“Hasn’t Waco Been Through Enough?”

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 4 I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 1 On today's show, Donald Trump warns his indictment could lead to violence and celebrates the January 6th attacks in Waco, Texas. DeSantis Curious Republicans are already down on Tiny D.

Speaker 1 And later, former White House Press Secretary Jen Saki stops by to talk about the Republican primary, Joe Biden's 2024 strategy, and her new show on MSNBC.

Speaker 1 Speaking of shows, Love It? I hear you're going back out on tour.

Speaker 3 Love it or Leave it's going back on tour. You can get tickets right now.
We're in the middle of the pre-sale. Crooked.com slash events.
The code is errors because it is the errors tour. Do you get it?

Speaker 1 Do you get it?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Do you get it? It's our errors tour.

Speaker 4 I didn't get it until today, but now I get it.

Speaker 3 Tommy's a recently converted Swifty. Yes.
He has his midriff exposed for all of us to see.

Speaker 3 We are going to be traveling across the country. We're going to go to some

Speaker 3 places where it feels good to be gay, some places where it could feel better.

Speaker 3 And we're going to raise money for Vote Save America's fuck bands, colon, leave queer kids alone, parentheses, and adults, and all of us, you absolute freaks, and perenns, fund.

Speaker 1 A A lot of brainstorming around that title. Yeah,

Speaker 3 we could have tronked it, but we didn't.

Speaker 1 We didn't tronk it. So you're going to be on the road for a while.
You're going to be out of the office? You bet. Oh, that's great.
All right.

Speaker 1 All right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What do you guys think? We'll miss you.

Speaker 1 Any chance he adds some shows? I guess you guys have to.

Speaker 3 I guess you guys will have to figure out a way to make conversation between noon and three

Speaker 1 quirket.com/slash events. Go get your your tickets.
All right, let's get to the news.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump held his first big rally of the 2024 election in Waco, Texas this weekend, right in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the deadly standoff between federal agents and a cult that right-wing extremists still view as a symbol of government overreach.

Speaker 3 I also just kind of, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do think this before we even get into it, I don't want to cover while we talk.

Speaker 3 I think people are reading too much into Trump going to Waco, thinking it's about federal government violence when he just think it was cool that David Koresh fucked fucked all those guys' wives.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
I thought you were going to make like a cult joke, but David Kresh

Speaker 4 did do that, though.

Speaker 3 Sorry, keep going.

Speaker 1 Everyone know who David Koresh is out there in our audience? That was the Waco thing, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, Leo that branched the video.

Speaker 1 A bunch of elder millennials.

Speaker 4 It happened in 93.

Speaker 1 That's 30 years. Yeah, it's been a while.
The twice impeached Republican frontrunner played footage of the violent insurrection he incited at the rally before it started.

Speaker 1 You always want to start the rally with just some January 6th footage behind.

Speaker 4 Pay the hits, right?

Speaker 1 They also played the song he recorded with a group of men who've been imprisoned for their role in the January 6th attack.

Speaker 4 The J6 Choir. The J6 Choir, and this course.
Thank you, of course.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump, the fourth tenor.

Speaker 1 You know, you have to joke about it because what else are you going to do?

Speaker 1 Trump also talked about his potential indictment for the first time. We're waiting for it.
It's coming any minute. Who knows? Andy, you're going to let us know that it happens

Speaker 5 during during the pod right olivia okay great thanks when he finally gets arrested he's gonna be like ah i called that a week ago old news anyway here's uh here's how we talked about it at the uh at the rally the department of injustice in washington dc was investigating me for something that is not a crime not a misdemeanor not an affair

Speaker 5 i never liked horse face i never liked

Speaker 5 I never, it's just not, it's a terrible thing.

Speaker 5 That wouldn't be the one. Legal scholars scholars can't believe what they're witnessing.
And yet, after going over 11 million pages of documents, they've got nothing.

Speaker 5 It probably makes me the most innocent man in the history of our country. Friends of mine say that.

Speaker 5 They're not coming after me.

Speaker 3 They're coming after you, and I'm just standing in their way, and I'm going to be standing in their way for a long time.

Speaker 5 You will be vindicated and proud, and the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited, and totally disgraced. That's what's happening.

Speaker 5 From the beginning, it's been one witch hunt and phony investigation after another.

Speaker 5 Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state. That's the way it's got to be.

Speaker 1 That's the bumper sticker right there.

Speaker 4 The first clip of him sounded like someone doing an impression of him. It really got that kind of rumbling grumble.

Speaker 1 It's going to be really hard to tell the real Trump from the AI Trump. Yeah, I'll work on that.

Speaker 1 So Trump said all of this after last week's truths, where he threatened that there could be, quote, death and destruction if he's indicted.

Speaker 1 And in another truth posted a picture of him waving a baseball bat next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who, by the way, has now received death threats, including a letter threatening to kill him with a powdery substance that's still being tested.

Speaker 1 How concerned are you guys about the potential for violence if Trump is indicted? We've talked a lot about sort of the legal case, the politics.

Speaker 1 We We haven't talked a lot about the potential of violence yet.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but there was also a bomb threat at the courthouse. Yeah.

Speaker 3 The Trump the Trump fora on the internet,

Speaker 3 already a pretty hellish place, has gotten pretty violent.

Speaker 3 The letter with the white powder said,

Speaker 3 Alvin, I'm going to kill you, followed by many exclamation points,

Speaker 3 which you'd think

Speaker 3 you'd think you could just use a period when you include the white powder.

Speaker 4 Well, no, not in 2023, because, you know, for a certain cohort. It seems passive aggressive.
It's passive aggressive. Every sentence is exclamation point at this point.

Speaker 4 So that's probably what that is. Therefore, what the hell is that?

Speaker 1 I am quite concerned about violence.

Speaker 4 I am, I think, heartened by the fact that the initial call for protests were met with mockery from some people on the far right. They were like, uh-uh, we got arrested last time.

Speaker 4 This dude hung us out the dry, no way. But it only takes one deranged person.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that's, you know, in Cincinnati, a few days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, a Trump supporter showed up at the field office with a rifle and was killed.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's the, you know,

Speaker 3 we've already been through Trump at the height of his power, causing a January 6th that wasn't able to do anything to disrupt our government, but did do a lot of damage and hurt and killed a lot of people.

Speaker 3 He can do the same thing here. It just takes one person having their radio tuned to the Trump frequency to show up and cause some chaos, which is clearly what he wants, which is why he's escalating.

Speaker 3 He was disappointed with the response. So he needs to sort of turn the heat up.
Yeah, I just feel like that.

Speaker 1 To your points, homie, about how some of them are worried because, you know, the last group of people who did this got arrested, I do think that's like,

Speaker 1 you know, a lot of them on social media were warning that this is like an FBI, these protests in favor of Trump would just be an FBI trap that they're just hoping to get people to those protests so that they can arrest them.

Speaker 1 But it does show that like what the federal government and law enforcement did after January 6th is being

Speaker 1 deterrent. It's completely a deterrent.

Speaker 4 It turns out it's locking up violent protesters as a deterrent or violent insurrectionist, rather.

Speaker 1 Why it was so important that that happened.

Speaker 3 he and it does also matter that trump does not currently have the ability to pardon any of these people

Speaker 1 yeah and i also think by the way that like you know dan and i talked on thursday about how um you know joe biden obviously doesn't want to be getting into the legal analysis of this case or talking about the case and other democrats but i do think and you've seen some of them do this already that speaking out about trump trying to incite violence again is probably an important thing for a lot of democrats to do and i don't think that joe biden needs to like plan a speech about it but if asked about it, I sure would make a comment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump called Alvin Bragg at the Waco event absolute human scum. And that's just, that is textbook dehumanizing language.

Speaker 4 And language like that historically has been a prelude to violence of some sort. So even if it's par for the course for Trump.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think, and Biden elevated this issue in the run-up to the midterms. And I think it was the right thing to do.
It was the smart thing to do.

Speaker 1 And it also lets people know that this is, this threat is serious and it's not just Trump spouting spouting off, which it can be easy to think. Why do you guys think Trump and

Speaker 1 MAGA politicians are so obsessed with the January 6th rioters? Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene and some others led a Codel

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 visit January 6th rioters in jail.

Speaker 4 I mean, these are his shock troopers. You know, these are the ones he could count on in his darkest hours to travel to D.C.
and in some cases, physically fight for them.

Speaker 4 And I think what Lovett said earlier is right. I mean, there is this narrative out there that he's abandoned them, and I bet he's worried.

Speaker 4 He didn't pardon them. He just recently dropped a single when he was working with Kanye for months on this track, you know.

Speaker 4 And so, you know, I think it's part of like knowing your audience. And back to the location of the rally in Waco.

Speaker 4 I mean, a huge slice of the Republican base has this fetish for these right-wing anti-government groups. David Koresh in the Waco standoff was a source of inspiration for them.

Speaker 4 Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who killed 168 people, said that his terrorism was retribution for the Ruby Ridge and Waco standoffs.

Speaker 4 The quote was, I wanted the government to hurt the people of Waco and Ruby Ridge. And so, you know,

Speaker 4 they can say that this was an accident. Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick was like, oh, Waco is centrally located.
That's why we told him to go there.

Speaker 4 Do you believe that?

Speaker 1 I don't believe that. Yeah, I told you that's why it's such a bustling metropolis.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's why the biggest city in Texas, because it's so centrally located, right? Where all the votes are.

Speaker 3 I also do just for that rally, you know, we'll talk about who did and didn't get applause, but the person who gets the most applause was actually Mike Lindell, which tells you that, like, this is a group of people, they want their worldview to be perfect.

Speaker 3 And the only way their worldview can remain perfect and like unsullied by any nuance or

Speaker 3 controversy or sense in which they might not have all the answers is if these January 6th insurrectionists aren't political prisoners.

Speaker 3 So they have to be political prisoners because that's the only way this whole story makes sense. That's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, and I think that's what Trump is doing.

Speaker 1 He wants to muddy the waters on his greatest political vulnerability which is you know attempting a coup and inciting an insurrection it would take down any normal candidate hopefully it'll take you know teflon dawn

Speaker 1 but i also think for all of these everyone in the maga movement here like grievance politics depends on these people being seen as victims of persecution, specifically elite persecution, and not perpetrators of violence, right?

Speaker 1 So they always have, in order to be aggrieved, in order for this to work, they always have to be the victims of some plot.

Speaker 4 Trump's entire stump speech is about how corrupt and incompetent and in some cases, evil the government is. And the message is very apocalyptic.

Speaker 4 And I imagine that kind of message resonates with this audience and with the defense of an event like Waco or an event like January 6th.

Speaker 4 Or remember Clive Bundy, the rancher who had a standoff with federal agents? He got tons of support from Republican elected officials.

Speaker 4 Some of this like useful idiots like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, but also from Dean Heller spoke out, like someone who we think of as sort of a never Trump moderate.

Speaker 4 So yeah, I mean, you know, Trump is like fanning these flames very much at these events.

Speaker 1 The elites are out to get you. The federal government's out to get you.

Speaker 1 They have guns. They're coming for you.
That's why you should have guns.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is a whole you have Tucker on every night using the footage that McCarthy gave him to tell a story that isn't true about the fact that it was just a couple tours run amok.

Speaker 3 And that that is the that.

Speaker 4 Trump shouted that out at the Wicca event.

Speaker 3 So everything is, everything is feeding back to this idea that they are being unjustly held and prosecuted. Why? Because it was an insurrection.
Why? Because Trump won.

Speaker 4 I learned in prepping for the show that Roger Stone dedicated his 2015 book to, in part, the Branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 That is wild.

Speaker 1 That's a deep cut right there. Yeah.
How is the rest of the book?

Speaker 3 That's the fucking

Speaker 4 to the branch Davidians. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Trump got plenty of criticism for all this violent rhetoric, even from some of his Republican supporters and MAGA media friends.

Speaker 1 What do you think are, now that we've talked about how terrifying all of this is, what do you think are the political implications of making his various investigations and potential indictments the centerpiece of his campaign?

Speaker 1 He basically said the weaponization,

Speaker 1 he did say the weaponization of the Justice Department is the central issue of our time. So let's talk about the political implications.

Speaker 1 Let's start with the primary and then we can talk about the general.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 I watched the Waco remarks.

Speaker 3 It was what, a full 45 minutes of this, of this grievance stuff. Just endless, endless, endless.
And I was so zoned out by the time I got to the end of the deep state section that

Speaker 3 I was halfway through the paragraph where he hit DeSantis and I had to roll it back because I was like, wait,

Speaker 3 when did he get out of his fucking personal vendettas?

Speaker 4 What speed were were you doing?

Speaker 3 I was at 1.75. Thank you for asking.

Speaker 3 Well, then you slow it back.

Speaker 3 You slow to one, you slow to one, and he sounds like he's losing.

Speaker 1 I think he sounds like he really sounds slow and drunk.

Speaker 3 But he basically speaks like this for 45 minutes, and he goes,

Speaker 3 and so that's why they're attacking me for you.

Speaker 1 Rings a bit hollow.

Speaker 3 It's just unbelievable.

Speaker 3 And so no wonder the audience basically was dead silent through the remaining 45 minutes of his speech where he actually got to the message that his people are trying to get him to deliver.

Speaker 1 It's interesting.

Speaker 1 We've gone through sort of this cycle where, for a while, basically all of last year and in the right up to the midterms, every Trump speech was all about Trump and 2020 and how the election was stolen from him.

Speaker 1 And then, like, he went on this little burst of, you know, I'm going to announce extreme right-wing policy to get to the right of DeSantis on all this culture war stuff.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to talk about policy a little bit. And now he is this speech, he's just got right back into like, it's 80%

Speaker 1 me grievance, 2020 insurrection, now my prosecution, you know, indictments, all that kind of stuff, and like 20% other shit.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And he gets to the message, which is the anti-DeSantis, the pro-Trump, anti-DeSantist policy message is the one he put in that long statement he put out about DeSantis, which is like a very tough and very sort of clearly well-thought-out hit on DeSantis.

Speaker 3 And he ran through it in full. But by the time he got there, these people have been standing out in the sun for hours.

Speaker 3 He's Trump, the plane landed and he sits there for half an hour on the plane having lunch, doesn't give a fuck what happens to these people.

Speaker 4 And did you notice how he does the full speech and then they play this new sort of soundtrack, the sort of orchestral movement, and then he just sums the whole thing up for like another seven to ten minutes and does it all again?

Speaker 4 But, John, to your point about like primary versus general message, I mean, I just think Donald Trump views every war as just a series of short-term battles, and he doesn't really care about the day after that.

Speaker 4 And so, in the primary, this does let him get back to just dominating every news cycle.

Speaker 4 And now, everything once again is a litmus test about how much other Republicans are supporting him against this unfair, like deep state movement against him.

Speaker 4 And the, you know, notably, one of the biggest applause lines at the Waco event was an attack on Mitch McConnell. And then it's followed up by Marjorie Taylor Greene getting like rapturous applause.

Speaker 4 Nobody cares that Mitch McConnell has done more to advance the things they ostensibly care about than any other Republican alive and that she has done nothing.

Speaker 4 So if he wins the nomination, I think like this kind of crap is what moderate voters will not like or at least like least about him, but we'll see.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, the latest polling from January of this year, right after the anniversary of January 6th, Day for Progress, showed 74% of all voters think Trump supporters did the wrong thing by inciting violence and threatening our democracy.

Speaker 1 17% think it was the right thing to stand up for Trump and overturn the election revolution.

Speaker 4 That's overwhelming, but you'd love the 74 to be higher.

Speaker 1 I know. Well, but then among Republicans voters, 61% thought it was wrong, 27% thought it was right, which among Republicans,

Speaker 1 probably better than I expected. Still awful.
So it is a fucking, it is a loser in the general.

Speaker 1 Like we just went through a midterm election where all of the election denier candidates who were extreme did poorly, where Trump was blamed for a lot of these losses, where like extremism celebrating January 6th, talking about the stolen election was just a loser for Republican candidates.

Speaker 3 Well, and also

Speaker 3 he's getting some,

Speaker 3 I think, unhelpful feedback from what this crowd likes. I mean,

Speaker 3 these are internet adults, goons, and dead enders. These are people with gold under the stairs,

Speaker 3 just absolute lost fucking souls out there for fucking.

Speaker 1 That's the wrong move for anything.

Speaker 4 The Grateful Deadhead Roadies, but the people who went to the Waco show, like, those are the diehards.

Speaker 1 Did you see him at Waco? It was amazing.

Speaker 3 You weren't at Waco.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I'm talking 23, 23, Waco. Not 93 Waco.

Speaker 4 Starfire at Waco.

Speaker 1 Most fans are at 2023 Waco.

Speaker 4 Did you drop ass at a Waco Trump event?

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course I did. I will say on Thursday's pod, Dan and I were talking about

Speaker 1 what the potential indictment might, what effect it might have in a Republican primary. And I was saying that

Speaker 1 there could be two reactions from sort of DeSantis curious voters, right? People who are open to an alternative to Trump, right? And one could be, well, this is all about electability.

Speaker 1 More indictments for Trump means even more baggage. Can't we just get Trump without the baggage and nominate DeSantis?

Speaker 1 Or it could be, you know, the liberal elite institutions and the deep state are out to get Trump and we have to defend Trump, even if we think, eh, maybe he's not the, maybe, maybe we're tired of Trump.

Speaker 1 We're going to stand by him.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, Semaphore at the rally interviews this 55-year-old Latina woman who said she'd been flirting with voting for DeSantis, but was disappointed in his response to Trump's potential indictment and would now keep her vote with Trump.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think it was interesting. We were talking about this on Pod Save the World.
It's a great show that comes out on Wednesdays. We talked about

Speaker 4 all sorts of foreign policy news.

Speaker 3 It seems like you veered sort of into other shows' territory there.

Speaker 1 No, Max Fisher.

Speaker 4 Max Fisher, the newest contributor here at Crooking Media, did a sort of talk to some political scientists and looked at the landscape of countries that have or have not prosecuted presidents.

Speaker 4 And they said that where it was effective was often more developed democracies when the list of charges kept adding up and up and up and up. And people were finally like, okay.

Speaker 4 Like Jacob Zuma in South Africa, like there were like 13 charges against him. And people were like, all right, well, he's got to be guilty of one of these.
That's interesting. Well, maybe, maybe.

Speaker 4 So these are diehards.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to say, I'm hoping that that woman that Semaphore interviewed is reflective of what you guys were just saying, which is the feedback he's getting from the folks at these rallies.

Speaker 1 These are the biggest.

Speaker 3 Yes, and I also do think we are.

Speaker 3 It is March of 2023. We're almost a year out from any actual voting.
And there's a difference between, yeah, of course I support them.

Speaker 3 And it's getting close. I support them.
And I'm going to cast my vote for this person.

Speaker 1 Well, just to get into the primary a little bit more,

Speaker 1 Trump also continued to go after Tiny D at the Waco rally, who is currently his only real primary threat. But the crowd wasn't really into Trump's DeSantis impression.
Let's listen.

Speaker 5 When a man comes to me, tears in his eyes,

Speaker 5 he's at almost nothing in the polls. And I said, I can't give you an endorsement.
There's no way you can win. You're dead.
I said, you can't win, can you? Honey, you can win.

Speaker 5 Sir, if you endorse me, I'll win. Please.
Please, sir, endorse me.

Speaker 5 And I said, All right, let's give it a shot.

Speaker 1 You know, it's funny as I've heard him say this a couple other times, and it's a classic drum. He starts, he almost had tears in his eyes.
Now it's now it's he did have tears in his eyes.

Speaker 1 Next week, it'll be like,

Speaker 3 he was on the top of the bridge.

Speaker 1 He couldn't breathe. He was on the top of the bridge.

Speaker 3 And I said, get down, Ron.

Speaker 1 Get down, Ron. I'll endorse you.
He throwed a jump off Epcot.

Speaker 1 So the crowd's muted reaction was noted by many media outlets, including none other than Fox News. Right-wing pundit Mark Levin tweeted, quote, conservatives don't like or want the personal mocking.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. You guys buy that? They love it.
They love the personal mocking.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 3 this is not to me a son. People can read whatever they want, but what I saw was a crowd that was bored as fucking hell.
Just like truly done.

Speaker 1 Also, what's most interesting to me is the coverage of the response is muted versus the reality of when I finally listened to the clip. Like, there was some giggles and laughing.

Speaker 1 It's not the stage of the, to your point about it only being March, it's not the stage of the primary yet where any crowd is going to start clapping and applauding for a hit on another, for another candidate of the same party.

Speaker 1 That's always the case in primaries, at least at the beginning.

Speaker 3 He's softening them up. He's warming them up.

Speaker 4 I mean, pretty soon they'll be treating them like Mitch McConnell. It'll be like cocaine ron, you know, wouldn't support me.

Speaker 1 Photos with those girls. What was that about? I don't know.

Speaker 3 That's what's coming.

Speaker 1 It's getting better. I do think that's it.
I do think it's fascinating, though, that Fox, Mark Levin. There was also

Speaker 1 an editorial in the New York Post saying that, like, what is Trump doing? He's inciting violence. Interesting.

Speaker 4 Murdoch properties going all in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's interesting that the Murdoch properties are going all in on DeSantis.

Speaker 3 Well, he's, you know, you know, Rupert's just recently got engaged. He's kind of jovial,

Speaker 3 thinking about maybe he's not as interested in a fascist takeover of global democracy.

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Speaker 1 Let's talk a little bit about

Speaker 1 DeSantis, who's hit a bit of a rough patch before his campaign has even begun.

Speaker 1 Guy hasn't announced, already pronounced dead.

Speaker 3 I'm frustrated, but I am frustrated that I have to be frustrated on behalf of Ron DeSantis. I know,

Speaker 1 that's the

Speaker 1 troubling dynamic.

Speaker 1 I know, I know. All right, so here's a sampling of stories from over the weekend.
Ron DeSantis' donors and allies question if he's ready for 2024, NBC News.

Speaker 1 Some Republicans fear that their non-Trump savior is showing signs of faltering, politico. DeSantis looks to revamp strategy amid signs of political strain, the Hill.

Speaker 1 And, but a new set of public opinion strategies polls showed DeSantis leading Trump by eight points in Iowa and tied in New Hampshire, though when you throw in the rest of the field, he's tied in Iowa and trailing in New Hampshire by double digits.

Speaker 1 But DeSantis does have the best favorability rating of any candidate in those polls, including Trump. And most other polls, national polls, have shown that as well.

Speaker 1 So what do you guys think is going on here?

Speaker 3 So you dig into this, and it is.

Speaker 3 There's really nothing there. There's really nothing to justify this level of

Speaker 3 narrative shift. You can say, all right, there was a Ukraine gaff.
That's absolutely true. He sort of fucked up a Ukraine answer and then did some cleanup.

Speaker 3 Is that what we'll be talking about?

Speaker 1 Said his carefully written statement was misinterpreted. It was a questionnaire.
It was a questionnaire.

Speaker 4 Again, Tucker Carlson offered a foreign policy questionnaire and he filled it out and then was like, how could you misstate my rights?

Speaker 1 Take that out of context. Unbelievable.

Speaker 3 But so he's doing cleanup there. We'll be talking about that statement in a year, probably not.

Speaker 3 That DeSantis went from darling to dud because Trump sucked up the oxygen by attacking him, which suggests like, when you said he was going to be the Trump slayer, did you think that was going to happen without Trump ever noticing?

Speaker 3 Right? Like, Trump is doing exactly what everybody would expect Donald Trump to do, and it's having an effect that everybody would expect it to have.

Speaker 3 If that means DeSantis' campaign has stumbled, it means it was never going to succeed. So that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 And then the third piece of it is that DeSantis didn't go hard enough at Trump when he was potentially being indicted, but also DeSantis took the bait by going after Trump because of the potential indictment.

Speaker 3 Those to me are sort of the three main points, none of which is to me a real critique, and all of them are just sort of what was going to happen at this stage.

Speaker 3 So it feels like everything is just basically static.

Speaker 1 What do you think, Tommy?

Speaker 4 Look, it's obviously not a good thing for a politician to do their big book rollout and their national press tour and then see their national polling numbers just collapse. I mean, that's not great.

Speaker 4 I don't know why it happened. I think with these early state polls, Axios leading with the head-to-head numbers is so stupid.
It is not going to be a head-to-head contest in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Speaker 4 And in some sense, when you look at this, not as a head-to-head contest, the numbers look pretty static from where Trump was in 2016.

Speaker 4 You know, like 39% in New Hampshire is very similar to the 35% Trump got in New Hampshire in 2016.

Speaker 4 So I'm just like, maybe we're all just like making too much of a bunch of polling from some random Republican firm that got leaked to Axios and misleadingly framed would be kind of my takeaway.

Speaker 3 I would just, what I see is a race that has not really shifted. And I see DeSantis was the Trump slayer.
Then DeSantis' campaign stumbles out of the gate.

Speaker 3 And now we are set up for DeSantis, the comeback kid,

Speaker 3 which will happen in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 And I do think that Will it happened before he even announces his campaign, which is at the earliest is going to be June.

Speaker 3 And all of this to me is like, you know, you look at the, I think you have to look at the trend in polling.

Speaker 3 And the only thing I see is in polling that shows DeSantis doing a little bit better in early states than he is nationally is it tells you that the Trump support nationally is soft and it does remind me of a lot of the polling we saw in early 2007 where you had Giuliani leading nationally but you actually had McCain and Romney and Huckabee doing far better in Iowa and New Hampshire and you had Hillary Clinton leading 100% every single poll literally every single one until September

Speaker 3 until September and really mostly

Speaker 3 most of September too nationally basically everything and then in Iowa is actually Edwards and and and Hillary going back and forth but ultimately Obama taking the lead there and then And so it shows me that I think the race is actually pretty static, and Trump has the lead, but it is soft.

Speaker 1 That's how I see it. On the polling, to Tommy's point, you can't take one poll from one firm as gospel.
You can't take many polls from many firms as gospel.

Speaker 1 But from here on out, you should always pay more attention to the state polls than the national polls. What the national polls are useful for is, as Lovitt just said, trends.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Nate Cohn did a piece in the New York Times about this. You know,

Speaker 1 all in all, DeSantis has gained about four points on average over the last month that warrants all this, you know, crazy narrative shifting. So it's, I'm with you.
I think it's a pretty static race.

Speaker 1 Dan had an interesting theory in

Speaker 1 his message box today about all this, which is that Trump is just better at getting attention

Speaker 1 than DeSantis or than anyone. Maybe anyone that's ever been in politics.
And I think at this stage in the primary, the candidate getting the most attention tends to do better in the polls.

Speaker 1 That's also partially explains the discrepancy between national polls where he's far out ahead and state polls where people have more to go on than just a national media narrative because they're starting to meet DeSantis and see more local coverage about these candidates.

Speaker 3 And feel connected to their vote, the importance of their vote as an early state voter.

Speaker 3 Like national polls right now showing that Trump is leading to me is a very soft support for someone they want to rally behind because he's underattacked by some Soros-BAC liberal fucks in New York.

Speaker 4 The quote that jumped out of me in this New York Times story about the Waco Waco event was from a guy named Jeff Fiebert. He was like a farmer, who was a Diehard Trump person.

Speaker 4 He said, I like DeSantis, I do, but the ground that needs to be covered is going to take Trump to get it done.

Speaker 4 And that Trump reminds him of the kind of person who goes into the bar and knocks all the bottles off the shelf just to see where they land.

Speaker 4 That, to me, I thought was like a pretty good summary because this felt like DeSantis wasn't that kind of guy.

Speaker 4 And a lot of these Trump voters just want a nominee who will kick the shit out of the people they hate the most to, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Liberals, the media, the deep state.

Speaker 4 That's where I think, to the extent that I think DeSantis has screwed something up, I think that Republicans want a fighter. Trump is beating the crap out of him, and he's not fighting back.

Speaker 4 And I know he's in a tough situation, but I don't think that's a great look for him in terms of voters who want someone who goes into a bar and knocks the bottles off the shelf.

Speaker 1 I think the big question in this primary, which is why I still, in my heart of hearts, can't predict who's going to win this thing, is I think there is a cohort of voters who are exactly as Tommy described.

Speaker 1 And I think they make up the core of Trump's base. I think there's a core of voters who've decided they're done with Trump.
They don't want anymore.

Speaker 1 And then I think there's a key group of voters in the middle here who were like,

Speaker 1 much like that woman that was interviewed at the rally, who were like, you know, I love Trump, always will love Trump.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of open to someone else, kind of worried that he's not going to be able to win again. And I'm not sure for them, the fighting thing is as important as it is to the Trump-based voters.

Speaker 1 But I do think what's important to them is like getting to know Ron DeSantis and seeing him and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And Trump's just going to blot that out, particularly, I guess, if all these indictments come.

Speaker 3 When I was just going back and looking at the polling from 2007 to 2008, one thing that pops up is McCain for a while was counted out. You had Giuliani leading, maybe Romney was going to take it.

Speaker 3 But then all of a sudden, as you head into the fall, there was a bunch of polling that started to show that McCain was the strongest general election candidate, that Romney was getting destroyed by Edwards and even Clinton.

Speaker 3 But McCain was always the strongest general election candidate. As we get closer, I think like the electability argument starts to play in.

Speaker 3 And that's where whatever's going on with whatever attacks they want to launch against the judicial system, the fact that Trump being under indictment starts to become a liability with independence starts to sink, get into the conversation.

Speaker 3 And Ron DeSantis gets to start making an argument about electability and stability that will carry more weight as we get closer. Let's just say,

Speaker 4 if you have a nominee on March 27, 2023, you're a weirdo. Most of the country does not care.
They have not chosen. These are like the diehards that we're talking about.

Speaker 4 The one thing in this stories that did jump out at me is relevant is the big donors pausing contributions.

Speaker 4 There's the U-Line family, this like right-wing billionaire family that just pumps money into the worst causes you could ever imagine.

Speaker 4 It did sound like they're pausing on their checks, according to some outlet.

Speaker 1 I forgot who reported it. I also thought,

Speaker 1 there's some real galaxy brain takes going on here from some of these Republicans in the NBC story.

Speaker 1 There was one Republican operative who said, DeSantis should have said in response to the potential Trump indictment, under no circumstances will the free state of Florida allow this political prosecution to take place.

Speaker 1 And then, according to that Republican operative, that would have made DeSantis look like the alpha and Trump look like the beta because DeSantis, to your point, then DeSantis would have been the tough guy because he can protect Donald Trump and it would have driven Trump crazy.

Speaker 1 It's like, what is that?

Speaker 4 This is a Charlie Kirk thing. Charlie said

Speaker 4 Florida should be a sanctuary state for Trump.

Speaker 1 But the idea that that somehow helps

Speaker 1 DeSantis

Speaker 3 Alpha, just like people, these like Jordan Peterson broken brain people.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 it does resonate with certainly a portion of that base.

Speaker 1 To your point about the electability argument, Lovett, it's hard for DeSantis to make that argument right now, too, because if you look at the polls, like some polls he's performing slightly better than Donald Trump against Joe Biden, some he's not.

Speaker 1 Now, if we get into Trump under,

Speaker 1 you know, with multiple investigations and potentially multiple indictments down the road, and Trump's out there on the national news every day saying crazy shit, and then you start doing general election polls, and Joe Biden's leading Trump by a good deal, and DeSantis is closer, then you can start making that argument.

Speaker 1 It's just a harder argument for him to make right now. It's too early.
It's too early. All right, we will talk about this and more with Jen Saki right after this.

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Speaker 1 Joining us now, former White House press secretary and current host of Inside with Jensaki, Saki, which airs Sundays at noon Eastern on MSNBC, our old pal Jen Saki. Jen, welcome back.

Speaker 13 Hi, guys. How you doing?

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 1 This is your first PSA appearance after the White House, right? You haven't done one.

Speaker 13 That is true. And I'm now wearing jeans and I'm feeling a lot more casual and laid back.

Speaker 1 So there you go. Love that.

Speaker 13 The transition of swords.

Speaker 4 Saki, congrats on the monster ratings for the first episode.

Speaker 1 Monster. Thank you.

Speaker 13 One episode down, guys. Many to go.

Speaker 13 We're going to do a second episode. I don't know.
How many episodes have you guys done? You could give me a little right.

Speaker 1 So many. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 Most are pretty forgettable.

Speaker 3 But now we've got it down, you know? Yeah. Trump, bad.
Trump is so bad. Like, you can't take it for granted.

Speaker 3 That's the key thing. Got to stay in the fight.

Speaker 1 Speaking of Trump, we were just talking about him celebrating the insurrection at his Waco rally and threatening violence if he's indicted.

Speaker 1 Fair to say that probably doesn't play well in the general, but

Speaker 1 do you think that's a a winning message in a republican primary what was your reaction to the weekend's events

Speaker 13 i mean sometimes i feel like people say things on television or just in general like look at trump he's just ahead of all of us he's playing three-dimensional chess or whatever analogy is used and at the end of the day playing uh footage from the insurrection he also had january 6th uh participants do a performance it was recorded but that was also a part of the rally in waco which i think somebody from his campaign said something like um they i don't know if they said it was a coincidence or something along those lines whatever it was it just didn't ring to be true and it's so on the nose the the analogy of waco given that it was a religious cult or a cult you know that was and there was a standoff with law enforcement it's like he's sending this huge message from all of this craziness to his people.

Speaker 13 I think that's clearly what he's doing. So

Speaker 13 I don't think that it is magical, amazing politics. Just like I don't think his,

Speaker 13 his,

Speaker 13 according to his campaign, that him wanting to do a perp walk and get photos and make that be a big moment seems like great politics to me.

Speaker 13 I don't, sometimes it's not, sometimes he's not the master genius politician that people give him credit to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I think that's probably right. You had a great segment on your show this weekend about Ron DeSantis flip-flopping on Ukraine.

Speaker 1 What do you make of the recent round of stories about Republican operatives and donors already second-guessing his campaign? What do you think is going on with his candidacy?

Speaker 13 Well,

Speaker 13 a couple of months ago, when he was kind of up in the polls, he reminded me a little bit of,

Speaker 13 do we all remember Wesley Clark when he got into the race in 2004?

Speaker 1 2004.

Speaker 13 I remember, I mean, because a bunch of us were on the Kerry campaign, it was like, oh my God, Wesley Clark is getting in. What are we going to do? Right.

Speaker 13 It looked good on paper. And it seemed like it was going to kind of mess up or change up the race.
And it really didn't.

Speaker 13 And with Ron DeSantis, the thing was that he was whatever, people were projecting upon him what they wanted him to be.

Speaker 13 And I remember a story, I don't remember where it was, but from November, December of some donors who attended an event with him. And many of them came out and said,

Speaker 13 he just, I don't think he was at his best today. And it was like, well, have you seen him before? No.

Speaker 1 It's like, well.

Speaker 13 So what's his best so i mean i i think this is like he's now even though he hasn't announced he's kind of in that stage of this where people are starting to ask questions and you actually have to have policy positions and positions on things and when you're not authentic about it people recognize that so that's kind of all playing out for him um but i don't know i mean he hasn't figured out how to go after Trump clearly,

Speaker 13 but he also seems to, and I talked about this on the show yesterday, I mean, he also hasn't kind of figured out what his own view is of things and that's not just a problem sometimes on the republican side there's problems in the democratic side on that occasionally as well but um you know that's never a good a good message to send to voters so no lane i don't think he's in search of a lane i think he's in search of a lane people are going to still what's the old term like lift the hood kick the tires

Speaker 13 they're starting to kick the tires and i don't know the tires may not all be functioning or something. I'm not sure what the analogy is there.

Speaker 3 The Wesley Clark comparison is good. I hadn't thought about it, it, but that he actually really did get on an airplane at the very start of his campaign with a sweater.

Speaker 3 And it was a campaign that was being just entirely about the vote on the Iraq War. And he was asked on that flight, his very first campaign event,

Speaker 3 would you have voted for the Iraq War? And he just didn't have an answer.

Speaker 4 Not only did not have an answer, but he ended up screaming for his press secretary to come help him.

Speaker 1 Mary! Help! Was it Mary?

Speaker 13 Or Howard Schultz.

Speaker 1 Remember?

Speaker 13 It was like, oh, when he gets in the race, it's all going to be over. He's going to bring the world together.
It's not exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 He was a drip.

Speaker 1 I mean, or on the Republican side in many different primaries, especially 2016.

Speaker 1 Rick Perry, remember?

Speaker 4 Fred Thompson.

Speaker 1 Fred Thompson. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Marco Rubio.

Speaker 1 Whatever Al Bachmann led for. Herman Kane,

Speaker 1 he had a moment there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he did have a moment.

Speaker 13 Didn't he have the 999 plan?

Speaker 1 Am I remembering this correctly?

Speaker 13 Oh, see, we're all kind of remembering. I vaguely remember what that was, but that's all affiliated.

Speaker 1 Also, R.A.P. Grimm and Kane, right? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

Speaker 3 Maybe his memory be a blessing.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 You guys have anything for Jen?

Speaker 3 No, I actually honestly did not prepare any questions.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's great. Okay.
We're just here to hang.

Speaker 13 But he did work very hard on his joke about Howard Schultz, or just like came to him in the moment.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, I'm here to outlive.

Speaker 13 He's prioritizing where he does his work.

Speaker 3 I was doing a lot of work with Chat GPT and it didn't help.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Saki, how are you feeling about going over to the media side? We're still torn about it.

Speaker 4 You know, we're political hacks at heart, but now you have like a real job at a real network where people are counting on you to get it right.

Speaker 13 I'm still torn about it. You're about, how far are you into this journey? Seven years?

Speaker 1 Seven years. Thanks for calling it a journey.

Speaker 13 Well, I don't.

Speaker 13 What was keeping it 1600?

Speaker 1 Keeping it.

Speaker 1 That was the early days.

Speaker 13 I remember the OG version.

Speaker 1 And back then we were like, Trump, what's going to happen? This is silly. Remember Tommy Williams?

Speaker 13 Is this guy going to be around for that long?

Speaker 1 Probably not. Now we're like, will the indictment stop him?

Speaker 3 There was a headline,

Speaker 3 there's a headline in CNN today that said, Trump leans into extremism as legal woes mount. And that could have been appearing every day for the last seven years.

Speaker 4 Literally.

Speaker 1 Should we let Jen answer the question that Tommy asked?

Speaker 1 Sure, yes.

Speaker 13 Well, I mean, the adjustment has been in part that, I mean, I have worked in the White House more than anywhere else in my life, which is a weird thing to say, but I've spent more time there consistently than any other job.

Speaker 13 So part of coming here was also just coming somewhere new that was like a big company with lots of people.

Speaker 13 And the first time I did a special or an election night special, whatever it may have been in the fall, I remember being nervous. Like I was like the new kid at the lunch table.

Speaker 13 you know i brought like a bag of snacks i was like if i have snacks for people maybe they'll want to be my friend i don't know so there's been an adjustment like that and just learning kind of a new place um and then there's an adjustment to things like as you guys know because you are experienced, you know, mediaites at this point in time.

Speaker 13 There are things like commercials. You can't just keep talking.
People will tell you to rap and stop. It's all, you know, those are things I'm learning, all the technical stuff.

Speaker 13 But, you know, I will say that there is a nerdy similarity. I mean, obviously journalism is very different.

Speaker 13 And what I'm doing, I'm not trying to hide from what I've worked on, where I've been, what I think I can bring to the table in this job at all.

Speaker 13 So in that sense, I'm not not trying to be even-handed about abortion or who you can marry or any of that. That's not what anyone's asking me to do or what I'm going to do.

Speaker 13 But I will say, you know, how when you work in government, how you have like a bunch of people wandering around who are policy experts on different things and they kind of, there's a lot of nerds flowing around and they know about different things.

Speaker 13 There is a weird similarity to that, right? Where it's like, you know, you'll run into somebody who's like doing like a documentary on NASA, like in the elevator, right?

Speaker 13 And then, you know, you run into

Speaker 13 somebody who's just been in Georgia.

Speaker 13 So there's, there's a cool aspect of people who are just smart and interesting, trying to get to the bottom of stuff and learn more and different layers of nerdiness.

Speaker 13 So in that sense, it's similar to government.

Speaker 4 It's cool. Did you call other trailblazing politicos turned journalists like Sean Spicer for advice before the show?

Speaker 13 I have not, although I have a great Sean Spicer story. Please.

Speaker 13 He, well, I I mean, we, it's a small town, right? It was, you know, for a long time, we would be, this was pre-Trump, obviously.

Speaker 13 He would be one of those people back in 2012 before I went to the campaign where you'd be in a green room together or you'd be doing television together, right?

Speaker 13 He was kind of a run-of-the-mill Republican operative for a while there.

Speaker 13 Early on in this last iteration in the White House, I did,

Speaker 13 I think it was Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, that show.

Speaker 13 And I talked about how when I needed to get a good laugh, I would pull up the video of him shimmying in his green shirt, you know, from Dancing with the Stars.

Speaker 13 And he, to his credit, sent me a signed photo of him shimmying in that shirt.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Is that hanging up on the wall behind you?

Speaker 1 It is not.

Speaker 13 But I did think that was a little funny, even though, no, I would not call him for advice. And we don't exactly have the same approach to anything.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 3 that's sort of like a good baby bathroom picture. You know, you need a piece of art for the bathroom.

Speaker 1 It's a conversation start.

Speaker 1 What

Speaker 1 are you trying to do with this show that you think is like different than other cable shows?

Speaker 13 I mean, one of the things that we've already started doing and we're going to do more of is spending time or a couple of hours with politicians or elected officials or not even necessarily.

Speaker 13 Like I'd love to do this with athletes or musicians or others to figure out what they do in their normal day. You know, we call it weekend routines.
So it's what do you drink?

Speaker 13 What kind of coffee are you drinking? What show are you watching? But also, what do you like in your normal life? What drives you? What is your background? What do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 13 And you learn so much about people. I mean, I think it's true for all of us, having spent two decades, I can't believe that's true, working for politicians of all different stripes.

Speaker 13 you know, they're human beings, right? They're imperfect. They have funny quirks about them.
I mean, you guys talk a lot about the funny Obama quirks as much as he was an amazing president.

Speaker 13 He's got some funny quirks, right? They all do. And that part of them is so humanizing that, you know, we had, we.
did a piece with Maxwell Frost yesterday.

Speaker 13 He's such an amazing and it's inspiring too. I mean, you think everything's terrible in Washington and government's horrible.
One, I don't believe that.

Speaker 13 I think government and people who get into public service are vast majority do it for the right reasons and do it because they want to make the world better.

Speaker 13 I mean, he's just like such an inspiring 26-year-old who is like outspoken on gun violence. he's just guts and he's going to be around for a while where i'm going to spend tomorrow with danica rome

Speaker 13 and danica um big friend of the pod here big friend of the pod but you know there's there's so many interesting people out there so that's one of the things we're trying to do the other thing is um and this has been really fun i almost start to like giggle because I get so excited about delivering some of these as we're working through them is these segments we're calling don't freak out which is basically you know sometimes it's like everybody's telling you it's a five-alarm fire there are some five alarm fires okay of course there are we're living in an era where the former president just like had insurrectionist video like at his rally so i mean like let's be real but everything is not right and sometimes um we can take the temperature down and explain stuff so those are some of the things but really i'm excited to go out and spend time with people um you know in the environments where they live and work and and share a little bit more about who they are because i think that's what people don't often get to see about politicians are you covering the gwynet paltrow trial i think she's being scammed.

Speaker 3 I really do.

Speaker 13 I've seen some clips of this, and I don't really understand what happened, if I'm being totally honest.

Speaker 3 You should have me on. I'll walk you through this.

Speaker 13 All right. Love it.

Speaker 1 You're invited. Anytime.
Anytime.

Speaker 3 I've watched hours of depositions. Yeah, there were.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Of just this trial.

Speaker 4 You need to read into someone else. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I tried to read like three paragraphs about it, and I was like, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 4 Why do I care about this?

Speaker 1 I know that you're out of the White House, but I'm going to ask you to put your Biden hat back on for a second.

Speaker 1 Our old friend Hans Nichols at Axios just wrote about how the president plans to offer a contrast to the nuttiness of the Republican primary that we were just talking about.

Speaker 1 He said, quote, Biden's advisors are convinced the president can overcome his low approval rating by outlining his infrastructure plan Congress passed last year, project by project and city by city.

Speaker 1 First question, do you think that's really the strategy?

Speaker 13 Well, first of all, I'm not, I've known Hans a long time. When I was working like in the House, he was working for the Hill.

Speaker 13 That is not the sexiest description of a campaign strategy right there, right? So I'm not sure Hans is going to be hired to do a campaign slogan.

Speaker 13 I think the point is, though, one, I mean, the contrast is a little bit inherent right now.

Speaker 13 I mean, they don't have to do anything right now except have Joe Biden be president and go meet with foreign leaders and sign bills and host events at the White House because the other side is so cuckoo.

Speaker 13 And so, in many ways, the crazy versus the this is way better and way more competent is happening on its own, which I think is part of the reason why he hasn't announced yet or why he doesn't.

Speaker 13 I don't know that there's the same urgency that there was six to eight months ago, because there aren't other people clearly. I mean, maybe some people will, but at this point, jumping in the primary.

Speaker 13 And right now, the thing about being president and running for reelection is that in itself is an advantage. You have the music, you have the plane, all the things, right?

Speaker 13 But in terms of the infrastructure, that description, what I do think that how I think they're thinking about this or,

Speaker 13 you know, if I were sitting in there, how I'd be thinking about this is a lot of what they've accomplished, people don't understand what the IRA is, which by the way, is just like a terrible acronym for anything.

Speaker 13 Acronyms are generally terrible. They don't really understand like the Inflation Reduction Act, even if you spell it out.

Speaker 13 They do understand if there is like a bridge being built in their community, if their road is no longer, if their road is easier to go go over if there's a cool renewable climate project that they can get excited about and so it is smart because there's still an element of all politics is local that i think is very true to who joe biden is but also it's how they can do their accomplishments in a way that's not just like ira bumper stickers which like you know no one knows what that is although tommy's like thinking about like the irelands right now

Speaker 4 just to push you on that a little bit talkie i mean every president is like, gets told by their advisors, like, sir, you're doing amazing things.

Speaker 4 Your communications team is just not selling it well enough, and that's what we're going to fix this next quarter, right?

Speaker 4 And so, you know, that happened to us when we worked for Obama and it pissed us off.

Speaker 4 When Joe Biden took office and they passed a ton of COVID stimulus money, his advisors were out there saying, you know, look, Obama screwed up by not selling the Recovery Act and the stimulus well enough.

Speaker 4 Joe's going to hit the road and we're really going to sell it. And then we fast forwarded today and his approval is at 38%.

Speaker 4 And it's just sort of like, is it an antiquated idea to think that you can do these road shows and really sell these granular projects?

Speaker 13 Well, no, I think that's fair.

Speaker 13 I mean, I think it's part, it's a little different just to like unpack all of that, because part of his accomplishment and what he's done to date is these big bills, right?

Speaker 13 So it's not the totality of the only thing you do, but it's part of what they can lay the groundwork on now before he announces, which is to help inform people and communities what he's actually done, right?

Speaker 13 And that's, that's more about the politics of it, I think, than it is about like when you're in the White House, do you sell it? Does your comm, is your comms team terrible?

Speaker 13 I've like long joked, and if I ever do this, I will make you guys mugs. I want like an

Speaker 13 NACP, which stands for not a comms problem.

Speaker 4 I want one.

Speaker 1 I want two.

Speaker 13 I used to joke with my team when I was the press secretary that that like we needed that mug.

Speaker 13 No one really knew what it meant, but we knew what it meant because it's like sometimes it's not a comms problem.

Speaker 1 It's a policy problem, by the way.

Speaker 13 Anyway, Anyway,

Speaker 13 I do think once he gets in and once it is an actual contrast with some, with

Speaker 13 an opponent, it becomes the like, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.

Speaker 13 And by the way, that guy over there, whoever it may be, unless Nikki Haley has a massive surprising surge in the polls, you know, I'm not betting on it, but we'll see.

Speaker 13 He is going to be way out of the mainstream on the vast majority of issues.

Speaker 13 Even if it's Ron DeSantis, he's, yes, less crazy than Donald Trump, or maybe I'd trust him more with the nuclear codes or something, but he still has policies that are way beyond even like most conservatives.

Speaker 13 I mean, he's way out of what the mainstream is. So that will still be the central part,

Speaker 13 I would bet, I would advise in a year from now. But for now, it's like the stage of like, here's what I've actually done.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Jen, do you think? So recently there was this photo.

Speaker 3 It was Biden and McConnell in front of a bridge, and it was Kevin McCarthy and the chaos on the floor of the house, and it was this great contrast.

Speaker 1 The Brent Spence Bridge.

Speaker 4 The Brent Spence Bridge.

Speaker 1 The famous Brent Spence Bridge. Which, by the way,

Speaker 13 is a scary bridge. I've driven over many times because my husband is from Cincinnati, and that thing is

Speaker 1 the same. That's how we got a free bridge.

Speaker 3 That's why Joe Biden's going to fix it. That's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But, you know, some of what Joe Biden gets, as you were saying, like, these are, these are, this is some, some of this is t-ball, right? Like, be against violence, be for democracy.

Speaker 3 How much would you have when Joe Biden's on the road touting infrastructure, touting

Speaker 3 climate and environmental infrastructure, how much would you have him enter the fight and start taking shots about what Trump and DeSantis and others are saying?

Speaker 3 And how much would you let the contrast speak for itself?

Speaker 13 Well, I mean, when I was there, we didn't do that a lot purposefully, right? And people can judge whether that was the right.

Speaker 13 decision or the wrong decision, but part of that was sort of resettling the nerves of the public, right?

Speaker 13 So the first year plus i mean back i mean i left 10 months ago almost to when i think there was starting to be a little bit of contrast right before i left but we didn't really do much of that we kind of let the crazy be the crazy right we didn't talk about marjorie taylor green we just let the crazy be the crazy um

Speaker 13 now they've done it more and they are to as a now observer of it they've been still selective about it but they've done it a little bit more obviously as a campaign picks up as he if he decides, presumably he's made every indication he's going to run, he runs, that will become more frequent, including when he's out there doing events.

Speaker 13 You know, you got to be careful, the official, unofficial, official, political, all that kind of stuff. But I think it increases over the year, and that makes sense.

Speaker 1 What do you make of this narrative?

Speaker 1 that's out there now that Biden is moving to the center because of, you know, they connect three dots here, the opposition to DC's criminal justice reforms, his support for the Willow oil drilling project, and now the rumored possibility that the administration may bring back family detentions.

Speaker 1 You've been in government like us, and you know that

Speaker 1 some things are political strategy, some things are just an unfortunate sequence of events that you have little control over, and sometimes it's a mix of both. So, but

Speaker 1 what do you make of it?

Speaker 13 I think without knowing where the third sits,

Speaker 13 I think the first two are a bit of an unfortunate sequence of events. I mean, the first, the DC bill, which is complicated, hard for people to understand.

Speaker 13 There was a total miscommunication, which obviously warrant is, you know, there's warranted criticism. But the mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, did not want that bill, right?

Speaker 13 She also, so I don't know entirely what happened there, but the thing about Biden is he, and people like this, they don't like it, he's never been as progressive on issues around

Speaker 13 policing as some in the party might like him to be. I mean, he's he is, has been an advocate for the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act.

Speaker 13 He's been an advocate for reforms, but he has also been a defender of funding the police, and that puts it in his budget and things like that.

Speaker 13 And that's kind of core to part of who he is. So, whether people like it or not like it, I don't think it's a shift, I would say.
On the Willow Project, as I understand that in my reading,

Speaker 13 there is a legal component there that is a little bit tricky for them.

Speaker 13 That does not mean, as we all know, it makes it easy to explain and it feels bad. It sounds bad.
It feels contradictory.

Speaker 13 But the legal stuff can be a real pain in the neck when you're in the communications team. And I think it's a case of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Sometimes having to follow the law is a real

Speaker 1 pain.

Speaker 13 It's a real tricky wicket.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's why the Trump people were just like, fuck it. We're not going to do it.
It's a grace factor.

Speaker 4 We're not.

Speaker 13 Right. Right.
We were still like, we cannot violate the Hatch Act.

Speaker 1 You know, we will not.

Speaker 13 Although I, I guess I got in trouble once, whatever. But like,

Speaker 13 you know, I got a sternly worded letter.

Speaker 13 But, you know, they, they were like doing their campaign rallies on the South lawn, right?

Speaker 1 We were like.

Speaker 13 And then we don't even, like, I'd see an attorney general in the hallway and I'd like move the other way.

Speaker 1 Wasn't the convention speech on the lawn?

Speaker 3 And then, and then it was like, and then they're like, you violated the hatch hack. Pay us $500, which means it's just a $500 fee for breaking breaking a hatch act.

Speaker 4 So Jen, you know, you're you're listen, I think anyone who watched you at the podium knows that you are not only brilliant but incredibly patient and kind to even very dumb questioners, but you're also a tough cookie.

Speaker 4 You know, we were in a lot of campaign battles. You shut up.
You were in a lot of campaign battles. That was a love.

Speaker 3 Do you owe Jen money?

Speaker 4 No, we were in a lot of fights with Jen in political campaigns. We saw her knife fighting, sticking it to opponents behind the scenes, dropping Oppo.

Speaker 4 So now that you're at your new perch, is there anyone at CNN that you want to talk shit about?

Speaker 1 Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper. Let's start a fight.

Speaker 4 Has Aaron Burnett actually been behind this whole time?

Speaker 3 Like, who should we go after?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 13 Jake Tapper, friends, was at my wedding.

Speaker 4 He'll come for you.

Speaker 13 I don't know. I hope not.
I love his wife, who's like even the better member of the family. I think that's fair to say.

Speaker 1 He'll probably attack you for saying that.

Speaker 1 Who was the other person? I'm uncomfortable with this whole conversation. Anderson Cooper.

Speaker 13 Does he not like Anderson Cooper? He's like, do, I mean, he's, no.

Speaker 1 All right, we'll do this offline. Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 You mentioned, you mentioned it feeling like the first day of school, like have Rachel and Chris and Nicole Wallace let you sit at their lunch table. Oh, yeah.
Is there a cool kid table?

Speaker 13 Occasionally, I do offer snacks.

Speaker 13 No, they have been really great. I mean, I have gotten amazing advice from all of them.

Speaker 13 You know, Nicole Wallace brought me to one of her staff meetings and I just watched it all happen when I, in my first couple of weeks, Rachel sat with me when I was going through the teleprompter.

Speaker 13 She may have been in her head been like, ooh, she's not good at this, but she didn't say that. She's very helpful.
Chris has been walking me through how he prepares for

Speaker 13 shows. Everybody's a little different, right?

Speaker 3 Like as famous as Chris Hayes, you're not allowed to look him in the eyes.

Speaker 3 But other than that, as long as you don't break that one,

Speaker 13 so

Speaker 13 no, they've been all really great. I will say there would be a really amazing, because I started months ago, I feel like there was such a long lead up.

Speaker 13 I think people were like, are you actually going to have a show?

Speaker 1 Are they like humoring you a little bit here?

Speaker 13 I feel like I got versions of that question sometimes. But because I started in September, I had time to kind of get to know each people and spend time with people.

Speaker 13 And I went to visit most of the anchors in their offices, which there would be an amazing, I'm like, I don't know who I'm pitching this to in the world, magazine piece, some sort of story about their offices, because it's like, they're everything you want them to be, you know, I mean, like Chris Hayes has like a stack of news, like of magazine articles.

Speaker 13 You're like, of course you do, and you've probably read all of them. That's annoying, but it's like what I wanted it to be.

Speaker 13 You know, Lawrence O'Donnell has like a portrait of like a member of Moynihan who he once worked for.

Speaker 13 I mean, it's just Ari Melbourne's office is like, looks like it's in a law firm. I mean, it's all the things things you want them to be.

Speaker 1 He's got biggies ashes.

Speaker 1 It's just like Lovett's desk is exactly what you'd expect as well.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's a pile of shit.

Speaker 1 Just very

Speaker 1 empty sneakers are.

Speaker 13 Color-coded, color-coded.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Your show is fantastic. We are so proud of you and so happy for the early success that you've had.
Please come back to Potsave America anytime. Anytime.
Gensaki. I will.

Speaker 13 And you guys come on my show.

Speaker 1 Yes. Anytime.
Anytime.

Speaker 13 We'll come to New York.

Speaker 1 We'll do it.

Speaker 1 Are you in New York or DC?

Speaker 1 It's D.C. Babies are welcome.
Great.

Speaker 13 Cool spouses are welcome.

Speaker 4 I mean, I've already been on, but no offense to you guys. Oh, whoa.

Speaker 1 That's why it was so nice.

Speaker 3 That's why it's so nice. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Right. Well, you know.

Speaker 1 All right, one of these days.

Speaker 13 Anyway, thank you guys so much.

Speaker 1 It was great to see you all. Thanks, Jen.
Bye.

Speaker 3 Sanderson hit Gweneth.

Speaker 1 I'm telling you.

Speaker 3 Sanderson took Gwyneth out. He took her out.

Speaker 3 I'm telling you. I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 Are we still recording?

Speaker 3 Yes, sir. Gwyneth Paltrow is being railroaded.
Don't believe TikTok. She is the victim.

Speaker 1 Everybody turn it on.

Speaker 4 Okay, give us 60 seconds on it.

Speaker 3 60 seconds. Here we go.
Okay, so basically, here's what I believe happened having watched so much of this trial.

Speaker 3 And again, because I don't want to be sued because this guy's litigious, I am just sharing my opinion.

Speaker 1 Allegedly, allegedly.

Speaker 3 My opinion. Now, he claims that he hit.

Speaker 3 hit uh that that he claims that gwyneth knocked him over with such force that he broke ribs and got a concussion the problem is he doesn't remember that happening and does not deny that when the collision happened gwyneth Paltrow said, you hit me.

Speaker 3 And he said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The eyewitness was 40 feet away and was confused about whether or not Gwyneth was wearing a helmet.
In fact, denied that she was. She was.

Speaker 3 Gwyneth's story has been incredibly consistent that this guy hit her. Not only that, all the reports by the ski instructors and ski patrol, everyone verified that the story was Gwyneth was hit.

Speaker 3 And the report that the ski instructor filed when he got to the bottom of the hill was that Gwyneth was hit.

Speaker 3 What happened was, right as the ski instructor was skiing away from the scene after everyone was said to be okay,

Speaker 3 everybody was done.

Speaker 3 He turned and he said your buddy just took out gwyneth paltrow and then he got stars in his eyes then the dollar signs started showing up what happens he lays back down says he needs help we're off to the races when gwyneth got to the bottom of the hill before she knew she was going to be sued she texted that guy really hurt me you don't send that text if you hit somebody else today's pod save america is brought to you by goop yeah what hollywood producer

Speaker 3 i don't love the jade eggs i don't love the jade eggs and i don't love brown broth for lunch but i know an innocent person when i see one all right i'm calling balls and strikes here justice for gwyneth Justice for Gwyneth.

Speaker 1 Are you in the J6 chorus going to record a justice chorus? The G6.

Speaker 1 The G6.

Speaker 1 The G6.

Speaker 3 We're part of the G6 chorus.

Speaker 1 I'll sing it.

Speaker 3 I'll sing it. Get chat GPT to write some lyrics.

Speaker 1 And one last point about this.

Speaker 3 One last point about this is: I will say that Gwyneth's performance on the stand.

Speaker 1 She's more preparation than you did for the whole thing.

Speaker 3 Gwen's performance on the stand is

Speaker 3 one of the best performances she's handed in since Shakespeare and fucking love. She is exquisite on the stand.
She makes these lawyers look like fucking dunces.

Speaker 4 Someone compared it to a Xanax versus an Adderall. The lawyer being the Adderall is very funny.

Speaker 3 Look, here's the thing.

Speaker 3 That poor lawyer that was trying to interrogate Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm sorry. You may be the best they've got in Utah, but this is Hollywood good.

Speaker 3 You're not going to be able to, you're not going to be able to take Gwynneth down a pet.

Speaker 1 This is Oscar good.

Speaker 3 All I can tell you is the truth, said she.

Speaker 1 Well, she did win an Oscar.

Speaker 1 Thank you to Gensaki.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Jensaki.

Speaker 1 Thank you

Speaker 1 to Gwenneth. To our court TV correspondent, John Lovett.

Speaker 4 I thought Savannah Savannah Guthrie got her start. You watch your tongue, pal.

Speaker 1 I know, I know. Yeah, I know.
Big shot now. I'm not a lawyer, though.
Unfortunately. You're not.

Speaker 1 No one would be killing.

Speaker 1 There's the rub.

Speaker 1 All right. All right, everyone.

Speaker 1 We'll talk to you later.

Speaker 1 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez.

Speaker 1 It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Girard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montouth.

Speaker 1 Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.

Speaker 14 What is the secret to making great toast?

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We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 14 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 1 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 14 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

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