Republican Frontrunner Tim Scott?

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
I'm Tim Scott's advance man, Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
On today's show, Republicans reject a White House compromise that would save us from default. Tim Scott is officially running and Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Chris Sununu are right behind him.
Joe Biden offers new support to Ukraine while Russia bans Trump's enemies. And new focus groups give us a clue as to how swing voters would treat a Biden Trump rematch.
Then Senator Brian Schatz talks to Lovett about the debt ceiling. And we will cap things off with a look at Ron DeS santis's attempts to play a human on the campaign trail uh but first if you are sick of scrolling twitter and you want a quick smart funny recap of the day's news i do look no further than crooked media's what a day what it is excellent what a day newsletter yeah both you love the podcast hopefully you also love the newsletter start the day with the pond you should be subscribed to both that's what i do that's basically the the deal in just a few minutes you'll be up to speed on all the top stories and the ones that may have gone under the radar subscribe to the what a day newsletter at crooked.com daily and happy 250th episode to our friends at hysteria 250 man that's 250 that's a lot of good content.
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New episodes release every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. All all right let's get to the news president biden came home early from his foreign trip to meet with speaker mccarthy about how to avoid a catastrophic default that could come as early as next week oof that x date is june 1 snuck up fast huh it sure did uh republicans rejected a white house compromise over the weekend that would have saved about $1 trillion by freezing spending for two years.

They want steeper cuts for six years to everything that's not defense related.

Plus, they're still gung ho on pushing more working people into poverty through work requirements.

They love doing that.

Not helping the situation is Donald Trump, who told Republicans on Friday not to make a deal unless they get everything they want, including, he says, in quotes, the kitchen sink.

Right.

Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are warning Biden that they may not support the deal he cuts with McCarthy.

AOC tweeted that the White House may lose 100 to 150 House Democrats if the cuts are steep enough.

So we're recording this right after Biden and McCarthy were sitting in the Oval. They were about to have their meeting.
They said they're optimistic that the meeting may lead to progress. So that's where we're at.
What do you think? Should Biden reject spending cuts deeper than he already offered? Or are we at the point where the risk of default is so dangerous we just got to get a deal? I think he will draw a line and has to because the goalposts have been changing constantly. And if you don't draw a line at some point, you're going to get another, you know, Hail Mary last minute change from the Republicans.
So I do think he has to draw a line because they're, you know, the latest over the weekend, they're pushing for more draconian work requirements for people receiving food assistance. And they're trying to tell states they have less flexibility in implementing those draconian work requirements.
So we'll see. I mean, we also saw the Republicans are trying to put immigration provisions into part of the bill.
You have Trump saying, who cares? Let's default. He said that on CNN.
Now he's saying, get the kitchen sink. So I think you do have to draw a line or else the line is going to keep moving.

Yeah. And McCarthy is all over the place.
On the one hand, you have him saying that their ridiculous bill that they passed through the House was the floor, not the ceiling of what they could demand. Then right before he goes over to meet with Biden, he says something like, we need to have spending be less than it was last year, which leaves a lot of room to negotiate.
So it's like Biden has to draw some lines because if you have someone like McCarthy who is beholden to sort of the right wing of the party and ultimately not in control, you have to have Biden drawing some kind of a hard line. yeah if you go by what mccarthy and mccarthy's top deputies and biden and the white house have been telling reporters over the last couple of days, which, as you guys pointed out, changes like every hour.
It does seem like McCarthy is trying to they're really focused now, not on sort of the extra stuff like the work requirements, the permitting reform. McCarthy says he's keeping immigration reform out.
But again, we'll see what happens with the rest of his caucus. It seems like they're focused on this top line number, right? How much are they going to be spending? And the White House wanted to free spending from where it is this year for the next two years.
Republicans say that's not enough. And McCarthy basically said we have to spend less next year than we did this year.
So he wants to go beneath what we spent this year. Without saying how much.
Without saying how much. So like, you know, in a perfect world, you could see a deal where it's a little less than it's somewhere in between those two things.
The White House offered a freeze. They offered, you know.
But again, this is all assuming that McCarthy can find enough Republican votes to pass it. And the Democrats can find enough Democratic votes to pass it.
And as the time ticks by, basically, they need a deal. We're recording this Monday afternoon.
You'll probably listen to this on Tuesday. But by like Wednesday, Thursday, they don't have a deal.
They're fucked. Right.
And he's an incredibly weak speaker. And we've known this since it took him 15 votes to get the job.
And it's also it it must be very frustrating for the Biden team knowing that Speaker McCarthy will likely lose Republican votes. So he's going to need democratic votes, but there is no pressure on McCarthy to engage with Democrats in the house to try to bring them along and get those votes to pass the deal.
It's all on Joe Biden. And McCarthy wanted it that way because they, they basically wanted, they thought that there was too many other, you know, Hill aides and Hill Democrats in the room.
So they just want McCarthy Biden. And at that point, it's so close to X date that basically then everyone else gets jammed because if McCarthy and Biden agree on something, then it's going to be really hard to be, you know, someone who's against the deal and tanks the deal when we're about to hit default.
Yeah. So McCarthy and Biden come up with the final thing that it has to be other than, say, a discharge position, which seems farfetched at this point.
And the point that Schatz makes when I talk to him later is, you know, we've gone from we don't negotiate over the debt limit to we are negotiating, but we should make sure it is a deal we would have ultimately had to get to with Republicans over the budget because they have the House regardless of the debt limit threat. And that's, I was thinking that today, like, as soon as the Republicans won the House, it was pretty obvious that there were going to be some kind of spending cuts, because if there was no debt ceiling, there would have been a negotiation over government funding that could have resulted in a government shutdown if there was no agreement.
And while government shutdowns aren't as damaging as a debt ceiling, there's still not something that can go on forever. So at some point when you have Republicans in control of the House and Democrats control the Senate, the presidency, like there's going to be some kind of compromise around spending.
And the other point that that Schatz will make is about is around continuing resolutions, which is basically when Congress can't come to an agreement on some of these harder budget questions, they just passed what's called a continuing resolution. We just said, do everything you did last year, but at either a little bit more or a little bit less than current spending based on past precedent, it would probably be less because to get it through the House, you would need to get McCarthy to bring to the floor.
Ideally here, you know, I mean, Republicans were first like, we want spending caps for 10 years. Now they're saying six years.
I mean, if you're Biden in the White House, you're trying to limit the damage for the next two years and then hope the Democrats win in 2024 and reverse the damage. Yeah, I mean, 10 years from now, it's AI's problem.
Right, that's right. It's AI's problem.
And AI will be having those seats in Congress. Yeah.

Better than some of the non-I we have now.

It's really unproven to be honest.

Biden said over the weekend he thinks he has the authority

to use the 14th Amendment,

but that it won't work in time.

Ah, damn.

God, right?

We need it most.

He doesn't have it.

He's not ready.

The 14th Amendment.

Not ready in time.

You gotta put it in earlier.

More Democrats are pushing him to do it anyway. Some folks are starting to wonder aloud how the party let itself get to this point.
Was there a better path Biden could have taken here? And we've been unfortunately following this closely. You know, we again, we talked to we push shots on this when we talked to him in December.
There was a lame duck and there are a lot of people saying, hey, you realize in six months, Republicans are going to walk into the Congress with a fucking vest of a vest of default strapped to their chest. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's six months from now. We'll deal with it then.
And it is a real shame that there wasn't a bigger fight when we had the chance to lift the debt limit completely. it just seemed like everybody accepted the votes weren't there and then we just didn't have a big hard debate about it or even any kind of creative conversation about what could have potentially

gotten uh accepted the votes weren't there. And then we just didn't have a big, hard debate about it or even any kind of creative conversation about what could have potentially gotten the votes we needed at the time.
I mean, I think the votes weren't there. I mean, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema basically said it much.
I think you have a bunch of institutionalists that might've made it hard. Maybe you could have negotiated something with them.
Right. But who knows? Joe Manchin is now saying he's going to run against Joe Biden for president on a third party potentially.
So, you you know, not a great actor here. I mean, there are also the other things I think progressives are frustrated about is not talking earlier or more seriously about printing the trillion dollar coin or the 14th Amendment and using that as real leverage to see if you could get the other side to, I don't know, think that he was actually going to do it.
I think the structural problem here is

that Biden really cares about avoiding defaults. A bunch of Republicans do not care about avoiding defaults.
And then the leader of the Republican party, Donald Trump is like, eh, we're going to default now or later. So who really cares? Get everything you can.
So, I mean, it's not like a fair fight. Yeah.
On the, on the mansion thing, I went back today to look at his quotes from the lame duck and he was he didn't completely rule out lifting the debt ceiling in reconciliation in the fall but he was pretty close he was like we should do this in a bipartisan way it does not belong in reconciliation blah blah blah and we know how he is when he has a of course i be in his bonnet and it's very easy now to say oh we should have done this then uh and maybe a big kerfuffle would have led to nothing um but and and part and i don't lay it at the feet of even the biden administration or any specific senate democrats it's just like it speaks to something about the constitution of democrats as a group that it just like there wasn't the fight without the looming threat to have that feel real and get it done at the time just didn't right it was like punishing your future self it's like it's like saying you'll go out to dinner two months from now right and then when it comes you're like oh it's like you couldn't rustle up the rustle up the willpower this is kiana reeves and speed saying shoot the hostage except they're aiming at the hostage's head and just gleefully shooting yeah i think that's right sure yeah it's movie. I will say one more thing on the 14th Amendment, because I've been talking about this in the last couple episodes, I didn't understand why the Biden administration didn't invoke it earlier and then let the courts decide before the ex-state.
The problem is we've been using the phrase, and so is everyone else in the coverage, like invoking the 14th Amendment. Like he just runs out a 1600 pen and turns out the White House.
He goes, I invoke the 14th Amendment. Right.
So it turns out that's not really a thing. That what would have to happen is you'd hit the X date and then the government would start issuing debt anyway.
And then the courts would decide whether that new debt issued after the X date is constitutional or not.

And then you are again relying on John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch as your swing votes.

And if they decide that it's not constitutional, then we're all fucked.

Well, it's also then it's like, ooh, I have a treasury certificate that's a cool souvenir.

And that's why the markets go haywire, right? So it's tricky. Anyway, I'm sure they'll figure it out.
Okay. Let's talk about the Republican primary.
Rhonda Sanctimonious. Great.
I haven't heard that in a while. Got it shorter.
Senator Tim Scott is officially in the race. He announced Monday in his home state of South Carolina.
He picked up a key endorsement from the number two Republican in the Senate, John Thune. He's going to ride John Thune's coattails.
Haven't thought about that guy in a while. Yeah, he just popped up to give an endorsement that I'm sure it's just a groundswell of support.
He did that. Tim Scott just picked up in South Dakota, I guess.
His team is making the case to reporters that Scott is the party's best messenger, the most consistent conservative in the race, the most broadly appealing to the Republican electorate, and that he has the resources and infrastructure to win. The guy does have $22 million in his Senate account that he's rolling over to the presidential.
He certainly sounded exciting during his announcement speech. Here's a clip.
Hello, North Charleston! I'm announcing today that I'm running for president of the United States of America! We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty in a single-parent household in a small apartment to one day serve in the people's house. The fewest people in 30 years believe that their kids will be better off than their parents.
And the radical love is pushing us into a culture of grievance instead of a culture of greatness we need a president that persuades we have to do that with common sense conservative principles but we have to have a compassion we have to have a compassion for people who don't agree with us so have your takes on Tim Scott's prospects changed at all since he launched his exploratory committee? What do you make of his team's case to reporters? The case? I mean, best messenger, sort of like a Reagan remix. It's not bad.
You know, you can dance to it, but it's not that great. Most consistently conservative.
He's very conservative on policy, extremely conservative, has the resources and infrastructure to win. 22 million is nothing compared to what Trump's sitting on, DeSantis is sitting on money-wise and infrastructure-wise.
Then broadly appealing, I think he's pulling at 2%. So I don't know about that.
I mean, maybe in the future he could be. I think Trump versus Tim Scott, I think could be an interesting race if it was one-on-one, sort of an optimistic guy, vision for the country versus uh you trump uh but trump versus scott and hayley and desantis and christy and blah blah blah like i don't know that there's anything has changed what do you think i thought the speech was really good i think that the people are pulling out the funny moments he's kind of goofy uh when they pull out he he shouted it to the microphone the way way he announced it's like, he's a goofy guy.
But it was the most compelling and interesting speech a Republican other than Trump has given. And he goes on about victimhood versus victory, grievance versus greatness.
And sure, he's in this speech directing it at Joe Biden and Democrats, but you don't have to squint very hard to see that it is addressing Trump and I think to a lesser extent DeSantis in a way that's pretty interesting. The other part of it that I thought was interesting is he does all, hits all the erogenous zones, you know, he hits the CRT, hits the wall, but he puts it in the context of a broader, more positive values based message that I just think is more broadly appealing and gets you out of the kind of kind of negativity and crassness and coarseness of DeSantis and Trump.
And so but then at the end of the speech, he kind of you blink and you miss it.

He makes a vague reference to abortion and protecting innocent life.

And you sort of see, oh, so here's where his problems are. Right.
It's Trump and DeSantis and whether or not this Republican Party has any interest in hope and compassion whatsoever. And then the actual reality of his policy positions and the fact that this very kind of good natured and positive and optimistic presentation belies, you know, a candidate who has extreme positions on abortion and who had the most embarrassing statement of anyone trying to kind of dissemble around what kind of national abortion ban he would support.
Yeah, I think he gave the best speech, certainly, at the Republican convention in 2020.

I remember thinking so at the time.

Again, I think he could be one of their party's best messengers in a general election.

But we're running in a Republican primary here. And it's like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are just like running at another time and another place and another universe where the Republican electorate is completely different than it is.
And it's all like pre 2016 notions of what the Republican electorate is that just don't reflect the reality of what has driven those voters, which is grievance. The very thing that he's complaining about in his speech.
Yes, it does seem like it's like, so first of all, I think that I put him in a different category than any of the rest, because whatever. I think he's more talented.
I think he's more talented. Haley than DeSantis, for sure.
Yes, I think he's making a cleaner, I think more sophisticated and smarter argument that actually makes sense. Like there's just there's a coherence to what he's doing that makes him a legitimate alternative in a way that no one else, not even DeSantis can really offer.
You watch it though. Yes, obviously he's not doing, he's trying to say, hey, we don't need to do grievance politics to a group of people that have become a neighbor to grievance politics.
But it took someone like Trump to drag them this far down and whether or not it works this time. Like this is very clearly to me, the best and only person I've seen make a case for a way to kind of drag Republicans back over time.
And if it doesn't work now, it might work in the future, but, and, but I'm not, it was, he did better than I expected. I really was like impressed by it.
It's just one of those, um, again, it's too subtle. Like if you're gonna, to your point point, if you're going to drag the Republican voters out of it, you got to be like, what, what the elephant in the room here is that it's a party in enthralled to like the fucking cult of personality that is Donald Trump, you know? And he has said before, he's thankful for Trump's time in office.
if you really think that the party is going in the wrong direction in the country because there's too much grievance, stuff like that,

then you've got to identify the fucking problem,

which is the guy that you're running against. Yeah, he seems like a nice guy.
Like, there's these stories about his early Senate days. He would, like, go down to Goodwill, not tell anyone who it is, mop the floors, talk to people, like, do these focus groups.
Like, seems like a nice human being. But he made the same exact deal with the devil on Donald Trump's administration that they all did.

Yeah.

After, after he and Haley endorsed Marco Rubio in South Carolina in 2016 and Trump kicked Marco's ass by 10 points. So I think frankly, like the fact that you like the speech that we all think he's kind of like an interesting, nice guy is probably why he will not go anywhere.
Whereas like, uh, Tucker Carlson is out polling him in national polls of Republican voters because what they want is that unadulterated like grievance on the other guy viciousness. Like I just don't see an audience for this.
Well, and I would respect it if he took on Trumpism. Right.
If he was doing this message, but taking on Trumpism and the fact that he's trying to have it both ways, which he has with Trump, which he sort of did with the abortion question, too. Right.
Like, you know, he he's trying to do the message, but he's underneath it. So, you know, I think that's the that's the test.
Right. Like it's like there's two versions of somebody with this kind of, I think, optimistic, hopeful tone, like in a debate.
right, if this ultimately led to a bait. One is, I think the kind of Obama style of like kind of being above it all in a way that makes someone like Trump or DeSantis look very silly.
And then you have the kind of Jeb Bush style, which makes you look kind of pummeled right now. There was something there was a very bad sign, I think for Tim Scott, that one of his aides told, I think maybe playbook, like, we think the contrast is so obvious.
We're not even going to have to talk about Donald Trump. It's like, okay, so this is all, this is all doomed.
I, you know, we'll see like, yes, I think the fact that, um, the speech work that I think it's a good speech probably doesn't speak well for him, but, um, I don't know. What do you think? A 57 year old bachelor with no kids? He, yeah.
And look, here's reportedly a virgin until he was 46, according uh ben terrace of the washington post who actually had to ask him that question about his virginia yeah i think that's cool 40 something year old look we're never we can't this country can't have a single president single people are freaks here's just one last problem you know i'm sure you point out that he's at one two percent in the national polls his team could say national polls they don't mean anything this is all about the early states okay let's try south Carolina where he's at 1-2% in the national polls. His team could say, national polls, they don't mean anything.
This is all about the early states. Okay, let's try South Carolina, where he's a senator, where he has won two elections and everyone knows who he is.
He's only polling 7%. Well, he just got in.
And he's competing against Nikki Haley, another sort of home state darling. Yeah, he just got in, but it's not a name ID problem with him in South Carolina.
Everyone knows who he is um so i think it's i think it's gonna be tough so ron desantis is set to launch his campaign wednesday reports are that mike pence chris christie chris sununu are getting ready to announce in a matter of days weeks right behind him uh which they will not sununu yes sununu here he comes uh rounding out a gop field that also includes trump scott nikki haley asa

hutchinson vivek ramaswamy i guess larry elder is in it too that radio yeah i know i was i was

reading it today and i decided i realized i needed to add him larry um you guys think this is is it

trump's race to lose is it trump de santis or do you see a path for any of these other candidates

i would like to just share first of all the sanunu thing is the the the dumbest one yet

I'm sorry. Trump DeSantis, or do you see a path for any of these other candidates? I would like to just share.
First of all, the Sununu thing is the dumbest one yet. But I like that he's sort of like, does Sununu have a chance? And then mentions halfway through that he's pro-choice.
No, he doesn't. No.
Well, he's another one who's an extremely popular governor in New Hampshire. And if you look at New Hampshire primary polls, he's not registering too high.
I would just like to read this. This is the most Nepo baby paragraph I've ever read in history.
As an engineering student at MIT, Sununu dreamed of Hollywood. He wrote a romantic comedy screenplay about a European man falling in love in Boston after a brief stint at NYU's film school, where the chess hustlers of Washington Square Park sometimes separated him from his money.
Sununu said he experienced experienced an epiphany on a five-month Appalachian trail hike from Maine to Georgia. Wow.
Yeah, interesting profile. That is Connor Roy shit.
Speaking of New England popular governors, I mean, remember Charlie Baker, governor of Massachusetts, was polling at 73% statewide in Massachusetts, but he couldn't win the Republican primary. Like, that's the task that these guys have.
You can be the most, 73%. He was like wildly popular governor of the state.
I don't know who knows what will happen. I would say this, my feeling on this is Hutchinson, Nikki Haley, Sununu, Chris Christie, these people are jokes, but Tim Scott's not a joke.
Yeah. I just think that they are, all of these candidates now have given Trump, outside of DeSantis, exactly what he wanted, which was a big Republican primary field.
And the reason you know it's what he wanted is because he's telling us. He says it.
He welcomed everybody into the field. He welcomed Tim Scott to the race, said he was a, he's certainly a step up from DeSanctimonious, who's completely unelectable.
And then he said, the field's getting loaded up with people fast.'s just he's one of those tries just telling you what he's thinking and this is the problem is like desantis scott haley pence they're all going to be fighting over the traditional conservatives the evangelicals christy sununu hutchinson are going to be fighting over the extremely small anti-trump faction in the party. So like you got all these people fighting over each other.

They're trying to try to get each other's votes.

16 again.

And then you've got and then DeSantis, who is struggling anyway right now,

needs every last one of those other votes. And if they start taking a little bit from DeSantis, then it's Trump's.

But it's not 16 again in the sense that we went through this.

It was so inconceivable.

People couldn't believe that Trump was happening,

that all these people stayed in the field,

believing that they could potentially be the alternative.

I don't know that you can do that this time, polling at 3%

in November before the primaries begin. So you could see it narrow.
We'll see.

People are so delusional.

You think these people do the right thing? What are we talking about here?

A lot of them, they don't have enough money to do polling and research, right? And so they're, like, listening to their advisors, telling them, like, you never know what might happen. They're probably meeting people at meet and greets who are like, I'm actually for you, you know? And then they think that's great.
Mike Pence, what is Mike Pence doing? Does Mike Pence not think that the Republican electorate has rendered a judgment? What if Mike Pence was hanged on January 6th

and we're all in a kind of simulation

that's his kind of purgatory to make up for his sins

and he keeps rerunning it

until he learns to stop being a fucking prick?

It's like Groundhog Day?

Interesting.

But for Jan 6th.

He just keeps waking up.

Yeah, I think if these people stick around until Iowa,

it's Trump's nomination. I mean, they got to start.
They all got to start dropping out by then. So one issue likely to be the subject of fierce debate in both the Republican primary and the general election is America's support for Ukraine.
President Biden met with President Zelensky at the G7 in Japan, where he also announced a joint international effort to train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 fighter aircraft meanwhile uh russia claims to have captured the key city of bakhmut in eastern ukraine and also released a list of 500 americans who were banned from entering russia that includes barack obama rachel maddow brad raffensperger tish james stephen colbert seth myers jimmy kimmel joe scarborough and the capital police officer who shot shot Ashley Babbitt. Seth Meyers looks up from the pool at Sochi.

He's like, huh, you know?

Why is he in Sochi?

He's on vacation.

Oh, it's Russia.

Oh, because it's, because it's, yeah.

I got it out of here.

All right, before we get to the list, Tommy, what is the significance of Biden's announcement on the F-16 trainings?

I think the F-16 announcement is recognition that the White House thinks this war is going to go on for a very long time because over the long term, you're going to have a border that you need to defend and you're going to need a modern air force. The current fighting, and even the sort of long promised, but seemingly not started yet spring offensive, is tanks in open fields in eastern Ukraine and artillery and drones directing these, you know, artillery fire and efforts to cut off supply lines.
And so what this does is sort of start the clock on training Ukrainian pilots. It takes about four months to train you up on an F-16.
You'll have to pull pilots who are currently flying missions off those missions to do this. So there is a bit of a cost to this.
Then you have to get the Dutch and the Poles to actually supply the planes. And over the long term, it's not just about supplying an F-16.
It's maintaining it. The missiles are really expensive.
The fuel is really expensive. They estimate that one flying hour requires 16 man hours of maintenance for an F-16.
So it's just like a massive ongoing undertaking. And they're all integrated into like radar systems and other air defense systems.
So this to me is just signals that this is not ending anytime soon in the eyes of the White House decision makers. Hadn't there been some concerns about like that this would be taken as a sign of escalation? Yeah.
And then how do you, why do you think they got over those concerns? They seem to get over those concerns routinely. Okay.
You know, I mean, there is, I think there's a very good faith concern about escalation and provoking Putin and any response that might lead to something like a nuclear response. But this happened with the long range missiles.
It's happened now with these F-16s. I think they think it's manageable.

What's with that sanctions list?

It seems like quite a cast of characters.

It's a pretty good list.

You know, it was missing a few.

There was a lot of Trump enemies on that list.

But you're missing some key ones.

Like, where's Deb Messing?

Where is Deb Messing?

Where's Alyssa Milano?

And also, Joe Scarborough's on there.

Where's Mika? Rose Mark Ruffalo. No Krasensteins.
No Krasensteins. No Krasensteins.
Are they enemies? Major Biden. Sanction a pet.
Make some news. Where's Luis Mench? I don't know.
Yikes. Is Putin basically doing that to just like troll? I don't know.
The Biden administration? It seems like. There's also a lot of national security nerds on there.
So, I mean, there's some sort of wonky people. There's a lot of Biden administration officials, like the NSC staff, the White House.
Ben LaBolt are friends on there. So, I don't know.
Like, it's childish, petty nonsense. Do you guys feel embarrassed that you and Ben Rhodes didn't make that? Yeah, why aren't you on there? Well, I think Ben's on it from the last time they sanctioned a bunch of people.
Oh, Ben and Dan are still on it? I mean, I don't think they get taken off it. Are you going to test that proposition? Are you going to buy a ticket? It's, yeah, I imagine it hasn't been like an exciting vacation destination.
No. Already.
It'd be a lot more painful if you could have a list where those people then had to visit your country. You know what I mean? Like a mandatory visit.
A mandatory visit list. Like 20 a year and you're like, all right, come on over.
Come to Sochi. You got to be here.
We have some breaking news about the White House meeting is over. And? Speaker McCarthy, I think the tone tonight was better than any other time we've had discussions.
Theater criticism. Great.
We are excited about the tone. And then one of the lead negotiators uh republican representative patrick mckenry said we've had tough meetings we've had difficult meetings this meeting was productive no acrimony okay that makes me nervous that means like the republicans feel like they're getting something yeah so we're so we're really yeah great every democrat on the hill read that thought by his dinner first you know what i'm saying all right, we've been talking a lot about the Biden-Trump rematch that's currently our most likely future.
So the Washington Post just held a series of focus groups with the kinds of voters who may decide the race. People who cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2016 and then voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
They got 15 Democrats, independents and Republicans from swing states. Nine were white, four were black, two Asian Americans.
None of them want either Biden or Trump to run again, like most Americans. Nearly all of them are worried about Biden's age.
But when asked specifically about a Biden-Trump rematch, nine said they'd vote for Biden. Three said they'd back Trump.
And three said that they would vote third party or not vote.

Just two focus groups, but the Post noted that the findings are in line with what Democratic strategists have been finding in polls and focus groups of their own. You guys have any takeaway

from these groups? And if you're the Biden campaign, what do you do with information like this?

I'll tell you what my first thought was. It was like, 9 to 15.
Can we do it with 9 to 15?

I was like crunching the numbers. I don't know that we can.
I think we need a couple more people. You know, I talked to Shots about this too.
You know, it's very clear that age is a big liability. It is a bigger liability than it was in 2020.
I think it has been, I think Republicans have done a very good job spreading it. I think the reality of having a person this old running is not possible to ignore.
And we have to, we can't have an abstract conversation about whether or not Biden's too old. He just has to go out there and be among the people and sort of have moments like he's had at the State of the Union and others that show that he's vigorous despite his age.
I don't know what else you're supposed to do with this. It's kind of like this is Biden's core pitch, right? Like, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.
And when these people did, they were much more likely to vote for Joe Biden. I also think, you know, when you combine this with the catalyst research you and Dan talked about on Thursday, that showed in the key swing states, issues like abortion access and the extremity of GOP candidates motivated people and they understood the stakes beyond the individuals on the ballot.
So that makes me hopeful. But yeah, I mean, you know, this doesn't signal like high, high, high turnout election.
Certainly not an election that people are going to be excited about. It could be a very high turnout election, but it's not something people are going to going to be like running to the polls.
I guess you're right. To the point it's a high turnout election, it's because you oppose the other guy.
That's exactly. Negative partisanship.
And to that end, if I was the Biden campaign, and I'm sure this is what they're thinking, but like the best Biden moments over the last couple of years, the speeches about democracy, January 6th, in the middle middle of the State of the Union when he started ad libbing and basically fighting with Republicans over Social Security and Medicare. Right.
They are moments when Biden has both shown energy and painted the contrast with Republicans. And I think you can solve two birds with one stone there.
Right. people are a little worried about his age whenever he's feisty and shows some energy.
That helps that. And when he is keeping the focus on what a Donald Trump second term would look like, like paint a picture.
And as you said, Tommy, you can also remind people like, oh, in these red states where Republicans have full control, this isn't the future, this is the present. This is what's happening right now.
There are book bans, there are full abortion bans. There's the don't say gay law in Florida, right? So you can start using these examples and just have Biden out there with like a very fiery, energetic stump speech that's just kicking the shit out of Trump and Republicans and telling people exactly what would happen if he gets a second term.
And if that's where he keeps the focus, then you're going to have people just like in this group who are like, yeah, he's a little old, whatever, but we don't want that. We don't want that again.
One more thing about those focus groups that I thought was interesting. They tested DeSantis in addition to Trump.
And most, the majority of participants also chose Biden over DeSantis because they said he was too extreme. Yeah, that's good.
That's great. Yeah, I, man.
Never someone, you know, only Elon Musk could build a ship that would explode so quickly on the launch pad there, you know? Yeah, DeSantis really has done it to himself for these voters. Yeah.
And when they brought up their criticisms of Trump were, you know, not surprising, his character's social media use, and they brought up the investigations a bunch, which is also interesting. All right, so when we come back, Senator Brian Schatz talks with Lovett about debt ceiling strategy and lots more.
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Joining us now, he's Hawaii's Senator, friend of the pod, and the most popular senator in the country, according to a recent poll. Senator Brian Schatz, glad to have you back.
Nice to be back. Nice to see you, John.
Do you walk around like, you know, like a big swinging dick now? How am I supposed to answer that question? By the way, that reminds me, the one time I went to your live show, it was, there were like three female comedians and you, you and it was just all dick jokes and I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that that happened. It wasn't all.
Anyway, let's get back to work. So Speaker McCarthy spoke briefly before going into another meeting with Biden.
He didn't say much. We had hopeful signs at the end of the week.
Then a Trump truth sent people into a tizzy. Now we're back at the table.
You know, Janet Yellen is looking under couch cushions. She's going into the bathroom.
She's making sure she's alone. And then she's screaming at the top of her lungs.
We're recording this Monday evening. McCarthy predicts he'll keep his caucus together and says a deal needs to have less spending than last year.
What is the latest? What are you hearing? Well, obviously, the president and the speaker are meeting in the next couple of hours. You know, I'm not going to take too much from the various public statements.
I think, you know, sometimes people make grouchy public statements specifically to soften the ground for a compromise. So I'm hopeful that we will land this.
And if we land this in a place that unlocks the appropriations process and avoids a government shutdown in the fall, then that's actually all as well that ends well. It's a stupid way to do business.
I continue to think the debt ceiling should be statutorily repealed. I have a bill to do that.

So I don't want to defend the process.

But if the result ends up being something that unlocks the ability for us to do bipartisan appropriations bills, then I'll be able to live with it. So it sounds like what you're saying there is that if it does allow you to move into that appropriations process are you saying the actual specific lines that are drawn in this specific deal that that they're not as important that they're that they're not as significant what are you saying there no I think look I think the numbers matter very much they're called top lines and they're basically exactly how the appropriations committee um determines how much money it has to spend.
So once those top line agreements are arrived at on a bipartisan basis, they are binding to the committee. So, you know, my criteria is, is this the kind of deal we would have gotten under the under normal circumstances if these people were not threatening default? And that's my criteria is that I think it's terrible.
I think we should offer no policy or budget concessions in exchange for not defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States of America. But we are where we are.
And so now my criteria is, look, is this the kind of deal that we would have done anyway later? Because the truth is Speaker McCarthy is the speaker. And if you're going to get a bipartisan budget deal, it's not going to look like the kind of bipartisan budget deal that we had when Nancy Pelosi was speaker.
Right. So if what you're saying is a deal in which the thing Democrats get isn't the country not going into financial collapse.

Right.

What, right.

What are, what are the places where Democrats are seeing give, or what do you want to see?

What, what will make this a bipartisan compromise in which what Democrats are extracting from

these negotiations go beyond just lifting the debt ceiling?

Well, one of my key priorities is something called parity.

And it's a very simple concept, which is you have two categories of discretionary spending, and it's defense and non-defense. And for the last 10 years, in order to sort of keep the peace and do bipartisan appropriations, regardless of who's president, regardless of who runs the legislative branch, we've kept parity.
Defense and non-defense have been roughly equal as they go

up. Kevin McCarthy is trying to stray from that and increase funding for the Defense Department while decreasing funding on the domestic discretionary side.
We're not going to do that. So that was actually what happened in 2011, right? So in 2011, the sequester was basically a kind of a trigger that would cut both discretionary and defense spending, right?

That that was sort of the way we could, but we ended up hitting that sequester and doing the cuts, but then didn't later we go back and undo some of the defense cuts? Yeah, well, we undid the defense cuts and we undid the whole thing overall because it was nonsense. The idea that like equal pain will bring the parties to the table is not true anymore because I do think that this Republican Party is uniquely dangerous and doesn't care about governing.

And so I don't think we should assume that if we have a sort of Damocles over the Defense Department and a sort of Damocles over say the Health and Human Services Department that that's going to do anything for us. What we have to do is have an arrangement where there's a modest increase in spending or a freeze in spending subject to inflationary costs and then we move forward with a budget because absent a budget agreement, we're going to end up with a freeze anyway, something called a CR.
And so, you know, we're in a strong negotiating position on one level because we have the executive branch in the control of Democrats and half of the legislature. But on the other hand, it takes an agreement with Kevin McCarthy in order to move forward on appropriation.
So if it unlocks that, that's great. I still think it's a stupid precedent to set.
I still think that it's insane that the media in particular has normalized this hostage taking to the point where I think most people who are only paying passing attention think this is another like shutdown clock, another sort of, oh, Democrats and Republicans, cats and dogs. That's not what's happening here.
These people are really threatening, you know, the United States dollar as global reserve currency, possibility of the stock market getting chopped by a third or a half interest rates going up. This is serious stuff.
And we have to come to a resolution in the next 10 days. But one of the challenges that it works as leverage, because all the polls show, right, that the blame for it would be laid equally at the feet of Democrats and Republicans.
So I don't know how we get out of Republicans using it as a cudgel when the media shows them that it works. And we seem to have, in this case, unlearned the lesson from 2011 that we simply don't negotiate over the debt ceiling.
But I'm not saying that we had any other choice. It does seem like for what this moment does feel different.
So did something change that force us to unlearn that lesson? I don't know the answer to that. I've been thinking about that and whether I want to substitute my judgment for the president's here, here because I can imagine that if you're in the Oval right and Janet Yellen and everyone else is coming to tell you you know interest rates won't just go up temporarily they may go up for 10 years right um stock market won't just take a hit it'll get cut in half we won't just lose or temporarily full furlough some number of tens of thousands jobs like you do in a shutdown, but we might lose millions and not get them back.
And so, you know, that'll get your attention if you're the lead of the free world. I still hate the idea that we're negotiating.
I still hate the idea that this has been normalized, but we are where we are. We have 10 days left to avoid default and we have to do whatever we can to land the plane.
So when you were last on the show, we talked about this. We talked about how stupid it is to just have this loaded gun sitting on the table every two years.
And it just seemed like there wasn't momentum when we had the lame duck, when we could have unloaded this gun to get it done. I asked you about this.
You said you didn't have the votes. I asked again, basically to no effect.
Well, you have been pushing very hard for this, but it just didn't seem like the Democratic caucus was focused on caring about understanding the inevitability of this moment that we're now in. And as someone who wanted to unload this gun, how frustrated are you? How long will it take us to learn this lesson? Why did we not take care of this when they had the chance? And does that mean there's a hope to do it in the future? We should have.
And I think it's becoming a mainstream position among Democrats that we just need to repeal this stupid statute. And whether that ends up happening by virtue of the court's ruling in favor of the administration, should they pursue the 14th Amendment, or that the next time we have leverage in a situation like this, that we just decide to repeal the statute.
I don't know what the pathway forward is, but I do think the political momentum for repealing the debt ceiling is there because I think initially people just use a shorthand and say, well, that's a tough vote because I'm going to have, I'm going to look like I'm repealing the debt forever or that, you know, I'm, I'm for endless spending. But I think most people who pay attention, you know, they're going to hold you accountable for whatever you decided to spend money on in the appropriations process.
And there's no getting around that by saying, well, I'm not for the debt, but I am for the spending.

And so, look, I think we have an opportunity here over the next several months to kind of recalibrate what the institutional position of the Democratic Party is.

I was sort of an outlier saying, hey, this thing is coming down the pike and it's dangerous and we need to defuse the bomb. But I did not succeed.
So I want to move on to another topic because the debt ceiling is the most important and most boring thing the country is currently facing. I was like, I can feel your viewers bleeding off while we were talking about the history.
You've got to get them back. So you're leading the charge on banning children under 13 from being able to use social media and requiring parental consent from 13 to 17.
You also would ban tech companies from serving minors algorithmically, from like sort of algorithmically generated content. It's a bipartisan bill.
What are the prospects for it? What is the pushback you're hearing either from colleagues or from tech? Well, I think, first of all, I think, you know, most people nod vigorously when they say, when I say a 12 year old and younger should not be on social media. So I don't think that's even a controversial position anymore.
13 through 17 is a little different, right? Because, you know, I talked to staffers of mine who say, hey, you know, in my teenage years, that's literally how we interacted. And my point is, you know, most kids who are online via their phones, their parents are paying for the phone.
So people are working. And so parental involvement is already the case.
For the most part, internet access and connectivity is something that your parents have to arrange unless you're, you know, really financially self-sufficient in a way that's unusual for a kid. But my view is that the parents should know what's happening and that the algorithmic boosting is really where the mental health danger is occurring, which is not to say that no algorithms can be used.
Like some of our opponents have said, like, ha ha, the whole Internet is full of algorithms. You're banning out.
Yeah, we understand the Internet is full of algorithms. We're talking about the specific part of Instagram or or TikTok or other feeds that algorithmically determine with incredible precision the thing that is most likely to deliver, quote quote unquote engagement.
How long will you linger? How likely are you to click? And what they have found is that engagement is at a maximum when you are outraged or angry or disgusted or despairing. And so now we have a business model that almost guarantees that a whole generation of people are fed an algorithm that makes them despairing, disgusted, angry, isolated, and all the rest of it.
And I don't think, first of all, I'm not sure adult brains are capable of sort of beating the algorithm, but certainly a 14-year-old is not capable of doing that. What's the opposition to the bill? I'm going to take the kind of good faith opposition first.
One is, hey, this sounds a little big brothery. I think that's a fair enough thing to worry about.
I don't think the government should be in the business of picking content. And this thing is content neutral.
I think the other concern I've heard is from LGBTQ plus groups about the ability for queer kids in particular to find each other, to find support, to do research, to not feel alone. And I think all of that is important.
But remember, we're not banning a kid from using social media. It's just that the social media platform will not have that feed that is algorithmically boosted.
You still ought to be able to type in whatever you want, find things that you want, have a feed, be on social media. It's just the algorithm that's shoving you outrage bait, which will no longer be permitted for kids 13 through 17.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem like there's a lot of evidence, especially around adults, about the harm that being fed this kind of content causes the impact it's having on politics. But it's less clear in terms of the core issue around kids, which I think is focused people on on depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide threats, suicide attempts, more kids dying of suicide.
Josh Hawley has a bill that would just ban kids under 16 from being on social media. That's obviously more draconian than what you're proposing.
But it does seem like right now, parents are buying the phones. Parents feel right.
I mean, you talk to parents about this. They feel that their kids are dragging them onto social media because all the other kids are on it.
Do you see any merit to going further and just saying, hey, this stuff is so right now, this is brain poison. It hurts kids more than cigarettes do.
Like it's taking their lives. Maybe kids just shouldn't be on this till they're out of middle school, till they're in high school at the earliest.
I'm sort of sympathetic to the view, but I think that there's more evidence the younger you get. And there are fewer upsides the younger you get, right? As you get a little older, you know, my kids can learn, you know, fishing or crochet or piano or, you know, there's some cool stuff you can learn from social media.
But I didn't see a ton of benefits for a nine-year-old, an 11-year-old, even a 14-year-old. So, you know, these sort of age gating stuff is always kind of goofy, right? Because should a kid be allowed to drive at 16 or 16 and a half or whatever? And the kind of absurdity of picking a particular age is, you know, presents a bunch of challenges.
So look, I, we tried to set a threshold that made sense. And I think the worry that I have is that the tech companies are now saying, well, we're not really sure that it's us.
Right. And I guess what I would say is, look, if I'm the, if I were like the principal investigator on some scientific study, I would say, sure, we need two decades of longitudinal research, right? And I'm thinking, kids can't wait that long.
We have to be precautionary when it comes to our kids. We have to assume that everything that the data is showing and that our own personal experiences, not mine in particular, but all of our collective experiences are telling us we have to believe our own eyes and our own ears and the indications from the preliminary data and just protect this next generation, not to keep them offline, but to make sure that their online experience is safer for them.
All right, let's move on to another topic from the young to the old. Diane Feinstein is back in the Senate.
She's on a lighter schedule, but she did vote to move some stalled nominees out of judiciary. There's been some reporting that she seemed to not acknowledge or possibly not even remember that she had been absent.
What do you say to people like me that believe she should resign and that's that California deserves to have two full time senators? Well, the decision to resign is in her possession. And and I think that's the main thing to remember is that this isn't a question of, oh, Chuck Schumer should be tougher or something.
Right. This is in her possession, the way the law operates, she gets to decide when and if to step down.
But I will say that, you know, to the degree and extent that the business of the Senate, in particular the Judiciary Committee, is slowed down or stopped, then it's no longer just a question of whether a particular person enjoys a particular job and continues to think they are good at it. It's a question of what's in the best interest of the country.
And I have some confidence that she will eventually come to that conclusion if she's no longer able to serve. I think on the other side, and I kind of understand where your listeners are coming from here, is that you do want to make sure there's room for someone to be sick and come back.
Right. Right.
John Zetterman, Mitch McConnell, right? Like lots of people have stuff they have to deal with and then come back. And if you have a reasonable level of confidence that the person is going to return to fulfilling their duties, that's a whole different conversation.
You know, if they're going to be gone for five years, that doesn't work. If they're going to be gone for two or three months, then I think, you know, they do, they have earned an election certificate and they are, I think, not entitled, but I think it's appropriate to allow someone to get better.
If I needed two months to get better, if something happened to me, I would want two months to get better. If I was maybe never going to come back, that's a different conversation.

Will you pledge to not seek re-election to the Senate in 2058?

That is when you will be in your mid-80s.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

Can we just flag this?

Just put a card on this because we're going to forget.

But but we got them. Mid 80s, mid 80s.
All right. Senator, you're one of the best messengers in the Democratic Party, which is how we preface our hardest questions.
Voters aren't thrilled about the prospect of a Biden Trump rematch. There was a focus group out of The Washington Post today that said there was a lot of concerns among swing voters.
But once they were presented, the choice between Biden and Trump, I think it was nine of 15 broke towards Biden, much more worried about the prospects of a Trump re-election. But a lot of concerns about Biden's age and fitness.
If this is his biggest liability as a candidate, what does he need to do to address it and to overcome it? I think he's starting to do that. I mean, you know, the White House Correspondents' dinner, he made a bunch of, I thought, pretty good jokes about his age.
And, you know, I was thinking about this. I think Bernie Sanders is 80.
Nobody talks about his age now. He's not commander in chief, I understand.
But I think that Joe Biden has to demonstrate that he is vigorous, that he is energetic, because I think seeing is believing the numerical age is I mean, it's it's it's a big number. Right.
And so the only way that you can persuade people that you are energetic enough that you have the acuity to do the job is to demonstrate that. And I think he's going to do that over the next year and a half.
But I think that's the big challenge is that if you're just arguing over whether 80 as an abstraction is quite old and most people are retired by then, I mean, that's just a fact, right? What I think Joe Biden has to demonstrate is that he's different. One last question.
We had Hawaiian food at a company-wide lunch last week. It was 10 out of 10.
People have been raving about it. People aren't talking about this.
They aren't talking about it. It's not getting the attention it deserves.
What can you do as, again, the most popular center in the country to get the people outside of Hawaii to understand what's on offer? So I just had a poke bowl for lunch right here and it's almost fun, but then I had to jump on the zoom and I just want to make this point. And I know this isn't the question you asked.
You guys are all doing poke bowls wrong. It's not a salad.
It's not Chipotle. You don't get to make a hundred different choices and put all kinds of different nonsense on it.
It's usually pretty simple cubed ahi or cubed some other kind of fish and some seasoning. But don't go to places that spell poke with an I and maybe just wait till you're in Honolulu before you get any poke.
All right. I mean, I think that's pretty definitive.
Senator Brian Schantz, thank you so much. Always good to see you next time.
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Alright, before we go, we wanted to gear up for Ron DeSantis' official campaign launch this week with some thoughtful analysis about how he's handling what will undoubtedly be his biggest challenge as a candidate,

being a person that other people like.

Here's a clip that made the rounds on social media this weekend after he pressed the flesh in New Hampshire. What's your name? I'm Tim Amson.
Okay. How are you? I'm wonderful.
What's your name? What's your name? I'm Tim. Okay.
Okay. I'm wonderful.
Where do I go? I'll come in here. There's so much like artifice in politics and you have to be be comfortable in

these weird situations that are totally fake and manufactured where you're in a diner and there's

seven people but 25 you know news cameras they're filming you and he just can't seem to do it you

don't even have to have so much charisma hey what's your name tim hey tim how are you i'm

try that try that i'm ron ask tim about himself don't say okay and then just fucking run away like a weirdo.

It's really funny.

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then just fucking run away like a weirdo it's really funny it's it's um you know we we have

this incredibly stupid way of picking who our president's going to be and we get it wrong half

the time it's a multiple choice question with two answers we get it wrong 50 of the time

uh but i will say this process of of forcing very tired hyper ambitious lunatics to go into diners

when they're at their most exhausted

and nervous and have them interact does reveal something.

I don't know he's exhausted, he's fine.

He's barely even running.

I'm just saying when they're in the thick of it,

when they're really in the thick of it.

This guy's fucking our age.

No, no, I'm not talking about,

I'm not saying right now, I'm saying over the two.

I'm just like 44 years old.

Okay, wait, that's not the point I mean.

I love DeSantis.

Wait, I don't know, this is stupid.

No, let me do it again then.

No, this is much more fun than what you were gonna. No, but that didn't make sense.
That wasn't the point I was making. I wasn't saying he's exhausted.
Okay. I'm not saying that he looks exhausted or is exhausted now.
I'm saying over time, this ridiculous way of having candidates interact with normal people ultimately shows us who they really are. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. And he is, and this is the beginning of the campaign.
Imagine what he's going to be like at the end after he's been doing six events a day for months. It is also wild that Rhonda's going to punch someone in the face.
We're contemporaries with this man. Yeah.
He looks older than us. He looks something.
I don't know what he is. He's already years.
Now, in fairness, he did have a much deeper interaction in Iowa with a fan who shared how far they'd traveled just to get a chance to meet him let's watch okay nice how far is that from here about an hour to see you okay nice he's already has his back to and what you can't see there is he walks away so he turned on him so as soon as okay is his end of the conversation. Okay.
You get one question. You come up to Ron DeSantis.
You say something. You tell him who you are.
You tell him where you're from. He says okay.
He moves away. He's really already falling into the trap of like the stories are that he can't relate to people.
And so now he has to relate to people. Then everybody watches how he relates to people.
Then he can't do it. You're going to start getting the stories like, oh, no, the real.
You got to get to know the real Ron DeSantis. Well, and when you hear that about yourself, because undoubtedly he's reading all this criticism or, you know, internalizing it in some way.
Then you get in your own head. And so now you're trying extra hard to be the relatable guy.
This is him trying. This is him trying.
Okay. And the current narrative is like he can can't do this stuff, but his wife is his secret weapon.
That's why he has her out in stumping, etc. So I'm sure he'll get put off by that and feel like, no, I can do it myself.
You've also, I've heard of candidates who have the opposite problem. Like someone who worked for Al Gore told me that they had to stop prepping him so much because he would go into meetings and meet with New Hampshire state reps he'd never met before.
And he'd be like, hey, Bruce, good to meet you. How's your wife, Sally, and your four kids, like Oren, Jim, Jan, and whatever.
And it was like, okay. Because he was a student who had to ace the test.
Yeah, more natural. Yeah, no, he's, Ron DeSantis doesn't have a, it's just, it's just awkward.
A Trump person said about Tim Scott, Tim Scott doesn't have to write likable at the top of his piece of paper, which I think tells you a lot about this. At least Ron DeSantis isn't running against someone in the primary who just has a knack for zeroing in on a person's absolute weakness and exploiting it as much as possible.
Destroying. Donald Trump is just going to...
It's not like Trump is some great retail politician. He throws toilet paper at people and insults them and then says he's smarter than everybody in the room and leaves.
I think he's pretty good at retail. But he's more charming than this.
He's good at talking to people and making them feel listened to. And I don't know.
He slaps backs and hangs out. He has nothing better to do.
He hates his family. He's got tons of free time.
Well, he, it's different, right? Because Trump, Trump I don't think is great in like the diner he doesn't do this well because so he he knows that and so he just doesn't do it and what he does is the performance on the stage and he's really good at that he does this shit too he like signs people's stuff and hangs out he likes to do the thing of like he likes to like go into a like a like he'll go and he likes to go into the diner and then talk to everybody he wants to do his he wants to do his stand he wants to five. Yeah, he wants to do his five.
Like when he goes to McDonald's and says, I've eaten everything on this menu. You're like, yeah, he has.
All right. So finally, it's clear that DeSantis has mastered the subtle, subtle art of pandering.
Let's listen. Iowa's like the Florida of the Midwest, they said.
But I just want to let you know, after watching all the good stuff you've done in Iowa, it may be that Florida is the Iowa of the Midwest they said but I just want to let you know after watching all the good stuff you've done in Iowa it may be that Florida's the Iowa the Southeast so we'll see what do you think Tommy I was gonna eat that up oh my god what what that was so torture now I know it's tough it's tough I'm sad say say say it again uh ron de santis makes people feel like uh uh their needs are met donald trump makes people feel like they have no needs this guy this guy this guy this guy's voice is so annoying oh someone wrote him that line too of course he was so proud of it sort of proud yeah delivering that line, very cringeworthy. So it's interesting.

He's been dreaming about running for president for so long,

and now he's finally doing it.

Reminds me of a roommate I had back in the day

who was going to a little school in Northeast D.C.

called Strayer University.

And he would meet women and say,

I'm going to the Harvard of Northeast D.C.

But he would always leave out the D.C. part.
So he'd say, I'm going to the Strayer, it's the Harvard of the Northeast. And they'd just be like, I think Harvard's in the Northeast.
Sometimes that was more charming than the rest of the joke, but yeah. Look, this gives me no pleasure.
We're going to get fucking Donald Trump as a nominee That's the takeaway. I wish Ron DeSantis was a little, I don't want Ron DeSantis to be president, but like, Donald Trump is a, I still think a uniquely dangerous threat to democracy.
And all these fucking goofs are like just. They can't do it.
And this was an event where, this is this Feenstra family picnic thing in Iowa. This was the one where he was sort of graded on a curve and people said he did well.
Oh, it was? Yeah. This was the one where Flip burgers, because he went to Des Moines and was like...
No, no, no. This is the first event in western Iowa.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Not the big shot at Trump when he went to Des Moines and said, it's sunny outside. No, no, no.
That was a couple of events later. It's like, slam! Got him.
Man, this guy. This guy's really fizzling.
Yeah, well. He's really fizzling.
I'm telling you. He's going to learn.
I'm telling you. Watch my guy, Tim Scott.
Okay. Just watch him.
Just keep an eye out. You're all in on Tim Scott.
I'm not all in. I'm in.
He's my Ted Cruz of this cycle. You and Mike Murphy of Hacks on Tap.
Oh, really? You and Murph. Nice.
I'm telling you. Just watch it.
All right. Just watch it.
I'm not saying what's going to happen. I'm just saying keep an eye on it.
Tommy, do you want to take Vivek Ramaswamy? That guy. Should we do a draft? He's doing a lot of press.
Should we all draft? We should do a draft. We'll do a draft.
He didn't lose his virginity. He was 46.
Allegedly. Yeah.
Allegedly he lost it earlier or didn't lose it at all. He said to Ben Harris he's not a virgin anymore.
I'm just trying not to get sued over here. Allegedly.
I think he said that to Ben Harris. Yeah, Ben Harris had to ask him because he said he would not have sex until marriage.
And he was, I think, at the time, a 46-year-old single guy. If there is even a hint that Tim Scott's candidacy might threaten Donald Trump's candidacy, you will see Donald Trump go so fast from welcome to the race to making fun of the 40 year old virgin.
It will be relentless.

No, it's it's good.

I think it'll be worse than that.

Let me read this tweet from Ben Terrace.

Tim Scott will be the first press candidate I've ever asked about the status of his virginity.

Initial answer.

I'm not talking about my sex life with Ben Terrace.

Then he stood up and said, I have to go potty.

Care to revise?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Love his guy. I said that he that that we're not going to elect a single president.
You know? So maybe there's still time. Yeah, he just has to meet the right person.
Well, that's a story. That's a campaign trail story.
There you go. Ultimately, he implied he did not wait until marriage.
Yeah. So, there's some, that's why I said allegedly.

To be revealed.

Yeah, to be revealed.

Thanks to Brian Schatz for joining us.

Don't know why you keep coming back on.

After hearing some of the questions, love that.

Me either.

But thank you.

We appreciate you joining.

Always good to see you.

And we'll talk to you all on Thursday.

Bye.

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