.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's really cute.

Speaker 11 So it's cute. It's great.
It's magical after

Speaker 11 the baby to be sleeps.

Speaker 3 Well, Emily.

Speaker 3 Emily is due on January 7th. And so that is just right between

Speaker 3 Jack Smith's trial begins and the Iowa caucuses on January 15th. So it's going to be great.

Speaker 11 It's going to be amazing. Can't wait.

Speaker 5 Baby Jack. Baby Jack.
Can't wait to meet you. You're right, of course.

Speaker 3 That's so resistance. I love it.

Speaker 5 I'm going to do it.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Jen. Everyone have a good weekend.
We'll talk to you later. Bye, guys.
Bye, everyone.

Speaker 3 Pod 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 3 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 3 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 3 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefcoat, and David Toles.

Speaker 3 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 5 Welcome back to Listen to Your Heart.

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