Trump's Legal Eras Tour

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 6 I'm the ex, formerly known as John Lovitt.

Speaker 8 There we go. Tom McGuitor.

Speaker 4 On today's show, Donald Trump is still crushing the field in a pair of Iowa and South Carolina polls that officially qualify multiple candidates for the first debate.

Speaker 4 The DeSantis campaign has finally landed on a let Ron be Ron strategy.

Speaker 6 Did we predict? I feel like we said that, that he was going to have to say someone was.

Speaker 4 I don't know if I said it on the podcast or somewhere else in life, but we've definitely been saying it. Joe Biden's campaign builds an unconventional operation to take on the Republican nominee.

Speaker 4 And later, New York Congressman Dan Goldman stops by to chat with Tommy about prosecuting Donald Trump and the latest House Republican antics around Hunter Biden and RFK Jr.

Speaker 8 If you send a direct message on Twitter, is it a DMX?

Speaker 8 I just think it's important to think about.

Speaker 4 Did you see that Microsoft and Meta have the trademark for X?

Speaker 8 I did.

Speaker 4 So X literally not going to give it to you.

Speaker 6 Can we talk about some news?

Speaker 4 But first, no third indictment just yet. Although by the time you hear it, who knows? Who knows by the time you hear this?

Speaker 8 Let's go, Jack.

Speaker 4 Though Judge Aileen Cannon did set a a trial date for Trump's second indictment, the Republican frontrunner is scheduled to stand trial on May 20th, 2024, for stealing highly classified documents from the White House.

Speaker 4 Trump's volume of deranged truths has also picked up considerably over the last 48 hours, so maybe something's come in there.

Speaker 4 He's now sharing posts that accuse the government he led of staging the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Speaker 4 He also made a threat on an Iowa radio show last week that if he's convicted and imprisoned, his fans might do something even worse.

Speaker 9 Aaron Trevor Brewery, is it something that concerns you of

Speaker 4 the people

Speaker 9 making sure that they don't go out of their right mind if something like that happens?

Speaker 9 Because I know what I'm thinking of could happen if that, for example, they do, say, Jack Smith says, okay, I'm going to put Donald Trump in jail.

Speaker 10 I think it's a very dangerous thing to even talk about

Speaker 10 because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters. And I mean, maybe, you know,

Speaker 10 maybe 100, 150. I've never seen anything like it.
Much more passion than they had in 2020, and much more passion than they had in 2016. I think it would be very dangerous.

Speaker 4 Where's the 100 and 150 come from? I just noticed.

Speaker 8 Yeah, what's that count from?

Speaker 4 I also like the question is, are you concerned? Are you concerned?

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's really concerned, you can tell.

Speaker 4 So his message here, Trump's message here, is that the insurrection was a false flag operation that could also happen again if he's held accountable for breaking the law.

Speaker 4 You guys think we'll hear that defense from his lawyers in court?

Speaker 8 Yeah, and it's just, I think it's worth noting that this conspiracy theory that

Speaker 8 January 6th was a false flag operation, that the sort of FBI plant led everyone to charge the Capitol has been around for a while.

Speaker 8 And a guy named Ray Epps, who was a former member of the Oath Keepers militia,

Speaker 8 had to sell his house and move because he was getting threats from other crazy right-wing people who suggested he was some sort of FBI plan. He is absolutely not.
There's no evidence to

Speaker 8 prove any of this, but Trump and Steve Vann and all these guys have latched onto it to push this false flag narrative. And it's very scary.

Speaker 6 Yeah, two thoughts. One,

Speaker 6 if you, you can not call that, you can't call this a strategy of any kind, but if it is, it is not a legal one. It is just a

Speaker 6 thrashing PR campaign

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 sort of excite the base and keep Republicans in the fold.

Speaker 6 But what's striking about it to me is, you know, one thing we've noticed over the years about all these different attorneys who've been involved in sundry Trump investigations is

Speaker 6 they become so radicalized in favor of prosecution. Like you see it out of the people that came out of Mueller.
You see it out of all these different investigations. And I just think, you know,

Speaker 6 you're working on this case. There have been death threats against prosecutors.

Speaker 6 You're working day and night looking at this brazen and ridiculous illegal activity by the former president of the United States. Is it all worth it? Should I fight again tomorrow?

Speaker 6 And then you turn on the television and he's learned nothing. He's doing it even more.

Speaker 8 And you just get a subway and you call it a day.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Get some fun. Get a tune a foot long.

Speaker 4 Look, I just don't think it necessarily helps his case to argue that the violent attack was a secret FBI operation, but also threatened that his supporters may do it again if he's convicted.

Speaker 4 It was an FBI plant, but also they might do it again. And this whole thing, it's like he's had so many different, this is where he's going to have some issues when this indictment comes down.

Speaker 4 He's had so many different explanations for January 6th. Like, let's on June 22nd of this last year, he said January 6th was not a simple protest.
It was not a simple protest.

Speaker 4 It represented the greatest movement in the history of our country to make America great again. I had forgotten that he said that.
Well,

Speaker 6 it's very similar to the conversation he has with Brett Baer.

Speaker 6 You know, he goes on, he basically does like improv excuses and lies and justifications, but every single one would require a different fact pardon.

Speaker 6 Every single one is something a prosecutor can ask him at a trial.

Speaker 6 So every day he goes out and makes whatever defense attorney is still answering the phone's lives difficult, more difficult, every single day.

Speaker 6 And even, you know, he's getting on the phone with like Stefanik and McCarthy, trying to strategize how the House investigations can help him run interference.

Speaker 6 None of that is going to make his legal arguments any stronger. None of that has anything to do with the actual threat he faces from the justice system.

Speaker 8 I think it's very scary and it's clearly a threat. But I think the good news is some of the hardcore MAGA types have been out there saying to the other supporters, do not go to these protests.

Speaker 8 Do not back him. Do not get violent because he hung us all at the dry on January 6th and didn't pardon those people.

Speaker 4 And sure enough, there was a pretty small, relatively small crowd outside the courthouse when he was indicted for the second.

Speaker 8 Look, it only takes one person.

Speaker 4 For sure.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 at the height of his powers while in the White House in a violent cause that was explicitly about keeping him in power, not protecting him in front of a courthouse, not stopping him, even long before he could ever become president,

Speaker 6 what was mustered? It was a violent attempt to overthrow the government. It hurt a lot of people.
It caused a lot of damage. But he's got chaos and mayhem support.

Speaker 6 There's no revolution.

Speaker 4 What do you guys make of the May 2024 trial date for the classified documents indictment?

Speaker 6 Here's why I think Trump was truthing so angrily. I think he just figured out what his next year is like.

Speaker 4 And it is. It's a rough calendar.
It's

Speaker 6 October 2nd, New York civil fraud trial. January 15th, 2nd Eugene Carroll civil defamation trial.

Speaker 4 Also the day of the Iowa caucuses. Also the day of the guy.
Don't forget. It's a big one.

Speaker 6 March 25th, Manhattan hush money trial. May 20th, the classified documents trial out of

Speaker 4 Florida.

Speaker 4 We still got

Speaker 4 Jack Smith Smith in Florida.

Speaker 6 We got Jack Smith in D.C. We've got the Georgia case.
So he's got his,

Speaker 6 he's heading out on his, Trump's legal eras tour.

Speaker 8 You know, he's got like a wedding or two also, right? Yeah. Everyone's got a couple weddings.

Speaker 4 Yeah, everyone's got to fetch that.

Speaker 6 He's got to fit in with this thing. I mean, this is a terrible thing.

Speaker 4 Well, he's probably going to DJ a few weddings at Mar-a-Lago himself. He's booked.
He's booked his business.

Speaker 8 I know he's a DJ now. Look,

Speaker 6 forget that he was president. Forget everything else.
This is a man about to face six independent trials.

Speaker 4 You know, I was thinking this the other day. I'm like,

Speaker 4 forget about, like, yeah, presidents, politicians. Has anyone faced this many trials? Six trials? For separate crimes? For separate crimes, yeah.

Speaker 4 For separate crimes in a year like i assume there's a lot of we got to call get it this is like a it's getting up it's a record like i don't know how to enron people but like this is this is wild

Speaker 4 so jacksmith wanted december of 2023 trump's lawyers wanted never

Speaker 4 i guess technically they said they wanted uh postpone indefinitely but certainly after november 2024 cannon landed in may but of course it could still be postponed from may 20th seems very likely it'll be postponed due to pre due to it's and due to it says routine pre-trial motions, right?

Speaker 8 So according to the New York Times, the amount of discovery evidence that Trump's lawyers have to go through will include more than a million pages of unclassified material, nine months of surveillance camera footage, and 1,500 pages of classified documents.

Speaker 8 They better get to work. It could take a minute.

Speaker 4 They better get to work. I wouldn't say that to the last minute.
That slot. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know, there's a lot of, I think, rightful concern that the fact that it landed in Cannon's courtroom was nerve-wracking for people that assumed she would do everything she can to help Trump.

Speaker 6 We don't know yet if what's going to actually unfold, like what she could do. She still has a lot of power.
You know, she set this date. Maybe it's a date set so that she can postpone it again.

Speaker 6 Who knows? But when you see these three other cases and the fact that there are two more coming down the pike,

Speaker 6 you start to see that

Speaker 6 he's going to need a lot more help. The other piece of it is

Speaker 6 you look at like the primary schedule and We don't know when the Jack Smith or the Georgia cases could land, but it does seem like what we're heading towards is a period of time in which while Trump is running for the nomination, he has the microphone.

Speaker 6 He gets to describe it to voters. He gets to talk over his opponents.
He gets to continue to define January 6th and his various legal troubles to his adoring fans.

Speaker 6 But then all of a sudden, perhaps after he has put himself on a path to be the nominee, then the trials begin.

Speaker 6 And then Trump no longer, the one, you know, Trump's approval rating never dropped faster or harder than during the insurrection because he could not overcome the video, the visuals that were coming out of what took place.

Speaker 6 And now all of a sudden, he can talk all he wants, but trials look like trials, and they have a rhythm all their own.

Speaker 4 Look, it's very possible that Republicans nominate someone who will be a convicted felon by the time November 2024 comes around.

Speaker 6 It could happen between him getting enough delegates in the convention. It could happen in those months.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 in that scenario, it's possible if they were a sane party that Republicans could try to wrest the nomination from from him at the convention. But who are we kidding? Look, they're moving for it.

Speaker 4 And this is only like it is interesting that the March date for the I keep forgetting about the Stormy Daniels one.

Speaker 4 So that that trial could take a couple weeks and could get a guilty verdict there by April or May. In May, if Cannon doesn't move it, you know, that's still like two, three, four week trial.

Speaker 4 Suddenly you're in.

Speaker 8 I think like they said like six weeks probably the minimum for that trial. So it's pre-convention, which means, it does mean the party has time to remove him as the nominee.

Speaker 8 You're not officially nominated until I think July 18th is the final day of the Republican convention. It won't happen.

Speaker 4 We are not that lucky. This is just not forget about that, just to see the fight.
How fun would the fight be a great fight?

Speaker 6 Here's the thing, but like, I think what I'm taking away from seeing all these different trials unfolding is, uh, I don't know how lucky we have to be.

Speaker 6 That's the first piece of this too is it's yeah, but the other part of it too is once you add you add the Jack Smith case, you add the Georgia case, and even if the trial, one of them slips,

Speaker 6 we're still staring at a spring, summer, and fall where potentially the dominant issue in front of voters is the most unsavory and unpopular position Trump has ever taken, which is I don't really support democracy.

Speaker 6 It'll become central to the campaign. You know, those images side by side, Trump on trial for insurrection and Biden campaigning, I don't know, on a road, you know, with a with a road and a shovel.

Speaker 6 That's pretty good.

Speaker 8 Some candidates do like Medicare Advantage plan rollouts or foreign policy speeches. Donnie's doing indictments and purp walks.
Those are his message events.

Speaker 4 You think there'll be a step-in-repeat behind him outside the courtroom?

Speaker 8 Well, which court?

Speaker 8 You know what I mean? Because they're all going to want their own brand.

Speaker 4 Anyone is, what else I'm going to say? Any swing state court? Yeah, I guess Georgia, he could spend time campaigning. Oh, wow.

Speaker 6 He's going to really make sure he's got a lot of

Speaker 8 commit a Wisconsin crime next time, you idiot.

Speaker 4 Also, Trump's going to new lawyer said he wants Trump wants cameras in the courtroom.

Speaker 4 It could just be something to say because he knows that they probably won't allow cameras in the courtroom, and then they'll say, oh, Trump wanted it. He wanted people to see what was going on there.

Speaker 4 How great would that be?

Speaker 8 They just watched that great new show, Jury Diddy.

Speaker 4 The cameras in the courtroom would be, for this try, would be amazing.

Speaker 4 Yes,

Speaker 8 how do you do in the classified documents? It's all confusing.

Speaker 4 That's why it's got to be. Yeah, that one's going to be tough.
That one's tough.

Speaker 4 Most of Trump's primary opponents still refuse to entertain the idea that he may have broken the law by attempting a coup. And some are even pretending that January 6th wasn't really an insurrection.

Speaker 4 Here's Tim Scott, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 7 I hold the folks who broke into the Capitol with ill will in their hearts, destroying property, responsible for their actions.

Speaker 7 I don't hold the former president who didn't show up at the Capitol and threatened my life as responsible.

Speaker 12 While his words were reckless,

Speaker 12 based on what I know, I'm not yet convinced that they were criminal. President Trump was wrong on that day, and he's still wrong in asserting that I had the right to overturn the election.

Speaker 12 But what his intentions were, and as you know, criminal charges have everything to do with intent,

Speaker 12 what the president's state of mind was. And

Speaker 12 I don't honestly know what his intention was that day.

Speaker 13 It was not an insurrection. These are people that were there to attend a rally, and then they were there to protest.
Now it devolved, and it devolved into a riot.

Speaker 13 But the idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true, and it's something that the media had spun up.

Speaker 13 If somebody is honestly doing an insurrection against the U.S. government, then prove that that's the case, and I'll be happy to accept it.

Speaker 6 Well, they've proved it many times. That's why they're all in fucking jail.

Speaker 4 That is just fucking

Speaker 8 the most galling part of that is Mike Penn saying he didn't know what Trump's intentions were. Yeah, you did, dude.
You talked to him. You're one of the very few people who got to talk to him.

Speaker 4 Yeah, his intentions were that he tried to kill you.

Speaker 8 Yeah, well, you just don't have the guts to share what you learned.

Speaker 4 Well, also, I remember,

Speaker 4 for some reason, this made me think of the Kevin McCarthy phone call. Remember, McCarthy calls Trump in the middle of the attack, and he's like, they're trying to kill me.

Speaker 4 And then Donald Trump's like, well, Kevin, I guess they're angrier about the results of the election than you are, huh? And then he's like, they're fucking trying to kill me.

Speaker 4 They all knew what the intention was. They all knew it was.

Speaker 8 And also, the Jack Smith case is not about just January 6th, the day. It's about the sprawling effort to overturn the election.
But what we just heard there, to me, is a story.

Speaker 8 It's like compounding political cowardice, right? Like McConnell wouldn't impeach. You just talked about the Kevin McCarthy phone call.

Speaker 8 Right after that, he said that Trump bears responsibility, that Congress should censure him.

Speaker 8 And then he went crawling back down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring when he realized he needed Trump to get the votes to be Speaker.

Speaker 8 So now here we are in a 2015-style conundrum where none of Trump's opponents will actually attack him for leading an insurrection because they all are trying to like win some sliver of his voters by taking oblique shots or running to the right of him on policy.

Speaker 8 And it's it's failing miserably.

Speaker 4 How about hopeful, optimistic candidate Tim Scott setting the bar at, well, he didn't come try to kill me personally at the Capitol, so

Speaker 4 I do not hold him responsible. Now, anyone who doesn't try to murder me there, it's okay.

Speaker 6 I would like to say, in defense of Senator Tim Scott,

Speaker 4 Tim Scott's spin zone over here.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the Timmy Time guys buckler seatbelts because

Speaker 6 we're in a rocket ship.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 check out those IOPOLs. We'll get to it.

Speaker 4 We're going to get to that.

Speaker 6 But you feel the G-forces.

Speaker 4 Feel the G-forces.

Speaker 6 But he does say as responsible.

Speaker 4 Now,

Speaker 4 here's the sad part of the question.

Speaker 6 That means he's responsible.

Speaker 4 They clearly think this is the only way they can win the Republican nomination, those three, if they genuinely think they can win the Republican nomination, which I presume they still do, which because they're spending all this time on the race.

Speaker 4 Are they right? No.

Speaker 4 Let's talk about that Iowa poll.

Speaker 8 Because I think that tells the story.

Speaker 4 There's a new Iowa poll out.

Speaker 8 I don't know if the numbers in front of me, but I assume John does in the intro to this segment. Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 4 We got Trump. Trump 46.
Trump 46, Ron DeSantis, 16, Tim Scott, 11, Vivek Ramaswamy, 6, and Nikki Haley 5. So this is the Tim Scott rocket ship.
He's in double digits in Iowa.

Speaker 6 That's two digits. We've doubled in digits, baby.

Speaker 8 But it seems clear to me that all of the support that's going to Tim Scott and others is coming from Ron DeSantis. No one is chipping away Trump here.
He's still doing great. So, no, it's not working.

Speaker 4 They're fighting each other just like 2015. It's definitely not working, for sure.

Speaker 4 But when you look at the polls of how Republican voters feel about January 6th, 32% of Republican voters approve of what happened on January 6th. So that's fortunately low.
That's a lot.

Speaker 4 That's unfortunately.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 I'm going to get to something worse. Okay, good.
Only 14% of Republicans describe Trump as very responsible for January 6th compared to 45% of all voters.

Speaker 4 This was a political poll from earlier this year. They did a bunch of polls around the anniversary, and then they haven't done any since on January 6th.
I'm sure we'll get more soon.

Speaker 4 In total, only 31% of Republican voters said Trump was very or somewhat responsible for January 6th, even though 59% of all voters assigned that level of responsibility to Trump.

Speaker 4 Cue poll from December, only 9% of Republicans think Trump's attempt to overturn the election was a crime. 81% say it wasn't criminal.

Speaker 6 And it's worth noting, too, that's brutal.

Speaker 6 that the numbers have slowly shifted and it depends on how you ask the question, but roughly,

Speaker 6 what, roughly two-thirds of Republicans believe that the election wasn't legitimately decided at this point.

Speaker 6 They sort of have bought into this, and it's sort of part of the hallmark of this era, which is when someone like Rhonda Santos is asked that question,

Speaker 6 is he saying what he believes that the base of the party also believes, or is he doing a shibboleth and signaling to them that he's not going to give in to the mainstream narrative because he understands that we're all in this fight together to protect, you know, to protect Trump or whatever it may be, because none of us can really, we can't tell these.

Speaker 6 Is there a difference? There isn't a difference. There isn't a difference in practice, but I do think it's like it's right because he's not saying, this is what I believe.

Speaker 6 He's saying, look at how I fight.

Speaker 8 I just think it's all a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, no one believes the thing I won't make an argument for.

Speaker 4 Well, of course not.

Speaker 8 Now, am I saying that I would make this the thrust of my campaign if I were running against Trump? Absolutely not. I'd probably answer honestly and as briefly as I could.

Speaker 8 And then to the extent this is part of my argument, it would be, to me, about electability. Like, look, most of the country blames this guy for the insurrection.

Speaker 8 That's the last image they saw of him as president. That's why he can't win.
Like, that's what I would do. But yeah, I mean, I get the challenge.

Speaker 4 We could do that. That would have been a great, that would have been a great answer.

Speaker 8 Like, when no one's fighting, no one's making

Speaker 4 that answer.

Speaker 6 But no one's softening the ground. It's like, it's rock solid.

Speaker 4 It's another collective action issue, too, because like all these Republican politicians in private would probably say,

Speaker 4 this is what the base thinks. Look at these poll numbers, right? But where do you think Republican voters take their cues from?

Speaker 4 They take their cues from the leaders of the party and from the people that the idiots that they see on

Speaker 4 who are also lying about this shit. So if that's all they ever hear, of course those polls are going to be.

Speaker 6 They can also look at Chris Christie, who has been out there trying to make the argument. And what's happened? Trump's numbers hasn't moved.
His numbers haven't moved.

Speaker 6 The only thing that's happened is more and more Republicans, when asked the question, say that he's an unpalatable candidate, the only person they couldn't vote for.

Speaker 4 Though he's risen in the polls a little bit, too. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, I'm not, you know, I mean, he's no Tim Scott, but

Speaker 4 he's only a couple points behind Tim Scott. Well, so as Tommy pointed out, whatever the other candidates are doing, it doesn't seem to be working.
We heard the Iowa poll from Fox.

Speaker 4 There is also a South Carolina poll that they released. That's Trump 48, Haley 14, DeSantis 13, Scott 10, Mike Pence 4.

Speaker 4 Notice I didn't mention Mike Pence in the Iowa poll because he was under Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy at 6-5.

Speaker 4 So these results from these two polls officially qualify Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy, Scott, and Chris Christie for the first debate a month from now.

Speaker 4 Mike Pence and Doug Bergham insist they'll qualify, but they haven't yet. Pence hasn't yet because he doesn't have the donors yet, though he does have the polls.

Speaker 4 And Bergham has the donors, but he doesn't yet have the polls.

Speaker 8 It's weird that you need the donors and the polls. Why wouldn't you just need the polls?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 That's a good question. I guess because polls are like, it's hard to trust polls and like donors are like real actual people.

Speaker 4 I guess it's the same thing. It's rough enthusiasm.
No, I think the incentive structure has really

Speaker 4 clearly fucked up, though.

Speaker 6 Because Doug Bergum is just

Speaker 6 buying donors at $20 a pop sound. For sure.

Speaker 4 Right. What do you guys make of these polls? So 30-point lead in Iowa with six months to go.
What do you think, Tommy?

Speaker 8 I mean, I want to tell you, my favorite part of this poll is that

Speaker 8 we'll talk about the debate later, but Fox slipped in a question about what you think it means for a presidential candidate to skip the debate.

Speaker 8 59% said it shows a candidate's weakness rather than strength. 27%, that's just hilarious that Fox is like, we're hosting the first debate.

Speaker 4 Don't you think it's weak if you skip it? Also, though, how cowardly to phrase the question like that instead of saying, What do you think about Trump skipping the debt?

Speaker 8 Right. Which probably would have gotten a total of the

Speaker 4 money. Right, would have flipped it.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I look, I think both these polls show Trump is in very firm lead and that Ron DeSantis is hemorrhaging support. And I think there's room for other people to have these little mini boomlets.

Speaker 8 But it's humiliating for Mike Pence, like you said. Four in 10 voters in the IWO poll said they couldn't support him at all, ever.
I mean, that is just devastating.

Speaker 4 He's done. Trump gets

Speaker 4 the education divide was per usual in the Republican Party and in the electorate, the starkest in both these polls. Trump in Iowa gets 57% of those without a college degree, only 33% of voters with.

Speaker 4 And the challenge for all these other candidates is within the Republican electorate, it's just an electorate that is more non-college educated than it is college educated.

Speaker 4 And that is especially true in a state like Iowa. It is especially true in South Carolina.

Speaker 4 It's not as true in New Hampshire, which is why that's probably of the three states, Trump's worst state currently, even though he's still kicking kicking ass.

Speaker 4 Trump's other best groups, voters under age 35, it's interesting that young people are one of his best groups, very conservative voters, and voters who rarely attend religious services, though in South Carolina, white evangelicals are one of his strongest groups.

Speaker 4 So he's, it's just, it's one of those things where across all categories, religious, not religious, old, young,

Speaker 6 and the young, well, on the, on the young front, it's sort of, it's a self-selecting group of people.

Speaker 6 The kind of young people that are, that are Republicans in the state of Iowa are going to be a pretty conservative bunch.

Speaker 6 But it actually more points to the other problem a lot of these candidates have, which is at least in 2016, there was a lane for going after more conservative and evangelical voters.

Speaker 6 But this poll found that across Iowa and South Carolina, the evangelical numbers track the main polling numbers. Yeah.

Speaker 8 The biggest issue that people care about, though, in the Iowa one was defeating Joe Biden and not on issues, which again makes you wonder, hey, Ron DeSantis, why are you running to the right of Trump on all these random issues instead of going after his electability?

Speaker 4 You moron. Well, this is why it's like

Speaker 6 that the only sin that has turned Republicans against Trump over the years has been the sin of him not being electable, the sin of him losing.

Speaker 6 And the fact that they're not saying that these indictments

Speaker 6 are a sign that he can't win, that no one's making that argument. Even DeSantis after his reboot will get to it, but he's not even making that argument.

Speaker 4 They are advancing Trump's message, right? By saying that, like, even though they're trying to say, well, I'm just focused on the weaponization of the Justice Department and the two-tiered system.

Speaker 4 That's Trump's message. That's Trump's central message about his indictments.
Here's where you're going to get excited, Lovett. Tim Scott, most opportunity to grow in Iowa.

Speaker 4 Only 12% say they'd never back him, which is the lowest of the major candidates. 90% are open to him, and he is drawing from a wide range of demographics.

Speaker 4 So he's drawing from moderates and from very conservative.

Speaker 4 Everybody loves Tim Scott.

Speaker 4 Tim Scott loves him.

Speaker 4 Everyone except for like the 80s, 90% who's backing the 80s. They don't dislike Tim Scott.

Speaker 6 They just have two great options. People do not

Speaker 4 like Tim Scott.

Speaker 8 I think a quarter of them said they didn't know enough about him to make a decision.

Speaker 6 To think about the privilege of being an Iowa Republican where you can choose between people as great as Trump and Scott, right? With DeSantis as your third choice, how cool is that? How cool is that?

Speaker 6 It's like there's like a Chili's, a Cheesecake Factory, and an Olive Garden right there at the side of the road.

Speaker 4 We were talking about this earlier before we started recording, but it is interesting to me that in South Carolina, DeSantis has slipped to third, but it's not because Scott's in second, it's because Haley's in second.

Speaker 4 My guess is that just that she was a very popular governor there, and people know their governors a little bit more than they better than they know their senators, but that's my only guess.

Speaker 6 She'll launch her campaign first and a bunch more events there, so who knows? Yeah.

Speaker 4 So Trump AIDS said to the Washington Post over the weekend, it's unlikely he's going to change his mind about skipping the first debate, despite pleas from his favorite Fox hosts, and not just privately, they're doing it on the air, apparently.

Speaker 4 I know, in addition to those polling questions that Tommy mentioned, what do you guys think are the political dynamics of a debate without Trump that it seems like we are careening towards?

Speaker 8 Don't you imagine that he'll just hold his own big event and counter-program it and try to steal all of their thunder?

Speaker 4 I think they've threatened that, and they said, like, maybe he might sit down with Tucker for Tucker's show to counter-program

Speaker 4 another show on X.

Speaker 4 Well, they did.

Speaker 6 The point Trump made is, why would I do the debate? I'll just increase the ratings. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then Fox is playing into that argument by being like, please come do the debate. We need the ratings.

Speaker 8 And then he's smart enough to know that he'll just watch a bunch of B-team candidates attack each other instead of him and look like the B-team.

Speaker 6 And Ramaswamy and Chris Christie have been out there being like, Trump's afraid to debate us if he's such a strong.

Speaker 4 Oh, Ramaswamy's been saying that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Ramaswamy said it as well.

Speaker 6 No, Ramaswamy said it in the best way.

Speaker 6 He said,

Speaker 6 it looks like Trump, Trump might be afraid. I sure hope not.
It doesn't seem like him. Something like that.

Speaker 4 He could be a surprise, like, quote-unquote, star of the debate without Trump on the stage because that guy doesn't have much to lose and he's just sort of swinging for the fences.

Speaker 4 I'm interested to see

Speaker 4 how much time Christie spends going after Trump. Does Christie also try to light up DeSantis? Does anyone else try to light up DeSantis if Trump's not there?

Speaker 4 Because he's still number two and you might as well go after him? Like what happens?

Speaker 8 I think Christie not only goes after Trump, but calls out everyone else for not having the courage to go after Trump, which we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and then what happens? And then do they, do they just like pivot or do they, do they defend someone defend Trump. And that's so embarrassing.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 6 Well, like, if it weren't for, if you put, if Ramaswamy wasn't on the stage, you would think, all right, this debate is Chris Crispy. Chris Christie,

Speaker 6 Chris Crispy versus everybody else, and he's going to make that case against them. But with Ron Maswami there, he's sort of like a chaos agent.

Speaker 6 And then you have to think, DeSantis, Haley, Scott, someone up there is going to come with a plan that is ready for what to do when Chris Christie does that kind of a broadside against the whole field and take it.

Speaker 6 But I don't know if it can be, it can't just be defend Trump. So you have to think Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 6 Ron DeSantis has to do a version in front of the debate audience of the argument for basically, you know,

Speaker 6 get things done, Trump without the chaos. He has to kind of make that case.
And that's the

Speaker 6 question: how hard he does it.

Speaker 8 I think you just go with like the Ronald Reagan 11th commandment: thou shalt not attack other Republicans, bullshit that everyone's used to, and coming together for unity and being Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I could see Tim Scott and Doug Bergham doing that too. Doing the work.
There's a lot of fighting up here, but I think we've fighting too much and we need to look forward.

Speaker 8 I can't see Doug Bergham doing much of anything. Honestly, if he was right here, I wouldn't.
He is here.

Speaker 4 He's here.

Speaker 4 sitting quietly. Yeah, because he's dropping off our gift cards.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 We should actually, honestly, we should bankrupt Doug Bergam. We should all take the $20 and donate the dollar.
Why are we doing that? I mean,

Speaker 8 I know.

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Speaker 4 So, DeSantis slipping to third place for the first time in that South Carolina poll is just one of the many shitty headlines for his campaign lately.

Speaker 4 Lots of stories about shake-ups and reboots over the weekend that have all the campaign classics. We got a donor telling Politico it's time to let Ron be Ron.

Speaker 4 We got a new media strategy that they're calling DeSantis is everywhere.

Speaker 4 Threat. We got the campaign

Speaker 4 blowing through cash on private planes and fancy hotels. We got infighting between the campaign and the super PAC.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, the campaign briefly retweeted another bizarre video over the weekend that ends with a neo-Nazi symbol superimposed on a Florida flag.

Speaker 4 And the candidate spent the weekend threatening to sue Bud Light for sending a beer to a trans person.

Speaker 4 And he tried to explain a line in his state's new education curriculum that reads this, quote, instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

Speaker 4 Here's DeSantis' response to that curriculum, followed by a fiery denunciation from Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaker 14 These are the most robust standards in African-American history, probably anywhere in the country. I think that they're probably going to show

Speaker 14 some of the folks that eventually parlayed

Speaker 14 being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.

Speaker 5 How is it

Speaker 15 that anyone could suggest that, in the midst of these atrocities

Speaker 15 that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?

Speaker 4 So it seems like the DeSantis reboot is off to a strong start, huh?

Speaker 4 Of all of these DeSantis imploding stories and details, of which there were many to comb through, which do you guys think are most politically consequential and which are just fun to mock?

Speaker 8 I mean, I do think we, like,

Speaker 4 this

Speaker 8 comment he made about slavery is one of the dumbest, most offensive, like straight out of the lost cause revisionist history narrative things I've ever heard a politician do.

Speaker 8 I know obviously it was his board of education, but they did it because of his stupid stop woke act.

Speaker 8 And it's just worth saying that even the examples that the Florida Department of Education held up as

Speaker 8 individuals who benefited from slavery, many of them were never enslaved. One of them was a poet and a writer.
Not a lot of slaves were taught how to read and write during slavery.

Speaker 8 So it's just like, it's outrageous on its face. It's frankly why critical race theory gets taught in the first place.

Speaker 8 So I do think it's just worth putting a stamp on what Kamala Harris said there and like explaining how outrageous this is.

Speaker 4 I also want to say about that too. There's a lot of pro-DeSantis pundits on X

Speaker 4 arguing about how this was out of context. They're like, look at the whole curriculum.

Speaker 4 And it's like, yes, the entire curriculum does explicitly call for kids to learn about the many horrors of slavery. But still, why do you include that line?

Speaker 4 Why does anyone need to be taught that, oh, there were some skills that were useful later on? Why else would you teach that

Speaker 4 if not for to like to apologize? It's totally apologize for it. I thought there were some silver linings.
There were some silver linings.

Speaker 8 It's also bullshit. Again, his example was a blacksmith.

Speaker 6 Like, people across Africa knew how to...

Speaker 8 forge iron and other metals before slavery. You know the famous bronze statues that the British looted and took to their museums? Those were created in the 16th century.

Speaker 4 It also doesn't matter if you picked up a fucking skill while you were being raped and tortured and dehumanized. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 8 It's wrong. It's offensive.

Speaker 4 Listen,

Speaker 6 I think, I just want to add my two cents to this, which I also believe slavery was morally reprehensible.

Speaker 4 It's reprehensible completely.

Speaker 6 And as Will Heard, who's

Speaker 6 almost at 1% some of these polls,

Speaker 6 just made the point simply, which is, no, slavery was not a jobs program, Ron, which I thought was pretty good.

Speaker 4 Chris Christie also attacked him for it.

Speaker 4 It's incredible.

Speaker 6 But I do think that this is part of

Speaker 6 DeSantis

Speaker 6 thought that this anti-woke thing was his ticket to being like the Republican standard bearer the person that could replace Trump his way into the hearts of like the kind of rabid base of the party but he keeps getting dragged into these ridiculous and embarrassing and extremist controversies that make him seem unelectable and undermines his his main argument his main thrust for why he could beat John beat Trump yeah he made his bed here yeah like this this another crazy sort of

Speaker 8 doomer edgelord video that had the Nazi symbol at the end.

Speaker 4 Like all of this shit that the curriculum,

Speaker 4 the New York Times had

Speaker 4 a little story, a little detail that the homophobic slash homoerotic ad was actually made by a DeSanta staffer. Made in house.
Yeah, Made in House.

Speaker 4 All these things, like, I think, deeply hurt him in a general election

Speaker 4 should he ever get there.

Speaker 6 Just too online.

Speaker 6 And of course, in your too online, too bubbly right-wing campaign, of course, your young video video staffers are the most online of them all, making this absolutely incomprehensible and hateful fucking gibberish that you're spreading on the internet because it makes you and a few other Reddit trolls fucking laugh.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and like this narrative generally that his campaign is a mess and out of control, it's just a massive distraction. And it's infecting everything they do.

Speaker 8 And as Dan said, the media wants a blood sacrifice. They want the campaign manager fired.
It doesn't look like Ron is ready to do that.

Speaker 8 But his whole argument was like, hey, guys, I'm Trump, but I'm competent. You know, I can can execute.
Let's go.

Speaker 4 You can't run your own campaign.

Speaker 8 And the profligate spending, I mean, they were having some donor retreat. They held it at something called the Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley.

Speaker 8 We're recording this on Monday, July 24th. The cheapest room available tonight is $540.

Speaker 8 When we held a retreat like this in 2007, it was in fucking Des Moines.

Speaker 4 Is Deer Valley not one of the 99 counties that make semiconductors?

Speaker 4 Are there caucus goers that hang out in Deer Valley? Like, what are you doing out there? I mean, I mean, also the fact that his fundraising, while

Speaker 4 you know, it was decent, uh, was heavily, heavily dependent on very, very wealthy donors

Speaker 4 who now can't give again. And now they're blowing through all of that money on private planes because the candidate and his wife prefer traveling on private planes and fancy hotels.

Speaker 4 But then later in the story, you find out in the New York Times that the candidate and his wife were also very surprised that they had spent that much money. Yeah, I bet.
I bet they were.

Speaker 6 How do they think they got to Deer Valley?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Hey, this Southwest flight is nice.

Speaker 4 Well, I guess we got the A ticket. We go right to the A group.
We go right to the runway. That's neat.

Speaker 4 Is that A Group Plus? Yeah, that's cool. And we will have a hot compress.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 8 And then you mentioned this, too. I mean,

Speaker 8 he has like a super PAC with what, like $120-something million dollars that they're sitting on, but they can't even coordinate. Like, our campaign finance system is so broken and terrible.

Speaker 8 You're not allowed to coordinate, but they, with a super PAC, if you're a federal campaign, but everyone does it through like unofficial statements and

Speaker 8 memos and shit. And the DeSantis campaign put out a memo attacking the Super PAC for not spending more money in New Hampshire, I believe.

Speaker 4 Not putting, not putting any ads on the air up in New Hampshire.

Speaker 8 And then it came out that the campaign manager freelanced and did that without telling the rest of the staff. Like everything is leaking.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 not only did they not listen to the campaign memo, the super PAC did not get the memo, did not get the hint from the memo that said, we will not cede New Hampshire, which was a hint to them to go up on New Hampshire.

Speaker 4 They said, fuck you, we're not going to do it. Ron DeSantis did an interview with Fox where they asked him

Speaker 4 about his positive ads. And he's like, you know what? I can't, I don't control the super PAC, but pretty soon they should be lighting up the air with some real positive ads about me.

Speaker 4 They have not done that.

Speaker 6 He said, I imagine they're going to be lighting up the airwaves pretty soon with a lot of good stuff about me. And that's going to give us a great lift.

Speaker 6 Since then, the Super PAC has not aired a positive ad.

Speaker 4 Or gone up in New Hampshire.

Speaker 6 It's very like, it's like,

Speaker 6 can you tell the Super PAC? that I'm mad at them. And the Super Pack is like, well, we know you're mad at us, but we don't care because we're going to do what we think is right.

Speaker 6 It's like, oh, well, well, well, can you just tell them that we heard that and we don't accept it? And we would really appreciate some positive ads.

Speaker 4 It's just one more gray quote from the campaign manager in a memo that we have to talk about. All DeSantis needs to drive news and win this primary is a mic and a crowd.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so

Speaker 4 we need to hear Ron DeSantis more.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, every like every one of those wacks.

Speaker 4 Give him a mic and a crowd.

Speaker 6 The best ads are Ron DeSantis. You never hear his voice.

Speaker 6 As part of one of these various uh reboot stories i thought this statement from the spokesperson was revealing the media and dc elites have already picked their candidates joe biden and donald trump ron de santis has never been the favorite or the darling of the establishment and he has won because of it every time he's literally most of his fundraising is because like the the richest part of the republican establishment pitched in and it just goes to like does Like, who do you think you're talking to?

Speaker 6 Who is going to buy into that argument?

Speaker 4 What Republican voters see media elites love? They love Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 Yeah, what voter, what person that pays attention at all to any of this is like, oh, I'm sick of these establishment candidates.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's like Donald Trump.

Speaker 8 Andrew Romero, I think the spokesman, it's like 12 different versions of the same Baghdad Bob quote. It's just absolute nonsense.

Speaker 6 But it's just like, okay, you can do any reboot you want. Like, what is your argument? Yeah.
What argument are you changing?

Speaker 4 Like, you've been out there for a long time.

Speaker 4 Okay, what more do you want?

Speaker 4 I didn't want to do a whole nother section on DeSantis today, but like, he's given us no choice. No, They just,

Speaker 4 the reboot, shake-up, embarrassing stories, they just keep coming. We'll try to hold off on DeSantis for a while.
We'll see. Will we? Well, we'll see.

Speaker 4 Maybe he won't make news. The voters are.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, the Biden campaign's feeling confident, and they're building a somewhat unconventional operation to take on the Republican nominee.

Speaker 4 The Washington Post did a deep dive on what they're calling the hidden Biden campaign, which is a move to outsource a lot of their operation to the DNC, state parties, state organizations, outside groups.

Speaker 4 Politico reports that the Biden campaign is also feeling hopeful about flipping North Carolina for the first time since Obama did in 2008.

Speaker 4 And Axios notes that the Republican arguments against Biden on crime, immigration, and inflation are starting to crumble, even as the president's approval ratings are still stuck in the low 40s.

Speaker 4 Let's start with the Post's story. The operation that it describes is very different from the campaigns we worked on.
What do you make of the strategy?

Speaker 8 I mean, it seems to me to be entirely driven by fundraising.

Speaker 8 We talked about this when Biden's fundraising numbers came out, but in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that they changed campaign finance law that struck down limits on the aggregate amount a person could donate to federal candidates and to political party committees.

Speaker 8 So before that ruling, your donation to candidates, parties, and political committees was capped at $123,000. Now there's no limit.

Speaker 8 So if you can work through these, the DNC and other state and party organizations, you can go to big donors and say, hey, can you cut us a $900,000 check and raise a lot of money pretty fast that way, as opposed to raising $3,300 for the primary, $3,300 for the general, which is what you can get directly into Biden's presidential campaign itself.

Speaker 8 So it seems like that's why they're doing this. I think there's an obvious upside there.
The risk is that sounds very challenging to coordinate to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you'd need a, I mean, look,

Speaker 4 an incumbent of either party running for re-election is always basically going to control the DNC or the RNC, but the coordination has always been a bit of a challenge.

Speaker 4 Trump did this, though, in 2016 and 2020 with the RNC. The RNC basically ran the whole campaign.
Most of the staffers were there. Most of the field operation was run out of the RNC.

Speaker 4 You can still, like, I remember in 2012, even though we still had a big operation in Chicago, the DNC was still like work, for all intents and purposes, working for the Obama campaign.

Speaker 4 So this is just like now the DNC is basically under the Biden operation doing everything, polling, research, message testing. It's basically not separate.
It's like part of the campaign.

Speaker 4 And legally, all you need to do is to make sure whatever you're doing benefits Democrats and not just Biden. So anything the DNC does just has to throw in Democrats too, just for legal.

Speaker 6 And you've seen that, like, this is a, this is sort of, um,

Speaker 6 you've seen ads like this, and this has been a part of campaigns for a while because even before the limits were raised, you could still donate more to the DNC than you could to an individual campaign.

Speaker 6 And so a lot of times you'll see an ad and it will say, thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats, we're investing in infrastructure. And that's an ad that can be paid for at the DNC.

Speaker 6 So it seems like it's an extension of that and just trying to turn a bug into a feature because one other piece of this that could be good for the long term is instead of a campaign being stood up and then taken down

Speaker 6 every four years, instead you could be building the infrastructure at the DNC, which could be used in future presidential campaigns and other campaigns.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think that's a good argument for it. I mean, look, historically speaking, the DNC has been at times very effective and at times very ineffective.

Speaker 8 And I think that's kind of the challenge is, you know, when you start a campaign, you build it from scratch. You bring in all the leadership and all the staff and the culture.

Speaker 8 And sometimes it's harder to change the culture of a place that already exists. So that'll be that and coordinating with these state campaigns.

Speaker 8 Like if every state party was like Wisconsin, we would win 50 states, but it's not.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the other piece of this, too, is

Speaker 6 Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, like these were people with long relationships with the broader Democratic Party.

Speaker 6 In 2008, Barack Obama is running an insurgent campaign, building his own organization, which is a different thing.

Speaker 6 And so, yes, this works very well in a re-election bid for an incumbent Democratic president, but it'd be harder in future elections.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, and

Speaker 4 the only other thing we haven't mentioned is

Speaker 4 for an incumbent, the like the most important strategic decisions on a campaign still happen within the White House.

Speaker 4 So even though in 2012, we had a large sprawling organization in Chicago and all over the country, like David Plough and Pfeiffer and everyone else were still like in the White House and legally there.

Speaker 4 You can work on the campaign in your free time. And also, there are many functions which just aren't technically one or the other.

Speaker 4 And so most of the high-level strategic campaign decisions were still made in the White House consulting the campaign agent.

Speaker 8 The concept of free time in a White House job is very funny. Also, federal campaigns, you get better rates on TV ads than like Super PACs do, for example.

Speaker 8 And that's actually a big advantage down the stretch when it's a really crowded ad market. So we'll see how they handle that.

Speaker 4 What do you guys think of the argument that North Carolina could be the Arizona or Georgia of this cycle?

Speaker 6 You mean a place that keeps me up at night? Sure. It's in.
I'm in.

Speaker 4 I'm in on it.

Speaker 4 I'd like to have one more state keeping me up at night. That just increases our odds.
I know I'm saying.

Speaker 6 Biden, like roughly half the margin in 2020 in North Carolina.

Speaker 6 One fact about North Carolina, they added about, between 2016 and 2020, they added about 2 million new potential voters, both young people aging into the voting pool and people moving in from out of state.

Speaker 6 Like that has continued. And so every year, North Carolina starts to look a little bit more like, say, Virginia.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, we are in a race to find states where we can win as things get harder and harder in some of the states we've talked about, like Ohio and other places like that.

Speaker 8 Yeah, so Obama won North Carolina in 2008. Biden lost by 1.4% in 2020.
I'm very much in favor of playing offense there. I mean, Roy Cooper is a popular governor.

Speaker 8 He can't run again, but he's a known quantity and he can run around the state and make the case. North Carolina passed a 12-week abortion ban, which I suspect is very unpopular.

Speaker 8 And they might run a bona fide crazy person named Mark Robinson for governor. He's currently the lieutenant governor.
And that might help. You're right, Lovett.

Speaker 8 There's been a lot of growth, population growth in urban and suburban areas that are favorable to Democrats. I did see some weird numbers about voter registration that were not good.

Speaker 8 Republicans have done better than Democrats in voter registration in North Carolina since 2020, so that ours have gained 6,000 voters while Democrats lost more than 175,000.

Speaker 8 I don't know what happened there.

Speaker 4 I don't either, but

Speaker 4 there is a trend with a lot of these southern states in voting registration where Democrats lose voters who are like, you know, Republicans in every way, but their party registration, and they finally switch over, right?

Speaker 4 Because there's like the realignment there, but I should look into that.

Speaker 4 The interesting thing about 20 and Biden doing better in 20 than 16 is Trump had a much better electorate in North Carolina in 20 than he did in 16.

Speaker 4 There was a higher percentage of Republicans turned out. There was higher white turnout and higher rural turnout.
And he still did worse than he did in 2016 against Clinton.

Speaker 4 And that was mostly because of these Democratic gains in urban and suburban counties, which is where all the hope was always based in North Carolina that the urban and suburban areas, the research triangle and everything with just the population growth there would end up doing what happened in Georgia for Democrats.

Speaker 4 The Mark Robinson thing is also what I think Democrats are hoping for as a nominee just because he is, you know, you mentioned mentioned the 12-week abortion ban.

Speaker 4 He's for a total abortion ban completely, and he's opposed to same-sex marriage. He's a kook.
So he's a, yeah, he's a legitimate kook. And so these are all reasons why it could flip.

Speaker 4 The reason North Carolina is so tough and has been so tough, it has the second largest rural population in the United States, right behind Texas.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and it's also really expensive. I did not realize it was the fourth most expensive state in terms of ad spend for Joe Biden at the end of the 2020 campaign.
Yeah. $47 million.

Speaker 4 It is expensive. And then in those rural counties, right, like Democrats are going to continue to get crushed.
But if we get crushed less,

Speaker 4 then it's a huge deal. And Joe Biden in 20, a lot of the places that he won, he just

Speaker 4 did less bad than Hillary Clinton did in some of these trumpier rural counties. And, you know, we had Anderson Clayton on, who's the young chair of the Democratic Party in North Carolina.

Speaker 4 And this is why part of her strategy is just like visiting every single rural county, trying to find every Democrat there and registering them to vote.

Speaker 8 At this point in the campaign, campaign, you're going to tell reporters that you're going to compete 100% everywhere.

Speaker 8 But if we were giving the Biden team truth serum, I bet they'd admit that down the stretch, maybe you peel back some spending from Florida, which seems a little tougher, unless they get one of those ballot initiatives on.

Speaker 8 They're trying to get legalized marijuana and reverse the six-week abortion ban. That would, I think, change the political calculus in Florida.
But absent that, Florida is a tough state.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and you'd want to expensive. I'd rather compete in North Carolina than Florida by a lot.

Speaker 6 Let's listen to what Florida's been telling us.

Speaker 4 If they don't like us anymore. Why do you think Biden's approval is still stuck in the low 40s, even though crime's down, border crossing's down, inflation's falling?

Speaker 4 Come on, isn't it a morning in America? What's going on?

Speaker 6 Let's just hope Pauling's a lagging indicator. Yeah, that's possible.

Speaker 4 Also,

Speaker 4 people are probably still not feeling the economic recovery from inflation just yet, I would say, too.

Speaker 8 Yeah, the data is slowly trickling in. I mean, the hopeful answer is lagging indicator.
There's all this good economic news. It'll take some time to seep in.

Speaker 8 The worrisome answer would be they have concerns about his age, for example. That's probably the thing you hear about the most from people in casual conversations.

Speaker 4 And that's not falling. No, no.

Speaker 4 That number is not falling. No, it's steady.

Speaker 6 It's rising steadily.

Speaker 6 The other piece of it, too, is, look, inflation coming down, very important. Inflation coming down doesn't suddenly make everything more affordable.

Speaker 6 And it doesn't make things go back to how they felt in terms of how far your income could go six months or a year ago. It stops the pain, stops the change.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And I also think just on approval ratings, like polarization now means just

Speaker 4 it's hard to see a president getting consistently above mid-40s these days, even if your party supports you because the other party does not

Speaker 4 in any way, not as much as they used to.

Speaker 4 You used to find like, you know, 10, 15, 20% of people in the other party who supported the president of the opposite party, and it's just not happening anymore.

Speaker 6 It is, you know, it like, and, and the idea that like it it's so polarized that basically Biden and Trump's approval rating both just hovered around 40.

Speaker 8 It's just, it's so

Speaker 4 dispiriting. Yeah, but look,

Speaker 4 the fact that I do think the fact that crime is falling abort, like all these, all these Republican tropes that they trotted out in the midterm that have for the last couple years, like, I think it's worth the Biden people like telling a good story about this stuff, you know, that like that crime is down, that all the, you know, just because it, it, it, whether it changes minds or not, like, it certainly neutralizes an argument that you've heard all over Fox.

Speaker 6 Right. Like whether you see it in the approval rating of Biden, that is a step removed from whether the arguments themselves are salient.

Speaker 6 And if the issues are not as powerful, then those arguments won't work as well.

Speaker 4 And you want to start setting the mood music, right? And you want to, like, if you're the Biden campaign, the Democrats, you start telling a story that sort of

Speaker 4 makes people feel a little bit better, or at least tries to. All right, before we go to break, two quick housekeeping notes.
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Speaker 4 When we come back, Tommy talks to Congressman Dan Golden.

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Speaker 8 Dan Goldman is a member of Congress from New York and was the lead counsel during Donald Trump's first impeachment. Welcome to the show, Congressman.

Speaker 11 Thanks so much for having me, Tommy.

Speaker 8 Now, you're currently in a car, a little behind the music here. Where are you driving to?

Speaker 11 I am driving around the district right now.

Speaker 11 Nice. Had a New York City, had a meeting

Speaker 11 with some 9-11 victims in Midtown and on my way to Sunset Park for a community event.

Speaker 8 Look at you. We're working every minute of the day, even in the car.

Speaker 8 So all of us news junkies out here, we're kind of waiting to see if and when Special Counsel Jack Smith will announce an indictment of President Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election.

Speaker 8 Folks might remember that. The January 6th Committee in Congress spent a year and a half digging into this question and recommended specific criminal charges to the Department of Justice.

Speaker 8 You worked on Trump's first impeachment. You were also an assistant U.S.
attorney for many years.

Speaker 8 What kind of evidence do you think Jack Smith could have that the January 6th Committee was unable to surface?

Speaker 11 That's a great question, and I think there will be a lot of new evidence. As you will recall, there were several witnesses who refused to show up and and testify before Congress

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 they will not be able to do that this time.

Speaker 11 And I think there are a lot of rumblings about whether or not someone like Mark Meadows, who did refuse to testify, is now cooperating with the Department of Justice at a minimum.

Speaker 11 We know that he has testified. And so people like that, who were very close to Donald Trump, will not be able to evade testifying as they were

Speaker 11 as part of the January 6th Committee. The other thing that we know they've been able to get are records

Speaker 11 with

Speaker 11 attorneys.

Speaker 11 The

Speaker 11 number of witnesses or the January 6th committee, I should say, ran into roadblocks as it relates to attorney-client privilege and didn't have the time to litigate that.

Speaker 11 But the Department of Justice has a stronger position on and a strong better ability to get

Speaker 11 information when they pierce the attorney-client privilege because of the crime fraud exception.

Speaker 11 So I would expect to see a fair amount more evidence out of Jack Smith's investigation than we saw in the January 6th committee.

Speaker 8 God, it's amazing that we could learn even more, even though we've learned a lot so far.

Speaker 11 And not only that, we could learn more from people closer to Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Right, right.

Speaker 8 People who understand his frame of mind, things he was thinking and saying at the time in meetings, et cetera. Exactly.

Speaker 8 Talking about these cases is obviously complicated for President Biden, for the White House, for the campaign, because they don't want to make it seem like this is Joe Biden going after his political opponent.

Speaker 8 But members of Congress, other people in the Democratic Party are allowed to say whatever they want. Obviously, there's First Amendment still.

Speaker 8 What do you think is the best way for Democrats to communicate about these cases with the understanding that there is a presumption of innocence in this country?

Speaker 11 Yeah, look, I think

Speaker 11 Democrats have been and will continue to be focused on buttressing our democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Speaker 11 And we've talked a lot over the last several years about Donald Trump's attacks on our democracy and this up forthcoming indictment may be the piece resistance of that because of an effort to overthrow and overturn an election.

Speaker 11 But it is important for the court system to play, let the case play out. That is where the case should play out.
Donald Trump is presumed innocent.

Speaker 11 He has a number of rights to confront witnesses, to a trial by jury,

Speaker 11 to

Speaker 11 see the evidence against him and to be able to respond to that evidence. And there is a tried and true process that occurs in a courtroom that allows our system of justice to play out.

Speaker 11 And that is where it should play out.

Speaker 11 It should not play out on a political campaign, and it should not play out in the halls of Congress. And so that's really at least what I've been focusing on: is let's let the system play out.

Speaker 11 Let's focus on what the allegations are and what the proof is.

Speaker 11 But the court of law is where this belongs, not the court of public opinion or Congress.

Speaker 8 Yeah, if only he would exercise his right to remain silent.

Speaker 8 I mean, but the challenge remains that we're looking at trials that will likely start after most of the Republican nominating contests have already happened, potentially after the Republican convention officially nominates him, if Trump is able to delay the classified documents trial.

Speaker 8 I mean, how do you work with that as sort of the framework here where, yes, you're right that the courts are the proper place to adjudicate this, but voters might not have all the information they need to make a political decision before they have to vote?

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's the quandary is that there are political implications and ramifications to this. But just like Jack Smith, as the independent special counsel,

Speaker 11 takes an oath not to consider the political consequences or the political leanings of any case that he's involved in,

Speaker 11 he also is not worried about the electoral process. And it is frustrating, I think, for a lot of Americans who would like to see this process play out

Speaker 11 quicker, that it just takes time. And there's a reason why it takes time,

Speaker 11 but it is frustrating, and it may be very inconveniently timed for the political process. And we're going to have to figure our way around that.

Speaker 8 So, speaking of sort of

Speaker 8 solely political actors, Kevin McCarthy, according to Politico, is apparently supporting an effort or has promised Tonald Trump to support an effort to expunge Trump's impeachments as part of some deal he cut for not coming out and endorsing Donald Trump in the Republican primary.

Speaker 8 McCarthy has since denied that there's some secret deal cooked up about these expungements. Have you heard anything about this?

Speaker 8 Do you think this vote will actually happen and would it go well for Donald Trump?

Speaker 11 I have heard about this. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced one of them and Elise Stefanik from New York introduced another one.

Speaker 11 I appreciate the fact that the Republicans recognize that the mark of impeachment is the political equivalent to a criminal record, which can be expunged.

Speaker 11 Unfortunately for them, there's no such thing in Congress and they can do whatever they want, but it is a pure messaging exercise. There is no such thing as expunging an impeachment.

Speaker 11 And it would only just be a political talking point. He still would be twice impeached, regardless of whether or not it is expunged.

Speaker 11 But the broader political point, which you just raised, which I think is a good one, is it will put a lot of Republicans in a very bad position if they bring this to the floor.

Speaker 11 There are, as you well know, 18 Republicans in Biden districts, and

Speaker 11 that is not going to be helpful for them. to have to support.
And obviously, if they do not support it, they will bear the wrath of Donald Trump. So I'm very interested to see whether they bring it.

Speaker 11 I think it would be politically stupid for them to do so, but that hasn't stopped a lot of what they've done thus far.

Speaker 8 You know, I don't think much of Kevin McCarthy as a leader or a person, but I do respect the fact that he negotiated a deal with Donald Trump where he gives him something that doesn't exist.

Speaker 8 That is, you know, that's good.

Speaker 4 Good negotiating. It's pretty impressive.

Speaker 8 Changing gears here. So Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 8 is unfortunately getting a a lot of media attention lately by taking money from Republicans and then using it to pretend to run for the Democratic nomination for president.

Speaker 8 Last week, he appeared before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a committee on which you were lucky enough to be a member. Congrats.

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 8 the fact that RFK Jr. believes and spreads all these dangerous conspiracy theories has come up a lot.
It's well known.

Speaker 8 I think less discussed, much to my frustration, is the fact that he seems to be literally a pathological liar. He lies about everything all the time.

Speaker 6 You saw this firsthand.

Speaker 8 Like, how do you prepare for a hearing with someone like that? And why do you think Republicans wanted him there in the first place?

Speaker 11 Well, the irony, of course, is he was ostensibly there because

Speaker 11 he wrote a tweet in early 2021, January 2021, where he said that Hank Aaron died because of the vaccine when he had died from a heart attack.

Speaker 11 And And there was, of course, no evidence at all that he died from the vaccine. And it was potentially very dangerous to tell many Americans that they can die from the vaccine.

Speaker 11 So the White House, someone in the White House sent an email to Twitter, effectively saying, hey, can you take a look at this and begin the process of taking it down under your terms and policies?

Speaker 11 Twitter did not take the tweet down.

Speaker 11 So this was ostensibly a hearing on censorship,

Speaker 11 and he was brought in to talk about that, except he wasn't censored. So the irony of that is, says all you need to know.

Speaker 11 So they essentially gave him a platform to spew his lies, to spew his conspiracy theories,

Speaker 11 with an idea of, of course, impugning Joe Biden, which is pretty much all they've tried to do with these investigations.

Speaker 11 I think my view of it is that he doesn't have any credibility.

Speaker 11 I thought it was shameful that they gave him the platform of a congressional hearing to spew his misinformation and to some extent his venom.

Speaker 11 You have a First Amendment right, but you do not have a First Amendment right to testify before Congress, nor does Congress required to give you that platform. And so

Speaker 11 I led a letter with

Speaker 11 Judy Chu, the president of KPAC, the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who's also on the weaponization subcommittee,

Speaker 11 to

Speaker 11 Speaker McCarthy and Chairman Jim Jordan to rescind the invitation. 102 people signed it in the span of about a day or two.

Speaker 11 And it just reflected... I think the broad belief that this person does not warrant the platform of a congressional hearing.
And I think that we saw a little bit of why that was last week.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we sure did.

Speaker 8 Speaking of things we all wish we hadn't seen, Marjorie Taylor Greene made some news last week by holding up sexually explicit images of Hunter Biden at this oversight committee hearing.

Speaker 8 Hunter Biden has been very open about his struggles with addiction, including on this show. He recently pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges.
It still is not at all clear to me, however,

Speaker 8 what the connection Republicans are trying to draw between Hunter biden his business dealings and joe biden besides the fact that they're related and this vague suggestion that joe biden somehow profited from whatever work hunter biden was doing can you help us understand uh those not like steeped in these hearings what evidence has or has not been presented of such a connection whether money exchanged hands how you could hide that money from us the public when joe biden releases his tax returns every year like what am i missing here uh you're not missing anything.

Speaker 11 And it's a very short answer because there is none. There is nothing that connects Joe Biden to enter any of Hunter Biden's business dealings.

Speaker 11 And what ends up happening is that the oversight committee chairman, James Comer, and others start talking about the Bidens plural.

Speaker 11 And they start lumping Joe Biden in to their investigation, even though he's not on a single bank record. There's not a single wire transfer.

Speaker 11 There's not a single document that says that he was involved or benefited from any of it.

Speaker 11 And as I pointed out at our hearing last week, there's actually evidence to show that he was not involved and that he's clearly unfamiliar with the Chinese company CEFC,

Speaker 11 which Hunter Biden allegedly got money from, and he had no idea who they were, what they were doing, and was clearly not involved at all in Hunter's business dealings.

Speaker 11 And yet, they continue to impugn the president falsely by alluding to evidence that does not exist.

Speaker 8 So, I mean, is there just nothing we can do about it? I mean, basically, the oversight committee is going to hold these hearings. They're going to make specious allegations.

Speaker 8 And the best we can do is hope that members of Congress like yourself correct the facts in real time and that it gets covered.

Speaker 11 Yeah, look, this is the political process that we are dealing with right now.

Speaker 11 I mean, when you see Marjorie Taylor Greene beclown herself by completely gratuitously and unnecessarily showing revenge porn during a congressional hearing, you learn everything you need to know about this Republican Party.

Speaker 11 I don't care what she was talking about. There is never a reason why you need to do that.

Speaker 11 And it was designed only to humiliate and embarrass hunter biden who as we all know is a private citizen he has never worked for the government he does not work for the government in direct contradiction to the former president's children and the notion that that would be fair game for an official proceeding in congress uh is despicable but that's what we're dealing with and ultimately you know you well know there is a political process i would say

Speaker 11 that the ultimate accountability is at the ballot box. And that if people do object to the Republicans going forward with this kind of misinformation, personal attacks,

Speaker 11 and completely unnecessary and wasteful time and energy spent on investigations. that have no connection to any official proceeding or any official purpose, then we should vote out Republicans.

Speaker 11 And if we can't vote out Chairman Comer because he's in a very safe red district or Marjorie Taylor Greene, we can vote out the rest of them and take over the majority, and then we won't have to deal with this

Speaker 11 absolute buffoonery that we're seeing.

Speaker 8 Yeah, final question.

Speaker 8 Speaking of buffoonery, what do you think about the suggestion that Democrats should bring posters of hardcore pornography to every hearing to kind of steal her thunder and make it less newsworthy?

Speaker 8 Is that something you're on board with?

Speaker 11 I know you're joking.

Speaker 8 I made that up. Matt Gates would probably do it, I guess.

Speaker 11 Yeah, look, one of the things we are really trying to do is, and I'm focused very much on this since I'm on a couple of the investigative committees, is we're trying to bring a sober analysis of facts and truth.

Speaker 11 And that we're really emphasizing that

Speaker 11 We want to be the people that and the party that Americans can rely on to understand what is really going on. And I'm not going to sit here and defend Hunter Biden's tax issues.

Speaker 11 And he, to his credit, has accepted responsibility for them.

Speaker 11 And if there is a crime that anyone has committed, I believe they should be charged, Democrat or Republican. But when there isn't evidence to support allegations and yet they continue to

Speaker 11 go on and talk about these allegations that have no basis in fact, that is unacceptable. And we will consistently point that out.

Speaker 11 And we will point out that they are wasting their time with these investigations that are going nowhere rather than focusing on legislation that can help the American people.

Speaker 11 And that is the critical difference, I think, between Democrats and Republicans.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I suspect that even most Republicans who saw that hearing were confused and ashamed of the people they elected to go to Washington to represent them.

Speaker 8 But, Congressman, thank you so much for doing the show. Good luck at your community meeting next, and thanks for talking to us.

Speaker 11 Thanks so much, Tommy. Great to be with you.

Speaker 4 Thanks to Dan Goldman for joining us today. We'll talk to you guys soon.
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